Inconsistencies are common mistakes made in the identification of what the problem is when seeking the nature of the change/s necessary when addressing a problem of community concern.

In this context an inconsistency is defined as statements and analyses which do not address the fundamental causes of the current circumstances and therefore are likely to result in a failure to address the fundamental causes or operational constraints facing the community. Alternatively this can result in a solution which has an elevated cost because of its inefficiency and lack of effectiveness.

This type of occurrence is common and it plagues party political decisions on, for example, the terms of reference for investigations and reviews which quite often end up as an incoherence between the analysis prescribed and the nature of the phenomenon being analyse. The objective being to avoid embarrassing revelations or to end up with solutions that favour certain factional interests at the expense of another faction or even the majority of constituents.

Perversely, the more widespread a problem and the more urgent the solution, the level of inconsistencies often rises along with a tendency for financial corruption arising from hurried and precipitous decisions. There are many recent examples of this type of "decision-making" by government. Amongst the most notorious failures of this sort have involved the argumentation and illogic of party politicians favouring the provision of services or goods "for the nation" by those who support or have promised to support "the party". Areas where this is self-evident are in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and in the statements being made in relation to climate change and COP 26, especially in the area of the role of finance.

There are logical due diligence procedures to avoid this sort of defective governance and these will be set out on this page.

Detecting faulty reasoning

It is important for constituents to be able to detect when politicians are using misleading arguments to justify a decision that will affect them. An argument consists of a "structure" consisting of a conclusion and one or more premises, or claims. The conclusion is what the politician wants people to accept, based on stated premises or the reasons for believing the conclusion to be true. Constituents need to be able to detect flaws in these components in order to know whether or not to accept the reasoning.

The work of T. Edward Damer on "Attacking Faulty Reasoning" provides guidelines for the detection of faulty reasoning in dialogues. However, decision analysis extends this analysis to identifying the fundamental cause-and effect relationship a politician might refer to including the quantitative aspects. A common device of using statistics to cast a misleading interpretation on "facts" is a common political trick. Darrell Huff describes the devices applied in, "How to Lie With Statistics". In this context, the most abused flawed logic is the interpretation of correlation (coincidence) as being a cause-and-effect relationship. Such flawed logic is rampant in economic policy decisions, and especially monetarism.

Power through lies Not being content with constructing elaborate logic, Boris Johnson has made widespread use of plain lies to enthuse most of the 100,000 gullible Conservative party members who have enthusiastically supported his declarations designed to mislead the electorate. Their curious logic has been that lying is bad but Boris is their liar and therefore his lying is forgiven since this way the party can gain and remain in power. However, although a pathological failure to respect truth is associated with visceral instincts required for survival in the world party politics, this is also generally associated with a lack of precision and concern with practical details; in government, this is important. As a result, this has become very evident in the poor decision analysis and chaotic handling of the affairs of the country including Covid-19. This lack of concern with ethical standards for truth ignores the Nolan Principles of Public Life resulting in widespread prejudice to the manjority of constituents on the economics front and avoidable deaths from Covid-19.

By combining decision analysis with Damer's analysis it is possible to pin down misrepresentation and lies. In a world where the media are biased towards specific ideological or party political viewpoints, they fail to bring out such details.

One practical solution which will be described in more detail is the requirement for all political decisions to be supported by Decision Analysis Briefs (DABs) first proposed by Hector McNeill in the book, "The Briton's Quest for Freedom ... Our unfinished journey". Since that publication in 2007, the DAB concept has been developed further as a component of due diligence in the process of identifying and designing propositions.

Diversionary tactics

One of the commonly applied diversionary tactics politicians use when asked why income disparity is allowed to continue to rise, that this is the result of the operation of the "free market". It is argued that some people are more "organized" and better at looking after their own interests than others.

However, markets are highly differentiated in terms of sector law and regulations brought into being by politicians. A principal reason for the massive rises in income and wealth of the financial services sector, over a 45 years stretch, has been the result of corrupt decision making in the enactment of financial regulations which have purposely reduced sanctions for any transgressions to almost meaningless levels. This has resulted in corrupt and damaging behavour within the sector being of no legal consequence to the perpetrators. This process of unethical political decisions leading to unethical behaviour in the financial sector is outlined in the Ethics section".

Why is this important?

Decisions by party politicians in government, who have to trade-off between party benefactor and constituent interests have, as a result, taken some disastrous decisions which have prejudiced the majority of constituents. Decisions to mount military campaigns that lead to the deaths of millions of innocents and made the UK less secure, monetarism based on faulty logic has resulted in worldwide extreme income disparity, quantitative easing intensifying austerityare both and augmentation in pauperism and state-dependency and the ability to continue to ignore the requirements of the care sector and mental health, which is in crisis as a direct result of the social and economic stress resulting from the flawed decision logic of politicians.

These are some salient contemporary examples of the terrible consequences of compromised and tendentious decisions taken under the political party system.


It is time for a politics without parties!!