Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

So President Obama joins the legions who meet on Facebook, confirming his high-tech, up-to-date connectivity. Good for him, the social networks are a great way for politicians to tell us their plans and an even greater way for us to tell them what we think.

And therein lies the danger. We vote someone into Parliament to represent us, not to be a delegate. As a representative, we first establish that his standards and principles accord with our own, we vote for him to represent us. When we have given him that role we leave him to make decisions until our next opportunity to vote him in or out. That is democracy. It doesn’t mean we cannot communicate with him during his years of office but it does mean that we have cast him as our representative and we do not expect to dictate his every decision and vote.

The danger is that our social media allow just that to happen. Recently an MP in UK started the day with one vote in mind, changed it later because of what the bulk of the blogs were saying – and then changed it back again when the social media swung the other way.

Democracy by daily vote is not democracy. A rolling referendum is no substitute for well informed and responsible representation. By all means let our voices be heard and certainly we should kick out any politician who betrays the principles on which we elected him. But let us avoid politics by popular shout.

They lead to anarchy and the bullying of minorities by the majority.

If we want better democracies let us phase our voting. I’ll tell you how we could do that tomorrow.