Program Your Own Mind 2

Colonial shame is the reason the Falklands should be British

2012-02-29T09:59:00.002Z

In the Guardian it is being reported that Roger Waters, founding Pink Floyd member, while garnering support for his current tour in the South Americas, has stated that the Falklands should belong to the Argentinians. It is reported as follows in the Guardian...

"I am as ashamed as I possibly could be of our colonial past," Waters is reported to have said to TVN journalist Amaro Gómez-Pablos. When asked if the islands are British or Argentinian, Waters reportedly replied: "I think they should be Argentinian."

This is obviously after other celebrity endorsements for the Argentinian heightening of military tension in the region, the most prominent being Sean Penn, clumsily sticking his foot in to something far more complex than he perhaps realised when first opening his mouth.

The trouble I have with these statements is that they are completely at odds with their own reasoning for making the statements, complete oxymorons. If we want to atone for our colonialist ways of the past, we need to stand by the wishes of the population of the Falklands and their wishes, people that have lived on the island for generations.

It is no less than a colonialist mentality to state that Argentina should be given sovereignty over the islands simply because of their position. There is no significant evidence of "Argentinean" people living on the island pre-discovery by the British in the 17th century, any claim to the islands is purely based on the whims and wishes of a particular government and the benefit that such sovereignty can have for their strategic aims.

This is colonialism 101.

Celebrities and others that would see Argentina regain some sovereignty over the land, especially ones that have been so vocal against military excursions in the Middle East due to the underlying controversy of how the country's oil reserves get exploited, are being amazing hypocrites by making the stand they are.

There aren't many up to date opinion polls on the subject, maybe because the last one Argentina tried to use to gain ammunition for gain in sovereignty of the islands almost 20 years ago resulted in only 4% of the population being open to discussions about it. The people, unless there has been a seismic shift in public opinion in the last two decades, want to remain as they are...who are we, or the Argentines, or Sean Penn and other vocal celebrities, to tell these people what country they associate with, potentially against their will?

And why would they want to change? They have an island of their own, not ruled over by the government of Argentina, and not really ruled over by the UK. They have their own governance, their own laws, their own way of life.

Those asking for the people to risk giving that up, and to be amalgamated with a population of people that are culturally and physically miles apart, ought to be ashamed; not for Britian's role in colonising various lands in history, but for their own desires to demand Argentina be allowed to colonise the island now, in the modern world.

Political spin in full flow

2012-02-23T12:26:00.004Z

It seems as though the political world we have to endure right now is one of those with vested interests, and no intention of listening to the public, twisting our complaints and trying to make out that it is us, wishing to keep the poor and the destitute from becoming more poor, more destitute, that are the "bad people". In some cases the arguments are being turned from big business taking the piss to big businesses having to endure severe hardship in the face of our laws and regulations.

Here are some of the best examples from this month...

Chris Grayling on Workfare during Channel 4 News 21/02/2012

Chris Grayling, while being expertly skewered by John Snow on various claims he was making in defence and promotion of the work scheme that sees "long" term unemployed people coerced in to basic jobs with little to no value in developing skills, came up with this doozy of a spin in order to sidestep one of the main criticisms of the scheme, that people lose their benefits.

Despite the main companies partaking in this scheme have been those like Tesco, Argos, the owners of Topshop and Topman, Poundland and others that have now sensibly removed themselves from the scheme like Sainsburys and Matalan, Grayling had the clumsy audacity to try and compare them to a "local small bakery business".

You see the taking away of benefits is purely there to protect these poor companies from being screwed over by benefit claimants agreeing to provide labour for free, and then deciding maybe they can do something better with their time for free instead. What is the small bakery business to do when the person just doesn't turn up for work? Well..I imagine the same that they'd have to do if the person failed to keep on going to the scheme within the first week, during which they won't lose their benefits.

And of course, let's not forget, the number of small businesses using this scheme is a pittance compared to those like Tesco who are earning MILLIONS OF POUNDS EVERY DAY and who's only complaint is that instead of paying no-one to do the work that they'd normally pay minimum wage for, they might need to ask someone else to cover those hours....for minimum wage.

Iain Duncan Smith on Workfare "Job Snobs" in the Daily Mail (and other papers) 21/02/2012

I doubt I'm the only person who thinks supermarket shelf-stackers add more value to our society than many of those 'job snobs' who are busy pontificating about the Government's employment policies. They should learn to value work and not sneer at it.

Hah! "Job Snob", it rhymes and everything. You see it is not a problem that people are doing work that, if they were given the job, would be earning at least TWICE the amount that they take on Job Seekers Allowance, no...the problem is us "Job Snobs" who somehow think that people doing labour for another person have a right to be fairly paid for that!

We are not sneering at the jobs that people are taking. It might not be everyone's dream, but for a lot of people minimum wage work at the biggest companies in the UK, like Tesco, means the difference between living in daily worry over choices between food or heating, or only having to worry about budgeting properly. What we want, us "Job Snobs", is for people doing this clearly available work to be PAID A WAGE FOR IT.

We sneer not at people getting work experience in Tesco, though for the life of me I can't think what employer is going to value the skill of taking stock from the back of the store to the front, other than Tesco or it's competitors, we sneer at the politicians that think it's fair to say "Here you go Tesco, feel free to save around £150-200 a week on employing someone, you obviously have the capacity to take on a worker...but we'd rather keep them stuck on benefits than actually in employment! We'll pay!"

Yes, it is us "job snobs" that are the devious bastards...

Liam Fox complaining about workers rights to anyone that'll hear his corrupt self 22/02/2012

"It is too difficult to hire and fire, and too expensive to take on new employees. It is intellectually unsustainable to believe that workplace rights should remain untouchable while output and employment are clearly cyclical.

Too difficult to hire and fire? There are too many people to fill each of the jobs around various parts of the country, and recent law changes mean that no matter how good you are at your job, no matter how well you perform, you are not safe from simply being told to pack your desk up and leave before you've been employed at your company for two years

Let's not have any of this bullshit that companies have it hard right now, and that workers have too many rights.

Also "intellectually unsustainable" is an intellectually unsustainable term.

Stephen Hester in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg on anti-banker mood 23/02/2012

He says he has 'great sympathy' for people who worry about pay gap, but UK won t prosper if we 'stigmatise success'

Who is stigmatising success? The complaints against those like Hester are not complaining about successful people getting paid. We are complaining because unsuccessful people are getting paid extra for being unsuccessful, even if they are slightly better at keeping it from being a complete disaster than the last guy.

We all want people to prosper...at least those of us that aren't spending all of our time demonising the poor...what that means, however, is society reaping the benefits of that success. The problem is that bankers get huge bonuses for very little, it might as well just be called their salary. Advisers get huge sums of money paid in to companies so that they can avoid tax, the highest paid in the land do more and more to avoid paying through these hard times despite still having enough for a great number of families to live off of their spare cash.

Meanwhile the poor are being told they don't deserve their benefits, there are calls for further deregulation of the workplace, a removal of workers rights, the ever present murmurs of removing the national minimum wage.

If anything is being stigmatised it is pricks that think it's ok to skim huge amounts of money off the top, avoid acting ethically on their earnings, and then have the audacity to point the finger at the poor and say that it is those people that need to lose more of their money, their services, their hope, their will.

2014 election? Maybe, maybe not.

2012-02-20T13:31:00.002Z

Over on the LSE blog an article has been posted, positing that a 2014 election is all but inevitable. It's my opinion that while Professor Patrick Dunleavy may possibly end up being correct, it may have been easier to reach the same conclusion by drawing years from a hat. It certainly would have had the same amount of logical reasoning.

I fisk it below...

The term of this Parliament has passed an invisible but magically potent half-way mark. We now have two years to go to the start of the UK’s next general election campaign in May or June 2014. I am now 90 per cent sure that Britain will go the polls again fully a year ahead of the ‘official’ date for Conservative and Liberal Democrat co-operation to wrap up (supposedly May 2015).

It doesn't bode well when, even by his own standards, his statement of this parliament passing a "half-way" mark is not true. A May 2014 election would mean the halfway mark would be just short of May 2012. Following the expected lifespan the true half way mark in law would be November 2012. Maybe this article has been published too early.

Forecasting the future in political life is a mugs game at the best of times. The opportunities for falling flat on your face are legion, and the chances of actually being prophetic are tiny.

I can't remember where it was right now (damn) but a nice little flow chart detailed that people take the stance of "predict doom" because in game theory is has the best overall outcome for the person doing the predicting. On a personal level if they're wrong then the "good thing" will happen, they won't feel bad. If it does happen, well.."I told you so". More so than this it's that predicting that things will go as planned doesn't get you remembered.

So most social scientists consequently eschew anything that smacks of ‘futurology’. Yet the timing of the next general election is an important matter. Billions of pounds may hang on it for the City of London’s financial markets. And in the second half of a Parliament it behoves all MPs, government departments, party activists and citizens to calibrate their behaviours with an accurate view of when the next election will happen. So a half-time assessment could be useful, however risky.

The fixed term parliament bill was created for a multitude of reasons. First of all it is a democratic move, since the form stance is to have a single person decide when an election happens. This law changes that to say that a super-majority of the representatives of the people must also want that election. It has devolved power to our representatives, and thus more power to the people. Further from this, there is also an element, as Professor Dunleavy will go in to, of "coalition securing".

However the purpose of helping the coalition stay together isn't out of some kind of love for hung parliaments and proving it works...it exists for the very reason that Professor Dunleavy details right here; Fixed term parliaments are to provide the City of London with a very strong promise that this country is not going to destabalise politically.

The fact that he looks at the potential for panic by the financial sector in this country as a reason to look at the possibility for a scenario, a scenario that would exist in direct opposition of decisions made to quell such fear, is quite frankly bizarre.

Liberal Democrats are convinced that this particular stable door [of uncertain election dates] is firmly locked, and that there is now no way that the Tories can ‘cut and run’ – whether through David Cameron ‘betraying’ his commitments to Clegg in order to seize a poll advantage, or because of a putsch or demarche by the Tory right forcing the Prime Minister’s hand. They believe that Clegg has accomplished a fundamental constitutional change, achieving a cast iron guarantee of remaining Deputy PM until the spring of 2015. And, ironically, if the current government was single party majority government, the five year rule really would indeed be binding.

I don't know if any of this is actually quoted from any Lib Dem, in fact I'm sure it isn't. I'd like to meet a single person that would describe a fixed parliament law, that both allows 50%+1 of the parliament to "no confidence" a government, forcing a new government to form, and allows two thirds of Parliament to straight out force an early election, as a "cast iron guarantee" of Clegg and the Liberal Democrats being in government until 2015.

So, we've not even got into the substance of this exercise in "futurology" an hyperbole has already set in...

Yet the incontestable evidence of all coalition theory is that every coalition (without exceptions) tends to unzip from the end. If two actors A and B are in coalition and co-operating, but they know that the coalition is going to end at time T, then it makes sense for one actor (say A) to defect from co-operation in the time period just before the designated end, that is, at time T minus 1.

Can't deny this, there is always a point where differentiation needs to occur. Unless the Tories and Lib Dems forge an election pact to try and attain a second term as a joint governing force, something that might sound tempting to both Clegg and Cameron who can use the other as excuses for their discussion making to the Left and Right of their respective parties while avoiding the many head to head battles the two parties face, but in reality is unlikely to sit well with supporters of either party or the public at large.

The interesting question will not be whether the parties "split apart", as there is evidence every month that more and more is being done to seed evidence of differences between both parties without threatening the union, the interesting question will be if it is done in a respectful manner or in a petulant manner.

And so the logic of unzipping goes on. The only circumstances where co-operation in any coalition will continue is when the end is uncertain or unforeseeable.

Only then will both actors still hope to reap the gains to be had from co-operation, and fear to incur avoidable losses if they defect too early, getting punished for it by the other (betrayed) actor playing tit-for-tat. Explaining this to senior Liberal Democrats I see flutters of unease cross their faces, and sometimes get a reaction that perhaps the election might be two or three months early, but still it will surely be in 2015.

Or where election pacts are made between the two parties, as unlikely as that may be, but it's interesting that not all avenues are being explored here, lest they get in the way of the point that the Professor wishes to make, regardless of how he gets there. There is also still no talk, despite it starting this whole "thought experiment" off, of external factors in the co-operation of coalitions.

Traditionally coalitions exist in times of political shift in the people of a country, or as happened in 2010 an almost uncertainty as to whether changing from Tories to Labour or vice versa will really make any difference to the way the country is run.

While we exist in the latter scenario, it is only because of the idea of forging market stability that a coalition even exists. The Tories would have been perfectly within their rights to govern as a minority government with a confidence and supply agreement from others. It wouldn't have worked in this economic and political climate without Labour themselves providing that endorsement.

I think it is naive to not include the factor of stability, and the perception by the public, let alone the markets, of a move to weaken that stability in to how long a coalition may co-operate.

Writing on this blog recently, Mark Pack – an unbelievably smart and well-informed analyst of the Westminster and Liberal Democrat scene – did none the less concede that:

‘The ‘fixed’ part of the new rules is pretty fixed, but not completely set fast in legislative Araldite… there are caveats for cases where there is either wide cross-party agreement or no one can form a government.

Why is this being written as if he is uncovering some big secret here? The law was pretty clear from the get go, it's a fairly small and easy to follow piece of legislation. At the time there was controversy precisely because it was TOO easy for the caveats to take place and undermine the fixed term nature of the bill too easily. Again, if any politically minded person believes any fixed term parliament bill is a 100% guaranteed "this election date will not change" bill then I fail to understand why they are in politics.

[Mark Pack continues] Forget the idea that Cameron might face a politically bountiful time and try to cut and run for an early election – if the timing is good for the Conservatives, it would be bad for Labour, meaning Labour could and would block it’.

… An early election also happens if the House of Commons passes a vote of no confidence in the government (by a simple majority) and then fails within fourteen days to pass a motion of confidence in a new government’.

Yet the Act is not the waterproof requirement that the Liberal Democrats believe it is. In fact, the scenario for a radically early general election in 2014 is the simple one in bold in the quotation above – the possibility that Pack dismisses as infeasible, where the Conservatives want to call an early general election to reap a polling advantage while they can. Labour will block that for sure he says.

There are good reasons why Mark Pack is right, and it comes down to simple polling and the extension of Professor Dunleavy's theory on political parties cutting and running when it is most opportune for them to do so, the same behavior that has compelled prime ministers for decades to choose or not choose their election dates.

But will it? Imagine that in January/February 2014 David Cameron takes a look at the polls, and talks to George Osborne about the economic prospects and the budget. With press speculation already beginning to build, he privately resolves to step down as Prime Minister in May that year. Accordingly the budget is loaded up with immediate tax cuts and other goodies for voters. The unveiling of the Chancellor’s budget in March 2014 of course gives the game away.

But what can Nick Clegg do now but grin and bear it? If he picks a fight, then Cameron can announce that he is stepping down because of irreconcilable differences. If Clegg stays quiet, the tax cuts happen, the pre-election boom builds, the press speculation escalates into overdrive, and in April Cameron announces that to end damaging uncertainty, the ‘National Interest’ requires him to resign. We must now give UK voters the chance, he will say, to elect a Conservative government with a secure majority, that alone can bring prosperity back to Britain.

Oh of course, "imagine" this, "if" that! A highly specific scenario without any real specifics. Give me a break.

If the Tories go for an early election they have to put it to parliament. This isn't the same as the old way of simply doing it and putting an X on a calendar. The 'easiest' way would be to have a no confidence vote in the government. The Tories would have to say they have no confidence in themselves, resigning as government. I'll go in to this later...

Alternatively they could try and force Labour and the Lib Dems to make that confidence vote, perhaps by offering the tax cuts Professor Dunleavy describes, and therefore services cuts that inevitably goes along with this, since we are going to be nowhere near out of out the woods with our borrowing situation. The Tories would have to start running things like the NHS and welfare truly in to the ground to keep the international markets from panicking.

The danger with this approach is that they would do it, and in the 14 days that the country is then "in turmoil" (note: May not include turmoil) Labour and the Lib Dems could come together and work with other interested parties for the remaining year to "steady the boat."

So in reality "no confidence" ways of destroying the 2015 election date don't work favourably for the Tories, they either have to be seen as sabotaging their own plans for political gain, or they have to allow the opposition the opportunity to take their coalition partners and create a "Well we can't leave this country in a mess like the Tories are leaving it" rhetoric.

Indeed, the only realistic option is working with Labour to gain a 2/3rds vote on calling an early election...

If the Conservatives are calling for an early general election in May 2014 then can Labour (ever) stand out against that? At all times Miliband must look as if he really wants a general election, and is raring to go at any moment.

Well, since you're not really going to look at any of the reasons why they probably would stand out against that, Professor, why don't we do the work for you?

First, where Labour stand on this, and conversely whether the Tories would risk an election coming early, depends on the polls. If Labour are leading in the polls, assuming there is no way for Scotland to be independent in time for the early election, then the Tories can kiss any hopes of a majority goodbye. They might be tempted to try the minority government route, but that isn't dictated right now by their desires as much as the general economy. In effect they would be shunning convenient and willing partners for a slight chance of abandoning them, while ultimately being very likely to need them again for another 5 years.

Not the greatest hand to play.

If the Tories are significantly leading in the polls, and unfortunately for them it does have to be significant still, then they could call the election...but why would Labour say yes? The public will be generally happy with the Tories in rule, albeit in coalition, happy enough to vote them in as a majority...what is Milliband gaining by showing that he's raring to go in to an election?

It's not like Ed saying "No, why don't we adhere to the principles of the law that you set out, to provide stability in this country, we're perfectly happy to fight you on the doorsteps when the law says, not when you say" is going to exactly push him severely down the ratings. Brown lost out because he was seen as playing with power, and also going against public wishes to give or take his mandate away...Ed, in opposition, by definition cannot suffer that same fate. Not unless the polls are vehemently against this government and he turns it down, but again... why would the Tories offer the opportunity to be severely punished by the electorate?

Outside of the polls there is also this issue, mentioned before, of the markets. It's not so much relevant as to whether the markets would be destabilised by an early election or not, as to the narrative that the Tories have built up about economic stability, and then the opportunity for not only Labour, but also the Lib Dems, to make strong arguments of hypocrisy and possibly even lying to the electorate.

"How can you threaten the stability of our economy by trying to gain politically, the public voted in 2010, and their voices said we ALL had to solve this mess?"

"I put it to you that the Tories and Lib Dems conspired to create an impression of market instability to suit their political ends, to cut the amount of money disabled people get, to raise tuition fees, to carve up the NHS for private gain, when it suited them...now they're proving this was all a lie by calling this election!"

I can't think of a single positive argument that can come out of the situation of the Tories successfully bring an early election about within the current political climate.

Labour certainly has no reason at all to look as if it wants to lend a politically toxic Nick Clegg any kind of hand.

It's hard to call Nick Clegg politically toxic without also highlighting everything that is toxic about British politics in turn. If Labour are to try and claim that they wouldn't do any deal with Clegg because of certain issues then they'd find it hard to justify their stance. NHS reforms too crazy? Sure, but then the plans are now just watered down versions of an even worse Tory marketisation of the NHS that Labour started in the first place. Students in higher debt? Shame that Labour have agreed to the principle of it then, except to do it in a way that makes it easier for rich graduates to pay less overall than poorer ones.

Toxic is only toxic if no-one else wants to go near it, and Labour aren't just going near to it, they're pulling their wellies on and jumping right in, where it comes to Lib Dem policy stances.

This all ignores another possible scenario which is that Nick Clegg steps down as leader amongst this "chaos" and allows a new bond to be forged between Labour and the Lib Dems with a hope of moving the coalition to a more left leaning alignment from 2015.

And while sitting in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street once again may seem immediately attractive, Miliband has very, very few incentives to agree to run a risky and lame duck minority government for ten months, with or without Liberal Democrat ministers.

Except to show supporters of things like the NHS that this is the best way to stop cuts to publicly loved services is to let Labour have control again, perhaps? To prove that Labour are actually ready to take the steering wheel and aren't just opposing for the sake of being in opposition?

And who says it has to be a minority government? Labour would only have to find 8 members outside of the Lib Dems to form a working coalition, or a coalition with confidence and supply for one year. With 15 socialist, liberal or generally anti-tory members to choose from it's less in the realm of fantasy than the Professor's prediction would lead you to believe.

So if the Conservatives want an election, and Labour wants an election, an election is absolutely certain to happen.

Yet if I try and push a positive end of a magnet against another positive end it's really hard to make them meet in the middle!

To bring it about it is only necessary for Cameron to resign as PM, forcing Labour to go through the motions of trying to form a maximum one-year administration with Liberal Democrat backing. For form’s sake, because the law requires it, and because it will give him endless TV coverage, Miliband will agree to negotiate for several days on some form of agreement (perhaps not with Clegg though). But then his team will say that it’s clearly impossible. The Liberal Democrats are untrustworthy and right wing, and there is no realistic agenda to get anything done. The ‘National Interest’ is calling Miliband too to go for a Labour government with a clear majority.

It is indeed that 'easy', No agreement for 14 days, an election must occur. But for this to happen this easily, you have to foster an environment where both the Tories are confident that Labour will either follow their lead, or will try and rule for a year and fail...at the same time Labour have to be blind to the possibility of being set up for failure, and have to have the same feeling on winning the election that the Tories do, despite there being only a singular issue dominating people's political minds...that of the economy and how it affects them...and plenty of public opinion data to state who is winning on that front.

So maybe not so easy? Take those magnets above, in theory it is easy to push them together, but in reality it's never that simple.

And with that, fixed term Parliaments are toast and a general election is called at the normal 4 year time, that could mean (indeed is almost certain to mean) maximum disaster for the Liberal Democrats.

Fixed parliaments aren't toast, they are still there, the date just changes. THIS fixed term parliament would be toast, sure.

But again, in the Professor's "I don't really do in-depth" way of analysis, what ways could this mean disaster for the Lib Dems? Let's try and define disaster for the Lib Dems. A big result would be remaining in a coalition, or being the "king makers" in a confidence and supply agreement. An average result would likely be going back to the position they were in pre 2010, a minority opposition party, with a better seat per vote share than they currently have. Disaster? Wipe out, reduction to only a handful of MPs that puts them on a level with other barely-there parties.

So how would that happen? Simply put, the public support for the Lib Dems would bottom out...completely bottom out. Yet despite having already lost a lot of Left-leaning supporters with their entry to the coalition, this has probably had a very small effect on their electoral chances. The reality of FPTP Britain is that Lib Dems end up fighting the Tories much more than they do Labour, and where the Lib Dems are fighting the Tories they are still drawing the "anyone but a Tory" vote.

In the end, this Lib Dem disaster is also a disaster for the Tories. Lib Dems are spoilers, and while they would gain seats from their own marginal fights, there would be a bunch of seats that they only keep secure because of third party interference. of roughly 37 seats (if boundary changes go ahead as planned) only 6 are going to be head to heads with the Lib Dems. The rest are Labour, hot on their heels, with a better poll rating than in 2010 (if things remain similar on the polling front) with no Lib Dems stealing votes away from the second place party that at least a third, if not a half, of Lib Dem voters have jumped ship towards.

Perhaps this is another reason why all of this fantasising over Tories fantasising about a Lib Dem demolition at the ballots is just a bit too unreal.

Just as happened with the AV campaign in spring 2011, Liberal Democrat ministers in 2014 will be stunned by the virulence of the Conservative electioneering

Will they now? Having experience it at the last election, and the AV campaign, will they really be stunned that the Tories can be a bunch of pricks with a pot of money come the time to try to get the public on their side? Really?

by the opportunistic way in which they are pilloried by Tory ministers and the Conservative newspapers for every government failing; by the shamelessness with which all Tory bridges to future co-operation are apparently burned; by the extent to which rampant Euroscepticism and populist causes are exploited in Conservative campaigning; and, on election night, by the radical way in which the cohort of Liberal Democrat MPs in the Commons is eviscerated.

Nothing happens to counter this situation by the Lib Dems in Professor Dunleavy's world. There is no concerted effort by the Lib Dems to work with the more liberal media to win back votes that they have recently lost to Labour on the back of evidence of "tempering" the Tory machine? There is no traditional Lib Dem fight of appealing to "anyone but the Tories", again in the realm of evidencing the way they have declawed the nasty party to some degree? Nope, the Lib Dems in this imaginary scenario just sit and take it, and seemingly so do Labour, possibly by joining the Tories in bashing the Lib Dems and handing the conservatives an excuse for everything that hasn't gone smoothly.

What could still stop this ending?

Reality, mainly.

By early 2014, only an economic situation so poor and a Conservative poll rating so low that David Cameron cannot risk any election.

Remember that a poll rating "so low" is still as high as 35% if Labour are higher than them and Lib Dems aren't polling significantly less than 10%....

Instead he would be locked inDowning Streetto the bitter end, hoping against hope that some good news will turn up. With the PM probably facing a divided Tory party (like John Major in his final year before him), a 2015 election would be a train wreck alternative for the Liberal Democrats also.

Brilliant, so even if things stay politically much where they are now, with labour gaining (very) slowly in the polls, it's still a terrible situation for the Lib Dems? Even though every public opinion poll out there on domestic economic issues is aligned perfectly with the Lib Dem stance, they won't be able to profit from that whatsoever? No analysis at all of the potential for the Lib Dems to generate a new Labour/Lib Dem coalition from the ashes of what ends up being a marginally popular, but resented government? No investigation in to the idea that the Lib Dems could act both as saviours to the Tories and to the idea of coalition politics by gaining a stronger hand in negotiations a second time around?

This vision of doom from the Professor, if I were a more cynical man, I would suggest is less about accurate predictions and more about very personal political tastes.

I say all this not because I believe I know better. I don't. Who knows what political craziness could happen to force allegiances apart, or to forge new ones? But if you're going to try an analyse the future, to be "90%" certain, maybe you'd do as well to actually entertain more than a single track of thinking, and stop excluding the most pertinent catalysts for our current political environment from the equation.

Tesco, Workfare, and poor social (media) skills.

2012-02-17T10:01:00.008Z

If you have been following the news...not the main news of course, no-one cares enough about the unemployed and those on benefits to give top billing to such controversy....you'll know the government has a scheme that says people are now being perfectly legally offered jobs to work for free. "Workfare" as it's being dubbed. If this doesn't sit well with you, perhaps you worry that your job might be at risk because "employing" someone for free may be better for business than employing you, help show support against the practice by signing this e-petition.

Well, actually it's not exactly working for free, they keep their job seekers allowance (even though they're technically in a job) and might get additional expenses from the company. This equates to companies, many of which can be found on This List, paying NOTHING for labour, and individuals only being paid ~£1.50-2.50 an hour for their efforts....efforts that would normally get them at least £5 an hour. If they don't adhere to the compulsion on them to work? They'll lose their benefits.

But then it's only filthy benefit scroungers getting hit, forced to either find work in jobs that don't exist or turn to other ways of financing themselves, right? Oh, wait... how about the disabled too?

The thing is that Workfare doesn't even seem to work. Read this report that the Department for Work and Pensions put together, and you'll see that workfare certainly isn't an answer to anything on it's own, that is potentially reduces the chances of people that are forced to work from getting real employment, and that (funnily enough) it's least effective in a high unemployment market. Why? Because there are no jobs for people to take after they've done their "placement"!

Somehow this report that says "it's not really effective" has led to this government ploughing ahead with it, no doubt with wind in their sails courtesy of it being a policy idea from the particularly vile parts of the previous Labour administration.

Tesco are currently absorbing most of the ire about this, previous targets like TK Maxx and Sainsburys have done the right thing and agreed to stop this practice, Tesco on the other hand have repeatedly tried to spin their stance, and obfuscate what is going on...clearly hoping it'll all just go away. You can tell, however, when a company is acting shifty when they spin their scheme in to "We give guaranteed interviews to everyone on the scheme". Of course there are few hard figures I can find, it doesn't help that Tesco, on their facebook page, keep deleting comments from anyone that tries to highlight any facts on the issue, but an unverified number popping up is that a whole 5% of people get permanent jobs after being in the scheme.

What has been quoted by someone, on Twitter, is:

@cutchswife
Tesco have taken on 1400 unpaid claimants in the last 4 months that equates to 168,000 hours unpaid work (30 hours a wk) Tesco profits 3.5bn

This is AT LEAST £840k saved by Tesco in the 4 months of the program instead of paying fair wages. They make a profit of £3.5bn and we're supposed to accept that the only way for people to get work in this country is by the tax payer funding people to work for these organisations for free? There is clearly work that Tesco can employ people for, why isn't there a huge outcry that they could be employing up to 1400 on a real, full time, job?

Hardly cause to celebrate the company and the scheme with their "guaranteed interviews" now, is it?

Hiding behind a "community policy" that seems to revolve around them dictating what the "community" is interested in (currently sky diving for charity and £5000 worth of chocolate being given away for free), their online moderators seem to be in a minute by minute battle with online activists trying to promote to fans of Tesco just what their favourite supermarket is involved in. Hundred upon hundreds of comments are posted about their Workfare involvement, and yet they refuse to publish any area of discussion on the front of their facebook presence, where everyone can see it, despite the clear desire by the "community" to discuss it.

Like Paperchase and others before them, Tesco are falling in to the well trodden social media trap of believing that they can honestly contain the outcry for them to do something about their practices. These companies fail, time and time again, to realise that the more you contain something the more loud it becomes. We don't have mass censorship here, there are plenty of avenues for this discussion to take place. Twitter is favourite right now, but it can't be long before it moves in front of Tesco stores. If they think that hiding the facts from people on the front of their Facebook page is important, how are they going to deal with people, feeling they're being silenced, being much more effective in making Tesco customers know what they are supporting with each purchase.

But the reality is that if Tesco and others are taking part in this scheme, it is because the Government is allowing it. No, they're not just allowing it, they're pushing it. Changing the policy originally from being purely for the benefit of communities...an attempt to keep it in the realm of volunteering and vital local work...they now have expanded the language to include pretty much any business. We can shout at Tesco all we want, it is a fun thing to do for activists, they're low hanging fruit...but if we want to change this we need to tell our Government, our MPs, that this is not how we want our country to treat our poor, disadvantaged and disabled. Sign the petition

I shall leave you with an example of this terrible strategy below, one of many conversations that "David" (are there more than one David's, or are Tesco also making their community hosts work outside of EU working time directive agreements also?) has had with people instead of just doing the right thing and being open and compliant to customer desires in the social web...

Tesco:
Morning. A quick remiinnder that we keep our posts on-topic on this page so we can cater for users who want to diiscuss a range of subjects. If you have a subject you want to comment on other than our chocolate giveaway you may be able to find a relevant post to comment on by clicking 'Everyone (Most Recent)' above. Best wishes, David - Community Host

Me:
David...how about you guys make an official post about your stance on Workfare, here on the front page, where you're not trying to hide the issue, and we can all be on topic there in an open and fair way, and stop wasting your time?

Tesco (paraphrasing, as they've already deleted their own post, along with however many others):
Hi Lee. Tesco's statement on Workfare can be freely discussed on one of the Workfare related posts to be found by clicking 'Everyone (Most Recent)' above.

Me:
I know it can be found by clicking away from the visible front page...I'm wondering why you are afraid of discussing it openly by letting those who just drift by your facebook page to see what you are involved in, right here where they can see it without having to go searching?

Tesco (paraphrasing, as they've already deleted their own post, again):
Hi Lee. Tesco's statement on Workfare can be freely discussed on one of the Workfare related posts to be found by clicking 'Everyone (Most Recent)' above.

Me (quoting from Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy): ‎
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

Tesco (now deleted):
Hi Lee. Tesco's statement on Workfare can be freely discussed on one of the Workfare related posts to be found by clicking 'Everyone (Most Recent)' above. We keep posts on a particular topic so that a wide variety of users have a wide variety of subjects they can talk about. Best wishes, David - Community Host

Me:
Which is why I'm saying make a new "particular topic" so that people can keep "on topic" with that "particular" topic, and we can have a truly "wide variety" of subjects to talk about here. It seems to me many more people want to talk about your workfare policy than a free chocolate scheme.

Tesco:
Hi Lee. Tesco's statement on Workfare can be freely discussed on one of the Workfare related posts to be found by clicking 'Everyone (Most Recent)' above. We keep posts on a particular topic so that a wide variety of users and Arthur Dent (above) have a wide variety of subjects they can talk about (perhaps with Arthur's towel, a dressing gown and a nice hot cup of tea). Best wishes, David - Community Host

Edit: I have now been blocked by Facebook, despite remaining fair and non-abusive, and asking multiple times in the area they requested I post in, about their scheme...they never replied, and now have decided silencing me is better than engaging with me.

Benefits, unfair?

2012-01-24T23:32:00.003Z

Let's be factual for a second. A couple that are out of work, without kids,in social housing, get £5.5k to do with as they like (when I say this, it means to pay for their food, drink, heating, electric, water, clothing, insurance, petrol, maintenance costs for various things...and all the more optional things like mobile phones, sky, internet, etc). This is just over £100 a week.

A couple who both earn £18k (which takes us to around the same level as this benefits cap in take home pay) will have £560 a week before mortgage/rent and council tax. After paying those two things (I'm going to arbitrarily choose a rent of £600 a month, and council tax of £1000 per year...I think these are low, but here goes). This means the couple on around the "benefit cap" of earnings are £370, or £270 a week better off than the same couple on benefits.

How low do the two people have to go on their earnings to be worse off? Technically if both are earning £7k and are working lots of part-time hours, they are a couple of pounds worse off than those on benefits.

Add 2 kids in to the scenario, and the "free loaders" get £411 a week. Our 2 person couple who work get £226. The earning couple are still £190 better off in this situation.

This isn't to say that there aren't people out there on higher benefits than those who earn, and obviously there are plenty out there *under* the average family earnings amount. But you have to compare fairly. It is ridiculous to look at amounts of income based purely on the amount they're entitled to, since most of the entitlement that people have is for their rent, which they never see. If there is a problem with people on low to average incomes affording those rents then the problem is NOT benefits payments, but the price of rent, and the disparity between earnings and the areas those people earning have to live.

If there are people on benefits that find they'll be worse off by going in to work the problem is NOT the benefits payments, but the fact that our government(and past governments) seem to think that a fairly low level of weekly income, poverty level I would say, is not viable for supplementary income support. To be clear, two people earning £7k (minimum wage, part time but over 16 hours a week) will earn barely enough to pay their rent, council tax, bills and basic provisions, if they have enough at all, and get little to no benefits or support. The reality is that the government allows people to earn this amount of money, but not to necessarily be able to afford to live, at least not without making compromises on food or heating...deadly in the winter.

Yet the public, it seems, would rather deal with the non-issue of the benefits claimant. Much fairer, you see, to bring everyone down to a standard level of poverty, than to try and ensure no-one has to endure that.

All of this fuss for around 0.2% of the households in the UK (1% if you talk about benefits over £20k) while the opposite 1% in the country, the highest earners (who incidentally make up at least 0.6% of UK households if we assume that all highest earners are paired up in to families) are fretting about being close to being taxed an extra 10% on their income, of which they already accrued around £100k after tax before having to pay more.

Food for thought, moving the 50% tax rate from £150k to £100k would see around 0.3% of uk households (at least, see proviso above) paying an extra £480-960 a week (on average) into the governmental pot, and another 0.3% an extra ~£100-200 a week (on average). Basically, this tax change would (assuming no tax dodging, HAH!) bring in over £100m a week. Cutting 67,000 house holds benefits? I'd be surprised if it saves more than £16m a week.

The difference? That £100m a week comes from a set of people that, even after the change, still have AT LEAST around £700-750 a week each as individuals, therefore not taking in to account their partner's earnings...even after the basics of living are removed. Two of these very wealthy people together would still have at least £1500. Taking the money from those 67,000 households above the "cap" limit reduces their income to £500 a week, though they still need to spend a significant amount of that on their rent, council tax and other basics of living.

Yet somehow this increasing of taxation is less popular than giving those freeloading scroungers a kicking. Of course this makes sense, since the scroungers aren't working, and therefore are all scum, contributing NOTHING to society, and that don't deserve any money whatsoever, while the super rich work their hands to the bone every day...

What a wonderful society we live in that jealous spite will drive something like 60+% us to agree to deprive people of something like £100 a week (assuming an average drop of £6k in benefits for that 0.2% of uk households) while only 45% of people think taxes on the wealthy, that could pay for proper income support for extremely low earners for example, should be increased.

I guess my TL;DR is this... wealthy families, especially ones with landlords in their family unit, must be laughing to the bank while poor people try to belittle and reduce the amount that other poor people have to live on.

Racism vs Authoritarianism

2011-11-29T15:45:00.003Z

If there's one thing that is sure in the world it is that the days of "shipping people out of the country" for the colour of their skin alone are long gone. While the odd convicted criminal may be deported along side some perfectly innocent foreigners fleeing persecution, the mass general public is not going to seriously consider that it is sensible when the "Racist Tram Woman (RTW)" says that her various self-appointed enemies should not be in this country.

The rantings and ravings of this person, perhaps in more than one occasion caught on video, are disgusting views...and they aren't to be applauded. The trouble is that they are just someone's views, able to be ignored or challenged as one wishes. Such mature beings are we that we're meant to be able to disagree without causing any harm to each other, save perhaps a little bit of tweaked nerves and a heightened sense of anger. It is depressing then that the woman has been arrested, for something that shouldn't be cause for arrest, as Sunny Hundal says over at the Guardian.

People get wholly unrational when it comes to racism, which is natural given it is such an emotional subject. But the views of this woman are nothing more than extreme and voiced in a anti-social manner. They are, in an objective sense, no worse than when you have to listen to the misogynistic braggings of a guy behind you while waiting to get served at your lunch break, having to hear the preaching of your city centre evangelist, or being with that person at a party that just won't shut up about the state of politics in this country (Yeah, sorry, I'll try to keep it to myself in the future!)

They're opinions, we can ignore them, we can challenge them, we can (ultimately) walk away. Yet unfortunately there is a law that exists that can lead to up to TWO YEARS imprisonment for simply getting on some people's nerves with racist connotations.

Worse still is the growing number of people that are in agreement with each other that perhaps this woman should lose custody of her child. To me this is mindboggling. There is no evidence at all that she is a bad parent, only that she is a woman that we don't really like the look of. I could give up half a dozen names each week to child if the threshold for "being a good parent" was whether or not I personally had a good feeling about them or not, thankfully a persons ability to raise their child is not about such childish and trivial measures.

Yet there are people that would have it this way. She has said a naughty thing, therefore her son is CERTAIN, they will lead you to believe, to become as bad a racist as her, if not worse. Forgetting all of the other influences that a child has, the community around them, teachers, friends, the culture they aspire to be a part of, it is not even certain that a child will take their parents views as their own. Yet these people will assume that this small possibility is a great threat, that needs to be snuffed out.

But why? Even if they're right what is another racist person on the streets, assuming that he has not got violent tendencies (which would tend to be present regardless of world view...but then beating up other same coloured people in a drunken fight because of their class would acceptable to these same masses, no doubt, at least more acceptable than the exact same action committed because of skin colour as the primary factor in target...), what actual harm is that placing us under so much that we need to intervene by breaking up the family unit?

Are we so untrusting of our public education system, of the rest of society at large, that this kid will not have any other scope over the next decade and a half to come to understand the ridiculousness of racist sentiment? It seems funny to me that the same people that fear for how this child has no hope unless the mother is taken out of the equation, and therefore lack faith in both the child and society to be a stronger influence on their own beliefs, also applaud the general public view of the racist outbursts as one of "proof" that people are sane and won't stand for this kind of belief in modern Britain.

Where do these people get off stating that one person telling another that they should "fuck off back to where they came from" is any more morally corrupt than their own statement of "You don't deserve to have your kid so I want him taken from you JUST because I don't agree with this opinion of yours"? Seemingly if the racist woman had shut up and another person on the train had started shouting at her that she shouldn't have her kid, that the state should take him from her, this would be applauded. It would be just as much a "criminal action" (though a slightly different crime), yet I am not sure we would have twitter campaigns to track down that individual and get them arrested.

Such is the danger of the law we have in this country against combative speech. If you offend a lot of people the law will come down on you, if you offend one person then the law...just as applicable...will pass you by.

You'll have to forgive me if I worry more about those that advocate greater state involvement in family life, for tenuous concerns based on opinions alone, than a woman madly ranting on public transport. There are those all too ready to make connections to Nazi Germany, and that we shouldn't "let these views go unchallenged", and perhaps that is where the whole "save the kid from this filth" mentality comes from too. I just find it depressingly ironic that it was just that kind of mentality, stamping out things like homosexuality and religion like Judaism, that we fought against the Nazi's for. The Nazi's thought they were absolutely morally correct too, and used that as justification for their state intervention in the affairs of people's choices and views.

I sincerely hope that the talk of her getting a jail sentence is just optimistic from the "baying for blood" brigade, that she gets a slap on the wrists, a mental health assessment and an obligation to attend anger management classes. In the end we shouldn't cheer people getting put away for offending people, it's all too easy to offend others and we never know when we might be just out of step on public opinion ourselves.

Strikes and November 30th

2011-11-28T14:04:00.002Z

I don't have a good and generous feeling towards strike action, I have generally agreed with politicians like Cable that have suggested the action of striking needs reform. I'm staunchly pro-worker rights, I think it's disgusting that there have been moves to remove the ability for people to claim unfair dismissal until after 2 years of employment, I don't understand why anonymous applications for jobs haven't become law, and on the issue of pay I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of the minimum wage in an organisation being no worse than a set fraction of the top paid position (for example, a CEO wishing to pay themselves £100k a year would have to ensure the lowest paid workers got no less than £15k).

But strike action just feels to me to be an archaic and blunt weapon used by workers to get/keep their rights, almost exclusively used in an inappropriate manner these days, that fills a void that better legislation towards resolution of conflict could achieve so much better.

Those that strike on Wednesday will be doing so off the back of an endorsement carried by a small percentage of their population. I know..I know...I've heard the arguments about a Tory government being elected on the same percentage, and of the "overwhelming" support by those that turned out. I also think those arguments are disingenuous.

It may well be the case that the vast majority of workers that had the right to vote in the strike ballot, but didn't, do indeed support going on strike. It may also be that they don't. The lower the turn out, the lower the chance of the verdict being 'correct'. Combine this with the fact that those that wish to turn out to these kinds of events are those that are predisposed to striking at the drop of a hat, or feel for the first time that they need to go out and support strike action, as well as the varying shades in between...the "sample" of voters is unweighted and completely biased.

The taking of a strike ballot is akin to YouGov going out with a loaded question such as "The Tories want to give you lots of free money, while Labour are trying to take away your hard earned cash...who will you vote for in the next election", and asking only those in the heart of Witney.

We don't take abstentions during General Elections to mean support for any one party, indeed abstention is a mark of "don't care", or of actually voting against the process in general. Yet the union leaders will put a completely different spin on abstention during strike ballots, I saw one article or blog in passing (didn't keep the link, sorry) that suggested that not voting wasn't a vote for the status quo. How they worked that out I will never know.

And so people will strike, assuming that no deal is reached between the government and unions...in reality there is little reason for either to give much way outside of trying to build a narrative of "being reasonable" with their respective friendly media outlets. The Unions want to show the Government up as not being in control, of the people being more powerful than the government is (quite rightly so in that respect alone). Meanwhile the Government wants to show the opposite, and that the unions themselves are unreasonable and selfish. With a single strike on the cards both parties can play this card effortlessly, and nothing will change. The die will have been cast before the day's strike action starts, with only a violent clash or two likely to sway public opinion (and then only towards to the government, in net effect).

Strike action is neither effective, nor reasonable...it hits this middle ground of posturing for the sake of it. If the proposed strike action was to go on for days...weeks...as it has done in the past with the firefighter strikes (which I have always, and will always, be morally against) and postal strikes...maybe it would be a different story. The government wouldn't be able to just "write off" a day's worth of economic productivity as they would do with a special bank holiday, and the unions wouldn't be able to meander in to the action without a much stronger and publicly acknowledged stance.

But then, as said above, I don't like strike action. I believe it needs to be a final option for workers, you can't take away their ability to simply protest...but if there are avenues of actual prosecution/fine by tribunal for unfair employment practice the chances of anything getting to that stage would be greatly reduced. Right now we'd be seeing the government having to seriously justify the option they have taken, to have gone through much greater consultation with all of the workers that are affected rather than just putting some sums together and deciding "here's where we save the cash".

In the end I find the prospect of Wednesday's strikes a little "meh", I strongly believe that the workers have a case, Labour already mucked with their pensions and there are significant amounts of public sector workers, especially those who have given service to this country for decades, that are going to be significantly out of pocket. That said, the government has been fair in negotiation to ring-fence those very workers that are set to lose out the most. To me it seems like the two sides could negotiate for much longer before having to break out in to an all out fight, but the environment of how we deal with these disputes in this country aren't conducive to taking this more mature and less disruptive/futile path.

Why the Tories will live to regret their anti-AV campaigning

2011-11-03T10:31:00.002Z

UKIP polled 3% of the national vote in 2010, and yet their stock has risen to nearer 6% in latest opinion polls; a rise fueled in no small part because of the Tory party becoming a little more moderate in coalition and certainly because of their cooperative stance on the EU.

My calculations are far too rough and laden with assumptions to publish fully, but taking the notional results based on the 2010 elections under the proposed new boundaries for Scotland and England (assuming equal changes for each party in Wales, as their review isn't out yet to my knowledge), and attributing a rise to the UKIP vote of 3% universally at the expense of the Tories in it's entirety will mean the difference in 2015 between another Tory/Lib Dem coalition, and a Labour/Lib Dem coalition (or minority governments of either of the leading parties aforementioned).

In simple terms, the rise in UKIP support does nothing but split the vote of the "right" of the political spectrum, i.e. the Tories. Given also that we know that the Tories are suffering in marginals where the Lib Dem vote is holding it's own (most likely due to tactical voting by Labour supporters that still understand ends justify the means in a FPTP system). The effect of this is that such a rise of the UKIP party's vote shifts about 20 seats to Labour as it loses it's marginal Labour/Tory fights even more easily than the current rise in Labour support would suggest.

The future is less than certain and all kinds of changes could happen in what is a very volatile political landscape over the next 3 years, so none of this is a given. UKIP support could fall back as the Tories find a way to placate the far right, or it could rise higher as disenfranchisement grows. Lib Dem's stock could be anywhere in 2015 and the battle between Labour and the Tories is far from over with the cuts and growth outcomes uncertain.

One thing is very probable though: When taking in to account UKIP's numbers, if those people were to put the Tories as their second preference under an AV election, the Tories would have a narrow but absolute majority of their own, even if Labour was as popular at the next election as they are currently in the polls.

I think that the Conservative party will come to rue standing against the idea of an AV system in the end, and perhaps AV supporters like myself will end up having the last laugh after all.

Greece: More reasons against direct democracy

2011-11-01T19:37:00.006Z

So the Greek Government want to give their people a referendum? How very "democratic". How very wrong.

There's a time and a place for all kinds of different aspects of democracy, and referenda, a form of direct democracy, only really stand relevant in one place; a referendum is needed when the law of the country is changing as to how the people are governed, or interact with being governed. Outside of that, it is used as a tool by governments crying "democracy" to get their own way.

Take Iceland. They were loaned money by the UK and Denmark to get them out of a similar spot to which Greece find themselves in, to be able to fulfil their legal obligation to provide a safety net for savers in their national banks. Then they held a referendum to ask the people if they wanted to pay it back. This is both democracy and not democracy. Asking people what they want, but on a subject where the people (unfortunately for them) have no right to a say without bringing in a wider audience...namely the public of the countries that loaned them the money to get them out of their mess.

This is what is happening now with Greece. Papandreou, realising that he is on a knife edge, if he hasn't completely killed all chances of his party's re-election in 2013 already, has turned to a referendum to hold a politically cowardly position. To the EU he can say that he wants to get this situation resolved as quickly as possible, to the people he can say this is their opportunity to put a stop to the austerity plans that will be increased.

What he doesn't care about is the ongoing effect of this political cowardice, and those that are championing this route of "democracy" are out of touch with how much democracy has gone on to this point.

The people of Greece don't need a referendum to make it clear that they don't like the route their government is taking, they've made that clear already. But then who would like it? Higher taxes, cutting services, this isn't a time to be asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.

But let's say that the pro-referendum people are right, that it's correct to follow through with this most obvious of direct democracy. We have no date, we have no question, we have no clue about where this is going. In the mean time Italy is going to the brink, and the question has to be asked as to how many other countries are still under threat of being pulled under.

It could be weeks, if not months until the referendum is actually put to the people. Will it be about accepting the bailout or not, as Papandreou has suggested, or will it actually have meaning? I say this because simply phrasing the question as a "accept this or not?" question doesn't solve the problem of stabilising markets. So you don't want the deal, but you do want to stay in the EU? Or don't you? Or is it just the Euro you want out of? Or do you want the money but not the austerity? Do you want to have your government find another route out of this without leaving the Euro?

Edit: I've just read that there are assurances this referendum isn't about the Euro. Perfect. A pointless referendum that serves only to weaken the system as a whole. The only problem with Papandreou shooting himself in the feet over this is that he's using piercing rounds, and lying on his back with his feet facing towards Italy.

A referendum, blunt instrument as it is, will not provide the answers that can accurately portray the will of it's people. Condensing the options down to two extremes may be best, but will also risk ignoring the preferred wishes of a more moderate majority.

Then once the referendum is done, what next? Hopefully it would be an issue of simple constitutional due-process. But the reality is that a referendum like this is a political football, and it is also non-binding until the parliament and president of Greece sign it in to law. Will the opposition play ball? Will the president? One PASOK MP has resigned, others have said they will if this referendum goes ahead. If this is true then the government would no longer have a majority to push the referendum result through, regardless of how together the cabinet may be on the subject.

It should be as simple as not going against the wishes of the public and may well go that way, but if the referendum is put in as vague and potentially extreme way as it seems it must, then there is plenty for those in power to argue about it's very legitimacy.

Even if there was an option on the question paper that led to immediate action, the politicians could still try to use it as a further bargaining chip while the Euro burns.

And this is the reason why Germany and France haven't already jettisoned Greece. A lot of stability for the Euro relies on people being happy to use it. If Greece is able to be got rid of, or leave when the going gets tough, there are serious questions over the value of the Euro to financial markets. It would seem that the high powers of the Eurozone would want the Greece problem to go away quickly, but they're powerless to make this happen without undermining their own power base.

If Papandreou wanted to do the best for Greece then he would be a real leader and make decisions, ideally based on some kind of knowledge of what his people want through the perfectly adequate representative structures that exist in his country. He could soldier on, or he could go down a different route...and he could do either of those today.

A referendum just draws this out, doesn't necessarily provide a definitive answer at the end, and damages all involved while indecision and bickering takes priority. This is why direct democracy simply isn't the answer to all of our political ills, and may in this case actually be fuel on the fire.

EU undemocratic?

2011-10-28T11:17:00.002+01:00

Is the EU undemocratic? I don't think so...here's why...

Election of representatives
European Council - Prime Minister or equivalent of each EU member state is automatically a member, thus indirectly elected by the public
EU Parliament - MEPs elected by public vote
Council of the EU - Relevant ministers automatically appointed from each EU member state, thus democratic accountability varies
House of Commons- MPs elected by public vote
House of Lords - Lords selected by leaders of parties, or by pre-conferred "right" to sit in the House

Formation of "cabinet*"
European Council - The European Council is it's own cabinet, so is indirectly elected by the public
EU Commission - Council of Europe and President have discretion over who is in the commission, but must be approved by the EU parliament
UK - Prime minister has sole discretion over who can be in the cabinet

Election of political "heads of state**"
EU President (colloquial term) - Elected by representative body of heads of EU member states
Commission President - Elected by representative body of heads of EU member states, and further ratified by the EU Parliament via a vote (second election of sorts).
Prime Minister - Elected by unrepresentative body of members of a single party

Removal of political "heads of state"
EU President - able to be removed from office by super-majority (not just over 50% of the votes, currently over 75%) vote of heads of EU member states at any time
Commission President - Can be removed through a vote of no confidence by the EU Parliament
Prime Minister - Only removed through fixed term changes of party in power, or prime minister's choice to stand down

Powers of political "heads of state"
EU President - Cannot make policy, can only help bring consensus on discussions
Commission President - Controls most of the policy agenda for the EU, policy must be voted on by Council of Europe and EU Parliament
Prime Minister - Controls most of the policy agenda for the UK, policy must be voted on by House of Commons and House of Lords (though House of Commons can force the House of Lords to be ignored).

So in the UK we elect one chamber out of two, this helps to decide who is the person that chooses our policy direction (though that person is elected by a tiny subset of a completely unrepresentative sample of the UK population). This person, along with other party leaders modify who sits in the second chamber, the House of Lords. The Prime Minister then decides who he or she wants to help him form policy, and that group of people entirely unelected by the people put forward new laws. These laws are voted on by those MPs we voted for directly, and then by Lords whom we have had no say in their "make-up".

We can't get rid of our Prime Minister, our MPs can get rid of our Prime Minister with a super-majority (which means those who are in the party of the prime minister would also have to vote them out), and so effectively the only way to change our policy direction is for the Prime Minister to volunteer to stand down, or to elect a new government at the next election.

By contrast the EU system is more complex, but more democratic. The European Council is made up by political heads of state, and as such the nations interest on the European Council always reflects the current wishes of that nation's public as of the last general election. The EU Parliament is directly elected just as our House of Commons is.

Comparison: The European Council is a psuedo cabinet for the whole EU, but unlike the UK where the head appoints his cabinet in a top down fashion, the EU functions on the indirectly elected heads of each country deciding who their President will be. A more democratic situation. The EU parliament is very similar to the UK, MEPs elected by the people, and a second chamber that are appointed. The difference is that the Council of the EU is still supposed to be representative of the will of each member state (since the minister involved at any one time should be following that country's policy direction). The House of Lords is representative to no-one, though supposedly should be representative of the power balance in the Commons. This too is very slightly more democratic in the EU, though could be counted as more democratic simply through MEPs being elected in a way that ensures a much closer accuracy to people's political beliefs through proportional representation.

The European Council decides who should be the EU Commission President and the European Council President (The former more like a "Prime Minister" the second more like a "President" though without the wider powers), they do this with a democratic vote in a system designed to try and forge a unanimous decision. The Commission President then needs to be ratified by EU parliament.

As said above, the presidential role in the European Council is a bottom-up appointment. As for the Commission President, unlike our Prime Minister who is only determined by members of their party, the Commission President has to be approved by both the "Cabinet" of the EU, AND your elected representatives in Europe.

In short, the systems in the EU are fundamentally more democratic than our own in the UK, and where there are potential weaknesses in the EU on the front of democracy it is only because individual member states (like the UK) have poor democratic structures when considering integration in to Europe, and because Europe does not tell those member states what they most democratically achieve to be included in it's processes.

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*It's worth thinking about the Council of Europe as a small version of our House of Commons, with each head of state being an MP. They automatically have a say in policy direction in some areas for the EU, and if anyone else such as the High representative of the Union for foreign affairs and security policy is elected in to this sphere of "cabinet member" by super majority, though they have no voting rights. A Cabinet in UK terms is the body of people that decide policy direction for the country.

**I'm fully aware the Prime Minister isn't technically our head of state, but for all intents and purposes (s)he is to be regarded as one.

UK Parliament? When do we get our say?

2011-10-24T13:28:00.002+01:00

In the 13th Century the landscape of Britain would change forever as the Magna Carta was introduced, and started the process of a terrifying removal of powers from the king and in to the hands of self styled "representatives" around the country.

Over centuries the powers of the monarchy were eroded away with no direct say by the people of England as to how they wish to be governed. The nearest we came was in 1642 where a Civil War forced the debate in to the open, and despite some early gains the supporters of the Monarchy ended up being soundly defeated, public opinion...it seemed, though was controversially never measured, to be in favour of this abhorrent new way of thinking around governance.

Moving on to 1707 those people that were in favour of Parliament perhaps never realised that their "English Parliament" dream would turn so sour, as a union was made with the Scottish by the English to have a British parliament.

Was anyone consulted about this? Were they asked if they wanted it? No!

To add further insult to injury, in 1801 Ireland was added to the mix to create a UK parliament. Again, no-one was asked if they wanted this, those that fought and died for the monarchy must surely be smiling in heaven right now because at least they could have seen this gross abuse of constitutional rewriting would be the end game.

"But we just wanted English representation for English people" the descendents of the Roundheads might cry. "We never wanted it to go as far as this!"

The fact is that generation after generation has never been asked the question of if they want Westminster, the center of the UK political landscape, to be our government. There have been fundemental constitutional changes, not limited to the increase of unions with other countries but also including giving women the vote, allowing the POOR to vote.

It's sick, just sick that our leaders are riding roughshod over our wishes for a simple say in how we're governed, not by them and their sham gathering of pompous "representatives", but by a glorious monarch in all his or her glory.

All we want is a say, our descendants may have agreed with the setting up of parliament, but it's constitutionally gone too far and it's about time we had an In or Out referendum on Westminster.

Who's with me? #WestminsterReferendum on Twitter, I hope you'll join me on the #No2Westminster side and tell these charlatans that we're not going to take it any more and let them amend, improve and enhance our representation any longer!

Who do we want to be governed by? The EU?

2011-10-21T17:39:00.003+01:00

The following comment was made on Liberal Conspiracy (and my comment is reproduced and enhanced below):

“The real ponit though is who we want to be governed by. I think our parliament and courts should be supreme in our country, yet we have a situation where our vote is watered down time and time again in Europe. We only get to directly elect our MEPs, but they are near enough powerless. The actual levers of power we have absolutely no say in. Did anyone on this site vote for Herman Van Rompey, or anyone else in the European Commission? Wasn’t Baroness Ashton simply appointed?”

The real point is how astoundingly people misunderstand representative democracy (and why it's better than direct democracy). Lets just break this down…

Who do we want to be governed by, or rather who don't we want to be governed by? For EU-sceptics it's "Not the EU" because "UK matters should be dealt with by UK government". But where do you stop with this? Why do I get represented by westminster? Why haven’t I got a regional South West government that negotiates on policy with the rest of the UK while maintaining an agreed trade system between regions? Why not town? Why not street level crime policy?

I’m not going to claim one level over another is correct, because it is arbitrary. There are countries in the EU with governments that preside over less of a population than my local constituency, this doesn’t mean that my constituency should be an autonomous EU member state, nor does it mean those small countries shouldn’t be.

You think our parliament and courts should be supreme, yet there is no discernible reason why they should be other than through some kind of nationalistic pride. To argue that the parliament should be supreme is also to argue that a town council should supersede the authority of parliament. If you don’t argue this it’s only because you’ve chosen your own personal and subjective limit of where to draw the line on where authority should reside. But it is just that, subjective…arbitrary.

Our vote is not “watered down” in Europe, it is proportionate. Sure, it may become less strong as more people join the representative party, but it’s still a fair vote. There is no reason why the UK should be getting more favourable treatment than other countries when it comes to european wide trade and regulatory agreements. We already dislike that potential for a German and French bonus from the on going "crisis talks" yet we also want to give ourselves an unfair edge?

To talk of MEPs as powerless is ridiculous. There are about as many MEPs as there are MPs in this country. Do you believe that MPs are powerless in this country? They have got more and more power as treaties have been amended, taking more and more away from the less accountable Council of Europe (or at least requiring that both arenas agree). Again, to state that MEPs are pointless is to state that our MPs are pointless, the model is entirely comparable.

Then we come to the crux of the whole representative democracy thing. For a start you’re overly simplistic on the realities of the “election” of the president of the council of Europe. The European council is every head of state for those in the EU, and has the responsibility for political objectives. It is therefore entirely democratic that heads of state (either directly elected, or indirectly elected) then go on to “elect” their own president, in this case through a unanimous decision by all heads of state.

In essence the president of the EC has one of the best mandates of any politician in the world through representative democracy. And yes, Ashton was also “appointed” but only by in practice getting a majority of “votes”.

It’s time to start thinking a little bit more maturely about the EU (or perhaps to simply start thinking). In the UK we elect an MP who does little but bring our concerns to parliament as a very influential lobbyist (at least if a member of the ruling party), and has a small say on implementation of policy. That MP then helps decide which party wins, and that party democratically decides who will lead them. All the EU does (outside of the situation of MEPs, which is exactly comparable to MPs), for the purposes of European wide political direction, is then extend that party (through their leader) to be our voice amongst other nations. It’s not an alien concept, and it’s readily embraced in this country within our own borders.

So who do we want to be governed by? We decide by who we vote for to decide the policy direction of the country, and therefore what type of policy direction we want to take on to be considered in Europe. If we have a problem with how we’re governed in the EU then we better tear up what constitution we have with our own national governance and try again, because if the EU is not working then neither is our own democracy here at home. They are, after all, as close to being identical models of representation as can be.

Finally...is it really worth all this fuss? The EU probably influences about 15% of all of our laws, a far cry from interfering in everything that we do in this country, and doesn't even consider how much the UK has a say in how EU laws that affect that 15% are created either.

Again, to go with the tact above, is it wrong that national government imposes as much law as it does over the South West? Over individual towns? Streets? At what point do you say "These people, with our involvement in a proportionally representative system where I get a fair say, have no right to tell me what to do" and why?

If one of the best arguments EU-skeptics have is that they don't feel why they should be governed by the EU, then it's their duty to say why we should be governed specifically by Westminster instead, and not one of the other many ways we could provide governance for ourselves. Just don't be surprised if those reasons don't have anything other than desires and "feelings" to back them up.

GCSE results: Getting worse?

2011-10-20T15:14:00.007+01:00

In 2000 there were 401,685 total students in the 16-19+ age bracket for all secondary schools in the UK. This has risen to 528,395 in 2011, an increase of 24% in total student numbers. This is not necessarily an increase in Full Time Equivalent (FTE) numbers, though part time students are a tiny minority of all students.

By contrast in the same period the number of full course GCSE exams sat (GCSE's as we would talk about them) has dropped from 5,481,920 to 5,207,790.

This is an actual drop of just over 5%, but a real terms drop of 27.8% compared to the 2000 figures. Students in the UK are taking over a quarter less normal GCSE exams than they did a decade ago. More students than ever that are noted as being in education that year are not taking a full GCSE (or are taking significantly less full GCSE's).

I don't say this as an absolute negative, as the routes through education have changed, IGCSEs have started to pop up, and there are always vocational routes that could be getting more popular (I don't have data to hand to say they are or not). However GCSE short courses (half length, half reward), though more popular, in real terms have only increased in sittings by 2%; Entry level (Certificate of Achievement) sittings have cratered. To me, where these students are going isn't sitting in plain sight, and outside of a significant number of students taking far fewer exams, it simply seems that less students are taking exams full stop.

Now the current headlines are about the rise on last year of pupils getting 5 good GCSEs. In the UK 69.8% of exam results were A*-C, a rise of 0.8% on 2010. Good news?

The trouble is that the total exam sittings in 2010 was 5,378,159. What we have here is a situation where in 2010 each student was sitting 10.8 GCSEs (from 496,850 pupils), yet in 2011 they were taking 9.8, one less exam each. Clearly less students are taking exams, with short courses also dipping in number of sittings.

Is it that students are dropping out across the spectrum of ability? Are schools truly making their brightest and most capable students cut down on the number of exams as well as the least able? Statistics from 2000 through to 2011 show that the percentage attaining only the lowest grade "U", a complete fail, has dropped from 2.2% to 1.2%. G has gone from 3.3% to 2%, F from 7.1% to 4%, E from 12.1% to 7.8% and D from 18.3% to 15.1%.

Simply a case of education working well a decade on? The increase in percentages in the top results as well may suggest this...but the drop students taking exams is a shadow hanging over everything. If those students, deemed not to be good enough to take exams (and clearly not going elsewhere to take different qualifications), were refactored in to the figures then the "rises" in attainment look a little different. It all comes down to whether students now not doing GCSEs are bright students simply taking a different route (such as the International GCSE) or not.

It's interesting to note, however, that the Department for Education is saying that IGCSE's could account for a 2.6% increase of A*-C results in England (may be less in the UK as a whole).

If the increase in pupil numbers was mirrored in the number of exams taken (with those not taken counted as grade D or less) then the number of Grade C's would be (difference on 2010 results in brackets) 22.4% (-3.5%), B's 19.6% (-1%), A's 13.9% (-1.2%) and A*'s 7% (-0.5%). This is the equivalent of just 62.9% A*-C passes, a 6.1% drop from last year.

I'd like to see how this spreads across subjects, but if the reports are right then it is in core subjects that we are seeing this kind of decline of participation too, and that it isn't just the more "woolly" subjects that are being dropped in an effort to provide a more focused education on the subjects employers really want to see.

To me it seems clear that our rise in attainment over last year, and since 2000, is more down to a manipulation of which students are taking the exams. If an equivalent number of exams were taken in 2011 as 2000 then the attainment of A*-C grades would have fallen from 57.1% to 53.1%. Even including the IGCSE effect, this is not an improvement, and is still a very possible decline.

Note: This article is based on figures to do with GCSEs, but doesn't necessarily follow alternatives.

Boundary Proposals: a review

2011-10-18T11:27:00.008+01:00

I just wanted to take a look in to the real effects of the proposed boundary changes. Using data that I've visualised up at Boundari.es to represent the boundary changes I'm assessing not only which parties lose out in terms of seats, but also in terms of notional vote shares. Where have parties taken a hit (or been handed a life line) while not necessarily gaining or losing extra seats? Which areas seem to have confusing decisions made regarding constituency area?

It has to be stressed, this data is notional and so is a reflection of how it is likely (but not guaranteed) that constituencies would look in 2010 if the boundaries had been as they're proposed now back at that election. We know that in terms of opinion polls the Lib Dems are polling differently (lower in general, though much less lower in seats they're battling the Tories), and that Labour are doing slightly better than 2010 while the Tories are about the same.

I will be editing this post as and when I get time to do more analysis.

Cornwall:
Cornwall loses about half a constituency through the changes, which may be a source of concern to the Cornish who, at least in the West, see themselves as very separate from the rest of England, especially Devon. In terms of seats Cornwall notionally gains a Lib Dem seat from the Tories in the process.

Cornwall remains an extremely marginal county, with differences between the Tories and Lib Dems in the area continuing to reside on a knife edge. If things have improved for the Tories it is only be a percentage point here or there and the electoral landscape for the constituencies will remain similar to that of 2010.

The major change is the loss of what was Truro and Falmouth in to the new Truro and St Austell and Bodmin and Newquay constituencies. What small majority the Tories had in either area is eaten up by the more Liberal tendencies of those in Mid to East Cornwall. On the flip side Cornwall North, just getting out of being a marginal constituency, is split up in such a way that a new super marginal Bodmin and Newquay is made, with the majority staying put in the new Devon and Cornwall constituency, Bude and Bideford. The Lib Dems sit with notional majorities of just 0.3%, 2.5%, 2.7% in 3 of their 3 and a half Cornish constituencies.

This means that while the Lib Dems may be happy with the outcome in Cornwall, it also requires a big fight from them in 2015. How many of those Lib Dem votes will remain, and how many were Labour tactical votes? Will more Labour voters go tactical to help the Lib Dems steal a marginal Falmouth and Camborne from the Tories? More importantly, will a potential resurgence in the Labour vote hurt the Lib Dems or Tories more in the county? Should the Labour votes rise at the expense of the Tories then it's feasible that the Lib Dems could, as in 2005, claim the whole of Cornwall...but on the flip side a deserting of the Lib Dems could see a sweeping move to net the Tories an additional 3 seats.

The electorate numbers look good compared to the ideal of around 76600, with only St Ives really breaking away from the average significantly. I can't initially see any reason that this should be rectified, with local areas quite well partitioned and the scope for future population increases in the mid to east of Cornwall rather than the far west of St Ives.

All in all, for Cornwall, the Lib Dems should look happiest in as exciting an electoral landscape as their usually is in the area. They do better where they're fighting marginals historically, and some sensible political moves by Labour supporters combined with natural flow back from the Tories to Labour could result in gains for the party. However similarly the Tories have to see this county as an opportunity, and as the party that tends to have more money to throw at marginals they could really hurt the Lib Dems if successful. The question is if they would be able to in a post-coalition landscape in a clearly more liberal and "locally-thinking" area. The prospects for Labour remain poor.

Devon:
Devon's 12 constituencies become 11 and a half, losing half a constituency to the Bude and Bideford merger with what was Cornwall North in 2010, and with the redrawing of boundaries the seat winners bring about a single Tory seat lost as Devon South West effectively gets squeezed down and merged in to Plymouth Sutton.

Devon remains fairly close to the ideal number of electors, with Plymouth Devonport alone standing out as a slightly larger than average population. Marginality does change, however. While most areas stay the same, the loss of half a constituency helps to make constituencies held by the Tories more likely to be quite safe. Devon West and Torridge was almost marginal at over 5%, but thanks to being split with Cornwall the resulting Tavistock and Plympton has a notional majority of over 20%.

The old Devon South West very safe seat (over 30% majority) may be gone, but as a consolation for the Tories the marginal Plymouth Sutton and Devonport is merged in to the safe Plymouth Sutton with a notional majority of 20.1%. Newton Abbot moves to slight marginal away from marginal status, while Central Devon gets a little less safe but still on the very edges of a significant swing (now 13.5% down from over 17%).

Devon is a county with a mixed bag through these changes. On one hand there are several constituencies that are literally untouched, or that are changed very little, yet on the other where significant changes have happened they have tended to significantly solidify a party's support base. Labour will be happy that in the seats that they control, Plymouth Devonport and Exeter, they are no worse off (a little better off in Plymouth), and the Lib Dems are untouched in the county aside from that Cornwall and Devon constituency creeping in from North Cornwall. The Tories will no doubt be disappointed to lose an MP, but they have at least not lost it to another party and have shored up support elsewhere.

Somerset:
Somerset has actually gained a constituency, up to almost 10 from 9. I say almost 10 as it has taken a very small part of what I would personally consider to be outer Bristol. In doing so the Tories are gaining a seat out of nowhere for the county.

There are some significant boundary movements, but little changes on marginality. Tory majorities in the region stay the same while the new constituency, Kingswood & Keynsham, makes a slightly safe seat at around 10% majority.

The Lib Dems, while shifting their area of representation out of the Wells area and more to the area around Bath, can be happy that they slightly increase their strength of standing. Their marginal seats are still marginal, but a percentage or two less so, and their only real loss in majority is Bath, where they can afford to lose the 5% to a notional 20.4% majority.

Electorate numbers are more interesting. Somerset is a county that, through the addition of the new constituency perhaps, has a lower number of electors than the threshold in large areas. Yet at the same time Weston-Super-Mare and North West Somerset have a couple of extra thousand. This is arguably the right way around, with more likelihood of population moving in to the larger constituencies and thus allowing for a rebalancing that avoids drastic boundary changes in the future.

Could the extra 2-3000 extra people over the threshold in those two constituencies be better represented in other constituencies, or is it (as is more likely) that being able to split just that amount of people out of these larger constituencies would provide too complicated when trying to adhere as much as possible to previous separations of populations such as at local council level? I tend to think it's the latter in most cases, your mileage may vary.

Somerset really doesn't feel like it is affected by these changes, indeed it may be a benefactor through an extra MP for the area in a scheme designed to reduce MP numbers! Marginality stays the same, and while there will be changes to make to local campaigns the status quo is mostly upheld.

Dorset:
Dorset sees a slight reduction in representation, losing about half a constituency to share with Wiltshire to the north. In a process that sees Dorset North cut up to help enlarge Christchurch, Dorset Mid and Poole North, and Wiltshire South West the net effect is the Lib Dems losing their seat in the area, though no-one picks it up since it disappears.

The already super marginal Lib Dem seat shows that the Lib Dems really don't have a chance in the area under the new desired populations for each constituency, their support is simply too low. The only hope for the Lib Dems in the area is a slightly reshaped Bournemouth West that is held by a 6.4% majority. Labour on the other hand are as shut out of the county as ever, with Tory majorities being largely untouched aside from that part of Bournemouth, and the new constituency of Blandford & Wimborne being an almost straight Tory vs Lib Dem fight, unlikely to be lost by the blues.

When it comes to population there is a question that hangs over just why both Bournemouth seats need to be so overpopulated (over 80,000 electors in each constituency) when Christchurch and South Dorset are both significantly under the ideal threshold. In my mind it is worth asking why areas of the Bournemouth seats couldn't be pushed out to their neighbours, with a view to increasing the size of Dorset South to the West and Christchurch to the East.

Dorset is, if anything, a score draw for all parties. The changes are significant in the center of the county, but don't serve to make many changes. Even the Lib Dem loss is arguably a Tory loss, as the margins were such that it would surely be one of the main targets in the country at the next election.

Gloucestershire and Bristol Area:
I have a bit of a personal interest in this area, it's my current "hometown" as it were! Bristol is what I would define as the 6 constituencies around the city center, including Kingswood and Filton & Bradley Stoke. This distinction gets blurred under the new boundaries as Thornbury and Yate gets split in half, encroaching on the old Kingswood constituency, and Filton & Bradley Stoke join with Thornbury to become Filton & Thornbury.

Further north, in to Gloucestershire actual, the remaining 7 constituencies in this area are unchanged aside from the already mentioned breaking up of Thornbury and Yate, and a small boundary shift between The Forest of Dean and Gloucester.

The overall effect of all this is that Kingwood and Keynsham is now more of a Somerset constituency than before (see above), essentially being lost from the area, leaving 12 constituencies compared to 13 before. This is a net change of one Lib Dem seat to a Conservative one, however.

I have my own concern in the area, it seems ridiculous that Filton has been extended to join with Thornbury, and in doing so created the largest constituency in the area in population numbers. This is an area which has very active housing development next to the Filton Airfield that could bring hundreds, if not thousands, more people to the area. The North of Bristol is being constantly redeveloped and the boundary commission seem to be ignoring this when choosing where to pitch their numbers.

Is it right that the Filton area keeps getting cut up and redistributed 5 years because a little forethought can't be put in here? This is aside from the fact it makes no sense to put what is an edge of the city urban area in the same catchment as a countryside town.

Bristol North West and Bristol West both have population numbers under the threshold from this review, in areas where people are certainly not going to be moving in at vast numbers. Bristol West is a mixed constituency, with a large student population as well as inner city residents, while Bristol North West has it's own mix of both poor and affluent residents as it spreads out to the west.

To my mind, moving Filton and Frenchay and Stoke Park wards in to the Bristol North West constituency, while moving Avonmouth (further from the city center than Filton, and partly crossing the M5) in to the Thornbury "outer Bristol" constituency would both make more sense from the point of view of the MP representing people with similar issues, and would have a net effect of making "Thornbury and Filton" or whatever it would be called near to the ideal threshold, while Bristol North West would grow to be about 2000 people over the ideal.

This alone would be acceptable, given the population growth to the north of Bristol as I said before, but it could also be even further balanced by swapping Stoke Bishop and Bishopston wards between Bristol North West and Bristol West.

Elsewhere in the area Bristol South seems a little over subscribed, but has little easy way to balance this with the Kingswood and Keynsham constituency next door. The Forest of Dean could easily do with a larger area, but with wards so large in the mainly rural outskirts to the constituency there is little prospect to do this without significantly (and arguably needlessly) messing with the already established constituencies that remain unchanged from 2010.

Gloucestershire itself has very little to show from the review, barely any boundary changes and thus no real change of marginality. Bristol's outskirts, however, get a thorough overhaul. Do the Lib Dems need to lose their seat in this way? It's another of those situations that is more complex than it seems, as a strong Tory and Lib Dem seat is turned in to a weak tory seat and better than halves the previous Filton area majority to 6.2% making both very attainable to the Lib Dems. Labour suffer slightly on Bristol East, but remain in a good position in a three way marginal (of which Bristol has two, lucky for us!)

Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire:
Herefordshire somewhat loses it's identity through the changes. A simple county of two constituencies only has one within it's borders after the provisional changes. In technical terms though it now becomes three constituencies, two shared with neighbouring Worcestershire and Shropshire. The overall effect of this is a single seat lost across all three counties.

While the Conservative constituencies get shunted around quite a lot, the loser in this area is Labour who's Telford constituency is the one that effectively disappears. This isn't much of a surprise given how small a majority Telford was held on, and concentrated in to such a small geographical area. This won't lead to anything more interesting, however, majorities at a safe level and beyond even any reasonable tactical voting thresholds the worst that can be said from a Conservative point of view is that a few very safe seats have turned to merely being safe.

Electorate sizes are fairly well balanced given the largely rural nature of the counties, and aside from the loss of a Labour constituency there is little interesting that is happening through these changes; there are simply too many Tory supporters in the area to make the changes significant, despite some fairly drastic redrawing of boundaries.

unfair unfair dismissal laws

2011-10-04T09:40:00.003+01:00

You're a dilligent worker, you like your job, but recently your manager has been forcing you to do things that are outside of your job description and threatening you with the sack if you don't comply. You've gone along with it for a while, perhaps it's an opportunity for progression. A few months later you feel you've proved something, you ask for a pay rise...instead you get sat down and told that you're being fired.

Under proposed changes by George Osbourne and Vince Cable, if you were previously a victim of this kind of abuse after your first year of emploment but before your second year at the business, you will now be unable to make any kind of claim against their former employer. They'll be unemployed, without a decent reference, in a worsening job market.

Apparently this is necessary to help our growth because businesses feel not being able to sack people without justification is stiffling their ability to employ. A cynic would suggest in the short term the Lib Dems and Tories feel that empoyment figures will look much better with a more revolving under-class of workers that are hired and fired at intervals that would usually be known for careers taking the next step up the ladder.

The trouble is...there's no benefit here to the state or society, aside from perhaps some statistical manipulation. The number of people it will affect currently is small, though this could worsen if the law is relaxed...and the cost it would save the government is so negligible at less than £6m per year, the state equivalent of change down the back of the sofa...certainly a small amount to pay for equality between employers and employees.

Don't get me wrong, employers need to be protected at the start of contracts, it's all to easy to lie on your CV and to be smooth in your interview, yet not be able to produce the goods in the actual job. There has to be an ability for adequate probation in roles where there isn't an extensive training/induction process to allow the employer to let someone go who simply wasn't what was expected. But this should be apparent in 3-6 months, not 2 years.

At 2 years without being able to claim unfair dismissal the prospects for employees are worsening conditions at work, lower job security (which results in lower morale), and the potential for the wage market to be stifled while business profits and productivity continue to rise.

Worse still is the idea of there being a charge to make a claim to be introduced. Not only will we make it so that young people have all of their power stripped from them for two years while they fear any non-submissive action might have them fired with no recompense, but if they manage to last longer than 2 years then they need to find at least £250 for the privilege of seeing justice done.

Would we be happy if the families of murder victims could only bring their cases to court if they paid a fee up front? The introduction here of fee's is a blatant attempt to limit access to justice in this country, along side the already dubious plans to remove legal aid for many.

These proposed changes aren't about rebalancing anything, the law as it stands is balanced. You can employ who you like within a fair selection process, and you can get rid of them if their job is no longer required as a role or the person is disruptive, incompetent or under-qualified. Equally the employee knows that once they have a job if they do the job, the business doesn't downsize, and they act appropriately, they can't be fired. Where exactly does this balance need to be redressed?

Look out for a consultation to come around in the next couple of months, and for calls to write to the Business Secretary to let him know how callous and unethical it is to draw power away from employees at a time when they need it the most. This government said it was going to be the champion for civil liberties. With these various changes on access to the justice system, and talking about the removal of the Human Rights Act at the Conservative Conference, they're sounding less and less like that government every announcement.

Ed Miliband's speech: Fail

2011-09-27T18:28:00.003+01:00

One of the things that you're advised when trying to get elected in Students' Unions is to not state the obvious, and to not make promises that are obvious. While those keen on you might be encouraged that you're telling them what they want to hear, others will be sceptical that you have no content, no meat behind your claims; That you are just trying to sound good without being good.

This is the trap Ed Miliband fell in to today.

See below some examples of the reverse of claims Ed made...and then see if you could see either David Cameron or Nick Clegg supporting them.

"I am determined to prove to you that the next Government will only spend what it can't afford. That we won't live within our means."

"we won't manage your money properly."

"So I’m going to tell you lies"

"I’ll tell you what I’m interested in.
Not winning back the trust of the British people.
Not winning the next general election."

"To the young people who want to get on and contribute to our country my message is simple.
I will let you be priced out of your future."

Then there was the stilted and awkward delivery, the hammy jokes, and the clear lack of any charisma, a situation that he attempted to mask by doing some strange rapper style delivery of his speech...not in terms of the words, but his body movements, and his stance. It all felt so fake, so forced.

And then the few opportunities that Ed had to actually say anything legitimate, he squandered by making a hypocrite of himself or by letting himself down with simple untruths.

First he reiterated the policy claim from his interviews at the start of conference, that he would cut the cap on tuition fees to £6k, an act that does nothing but help the richest graduates richer. Then he would go on to say...

Only David Cameron could believe that you make ordinary families work harder by making them poorer and you make the rich work harder by making them richer.

Well, sir, it would seem you believe that too.

Finally.. "New Bargain". What the hell is up with that phrase? Who came up with it? Do Labour just want to relaunch the New Deal but can't call it the same thing? New Bargain, it sounds...dirty, imbalanced. Is it to be followed by Newer Haggling?

To use a frictionless slope, you have to get on (Facebook "Frictionless Experiences")

2011-09-27T10:02:00.003+01:00

"I gave them express permission to slap me in the face...imagine my suprise when they slapped me in the face!"

This is what the current outcry about Facebook's new push for "frictionless experiences" with third party application developers, some of the most high profile being the likes of Guardian or Independent newspapers, sounds like to me.

Somewhere along the road with this announcement it seems people have forgotten that in order to be sharing "everything you do" into your timeline (a new Facebook feature that is being rolled out) can't be achieved without you clicking a button that, in not so certain terms, "share everything I do with this site/app".

Privacy warriors, a vital set of people in the online world as companies like Facebook seek to test the boundaries of what is acceptable or even legal on a seemingly daily basis, may not realise how difficult it actually is to just use people's information from Facebook.

Those people that have left all of their details open to the world may be able to have some of their personal detail harvested by application developers, but those who employ even the most basic of privacy settings shield it all until they actively go through a process that says "let this application see my details".

And so it is with "frictionless experiences", if you're going to have that smooth ride you need to give yourself a push first.

Privacy is something you can do with as you wish, and as such it is not a privacy concern when what you're doing is being published automatically when you have approved this behaviour up front. If facebook was allowing all users data to be used by third parties for the purposes of this experiment then those with concerns would have genuine reason to have those concerns.
It is not.

And then there is concern about "noise" and lack of considered sharing. "Frictionless experiences" doesn't appear, at least for the time being, to replace the Like button. Or the share this functionality. People will still be able to post links to things they think are cool, or articles that are interesting reads, as much as they always have.

On top of this Facebook will start to log your activity on sites that are running apps that you have approved to do so and will keep that information in the background. It will get posted to that inconsequential news ticker that no-one actually reads, but it won't go in the timeline/newsfeed. It might, if it algorithmically sees a trend, push something to be shared as if you'd "liked" it...but this is a far cry from you happening to read that article about porn and it being put in to a prominent position in your friend's news feeds!

Unless you always read about porn.

I also would argue this is a positive thing. Obviously when you feel the need to hit a like button you know this is something you want to share with people, that you think they want to see. What about all the things people want to see, or that you should be sharing, but don't realise? If Facebook can get the algorithms right then you could find yourself looking at the feeds and thinking "Yeah...why *didn't* I share that?".

If you don't like the privacy implications here, then don't approve the apps. You don't have to take part, and in all honesty your experience of Facebook and the web is not going to be knowingly dampened by not approving those apps. If you are worried about the noise...well...let's watch this space. Facebook have given strong assurances over controlling the number of updates, and this should be obvious as the last thing Facebook wants to do is drive people away from using their platform. Your concerns there may well, hopefully, be unfounded too.

The Lib Dem's and that pledge.

2011-09-25T20:36:00.004+01:00

It's time to accept it, the Lib Dem's have not really broken their pledge on Tuition fees. Reframing higher education funding in a way that the Tories and Labour were likely to do anyway, they have reduced the cost of tuition for the majority.

Cheaper degrees than those from 2006-2010, and more accessible than any system since tuition fees were first introduced, the cost of going to university hasn't been this low for a decade for those that need that cost to be low.

Preface: All figures below are calculated using the Money Saving Expert calculator on their standard assumptions. It assumes a retention of current student numbers at around 1.8m Full Time Equivalent (FTE) undergraduates in Higher Education (HE) in any one academic year, of which about 800,000 take out a maintenance loan of a average of £3,650, and all take the average university cost of £8,600 per year over a three year course. It assumes the average graduate salary is £20k. It assumes all values rise with inflation. It also obviously assumes the policy won't change in the next 30 years, as unlikely as that may be.

The Lib Dem plan... what's the problem?
The real problems with the system coming in to effect are as simple as the system is overly complex. The rich still have a way of getting out of contributing "their fair share", the system is not truly progressive in that those graduates who earn more money, earlier in their career, will pay back a much smaller total amount than those who earn the majority of their money later in their career or don't achieve high salaries.

It also relies on up front payment by the state for HE, with a significant lag before the majority of the funding is recouped, creating a form of deficit at a time of deficit reduction. A strange choice for a supposedly deficit reducing government!

These issues, along with the issue of the system being complicated and hard for people to understand as more progressive and *cheaper* than previous systems for funding HE, would be solved if funding was provided for purely through taxation in some form or another; graduate taxation, or general taxation.

There is also the problem that is the main reason for the Lib Dems taking a beating over this issue; the chance and perception that students will pay more than they had to when fees were capped to £3,000. In part this is true, for those who take out loans and earn above average wages. Students have long wanted education to be funded from general taxation. In this sense a graduate tax does not solve the final problem of the Lib Dem funding system, that of not shelving a burden on the students themselves for their own education.

However that is, as I say, a perception issue. It is only partly true. Educational costs have been passed more on to students themselves, but not all students...and it is certainly not the case that a tripling of fees is leading to a tripling of cost. The problem that is most often cited by angry students isn't really a problem at all.

Niggles, not problems
The reality, not accepted by the NUS who's official line is "FEES BAD (nswf link)", baulked at by those who have failed to return from their knee jerk break up from the party when the plans were announced in 2010, and ignored by Labour supporters that would rather deceive ex-Lib Dem's to keep their new found support, is that the system is fundamentally more progressive than anything Labour have brought forward in the last decade.

This system is better for poorer graduates than anything that's existed since tuition fees were first introduced to fund HE, in relative terms.

More than this, it in practice gives any student that doesn't earn over the average wage in this country a free HE education. Not just free as in the bursary scheme that Labour introduced, free as in they won't have to pay for their education, they won't have to pay for the maintenance loans they took to help pay rent and buy food during those years. For the first time graduates that earn money, but not enough money to put them in to the "better than average" bracket, will have a completely free university life.

This system, in all it's ugly convolution, is closer to "free" education than any system since Labour started us on student contributions.

There has not been a time since 2006 where so many will have a free education. Since 1998 we will not have seen as low a cost for education and living for the majority, with the benefit of repayments being more manageable than their upfront nature.

There are losers of course, but only where the losers can afford to subsidise those who lose out in their own way of not taking the premium that they were idly promised before they enrolled.

University degrees and three years rent, only £12k!
The only people interested in keeping the focus of this discussion on £9k tuition fees and £4k maintenance loans each year, and the "debt" that it accrues over three years are those that wish to make political capital out of it. They know that such a stance is now disingenuous, but they find it easier to try to confuse supporters of free education with scary sounding numbers.

In particular it's hard to make the new system sound evil when the amount that most would repay under this system is just £12k, while those paying under Labour's "cheaper" and "less debt" system would pay back all of their roughly £22k loan.

The reason for this is the values, the "debt", have been increased to such a degree that we're now looking at something much closer to a graduate tax, and a tax that has it's thresholds set fairly for earners. "Tuition fees" are dead for the majority, and it's time we should call a spade a spade.

Yes...graduate TAX
Debt this is not.

Debt does not disappear after a set of time before it is repaid, debt doesn't even disappear if you are unfortunate enough to die before you have repaid it. Debt repayment isn't based on your ability to pay.

What other system is there where you pay a set percentage of income, as long as you're over a threshold, to the state as standard? Income tax, of course...national insurance too. Both taxes, but could be described as hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of "debt" that you are continuously paying off at a set rate dependent on income.

By increasing the amounts that universities can charge, and fundamentally reforming the way that we pay back loans, a tax system has been created for all but those who choose to pay off the loan early or earn a significant sum of money. It is a clear move away from the situation of tuition fees and even loans as a principle. Instead, the focus is now on long term funding through a taxation model.

Why is this something that is worth praising rather than deriding? Progress. We need to move the language of fees away from loans and payments to that of taxation. Until we start to enter the realms where a tax, even a graduate tax, is the most effective solution, we cannot re-enter the cost of HE funding back to general taxation.

The future
We have to consider where this system will take us in the future. With 1.8mil FTE students in education at any one time there are loans that will be going out every year in excess of £15.5bn of loans delivered to institutions on behalf of students, and £9bn in maintenance loans. Each year (after 2015) a certain proportion of this will be paid back by the students. With a cut off point of 30 years we will be looking at having accrued over £475bn+£280bn (at today's money values) going out. That's £755bn.

Coming in is much harder to define, but an "average" student would likely pay back £12k over the course of their 30 year loan term. Over 30 years this would work out at £268bn paid in. This is, of course, just a "guesstimated" likely minimum. We know from the "top fliers" survey that an average salary of £25k is earned for the top 6% of graduate earners, but wage progression is also likely to be better than for average students too (in the medical profession we know this to be true). I can only guesstimate more that these people would certainly bring another £28bn, by assuming a most cost scenario for wage progression (that is RPI +6%, any higher and the amount they pay back actually decreases as they repay their loan quicker and thus interest is reduced). By doubling this I hope to conservatively get a likely average for loan repayments over 30 year of £325bn;

It's not as simple as saying this apparent large shortfall is a problem though, as 30 years worth of loans should be paid back over 60 years of repayments. In this sense the figures roughly, maybe with a slight shortfall, add up (at least £650bn brought in versus the £755bn out).

The problem is if the system continues then we will have a constant deficit of around £400bn that will have to be borrowed from somewhere to service HE funding year on year. This doesn't make sense from a government that has put their flag in the ground of deficit reduction.

In general taxation terms we could cover this quite easily. With graduates being forced to pay 9% tax on earnings over 21k it's just a case of how the yearly £15.5bn cost of HE (other sources say £12.5bn, I'm being conservative) could be shifted on to taxpayers that will, over time, largely be graduates anyway. At around 2.5-3% of the total current income tax receipts the amount of additional tax needed isn't insignificant, and it's true that this would likely be seen negatively by the public at large.

However the negative view of tax being increased is only masking the fact that as time goes on most people in this country will be paying tax rates of 29% and 49% rather than 20% and 40%. Could it go up to (for example) 22% and 44%? A tough sell right now, to change either of those rates...or to add an additional layer of tax band in between the two, but in the future? Perhaps not so tough.

It is an improvement, it is better, it is to be applauded
Anyone that is annoyed at the Lib Dem's breaking their pledge not to raise fees has some right to feel aggrieved. I am. Or at least I was. We also have a duty to see things as they really are. Rich graduates have their fees increased, in that sense the pledge has been broken, but poorer graduates have had their fees reduced, even middle income graduates will see no change to the amount they end up paying, if they're not lucky enough to still pay less than 2006 prices in real terms as well.

Are we really to cry over the Lib Dem's, in a de facto manner, keeping their pledge for the majority of students, but breaking it for those that earn significantly more than the average worker in the UK?

I'd prefer absolutely that the pledge was never made, the politics since has been complicated and the simplicity of the message was begging to come back and bite Nick Clegg and his team. However the coalition have moved us in the right direction, an it's what we do next that is important.

If we accept and applaud this situation within the confines of graduates providing repayments, but criticise the fact it is confined to graduates at all, we have never had as stronger footing for an argument to remove tuition fees since they were first introduced over a decade ago.

Next stages
The important thing now is to make it clear what the real cost of university now is. Students should not be told that they will face £60k of debt, this is irresponsible and simplistic. If poor people are getting put off from university it is because politicians are letting them get dissuaded. It's a no brainer that those that understand the value of money will be put off by a large figure being put on their back.

Tell them, however, that if they earn an average wage in this country that their debt will effectively be just £12k and they might have a different stance on whether to enter university. Tell them that they will likely have to pay just 1-1.5% of their income each year as long as they earn a middling wage and they might see the "debt" as less threatening.

Let them know that if they are unsuccessful, choose a low paid path in life, get unlucky...that the real cost of their university life, fees AND living cost loans, could decrease even further from £12k to maybe not needing to be paid back at all and their perceived threat of penalisation for not achieving, of having huge debt with nothing to pay it off with, must surely be swept away.

Let them know that there hasn't been a better, more financially managable, less risky time to try to get a university education.

The art of pledging: Ed Miliband and tuition fees

2011-09-24T22:03:00.001+01:00

There was a law that was set in stone in the strongest possible terms in late 2010...don't make pledges that your party can't cash. Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems paid a heavy price that may end up doing long-term damage to the party by promising to do one thing (not raise tuition fees) before the election, and then being forced in to a situation where that promise was broken.

Need, tact, tempering or two-facedness aside...whatever your view on the reasons...abandoning a pledge and a promise is not something to do lightly when you are aiming to garner the trust of the electorate. So when Ed Miliband promises that he'll lower tuition fees if Labour get back in power, is he playing with fire?

The key here is what is actually being promised, and how likely it is that it will be broken. Has Ed actually taken any risk by pledging this stance?

The plans, to lower tuition fees to £6k and pay for the difference by reversing a tax cut for banks and making those who earn over £65k a higher rate of interest on their loans.

Lowering loan values in a graduate tax era
First of all the thing that should be noted here is the sheer lack of ambition in these proposals. Reducing the fees to £6k is essentially claiming the same policy that the Lib Dems and Tories wanted from their change in the cap on fees, before failing to understand the need of more than just the top class universities to charge more.

There is also, in terms of cost to students, very little change by making such a claim. The reason for this is the Lib Dems have, through their changes to Tory plans, created a de facto graduate tax system...albeit one that the very poor (and the very rich) can escape in one way or another.

By reducing the cap to £6k the effect on the average student, let alone the poor student, is nothing. Whether your loan is £6k or £9k a year it will take you more than 30 years to pay off that loan (plus interest), at which point the loan is written off.

To put it bluntly, Ed Miliband is promising a change that is no change

There are some assumptions here, and that is that inflation will remain around 3-4%, and that that average student will start working straight away as a graduate and have a good career progression. (3% above wage inflation) The reality is many, perhaps the majority, won't achieve this and are even less likely to be affected by Ed's attempt to stop the "loading the costs of paying off the deficit onto our young people"

Increasing fees from Labour's last stance
The only reason too that Ed can make this stance is that the coalition have changed the rules in such a way that they can present a rise that they would have introduced anyway at a minimum by following the review in to Higher Education as a cut.

It is extremely cynical to present this as a cut, when it is nothing more than a slightly different interpretation of the Browne review of Higher Education. Of course we will also never know exactly how much they would have followed the review as the Tories wished to do either.

Destroying the principle of non-retrospective changes?
It has been the case that those that sign up to a student funding plan in whatever way don't have the terms of that plan changed. I had a student maintenance loan, but I don't get affected by the changes being put forward for 2012. Those who got loans before me have different terms to their repayment as well.

Labour intend to ask those who earn over £65k to pay even more through higher interest on their loans. If this is only on students that take up the deal after Ed's changes then this isn't an issue...indeed it's arguably just an extention of the Lib Dem policy on turning loans into a de facto graduate tax by extending the length of time that higher earning students will pay a percentage of their wage to the state simply for being a graduate.

The losers?
In one way then, the rich are losers.

By increasing the value of their interest on loans they will find themselves paying their loan back for longer. But this in itself is also deceiving, since the lowering of the fees to £6k in itself actually helps the rich by allowing them to pay their loan off in a shorter amount of time than those who earn less than them.

For example, someone who starts on £30k with a good wage progression might be looking at paying around £40k back after 18 years, someone that enters on £21k with the same level of progression will pay around £52k for the same education before remaining debt is written off after 30 years.

By contrast with £9k fees the average graduate wage earner still pays back the same amount, but the graduate starting on £30k pays for 6 years longer, and pays back around £79k.

Ed's plans would actually severely cut the proportion of money entering HE from rich graduates.

(There are many assumptions here, including that the student examples also didn't take maintenance loans. If maintenance loans were taken wealthier graduates wouldn't necessarily pay less than graduates starting out on an average salary, but they would still be better off through Ed's plans)

A pledge that can be kept
This is a pledge that Ed Miliband can afford to keep...and in a political sense it may even be a good idea. But it is a facetious one, and one that is designed to dupe and fool the electorate rather than to affect any real change, other than to further help rich graduates escape equitable contribution.

Ed won't have to break this promise because he won't have to take any economic risk in fulfilling this policy, but it may be a case where a politician doing what he said he would do is actually worse; entrenching the current situation rather than daring to truly change it and further moving his party from it's roots of economic redistribution from those who are better off to those that haven't been so lucky.

The bitter partisanship of a Labour supporter

2011-09-19T20:51:00.002+01:00

I read Darrell Goodliffe's stuff with interest, when it's in the realms of fact his views are excellent and I highly recommend them. By contrast when the issue is pure politics his views are beneath that usual standard. Take his recent "musings"

--

"Geroge Orwell would probably love a visit to the Liberal Democrat Conference. He would find enough examples of Newsspeak to convince him that rather than being a work of satirical fiction, 1984 was in fact a grimly ironic prophecy of things to come."

Maybe it's not his intention, but I think the idea of a Labour supporter citing Orwell as being prophetic through the actions of Lib Dems will do nothing but set the red rag to the proverbial bull.

"Orwell would have found Nick Clegg’s speech particularly laden with it. Clegg, as is becoming usual, spoke with his forked tongue; look at the pledge to ‘veto the abolition of the 50p tax band’ – made as if Clegg will not already know that there are, in fact, no proposals to abolish this band, in the next budget at least. Que much spinning about a ‘famous Lib Dem victory’."

Well talking of "spinning", Clegg didn't talk about the 50p tax rate in his speech. he did, in an interview where he was asked specifically where he stood should George Osborne press on with the much reported and alluded to plan to bring forward the cutting of the 50p tax rate, say he would veto such a plan if it came up.

Not so much spinning of a famous Lib Dem victory as much as spelling out the realities of consensus politics in a coalition, if you read the interview in question.

If Clegg is at all shaping up for "famous Lib Dem victories" it is on his desire to push for greater tax free allowance limits for low earners, and to shift taxation for the rich on to wealth...things that would be truly praise worthy if implemented well.

"This is the point, for all the rhetorical flourishes about the Conservatives being the “political enemies” it is still just a show being put on for recalcitrant Lib Dem members and the dwindling band of Liberal Democrat voters to convince them that they are still loyal to a Party that exists in more than theory."

How's this for theory?

Lib Dems run on policy that is, unlike other parties, actually decided by their membership.
Lib Dem manifesto's are created from these member approved policies.
Currently the Lib Dems have some 75% of their manifesto enacted, or being enacted, as government policy.

And this doesn't even scratch the surface of the nuances of tempering of conservative policy.

"Clegg’s speech and the whole conference will have been carefully calibrated in close consultation with the David Cameron and his clique within the Conservative Party as the same will be true of the Conservative conference. Cameron will make his carefully worded attacks on his allies to please his right-wing and the Daily Mail blue-rinse brigade and it will generate exactly the kind of media kerfuffle that both want."

This much is obviously true, indeed already the Daily Mail are doing what they feel they need to, the Lib Dem words of Farron and similar being portrayed as the deaths knell of the coalition when the reality will be far less interesting.

"Many Liberal Democrat’s are now so crazed in their hatred of Labour that it is unture. They are so much so that one rather shockingly accused Labour of being complicit in the killing of Baby P due to its “love of bureaucracy and red tape” on Twitter last night."

Indeed, the rantings and ravings of one individual are of course a fair representation of the entire membership's view...

"She also went onto to call all Labour members “deviants” and “vipers”. Red-eyed, demented and totally detached from the real world, you are left wondering at what Clegg has done to inspire this kind of fanatical loyalty."

The same could be said of any of the party leaders and those members of that party, who may be in the minority or not, that seem to attack other parties without actual basis in fact. It could be also questioned whether it is fanatical loyalty to one party, or an actual fanatical hatred of a party instead.

It would seem that hating the Labour party for what they did while in office is an illegitimate reason, and must be fueled instead by some kind of idolization. Hatred of the Tories for everything they did in the 80's on the other hand, is legitimate, and not at all fueled by a devotion to an ideal or an individual.

"The amazing thing is that the same Liberal Democrat’s then wonder why Labour activists heap bile on them. We are ultimately the ones who were first betrayed by a Party which pretended to share our values as long as it garnered them support."

Betrayed? The Labour party never reached the threshold of what the Lib Dems stated in advance of the election in order to become coalition partners. The fact talks were held at all shows how much the core membership and backbench MPs care about the shared ideals, and it's more than abundantly clear that it was Labour that shot themselves in the foot on this note. Betrayed isn't even close.

"This is a perfect example of why Labour cannot work with the Liberal Democrat Party as it currently exists."

Indeed, because there seems to be a core of party members, activists, and MPs, that all fail to be able to see common ground through differences within the Labour party itself. This post being a fine example of one of those viewpoints.

From my view point, speaking to Lib Dem supporters and Labour supporters before the election result...there was lots of common ground, some distrust, but little hatred. That has changed, and it's not been because of the Lib Dems suddenly turning on Labour. Quite the opposite. The fickle childishness of Labour supporters, in an essence sounding every bit like they were entitled to be handed power once again in 2010, is what has turned a lot of Lib Dem supporters' moods so hostile.

"Having said all that, there are good Liberal Democrats left. My plea to them is to leave their stinking corpse of a Party and government and if not join Labour, then at least join the opposition to the government and open up a conversation with the rest of us about the way forward."

'Leave a party that is delivering what you agreed to do, and join one that has generally failed to deliver those same wishes, and has actively gone against your core principles and hasn't yet faced up to how wrong doing that was'

Yeah, that'll work.

"Your Party is driving this country into the ground and is part of the problem. Not even your vaunted tax proposals are helping the poor, in fact, they are helping the rich,"

Really? The tax proposals still to come that could well bring more taxes proportionally from the wealthy than current taxation rules? The ones Lib Dem brought to the table that are reducing the marginal tax rate of going to work? I'd be interested in seeing where these tax proposals are indeed helping the rich.

"which is why the Conservatives are happy to implement them."

That'll be why the rich are, in the Tory press, on the back benches, and even through actual minister's words, praising current taxation on the rich and wishing it could have been like this sooner.

"Nothing is as it seems with your Party and I know you want to believe for the best of reasons but the facts are the facts."

Funny, I've not seen any facts here so far, only that "bile" that is detested so much by Mr Goodliffe.

"Leave government and join the opposition so we can overturn this government of the social elite and replace it with one that governs for the many, not the few, the country needs and deserves nothing less."

And so ends this Labour marketing pitch to do exactly what Nick Clegg warned about in his speech...

The Liberal Democrats are a family. There are those who wish to drive a wedge between us – our opponents, the vested interests in politics and the media who want to put us back in our place. They won’t succeed. Because whether you consider yourself more of a social democrat or a classical liberal, whether your hero is Gladstone or Keynes, Paddy Ashdown or Shirley Williams, we are all, to one degree or another, all of the above.

The NHS reforms: Not bad

2011-09-08T09:22:00.010+01:00

I find myself surprised at the surprise in the actions of most Lib Dem MPs with regards to the NHS Health and Social Care Bill, passed for consideration by the House of Lords yesterday by a narrowish margin of 65 votes. Obviously this figure of 65 gives fuel to the ire because it's a number that could have been reversed by a strong Lib Dem rebellion.

It also would have spelled the end of a coalition at a time when the country least needs it, with the Tories the only party that can truly afford an election right now (if "the word on the tweet" is true), and Labour completely unprepared for taking the reigns as they rediscover what they actually bring to the table.

But I find myself more surprised at the Lib Dem supporters themselves that are aghast at the actions of their MPs doing what they agreed to do when they signed the coalition agreement in 2010; not least because this is a very "Lib Dem" bill, and, if you believe that it can be achieved, is actually better for providing a progressive and improving health service than our current legislation.

Profit driven decision making

A possible hangover from the bill before it was paused and rewritten, there was a real fear that we would be continuing down the path that the Blair administration set us down which is privatisation of public services to the lowest bidder. It's clearly a system with huge risks, doesn't deliver adequate results, and leaves devastation in it's wake as we are unable to reclaim the standard we knew before.

Thankfully the new version of the bill specifically veers away from such plans. (Section 23 14Q)

The whole point of the bill as amended is that the commissioning consortia have to improve standards in care. It's common sense really...the people that are tasked with running a good health service are legally required to ensure the service is good. They aren't, as councils and similar have been in the past, mandated to go with the lowest offer and so it is not in the interest of private bodies to put in a low ball offer, the evidence has to be there that they can do as good a job as what is currently provided, or better, and that the service is value for money on top of that.

It's decision making with the needs of the public's health put first, not how much money can be saved.

Lack of public interaction

Not all concerns are so baseless, this concern is one that is centered on a lack of real information or clarity within the bill. The bill fairly loosely talks about involving patients in their own care...the intent for this is that patients will have options presented to them of how to achieve their care, and to be part of the decision making process for the journey ahead.

It also talks of a "Health and Wellbeing" board, that operates with the overarching commissioning board that oversees and regulates the numerous, yet all that the bill talks about is these bodies giving "advice" to the various commissioning bodies.

There is also a requirement for commissioning consortia to consult those affected by any changes that they make to healthcare provisions. (Section 23 14Z).

However the trouble with all three of these things is that without further embellishment they could let lazy elements within the NHS off with doing very little to engage with the public. Indeed the wording of consultation is right along side "provide information", and if commissioning bodies are able to get away with "consultation" simply by putting leaflets on a desk in GP offices then the spirit of the legislation isn't being followed.

Inequality of care

There are concerns voiced about two tier systems of care, the charge of "cherry-picking" of profitable services by the private sector while others languish. However it is not as simple as to say that, as the GPC deputy chair Dr Richard Vautrey claims, that old and vulnerable people will be treated differently.

It would be a breach of the law if there was an active decision made by commissioning bodies to split the same service in terms of profitability, and hand some patients to a superior care provider, and retain others on lesser conditions. For example, there could never be a situation where it was actively sustained to have elderly cancer patients dealt with by one service, and young cancer patients by another, without there being a clear comparability between the two in terms of quality and effectiveness. (Section 23 14S)

There is a problem with the differences between services. Will mental health patients get a comparative level of funding and care to those treated for cancer? The truth is that the situation on that front is not equitable right now, nor is there any framework to try to ensure that it becomes more equitable. If people want better standards of mental health care right now it appears there is no route they can rely on to try and force the matter...aside from lobbying politicians.

Under the new system there is a duty for the new commissioning consortia to try to improve standards year on year, obviously it is not a requirement to always improve as sometimes that will be impossible even with the greatest of wills behind it. If this duty is not followed, then the consortium can be told to act differently, members of the consortium removed or added, and even the consortium itself dissolved in cases of severely abandoning that duty.

If we're looking for more equal patient care then we have a much more robust framework to discuss that issue with in the Lords. Before there was nothing to stop ministers actively "running down" areas of healthcare for whatever reason, now there is.

Privatisation of healthcare

An obviously big concern is that of private companies taking over our hospitals and services, at least where there is no need, with no consultation and with no patient choice. This has been, I believe unfairly, highlighted by recent reports of considerations made for a German company to run 10-20 hospitals.

Yet the reports have no bearing on the future of the NHS, as strange as that may sound. The idea of ministers contracting in private companies to deal with healthcare would actually be impossible under new reforms, where local autonomy of commissioning bodies is paramount.

It helps to be more specific about what we mean by the dangers of privatisation, as surely it cannot be argued that if the best value for money (note: I didn't say cheapest) provider happens to be a private organisation, then that organisation should seriously be considered for provision. The downside comes when that choice is made without the patient in mind, when it is done purely on cost, and when the structure of any agreements are such that we risk running down an avenue where we lose all ability to provide services as a state because expertise is lost to these private organisation...all of which have long term effects of *not* being value for money.

Simply throwing out scare stories isn't an argument of why the reforms are wrong, or dangerous. In fact part of the reforms is to extend the scope of the body "Monitor", who will take on the task of being an economic regulator for providers of health and social care in England, and in doing so will be responsible for dealing with anti-competitive behavior. (Section 57)

What's interesting though is the that language talks not only about anti-competitive behaviour, but in the sense of behaviour "which is against the interests of people who use such services". Does this mean that there is a loop hole for the co-operation of GPs with established local bodies even if such co-operation were to be "anti-competitive" as long as it can be shown that it is for the benefit the public?

This is another area that needs to better clarified; adequate provisions must be made to stop businesses following the anti-competitive behaviours that could lead to a lack of choice further down the line. This bill is essentially about competition, and about choice, so to allow any chance of the opposite occurring but for the benefit of private companies instead of the public sector must be shut out.

In the end we should accept that privatisation can, in some cases, improve our NHS; not privatisation as Tony Blair helped push through while Labour were in power, but a new way of approaching it where the contract cost isn't king.

"Free" NHS on the way out

Put simply, there are no provisions in this bill for charging for services that aren't already being charged for (Dentistry, for example). However there is the wording that leaves such an option on the table. There's not much to read in to this, it's the kind of catch all "Just in case" wording to make legislating easier in the future. (Section 1(3))

I don't see this as a threat for the now, if there were a time in the future where additional charges were intended to be made then that is an argument for that particular time, and it isn't responsible to oppose this bill on decisions that would have to be democratically taken in the future.

Lack of accountability of government

Slightly more abstract is this issue of "accountability". Accountability comes in many shapes and forms, however it seems a lot of people just don't care about accountability unless it's via an election. It's, in my opinion, a terrible stance to take when talking about having decisions made correctly, not decisions made in the most popular manner.

The Health Secretary will no longer have responsibility for providing a health service in the UK, in a sense we're turning from a National Health Service to a National Health Franchise. But this isn't necessarily a problem. When I say above that this is very "Lib Dem", the very nature of taking decision making out of the power of the central governing body of the country and devolving/distributing it to local cells is a natural Lib Dem position for most issues.

And so accountability doesn't disappear, though it does change. Gone is the rather blunt force manner of changing the direction of the NHS, i.e. electing a whole new government with all the various OTHER changes in direction that comes with, and instead comes much more local (regional at least) bodies that take over from where Primary Care Trusts left off with better regulation but also more local autonomy.

Of course the reality is also that the Health Secretary hasn't had the direct legal duty to provide services since 2002 anyway, when Labour decided that those PCTs should be the ones that carry the duty. Sure, the Health Secretary could call back his legal duty, but in practical terms the authority and accountability of decision making with the NHS isn't really going to change.

The change the bill provides on this is only a problem if you believe that you need to elect everything in order to make them accountable. I, on the other hand, don't believe that we get better decision making through elected officials, nor do I think areas like policing or health benefit from the public having ultimate control over strategic direction. Quite frankly very few of us are crime, safety and health experts, and it's not our place to interact with those areas in such a direct manner.

Freedom of information

A concern across all areas of outsourcing and privatisation is that of lack of transparency within the organisations contracted to do the work. Freedom of information is a tool that is supposed to ensure that the public can see what is going on behind the scenes of public bodies, but some are concerned that not enough is being done to ensure private bodies would also be accountable to relevant freedom of information requests.

A lot of new approaches to how competition is approached are taken in this bill, it would also be the perfect time to quash this concern and start a new trend of telling companies that wish to get involved in public sector work that they have to accept public sector responsibilities too.

...

The ultimate question that should always be asked of reforms is "are they necessary?" and "How does it benefit us?"

It seems to me that the bill isn't quite selling itself as "necessary", but it does have interesting ideas on how to help make the health service more relevant to patients, to embed a culture in strategic direction that drives improvement and progress. These are ideas that, if they do work, could seriously benefit us and our healthcare; and given the practicalities of the duties are very similar to what we already have with regards to Primary Care Trusts and Foundation Hospitals there's a certain element of not taking a huge leap to get there.

I am not going to say I think that these changes will definitely work in improving our health service, I have deep reservations any time that the issue of privatisation and competition come up in areas that need such consistent and improving service. However I also can't take many of the criticisms leveled at the bill seriously, some seemingly out of date accusations of a bill that was clearly much worse before Lib Dem interventions on rewriting it to what it is today, as some of these criticisms simply do not stack up against the reality of what is being proposed.

The Tories were always going to reform the NHS, and the Lib Dems have come in and saved the country from a continuation of Blairite privatisation methodologies that have lead to tensions and problems where such a model has been applied. They've developed a robust framework for checks and balances, and as long as some more elements are improved through the passage through the House of Lords, there is a strong argument to be made that these reforms will help make the health service in this country more relevant and more progressive for patients.

Quite frankly, the reforms aren't bad, they have great potential...and I'm happy to "blame" the Lib Dems for that fact.

Edit:

Been made aware of this motion for Lib Dem conference that goes quite a way to dealing with most of the concerns that are legitimate above, and is worth a read.

If I were a rich man...

2011-09-07T14:49:00.003+01:00

If I earned £150k I'd be possibly just outside the top 1% of earners in the UK. If the 50% tax rate was abolished...I would receive no different income than I was on before it was abolished.

If I earned £300k I'd likely be within the top 0.2% of earners in the UK. If the 50% tax rate was abolished I would be able to take home an extra £15k. This equates to around £175k instead of the higher £190k, a loss of about 8% of disposable income.

If I earned £500k, I'd be nearer to the top of the 0.1% of earners in the UK. If the 50% tax rate was abolished I would take home an extra £35k.

If I earned £1m, aside from being one of the highest paid people in the world, the 50% tax rate being abolished would let me take home an extra £85k.

I might be a bit of a freak here, economically speaking...but I can't quite get my head around why, even on something as "paltry" as £300k, the idea of *only* having over £150k of disposable income (after pensions, perhaps) instead of £165k is "punishment". Sure, if I had those earnings I might be able to keep more money if I lived somewhere else...but in the UK I would still have enough money alone that would sustain 8 whole *average* families, even if without the 50% tax I might be able to sustain 9 whole families a year instead.

Maybe those that are in the top 1% of earners in the UK don't think in such selfless terms. However even if this were the case, and they all felt so punished, how does removing the 50% tax rate help our growth situation?

I can't help but think that if our growth is truly down to this small, extremely small, section of society that we have much deeper problems than our income tax system. If growth is down to these few hundred thousand individuals then they hold far too much power, and the fall of the 50% tax rate may be inevitable. There is also the threat that even with the removal of the 50% tax rate that we could be undercut even more by an emerging market, and that we could be forced to reduce our own revenues even further to compete.

This is not a healthy position to stand from, and with widening income gaps between the rich and the poor a position that gets more perverse each year. The idea that our entire economy rests on the shoulders of such a dwindling proportion of people should scare the pants off of us.

The illogical nature of riot/looting sentencing

2011-08-18T17:26:00.003+01:00

In the Independent David Thomas QC says:

the sentences are not surprising because "an offender who takes part in a large-scale public disturbance cannot expect to be sentenced as if his actions had been committed in isolation".

Why?

It's human nature that where there are groups of people doing something, especially people you have empathy with, that you will feel an urge to follow and do the same. Some people will control this urge and maintain perspective, others may not.

How is it that someone who is a normally upstanding member of society, but falters in an intrinsically human way when a very specific set of circumstances appear, is deserving of greater punishment than someone who rationally decides to do the same thing.

We've had people jailed for upwards of 2 years for crimes that would possibly only get a community sentence in "normal" circumstances.

Tell me, who is a greater threat to society, someone who does a smash and grab on a store in normal conditions, completely unaided by the psychological affirmation of peers doing the same, in an environment that requires the store to be broken in to, with every possibility of police being ready and able to respond and catch you...or someone that has seen dozens of others do the same and seemingly get away with it, while the police are clearly busy, and only takes this opportunity because it's presented itself?

It makes no sense to me to describe these people are not acting "independently", as if everyone in the riots and looting were connected as if psychic, organising each other and only committing crimes after getting group approval.

I would much rather the type of person that looks for *any* opportunity to steal is punished more harshly than the one that doesn't look for an opportunity at all, but takes it when it occurs...yet it seems the mantra from our legal system is quite the opposite. It doesn't make logical sense to me.

Some people getting jailed will be getting what the deserve, fairly and in proportion to what they would normally get if they had committed the same acts outside of the riots. Many more are being unfairly dealt with because of a circumstance that should not have any bearing on sentencing, other people's actions and an issue of perception by the public.

Jailed for two years, Anthony Winder was told he had "thrown so much away" by stealing an ornament from a jewelers store, a sentence he would likely not have received if it had happened a few months earlier. I suggest that it is entirely the judge that has thrown this individual away. Given the opportunity to provide this man with suitable punishment, balancing the benefit of remaining at home with his kids with helping to restore the community he helped tarnish...the judge instead has decided that two children will be better off with the psychological distress that putting a father in prison can incur, and all for a trinket.

Yet despite all Cameron's blustering about fatherless families being the root of all evil, I doubt you'll hear him denounce this action that rips a family apart, for no greater benefit to anyone than to fulfill a judge's role in this obscene spectacle of public revenge over fair and balanced justice.

Why we get frustrated at "Disrupt messaging services" mantra

2011-08-11T16:27:00.002+01:00

It's hard to put this down into words properly, as no matter how I try to phrase it the whole notion of how we approach problems in our society just seems childishly silly. But taking away some messaging services when people are using them to communicate about potentially illegal matters seems so much like using a RPG to scare the cat off your lawn.

Disrupting innocent people's services at the same time, rather than deal with the issue of...you know..people wanting to commit criminal acts the government would rather look in to ways of simply stopping them from talking to each other.

Ignoring all of the ever-present digital knowhow that means blocking a single service, or even a range of services, won't stop people from circumnavigating such block...it's a very lazy way of trying to solve a problem of crime.

I mean, I understand it...this Tory led government, like Labour before them, don't want to spend the time and money necessary to deal with the issues that cause people to use social networks to organise themselves in to criminal action...they'd rather just forget the people exist and try a cheap, brute force, don't care how many other innocent people are inconvenienced because it's for the greater good, lazy tactic.

Just imagine if cancer research changed today not to find the reason for Cancer, but instead to just try and treat it as it is...and not only in those with cancer but anyone, just in case they have cancer and we don't know it. It's a ridiculous idea that people would approach such a serious problem with that attitude...so why do we do it for social political issues?

It just doesn't make any bloody sense.

When and why to shoot?

2011-08-09T19:21:00.004+01:00

The shooting of Mark Duggan is an interesting story. Without full details all that we can do is speculate about the situation that occurred and why it happened the way it did, and try to understand how likely potential reasons or outcomes are.

All we know, from the now official IPCC report (it's always nice to get the full facts rather than cry hysterical murder about a leak), is that it seems Mr Duggan did not fire his gun, a gun that he had illegally and was armed in the minicab he was travelling in. Police did fire, and it would appear that one of their bullets ricocheted and embedded itself in a police radio being worn by one officer.

Mr Duggan was shot twice, once in the chest and once in the arm, from a single officer.

So why was he shot? The first, and improbable answer, is that there was a concerted effort to murder this man. A set of reasons were made for his arrest, and protocol was thrown to the wind as one officer simply killed him, at great personal risk to his career and possibility of serious jail time if ever found out.

I dismiss this as an option, those that believe this option simply do not think about the training necessary to become an armed response officer. According to the latest information about the Met's practices, only an officer with three years service, who carries out a two week training course (and passes) then a further three week training course (and passes that) could be put in the position of the officer that shot Mr Duggan.

It is not an easy process, the testing is focused on situational testing in a simulated environment, and experienced senior armed officers assess individually rather than it being a "Grade C to pass" kind of deal. I reject out of hand that any officer on the CO19 team is there because they want the power of wielding a gun, or to abuse that position.

So that leaves only the second option...this was a legitimate arrest opportunity, with no pre-judgement of outcome by the officers involved.

However from here until the shooting we have nothing to go on. It is almost certainly the case that the minicab was stopped and the driver and passenger ordered to get out of the car, with clear indication that they were armed police. There is no suggestion that the driver was in the vehicle since he was shaken by what he saw.

So here we are with another set of options. The police could have opened fire on the vehicle with the driver still inside. This is unlikely, putting someone in danger such as the driver without knowing they were a threat, or without their life being threatened, is a big no-no.

The driver could have got out of the cab, and then the police opened fire. This option is dependent on visibility in to the vehicle and ability for an officer to clearly determine a threat to another individual or themselves. This is possible.

Mr Duggan could have got out of the cab, and he was shot after this point. However the action of Mr Duggan getting out of the cab would be one of surrender, and without a foolish action would not be fired upon. It also doesn't explain how an officers bullet came to ricochet into a police radio.

Perhaps most likely, the police could have felt compelled to approach the cab to arrest Mr Duggan. To have to do this, to get in to to close quarters it would be a surprise if Mr Duggan was acting willingly and following the orders of the police. In order to have shot him inside the minicab the police will have had to approach the vehicle which is in itself not a typically safe act unless visibility into the minicab was good.

So the real question, regardless of above, is this: what did Mark Duggan do to convince an officer of CO19 to shoot him?

The officers' training is all about determining the point at which the arrest is no longer safe and that taking the person's life is the only option to protect the liberties of those around that person.

It's extremely likely that Mr Duggan made some kind of move, a threatening motion, going for the gun he had with him, or appearing to go for a weapon. Without this imminent threat a shot (or two, as it were...though this may just be the nature of firing a weapon like an MP5) would not have been fired.

To this end it doesn't matter if Mr Duggan fired his loaded gun or not, as we don't wait for a life to potentially be taken by a criminal before we then stop them. I don't usually agree with the mantra "You have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide", but when the police are pointing weapons at you it has never rung any truer. You have nothing to worry about, if you just follow their instructions.

It's also not relevant whether or not Mr Duggan's gun was a replica, or if it was even his gun. If his actions were such that it appeared he was about to put the life of an officer or member of the public at risk, then the training of the officers would kick in.

For the conspiracy theorists, the cover-up angle is one they will pursue 'til the bitter end. Even if they accept that the operation was legitimate, they will claim a mistake was made and those present are conspiring to cover it up. They state the situation of the officers claiming that they were fired upon, which is now clear not to be true.

The question really can only be answered when the circumstances of where the officers were when shooting become clear, but let's just put this as one potential scenario. The officers approach the cab, and a definite motion is made to point a gun at a police officer. One shoots, and a ricochet from the inside of the cab hits a police radio...the force is enough to at the very least make the officer feel like they've been punched in the chest. Without being sure, and with more immediate concern for whether the officer has been injured by gunfire, their interpretation is that this was an exchange of fire.

It could just be closing ranks...but that is risky, it threatens to undermine an investigation in to you, and leave you open to potential arrest. What do the police officers have to gain by doing this?

Finally there is the question of how to shoot, too. His fiancee asks why he wasn't shot in the hand, if he was carrying a gun. It's a tragic situation that has happened to this woman, and it's understandable that she'd wonder why more wasn't done to keep her husband-to-be alive.

But the police don't take chances. By only shooting when they believe there is imminent danger, they are making a choice that essentially chooses the life of one or more persons over that of another. A shot to disarm is a shot that is harder to hit. By aiming for the chest you are almost certainly going to kill a person, you're also very unlikely to miss.

There is the chance you may just do serious injury, and I'm sure any police officer that is put in that situation prays that this is the time they get lucky and all they do is incapacitate rather than kill, but in order to provide safety the person posing a threat must be taken down. Aiming for a hand, or an arm...it's very Hollywood, but it also puts people in danger.

And so now the police officer involved, perhaps all involved, will likely be on suspension. This is not an indictment of their actions but standard practice to ensure that they are not on duty while their actions are investigated. Where there are questions over the legality of the shooting the IPCC has not had qualms in the past to suggest the arrest of officers that shoot under less than absolute circumstances for murder or manslaughter, and they stand trial.

Mark Duggan was killed, and the chances of it being as a result of anything other than his own actions are slim. I eagerly await the results of the investigation so that the truth can be shone on this subject...but hopefully here some realities can help put context to the quite audacious claims being made about the actions of the police last week.

London Riots

2011-08-09T16:09:00.004+01:00

I say I cannot understand the actions of the rioters, but then when I break it down in to the most simple or obvious explanations it doesn't seem to hard to understand.

The rioters actions seem so at odds with what is best for the rioters and looters themselves. For a start they're helping to create a rhetoric about the poor and unemployed in the country, even if not all of them fall in to those brackets. Then they're destroying property and homes that other people rely on to keep out of the same poverty themselves, businesses and even charities that give back to the community and have done for years.

Perhaps it's just malicious spite driving them once the momentum has taken hold, that even those who are only marginally better off with their minimum wage job are "rich" enough that they are legitimate targets for these people. To say that those that attacked charitable shops, the smallest of local businesses, weren't doing so out of a feeling of social disconnection with their community seems almost quite wistful...the product of people wanting this destruction to be purely mindless and not of their own making.

Ask yourself, how can people go around attacking indiscriminately in their communities, putting life in danger, attacking those trying to protect life, if they aren't feeling completely removed from those areas of their community, of that society? I urge you to try and think about how hard it would be to just throw a brick through your next door neighbours window. If you relate to them, respect them, it'll be unthinkable...if you don't know them, don't respect them, perhaps it doesn't sound so abhorrent after all.

The question is not "Are these people disconnected from communities in their areas, are they socially excluded and detached?", that questions has been answered for all to see and hear by the actions taken. The question is "Why are these people detached from our society?" The answer primarily feels like it has to lie in their circumstance of poverty and lack of ability to see an end game that improves their lot in life.

But this is where segments of the public speak up. How dare we say that it's poverty and lack of aspirations that have caused these riots; after all "I am in poverty, and I don't need to riot".

Anecdotal irrelevancies, every time this is stated.

Fast cars cause speeding fines...at least I think we can for the purpose of this example assume they do. Does this mean every fast car breaks the law and attracts a speeding fine? No, but the faster a car is the more likely it is that it'll break the speed limit...or at least it's driver will.

It's the same with this argument. Listen to examples of the people themselves and you'll hear the utter disconnect between them and the rest of society, where *any* business owner is "rich" and those that work for them privileged. Do all poor people think this way? Of course not, but it is much more likely that they would from such a position.

Perhaps the differential is how much those in poverty understand of their own situation...duration in poverty, generational knowledge of their lack of opportunities, these are all factors that will change your feelings on the riots and who is right or wrong. In this sense it is surely more true when we talk about poverty and immobile society being the cause, it leaves those in the worst position without the ability to realise what they're doing just doesn't make sense for themselves.

Of course I am sure not all those involved are those who genuinely feel lost in our society, the way our psychology works means that those that affiliate or relate to those who are rioting will wish to conform too. Even if those that are more well off, less disconnected from society, are looting too it feels to me that it is because they feel they can...that there is a certain populism about doing it that they want to join with. For them it'd only be as "mindless" as seeing several people they feel some kind of affinity to looking to the sky, and feeling compelled to look up also, regardless of the existence of something to look at.

But if these rioters are not playing it smart, neither are a section of the anti-rioters. Encouraging vigilantism, calling for non-lethal-but-still-more-lethal-than-a-baton weaponry, or even the deployment of the army as if we're so incapable of dealing with the problem of a few thousand kids with a temper we have to resort to Middle Eastern or South American tactics on public order control. It is astounding that people claiming that looters and rioters are such idiots for targetting their own community can, almost in the same breath, advocate actions that would only stand to further justify those riotous actions...either through an unfortunate death or serious injury caused by the greater force deployed, or just a simple affirmation of their views that the state is out to get them, not to help them.

I feel more than a little uneasy with how people have approached these events. At the end of the day we are talking about a statistically insignificant number of people causing these troubles, by numbers an extreme minority and no doubt edge of society. Yet this small number of people have some (mainly well off types) feeling scared. In return we've tried to find bogeymen to take the blame, either through extremely partisan short term political point scoring, or ambiguous notions of these people being completely autonomous and not at all effected by the world around them, as if they're all completely psychologically damaged and incapable of rational thought.

For years we've had Labour and Tories alike trading blows on how to further alienate these areas of our society, from Caroline Spelman's policy of kicking people out of the only homes they can afford (the ones given to them for free), to Purnell/IDS's "workfare" where we don't even pretend to want to treat them as equal human beings. After this how much are we going to see politicians, police and community leaders get together with their communities more pro-actively, with greater direction and conviction, or will we instead continue our trend of apathy towards them and just see these people dismissed as utterly criminal and ignore them even further?

It's easier to believe there isn't a reason for these people to have started to riot, because the alternative is recognising that ultimately we are as bad as the bankers we love to loathe. We have taken the benefits of a prosperous society for the last decade and have barely looked downwards at the classes in our country that are institutionally disaffected and untrusting of "the system" to which the rest of us conform, because mostly the system benefits us and doesn't open it's arms to them. We've taken what this country has had to offer, and we haven't passed any of it down the line, and we sure as hell haven't prepared to protect those below us when our world starts to crumble.

If all this isn't mindless, if this part of society's long term situation is the cause of their choice to just put their arms up and say "fuck it, I'm doing what I want", then it's because we, the majority of society, have failed them. We have chosen to push politicians in to a corner that means they focus only on us in the "middle", and ignore those who actually need the support of their government, and we have chosen to do the bare minimum for these people with a look of disdain and disgust as we do so.

Statistically insignificant as the numbers of actual rioters are however, the actions this week have been like the discovery of a crack in the wall of a home...itself small and perhaps easy to try to hide away, but indicative of a wider problem that hasn't made itself apparent yet; a problem much harder to fix than the simple action of filling in that initial crack and hoping nothing deeper is also starting to break.

Why I'm against the death penalty

2011-07-29T14:49:00.002+01:00

ByrneToff writes on twitter...

Only reason I can find against the death penalty is the inability to remedy miscarriages of justice. #hotvote

The reason I can never support the death penalty is that a) even if this were the only reason, it's an important one. Our justice system is not infallible, juries not always unbiased, judges not always privvy to the absolute sum of evidence that may change a sentence. To kill a person is an absolute act that can't be done, and so at the very least we need to be 100% sure the decision to do it is based on completely solid basis...which we can't be sure, ever.

But also b) I value human life. I also value the worth that a human life of an unusual disposition can bring, and that reformation of a person someone would think worthy of the death penalty is a net benefit to society. At best the death penalty is stagnation, given the other option would be to remove the individual from society anyway.

If we have people that are capable of doing things that require the death penalty... serious premeditated murder for example, then they are people we need to understand. Can we gain any more insight in to human psychology and even effects of society on individual behaviour if we simply kill them and be done with it? Why waste such an opportunity purely for retribution?

And of course if you manage to reform the individual, to be confident of their ability to be a positive force in society...even if this is still done from within some level of detention or supervised living...then society has benefited from turning a bad apple in to a good one.

Most support for the death penalty comes from those that are either driven by bloodlust, unable to see that there are no overall benefits to killing a person for their crimes other than for the *potential* temporary good feeling that revenge may or may not bring...or they are those that see these people that are a drain on the state and would rather they weren't, through non-existence.

It's actually the second people I fear the most, as the line between being a drain and a criminal and being a drain and not being a criminal is not very wide at all. But if they have a point it's only because we hamstring our ability to lessen this "drain" by catering too much for the original bloodlusters.

We're too afraid that actually making prisoners productive for society, within the realms of modern human rights, will send the bloodlusters in to a frenzy of outrage...and politicians obviously believe that a significant amount of their electorate are those very type of people.

It just doesn't make logical sense to support the death penalty. We can benefit much more from engaging with criminals, authoritatively and firmly, but humanely...aiming to bring about a net benefit to society regardless of (but especially if) they are rehabilitated. Killing them denies any potential benefit, and results in no better holistic outcome for society than our current system.

British Gas and a worrying trend

2011-07-28T12:15:00.004+01:00

You may well have already heard, British Gas and their parent company, Centrica, have posted some profit numbers and they're "disappointing" for the company. £1.3bn profits, a 19% drop in profits, is seemingly not good enough news during times when wholesale energy prices are rocketing and the economy is stagnating. British Gas itself seems to have taken the brunt of the "loss" with an over 50% drop in their operating profits to £270m.

As Ben Goldacre here says... the reporting is lax, there is no context. £1.3bn is huge, but it's especially huge if the company was only taking, say, £1.4bn in turnover. The reality is that their revenue was £11.5bn, a margin of around 13%. I have no figures to back this up, but an anecdotal search shows this is about "normal" for the energy industry, as far as profit margins go...maybe even "good". In the solely British Gas court, the first half of 2011 residential revenues are £4bn, which paint it as a particularly weak arm of Centrica this first half of 2011.

But shouldn't we have more context? By allowing the press release to essentially be regurgitated we're forgetting the history of how British Gas got to a profit of £270m in the first place, from profits half a decade ago of only £90m, and the situation Centrica are in as a long term trend.

For a start Centrica are currently looking at a 13% margin, this is really no different from where they've been in the past (slightly down in terms of real profit amount, though insignificantly so), 2005 saw around 11% margins, 2006: 9%, 2007: 12%, 2008: 9%, 2009: 9%, 2010: 13%...all the time with increasing revenues from 13bn to 22bn in this half a decade space of time.

Then there is British Gas (residential only), 1.5% margin in 2005, 2006: 1.3%, 2007: 9%, 2008: 5%, 2009: 8%, 2010: 9%. It's currently looking like 2011: will end up being somewhere below that 9%, perhaps as low as it's 2008...yet still with profits that are 3 times what they were half a decade ago, and almost doubled revenues to boot.

Note: you can get all these figures from the Centrica website, such as here.

Let's never forget, this is a company that still hasn't acted fairly to consumers over the disparity in energy charges versus wholesale energy prices. Indeed this is an industry that still hasn't acted fairly.

The interesting thing may well be *why* the price rises are being justified, If you look at todays release you'll see the following statement...

In residential energy, the combination of higher commodity prices and significantly lower consumption resulted in operating profit being less than half the level recorded in the corresponding period last year. Average residential gas consumption fell by 18% in the first six months of the year, and electricity consumption was 3% lower, reflecting the milder weather conditions together with underlying energy efficiency improvements.

This is the danger of a business mentality operating our core utlities in the country, profits come first, and a drop in usage of services (and thus a drop in revenue) is seen as a reason for declining profits. If the danger to Centrica/British Gas's business is lack of use, be it from warm weather conditions, or energy saving measures, then it's only answer is to cut parts of it's business, a potentially unworkable solution given the inevitable rise in the demand over winter, or to raise prices.

When not using energy becomes a reason to increase the price of energy, the exact opposite of the way supply and demand works, we surely have to ask the question of whether or not businesses are fit to run these vital services in the model they currently do. Beholden to their share holders, when the only way to keep both your profits and your profit margin up, to keep your profits in growth, during a time when less energy is being used for a myriad of reasons...the only answer is to increase prices.

The question has to be where do we go from now without solutions like Nuclear and/or accelerated roll out of sustainable local energy? As consumers it is now both in our interest to not use energy (lest we help push up wholesale prices as supply diminishes) and to use energy (lest we not use enough of the potential supply and force companies to increase prices anyway to cover their losses), truly stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Open University fee increase, blame where it's not due?

2011-07-27T09:44:00.002+01:00

A tweet this morning...

lecanardnoir retweeted by dnotice2012

Tories/LibDems forcing Open University to more than treble its prices. Destroying something precious for ideology. http://qako.me/qMhCeU

The basics are this, the Open University has declared that their 60 point courses will now cost £2500. This is up from £700, a £1800 increase. It's an institution with 250,000 students, of which around 70% are likely to be doing no more than part time (60 points or less), while 30% are doing full time courses. There were about 83000 full time equivalent students.

Now, HEFCE funding was to the tune of £140mil in 2009/2010.This amount of central funding is about the same as 2011/2012.

The tuition fees in 2009/2010 were in the region of £650 per 60 points, a full time equivalent cost is therefore £1300. 78000 students needing to pay an extra £3700 per year for full time equivalence of a new £5000 fee is £307mil extra money for the OU as income.

This is more than double the current HEFCE funding in it's entirety.

Blaming the government for the current fee change seems a little premature. Obviously the policy of reducing central funding is a bad one, one I don't get behind at all, but even if we assume all OU courses fell in to a category where HEFCE would think of cutting funding significantly (potentially all together) the OU would only need to increase fees to £3000 for a full time course, or £1500 instead of £2500 for the 60 point module.

The reality is that with over 20% of OU FTE students studying courses that fall under funding that wouldn't be fully cut in the ategories HEFCE has for subject types, not even all of this £140mil will need to be found elsewhere in a worse case scenario.

Funding cuts are set to bite, but universities are savvy businesses more than altruistic learning centres. Yes the OU has to put up it's prices because of government policy to cut fees (government policy that the Labour party were completely on board with implementing themselves when in power, so let's not pretend that either the Tories or Labour are any different in this), but it's gone further than that. Unless it is also receiving significantly less funding from other funding bodies, and the type of student attending is drastically changing in terms of numbers of "paid by employer" places, the OU seems to have simply used the opportunity to pad their margins and make themselves more comfortable for the years ahead.

The OU sets out it's stall in this press release, and while it makes a passing comment about funding changes the main gist is one of carving it's niche out further. With funding changes to allow students on part time courses to receive maintenance loans, and their perception of an increase in students wanting to go in to part time study while they work...it seems the OU sees an opportunity to increase it's margins while still coming off as extremely good value for money by comparison to traditional universities.

Hot air ruining our economy?

2011-07-26T15:39:00.003+01:00

I'm not going to spend an age going over how ridiculous the ONS and Gideon's appraisal of our economy is. I'm not going to dwell on why forecasters didn't appropriately factor in the effect of an extra bank holiday to their GDP growth estimates. I'm not going to ask how it is that a predicted economic boost around olympic ticket sales has somehow turned in to an economic drag.

What I am going to say though, is this notion that somehow the weather is to blame for our economic situation is utter bullshit.

I can understand that the weather may have certain effects, slight ebbs and flows that can make some minor changes to our economy. I can even slightly accept that yes...maybe a bit of snow and freezing weather does discourage some people from going to work those few days...discourages them from spending. But today's claim that it's too WARM? Pull the other one.

Take a look at the GDP growth data over the last few years. The temperature of our summer's has increased every year (pretty much) for the last decade or so. Perhaps it's a crass analysis, but GDP hasn't stalled as the country has had warmer and warmer years, infact it has been very consistently rising...recession aside.

If warm weather, and indeed cold winters, were really a problem for economies, then we should be seeing a tailing off of GDP growth from 1998 to 2008, not a straight trend line.

I am not prepared to accept is that we should at all focus on what must be a miniscule impact on our economy from the weather, it is political opportunism to pick on the weather as an excuse; it shows just how little of the economy is out of the control of government influenced factors if anything, since this is the best excuse they seem to be able to come up with.

The problems with our economy lie at the heart of the decisions made by the Treasury and this government, not with abstract or uncontrollable factors.

If people had jobs they weren't afraid of losing at a moment's notice, with a good salary that wasn't eaten away by inflation every month, if food prices weren't soaring, if fuel prices weren't allowed to increase by over twice the rate of inflation, and if we weren't in post-banking-crisis that helped to ensure borrowing for those suffering from all the above was even harder than normal...maybe then they'd be out spending more, working harder, living happier and putting our economy on the real road to recovery that we seem to have missed the turning for many, many months ago.

We are, like it or lump it, a consumer economy right now. Extra exports would be ideal, but no-one can magic up a manufacturing industry to save our economic growth in a single parliamentary term. If this government want to keep us out of another recession they need to realise their mantra on "private sector creating jobs" just isn't going to cut it. Even if they currently are creating jobs, the signs are that the jobs are part time and not at all conducive to either a) increasing our GDP by any meaningful factor or b) allowing those people to spend money, since they will not have enough to do more than purchase essentials. If this government is serious about the economy they will take the lead like only a national government can and make those jobs happen themselves, directly or indirectly, and do the right thing for the short term recovery of this country...and therefore hopefully lay the foundations for a longer term return to normal.

Dear Right wingers...

2011-07-25T10:22:00.003+01:00

Your own views, as disgustingly selfish as they can be, are not being called extremist. Stop getting your underwear in a twist over people legitimately saying someone who holds the same type of views as you is extremist in their views.

Wanting to end all immigration? Selfish, backwards thinking, ironic given your stance on free markets. Wanting to kill people that you feel have advanced the cause of immigration too far? Extremist.

Your tendency towards the traditional family unit, and fear of homosexuality? Old fashioned, bigoted, sexist. Wanting to kill people that work towards gender and sexual equality? Extremist.

I hope you can see the difference, and in the future maybe see the same differences between your Muslim kin too, you're really not all that different.

The problem with Police and Crime Commissioners

2011-07-17T17:20:00.008+01:00

Plans are afoot for a move in this country to elected police and crime commissioners. The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill 2010-11 is currently going through the House of Lords and will see it's third reading on Tuesday. They've been pushed forward by the Conservatives, the only party to suggest such a plan in their manifesto.

WHAT ARE THE PLANS?

In short, to quote Mrs Theresa May (Home Secretary), the plans put forward are to "shift power directly into the hands of the public as they elect police and crime commissioners to lead the fight against crime and disorder in their areas."

This means elections held at the same time as "normal" elections, such as local or general elections, to put a single person in charge of strategy for local policing, to decide budgets, and to take responsibility for the senior officers in the police force.

WHY ARE WE TAKING THIS ROUTE?

Is this plan genuinely seen as the best option by the government for deciding police strategy? Is it fair to assume there is a hidden agenda, that there is a desire for greater political involvement in our police forces?

New governments mean new changes, sometimes to situations that have already been tried and failed in the past. Policing seems to be one of those areas where politicians feel the need to make a change regardless of the need, cost or sensibility of the alterations.

It makes little sense for this government to push these plans go ahead, given that it may very well result in police forces being run by politicians from either Labour or Lib Dem colours rather than Tory ones, and so it also must be that the Conservatives also feel that this change won't, ultimately, make much of a difference to the national strategy of policing.

Governments may well be able to say they wish to take power away from centralised sources, but I doubt any would say they want to lose power of the country's law enforcement after all.

POLICE APPROVAL RATINGS

What the plans may do is reflect well under current methodology of police approval studies, and give the Tories something to crow about nationally come the next election. But as we can see from the British Crime Survey 10/11, there's already a long term trend of increased approval of the police, and crime itself is on a downward trend.

This isn't to say that new plans couldn't improve these trends, to make crime fall and approval rise faster.

If the public feel they are influencing the police force, albeit making them happier about the force in the process, this doesn't also mean the police are more effective at their purpose and stated aims. It doesn't mean that the police will be operating cost-effectively. And it does run the very real risk of the public thinking they should be having more influence than they ultimately will end up having, potentially damaging approval ratings, and trust in the force.

POLITICISATION?

Simply put, having people elect the person responsible for police strategy (on what would likely be a low 30% level of turnout) doesn't mean that someone right for the job makes it in. Far from it. We know that rather than knowledgeable individuals with experience in the field, parties will field politicians, and the election material will be "Let Labour run your police force" or "Lib Dems for more police on the beat".

We won't be electing individuals that fit the task at hand, though some of us may try to find out what the stances of each candidate for our area are, most will align with their political leanings and go with what their preferred party tell them to do. You vote Labour for your local elections, you'll probably vote Labour for your local police commissioner too. As far as accountability goes it's pretty thin on the ground.

And there is very real evidence that people that intend to get in to this position will do so by playing up to populist stances, without it necessarily being the right direction to take. Take this research conducted on the actions of public prosecutors (mostly elected) in the US.

The theory predicts that when re-election pressures are high prosecutors increase the number of cases taken to trial and plea bargain less. Data from all forty-three districts in North Carolina over twelve years provides empirical verifcation.

As a job, it's not comparable, but it shows us really what we already know...where personal power is predicated on the "success" of persecuting others more compared to your rivals, you will do what you can to achieve that. It's not a remote possibility that elected police commissioners here would seek to tie up police budgets on schemes that aren't cost effective but do provide favourable figures in the eyes of the public...or at least the area of the small handful of the public that is likely to return them for a second term.

SHOULDN'T THE PUBLIC HAVE A SAY?

The main gist of the whole plan is clearly the drive for more democracy, or perhaps as is more likely the greater illusion of democracy; Yet my stance is no, the public shouldn't have a larger direct say.

For a start, what do the public know of the nuances of police budgeting and crime fighting strategy? Some may have very detailed knowledge, many will have none. As I say above, the public will rely on trusting parties, at which point the public are merely delegating their voice to a party machine rather than having a true say of their own.

What the public should have is confidence that their communities issues are being listened to and dealt upon, something that doesn't need a directly elected official, and confidence that where there is wrongdoing or incompetence on behalf of the police force that it will be quickly and comprehensively dealt with. What it needs on the issue of crime is that common sense is applied as to who is being brought to justice, a remit not even in the hands of local police forces themselves. With criticisms of both the IPCC and CPS, as well as the invisibility of the police authorities that currently run some of the tasks that the police commissioner would take over, there are much more concerning areas of policing that could be improved and bring trust in the entire crime and justice system up another level.

Nick Herbert, a Minister involved in pushing the legislation forward, has called views like this "Elitism", which is a very crass way of trying to switch off the political debate about such a potentially large change to the way our police attempt to do their job.

HEADING IN BLIND

I for one don't think it's elitist to ask that we don't make policy up on the hoof, that we set out a proposition (That the police could be reducing crime faster, and improving public relations quicker), and then carry our appropriate research in to similar models, how they've worked, how frequently they're used, and if the model isn't used then why not; to legislate potentially for small scale pilot study of the model that seems most in tune with out aims.

I don't think it's elitist to use all this data to make sure we have a good idea that is likely to work before we spend £130 million to implement it.

The Lords seem to agree with this, when on the 11th of May they voted for Amendment 1 on a margin of 188-176, scrapping the notion of an elected police commissioner completely from the legislation (though the government have presumptuously said they shall keep on with it)

[The Lords must] ask ourselves whether we really understand what we are changing and why; and, above all, whether we fully appreciate what the consequences of that change will or could be. I am not against change, but if it is to be positive it needs at the very least to do more good than harm, and preferably it needs to demonstrate that what it creates is better than what came before. I am very concerned that the evidence base for making this change is incredibly thin, and that the consequences of implementing it have not been thoroughly researched or properly thought through.

Baroness Harris of Richmond

I urge people to read the debate held in the Lords on 11th May, as it's an incredibly sensible one that cuts through a lot of the supposed benefits of this plan.

STANDARD PRACTICE?

When it comes down to it, this legislation doesn't follow standard practices for our democracy, we understand the need for local democracy and that's why we elect entire councils of local politicians rather than a single politician for the entire area, and when we elect our representatives for the entirety of the UK we don't just elect a single individual or a party and give them full control of our nation.

The principle of more direct accountability of police authorities is one that can be positively discussed, it's a model we all understand. By contrast the nearest we have as a model in the UK to police commissioners are elected mayors (such as Boris Johnson in London).

If there is one thing that perhaps the last few weeks have shown us is that power corrupts, the involvement of the police and politicians in collusion with the press for their own self-serving ends shows the danger of a lack of independent oversight and the danger of an organisation or set of individuals feeling beholden to someone with an over-abundance of power.

Do we necessarily need a single individual holding all the cards, pandering to populism (though only in the majoritarian sense, since the views of the minority that take part in their elections shall be all they need to concern themselves with), and significantly more vulnerable to media (tabloid) attacks on their actions due to their single party standing?

IS NOW THE TIME?

So surely, with all of this in mind it is not the right time to think about plans as "grand" as this? Now is not the time for creating a job so easily corruptible, not when we have organisations that are much better suited for the job of holding police forces to account, if only they had a little more power.

Police authorities are unelected bodies, but are made up of people that are both interested and knowledgeable parties, as well as politicians that have been elected (yes, directly elected!) and are a more accurate route of information from local communities around a police force's area to those that hold that police force to account.

There is no doubt that these police authorities need to change. They're silent, they lack teeth, they essentially don't justify their own existence as it stands...yet it would take minimal changes to give them the powers that the government wishes to gift to the single role of police and crime commissioner. Administrative reforms that make it clearer who they are, how they can be contacted, and what they've been doing...as well as a larger move to publicise their existence, would cost significantly less and be significantly more balanced than trying to get the same work from a single elected party line politician.

GOING FORWARD

If the latest Lords bill is to be believed (though it is a little contradictory since the amended bill has been published), what will return to the commons is a plan for a non-elected body, made up of representatives that are stakeholders in local areas, that will alone have the power to create this police commissioner from it's own membership as it sees fit.

We have the opportunity to tell our MPs, when this bill finds it's way back to the House of Commons, that we would prefer that they don't politicise our police force any further than it already is, without proper study at least, and that we also don't want our time and money wasted by trying to revert the Lords' plans back to their own when they now provide a more stable reform.

Liberalism and sentencing

2011-07-16T15:39:00.004+01:00

The problem with the Charlie Gilmour conviction, for those that support and take part in UKUncut, is that he's probably the best example of someone actually genuinely deserving of a punishment. His actions (and those like him) made young people look bad, they undermined the efforts of the protestors, they strengthened the defence for what was a shambolic and dangerously organised police force, caused very real damage, targeted the head of state's son, was allegedly uncontrollable while on intoxicating substances, and (if we believe one Lib Con commentator) clearly didn't care much whether he did real serious harm to the police either.

Yet he was standing on the side of UKUncut, and they as well as their supporters seem unable of accepting that people on their side need to be punished any more than those on the right wing press and in the government wish to accept that the authorities acted out of line. It's blatant and disgraceful hypocrisy.

So of course, it seems, the only action is to try and claim that it is perfectly acceptable to do such things, as long as it is in the face of the state authorities...that "he didn't really hurt anyone" and that therefore his actions should be ignored. The stance seems to be as socialists (ironically) and as liberals we should just let it slide.

But the law is a liberal tool as much as an authoritarian one. Charlie and his fellow protestors may not have actually hurt the Royals in their car that day, not physically, but psychologically they clearly had some effect. This is just as relevant when it comes to the intimidation effect that violence can have when perpetrated by any side. But a different object picked up, a different direction thrown, the result could have been very different.

The law rightfully chooses to condemn actions and intentions, not outcomes. The kid that threw a fire extinguisher off the roof of a building, narrowly missing a police officer, was charged not for "almost killing someone", but for doing something that was clearly extremely dangerous, regardless of how likely it was to injure anyone. (Though I will come to Woollard's charge shortly)

So if it is perfectly liberal to accept that charges are right to be brought, for the purpose of the protection of other people's liberties, is it liberal to suggest that the sentences that they also carry are fair?

Ultimately this isn't a question of liberalism, but of logic and realism. The realities are that judges have a good idea about where their sentences need to start from and for what reasons. Previous examples of sentencing may help to give context to that judge. As such it's unlikely for a judge to ever give a suspended sentence, or a community sentence, to someone who has done something that (under the law) is just as serious as someone that got jailed traditionally for the same level of activity.

Indeed, the point I raised wasn't that the sentence itself was the best type of sentence that could be handed down, or that I agree with how the law of violent disorder is sentenced; it was to point out that claims that the sentence was politically motivated, or that it was inflated unfairly, as I was reading by various UKUncut supporters yesterday on Twitter, is a nonsense point of view to take.

It's just diresepectful and false to claim that this sentence is anything other than what someone else doing the same thing outside of a protest would have also got.

I guess this is where those people are getting their panties in a twist, they can't quite make out the difference between understanding that due process has been carried out fairly, and understanding that a sentence range for a particular crime might not be the right punishment.

This is where nuance is needed. Mr Woollard, who threw the fire extinguisher off the roof of a building, showed real remorse for his actions...acted in the heat of the moment...he was stupid but he was not violent. He is actually, in my mind, the victim of being the first and most public figure in this situation; as such I am not surprised but am saddened he was found guilty of his charge of violent disorder.

So in this case I feel that the sentence is out of step with reality, that Mr Woollard's intentions have not been adequately considered. I hope that an appeal will go ahead, and I hope that at the very least he has his sentence drastically reduced now that the public furore has died down, if not his charge over turned completely.

The other person charged by the same judge presiding over Charlie Gilmour's case, who threw sticks at the police, was on the other hand clearly violent. However my view on his sentence would vary depending on the situation. Was this person kettled when he was acting violently? Was his throwing of things at the police only something he did in one incident (as long as that incident spanned)? Did he come to the protest without the intention of fighting the police? If the answer to all of these is yes then I feel that not enough of a mitigating factor is made of how police provoked such reactions. If the answer to any is no, then his sentence starts to becomes more reasonable, though in my view suspending it if he is a first time offender would make the most sense from a liberal stand point.

Which brings us to Charlie. We know that in the situations he was being charged for he was not provoked, we know he went from one incident to the other with ample opportunity to "calm down", we also know that he was under the influence of serious drugs which is never going to work to your favour (nor should it) in sentencing. But again, prison is unlikely to really serve anyone involved with the best outcome. To be humbled by the process of publicly being dragged through the courts is likely to be enough, a suspended sentence to keep you under control for a while a good chance to reflect on how to not let your fellow protestors down in the future.

As a liberal I will question the public need for bringing some of these convictions, and I'll always question in a more wider sense whether the sentencing is appropriate for the crimes in modern day Great Britain, but liberalism doesn't even come in to the subject of whether or not due process, with all of the rules it has to abide by, has been carried out properly. Illiberal for saying that following a fairly transparent procedure is the right thing to do? Please...

It don't matter if you're left or right

2011-07-15T23:54:00.002+01:00

Earlier I posted about Charlie Gilmour, an idiot that decided to put himself in the crosshairs of the authority, antagonised police, riled up protestors with rhetoric to break the law, attacked (however feebly) a royal convoy, allegedly threw paving stones at police, and caused property damage, all while on LSD and Valium. He got 16 months for a portion of this, and within the law got exactly what could be expected.

The thing that was a little unexpected for me was just how right wing the left wing could be. There are, of course, several tactics in the blogging/discussion world to try and undermine or derail an argument. Reductio ad absurdum, where you try and make too simple a case about something in order to disprove another's point; whataboutery, where you almost accept that the other person has a point but aim to "disprove" by talking about something similar as if it's more important; and hyper-comparison (for want of a real term), where you take two points made and attempt to portray them as something the other person has linked much more closely than they have and then use that strawman (false argument set up to be burnt down) to claim to disprove something else.

*phew*

These are all tactics I see over and over again with vehement right wingers on issues such as Climate Change, crime rates, immigration, over-eager legislation (on subjects like Terrorism), internet freedom, etc, etc.

I guess I just didn't realise that these kinds of comments, Daily Mail-esque in their simplicity and lack of objectivity, aren't really the purview of "The Right" anyway, but of people in general that are unable to distance the realities of the world from what they wish to be true.

Yes, I don't think Charlie Gilmour should have got 16 months, however the point of contention for that view is not this particular case but the oversight of the CPS and, to a greater extent, how fit for purpose some 25 year old laws are which are now used by the CPS.

Does what the police also did on the day matter to this reality? No. Does it mean I agree with the police action of the day? No. Perhaps this is too multi-faceted and complex stance for those in the UKuncut movement to comprehend, I'm not entirely sure.

What I am sure of, and now glad to know, is that in reality it is just heavily partisan people that get down and dirty with the tactics of not engaging with the real subject, and skirting around the facts of the matter, regardless of whether they'd describe themselves as Left wing or Right wing.

Charlie Gilmour - sentenced fairly within the law

2011-07-15T13:08:00.003+01:00

There's a bit of a fuss going on about Charlie Gilmour, and how apparently it's outrageous that he has been sentenced to 16 months in prison (which, we all know, will only end up being 8 or so).

This outrage is bollocks.

You only have to take a look at the sentencing history for "Violent Disorder", coupled with Mr Gilmour's nature in court (allegedly giggling at scenes of his actions), tempered by the fact he pleaded guilty and apologised for certain (but not all) actions...

Attacking a police officer by throwing bottles - 10 months
Encouraging others to KILL police officers - 12 months
Revenge attack on property, with "attack" of person, person of good character - 18 months
Taking part in a riot, repetitive attacks on riot police with state of mind to "re-arm" with projectiles, second offence - 3 years

16 months, given that Charlie doesn't exactly seem remorseful of the main elements of the charge (which is the threat, as little as it was in reality, he put members of family of the head of state under, and the encouragement for others to break the law), seems pretty much bang on all things considered, doesn't it?

Now, perhaps the sentencing range (maximum 5 years) for this offence is too harsh, that'd be a fair stance to take...but to call this sentencing "political" or "outrageous" is to just not have bothered to check what is normal in sentencing this kind of offence, as it stands in law.

Why yesterdays strikes were more successful than most

2011-07-01T13:33:00.003+01:00

I would usually start this kind of entry by saying "People aren't stupid", unfortunately a year's worth of politics where people have been given the opportunity to prove it has actually proven opposite. Instead I will say people are selfish, and very prone to putting things in to their own frame of "would I win or lose if it happened in my situation" versus "does them getting what they want detriment me also?".

It's for this reason why I feel that yesterdays strikes were successful, unlike strikes by other parts of the public workforce that have happened periodically through the past.

Past strikes have never tended to breach past the "selfish" barrier. Calls to get an even bigger pay rise than they're getting just don't go down well, regardless of how justified they are. Yesterdays calls were not that simple though. While publicly about the pensions public workers get, those that listened to supporters of the strike through the day would have got the message that pensions were already reformed to not cause a strain on the tax payer, and that further reforms are just a pay cut.

Here it's where people put their own selfish frame of reference to the test...and see no reason to be petulant. It's not going to actually cost them any more (or less, taxes aren't going to be reduced because of any further reforms), and they can equate it to their own job. "Would I be happy with my boss taking away some of my pay but not giving me anything in return?"

Overall the framing of yesterdays strikes, clumsily handled into a failure by those that spoke against them (Check out the Today show on Radio4, which led to this factcheck, among others, about affordability of public sector pensions), meant that no-one could see any detriment to themselves, and therefore were free to feel empathy for the situation those workers find themselves in.

And for that reason I think those unions that took part were very much right to go ahead, despite negotiations still ongoing. It's all well and good to claim that you should wait until negotiations have finished, but that assumes that both parties are going in to the boardroom on an equal footing, and that those holding the purse strings intend to be objectively fair. Leaving a strike until after the negotiations stall only leads to the striking side being painted as wanting too much out of the deal, of being unreasonable in negotiation.

By striking now it has been nothing more than a protest, a statement that this avenue is not one that public sector workers are going to accept without a big fight. Sometimes that is necessary to make the balance of power more even in that negotiation room. And when you have a subject like this, it isn't hard for the public to find themselves on your side either, so why not take that opportunity and get that message out while you can?

Injunctions, and privacy, and twitter, oh my!

2011-06-07T10:39:00.002+01:00

We're at an interesting crossroads in our public social development. Twitter, pub or bar for the internet masses, is gaining more and more attention for the "Civil disobedience" of breaking injunctions, and with it an interesting paradox over which human right is more important is being fought out.

Which is more important, our right to say what we want (within legal boundaries) or to have a life that is free from prying eyes? I cannot say that I feel the right to say what we like is more important, myself, I know that most people that are so eagerly flouting the injunction laws might feel a whole lot differently about the subject if we were to turn on them and start publishing details about their every day life.

But then the question about the whole Imogen Thomas affair was never really about the privacy of just one individual. It's perfectly acceptable for one person to wish to keep their life private, but does that mean they have a veto over that other party ever expressing themselves about it, in however much detail they want? Surely there must be something that those, certainly feminists, must feel leaves quite a sour taste when one person, a man, can control the voice of another because they put their priority first?

Of course, don't believe for a second I think this is about gender politics, it's the privilege of the rich and the powerful that is at play here. Equally, however, those people being rich or powerful (or both) doesn't mean they don't have the same rights as everyone else. I am not one that subscribes to the idea that "you must expect it" if you become famous.

It is the focusing on twitter aspect of the whole situation that is most intriguing though. Prosecutions for those that flaunt the law? Unworkable as far as I can see (or hope). Speculation and rumour should never be treated as anything more than that. If there are those posting evidential proof of something then they are clearly breaking the law when it comes to injunctions such as the one involved in the Imogen Thomas case. Simply blurting out a rumour (however true it is known to be, or ends up being) in 140 characters or less is a very different matter.

I call it the pub/bar for the masses for a reason, for all that users and commentators alike hold Twitter up as a bastion of free speech, it is nothing more than a (large) public area. We all enter the building as we log in, we take up our seats with those we enjoy the company of, and sometimes we overhear things from the table behind us. Sometimes someone just has to say something that means everyone around hears.

So, when do we regulate and legislate against public and social gathering? By the words spoken in the last month we would assume that were it possible the courts would rather that they had ears in every conversation in the pub, every bus stop chat, every tea-break room. For that is what is being assumed here...because the internet is so documentable, able to be logged and catalogued, evidence preserved so easily... that rumour is unacceptable, and some would therefore say human nature is unacceptable. It's an affront to our freedom of association at the end of the day, with courts saying individual privacy should be upheld at any achievable length of manipulating the boundaries of association between individuals.

And it is for that reason that I ultimately disapprove with this witch hunt against twitter users. Not because I believe that they have a right to pry, to abandon someone else's right to privacy, but because the right for them to speculate and to feel free to speculate with one another is the most important aspect of a free society. A society where we do not feel that we can talk amongst one another freely, about subjects we wish, even in an environment where others may be able to overhear us, is a terrifying prospect of authoritarian proportions.

There is a fine balance to be found, if it can ever be found, to allowing that "tittle tattle" while also allowing those that value their privacy recourse to punish those that have gone too far...but it can never be expense of collective freedom.

The Scottish elections, an example of where AV benefits

2011-05-06T14:25:00.003+01:00

As I write this I believe the SNP have a majority in government (65 seats, still counting) in the Scottish Parliament. The interesting part of it is that in terms of vote share the Liberal Democrats are nose diving as people leave the Lib Dems to vote SNP. Labour on the other hand aren't doing terribly, they're losing some share as are the Tories, a natural effect of a general swing to the SNP. Yet Labour are also losing a lot of seats, more than their reduction in share might suggest. Why?

Despite Scotland having a semi-proportional system, these seats are being won on our FPTP system. What these results show, very clearly, is that those who have voted Lib Dem in the past are only ever thinking to vote SNP in their second preference. Through truly being swayed to vote SNP as their true first choice, or realising that their chance of a united majority against Labour can only come about with the SNP getting their votes, Labour are losing out because they appear to be the party that have gained in the past due to votes being split between SNP and Lib Dems.

This is about as pure an example of why AV is so beneficial, how many Scottish seats at the last election may have fell to the SNP under the FPTP stage of the elections using AV instead because of the system's inherent property for stopping parties that don't have direct competition getting a foothold in areas that they're not wanted.

As a final example, look at East Lothian, seat to the Labour Scottish leader.

Iain Cumming Gray Labour - 39%
David Berry SNP - 38.5%
Derek Scott Brownlee Conservative - 16.6%
Ettie Spencer Liberal Democrat - 5.9%

Is that a seat that it looks like Labour deserve? Sure, Tory Scots are unlikely to pass their preferences on to the independence loving SNP, but nor are they likely to pass votes to their arch-rivals Labour. This election has shown that Lib Dems are much more likely to desert to the SNP.

It may be unlikely, but I still hope deep down the public has not been duped by the lies of the No campaign, and that we in the UK elections...unable to temper a bad system with some form of proportionality as the Scottish can...move to a fairer system that does not penalise voters that have a choice between similar candidates.

What happens if No wins?

2011-05-04T12:11:00.003+01:00

With a poll out that shows something like a 20 point lead for the No campaign there is a part of me that has to prepare for the possibility of people voting against a fairer voting system, and for a continuation of the terrible topsy-turvy system we've currently got. But what will the No campaign have achieved if they win?

PR?

One argument being peddled is that a No vote will enable a much quicker move to a PR system for the commons. This is despite all reality that the Tories and Labour do not want a PR system. The Tories will never vote for anything other than FPTP, and Labour will stretch at most to AV+, which isn't PR but addresses a small part of the problem of single member constituencies.

How we will get to the PR system that most want, STV, when both of the biggest parties in the country do not want it and consistently talk it down (after all, why would they want a system where they both have to give up seats for MPs that people really want?), after a result which is a resounding "No reform" statement, I will never know.

No more coalitions?

Polling is all over the place, and it may well be that we move away from the three party system that we currently reside under. However if this did happen it would also mean no coalitions under AV as well as FPTP. However if the Lib Dems turn things around (as they appear to be doing in some local election polling) then we're still looking at another coalition (or at least Hung Parliament) in 2015.

Given Labour and the Tories don't want to work together, this only leaves the Lib Dems to prop one or the other up. So voting no doesn't stop coalitions, and it actually makes it harder and slower to get out of the hung parliament territory we're in right now (AV is much better for making large changes where the public wants it).

Fair winners?

The main reason I've supporter AV is because of this one fact... FPTP does not deliver fair winners in seats where opinion is split. FPTP, in fact, PENALISES popular opinion if more than one candidate falls under that area of support. If your constituency is heavily environmentally minded, with a Lib Dem and a Green being the two "greenest" in the constituency, people that want a Green focus actually can cause themselves to lose out.

It's ridiculous, but a No vote helps to ensure that someone who is TRULY "third place" in the local area wins ahead of one of two candidates that are pushing policy the majority of the constituency want.

Money saved?

I've written here before, but we'll be spending near to £50-60mil on this referendum even if it is lost. And after that, we barely save any money as the cost of counting extra rounds is miniscule compared to the costs that are already incurred for an election.

----

So when it comes down to it, if we do vote No tomorrow then the only thing we've proved is that as a nation we'd rather cut off our nose to spite our face, that short term personal politics is actually more important than meaningful reform (and thus politicians will be enthused to know that focusing on talking down their opponents rather than talking up their own policy is the way forward in the future), that we'd rather that vocal minorities win against loose majorities every time, and that reform of the house of commons is not something that we're interested in.

The only thing that keeps me positive about the possibility of a No win tomorrow, given that my faith in the public to not shoot themselves in the foot will be destroyed, is that the possibility of a parliament only evolution of how the Lords is formed can mitigate all of the terrible elements of our democracy this referendum will have enforced, and ensure that even if we're too stupid to vote for it, we still have an opportunity to have our voices better represented.

Stokes Croft and the horrible stench of hypocrisy.

2011-04-24T00:34:00.002+01:00

It's been a couple of evenings now since the Stokes Croft riots, however riotous rather than spectator like it actually was, and it's been interesting to read about the various views on what has been going on. From the police we have official statements about the operation, press releases as they are an therefore highly dubious as to their factuality. Yet on Twitter and Youtube we have other accounts as to the operation's effectiveness.

I don't wish to promote alleged police actions of "brutality", and I've been pretty damn vocal against the tactics of kettling and charging innocent protesters in London. However reading reports like this from Oli Conner just take the piss.

However, it didn't take long before everything began to switch. I couldn't say what happened first, the police arming themselves with riot shields or people dragging dustbins and bits of wood onto the street to build a barricade. One thing I can say with absolute certainty is that the police could have prevented what was to happen next by demobilising and leaving the area with the people that they had arrested. But they didn't, and stubbornness instead provoked a riot.

Emboldened, the protesters turned the tables on the police, standing in front of their vans, not allowing them to exit - giving them a taste of what it feels like to be kettled. As the riot shielded officers came back out of their van and formed another line, everyone sat down in front of them linking arms. The police swiftly responded with violence.

Yes, the police are the authority. Yes, the police should know better. But you know what, it's absolutely un-fucking-acceptable to state that one side "provoking violence" is their fault, while on the flip side it is only their response of violence after being provoked that is the problem.

What we have here is an almost playground-esque tragedy. I have no doubt that police were given stupid orders...it seems to happen a lot these days. But ultimately the police on the ground are just workers, trained in a specific way, and generally left to their own devices to carry out a blanket task. If they are told to stay and defend an area and stop people, that is what they'll do. If the people they're trying to stop start to get violent, no matter how small a group, they will revert to training.

Is this right? No. Absolutely not. But it is understandable, despite what commentators around the web may try to alude to otherwise.

Equally I understand entirely why a group of people feeling unheard, ignored entirely, or simply persecuted in the short term by the authorities present, may feel so obliged to "stand up" to authority. That doesn't make such a childish action right either.

Authority or not, we're meant to be civilised human beings. I don't believe that in the face of brutality or oppression people should back down, but there is no evidence of the police going around and seeking out to oppress or to brutalise. The people that were hurt were hurt because they, or those around them, chose to confront and oppose themselves and become the antagonists.

Take a look at this video, for example (warning, it's cut together by people sympathetic to those that aren't the police, yet still moronically is showing why the police withdrawing was a mistake).

This wasn't a protest that the police were shutting down, this wasn't a group of people acting innocent and enacting their rights. Whoever "started" it doesn't really fucking matter, what happened was two groups of people...one no doubt briefed to expect trouble and trained to deal with it, the other spoiling for trouble after a pint or two...came together and neither felt they could withdraw.

Except only one group could be expected to take this stance, the police. They're there to maintain law and order. They failed, but it would not be seen as acceptable in any way shape or form for them to simply walk out of there after tensions had snapped. As we see from the video above, when they did leave absolute dickheads decided the best way to further their cause was to help provide the mainstream media and hand-wringers alike exactly the ammunition they need to say "SEE...they're just a bunch of criminal wasters!"

I've been largely impressed with the way that those opposing the Tesco store in Stokes Croft have handled themselves, the way they've mobilised support and tried everything they can in the face of clearly biased planning laws to enabled business to win out over communities. I can only assume they have had little part to play in the actions of two evenings ago...I hope that assumption is correct.

What happened in Stokes Croft was pitiful and made no-one look good. But don't kid yourself that this was unwarranted police brutality. If you go looking for a fight with a guy with armor and a big stick you're looking to get hurt.

And if you're happy to stand amongst those people while not looking for a fight, you're an idiot and I have little sympathy for you. Document these "abuses of power" provoked by anti-social elements from a better position where you won't be mistaken for one of the law breakers in the heat of the moment, and stop thinking that police officers are somehow unable to distinguish between innocent and guilty in that moment any more than you seem capable of distinguishing between a police officer fighting scared or fighting for fun.

AV elects the most popular candidate...

2011-04-12T09:24:00.003+01:00

A bit of a recap here...but it's not good enough to pretend that AV elects the least worst candidate.

If three candidates, Tom, Wendy and Kim stand for election, and get the following shares under FPTP, then Kim would win...

Tom: 20%
Wendy: 36%
Kim: 44%

If Tom never stood, then under FPTP Wendy would win, assuming that half of Tom's supporters vote for Wendy, and half don't bother to vote at all...

Wendy: 51%
Kim: 49%

If the first election was run, we'd likely say Kim was the most popular (or held the most votes), whereas if the second election was held we'd have said Wendy was the most popular.

Using FPTP's very own definitions then, it's clear that AV round 1 would result in the first set of shares, and then result in the second set of shares. Wendy would rightfully win as the more popular candidate...but more than that a candidate with majority support and true endorsement from the local area.

This process is especially important when you consider perhaps that Wendy is a Labour candidate, Tom is a Green candidate and Kim is a Tory candidate. The population (as the second result shows) are clearly leaning towards green-left ideals. Under FPTP, with all three candidates standing, the population (who are clearly green/socialist) would end up with a conservative candidate.

So AV re-runs FPTP elections to eliminate vote splitting that can allow a candidate that doesn't represent a constituency to win, and it does so by electing the most popular candidate just as a FPTP election would. A fairer system for better democracy!

A month to go before the AV Referendum

2011-04-03T13:30:00.002+01:00

So we're almost a month away from the Referendum vote, as well as local elections widely expected to see the country stand against the cuts that are being foisted upon them by electing a landslide victory of Labour council seats nationally.

I wanted to reiterate why it is I'm voting for AV:

1) I believe in the constituency link between voters and their MPs

We don't need to go for PR in our House of Commons, a strong constituency link is a positive factor for MPs to do what local people want...but only where they feel those local people can get rid of them. FPTP fails the second part of that sentence, as too many MPs know they need not consider as wide a range of voters as possible. Only around 1-2% of all voters mattered in 2010.

2) Proportionality can now be delivered more quickly, and more fairly, by reforming the House of Lords

But I do want proportionality in our politics...yet this referendum has screwed that consideration up for the House of Commons.

The House of Lords is our answer. If AV is lost in May, then the Daily Mail, the Tories, Labour...it'll all be swung as a victory for FPTP. None of them want a more proportional system than FPTP or AV. If AV is won then we'll have to bed it in and test it for several elections. Either way PR in the House of Commons is off the table for at least a generation.

House of Lords reform, however, should happen by the end of the current parliament if the coalition agreement is to be believed. We can have a house that scrutinises our laws, and even introduces laws of it's own, that is proportional to our national wishes.

To me this is a perfect system, a national government elected via run-off popularity in each constuency, and a representative chamber that ensures all law passed has to have been agreed by a group of politicians with political views proportional to our nation as a whole.

Yet listen to most in the Yes or No debate and you'd think that this option never existed. *sigh*.

3) AV is a more equal, and therefore more fair, voting system for voters

FPTP doesn't treat everyone equally. It gives everyone the same voting opportunity (as does AV, for the record), but it gives more influence to those who choose to vote with the crowds. If you want a minority candidate, but choose to vote for Labour, Tories, or the Lib Dems...your vote will be worth more in the system than those that vote with their hearts.

AV lets everyone vote the same way, and ensures that everyones voice is equal in the results. This is fairer for all involved, allowing people to vote how they want for the reasons they want...not forced to either vote against their wishes, or to vote in a way that means they might as well not have turned up to vote at all, as it would be under FPTP.

4) AV increases marginality through greater chance to change MPs, this is linked to increase in turnout.

Take a look, studies show that AV allows seats the change hands more frequently than under FPTP. This chance has, in research, been linked to increase in turnout.

People simply turn up more the more they think their vote will matter. So along with AV actually meaning that 25% of the country that really don't count may actually make a difference, the act of them making a difference may encourage more to turn up as well.

This only helps to enhance the legitimacy of the government that is eventually formed.

5) AV stops extremism from getting a foot in the door

FPTP is the system that lets extremist parties have a chance at winning with a tiny share of the vote. To illustrate, though they themselves aren't extremist, the Lib Dems won a seat in 2010 on 29% of the vote, less than a third of those voting!

This could have been any party that could generate a swell of minority support, Lib Dems, Labour, or even the BNP. AV ensures that the only parties that win are those who actually have the endorsement of local voters, and thus cannot be extremists in that area.

6) AV enables greater transparency

If a Labour MP wins right now, they only have some idea of why they won. Was it national politics, was it an overwhelming case for their manifesto, was it the lack of a local candidate that would split their vote?

With AV that Labour MP will be able to see who transferred votes to them. Was it Liberal Democrats and Greens, or was it the BNP and local candidates? By having this information that MP knows much better how to serve their constituency. It's a level of transparency that simply doesn't exist under FPTP.

This, of course, doesn't mean that all of a sudden Labour MPs are going to singing from the BNP hymn-sheet...right now those like Phil Woolas make educated guesses as to how many BNP supporter votes they can poach and act accordingly.

Let's have a system where candidates have more freedom to be who they really want to be, without having to pledge to being more racist/liberal/green than they necessarily want to be, or even potentially need to be.

7) AV is opposed by the Daily Mail, most Conservatives, the worst of Labour's past, and the BNP.

When the people most involved in restriction of our liberties, and the promotion of so much hatred and fear, are the people saying we shouldn't vote for AV...well I just instinctively feel I'm on the ethically correct side of this debate. Petty? Perhaps, but petty based on preferring people to have equal rights and access to the political system...unlike those currently saying "Vote No to give Clegg a bloody nose" and other such short-termist anti-democratic nonsense.

What have we learned: 11th March

2011-03-11T19:24:00.002Z

So it's been another fun (your mileage may very) week for AV discussions.

Starting off last Saturday, the 5th of March, Bristol had it's debate on AV. From this we learned that Chris Skidmore, a Tory MP, is willing to throw his party leader under the bus if it means winning a relatively minor point in a discussion...inferring that perhaps Cameron shouldn't have won his leadership of the Tory party given he didn't get the most number of first preferences in the first round.

All in all we learned from the whole debate that Chris Skidmore is woefully under-prepared to deal with the issue of discussing AV; a man that clearly relies on people to be completely uninformed so that his deceptions pass by as if fact.

We also learned that unfortunately the markets have moved towards the No vote winning, as well as polling, which suggests that unfortunately the No tactic of lying to the electorate (the Big Lie tactic as some have described it might have worked through the last month.

We also learned that the Tories would rather stop voting reform than concentrate on local elections. So little is their care for the public that they're cutting services for left right and center, they are abandoning even trying to make the case for their localism! David Cameron intends to personally take more of a visible role in the campaign and the party itself is throwing more resources behind it.

We still don't know who is funding the No campaign and by how much though.

We learned that historians don't know their history, as a bunch of right wing history "buffs" sign a letter crafted by (wait for it) Chris Skidmore claiming a bunch of facts that are actually historically incorrect.

We learned that some people still believe that a vote for No will have a better chance at delivering PR, after all the Murdoch owned press start a party to celebrate FPTP, and half the Labour party and most of the Tory party go on record to talk about it being an endorsement of our "traditional and time honoured system", and in an environment where the two main parties STILL don't want to move to a PR system.

More than that though we learned the main person pushing for it actually just wants to keep FPTP for the House of Commons anyway, so is hardly the right person to rely on to push PR at any point.

We learned that No supporters will use emotional blackmail at the drop of a hat (as if the "AV will kill babies" adverts didn't show this), as Cllr Terry Paul condescendingly asks Operation Black Vote why they're saying Yes. The dummies, don't they know it'll let the BNP in? That's right, vote yes and it'll be YOUR fault that racists get some power.

However we also learned that maybe the No campaign is cross party (or at least equal opportunity backstabbers) as they layed in to Tory Yes lead, John Strafford, and tried to score cheap political smug points by getting the Yes campaign to disown him. How did they do this? They scoured the internet for *anything* they could find from the man to try and pin his balls to the wall, and found three fairly innocuous personal opinions that they then quoted out of context.

Don't give up your day jobs, chaps.

PS. I personally spent a good amount of time researching Australian Election history, and found no proof whatsoever that preferential voting caused a drop in turnout as those against AV claim. Worthwhile learning perhaps!

FPTP gives people unfair influence, AV is a more equal system

2011-03-11T13:29:00.005Z

Question: Isn't FPTP a fair system because everyone has one vote and there is only one round for it to count in?

FACT: FPTP is equal in process, but not in influence, unlike AV which is equal in process AND equal in influence.

Probably the most popular myth about FPTP is that due to it being so super simple, it must be so super fair and equal too.

It is not.

25% of the population voted for a candidate that came 3rd or worse in 2010's General Election. Their influence on the result was almost non-existant. If, however, they had decided to vote AGAINST their preference and vote tactically then they would have made more of an impact, either by increasing or decreasing the majority of the winner, or potentially even changing the winner completely.

FPTP leaves a gulf in voter power between those that vote for the top two candidates and those that don't.

AV, by comparisons, almost abolishes this unfair situation. AV is a run off voting system which means that if there are no winners (someone with over 50% of the remaining votes) in the round taking place, the least popular candidate is removed from the race and votes are reallocated to those remaining. These rounds each ask the same question, "Who's the best candidate of those remaining now?", and keeps going until a clear winner is found

It is the electoral equivalent of working out what kind of beer you want from the bar when your favourite has been discontinued because not enough people are buying it.

Because of this process everyone has the same input in to the system, everyone has the same opportunity to rank as many candidates as they like, and then everyone also enjoys a fair outcome, the same opportunity as everyone else in each round to make a statement about who is the best candidate left in the running.

FPTP is the act of making a choice, but then being left out in the cold unless you are canny enough to vote AGAINST YOUR WISHES and in line with the more popular top two candidates, creating a divide in equality between those who happen to support the top candidates and those that don't.

Worse still FPTP provides additional weight in the single voting round of FPTP for those that are willing to abandon their true desires and vote negatively and tactically, over and above those that have decided to vote with their heart.

AV is the act of letting the system know your opinion, and then being involved in a much more equitable process of fairly working out who the most popular candidate is as a group...and not assuming that the largest minority, as small as 29% in one constituency in 2010, knows what's best more than anyone else. And best of all the chance of you being punished for voting honestly and positively is almost completely eliminated.

EDIT: Some like to come and say that they wouldn't put their full preferences, so they get less say. This is wrong. While your candidate is in, you get the same amount of say as everyone else, as soon as your candidate goes out you are also out. Is this unfair? Well ask yourself this, if you wouldn't put further preferences under AV, then you'd probably not turn up (or you'd spoil) at a FPTP election where your party wasn't standing, wouldn't you?

In that case you would have actively chosen to not take part, your choice...the same is said here of AV. If you want to choose to give yourself no further influence that is not an indictment on the system, that is you having the freedom to do as you wish with your vote. The system itself hasn't disempowered you, you yourself have.

Did AV really decrease turnout in Australia?

2011-03-11T01:55:00.005Z

There’s a throwaway charge made towards the Alternative Voting system that has always bugged me. It’s the charge that AV will cause the turnout in this country to drop through its introduction, and the “proof” of this is supposedly a single year’s turnout figures in Australia, the 1922 Federal Elections. So, did AV, or IRV, cause low turnout at the Australian Federal Elections?

But is this even proof? Statistically it’s flimsy, looking at only two years of turnout for comparison, near the beginning of a parliament’s lifetime, and not long after a war effort. But I’ve decided to take it on it’s own basis and look deeper...and I think the realities of what can be drawn from the drop in turnout are not quite what the “No2AV” camp would enjoy.

First, let’s get some background on the country and it’s politics prior to AV being implemented.

We know from our own history that times of great internal discomfort lead to higher turnouts. 1917 was a time when the war was having a huge toll on the Australian’s resolve (as it was, no doubt, everywhere), a controversial attempt was made to try and get the people to agree to conscription, and heavy economic penalties for having got involved in the war, kept turn out high, one of the highest Australia has had pre-compulsory voting.

It’s easy to compare this year for the Australian government to our own 1997 or 2010 elections where national events conspired to push the public in to action to reform it’s own government.

There was also high turn out in 1914 and 1913, however, the former “helped” by the outbreak of the first world war that would later come to hurt the Labor party, and the latter by an increase in in turnout by “Liberal” (conservative) voters in response perhaps to the biggest socialist set of reforms of Australia’s then short history in the preceding government.

Before this point turnout was low, once in the low 60%’s and otherwise in the 50%’s. This is probably more to do with the relatively new status of federal Australia and how it operated...it’s legitimacy in the eyes of the people and how well it was in itself supported...rather than an indictment of the FPTP system that was being used.

History lesson over, what about 1919 and 1922? I’ve gone through the elections from 1914 to 1922, seat by seat to work out if there is anything that can be said to be a clear indicator of a trend. Is there an apathy when asked to rank between 3 or more voters, for example, instead of two? Is there a marginality effect in 1919 that isn’t there in 1922?

Well let’s start first with the candidates. In 1914 and 1917 the FPTP system meant very few seats stood more than 2 candidates, and in 12 and 10 seats respectively they stood only 1 candidate uncontested. This fell to 2 uncontested seats in 1919 and 4 in 1922. In 1919, when the AV system was introduced there were only 27 seats contesting more than 2 candidates, and in 1922 this rose to 44 seats, not even 60% of the total number of seats.

So, for a start we know that roughly around 4% of the 12% drop in turnout was down to two uncontested seats.

Next there is the drop in turnout. From the 1919 year to 1922 there were 27 seats that can say they lost turnout after moving from staging a contest between 2 candidates to a contest between 3 or more candidates. However 29 seats lost turn out by keeping exactly the same number of candidates, while 8 lost turnout despite REDUCING the number of candidates fielded in 1922.

What’s most interesting is that of the top 5 biggest drops in turnout, all 5 either decreased the number of candidates standing or remained contesting with only 2. Turnout drops of 26%, 24%, 23%, and none of them to do with any added complication of having to choose between more than two candidates!

Of the 3 seats that can be said to have gained turnout during 1922, the only seats we can be sure of doing so (due to other 5 other seats having been abolished/reformed between the elections), 2 increased their candidate list to 3 candidates standing, and the other REMAINED on 3 candidates.

Then there is the phenomenon of vote counts actually not dropping, despite turnout doing so, suggesting that in reality a lot of these seats gained a significant amount of non-voting population between 1919 and 1922, rather than people choosing to not vote.

For example, Capricornica... an extra 10600 voters, but only an increase of 0.6% in the turnout. Wide Bay, 5400 extra voters but LOST 3.1% in turnout. Darling, increased it’s vote count by 1700 but lost a huge 12.5% of it’s turnout. Kalgoorlie remained stable on voters but lost an even bigger 20.9% of it’s turnout, similarly Batman lost only 200 voters but also a turnout share of 15.9%

The list goes on, in fact there are only 10 constituencies that have anything like a logical correlation between their turnout figure and voting total figures (comparing the drop or gain in turn out to a reasonable matching percentage... 10% of turnout equates to roughly 3000-4000 votes if the constituency size is staying roughly equal).

This isn’t to say what happened was unbelievable, just that there was clearly a population upheaval in some respect between 1919 and 1922 that caused placed to drop turnout so suddenly while increasing their vote totals

On this subject, of those places increasing their vote total (the number of ballots cast), of 17 constituencies 8 increased their number of candidates, 8 remained with the same number of candidates (2 of those with 3 candidates) and 1 had decreased their number of candidates.

On the flip side, the 17 (to be consistent) constituencies that lost the most vote totals consisted of 10 remaining on the same number of candidates (2 of those with 3 candidates), 5 increasing the number of candidates and 2 decreasing their number of candidates.

And when it comes to marginality the obvious expectation seems true. The most marginal seats in 1919 were the best at increasing vote totals, and tended to minimise the loss in turn out. in the seats where the margin was about 5.5% or lower in 1919, out of 16 seats 9 of them gained vote numbers, with an average drop of about 9% in turnout boosted in part by a few modest turnout increases in 2 areas.

Take the 16 from the side with the least marginality and that average drop in turnout goes up to 15%, no turnout increases whatsoever in any of those areas, none of them gaining higher vote totals.

Just splitting the seats in to two halves shows the half with the more marginal seats had a 3% better performance on turnout than those without marignality.

Finally there’s the issue of the longer turnout trend. 12 of the 75 seats, at least, experienced an ongoing turnout drain from 1914 all the way through to 1922. The introduction of AV didn’t alter that direction. Another 22 seats increased or maintained their turnout in 1919 compared to 1914, a good result considering that 1914 was a year of going to war and 1917 was hot off the heels of controversial conscription legislation being defeated.

Due to uncontested seats, and some seats being incomparable through boundary changes, this only leaves 19 seats that it can be said, for sure, that lost turn out after the introduction of AV despite turnout increasing in 1917. 14 of those seats didn’t contest more than 2 candidates in 1919 and 6 still didn’t contest more than 2 in 1922.

From all of this data we can see that marginality still has a strong pull on how turnout changes in line with the national mood, we can also see that constituencies that adopted more candidates were more likely to get more votes cast, even if this resulted in a drop in turnout due to population factors. Consequently the seats more susceptible to lower turnout were those with fewer candidates standing.

And finally we can see that out of all the seats that we have data for, only a maximum of 15 (from 75, including seats we have not enough data for) can actually be identified as having consistently lost turnout while moving towards multiple preferences.

(As a side note, it was interesting to find in my research that Australia had several seats that uses AV as a means to, essentially, run primaries during the election. Multiple candidates from the same party standing against each other, resulting in a head to head between two people from the same party in some cases...another benefit of AV that I’ve talked about in the past, actually evidenced in use!)

Of course this is just what we can measure! There are plenty of other unaccountable things that could be at play that could affect why turnout changed both from a national and a local perspective:

As with 2001 in the UK, a huge turnout drop after the 1997 high turnout, there is no reason why a stabilising country after war simply wasn’t interested in politics, especially during a time where all the parties seemed to be chopping and changing so frequently to find the right identity and level of power. Maybe people just genuinely didn’t care who was winning.

The usual local issues could have their effect...multiple candidates not different enough to warrant choosing between, poor local campaigning, lack of faith in the system from a local perspective. These feelings can change election to election.

Was centralisation of government a problem from the start in terms of endorsement? We know that turnout was in the 50% area at it’s inception, was it only war and it’s aftermath that grabbed the nation enough to be inspired to vote up to the 70% and above mark in the first place?

Did immigration play it’s part, how did the “type” of population that was arriving in it’s largest numbers since the early 1910’s in the country play it’s part in who felt the need to vote and who didn’t?

How did the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918/1919 affect the turn out, especially in Tasmania where around a third of the population were affected? (Coincidentally, perhaps, Tasmanian turnout dropped by around a third that year, unlike most other areas in Australia)

Perhaps it was to do with an aspect of the system we can’t measure...the fact that Australians have to rank every candidate standing may have felt counter productive for example. “Vote 2nd preference for the candidate I dislike?!” I can just imagine the absurdity of the notion at the time!

So...the conclusion:

We just don’t know why turn out dropped in 1922 to the level it did! The figures seem to show that if there was a problem it wasn’t in the preferential nature of the voting system not long since introduced. Voting numbers went up, yet turnout fell dramatically; voting dropped in areas where they had to choose between only two candidates just as much where they had to suddenly rank between three or more.

Population increase appears to be key, combined with a lack of will to vote, and the long studied trend of “safe seats” helps bring that turnout down lower where it’s occurring. Along with 2 more uncontested seats than in 1919 that can be seen as the cause of a 1/3rd of the drop in turnout, perhaps the mystery of where the voters went isn’t that big of a mystery at all.

The only thing we can genuinely say is that being confronted with ranking more than 2 candidates was not a key factor in a decrease in turn out, and in that sense...given how close 1919 and 1922 Federal elections were to First Past the Post in their application during those early years...I think it is highly speculative, and more than a slight stretch, to believe it was the preferential nature of the system that caused the significant proportion of the drop in turn out.

Given that it is this preferential nature that is the only thing the UK AV system would share with Australia, not the requirement to order all preferences, nor the particular style of constituencies at that time of history of only usually standing two candidates, there is no reason to believe that introducing AV would lead to a decrease in turnout here in the UK either.

But, in the interest of fairness, I should also say that if turnout does increase under an AV election in the UK it is no more a reason to claim that the voting system has enfranchised voters either. Trends are the only thing that matter in this kind of data, several elections at the very least are needed to compare to similar periods of time in history to determine any difference in voter apathy influence because of the system.

When we’re making claims, whether it’s about the cost of the voting system, how it’ll engage the apathetic, or the likely political outcomes of it’s use such as making statements about it’s coalition making powers...we need to actually base these claims on reality, measurable reality. It’s not enough to have some anecdotal evidence, such as 1922, and inflate it with your own meaningless opinions.

EDIT: Link to the data for these elections...

EDIT: Antony Green, who runs an excellent blog that gives plenty of analysis to bogus "No" campaign claims, has also put an insight up as to the lack of link between AV and fall in turnout.

FPTP doesn't guarantee a winner has the most 1st preferences either...

2011-03-09T12:49:00.003Z

Question: Do you think it’s unfair that AV takes in to account people’s second preferences to determine winners?

FACT: FPTP is no more sure of winners having the most first preferences than AV.

FPTP might only let you put one vote, but it ASSUMES that it is your first preference, and no doubt you assume they are all first preferences. This is wrong. Tactical voting is happening up and down the country, where people put a cross against someone other than their true first preference...and in some constituencies supporters don’t have their preferred MP standing at all, so have to vote for their second choice!

The reality is that a FPTP winner could win on LESS 1st preferences than the person that came second had, and further more the FPTP can easily also be disliked by over half the voters taking part in the election too! If that isn’t truly giving the gold medal to the runner up I don’t know what is!

Take this example...

Red: 40%
Blue: 60%

You’d say Blue was the winner, under AV or FPTP right? Under FPTP you may also say that Blue has the most first preferences.

How about if I told you that Blue is made up of supporters of Aquamarine (10%) Blue (30%) and Cyan (20%)? Half of the votes for Blue are second preferences, meaning Red actually has more first preferences but still lost. Red rightfully lost, of course, as it’s clear that the majority prefer a Blue of some kind.

But take a more "realistic" example if you will, North Cornwall...

Liberal Democrat 48.1%
Conservative 41.7%
UKIP 4.9%
Labour 4.2%
Mebyon Kernow 1.1%

We cannot know how people vote here, but a Labour result of 4.2% is extremely low. Could it be that Labour voters are propping up the Lib Dems to save the seat from going Tory? This is, of course, speculation (FPTP doesn't show us enough information, unlike AV), but if 7% of that Liberal Democrat vote is actually 2nd preference Labour votes, and all of the Conservative vote is 1st preference...then FPTP has failed the main test that so many of it's supporters hold up as it's main strength.

So, I repeat: FPTP does not guarantee that the winner has the most first preferences, it is an ignorant assumption to believe that it does.

All this leaves is one difference between AV and FPTP (for the purposes of how much mandate a candidate has), and that is that AV ensures that the MP elected does have the most support. Both systems can’t guarantee the winner is the one with the most first preferences, so it is common sense that we make a change that at least means that our MP is actually popular rather than unpopular in their area.

How an increase in Lib Dems could mean less coalitions

2011-03-07T10:25:00.004Z

Some people are unfortunately unable to work out the maths behind why an increase in the Lib Dem seat numbers is just as likely to mean lower chances of hung parliaments as higher chances. Let's take a deeper look...

Using the UNS (you can play with an interactive version here...) we can see a likely result under FPTP if polling remained the same (and assuming that boundaries don't change) would be this..

Lib Dems: 20
Labour: 363
Tories: 242
Others: 24

This gives a Labour majority of 76 seats. Under AV the Lib Dems might pick up another 20-60 seats depending on local marginals. So, does this mean more coalitions? Well first of all the maths show in all likelihood that even if all those seats came from Labour there still wouldn't be a coalition. But what if Labour had a smaller majority? In theory the Lib Dems could force a coalition by their existence with AV where it wouldn't have happened under FPTP?

True. But it could also do the opposite. Depending on where people live and how they intend to vote (and especially considering the weakness of the Lib Dem vote) it could be that the Lib Dems win more of their seats from the Tories under AV, and on top of that the Lib Dems being a weak force could mean their supporters transferring more votes to Labour to force Labour wins where the Tories would have won with FPTP.

Far from increasing coalitions, this increase in Lib Dem seat numbers would at worse mean that there is no change in Labour's majority, and at best mean that Labour also end up increasing their majority because of the transfers and support they get.

Take 1997. Studies (flawed as they are with lack of true information) show that the Lib Dems would have picked up an extra 69 seats with AV, more than doubling their result under FPTP. Coalition causing? hardly, because the shift in mood towards Labour was so large, so popular, that Labour also would have gained an extra 26 seats, with the Tories losing 95 seats more than under FPTP. In doing this Labour's majority, already large, would have grown in 1997 under AV, a hung parliament even further from reality.

EDIT: For the hard of thinking, an increase in Lib Dem seats, if it happens, will only cause a result closer to a hung parliament than FPTP if it wins more seats off of the LEADING party than the leading party wins off of every other party. It is entirely possible for the Lib Dems to increase their seats and make no difference to the resulting majority if they win all of their seats off the second placed party (in net terms, that is, they could win seats off the leading party too, but the leading party wins just as many seats off of the second placed party too). It could still result in a result FURTHER from a hung parliament than FPTP if the separate measure of how many seats (net) that the leading party wins is increased too. An increase in one party's seats, when talking about three main parties, is only one half of the equation.

The reality is that AV promotes popular governments to be stronger than in FPTP (increasing the majority, weakening the chance of coalitions) and weakens unpopular governments (decreasing the majority, increasing the chance of coalitions). In basic terms, AV only delivers a greater chance of a hung parliament when the country as a whole isn't pulling strongly in one direction for one of the top two parties or another, when the country as a whole is saying it can't decide on one party to be an out and out winner.

The fact that Lib Dems are increasing in numbers plays a very small, tiny, part in whether a coalition is needed or a hung parliament occurs. Much more important is which way transfers go, to the Tories or Labour, this is more to do with how popular Labour is versus the Tories and vice versa.

Why hypotheticals matter

2011-03-06T02:01:00.004Z

This recent poll shows a danger of First Past the Post. With just 23% of the first preference support, the far-right extremist presidential hopeful could win under a First Past the Post system.

Thankfully for France, they don't use FPTP, they use two round run-off that ensures that while the far-right candidate might be the most popular first preference, in a head to head situation the people can truly decide who's the best President out of the two most popular. It's like a cut down, less representative AV.

Of course post this on Twitter and cue the usual nonsense replies. "People could vote differently if they wanted to", "it's called democracy!", etc, etc. As if making these statements make it any better that the whole set up of an electoral system could deliver (if it were used) a far-right extremist president that over three quarters, 77% ,of the population would not want.

"@Niaccurshi @YesInMay Right, so you're talking of hypotheticals, the like of which have never occurred in our entire history of using FPTP?!"
from @Boris_backer

Yes, I am talking about hypotheticals. Why? Because they matter when what you're talking about is constructing a system that is meant to safeguard democracy. The fact that hypothetically, if enough people ran as candidates in a constituency, a BNP candidate could win a seat with 30% or even 20% of the vote while 70-80% actively hated them is a problem. A real, anti-democratic problem!

So what if it's never happened, so what if it's unlikely...it COULD happen, and to have a system that allows that and be happy is the same logic as building on top of a dormant volcano because it almost never erupts.

EDIT: BTW, Norwich South was won by a Lib Dem on 29% of the vote in 2010. Hardly *too* hypothetical now, is it?

Back in 2009 I had to make a similar argument about a similar way of thinking...Labour were trying to change our Data Protection Act laws in a sly and hidden manner (along with changing coroners inquests, etc). Their intention was to allow any minister to allow anyone that they liked to completely ignore the data protection act, and for those people to then be able to continue to disregard the act (i.e. to sell our personal information) for any purposes that "secured a relevant policy objective"

When pushed on it by Lib Dems then in opposition the claim was "well it'd never be abused, don't worry about it". I mean seriously...are we honestly living in a world where what we want to do is make laws and systems with inherent flaws in them because we probably won't ever see that flaw come in to practice?

Call me old fashioned maybe, but how about we just GET RID OF THE FLAW and make sure it doesn't happen. Instead of allowing ALL ministers to abandon the DPA on a whim for any policy objective (that can be made up at a moment's notice), how about we not let any minister do it for any reason other than for national security reasons, for example?

Thankfully parliament saw sense in 2009, Labour cut out the parts about abandoning the safeguards to our private and personal data in order to get the rest of it's massive bill through. Now, in 2011 we should do the same...it's time to cut all of the hypothetical flaws out of our system that we can, because waiting until the flaws actually get shown up in practice is leaving it too late.

Edit: The same guy has now come back with an amazing lack of understanding of the problem, with this analogy that doesn't fit...

"@Niaccurshi @YesInMay Should I throw my phone away because although it's always worked fine, I can't guarantee it won't explode one day?"

If the phone is our voting system, then the probability of it exploding is the chances of undemocratic results being made. So, essentially...if there's another phone out there that can guarantee that the chance of it exploding is reduced, then yes...we should throw our phone away and get the new, safer one. The manafacturer should indeed recall that phone to help protect the consumers using it by providing the safer "less explody" version.

Isn't that just common sense?

Repugnant views? No campaign offer more smears

2011-03-06T01:04:00.003Z

It isn't often I feel the need to come to support a Tory, or a UKIP supporter for that matter...however the nasty campaign of the No camp rolls on unchecked.

Not content with lying to us about the cost of a system (while failing to provide the context of how small that cost is in the scheme of things as well), with trying to drag the debate in to short-sighted and partisan Clegg bashing, squatting on domains that should belong to the Yes camp (see yes2av.org), censoring comments that try to correct mistakes (or lies, as I think they can be more accurately described) and trying to emotionally blackmail us with scenes of sick babies that I guess they'd have you believe you were voting to kill by voting Yes in May; they also feel the need to try character assassination wherever possible in a feeble effort to create ammunition against the Yes campaign.

It's a text book old politics nasty campaign. It shouldn't really be a surprise either given that one of their main people is Charlotte Vere, who tried to smear her way (unsuccessfully) in to winning a seat in Parliament against the Greens. It also isn't short of hypocrisy that the head of the whole No campaign will use these tactics, of trying to tell us this money could be better spent on hospitals, after his organisation (The Taxpayers' Alliance) have spent so long trying to lobby for cutting spending on public services across the board!

But I digress, you probably already know everything you need to know about the types of characters that are organising and running the No campaign, you probably already understand it's not a recipe for a fair and honest debate.

And so earlier this week Paul Perrin made a comment that had several No commentators up in arms with their nowtrage. His comment was this:

"Ballot paper for the middle east: 1) Nuke Jews 2) Nuke Arabs 3) Negotiate --- what will it be FPTP/#No2AV or #Yes2AV"

Now I don't think there is any reasonable way you can get angry or upset about this tweet. It's poor taste perhaps, but satire tends to fly quite close to that area, that negotiation is the sensible compromise as opposed to the extremist wishes of a popular few.

@larasmallman on the other hand is either overly sensitive, or one of those gibbering idiots, as she claimed that this was "racism" and then proceeded to try and get the Yes campaign to disown him, even though he has never worked for the Yes campaign. Cue the typical action of a No campaigner to then not admit she's being stupid, but to instead downgrade her presumptions demands, this time to requiring an apology just for her...though not after trying to claim that Take Back Parliament, a pre-Yes campaign movement, publishing one of Pauls posts from his own blog is proof Paul has worked for the Yes campaign.

...Give me strength....

Thankfully Paul, with all the traits of a UKIP supporter, told her extremely kindly (or not) where to go, and much Kudos for that.

But here we are now with an article in tomorrows Guardian, and the same nowtrage flowing on Twitter, about John Strafford the head of the Tory "Yes" campaign.

Yes, I know, sounds crazy that there are Tories that are actually pro-reform, let's leave jokes about oxymorons at the door.

John, it seems, has said three "controversial" things over a period of time that appears to span 9 years. 1st, a comment in 2002 about how people would react to having gay MPs in the Tory party. 2nd a comment in 2004 about female presenters of Radio 4's Today program and finally a comment in 2006 about Israeli's bombing the hell out of Lebanon.

"In welcoming 'gays' into the party we should not ignore our existing members. Many of them will be offended, not because they are Conservative but because they are of an age that were brought up to believe that homosexuals were 'poofters'. They reflect the population at large of a similar age. We should show some understanding."

Repugnant? Hardly, it's essentially the same argument we're talking about right now with BNP supporters. "Let's be real and understand that BNP voters will be offended by immigration, and we should try to understand that"

It's not accepting their anti-gay views are acceptable, what it is saying is that these people have grown up with a prejudice their whole life. We can just try to tell them to flip their entire beliefs upside down over night, or we could try to work with them to adapt. Repugnant, please...

"I was half waiting for a male voice which would tell me that a serious interview was about to be conducted. Does this make me a male chauvinist pig?"

Talking about how he had Radio 4 on and only realised at the end of the Today show that he hadn't been listening. Is it sexist to claim that a male voice signified something to listen to? Absolutely. Is it evidence that John Strafford is a sexist, male chauvinist pig? Hardly. I won't condone his views here if he is trying to claim only a male voice would keep him interested, but if he truly feels that female presenters lack the gravitas to make him keep his attention then that's also not something to get too fussed about.

"Once again we have seen the shock and awe tactics of the naziraelis. How long can this go on? 500 dead, one million refugees in Lebanon. It could all have been prevented if the United States had said STOP, but they didn't. The people of the world demand an unconditional immediate ceasefire on both sides, but the bullies ignore it. The Naziraeli tanks have rolled into Lebanon. They should withdraw."

I guess what might be repugnant here is that a bunch of Tories in the No campaign can't understand why another Tory might try to describe the Israeli forces as unreasonable (and align them with the term "Nazi") in 2006. I don't think someone stating his mind that the indiscriminate and deadly tactics of the Israeli army and political rulers is not acceptable can be called repugnant. Even allying them with the "nazi" moniker, while in bad taste for sure, isn't really out of context given the sheer nature of how Israel were operating as a military force.

We'll no doubt see more of this as time goes on, we've already had to endure out of context quotes about how AV is bad compared to PR, but stated as if it's compared to FPTP, and now we'll have to endure the smears and slurs on people's character where there is the slightest hint of controversy.

It is just a shame that rather than actually be able to put forward a coherent argument about why we should keep FPTP, the No campaign as only scare tactics and nasty smears to offer.

The Bristol AV debate

2011-03-05T18:56:00.003Z

So I have just got back from the Bristol debate, but before I stave off my hunger and get cooking I thought I'd just put a few notes down.

1) Bristol Yes was represented very well at the debate, I'd say roughly 2/3rds of the people there were Yes sympathetic, at least.

2) Billy Bragg is, of course, a great speaker and put Tory MP Chris Skidmore on the back foot more than once (reducing Chris to having to play a game of "No, you answer MY question" childishness at one point)

3) People really do get too focused on the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg...far too much time was spent making points (rather than asking questions) about the Lib Dems. This is a reform that could stretch on for decades, the Lib Dems may not be the focus in 10 years time...let's get over this short term thinking.

4) Full respect to Labour PPC in 2010, Paul Smith, for putting the balanced and common sense case on the table for Yes, highlighting just how much of those speaking for No were relying on hyperbole and half-truths.

5) A "No" campaign weakness is certainly getting them to do as Chris Skidmore tried to do and that is explain in public how Run Off voting is so fundamentally different from AV.

6) Another "No" campaign weakness is questioning them on how they're happy to accept tactical second preferences under FPTP from BNP supporters and the like, through ignorance, but wouldn't under a more transparent system that showed them how they're really supported with AV.

7) Chris Skidmore needs to stop saying majority when he means plurality.

8) The debate, organised by "No", was actually fair and impartial so I take back any criticism of it so far (though I'm sure those in Sheffield left stiffed by poor organisation still have a legitimate concern). The only point of lack of impartiality was the "independent" chair arguing with Billy over what tactical voting actually means.

9) "No" also clearly have more money to spend on shit, at least by the show of various bits and pieces at the debate. Canvas bags with logo, filled with some things I didn't bother to try and look at, three sets of leaflets on every seat, and god knows what else. Yes by contrast gave one much less glossy leaflet, some stickers and some cardboard "Yes" cutouts to hold for the picture afterwards

10) The debates still feel somewhat pointless, with people that have already decided what they want to do telling other people that aren't going to change their minds. The only good thing will, hopefully, be a fair write up in the local press including all of the groans and dissatisfaction with weak arguments put up by the "No" speakers.

11) (Should have put this higher!) More needs to be done to shut down the ridiculous argument of AV still encouraging tactical voting. Yes, tactical voting can still take place under AV in *certain circumstances*, it can also be counter-voted with other tactics that mean it's extremely risky, leading to someone you hate being voted in...hardly something you want to try to do on a whim.

EDIT 12) I can't believe I forgot this and took so long to put it here... Chris Skidmore was also pressed on, if he's so fond of FPTP, why Cameron is leader of the Tories when he came second to David Davis on first preferences. The answer was that Mr Skidmore thinks it's clear that there are many in the Tory party unhappy with Cameron. Ouch!

Now. Time for tagliatelle.

Edit2: Tagliatelle was good, walnuts not so much.

AV weakening the vote? A response to Spiked

2011-03-03T09:41:00.003Z

I've already made it clear on this blog that the people that irk me the most are those that are pro-reform but wish to stand against AV. I think it's immature, senseless...but at least in the case of Spiked they have given some actual reasoning to this stance. As with most of these types of things though, no chance to reply other than via letters to the editor, so I'm going to just make my response here.

Spiked's main assertion is this...

moving towards an AV system would make British politics even less democratic and open than it is.

And it's one that I stand very much against. Their first mistake comes when describing the functionality of the system, stating the process the system goes through to pick a winner, ending with...

someone eventually wins, even if many of ‘his’ votes were cast very half-heartedly for him.

It's that age old problem with perspective, in that those who are against AV seem to have a false perspective on what is happening with AV. They get confused and thrown by the presence of preferences and decide they have the omnipotence to decide that they know everyone using preferences only "half" cares about those they are voting for after their first preference.

I invite, again, people that say this to bring forward any proof that the same situation isn't happening right now under FPTP, and that it wouldn't happen under any other single member constituency, single vote system. I invite them because it is impossible for anyone to judge or second guess how much people care about their candidates in such systems, and especially impossible to judge how much one person's "heart" is in it when they vote compared to another.

What system best encourages the creation of popular, properly representative assemblies? It categorically is not AV.

Absolutely true. But as per my previous post on how "childish" this argument is...sometimes we don't get offered the best. Sometimes we get offered "better". To do this kind of "toys out of the pram" and "side with the enemy" action because of that is immaturity at best.

Probably the best electoral system for Britain, in place of the First Past The Post system we currently have, would be some variant of proportional representation.

Spiked here now show their narrow scope on this debate. Ignoring, as many do, the forthcoming debates on Lords reform, they assume that the only answer for our WHOLE democratic system is for PR to apply to the House of Commons. Except there is one problem with this... it is clear that the one thing people don't like when it comes to electing an executive is coalitions.

Now I don't mind coalitions, I like their safety in the current system we have, but people do very much seem to want to have a clear single party government. PR systems do not achieve this under Britain's political landscape, they would produce coalitions each and every time. As I say, not a problem for me, is a problem for many other people. The idea that we're going to get a robust representative system if all we do is harp on about the House of Commons as if it's the be all and end all is self defeating.

There are strong reasons to say that the best electoral system for the House of Commons in Britain is AV. It ensures local people get an MP that is most in tune with their politics, and in turn ensures that the national government is a true popular executive. Combined with PR and a fully elected house of Lords we move the onus on representation and balanced legislature to a different house...a house that is able to act solely as a barrier between over-zealous government and us as people not being listened to fairly.

Spiked show their limitations here by simply pinning PR in the House of Commons as a panacea to our woes.

However, introducing AV in Britain would unquestionably be a change for the worse. It would make things less democratic, in two important ways:

Oh pray tell, how?

firstly through its impact on the act of voting, which would turn from being an impassioned statement into a watered-down listing of candidates you like, kind of like and dislike

Again, here's the assumption that right now people aren't forced to make a "watered-down" choice under FPTP. It's a flawed premise to start from. It is just as likely that AV will lead to more people being able to make true impassioned statements, indeed with a certain percentage already making a tactical vote under FPTP, it seems bizarre to think that AV would lessen the amount of "impassioned statements" people make.

and secondly through its impact on the act of deciding, which would more and more become a post-election, closed-off process of sifting through people’s preferences to try to decipher which candidate sort of represents the electorate’s desires.

What beautiful use of language. I could apply the exact same language to every system, and certainly more so to any PR system that Spiked would rather have. I'm absolutely at a loss as to how this is even an argument against anything other than the process of counting the votes when you could just make an educated guess instead.

AV would weaken the vote by implicitly inviting people, not to stamp their ballot paper with a heartfelt X for their party, but to scribble numbers next to various candidates, regardless of whether they feel very much for them. Voting would become less a declaration of belief and more a hedging of political bets.

If they don't feel very much for them they can always not vote for them, no-one is forced to put down a number against every candidate. Furthermore, FPTP already makes people do this kind of preferential determination, but instead of having the safety of potentially making an impact with their real first choice, as AV allows, they have to abandon it with FPTP in order to help keep a candidate they dislike out.

And let's not get this wrong...if a voter wishes to have a candidate that is someone they "half like" because they *hate* another candidate that might win, that is an entirely fair and reasonable decision for them to make in a single member constituency system. AV at least let's people vote first for their passionately loved candidate and then for a candidate that keeps a terrible one out of office, instead of forcing people to choose.

How this is a "weakened" vote I simply cannot fathom.

In keeping with our era of ideology-lite, where strong political convictions are seen as weird, voters will be tempted away from their so-called ‘tribal allegiances’ towards the expression of a more relativistic sentiment.

This statement is so ridiculous it's like it's here for comedy value. Rather than people having to come to a "best guess" consensus to abandon their political convictions, AV provides people the opportunity to really put their political convictions on show. Letting people show their full opinion isn't about limiting your expression, it's about letting your full expression flourish.

How exactly do tribal allegiances lessen under a system where you can always put your flag in the ground and let that allegiance fly, compared to a system where sometimes you have to abandon it to save yourself from a worse situation?

Which political party will risk standing a hardcore individual – a deep-blue Tory or a workerist Labourite – when it knows that if its candidate fails to secure 50 per cent of the vote in the first count then the views of other parties’ voters may become key?

Parties that understand the electorate, and that understand that under AV you need a strong initial following to have any chance of being elected. AV doesn't make politicians more middle ground, unlike FPTP which saw every politician failing to answer the question on where the defecit would be cut, all of them agreeing roughly on what would be cut, and none of them committing one way or another to issues like tax rises.

To me it's a non argument, politicians that stand out will draw votes, those that polarise will rightly not gain majorities. This is not a problem with having fair representation on a local level.

AV would implicitly encourage the homogenisation of political life.

It's hard to get more homogenised than we are now, yet interestingly AV allows these candidates of many a colour to stand against each other without harming the result.

Personally I don't see homogonisation, I see a situation like we saw in London for the first Mayoral election. Faced with the new AV-lite Supplementary Vote system, Labour wanted a safe bet to get the position and dropped their support for Ken Livingstone. He ran as an independent. His much more left wing views went well with the public, and the supporters of Frank Dobson and others placed their second preferences for Ken knowing that they'd prefer him to a Tory mayor.

This is a working example of how preferential voting allows stand out candidates to really stand out. Homogonisation? Nah, I see many more independents standing because they haven't got the official support of their party, and forcing the debate to focus on local and key national issues that would otherwise get swept up in the three-party consensus of what is acceptable to say to the electorate.

Under AV, the emphasis will inevitably shift from politicians appealing directly to the public for their outright political support and towards candidates cosying up to each other, striking deals, saying ‘get your people to give me their second-preference votes, and I’ll get mine to give them yours…’ AV has a built-in tendency towards oligarchical relationship-building over direct, passionate, people-oriented electioneering.

So let me get this straight. Electioneering will move AWAY from appealing directly to the public by politicians trying to strike deals on preference transfers and encouraging, DIRECTLY, the public to follow their wishes. Excuse me if I think this is a logical failure on behalf of the writer.

Clearly, if the parties are trying to organise preference swaps they need to also convince the electorate of this. And with this, at the end of the day, it's still the public who decide who they want to put in each preference...they have the final say. Sorry, but this idea of politicians not having to concentrate very much on the electorate, when the percentage of swing voters changes from 5% to 25%, is rubbish.

Finally, AV would transform the traditional act of counting votes into a political form of tea-leaf-reading.

Nothing like a nice bit of hyperbole in the morning.

The people’s will would become something that is not so much clearly expressed in the election itself, in the act of voting, but rather something that is worked out after the election by officials and experts.

No, it is worked out by the mathematical construct clearly defined and re-creatable by anyone that has access to the data. The process of counting is absolutely no different to counting for FPTP, except that "mini-ballots" are taken after each round of counting to redistribute the votes for the least popular candidate.

Indeed AV is simply a round by round series of FPTP elections, where if there is no clear winner the weakest candidate is eliminated, leaving the popular candidates in, and re-testing who the most popular is. Read more on why AV is a simple and fair system here.

Politics would become less open, less forged in the public realm, and more an act of elite deciphering of what ‘the people’ seemingly prefer rather than want. We could easily end up with representatives that no one truly, passionately, wants.

Absolute bollocks.

If there are four candidates... Bob, Wendy, Jim and Carol, and under FPTP we find that Bob is the winner and Carol is the absolute loser...this to Spiked would be an "impassioned expression" for Bob. Yet we don't know that those that voted for Carol wouldn't have voted for someone else if Carol wasn't there. AV pretends Carol wasn't there, and the second round is another FPTP election between Bob, Wendy and Jim. Now, with Carol gone and people having to think about who they'd vote for without her there, Wendy wins.

If this were a FPTP result it would be "impassioned", it wouldn't be "closed" or "less forged in the public realm". These kind of descriptions are scare tactics to try and distract from the simple fact that AV, in terms of how it's working out who the winner is, is not more than a stones throw from FPTP. It's process is one that always picks the MP people truly and passionately want more than the main competition on the table, when compared head to head...it picks the most popular MP out of the most popular MPs.

And even if we did end up with an MP that no-one did passionately want, is this a worse situation than an MP that most people passionately dislike?

---

I'm glad someone wrote up their thoughts on this from a pro-PR but "voting No" perspective...it's just a shame that so much of the argument is clearly subjective hyperbole that also applies to FPTP, with subjective opinion that isn't based on real life examples like the London mayoral election of 2000, and while seemingly wishing to ignore that it is always more representative, and locally fairer, for an MP to be mostly liked in their constituency than mostly hated.

Combined with a narrow view on what reform is necessary and sustainable, the whole article reads like a stance against any reform that isn't PR for the House of Commons...and as I said at the top of this article, that's simply childish.

Tactical voting under AV, where it'll work and where it won't

2011-03-02T11:50:00.005Z

Tacitcal voting is lessened significantly under AV. Whereas FPTP is a system that means 25%+ of the electorate (those who voted for 3rd placed candidates or lower, plus those already voting tactically) are encouraged to vote not for who they want, but for who they think will keep their main opponent out. FPTP is, at it's very first point, a negative voting system.

However while AV solves this by allowing people complete freedom to vote honestly from the get go, there may be constituencies where it is in people's interest to still vote tactically. The reason for this is that in such constituencies there is a hidden mostly preferred candidate, a true "least unpopular" that more people might be able to get behind than the more honest "most popular" that AV can result in if everyone votes honestly.

But this type of tactical voting doesn't work everywhere, and it doesn't work in all situations. The kind of organisation required means that some constituencies are extremely unlikely to be able to organise it, and that's if the results lie in such a way that the party looking to "benefit" is likely to even pick up the preferences it needs to win. More importantly it is a way of voting that always gives a result that returns an MP with a mandate of approval.

Take Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine...

LD - 17,362 - 38.42%
C - 13,678 - 30.26%
SNP - 7,086 - 15.68%
Lab - 6,159 - 13.63%
BNP - 513 - 1.14%
UKIP - 397 - 0.88%

Assuming this is an honest FPTP result (as opposed to tactical where LDs have got SNP and Lab support to help beat the Conservatives), how would this translate under AV? Lab tend to split to Lib Dems (and maybe SNP) or not re-voting, as would the SNP, as such the Tories don't have much chance of winning here, and the Lib Dems have an almost guaranteed victory next time around with AV.

At no point can the Tories game the system to promote themselves to a win...what they can do though is help another party to win.

Around half of their voters would need to vote SNP (or Labour, for the lulz), moving them to second place, which would allow the remaining half of conservative voters to place their second preferences for the SNP and promote them to a victory.

Obviously the co-ordinated effort required for this is huge, some 7k voters need to be convinced to not vote for the party they want to win, with the explicit knowledge it means that they cannot get a Tory win by doing so. Then the remaining voters, at least 80-90% of them, need to give second preferences to the same party to help beat the Lib Dems.

This begs the question...would the appetite be there for it to occur? Probably not. The fact remains that a party that would honestly get second place in AV cannot use tactical voting to gain a win, but they can change the party that does win...in doing so the party that wins changes from one (LDs) with a majority share to one with a different majority share (SNP, in this example). In both cases the party that wins has a mandate of sorts, the electorate as a whole hasn't lost out.

How about another constituency, one more finely balanced perhaps? Bristol North West...

C - 19,115 - 37.97%
LD - 15,841 - 31%
Lab - 13,059 - 25.94%
UKIP - 1,175 - 2.33%
Eng Dem - 635 - 1.26%
Green - 511 - 1.02%

Here we have a situation where the Tories would probably lose under AV to the Lib Dems, who would pick up Labour votes. Can the Tories game a win here?

In theory the Tories would need to convince about 3000 of their 1st preference supporters to vote Labour. In doing so they create a situation where it is Lib Dem second preferences that matter, not Labour. We know from studies that Lib Dems split fairly evenly between both Labour and Tories, so the Tories would likely pick up the win by doing this.

Unfair? Not exactly, in this constituency obviously lives the dichotomy of Lib Dems and Tories being supported individually by over half the electorate, while Labour are not. Both Lib Dem and Tory wins are good democratic results, though the type of MP received changes from honestly most popular to least unpopular.

But even this is able to be countered. Labour could see this coming and decide they don't want a Tory win, and could put more of their votes on the table to the Lib Dems, further pushing themselves back in to third and once again elevating the Lib Dems to the win. This situation, whereby tactical voting can be cancelled out, makes it extremely dangerous for parties to engage in it. If the Tories engage in tactical voting and so do Labour then not only do the Tories lose, but they appear to not be wanted in the constituency, hampering future funding and perhaps where the Lib Dem MP takes their policy direction from. If Labour engages in it but Tories don't then they can suffer the same situation of appearing weaker than they are.

This kind of counter-tactic doesn't work with FPTP, Labour can vote tactically for the Lib Dems to help them win, but the Tories can't counter it, their only way to win is to gain more votes from someone else. In this sense at least AV provides the opportunity to strategically "block" tactical voting.

There are also constituencies that would benefit from AV without any realistic possibility of tactical voting taking place. Take Stockton South where there are only about 300 votes in it.

C - 19,577 - 38.93%
Lab - 19,245 - 38.27%
LD - 7,600 - 15%
BNP - 1,553 - 3.09%
UKIP - 1,471 - 2.93%
Ind - 536 - 1.07%
Ch P - 302 - 0.6%

For tactical voting to take place, in order to prevent Labour moving in to first on transfers, the conservatives would have to abandon a full 12000 votes, around 60% of it's first preferences...and in doing so moving itself in to distant third position and being utterly unable to win. In these constituencies, if the mood really is for a Liberal-Left MP, then the Tories are simply not going to win (nor should they), while under FPTP vote splitting allows them to do so against the wider wishes of the constituency.

What it comes down to is this...

There are a lot of if's, a lot of buts, and ultimately no guarantees for your tactical voting to make the difference you intend under AV, if it makes a difference at all.

Yes 2 AV and privacy/mailing lists.

2011-03-01T10:58:00.002Z

Some people are getting, with fair reason, concerned about their data privacy with the Yes campaign's mailing list. For the second time now we have received emails from the Labour Yes campaign, affiliated obviously with the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign but not necessarily an organisation we have signed up to receive information from.

Or have we?

Take a look at their privacy policy on the Yes to Fairer Votes website...

4. Marketing

If you have consented to receive marketing, we will use your information to send you marketing communications relating to Yes in May 2011 and carefully selected third party supporters, which we think may be of interest to you. We will only send marketing information by email or other electronic means where you have specifically agreed that we may do so.

You have a right to request that we stop contacting you for marketing purposes at any time. If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, you can unsubscribe from Yes in May 2011at http://yestofairervotes.org/unsubscribe or by emailing ‪privacy@yestofairervotes.org

What is happening here is that Labour Yes are a third party supporter. What is not happening is your emails being given to Labour Yes. Labour Yes are providing an email to the Yes to Fairer Votes team to be distributed through the Yes to Fairer Votes marketing mailing list, as we've signed up to, ensuring that data protection is paramount.

Your email is never transferred to others, instead their email content is transferred to those you've given permission to use your email address for marketing purposes. Just because the "from" address says that it's from Labour Yes doesn't mean that individual has seen all of your email addresses. Nor does it mean they can email you for anything other than related purposes to the central Yes campaign.

It is irksome, of course, I'm not a Labour supporter and I dislike receiving Labour based messaging. Much more intelligent would be for Yes to Fairer Votes to have asked us what our party preference was when we signed up for marketing and to segment who gets sent emails. Even more "standard" would be for us to be able to opt in to the third party elements of marketing, such as the Labour Yes emails.

However the privacy policy is there, there are no data protection problems with it as it stands as your email is not provided to external bodies. And...relax.

Packed full of deceit, the next stage of the No campaign!

2011-02-28T15:25:00.002Z

So after No2AV's calamity of an advertising campaign where they focused on trying to insult our intelligence, that a change to AV would kill babies and kill troops, a campaign that has been found to be less than honest by Channel 4's factcheck, and not based on reality according to the Treasury...now they move back on to more comfortable ground for them.

More comfortable, but no more honest of course. It's back to "bash Nick Clegg and hope we can make capital off of it!" time!

"Say no to President Clegg" they say, again insulting our intelligence. Their text on their main poster on their own website says the following...and boy is it packed full of deceit:

"Under the Alternative Voting system Nick Clegg would have the power to choose the government."

1) Under the FPTP system, Nick Clegg would have the power to choose government too, if all you're talking about here is coalitions...since coalitions are no more likely under AV than FPTP, and an independent report states that we may well have coalition's under FPTP for some years to come...

2) Even if the problem here is coalitions it is not Nick Clegg who has the power, it is the Liberal Democrat party...as elected into their position by the voters wishes around the country, who have to ratify the decision to join with a certain party or not to form coalition. One man, like Clegg, does not have the final say.

3) If a party like Labour or the Tories don't want to go in to coalition with the Lib Dems, they don't have to. The Tories had every opportunity to be a minority government with an agreement from the Lib Dems to pass their budgets.

"NOT you."

Except YOU have elected a hung parliament, collectively...you have decided that you can't work out exactly who you want to govern. You have chosen your parties, and under AV we would have a good idea about what kind of policies you like through your first AND second preferences. This would much better inform the smaller parties like the Lib Dems so that they only ever supported parties to make government that reflected the larger wishes of the country.

And, of course, this is something that is just as likely to happen under FPTP, if not more than it would with AV.

"Say NO to spending £250million on AV."

And yet unperturbed by being proven wrong on this issue, including the fact that by their own figures at least £80million of that figure will be spent whether you say no or not, they continue to peddle this lie over cost. But then is this a surprise from a group of people and their supporters who put the length of time it takes to count an election, and the relatively tiny cost of administering an election, above voters getting who they really want as their MP?

And the winner is...

2011-02-28T10:14:00.005Z

Last night saw the Academy Awards gift the King's Speech with several Oscars, and a good amount of positive reputation for British talent at the whole ceremony. However it interests me that Toby Young tweeted this before the awards...

@toadmeister
Best Picture is decided by AV. Does this mean the least offensive film will win rather than the best? #No2AV #Oscars2011

See the tweet here.

The nominee's were:

The King's Speech
Winter's Bone
127 Hours
The Kids Are Alright
True Grit
Toy Story 3
The Fighter
Inception
Black Swan
The Social Network.

We know now that the winner was, indeed, the King's Speech, however does it's win mean that it can only be classed as the least offensive film, not the best as well? I don't think so...

Let's imagine how the voting went, no-one does know how it went but for illustrative purposes it doesn't really matter what the reality is in showing that the King's Speech was...to those eligible to vote...the best film.

Voting via AV, let's assume that Toy Story 3 gained the least amount of votes in the first round. What this tells us is that a) Toy Story 3 was the least impressive film to the voters, and that the remaining films are the best of the rest.

Next round, The Kids are Alright goes, again showing that it is the least impressive film of what remains, while those still in the running are the best of the rest. Next round, Winter's Bone, then 127 Days. We are left with The King's Speech, Black Swan, Inception, The Social Network, and The Fighter. By still being here it has been decided that in head-to-head run-offs they are the best films.

The next film to be the least liked is The Fighter, with those who voted for it transferring their votes upwards, and then Inception goes. We can imagine this is actually a close race for the purposes of illustration, and so we are left with The King's Speech, Black Swan and The Social Network.

These three films are, clearly, the best films that are around by the fact that the "worst" films have been eliminated round by round. This is the final round and now Black Swan is eliminated, gifting the win to the King's Speech.

The King's Speech is the best film, in the final round it had more people voting for it as the better film than those who voted for any of it's head-to-head competitors..in the illustration this was just The Social Network.

If this was a FPTP result, where only two nominee's were picked then there would be no question that The King's Speech was the best film, yet for some reason because we've arrived at it by more comprehensively understanding how films relate to each other in the voter's eyes, and by ensuring that no film loses votes simply because of vote splitting, this is an indication of the film not being the best? Crazy.

How much would AV really cost? (hint: Not £250 million)

2011-02-25T10:04:00.017Z

Before I get in to my reasoning, here are the top line results I've found. Note that all figures are as worse case as I can reasonably make them for the next election...

Extra cost to count an AV election: £1.3m nationally per election
Extra cost to educate: Potentially an extra £2m per election year at most (£8m over 4 years).
Extra cost to run this referendum: Cost of referendum is seen as the same cost as an election, so ~~£90m~~ £110m, but more realistically only 60% of that cost if run on the same day as other polls as many costs are shared. ~~£54m~~ £66m.
Extra voter education on referendum: As above, an extra £4m at most spanning two financial years. Edit: It turns out that No2AV aren't specifically talking about just voter education for this referendum, so I'll use the Electoral Commissions £9m estimate as the No side have.

This works out at a total yearly cost, over the course of 4 years until the next election is complete, would be ~~£16.8m~~ £20.75m, or ~~£67.3m~~ £83m over the 4 years. Of this cost ~~£58m~~ £72m (dependent on voter awareness) will be spent no matter what happens with the referendum result. This cost is also assuming that voter education is maxed out every year to educate about AV, something that may not be realistic.

A long cry from "£250m unless you vote no"!

Not that any of this really matters, the cost implication, when such small amounts of money (in the national sense), being discussed with relation to increasing democratic integrity of our voting system is a perverse discussion to have anyway. But referendum aside, are we really going to get angry over an absolute maximum of about 4p per year per person to have a more inclusive, honest, transparent and ultimately fairer system for the individual voter?

But anyway, how to work this out? You can do it for yourself if you like...

First of all, the referendum. This is a cost that will be incurred regardless of the result. You can argue all you like about how much the cost is too much, but it is going to happen. The question is whether you engage with it or not, if you do then voting No will not make the referendum itself cheaper.

The cost of the referendum has been estimated in the House of Commons at £82m. This, I feel, is an under estimate of the total cost of a stand-alone referendum. The Ministry for Justice (who pay out for election costs) paid around £90m for the last european elections^[1]. The count was more complicated, but turnout was lower, than FPTP. I'd prefer to use this value as it won't under-value the cost.

However this referendum won' be stand-alone, it will be held along side our local elections (and others in Scotland). When assessing this in 1999 the presumption was that a referendum would cost £50m if standalone, but that only £30m would be extra cost above another poll^[2]. As such I think it is only reasonable to assume similarly that the referendum's true cost is more likely to be £54m, 60% of the stand-alone cost. This is because costs such as security, building hire, postage, overseers and more can be shared across the multiple elections, while time taken to count and cost of printing materials cannot.

EDIT: New information from parliament shows that the estimate for the cost of the 2010 election stands at around £110m, up from the cost of the 2005 election. With a few more seats, a greater turnout, and inflation this all seems to be about right. As such the cost is likely to be up from the £54m I state above, to £66m

Referendum cost difference to No 2 AV estimate: ~~-£28m~~ -£16m

Then there is the need for some voter education on the referendum. No2AV have this at £9m, though I am unsure of where they are getting this figure from. The reason I say this is that it is the Electoral Commission who have the responsibility for raising voter awareness as an arm of the state. Other organisations and groups can no doubt do what they wish as well, and do, but in terms of public funding the Electoral Commission is the only body that receives our money to educate people about elections and registering to vote.

It's important to know that the Electoral Commission is bound by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000^[3], where under Section 13(1) it is made clear their responsibility is to raise awareness for voting systems in the UK.

(1)The Commission shall promote public awareness of—

(a)current electoral systems in the United Kingdom and any pending such systems, together with such matters connected with any such existing or pending systems as the Commission may determine;

(b)current systems of local government and national government in the United Kingdom and any pending such systems; and

(c)the institutions of the European Union.

More specifically...

(4)The Commission shall perform their functions under subsection (1) in such manner as they think fit but may, in particular, do so by—

(a)carrying out programmes of education or information to promote public awareness of any of the matters mentioned in subsection (1); or

(b)making grants to other persons or bodies for the purpose of enabling them to carry out such programmes.

This is all well and good, but it is regulated in how much it can spend each financial year on these purposes by a statutory instrument, The Electoral Commission (Limit on Public Awareness Expenditure) Order 2002^[4]. This puts a block of £7.5m per year on spending for awareness, which includes voter education. For them to spend £9m they would have to be spending some money from this current financial year and a significant amount of the next financial year's allowance too.

The money for voter awareness clearly spans in to many areas, such as registering to vote, how the voting systems work, etc. As such it is also money required for general use in other elections too, such as our local elections and the General Election just past. I feel I'm being very liberal in my allocation of money to the AV referendum by saying that £5.5m of the yearly allowance is certain to be already spent on the last set of General and Local elections, which only leaves £2m left to actually use this year. That's if it gets used of course, and next year the likelihood is that another £5.5m will be certainly used on voter awareness even if the AV referendum wasn't taking place.

Take a look at the Electoral Commission's reports for yourself, in 2009-2010^[5] they only spent this £5.5m, while in other years (such as the General Election year in 2005^[6], and a year with only local elections in 2006^[7]) they spent more than this. It is unfeasible that, even taking in to account the two years as a source of funding that they could use, more than £4m could be spent on education for the AV referendum.

EDIT: It turns out that the No camp aren't talking purely about voter awareness when they talk about this figure, but the wider costs of the Electoral Commission running the referendum. It is debatable as to whether this cost is included in the costs that are given in Parliament for each election, however for the sake of continuing a worse case scenario I'm assuming it is not. £9m is what the Electoral Commission say it'll cost them in this referendum, so that's what we'll go with.

Referendum education cost difference to No 2 AV estimate: ~~-£5m~~ £0m

That brings us now on to the cost of the actual voting system and it's use every 5 years.

First up, we can discount No 2 Av's £130m estimate of costs for voting machines straight away. They aren't necessary (and I'll hopefully show you why they're not necessary in my workings next, it's pretty damn obvious why they're surplus to requirements), they aren't used in places like Australia that have counted their results by hand for almost a century. There is no proof even that it is likely that electronic voting machines will be used, as Channel 4's Fact Check^[8] revealed today.

But how about the extra time and money to count by hand?

In Bristol there were 929 staff in 2010, therefore likely around 150 counting staff for Bristol North West^[9], of which about half would be doing the real counting (my old constituency, and a three way marginal in all but name before the election) as one of four constituencies in the city. The average rate to count for staff involved is 150 ballots per hour with 50336 ballots to count for the General Election; they should therefore complete the total count for the general election alone in around 4 hours (though administration may mean this is less efficient, and rechecks or close counts may also increase times).

Further facts: Bristol North West had 36 polling stations, an electorate of around 73500 people, a turnout of 50336, and I'm assuming 6750 postal votes were cast (out of a therefore assumed 9000 total registered based on Ministry of Justice basis for cost calculations) based on an equal share of 27000^[10] in all of Bristol.

The cost of administering Bristol North West would have been estimated using Justice Ministry figures^[11] at around £97.5k + the returning officer's fee (around £2500).

In Bristol North West about 30% of the ballots might have had to be recounted (a high figure given the three way marginal nature of the seat, and certainly not as likely in most other constituencies where recounts would be needed), or no more than 130 hours worth of counting staff's time (19500 votes cumulatively, recounted at 150 per hour). This is a maximum because counting techniques that bunch people's next preference together can reduce the time needed to count by "block" counting a shift in votes, and the additional time assumes that people vote in such a way that the maximum number of redistributions need to take place.

But even with a worse case scenario here that is at most (assuming some counting staff aren't used, or my counting staff estimate is too high) an extra cost of less than £2200, or 2.2% extra cost incurred of the whole of constituency cost of election (19.96% of the FPTP counting cost).

This would be replicated across all but a third of the constituencies (most likely, due to those MPs already sitting on 50% wins), to bring that percentage increase down to about 1.2% across all constituencies for the general election.

Therefore, if an election costs around £90mil due to administration and postage costs, then introducing AV will cost about an extra £1.3m depending on the level of involvement of London constituencies. As far as time goes it would appear that the transfer of votes could be calculated to take no more than three hours extra, so a far cry from the "days" some wish to claim, and within the timeframe that long FPTP counts would be completed by.

Vote counting cost difference to No 2 AV estimate: -£128.7m

Next, the cost of voter education. As above the same rules apply to the Electoral Commission on education for elections. £7.5m max. The idea that the country could spend £26m extra on voter education is impossible under current law, as it would be a cost of £5.2m per year to achieve that, and we already know that the maximum that can be improved on is £2m a year! At worst the cost of education for voters (which if it occurs, would clearly be necessary to ensure people feel informed about their elections!) would be £8m.

Of course realistically we're more likely looking at only £1m-2m in one year, but I'm trying to paint a worse case scenario here, within reason and current law.

Voting education cost difference to No 2 AV estimate: -£18m

So in total the amount that No 2 AV seem to have over-estimated their possibilities is to the tune of £180m (£190m due to their habit of rounding up).

It'd be nice if the No camp could provide equally thought out costings to prove their side (though it seems evident that it would be impossible), but even where I have asked those like Charlotte Vere and other prominent supporters and campaigners for the No camp they have declined to answer my requests.

-----

Notes:

[1] Returning officers expenses accounts for 2009-10: http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/hc1011/hc05/0550/0550.pdf
(2009's european elections, more up to date than the estimates based on 2005 election)

[2] Referendum held on same day as other election is cheaper: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/publications/unit-publications/34.pdf

[3] The law for electoral commission: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/41/section/13

[4] Statutory instrument capping spending at £7.5m : http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/505/article/2/made

[5] Electoral commission annual report 2009-2010: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/100722/Resource-Accounts-2009-10.pdf

[6] Electoral commission annual report 2005-2006: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/78182/annulaccounts0506.pdf

[7] Electoral commission annual report 2006-2007: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/56269/Annual-Accounts-Final-Web-Optimised.pdf

[8] Factcheck The AV campaign gets dirty: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-the-av-campaign-gets-dirty/5789

[9] Bristol north west: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_North_West_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

[10] Postal votes numbers for Bristol: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/committee/2010/wa/wa041/0727_6.pdf

[11] Cost of running an election in a constituency: http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/docs/ro-expense-guidance1.pdf

Conflict of interest for the Electoral Reform Society?

2011-02-24T14:46:00.003Z

It has come to light that the main funder of the "Yes" campaign, the Electoral Reform Society, is also the main stakeholder in a company, the Electoral Reform Services Limited (ERSL).

The Spectator, a heavily Tory friendly magazine that has featured articles from the head of the No2AV campaign Matthew Elliott, claims that this is proof of a conflict of interest. I have to disagree.

Take a look at this quote, perfectly formed from Wikipedia: "A conflict of interest can only exist if a person or testimony is entrusted with some impartiality;"

So for a start it is pretty much impossible for the ERS to be in conflict of interest here. They're political, and they're wanting reform. There is no impartiality assumed upon their being (especially as members are actually key parts of the Yes campaign), and no impartiality is required to be a donor of the Yes campaign.

But even ignoring this I believe there are three different ways it can be described that it is not a conflict of interest for the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) to be donating to the Yes campaign any more than it is for the Tories (who today donated £500k to the No campaign) to donate to the No campaign.

1) The ERS is not the ERSL.

Sure, the ERS is a stakeholder (the main one in fact) in ERSL, perhaps even controlling in that fact...who knows how the inner machinations work? But it is the political body, the ERS, that is funding the campaign for a Yes vote. The ERS derives dividends from it's stakeholder position whether it supports the Yes campaign or not, what it does with that money to support it's own stated aims is up to the ERS.

Given the ERS is a political organisation rather than a business there is no benefit that they can gain other than to further their own aims. To claim this is a conflict of interest is to accept that ANYONE donating to EITHER campaign is a conflict of interest, as they ultimately want their respective side to win.

It might be a slightly different picture (but still not a conflict of interest) if it was the ERSL that was directly using it's own profits to fund the Yes campaign.

2) There is no immediate benefit to ERSL by the referendum taking place

There is no proof that additional services would be required by the ERSL. There is a claim that the referendum for AV will be administered by ERSL, however I am unable to find any proof of that (I welcome any confirmation either way), but even this involvement is not a conflict of interest. The fact that the ERSL could be administering the referendum doesn't mean that it benefits by ERS contributing to the Yes campaign.

A separate body, I would imagine the Electoral Commission, will be responsible for awarding contracts through their own process, so donations to the Yes campaign are not going to increase their chances of being picked by this separate independent body.

3) There is no guarantee of future benefit to ERSL conferred by the change to an AV voting system

There are two things that the ERSL cannot guarantee. 1) It cannot guarantee that it will be used for general elections in the future, the Electoral Commission no doubt decides this. My understanding is that it currently does not provide services for General Elections (corrections are welcome). 2) It cannot guarantee that if AV were to take place that it would generate a greater profit in the chance that it would be chosen to administer the General Election than if it were still under FPTP.

Essentially, for the ERSL to be in conflict of interest here it would have to be providing funding in such a way that it could improve it's chances of increased commercial use. Given that in the first case their chance remains the same for gaining any contracts regardless of whether their dividend money is going to the Yes campaign or not, and that the second chance is a decision that would need to be made by the same independent body without ERSL involvement on using different and more expensive administration methods, there is no reasonable claim to be made here that the ERSL are in a conflict of interest situation.

---

If we are to get ourselves in to a mock frenzy over this issue then we would have to severely look at all funding models for political campaigns in the future. Is it appropriate that the Tories, who will perhaps see that their chances of a not-to-distant majority in the House of Commons relies on the retention of the First Past the Post system should donate to the No campaign to help them secure that? Should individual donors be able to contribute to either side when they stand to be rewarded, based on their local area, with a result that is more likely to be in their favour?

It is not a conflict of interest for people to fund campaigns in to what they believe in, and it's certainly not a conflict of interest for money to be used that has been derived from an organisation in the same "field" or forum whereby decisions are being made. And even if it were the ERSL funding rather than the ERS (if we perhaps combine them as a single unit), the ERSL cannot guarantee by any of it's actions that by increasing the chances of a Yes victory through it's funding that it will benefit in any way from that choice.

A storm in a teacup, and so if you're reading this congratulations as I'm not going to be giving this link out, as I don't wish to give extra fuel to the flames of such a ridiculous argument.

Those advantages of AV, again.

2011-02-24T13:02:00.002Z

With the referendum we are being offered an improvement over the current system on 5 levels, by moving to AV from FPTP. 5 key areas where AV is fairer than FPTP if you will...

1) Inclusiveness

In 2010 25% of people voted in such a way that their votes meant less to the over-all result. They are everyone that voted for a 3rd or worse placed candidate in their constituency. By voting that way they made a choice that made so little difference that they might as well have stayed home. It wouldn't have changed the winner, it wouldn't have changed the majority the winner had. Yet if they *had* voted tacitically (essentially making an AV result, without the rounds of AV) their vote would have made a difference, either increasing or decreasing the winner's majority to a more accurate show of like/dislike on policy areas, or could have changed the winner completely.

AV stops this unequal practice of people's votes being worth less than others (unless the voter chooses to make it so), by removing the last placed candidate and simulating another FPTP election as if that candidate hadn't stood, etc, etc until a winner is found.

2) Transparency

Along with the above comes transparency. We're ultimately diverse beings with diverse opinions. I personally appreciate Labour's approach to funding of public services, but I dislike their authoritarian streak. A Labour government tempered with a liberal edge would be my perfect party or coalition of government. But I can currently only vote for Labour or vote for Lib Dem. If I make the wrong choice, along with many other people in the constituency splitting their "left wing liberal" vote, then a Tory could win despite the opinions of people not fitting that bill.

AV enables us to say what we really feel, it's not tactical it's just honest. And furthermore it gives us and the parties much more information about the type of policies the constituency really wants, and better informs governance as a result.

3) Honesty

And this transparency can only be achieved because AV enables a much greater level of honesty. Sure, there are situations where tactical voting can exist, though it is much less rational or possible under AV than it is under FPTP. The vast majority of seats will see people simply being able to state their true preferences, to say who they really want.

Currently people might be forced (or feel forced) to vote negatively under FPTP, not through an honest wish for that candidate to win, but to stop someone else. AV ensures that your first vote need NEVER be a tactical one, and always an honest choice on who you want to represent you.

4) Representativeness

And as such AV is clearly more representative. By running elections in such a way that we ask the question "What if the election under FPTP had been run only with the most popular candidates?" As such we whittle the list down, keeping the most popular candidates in, and eventually selecting the most popular of them.

Now representativeness can be measured in other ways, you can also claim there may be a more representative result available than under AV, but the fact remains that the result under AV will be a more knowingly representative one than under FPTP...even if the same candidate wins that would have under FPTP, we know exactly how much more they're supported by people than first appeared, or how much less.

5) Choice

All of the above are available as improvements because the choice for voters is moved to being an active and free participant to whatever level they wish. If they want to still put a single "X" down under AV, they can. If they want to preference everyone, they can. FPTP drains this up front choice from voters, making them decide between honesty and tactics, only informing them of how "equal" their participation is after the result, not guaranteeing it from the beginning to whatever level they wish it to be the case.

There are, of course, weaknesses of AV too...but they're not disadvantages compared to FPTP. It isn't proportional (neither is FPTP), it could lead to coalitions (so could FPTP, as in 2010), it could lead to unfair majorities (as could FPTP). It also doesn't necessarily mean MPs get over 50% of the vote as some claim, though the amount of the vote the MP does get is almost certain to be more than they would get under FPTP.

Other supposed weaknesses such as the time AV takes to count have been debunked, the cost implication is minimal (and such small prices should never come in the way of voter's having a fairer voice), and there is no reasonable way to claim that AV counts some people's opinion more than others. It's also not going to return Lib Dems to power forever more, not unless FPTP was going to do it anyway, in which case it would be the democratic will of the people.

If you're honestly believing that FPTP is better than I'm afraid I don't believe you. I think that either you have some underlying vested interest you think that FPTP will protect, such as an MP without a mandate, or you have failed to understand the realities of AV as a system and the inherent weaknesses in FPTP that can lead to the same results that you fear from AV. I cannot accept the plethora of excuses such as "AV encourages negative voting" when we exist under a system that already perpetrates all of these problems only more so.

If you are holding out for PR, however, then I think you're being irrational by voting No...the reasons above show why AV is demonstrably a fairer system on the voter than FPTP but you would choose to stick with the less fair system with NO guarantee we'll ever get PR. You are also unlikely to be viewing the bigger picture of wider constitutional reform.

PR for the House of Commons would be great...but it's not the only positive end game. If the House of Lords reform that should take place in the next few years (or get started) was to do so with PR in mind, then we would have two chambers to discuss the laws of this land...one that is based on local representation, and one that is based on national political opinion...balancing each other's weaknesses out. It's somewhat short sighted to believe that if we are not getting PR for the House of Commons now, that a representative way of having our views on law won't be possible in the very near future.

I wish that there could be more honesty in this debate, on a referendum where it is clear that people's partisan fears about which party it might help most, and ideology to pursue only the "best" system in their eyes, is overcoming rational and reasoned thought. I only hope that come May 5th we will have more people turning out that are able to see through such selfish and illogical views and towards a more objective one.

Childishness

2011-02-24T09:24:00.003Z

Given people around me start to start families, I'm starting to see a key similarity between those that are saying they're voting "No" in the AV referendum because they want PR, and 2-3 year olds.

No doubt if you know of someone with a young child, or maybe if you've watched any of those "I need parenting help" TV programs, you'll have knowledge of the same mind-numbing lack of logic that is perhaps excusable in kids under the age of 5, but not so much for adults of voting age.

"Would you like some ice cream?"
"NO. I want chocolate cake"
"Well...we don't have chocolate cake, how about we get some chocolate cake another time?"
"I want it now"
"So you don't want ice cream?"
"NO"
"Fine..."

It's not a specific example I've seen, but in the vein of many of the examples you'll find out there. And it is, without pulling any punches, childish and narrow-minded.

With the referendum we are being offered an improvement over the current system on 5 levels.

1) Inclusiveness

In 2010 25% of people voted in such a way that their votes meant less to the over-all result. They are everyone that voted for a 3rd or worse placed candidate in their constituency. By voting that way they made a choice that made so little difference that they might as well have stayed home. It wouldn't have changed the winner, it wouldn't have changed the majority the winner had. Yet if they *had* voted tacitically (essentially making an AV result, without the rounds of AV) their vote would have made a difference, either increasing or decreasing the winner's majority to a more accurate show of like/dislike on policy areas, or could have changed the winner completely.

AV stops this unequal practice of people's votes being worth less than others (unless the voter chooses to make it so), by removing the last placed candidate and simulating another FPTP election as if that candidate hadn't stood, etc, etc until a winner is found.

2) Transparency

Along with the above comes transparency. We're ultimately diverse beings with diverse opinions. I personally appreciate Labour's approach to funding of public services, but I dislike their authoritarian streak. A Labour government tempered with a liberal edge would be my perfect party or coalition of government. But I can currently only vote for Labour or vote for Lib Dem. If I make the wrong choice, along with many other people in the constituency splitting their "left wing liberal" vote, then a Tory could win despite the opinions of people not fitting that bill.

AV enables us to say what we really feel, it's not tactical it's just honest. And furthermore it gives us and the parties much more information about the type of policies the constituency really wants, and better informs governance as a result.

3) Honesty

And this transparency can only be achieved because AV enables a much greater level of honesty. Sure, there are situations where tactical voting can exist, though it is much less rational or possible under AV than it is under FPTP. The vast majority of seats will see people simply being able to state their true preferences, to say who they really want.

Currently people might be forced (or feel forced) to vote negatively under FPTP, not through an honest wish for that candidate to win, but to stop someone else. AV ensures that your first vote need NEVER be a tactical one, and always an honest choice on who you want to represent you.

4) Representativeness

And as such AV is clearly more representative. By running elections in such a way that we ask the question "What if the election under FPTP had been run only with the most popular candidates?" As such we whittle the list down, keeping the most popular candidates in, and eventually selecting the most popular of them.

Now representativeness can be measured in other ways, you can also claim there may be a more representative result available than under AV, but the fact remains that the result under AV will be a more knowingly representative one than under FPTP...even if the same candidate wins that would have under FPTP, we know exactly how much more they're supported by people than first appeared, or how much less.

5) Choice

All of the above are available as improvements because the choice for voters is moved to being an active and free participant to whatever level they wish. If they want to still put a single "X" down under AV, they can. If they want to preference everyone, they can. FPTP drains this up front choice from voters, making them decide between honesty and tactics, only informing them of how "equal" their participation is after the result, not guaranteeing it from the beginning to whatever level they wish it to be the case.

These above are not opinions, the are logical facts. If you wish to ignore them then that's your choice, but you are acting the same as that immature and illogical child. The only difference is you don't have the excuse to not know better.

The problem with FPTP

2011-02-21T12:09:00.002Z

It's all well and good focusing on all the good things AV has to offer, representative local politics, constituency link, more equality of people's voices...but this is also about why we should move from the current system.

FPTP has three main flaws that AV does not share (we all accept AV has flaws, though in general it's flaws are less severe versions than under FPTP.

1) FPTP discourages diversity/encourages unknown results

FPTP works great when only two people are standing. Add more voices in and it gets a whole lot harder to work out as fair. The more candidates that stand under FPTP with some kind of support, the more chaotic the election gets. As votes split further and further the actual number of votes needed to win the seat plummet. It's dangerous in one direction, those that gamble and get the support can easily end up getting elected on only a quarter of the vote if there are enough candidates with support standing.

But also, it means that if you are concerned as a candidate about splitting the vote you may not want to stand. Look at what happened in Oldham and East Saddleworth. Now granted the Tories ran a candidate to placate the local party, but they wished actually to not run at all to give the Lib Dems a better chance. They KNEW that under FPTP fielding a candidate would actually hamper the chances of beating their enemy.

When you have a system that says a winner can be crowned because of how low the threshold is taken, or because two parties are too similar and will gift a common enemy of the two a win, then it is time to move to a system that doesn't make such fatal democratic mistakes.

2) FPTP means unequal votes

Around 25% of the electorate in 2010 voted for a candidate that came 3rd or lower. They might as well have stayed home, it would have made no difference to the final 1st and 2nd place results. However, if they hadn't have "stayed home" and instead voted for the 2nd or 1st place candidate then suddenly their voice would have been more influential.

Under FPTP if you vote for a candidate that placed lower than 2nd then your voice was less instrumental in the result than those that voted 1st or 2nd. If, under AV, we whittle out all the unpopular candidates and end up with a final two, the only equal way to deal with people's opinion is to give them all an opportunity to decide which of those already popular final two are their favourite...equal voices and equal votes.

When your voting system is saying that if you are knowingly voting for someone that is not likely going to be in the top two that you better change your vote, or stay at home, something is wrong.

3) FPTP favours large unified minorities over more "picky" majorities.

Similar to point 1 above, FPTP has the effect of meaning constituencies with a strong but minority voice are more likely to win than those voices that generally agree with each other but find different vehicles of representation. Whether it is Labour and the Left Wing of Lib Dems, or Tories and the Right wing of Lib Dems, or Tories and UKIP, etc...if these local splits happen then the winner is not the popular choice, it's not representative of local views. FPTP allows strong minorities to steal elections, something completely obliterated by the introduction of the AV system.

What is FPTP?

2011-02-20T11:25:00.003Z

FPTP is turning up at the butchers wanting steak, but being refused service because it's sold out.

FPTP is wanting to watch the Kings Speech at the cinema, but being turned away because the screening is full

FPTP is going for a curry, even though it means the majority of your group go home early

FPTP is not having a single thing you can use as a knife in the kitchen when you need to slice some things.

FPTP is not being able to find your Kings of Leon CD in the car, so having to sit in silence.

FPTP is wanting a Cobra when you get to the bar, but having to not drink anything because it is sold out.

FPTP is your long term life partner dying, but finding another love to keep you company.

FPTP is wanting to use the treadmills at the gym, but turning around and going home because you don't know when they'll become free

FPTP is your team being 1-0 down in the 90th, and your manager telling the team to give up because only a win is worth it.

FPTP is finding your favourite clubbing top hasn't been washed, not having a reasonable going out top otherwise, and so having to call your night out off

In basic terms, FPTP is having one choice, and if that choice isn't valid enough then you have to sit on the sidelines without your full opinion being heard. Isn't that pretty unfair?

A fair result

2011-02-19T22:53:00.006Z

Let's look forward to a potential election in 2015.

In your constituency the result is counted and it ends as thus..

Tories 51%
Labour 40%
Lib Dems 9%

Happy with this result? Over half have voted for the Tory candidate, and he's elected. Good stuff? Looking at it as a FPTP result, it's clear it's a fair win for the Tory MP.

If this is the case, then how does the presence of other rounds before it, should it also be the AV result, make any difference? What if the round before the final round above was...

Tories 45%
Labour 40%
Lib Dems 8%
UKIP 7%

And how about the round before this it looked like this?

Tories 39%
Labour 40%
Lib Dems 8%
UKIP 7%
Independent 6%

Are we honestly so fickle that we would accept the result at the top of the page if it were FPTP, where voters have decided to vote Tory in the absence of their own candidate, but won't accept the same result achieved through a different system?

EDIT: I'm just going to elaborate on my thinking, after a conversation with @SohoPolitico on twitter.

The reason I bring this example up is it's important to understand that preferences that people place explicitly under AV are the same preferences that they decide to use implicitly during FPTP.

Take the top result on this page between three candidates. If it were FPTP it would be accepted as a Tory win by everyone, perhaps as a clear mandate. The reality would be that the vote is made up by people that have used their own second and third preference choices as though it were a first preference because they don't want Labour to win.

The result that would take place under FPTP would not be transparent, we wouldn't know if the Tories had a real majority, or if the vote was more about not wanting Labour while *really* wanting someone else. But the one universal truth between both that result as FPTP, and AV, is the same voter in both scenario's feels strongly about voting for someone other than Labour and has every right to express that preference.

As soon as you understand that how people feel doesn't change between the two results, regardless of how the result is reached...you should also understand that comparing people's preference level to each other is irrelevant. We don't measure inter-personal preferencing under FPTP, it's implicit, but just because it's out in the open doesn't mean it's relevant to "who is more popular" either. Preferences only exist to allow the system to work.

If the system was Run-Off, where there is a re-vote between rounds, we wouldn't use preferences...we wouldn't need to. The system is functionally identical except for this fact...preferences therefore only exist to allow vote counters to carry out each round without reapplying for people's opinion.

So with preferences being irrelevant to the validity of the "popularity" of the result, it just comes down to that result. If you accept the top result on this page is a victory for the Tories then you also accept that by adding more people in to the mix the Tory hasn't got less popular in a head to head with Labour.

The only thing that has changed as you go down the "rounds" is that people are splitting their vote...that the Left leaning people in the constituency are all huddled around Labour while an increase in right wing candidates spoils the vote for the Tories.

This is why AV is a fairer system, we can see where the vote is being split, we can rectify it by ensuring that we understand who the most popular person is in a final head-to-head (or head-to-heads), with an accurate level of information as to the specific type of policies that the winner should be taking in to consideration if they are to be truly representative of their constituency.

AV... more representative of overall views
AV... more transparent for telling the core priorities of electorate
AV... Disallows the logistical act of vote splitting to enable an unpopular candidate to win.

This is why it is a no brainer to vote to change to AV this May.

What is AV?

2011-02-19T18:47:00.004Z

AV is turning up at the butchers wanting steak, finding it's sold out but still being able to buy chicken instead.

AV is wanting to watch the Kings Speech at the cinema, but still being able to see Black Swan when the screening is sold out.

AV is wanting to go for a curry, but happily getting a chinese instead because your housemates don't like spicy food.

Av is at least having spoons when what you need is a knife.

AV is not being able to find your Kings of Leon CD in the car, but having Mumford and Sons ready to play

AV is wanting a Cobra when you get to the bar, but buying a Corona when the Cobra is sold out.

Av is your long term life partner dying, but finding another love to keep you company.

Av is wanting to use the treadmills at the gym, but using the rowing machine as all the treadmills are in use.

AV is your team being 1-0 down in the 90th, and being happy when they score an equaliser just before the whistle.

Av is finding your favourite clubbing top hasn't been washed, but having a back-up for just such an occurrence.

In basic terms, AV is still being allowed to have a choice out of the remaining options available, and for your valid opinion to be heard. Isn't that a nice thing to be able to have?

AV Game theory

2011-02-19T00:38:00.003Z

One of the less provable aspects of this debate between AV or FPTP is this:

Which result will better enable people to call for further reform?

To me it's a redundant question, but let's look at some realities we do know.

1) The No campaign is mainly organised by Tories and Labour peeps that actually don't want to move away from FPTP. There are those involved that are honestly of the belief that a system that means something like 25% of the electorate could stay at home without affecting the 1-2 placings of every constituency, is better than one that gives everyone a more equal voice. There are also a certain amount of those who believe that accepting a small change will put a barrier up against bigger change.

2) The Yes campaign is mainly made up of Lib Dems and Labour peeps that see there is a democratic deficit in this country that needs resolving somehow (though, I think it's fair to say both sides tend to disagree on just how that should be solved)

3) Referendums kill other referendums. In the 70s we had a referendum on the EU (which was won as a Yes vote). Labour recently faced calls for a repeat of this referendum under different times. In the 70s a major push was made by the Tories to go in to the EU for economic reasons, in the 00s the popular rhetoric was one that we had "had enough". As such Labour basically said there would be no referendum because it hadn't been long enough since the last one. Political posturing based on knowing the result most likely wouldn't have gone their way. (I support being in the EU, for those who care).

So what does this all mean? First, if you vote no please don't pretend that you're not giving a victory to those that want to ultimately keep FPTP. If you vote yes, don't pretend that there aren't No's that don't want reform..or that you're voting for further reform. You're voting for AV, that is all.

Also, the fact this referendum is here means that another referendum will not come about without a party political wish for there to be one, regardless of the result.

But then how the whole "further referendum in the future" thing goes is anyone's guess. If the public truly make a stink about reform...protests, mass petition/engagement with politicians...then maybe it'll happen sooner as whichever party in power thinks they can gain popularity off of it. This will happen regardless of whether we vote yes or no, the power is in our hands at any time to collectively try and force this.

The only other situation is that someone like the Lib Dems does actually get the main stay of power (at least the reverse of the current coalition), with party policy that they pursue STV and as such are mandated by their members to put a referendum on the table as a party of government. Of course, I think we all understand how unlikely this is!

So given this, how should we vote? Obviously it depends how you feel, AV or FPTP being better (despite it being demonstrably evident that AV is an improved and fairer system than FPTP), but Game theory for me says this...

1) The referendum is Yes, and we get further reform referendum after = PR people have what they want
2) The referendum is Yes, and we don't get another referendum any time soon = No proportional reform, but a better system than we had for the time being
3) The referendum is No, and we get a further reform referendum after = PR people have what they want...though the fall back if they lose again is still FPTP
4 The referendum is No, and we don't get another referendum any time soon = No proportional reform, and stuck with the same unrepresentative system.

Total it up, it's clear that you're more likely to get a positive result, not only now but if everything goes wrong in a future referendum, if you vote for AV now. A future referendum is not dependant on how this referendum goes, but how much we want it regardless of the result...the question now is what do we want the default position to be should that reform not come, or should that future reform fail to get supported by the public?

50% or not 50%?

2011-02-19T00:15:00.003Z

One of the most (pathetically) controversial points of the AV argument is this claim that 50% of the vote must be attained by the winning candidate. It is entirely a pedantic point, but let's look at it.

First, how does a "vote" count currently under FPTP? For your vote to be counted it must be cast, and valid. If you spoil your ballot, your vote is not counted.

Fast forward to AV. If everyone casts enough preferences that no-one "runs out" of preferences (that is that their vote is no longer transferred to another candidate) it's very clear that the winner will have over 50% of the vote. Even where preferences run out it is likely that votes will go over that 50% mark of all votes cast, preferences counted or not.

However there are situations whereby someone may well win on 50%, but not of all votes cast. Is it valid to still say they are elected on 50% of the vote?

As I said at the top, this is pathetically pedantic when coming from either side, but yes, it is still valid to claim that.

Just as under FPTP whereby if you do not vote for one of the candidates but you submit a ballot you are spoiling your ballot, if you end up running out of preferences you too are spoiling your ballot under AV. This is, of course, an active choice on your part. You are saying "I don't endorse any of these candidates, I'm not taking part in endorsing the eventual result".

As such, with these votes becoming spoiled...again, just like under FPTP...they don't get "counted" in the same sense. Recorded, of course, they were part of the process...but for the result they do not count, therefore the winner can still attain 50% of the vote..the valid vote..same as under FPTP.

In the interest of honesty, this should also mean that it's clear that there may be scenarios in AV whereby the total number of votes that someone wins on under AV does not change compared to if the vote was held under FPTP...the difference is that we know for sure under AV that the person truly held the greatest plurality, rather than just assuming it without taking in to account everyone's opinion.

So there you go, a particularly boring part of the whole discussion, highlighting how pedantic and silly it is to get in to arguments over it. "50% of the vote" is a valid phrase, at least it is if you don't go around questioning whether or not your MP currently *really* got their 30-40% of the vote under FPTP.

"on May 5th they want their second preference to come first."

2011-02-18T14:55:00.003Z

"And, as so often happens in elections using the AV system… …on May 5th they want their second preference to come first."

Cameron's witty quip at the end of his press conference. But, does it really prove the lack of integrity of AV supporters, or why the system is a good one?

When we go to the ballot in May we only have two options, Yes or No to the question of "Should we change to AV?"

Now this is a FPTP election, we don't know anyone's preferences or reasons, we just have the options on the table. If AV wins it's because more people want AV than want our current FPTP system.

If this same type of situation happened in a constituency for the General Election, like happens every election, do we look back at those who are voting for Labour, Tories or Lib Dems and say that their vote doesn't count because we believe they'd rather support the Greens or BNP?

Of course not, because making crass assumptions about people's wishes is childish.

But what if AV really is our second preference? If the question was "Which system shall we use: FPTP, AV or STV?"

If that was held under an AV vote (for irony!) and it was clear that most Labour and Tory supporters didn't want STV, STV would be eliminated first as having only a small percentage of the votes. The question then returns to "AV or FPTP?", just like this referendum question we have now.

Second choice or not, if AV wins in May it's because it's preferred to FPTP, and thus more popular than FPTP is. That kind of result is the fairest of all. And it's that kind of fair result a "Yes" win in May will ensure up and down the country at the next General Election.

Candidate lists

2011-02-16T13:17:00.003Z

At the last election there was a constituency (hypothetical) that had the following candidates running, with the following number of votes...

Jeff - 18,000 votes
Billy - 17,000 votes
Ashley -4,000 votes
Jane - 800 votes
Kerry - 200 votes
Tom - 100 votes

Under FPTP Jeff wins. Fair? It must be, if you support FPTP.

Next election the same candidates run again. Every voter votes the same way...except Ashley has pulled out. Instead Ashley's voters decide how they'll vote in Ashley's absence. 2000 decide they won't bother voting at all, 1,600 decide they'll vote for Billy, and 400 decide they'll vote for Jeff.

New vote shares for the next election are...

Jeff - 18,400 votes
Billy - 18,600 votes
Jane - 800 votes
Kerry - 200 votes
Tom - 100 votes

Another FPTP election, but this time Billy wins. Fair? It must be if you support FPTP.

Yet this situation is exactly what AV deals with, except it does it within the same election. Before claiming that it's "unfair" that someone's 2nd or further preference counts as much as your 1st, think about the above scenario. Would you complain about your election being won by someone because another candidate wasn't present? Would you think that Billy's votes aren't as worthy as Jeffs?

Of course not, you'd not bat an eyelid at the situation, and you'd congratulate the winner. Yet this is what AV does to ensure that the most popular of the most popular win each seat.

Edit: Someone on twitter tried to claim that the above results are like "earning £10" whilst the AV method is like stealing £10. It should be clear to those that don't need to abandon logic to parrot a party line...what I've demonstrated above is the exact process AV takes, though over a period of years not hours. If you believe the above FPTP result is fair you lose any right to claim that AV is unfair. It is, possibly unfortunately for you, unavoidable. :) /Edit

For more on why AV is a fairer choice than FPTP, read on.

CCHQ's misleading posters

2011-02-16T09:45:00.004Z

Misleading. For a start what other countries do or don't do is irrelevant. We are our own country, we make our own decisions, and I think we're proud of that fact. We have a monarchy as head of state despite most other democracies having abandoned that, we drive on the Left despite most countries driving on the right. We don't really compromise on our traditions, unless those traditions have become truly outdated.

Also, FPTP is used in less than half the countries in the world (70 countries use it in at least half of their election for their representative body, out of 203), so don't mistake that big expanse of Green to mean FPTP is used everywhere.

No-one gets more votes counted than anyone else. You could say someone's vote is counted 5 times, but you'd equally have to say that everyone else still in the vote gets their vote counted 5 times too. More here.

This is a false analogy, utterly misrepresentative of reality. If you're going to use a running race to analogise AV, then do it the right way. AV is like having multiple races, where the slowest running fails to qualify. More on this analogy being rubbish

A misrepresentation of how AV really works. "Preferences" only relate to how you rank each candidate against each other, not how you rank them compared to how others rank theirs. At the end of the day if the vote comes down to a Tory versus Lib Dem, and your 5th choice is Lib Dem you are still stating that, when choosing between the Tory and Lib Dem, you want the Lib Dem. This is just as relevant a statement, and completely fair, as mine of prefering the Tory on first preference.

If a FPTP election took place and only a Lib Dem and Tory stood, and people chose to vote the same way as they would in a final round of AV those in the No2AV camp would claim this is entirely fair and equal...so why does that change all of a sudden under AV? Answer: It doesn't. Again, read more here, and about how AV is fairer than FPTP here.