Category Archives: Politics

Domestic (UK), Politics, Voting Reform

Voting Reform – First Past The Post

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First Past The Post (FPP) is the system of electing our MPs, and, in England at least, most of our other elected officials. How it works is simple to understand. You are presented with a list of candidates and you put your “X” against the one you dislike the least. After the polls close the votes are counted and the person with the most votes wins. Dead simple, your dog could understand it, so why don’t I like it?

The first reason that I don’t like FPP is that it wastes my vote and thousands of other people’s votes. Where I live, in the area of South London that has Surrey as its postal address, if I vote the way I would naturally, for the Labour Party, my vote is wasted, it has no effect on the result of the election because it is completely outweighed by the Lib Dems and the Tories.

My guess is that roughly 25% of the population, in this area, would normally support the Labour party, about 35% would normally vote Tory and a slightly lesser percentage vote Lib Dem, with the remainder voting UKIP, Green and etc. So one in four of the local constituencies should have a Labour MP, err no…. Either Tory or Lib Dem. Strangely enough the current system probably means that the Lib Dems are over represented in this area due to a lot of Labour and Green supporters voting for them to try to keep the Tories out.

The second reason that I am against FPP is that it creates safe seats, where as the saying goes you could put a pig up as candidate and providing it was wearing the right colour rosette it would be elected. I know much has been written in the past day or two about the demise of the Liberal Democrats in the Barnsley by-election, but it does not disguise the fact that only Labour could win there, and that the winning candidate Dan Jarvis now has a job for life if he wants it. Unless of course he finds himself with  same accounting problems that his predecessor encountered. And again how many votes were wasted in this election? I would argue that every vote cast for a candidate other than the winner was wasted and about half the votes that were cast for him. The turn out for the by-election was 36.5% – roughly two-thirds of eligible voters stayed at home. Why? a wet and cold Thursday in early March probably did not help, but largely they stayed at home because the outcome was certain and they felt that it wasn’t worth the effort of going to the polling station.

If we want – and almost every politician of every hue say they want it – increased voter participation then we need an electoral system that makes every vote count for some thing.

The third reason that I am against FPP is that it encourages, even demands, tactical voting. In a two-way marginal seat, the supporters of the minority parties are almost obliged to vote against the candidate they like least, rather than voting for the candidate they like best. This depresses the vote of the minority parties and reduces their voice in the public square. For example at the last general election the green candidate for my constituency was a friend, and while my political leanings tip slightly more toward red than green, under any sensible voting system I would have voted for him, knowing that he would be unlikely to be elected in a single constituency vote, but knowing also that my vote is not wasted as my second and third preference votes, will still count if he is eliminated. This would give not only a fairer system of voting but also a clearer picture of the actual level of support for political parties. What happened in reality, I voted Liberal Democrat in the hope of keeping the Tories out. Which it did in this constituency, but for all the practical good it did the country, I would have been better voting Green.

The fourth reason I am against FPP is that it allows single party majority governments to be formed with considerably less than 50% of the votes cast, let alone the votes of 50% of the electorate at large. Even at its peak in 1997 Labour won 63% of the seats with only 43% of the votes cast. Admittedly the current coalition government took about 59% of the popular vote between the two parties, but this is genuinely the exception that proves the rule.

My conclusion about First Past The Post, it is better than no vote at all, but it is time that we ditched it in favour of a more democratic system that allows all voices to be heard and not just the biggest and loudest ones.

Domestic (UK), Politics, Voting Reform

More Voting Reform – Single Transferable Vote (STV)

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Anyone who has been reading my posts  on voting reform (if anyone has been reading them apart from possibly Grace) they will probably have noticed that I am trying to work out what I think  about it.

I am convinced that our current first past the post system is not good for democracy in the long, or even the short-term. I am not quite so sure what to put in its place, hence the series of posts.

“I am convinced that our current first past the post system is not good for democracy in the long, or even the short-term.”

This time I am going to look at the voting system known as the Single Transferable Vote (referred to from now on as STV to save typing). This is the system that has caught my imagination the most.

I’ll explain how I think it works, then look at the advantages and disadvantages of the system.

The STV is based on the idea of proportional representation and preferential voting. Initially your vote is cast for the your preferred candidate and then after candidates are either elected or eliminated, transferred to other candidates in line with the your stated preferences. The system minimises ‘wasted’ votes. You are also voting for individual candidates rather than party lists.

How it works

STV works by using multi-member constituencies. As with all alternative vote electoral methods, you rank the candidates in order of preference, 1 to however many candidates you care to vote for. You do not have to cast a preference for a candidate that you abhor. So you just number your preferences 1 to 11 and leave the twelfth candidate out. In the event of your preferred candidates being eliminated or elected your vote will not be transferred to them.

Candidates are generally elected using the following formula:

So in a constituency that elects 6 members, if there were, say 150,000 valid votes cast, each elected candidate would need to get 21,430 votes to be elected.

After you have cast your vote the system works like this:

All the First preference votes are counted, one candidate has 30,000 votes and is elected, but none of the others have enough first preference votes to get over the electoral thresh old. Candidate one has 8,570 surplus votes, so they are distributed among the remaining candidates according to the second preferences of the voters.

The votes are counted again and still no candidate reaches the magic figure, so the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and his or her second preference votes are redistributed among the other candidates. This process goes on until all the vacant seats are filled.

Ireland uses this system for its elections and if you want to see how this works in practice look at the results for the Dun Laoghaire Constituency in Ireland’s 2007 Elections.

The Electoral Reform Society has an example of a model STV Election here

Advantages

STV gives us as voters much more choice than any other system. We determine who is going to be elected. Under the current system part officials, especially in ‘safe’ seats, essentially decide who our MP will be long before we get a chance to vote. Under STV MP’s responsibilities will be more to the people who elected them than to their parties.

  • Fewer votes are ‘wasted’, either by being cast for a candidate with little or no chance of being elected, being cast as surplus votes for a winning candidate.  What this means is that most, if not all, voters will be able to identify representative that they helped to elect. This link in turn helps to increase the representatives accountability.
  • Post election STV gives voters a choice of representatives to approach with their concerns, rather than just the one, who may be indifferent or actively opposed to the concerns of the voter. Indeed in some cases the representative may be the cause of the concerns.
  • Competition, we are constantly told, is a good thing, and generally this is the case. Competition to provide a good service to constituents is no different.
  • Because there are no safe seats under STV,  candidates cannot be complacent and parties must campaign everywhere, and not just in marginal seats. This also means that candidates with in a party must find their own voice. It is extremely unlikely that if a party puts up a full slate of candidates (i.e. six candidates for a six member constituency) they will all be elected. So candidates with in a party will have to be able to sell themselves to the electorate as well as their party manifesto.
  • Because we rank candidates, the most disliked and/or extreme candidates cannot win, because they are no good at picking up second, third and lower-preference votes.
  • There is no longer any need for tactical voting. Vote for the candidates you want, not against the candidates that you don’t want.
    All my life for some reason or other I have managed to find myself living in Conservative/Liberal Democrat marginals. All my life this greenish, left leaning voter has been voting Lib Dem, in the hopes of keeping the Tories out. Under STV I will no longer have to do this.
  • Because there will be a more sophisticated link between a constituency and its representatives,  there will be an increased incentive to campaign and work on a more personal and local level, but also, the constituencies are likely to be more sensible reflections of where community feeling lies.

Disadvantages

To be honest I don’t think there are many. Most of the ‘disadvantages’  cites by supporters of ‘first past the post’ such as loss of connection between the representative and the constituents are red herrings. True STV is much more likely to give rise to coalition government, but current examples aside, is this necessarily a bad thing. However there are some potential problems.

  • If a representative dies in office, or resigns how do you replace them?
  • Counting of the votes will take longer than under the current system (or AV) so the results will not be declared on the night of the election.
  • In some parts of the country, notably the Scottish Highlands STV will result in massive constituencies.
  • Some voters find doing anything other than putting an ‘X’ in a box to complicated for them, therefore there will be an increase in spoiled votes.

To my mind none of these disadvantages come anywhere near to outweighing the advantages of  STV.

Summary

Give my choice STV is the electoral system I would choose. Unfortunately it is not the choice that we are being offered. The choice is between the current system (first past the post) and the Alternative Vote.

International, Politics

Isacc Asimov on Global Warming (from 1989)

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You think that concern about Global Warming is a new phenomenon? Think again.

From Climate Progress

Politics

Gazan youth issue manifesto to vent their anger with all sides in the conflict

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I read this in today’s Observer

Gazan youth issue manifesto to vent their anger with all sides in the conflict

Gaza Youth’s Manifesto for Change is an extraordinary, impassioned cyber-scream in which young men and women from Gaza – where more than half the 1.5 million population is under 18 – make it clear that they’ve had enough. “F**k Hamas…” begins the text. “F**k Israel. F**k Fatah. F**k UN. F**k UNWRA. F**k USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community!”

Here in Gaza we are scared of being incarcerated, interrogated, hit, tortured, bombed, killed,” reads the extraordinary document. “We are afraid of living, because every single step we take has to be considered and well-thought, there are limitations everywhere, we cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want, sometimes we even can’t think what we want because the occupation has occupied our brains and hearts so terrible that it hurts and it makes us want to shed endless tears of frustration and rage!

The text ends with a triple demand: “We want three things. We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask?”

This seems to me a perfectly reasonable response to the situation that they find themselves in. What I want to know, and can’t quite work out is what can I do to help them achieve their demands?

http://www.youtube.com/v/oawfn73Va6M&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3

Politics

Telling white lies to children

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While I was working in a dental surgery yesterday I noticed that on the walls there were numerous posters encouraging children to brush their teeth and to eat non-sugary snacks. Three in particular caught my attention.

The first one was of Pippin the Dog, from the children’s TV programme ‘Come Outside’. Beneath the drawing of Pippin it said

Pippin the dog eats fruit and vegetables to keep his teeth healthy.

I don’t really know what kind of dog Pippin is, but from the drawing I would say some kind of mongrel. So he may be a very unusual dog, but I have never come across a dog that eats fruit and veg.

The second one was of Winnie the Pooh and some of his friends. Beneath the drawing it said

Pooh Bear and his friends only* eat fruit and vegetables between meals. (* my emphasis)

My knowledge of Winnie the Pooh is about fifty years old and my memory may be faulty, but my recollection is that Pooh’s favourite between meals snack was a honey (or Hunny)  sandwich, not fruit and veg.

The third one was of Snow White and beneath that drawing it said

Snow White only eats apples

I don’t know if Snow White only ate apples, but she definitely ate one, and a lot of good that did her.

I fully understand that the purpose of these posters is to encourage young children to eat healthier snacks rather than sweets, but is telling lies to children justified in the greater cause of healthy teeth?

Should we tell children that Father Christmas doesn’t exist, even though the fantasy doesn’t seem to do any harm, and most kids do not seem to be too traumatized when they find out for themselves?

Are any lies justified?  The current Wikileaks data dump seems to show that governments in general think that certain lies, or obfuscations of the truth are justified. I am in two minds about the disclosure, because I do think that there are certain things that it is legitimate for governments, private  organisations, or even families and individuals to keep secret. On the other hand a lot of the material that has been released is embarrassing , The Duke of Pork’s foul-mouthed rant for example, rather than threatening national or international security. And how secret can the data be when it is posted to an Intranet that about three million people, including a Private First Class, have access to?

Ultimately, I do believe that in private life, and government and corporate life, there are things that should only be shared within a small circle, kept secret in fact. However, the bias should always be to openness  and transparency, especially where the information is merely embarrassing. Strangely enough I feel that in the end concealment of embarrassing material ultimately leads to  more embarrassment than transparency. I think that last year’s M.P.’s expenses scandal is a case in point. A fully open and transparent system of expense claims would have never allowed the scandal to occur in the first place, but we did not have that in place and probably still don’t.  The thing that made the release of the documents worse, for the M.P.s involved, was the long and hard rearguard action that they put up in the attempt to prevent the release of material they knew was going to show them in a bad light.

Keep secret only what really needs to be kept secret, and make sure that if it has to be kept secret only the people who need to know have access, otherwise release it all into the public domain, most of it is probably pretty banal anyway. I don’t think that I have read anything on the Wikileaks release that either surprised or shocked me. Sorry I was mildly surprised at the extent of the Duke of York’s vocabulary, but then his father has previous.

Politics, Voting Reform

Alternative Vote +

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AV+

Alternative Vote Plus as the name suggests works in a similar manner to The Alternative Vote system with a top up of members chosen at a regional level from open Party Lists. The system was the one proposed by the Jenkins Commission, set up by the last Labour Government. Roy Jenkins took his brief seriously. Tony Blair’s purpose for the commission was  to kick voting reform into the long grass. He was very successful in doing this.

Basically for elections to the House of Commons the system would involve reducing the number of seats to about 500 with the members elected by the Alternative Vote method , i.e. you rank your candidates in order of preference and as the votes are counted the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and his or her second preference votes are allocated to the candidates indicated. This process carries on until one candidate has over 50% of the votes.

You would also have a second vote on a regional (possibly county) level where you can vote for a party or if you prefer a specified member of that party on the party list. This is the plus part of AV+.  About 120-140 additional members would be elected this way.

Like it’s parent, I can’t get ultra enthused about AV+. It is an improvement on first past the post (almost anything bar a suspension of elections would be) and should give a more proportional outcome to an election.

In its favour:

  • it keeps the tie of the M.P. to a geographical  constituency, albeit a slightly larger one than at the moment, unless of course we want to have more M.P.s.
  • it does produce a more proportional representation than straight AV
  • people other than me would argue that it should keep minority extremist parties out of parliament.

Against it:

  • it is not fully proportional.
  • the ballot paper is more complicated than at present.
  • it would still be likely to produce a single party government.

My objection to it is basically that it adds a lot of the complexity to the ballot paper and counting of the Single Transferable Vote or Additional Member System, without giving the proportionality that they do.

Politics, Voting Reform

Voting Reform

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Voting Reform has been in the news of late.

Various Labour and Conservative ‘Big Beasts’ have united to oppose any change in our current system of electing the House of Commons. I find it interesting to note that the Senior Politicians who have come out against electoral reform are all, well, senior in years, Margaret Beckett, Ken Clarke, David Blunkett, John Prescott to name some of the more prominent members of the group. They hardly represent the coming generation of politicians.

This has raised a few questions that I need to try to answer for myself

So these are my questions to answer.

  • Is the AV system worth fighting for?
  • Should we be looking at other – more radical systems
  • Are the Tory proposals to cut the number of MPs by 50 anti-democratic?
  • Shouldn’t we be doing something about the House of Lords as well?

I’ll make a series of posts trying to answer these questions.

Let us take them one at a time – AV first.

It is an improvement on the current system, in that it allows the voter the opportunity to cast their primary vote positively for their party of choice rather than negatively, voting against a particular party. As such it may help a few Green and UKIP candidates keep their deposits. It also means thy by the time an M.P. is actually elected, at least 50% of the people who actually cast their votes will have expressed some sort of preference for him or her. This compares with the current parliament where I believe only 3 M.P.s even managed 40% of the vote in their constituencies.

We can see from the Electoral Reform Society that had AV been in use at the last election it would have resulted in a few more LibDems a few less Tories and about the same number of Labour. Essentially It would have made no real difference.

Whilst can’t get all that enthusiastic about AV, it would for the first time allow me to cast my vote positively for the party I actually support rather than negatively, to prevent a Tory being elected. (I have somehow or other contrived to live my entire life in areas that are LibDem/Tory marginals.) It is also the only thing on offer so I will be voting for it come the referendum in May.

There are other and I think better systems that I think we should consider which I will get round to discussing in another post.

To list the ones that I think are worth considering :

Politics

Royal Weddings

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Or Why can’t they just disappear of to Vegas and get married by an Elvis impersonator?

I’m sure that the Daily Mail would give me thirty thousand reasons as to why this is not a good idea, but I can’t think of one.

For the next six to nine months this is what we are in for people so brace yourselves:

  • We will really need to know that they are 23rd cousins twice removed, because some past royal had a one night stand with Kate Middleton’s 6 x great grand-mother. I haven’t actually seen this as yet, but believe me every newspaper, with the possible exceptions of the Guardian and the Independent, are doing the research.
  • We will need to see endless photos of Kate Middleton in various stages of undress taken in an earlier more carefree life.
  • Likewise we will need to hear the remembrances of someone who was her third best friend in nursery class?
  • We need an avalanche of Kate’n’Wills© tat – it is probably the only boost the economy is going to get this year

I think it is mainly the prurience that I am objecting to, but it may be my republican sympathies coming out.

I don’t have a problem with two people who are in love getting married, but outside of family and friends should anyone really be concerned about a wedding? Unless of course you make the argument, which I reject completely, that we, as citizens of the United Kingdom, are, in some magical way, the children of Elizabeth Windsor.

Something else occurs to me, mainly about the timing of this. Our ConDem government is going to be attracting a lot of negative attention in the coming months as tax increases and spending cuts start to bite. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but might just make an exception in this case. This is going to soak up front page headlines for the next six to nine months, and probably a fair while after that. A good year to bury bad news?

Politics

The Release of Aung San Suu Kyi

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The release of Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the more welcome developments of the past few weeks. unfortunately I don’t think that it is as significant in the process of change in Burma as Nelson Mandela’s release was in South Africa’s.

When Mandela was released everyone knew that this showed that the apartheid regime in South Africa had bowed to the inevitable and that this was the start of a process that would lead to full democracy in South Africa. What Aung San Su Kyi’s release signifies in the process of Burma’s progress on the path to democracy and freedom I am so sure.

The military are still in (apparent) full control. The retain their capacity to suppress any form of protest violently and presumably would be able to re-arrest her at a moments notice. Perhaps the Generals are more mindful of international opinion than they used to be, placing her back in detention would inevitably provoke an international outcry, but I fear beyond that there would be no significant action taken. In fact I’m not all that sure that there is any significant action that the West could take. China, of course will take no action what so ever.

“I am so glad to see so many people here and so happy to be free,”
“There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk. People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal.”

These were her words to her supporters who greeted her outside the gates of what is now her house which was until yesterday he prison. She is not going to be leading a violent revolution, she is going to follow the non-violent principles of Gahndi and Martin Luther King and help the people of Burma chip away at the foundations of the whole rotten edifice, then let it collapse under its own weight.