The premise for the campaign is flawed and cynical, the methodology is pie in the sky.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my concerns.

I realise you’re not calling for an *unelected* technocratic government, but it does seem you want to replace politicians with managers – far from restoring British democracy, I think this would undermine it further. At the very least, you could aim to attract candidates from all walks of life, not just entrepreneurs, headteachers and managers.

As for the policy process, I’m afraid I’m still unconvinced. You’re asking people to put time, effort and money into a political movement that has no core values or principles (if you do, then you should make them explicit and use them as a basis for policy discussions).

Thanks for the additional info on the campaign team. I have no wish to discourage them but (as the Democracy 2015 Twitter account confirmed to me) they are mostly unpaid interns. This seems pretty hypocritical – the internship system is one of the reasons we have so many ‘career politicians’.

On your finances – collecting small donations from supporters doesn’t sound like a viable fundraising strategy to me. If you’re going to do this properly, you’ll need major funding from somewhere – whether that’s wealthy individuals or charitable trusts.

I’m glad you’re going to make contact with other democracy organisations. There’s a wealth of campaigning experience out there – I hope you make use of it.

Thanks again for replying.

The campaign team comprises recent graduates with a 50-50 split between men and women; they come from all over the country. I selected them blind, relying solely on how how well they answered my email question asking them to comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the proposal. Why don’t you come to see us? You would be vey welcome.
As to finance, we propose to fund ourselves by collecting small donations, maximum £50, from supporters.
You also correctly observe that there are a number of organisations and charities already out there trying to reverse the democratic deficit. Indeed we have identified ten such bodies with which we shortly make contact.

I can foresee a confederacy of Independents forming a government and proceeding with a deliberative democratic process.

What needs to happen, as you hint, is to spread the net wide and involve all of those who are already doing their own thing in anticipation of 2015 – I’d add The Independent Network for example. Unfragmenting (not perhaps an ideal term but bear with me) the disparate elements and melding the popular sentiment that favours change into an electable group ought not to be beyond us.

I think this is actually a win win of a sort. You, Artur, got a chance to try to promote your business. And you provided everyone else with a hysterical example of pseudo-scientific posturing.

With your behaviour, criticisms of existing reviews, and lack of solid evidence managed to fit neuro-linguistic programming into this profile perfectly:
http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/pratkanis.htm

You gave us a chance to see all the other pseudo-scientific therapies you have enrolled in: http://www.krolartur.com/narzdzia-zmiany

And especially with your attempt to reverse burden of proof and your attacks on critics, you fit the Lilienfeld characteristics of pseudo-scientific thinking very well:
http://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux/teaching/JOURNEE_AUTOMNE_CogMaster_2011-12/docs/Lilienfeld_2004_Teaching_PseudoScience.pdf

If you want to really make your mark as a pseudo-scientist though, just think to yourself “What would Andy do in this situation?”
https://sites.google.com/site/nlpthepseudoscience/typical-nlp-flimflam/quacker-no1-andy-bradbury

Thanks for the performance!

BTW, those articles explain pretty well why HR departments can be conned into falling for such neuro-babble and flimflam.

Bye, bye, mr. duck. Keep on quacking, I’m done wasting time on you

OTH, if James or some other person actually interested in a debate comes up, I’ll be happy to participate.

You recommend them based upon your cherry picked and quite laughable set of articles. Do we take your pick as a neuro-linguistic programmer and pusher of other such pseudo-sciences, or do we take the reviews of independent published researchers such as Sharpley, Norcross et al, Witkowski and Druckman et al?

Mmm! Let me think!

Well first up a lot of your refs there are from minor or fringe subjects, such as Journal of Accelerative Learning and Teaching. They push as much woo as you.

The Tosey refs are funny. He’s another one with vested financial interests. He’s a neuro-linguistic programmer/lecturer who seems to think he can prove NLP works because some people like it.

Sorry, but those guys got well and truly squashed here:
http://gjarhe.research.glam.ac.uk/media/files/documents/2009-07-17/JARHE_V1.2_Jul09_Web_pp57-63.pdf

Notice Rodrique Davies also calls neuro-linguistic programming a pseudo-scientific title.

Its interesting to note that you don’t even list Sharpley 1987 here:
http://www.krolartur.com/artykuly/167

Just as above, you rather glossed over that one, trying to make believe that Einspruch and foreman was the last word on Sharpley 1984. Again, was that confirmation bias, or just a deliberate attempt to blinker the reader towards your bias?

So as before, of course homeopathy has some supporting studies, but just like neuro-linguistic programming it fails overall. The pushers ignore the overall and narrow the reader just like you have attempted.

HR departments often don’t see the scam.

Feel free to continue with your fatuous attempts at character assassination. You are adding to the list of pseudo-scientific characteristics of neuro-linguistic programmers very nicely, and turning out to be a pretty comprehensive exemplar of pseudo-scientific thinking yourself.