Software patents and ID cards sneaking through

More democracy in action in the EU. As was reported recently, the Council are sneaking the software patents directive through during a meeting on Agriculture and Fisheries today.

It will go back to the EU parliament, which opposed it in its current form, once the Council has approved it but don't expect the parliament to have much influence.

The ID cards bill was "debated" in the House of Commons yesterday and the chamber was virtually empty. Compare that with the sessions on MPs salaries when the same chamber is bursting at the seams with MPs and it gives you some indication of the state of our democracy in the UK. Our political representatives are more concerned about their own salaries than an issue of fundamental importance such as the introduction of national identity cards. No other Western democracy has introduced ID cards in peacetime and we're passing it through without interest or debate.

Paraphrasing Edmund Burke (and various others since, including Albert Einstein), for evil to prosper it requires only that good people do nothing. Most MPs are basically decent people but in this instance they are doing nothing.