There are several worrying aspects to this soon-to-be-legislation that I could comment on. The fact that the Bill has been “washed-up” – parliament parlance for pushed through without proper consultation – is both dangerous and worrying to begin with: the fact that the government didn’t try to push this through earlier should ring alarm bells as to why they considered a period where proper consultation doesn’t take place (with parliament being dissolved) the necessary time to have it read.

The ever-unpopular Landline Tax has been shifted to the Finance Bill, so we are still paying. Powers given to Ofcom are again dangerous and worrying, considering nationalisation of Nominet is a terrible, terrible idea.

I’m not going to go into much detail because I’ve exhausted my thoughts on this in several places, but what sickens me the most about the whole thing, is that 40 Members of Parliament turned up to vote on the second reading.

Forty people from our collective body who are supposed to represent us. I wrote to my MP, David Howarth, asking him why he felt it unimportant to be present at the second reading. A reply from my MP’s secretary (or whoever it is that actually replies to us mugs on these occasions) wrote a nice letter about how Mr Howarth MP opposed the DEB and had voted accordingly.

Well first off, I appreciate him voting against it, but secondly it didn’t answer my question. I wanted to know why my MP (and by proxy hopefully why so few MPs) considered it not important to be at the second reading. That is the failing in democracy for me: our politicians – our elected representatives – do not give a damn about what we actually want.