Accountability

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When did the concept of accountability disappear? Once there was a time when local and national government bodies were accountable to the people who elected them. That's the whole idea behind democracy after all. That's how it works. Now it looks more and more that once they're in office, the government officials no longer take any notice of what their electorate think. They just forge ahead with their own plans regardless of protests. The most obvious example was the Iraq war where there was a fairly massive protest in the UK and no notice was taken of it at all. The attack went ahead on the basis of what turned out to be extremely shaky evidence about weapons of mass destruction. More locally, Cornwall County Council totally ignored the results of a referendum which went against the formation of a unitary Cornwall authority and abolishing district councils. As of April this year we have a Cornish unitary authority the majority of the public apparently didn't want. So what use is democracy if the officials who are elected take no notice of the wishes of their constituents? What other form of government would work better? Perhaps we need to ask this question? We do after all pay their salaries in one form of another so surely it's time something changed? Something which served the majority of the population better.