What's in the news?
What shenanigans are politicians up to this week?
Are the Tory backbenchers going to force an early EU referendum?
Conservative MPs are currently rallying around a Private Members bill aiming to guarantee a referendum about our membership of the EU in 2017. However a good number of Conservative backbench MPs (MPs who do not hold a ministerial or shadow ministerial position in the House of Commons and therefore sit on the back benches of the chamber) are looking to add amendments that would see the referendum take place next year instead. Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24859102
Questions to consider :
- Why are Labour adding so many amendments to the bill?
- What is the difference between a Private Members bill and a Government bill?
- Should the UK have a referendum on our membership of the EU? If so, when?
Brand vs Webb - Should we stop voting in order to bring about changes to our political system?
Russell Brand recently gave an interview on Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman where he talked about why he didn't vote and why he thought the political system needed a fundamental overhaul. You can see the interview below.
In response to this, Robert Webb (of Peep Show fame as well as all of those Movie Mistake programmes) wrote an article that disagreed with Brand's view. Read it here - http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/russell-brand-robert-webb-choosing-vote-most-british-kind-revolution-there
The question is, which one of them (if either) is right? Is our system so broken that we do indeed need a 'revolution'? Or do we need to get involved more and stop our apathy in order to bring about any positive change?
Russell Brand NEWSNIGHT Paxman vs Brand Full Interview