There’s the agenda setting practices of powerful media owners for a start. And what about all that comercialisation – billions spent on marketing happy meals + diet pills + teeny padded bras + image anxiety must be doing something (or is the private sector wasteful after all?).

I suggest they also be asked whether fast tracking a rich elite through private schools and the top universities into the most influential jobs is a good thing any more – if we really are going for democracy then we’re going to need to spread the education and influence a bit more widely!!

In my view, we are a representative democracy, and I don’t think we want a situation of ‘mob rule.’

As an example (because that’s the minority I belong to), look at attitudes towards disability in the general public. Even before the tabloid campaign that has now reduced us all to ‘faking scroungers’, the overwhelming public attitude towards disabled people could be summed up in two phrases: ‘Does he take sugar?’ with its implicit demeaning of the intellectual capacity of all disabled people, and ‘I’d rather be dead than in a wheelchair’, which not only continues the demeaning, but suggests that our very lives may not be worth living. Even the assumption that a wheelchair is a negative reveals the degree of disconnect between public and minority, because as anyone with a mobility impairment will tell you, wheelchairs are actually incredibly liberating and empowering. People might claim that these are cliches, that attitudes aren’t that bad, but I’ve faced them on the street, they’re worse. Even the members of the public who think they have a positive view of disability are usually locked into the Personal Tragedy model of disability, which is simply ‘Does he take sugar’ dressed up in a posh frock.

And that’s my minority, no doubt members of other minorities will be able to quote similar examples of the disconnect between the established elite, sorry, the general public, and their own concerns and needs. There may be a role for ‘Citizen’s Juries’ in some cases, but we need to be desperately careful with this because sometimes that jury of your peers turns out not to contain any of your peers at all.