Smoke and Mirrors

“I am prepared to tell you absolutely anything!” No, this is not a quote from a politician’s speech; it is a quote from the rather funny series called ‘Black Adder’. However, the quote could well have come from any number of our incumbent Parliamentarians because 2010 opens the door to a new wave of lies, deception, obfuscation and kidology. Sit back and enjoy the playground bickering as two sides attempt to ‘outbid’ each other in the race to kick and elbow their opponents out of contention. Marvel at the amazing claims to be able to achieve what they, and every other previous Government for the past 100 years for that matter, have failed miserably to achieve before. Welcome one and all to the start of the campaign trail for the 2010 General Election.

Media coverage of politics in the UK is dominated, as per usual, by Labour and Conservative. The first spat of the New Year is over the economy and who has got its figures right. Labour produced a tremendously large document discussing plans to dig Britain out of debt; No, not Labour’s plans – the Conservative plans. You see it is so much easier to disparage the opposition plans than it is to justify the rightness of your own. So we learn that Labour thinks the Conservative plans are unachievable but we have no idea if Labour’s plans are any better. So what kind of message can we take from this opening salvo? Surely the message put across by Labour is not so much vote for us as it is don’t vote for them.

The conservative party, in the meantime, has declared that it tends to concentrate on the National Health Service (NHS). It plans to ring-fence the funding for the NHS, which means that other departments must surely bear the necessary cuts any future Government will desire to miraculously accomplish within one Parliamentary term simply for the purpose of looking great and ‘electable’ once more in the next General Election. But look closely enough and you can see that most awful of management devices called ‘the quick win’ in action. The NHS funding is already there. All the Conservatives are saying is that they will leave it alone, which is what they want to do with most things anyway. Perhaps what is most surprising about their declaration is that they are not seeking to privatise large sections of the NHS – probably because no one has any spare cash right now.

The Liberal Democrats may or may not hold the balance of power if the expected result of a hung Parliament becomes a reality – and just maybe politicians will take notice that we, the people, will no longer accept their kind of futile political point scoring that resembles nothing more than a flock of quarrelsome seagulls squabbling over a piece of dead crab. Perhaps one might even give the Lib Dems some credit for not joining the unseemly scrap.

Of course, the clever bit to all this is the way media coverage is distracted form things like the MPs expenses scandal and the ongoing Iraq enquiry, both of which has cost the tax payer extraordinary amounts of money and leaves no politician covered in glory. We must remember in the coming days when we hold the power to change the way we are governed, that whatever successive governments have promised in the past, they have singularly failed to deliver on it.

In the 2010 election I think we all know that whatever Government is formed, the tax payer will be paying taxes to pay back the debts created by unwise and foolish banking investment practices. There is nothing financially in this package for the little people. And thus we approach a defining moment where ordinary people can feel comfortable in voting on principle rather than on their own pockets (yes we all do it at some time or other) because there are no immediate material benefits to us. Therefore we have a glorious opportunity to use our vote – and use it we must – to change the way politics is delivered in our country.

For example, I noticed on the BBC news web page for ‘Politics’ (that is British Politics) that there is a subheading for Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh Politics. There is no heading for English Politics because England does not have an English Assembly. The ‘English National Party’ would want to have one of these along with the much popular introduction of a national holiday for St George. Please note that the smaller parties are concerned with letting you know what they stand for, rather than what the other parties will do to you if you are stupid enough to let them get in. Positive political campaigning does exist and I believe you would suffer no detriment by listening to a few of them. Clearly they have something positive to say, unlike Labour or Conservative who clearly have nothing to say worth listening to and nothing new to offer. If they did, wouldn’t they be talking to you instead of competing with each other?

Don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors. As one politically astute person pointed out on a website recently, if only Labour or Conservative are the likely Governments under our first past the post system, we are as near as living in a one-party-state as can be. There is no democracy - only the big boys club. I don’t know about you but I have had more than enough of their empty promises, deceit, back biting, corruption and self serving policies. Don’t be afraid to change your allegiance this year. Vote for someone who tells you what they want to do. Don’t be afraid, be involved – be very involved.

Getting Attention

A great deal of controversy surrounded the televising of the BBC’s ‘Question Time’ political show because it included Nick Griffin, the head of the British National Party (BNP) renowned for its extreme right wing, racist, homophobic and anti Semitic views. The BBC defended their position stating that the BNP got two MPs into the European Parliament and therefore had the democratic right to be represented on the panel. I believe that the BBC was correct in doing this. Despite an anti BNP protest outside the building trying to disrupt the program I am glad to say that it went ahead. This by far is a victory for democracy.

So instead of getting all worked up about some abhorrent and odious character having the right to be given air time, would it not be more productive in trying to understand how it is that the British public felt so disgruntled with our current representatives that they should resort to voting for the BNP at all?

I was rather disappointed with the show, mainly because it simply gave all the other, shall I say advisedly, legitimate politicians an opportunity to grandstand their repulsion of the BNP and attempt to score as many ‘buddy’ points with the electorate as possible. There was very little debate until the question that most likely got people voting for the BNP in the first place was raised.

In short, the questioner wanted to know if the success of the BNP was down to the current Governments failure to get to grips with immigration into the country. The representative for the Government, Jack Straw, naturally denied it. The other politicians were duty bound to say that it was a Government failing. All this was pretty standard and quite frankly could have been written without any politician being there at all, which is generally what bores many people away from politics.

But then Jack Straw said something quite extraordinary. He suggested that what the Government had to do was to listen to the electorate. So does this mean that the Government has not listened to the electorate so far? Does it take the voting in of an extreme party to make the incumbent ruling party do something it was responsible for doing in the first place?

As it goes the answer is most likely ‘no’. You see this is another throw away line that any political party will use to demonstrate that they are willing to do something about what the electorate cares about. Because we are now in a contest to vote in the next British Government and all of a sudden everyone cares about the little people. Tony Blair talked about listening to the people. Gordon Brown talks about listening to the people. But once any party is voted into power… nobody is listening to the people.

Back to the program and one unhappy person accused Mr Griffin of being in a minority with his view. Ironically everyone else wanted us all to celebrate diversity; but not it appears the kind promulgated by the BNP.

Now although I have encouraged everyone to vote for anyone except Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrats, I would have to include the BNP in the list of don’t vote for. Mr Griffin did not cover himself in glory at all during the program and his rhetoric was of a view that only, in my humble opinion, the ignorant would share. But in certain policy areas his party has struck a chord with the electorate. And how else are the electorate going to get the mainstream parties to ‘listen’ if they won’t listen when the people have voted them into power. Furthermore, it is not just a case of listening. Anyone can listen and do nothing after. Our future Government has to actually do something about ensuring that our country’s infrastructure can cope with an increasing population, that our councils are properly resources to handle the increase in population and that those people who are not entitled to be here do not just disappear off the radar but are sent home. This is what our current Government is not doing and this is what the other mainstream parties have no workable solution to.

The mainstream politicians may be less repulsive than the oleaginous Mr Griffin but there is one thing ganging up on a bigot, and quite another in finding and implementing a credible alternative to the policies that the he put forward and that a percentage of the electorate were attracted enough to vote for. Many protesters outside the BBC were repulsed by the notion that the awful British National Party should get any attention whatsoever. Likewise it would seem that successive Governments are repulsed by the notion that they should have to pay attention to the people who voted them in. From tonights televised performance they still have no intention of serving the electorate. We cannot remain a politically apathetic society and maybe there, Mr Griffin could have done us a favour - because we do live in a democracy and we get to choose who represents us in Govermnent.

Economy of Principle

Economy of Principle

Such a beautiful phrase, 'economy of principle', employed by the philosopher Nietzsche, is rather poignant in the context that I feel most typifies the behaviour and practices of our politicians and the capitalist systems that expect the tax payer to fork out billions for nothing so that they can wallow in troughs of our money. It really has to stop.

We, the taxpayer, paid out money on the premise that the banking system got it wrong and having learned from their mistake would accept a bail out in return for better practices and less reckless gambles for obscene bonus payments.

To put it mildly, we were conned.

Not only does the practice of bonuses continue but it continues despite the losses incurred. Financial bosses complain that there is a need for the bonus culture to attract the most talented of staff. Now don’t get me wrong, I can see the logic in the argument. What I can’t see is how the hell that affects the tax payer who got none of that bonus before the credit crunch of 2008 and will get none of it now. So why should we pay for something that gives us nothing in return? Where is our compensation for keeping the banking systems alive?

It is certainly not in the savings interest or mortgage lending system; not only is it impossible to get a decent mortgage at present but our savings attracts almost nothing by way of interest. Why is that? Perhaps the reports are true that the banking houses are going hell for leather to shore up their balance sheets. Once again, why should the tax payer pay for someone else’s mistake? We only have to go one penny into the red and the bank would slap us with a bank charge. So where are our tax payer charges against the banks? Where is our golden handshake for getting the country out of the soft and smelly?

The answer, apparently, is higher taxes, a cut in public services and spending and painful decisions possibly for the next ten years. I, for one, cannot accept that we deserve this treatment.

But that is what we will get, whether we vote for Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat. We couldn’t possibly upset the institutions that no doubt bankroll the major political parties. How this must stink to any right thinking person.

Recently a Conservative MP, you know, the party that the British Public will inevitably vote for in 2010 because their heads have been shoved either in a political vat of apathy or the conservative faithful actually do make money out of everyone else's misery, said that if the expenses system changed, or if his salary was reduced, he would not be able to give to charity. Excuse me? How many millions of poor tax payers stick money regularly into charities, raising millions? Not that they can in any way afford such extravagances but so many people cannot afford to give to charity because they are too bogged down paying taxes to overrated politicians and bonus grabbing talented stock brokers. This is an example of the planet our politicians are on – and it sure isn’t ours.

The tax payer does not ask for much. The people who run our country have to take taxes, but only to pay for the things we need: good health care, emergency services, utilities, roads, education and so on. However, whilst I have an aversion to violence, I would rather pay £27 million on a helicopter for our armed forces in Afghanistan than the billions the government spent to enable financial houses to continue paying out bonuses to ill deserving parasites. The tax payer cares nothing for greed-driven gamblers in financial houses. Politicians have a duty to look after our soldiers, otherwise the point of shoring up the money system beggars explanation.

Or maybe it doesn’t need explanation. Politicians have acquired the habit of putting a spin on everything they do. Business management do much the same nowadays. In fact, the world seems to be running on the spurious results of targets and tick boxes. Reality takes a back seat to statistics while the poor tax payer is punished again. As long as the boxes are ticked it doesn’t matter what suffering is meted out. The true reason for running the country is lost to the effort to gain power under any circumstance. So unless we, the electorate, change the cycle by voting – and we all must vote – for any party other than Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, we will continue to experience an economy of principle that places our modest ideals beneath the horizon of achievement. We have become nothing more than iron filings to a magnet when it comes to election time – and as soon as the vote is complete the magnetism disappears.

When are we going to learn? Shall we make a real difference in 2010?

Revolution On Our Horizon

An unemployed person over the age of 25 receives £64.50 a week in Jobseeker's Allowance. Or, to put it another way, this is the amount of money they are given to live for a week and to seek work. That's £3,354.00 a year.



The Sunday Times reports today that a group of 60 Ministers of Parliament received £250.00 a month from the House of Commons authorities for 'tea and coffee'; that's £3000.00 a year, or the equivalent of one very happy fig tree (See earlier blog).



Jeremy Browne (Liberal Democrat) claimed that the money he received went on office materials but also stated 'The fact that I've claimed that amount doesn't mean I have spent that amount'.



So where is it then? and why are you claiming more than you need?



Not that MPs, CEOs and high-flying, high-risk-taking-with-our-money-for-a-fat-bonus city workers are the only ones taking the mickey. Union leaders are apparently enjoying pay rises of between 8% - 10% while most of us ordinary folk contend with a pay freeze or even a pay cut. Unemployment in the UK has doubled and we are left wondering how these people can justify giving themselves rises that they clearly do not deserve.



The ingredients for a revolution loom large. The figures are waved in our faces every day and while the majority may shrug their shoulders in apathy and decide once again not to vote in the next election, not to vote again will only invite those who abuse their positions of power to continue to do so.



The Labour Government were not the cause of the global credit crunch. They were, however, the keeper of the purse strings. The conservative party were right to point out that Labour did not put money aside for a rainy day. Banks made huge profits from us and it was our money that had to save them. Now we will be told that we must pay for the Government's mistake, the bank's mistake and for bank profits and Parliamentary expenses. Complaining about it really isn't good enough; we need to vote the Labour Party out. But who do we vote for?



The Conservative Party has had its nose in the expenses trough as much as any other party. They would rather that we pulled out of Europe because the UK is giving too much power to Brussels. And where would that leave us? No, the Conservatives are too fond of going backwards to be of any use in a progressive society. And besides, they were voted out unanimously for virtually the same kind power abuses that the Labour Government are committing today. So why they would have us believe that Europe could not cock up the country better than either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party is beyond me. I reckon it would be easier to tame one big monster than have to contend with a scrapping melee of home grown little ones.



The Liberal Democrats are no less guilty of collusion in expenses than any other party. I have often favoured voting for these guys because they have always favoured proportional representation but while that may at least make our vote more likely to count, why should we want to vote in anyone whose sole mission in life is to represent their wealth accumulation rather than the interests of the electorate?



It would seem apparent that the entire current political regime is rotten to the core. No amount of stirring the putrid sludge is going to clean the Commons of the stench of corruption and outrageous profiteering by its organised crime syndicates ...I mean political parties. Now is the time to consider how one might stage a bloodless revolution that will give the ordinary citizen in the UK control of their lives once more.



We must vote at the 2010 general election, all of us, the highest turnout ever. And we must vote for absolutely anyone but Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat.



The BNP recognized this at the 2009 European Election. What happened was that the Conservative voters all went out and voted in the same stalwart sheepish way that Conservative voters do, which is why they were so successful at the European election. Not because Labour voters voted Conservative - nor indeed that the Conservatives are in any way better than Labour- they just didn't vote. The BNP, sensing a low turnout, pushed their voters to vote and proved that the political spectrum can change under proportional representation if people vote for what they believe in. Now they have MEPs in Europe.



What the Conservative die hards do not want you to figure out is that, if everyone is disaffected by the performance of the Labour Government, and all Labour voters stay at home, the Conservatives can win a landslide victory in Parliament. They can win by ensuring that all you can't-see-the-point Labour voters just stay at home. Then, of course, some 15 or 20 years later when they too have cocked up the country, the Labour voters will be suddenly kicked into action to vote them out again.



Labour voters are the true voice of this country. Often they will make up the largest proportion of the have-nots. To have a chance of having anything at all over the next ten years they need to vote for someone else whilst disaffected with Labour (although why they would want to vote for more poverty is a mystery). Conservative and Labour voters both need to stop voting just to keep the other one out. They both need to go. Only when everyone is voting for what they believe in will we see the true feelings of the country.



Some people might say that no one outside of the big political parties would be able to run the country. I would say that I haven't seen any political Governing body that has achieved that in my life time.



There will be a revolution. If we act sooner rather than later it will cost us less in terms of pain and suffering. If we just allow the same old Government swap over in 2010, it is going to hurt us more than it will hurt them; trust me, they will see to that as they have shown us already.

Go Fig!

Amazing, this revelation from the Sunday Times today. Apparently someone in the House of Commons was authorised to rent, for the new House of Commons extension, twelve fig trees at a cost of £40,000 a year! Why MPs believe that this would be considered as proper use of tax payers money is a complete mystery. As the Americans might say, go figure.

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But hang on a minute. Is this not just another example of how completely wasteful our Westminster machine has become? Not only that, I bet there are other examples of ludicrous and expensive rentals yet to be discovered. While the little people suffer the consequences of an economic slump, our money is being frittered on maintaining twelve of the most hardy and fecund trees in the world. We have complete forests that don't have that much money spent on them. In fact trees were around and happily looking after themselves millions of years before man and money saw the light of day.

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There is no justification for spending such outrageous sums, even in the most affluent of times. The average salary in the UK is £22,000, almost half what it is costing the taxpayer to look after trees that they won't even see, let alone be able to afford. There is clearly a need for Ministers of Parliament to investigate whatever department thought this was a reasonable thing to do and stop these hair-brained and needlessly expensive contracts.

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The Government needs to put the fruits of our labour to much better use than renting a dozen trees for their pleasure. The Americans might say 'go figure' but the UK tax payer is feeling far from philosophical at the moment. Forget go figure. We demand 'go fig'.

We Live in Insulting Times

Today David Cameron rejected Alan Johnson's idea to hold a referendum on electoral reform (The Times) saying "Proportional Representation takes power away from the man and woman in the street and hands it to the political elites".

Turn over a few pages and Mr Cameron says in his speech on political reform that people are not just angry at the expenses abuse but "...they are the result of people's slow but sure realisation that they have very little control over the world around them and over much that determines whether or not they'll live happy and fulfilling lives".

So why is that then Mr Cameron? Is it perhaps because, under this First Past the Post system that power has been taken away from the man and woman in the street and handed to the political elites?

And anyway, what's all this about people's slow but sure realisation? How insulting is that? The electorate are much shrewder than you think and it is one of the reasons why people press for electoral reform, vote for different political persuasion or, as in many cases, don't vote at all!

If this is the Prime Minister of the future we are all going to hell in a handbag.

What the little people need is for the politician we vote for to represent the people and not be press-ganged into voting what the party wants. Otherwise we might as well just vote for a party and say who cares what MP represents us if they are all going to vote the same way as all the other MPs?

The Conservative Party and the Labour Party have too much of a strangle hold over our country. They are the political elite and we have had enough of being ignored. The so-called progressive Conservatives still want to abnegate the responsibility for anything and Labour wants to control everything. Neither way has worked in the past and it will not work in the future. Yes we need a new kind of politics but I believe we may need new political bodies to achieve the kind of change that the people want to see.

Real Proportional Representation

Monday, 25 May 2009

25 May 2009Alan Johnson is right about the public mood of anger and disquiet over the way MPs have abused the system of second home allowances (‘The Times’ today). They had a year to change it but decided not to (see All At Our Expense). I have no doubt that Labour MPs, staring into the abyss of an uncertain future and possibly having to come to terms with suddenly not being an MP anymore, would welcome the opportunity to cling onto power in any way possible. So is it not just an amazing coincidence that Labour politicians, fearing that their pedestal of power is about to be kicked from under them, would leap onto the bandwagon of Proportional Representation that they kicked, without a second thought, into the long grass back in 1998?

OK, I agree that some form of Proportional Representation is better than our current First Past The Post (FPTP) system but not if it only serves to pay lip service to the idea. In 1998 the ‘Jenkins Report’ came up with a system of ‘Alternative Vote Plus’ (AVP). Alan Johnson proposes to suggest we have a referendum weighing FPTP against AVP. Why is that? What is wrong with throwing a number of systems into the melting pot that satisfy the criteria that the Jenkins Commission followed? Does he think that the electorate is too silly to make up its own mind or does he fear that we would pick one that does not suit a particular political party or changes the balance of power in favour of the people? Why can’t we have a proper open competition on electoral reform?

In 2007 I proposed a system of PR on my website. I posted a copy to the Electoral Reform Society and they politely ignored me. Never the less I posted it on my own web site for anyone to scrutinize. See ‘New Voting System’. Let’s look at how my system sits against the guide lines given to the Jenkins Commission. The statements in italics represent the criteria by which the AVP system was devised.

‘The maintenance of a geographical link between MP and constituency ‘

The Jenkins Report rejected the idea of a ‘Single Transferable Vote’ (STV) system because it would require massive voting constituencies of 350,000 electors resulting, they concluded, with an oppressive degree of choice. There was also a number of counting systems that would have given different outcomes.

The average number of voters for Labour, according to the number of sitting MPs, in the 2001 election was 26031, for the conservatives 50347 and the Liberal Democrats 92583. Recently the political parties have tried to spread the fear that voting for extreme parties rather than one of the main three would allow parties like the British National Party (BNP) to get in. In 2001 the average vote for the BNP was 47129.

There are 650 MPs in Parliament and 60 million people in the UK. If 40 million are registered voters that would mean 61538 voters per constituency if the voters were evenly spread. But we know this is not the case because more people live in towns and cities than in rural and agricultural areas.

The constituency I live in has a demographic of 230,000 people, of which two thirds, 153,000 would be registered voters. As you can see from the above figures, nowhere near this amount of people are currently voting but if they did it would reflect the true amount of voters that sitting MPs are representing today. So MPs are already presiding over massive voting constituencies.

As far as ‘oppressive choice’ is concerned, we have seen elections with an abundance of candidates from the ‘Monster Raving Loony Party’ to an independent candidate with a personal axe to grind. Anyone can stand for Parliament now. There just needs to be a simple rule stating that a candidate must acquire 25% of a National Vote at least to represent those people and to save ourselves from lunatic fringes and real minority concerns.

My proposal would suggest the need to double the size of a constituency in order to keep the same number of sitting MPs, however, because my proposal would also share the vote between the MPs in that constituency, MPs will be presiding over no more a percentage of the vote than they have experienced before. So if we presume that two MPs could be presiding over the same geographical area that two MPs had covered previously, albeit disproportionate to the voters, nothing has changed.

‘The need for stable government‘

Many people opposed to PR tend to point the finger at Italy’s often fractious coalitions. Politicians love to throw fear into the path of change because they hope to distract people from the possibilities of change for the better that does not include them. Conversely one has to acknowledge the difficulty that exists in many political systems and how easily parties can split themselves into factions. On the other hand we can see this happening almost weekly within the current Government, as we have seen before in previous Governments. So whether there is infighting within one party or fighting among several parties, the only difference is that in the current systems there are whips telling MPs to vote a certain way and in other systems the centre of power does not lie with one majority. Considering the number of times the people have not been asked about things they really should have been asked about, is the act of ignoring the people considered as stable Government?

My proposal, like the AVP system, uses a ratio to decide what MPs sit in the House of Commons. The difference is that my system keeps MPs geographically based and MPs vote in the House of Commons with their vote percentage. In short, there are no arbitrarily picked MPs from a pool of 150 (the AVP system). And if the current political parties are any good, then our people will vote for them will they not?

‘The desire for broad proportionality‘

There is a balance required between the geographical size of a constituency and the size of populace. Beyond that, one has to consider how one is able to represent left wing voters in a staunch right wing constituency and right wing voters in a left wing constituency. The AVP system will not achieve this. Even if it elects a proportional representation from a list of 150 MPs who are not ‘directly elected’, they lose the geographical connection.

My system does not satisfy itself on ‘broad proportionality’ It is directly proportionate to the point where 99.6% of votes count both geographically, and where this cannot be achieved in sufficient numbers it can go regionally and even nationally. The AVP system cannot possibly compete with this.

‘An extension of voter choice‘

This is pure nonsense. Why not vote for your first choice and expect it to count? My system does not put up with second best, which is why my system aims to make 99.6% if voter’s first choice count – not second best.

Alan Johnson describes the Jenkins system as an ‘elegant solution – Alternative Vote Plus’. Personally I think it merely tinkers with the idea of proportional representation and is not proportionately representative at all. It is also unnecessarily complicated. I would dearly like to put my system up against Mr Johnson’s preference to see which one the public likes better and I challenge him to do so. Unlike Mr Jenkins, I don’t have to horse trade with other political parties and MPs desperately trying to save their own skins should a shake up in electoral reform actually occur.

So I say to Mr Johnson, your proposal is not acceptable. If you really wanted to see electoral reform using the Jenkins solution you could have done it back in 1998 when it was proposed. The electorate must question why you choose to resurrect it now, if not to save a perceived massive defeat at the next general election. The Conservatives, of course, will oppose any PR all the way, especially as they appear to be under the delusion that they will win a landslide victory at any general election. It is not as simple as that. And besides which, what makes Mr Cameron think that we want another political party in power that is just as guilty of abuse as the rest? The three main political parties not only abused expenses and would have continued to do so had it not been made public. Not one of them deserves our support because not one of them has represented the people who elected them.

Yes we do need electoral reform – not to save any of our current main parties but to stop that sort of corrupt power from ever taking a strangle hold on our democracy ever again. So if you really want to see electoral reform Mr Johnson, why not give people a proper choice? We should decide what to vote for in a referendum – not you.

Posted by shaneward at 09:03 0 comments