POLITICS/SOCIETY: THE ALTERNATIVE VOTE VOTE: A GUEST COMMENT BY BARRY SPENCE

Like you, I will vote NO - but maybe my reasons are different.

As an example of patronising, insular arrogance and presumed superiority of intelligent thought, I had a Tory canvasser at the door two weeks ago, who annoyed me very much. When I explained my exact reasons for choosing NO, he was happy to say that I AGREED WITH DAVID CAMERON. I said I did not agree with him; it was CAMERON who agreed with ME, because I worked all this out myself with my limited and inferior peasant brain, many weeks before Cameron spouted off his feeble opinions and support of the NO lobby. This he does purely for expedience and political reasons, not from genuine belief or convictions about the best voting system.

Meanwhile, his poodle Nicky says that AV would reduce MP expenses abuse, as any MP voted in would be wary of his actions - unlike the previous (and current) bunch of fraudsters and thieves who helped themselves freely. Cleggy reckons that because they were not monitored or controlled, it's "little wonder they dipped their hands into the till - there was nothing to stop them." I have news for this brainless puppet - any ONE of the following would have stopped them: decency, morality, honesty, responsibility, integrity, knowing right from wrong and being as honourable as the title "right honourable gentleman" once meant. I presume Claggy Cleggy accepts that these qualities are no longer demanded of today's MPs. I don't accept it - anyway, I don't want to see expenses abuse "reduced": nothing short of complete elimination will satisfy ME!

Whether by AV or anything else, no elected MP's (mis)behaviour with expenses will change.

I had many reservations about AV ages ago, but what finally pushed me was John Reid of all people (Cameron's unlikely ally in the NO camp) - he expressed so clearly and articulately the seriously anti-democratic problem of totally destroying the ancient basic principle of "One man - one vote" (which in the last century became "One person - one vote"). My democratic right is exactly equal to yours - to demand that MY vote is counted only ONCE in favour of my chosen candidate, not repeatedly used for the potential benefit of the candidates that I DON'T want!

This AV: "One person - a variable number out of several votes" is unfair, unbalanced and (have we all forgotten this?) NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE VOTERS' WISHES.

Only three countries use it, one of which now wants to get rid of it.

As Dirty Harry said, "I hate the system and will always criticise it - but until someone comes along with a better one that makes more sense, I'll work within the current one." For all its stupidities and weaknesses, the creaky, current so-called "first past the post" method is far more preferable to the nonsense of AV.

However, my big question is this, given the whinings over the last half century by Lib Dems, SDLP (anyone remember them?) and Liberals before them - WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THEIR PRESSING DESIRES FOR PR? This works already in Northern Ireland, the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies and half of the world's democracies, including most "member states" (formerly countries) of the EU. Why has nobody mentioned PR at all during this important debate? Are we being fooled by a conspiracy that only two systems exist - the current one and AV?

If any one of you doesn't know what PR is, then I will believe that the above conspiracy did exist - and has succeeded.

Puzzled Anonymous

POLITICS/SOCIETY: THE ALTERNATIVE VOTE VOTE

I have a postal vote and have already used it. I voted No.

Not long ago this would have surprised me. I'm all for egalitarianism and believe that a true democratic system should reflect all points of view, even those I find repugnant (anyone reading the About Me sidebar can guess what they are). However, after some thought and some reading about the issues, I changed my mind. I now believe that AV is an unsuitable method to create an effective and decisive parliament. A government created with the support of minority parties would be too compromised to govern effectively which would result in a weak vacillating government.

So that's why.

At the same time as I voted No, I also for voted in the local council elections. As a socialist, it doesn't take much working out which way I voted.

That's right. I voted Conservative.

And I voted Conservative for the same reason that I would support the AV system for local elections.

Sunderland is massively dominated by Labour who have a huge majority every time which marginalises the opposition. I believe that to be effective, a council needs a strong opposition to keep it on its toes. An AV system would massively increase the size of the opposition which can only be a good thing. 

Of course it could also lead to the same situation I complained that a national government would find itself it. However, on a local level that isn't a bad idea. I'm very much in favour of a plurality of views at a local level because, on at that level, I don't believe there is such a diametric divergence of views between the parties as the focus is a relatively narrow one.

At the very least it would mean I could vote Labour again with a clear conscience.

BOOK REVIEWS: CHRIS MULLIN -DECLINE & FALL: DIARIES 2005-2010

From the introduction:

"... by the end of the Thatcher decade, male unemployment in Sunderland stood at well over 20%; today it is less than half that... In 1997 you could wait up to two years for a hip operation at City Hospital Sunderland; at the time of writing the waiting time is 18 weeks and falling. At Sandhill View, a secondary school  in my constituency, in the early nineties fewer than 10 per cent of pupils were achieving the standard 5 GCSEs at grades A to C; today that figure is nearly 80 per cent. There are many other examples I could cite. No-one can tell me that Labour governments don't make a difference."

Chris Mullin was my Member of Parliament for the last 23 years, standing down at this year's General Election, and these are the diaries of his last five years in Parliament. As with the previous volume, they are well written, honest, perceptive, compassionate, possessing a sly wit, and, for political diaries, extremely interesting and very readable.

When I first learned that Chris was to be our MP, which was as soon as he was selected -a Labour victory in Sunderland being a foregone conclusion- I was both impressed and a little wary. Impressed, because he came here with an established reputation for integrity as his victorious uphill battle to free those wrongly convicted of the Birmingham bombings (when he was excoriated and vilified by the right-wing press, among others) demonstrated. There was never a question in my mind that he would do his best for Sunderland. I'd also read and enjoyed his novel The Last Man Out Of Saigon. A writer (and journalist) as our MP! 

My reservations concerned his reputation as a member of the loony left -a phrase I now despise and maybe I'd been reading the Daily Mail too much (which I did at the time).  Back then I'd have considered myself to be maybe a tiny bit left of centre while Chris, I regarded, as being of the far left. Having read his diaries and learned more about him, this is probably something of simplification and a disservice to him. He is a socialist (with a small 's' as he describes it), always was and always will be, but he also an open-minded person seeing truth when it is shown to him from different ends of the political spectrum and he has good friends from both (including a man I find absolutely loathesome -the Tory grandee Nicholas Soames). I suppose I'd really call him a principled pragmatic idealist. He's probably moved over to the slightly right of centre left (whatever that is) while I've gone the other way and am probably on the borders of left of centre left and the radical left (whatever they are).

For 23 years as an MP Chris has fought for the City of Sunderland and for the people of Sunderland, including (though it didn't win him many friends among his constituents) for immigrants who wanted to stay in Sunderland, something I approve of. I remember being on the City library enquiry desk and trying to help an immigrant who wanted to be relocated from Sunderland because of the racism. I could only apologise and tell him we weren't all like that. He's fought to do the right thing in Parliament and to get Parliament to do the right thing to regain the respect of the public for its representatives, and he has been knocked back so many times. He's seen the Labour Party nearly tear itself apart because people who should know better keep doing the wrong thing.

All this is detailed in his diaries. What is also mentioned, all too briefly, is his love for his family, indeed absolute adoration of his daughters (the pride he has in his eldest who is studying at Oxford), and his love for the North East countryside. I have heard it cynically said that now he's no longer an MP he'll be buggering off back to Birmingham as if his tenure here is over. The Mullins may well move but it won't be because his sentence has come to an end.

Chris Mullin was my MP for 23 years and I couldn't have wished for a better one. Thank you, Chris, for all you have done. Now enjoy your retirement, mate. You've earned it.

Photo of Chris and his daughters, ironically, from the Daily Mail, as is the one below.

He's even mates with-

God, I'm so jealous.

POLITICS: THE DAILY MAIL GETS THE KNIVES OUT

For whom, you may ask, as if you didn't already know. It's for this innocuous looking man.

Whose name is Ed Milliband, or Red Ed as the DM calls him, and he's just been elected leader of the Labour Party. 

The DM hates him for a number of reasons, not least of which being that he isn't his more moderate brother David who lost by 1.3% of the votes. Another is that he won because the majority of union votes went to him. He also quoted as saying that he would not condemn legal strike action by an union attempting to save jobs and that his view on any particular strike would be dictated by the circumstances surrounding the strike. Mind you, I can understand the DM's outrage at this; after all it's been at least 15 years since a Labour leader said that.

How absolutely outrageous!

And did you know that over 35,000 votes were declared invalid? Shame! Um, except that these were almost entirely union votes and the unions were the ones who preferred him anyway so if they had been counted he'd probably have had a larger majority. Sorry, DM, can't have your cake and eat it.

A majority of party activists and MP's preferred brother David; only the unions got Ed in. This may be true and it doesn't make any difference. The unions are the major source of funds for the Labour Party so it's only right that they have some say in voting for the leader. 

The voting system, in case you weren't aware of it goes like this: The ballot paper has a list of candidates and voting is by preference =1,2,3 etc. The candidate with the least votes has his second choices distributed appropriately among the remaining candidates, and this goes on until there are only two left and the one with over fifty per cent of the vote wins. This does mean that a candidate with less first choice votes could win over a candidate with more first but fewer second choices. In practice this means that a middle of the road candidate is more likely to win over someone who polarises the voters.

I've taken no interest in this election until the actual announcing of the results but I will be taking more now that it's over. All I can say, especially after the DM started sticking the knives in, is: Go, Red Ed!

GUEST POSTING FROM BARRY SPENCE

This is a response to an article in the Daily Mail (online edition), a (cough) newspaper neither Ian nor I rate very highly.

As usual, I am missing something.

This champion of the sacred institution of a free press seems to condemn as
bigotry spoken freedoms (or any communicated in any way other than the
press) by the rest of us. If anyone objects to the visit (for whatever
reasons) are they bigots for their reasons of for nothing more than daring
to object in itself?

He seems also to reckon that we welcomed without protest in the past many
blood-stained, butchering tyrants and terrorists, plus genocidal criminals,
mass rapists, mysoginists, homophobics and true religious and/or political
bigots. A far greater crime to him seems to be suppression of a free press! This
"non-objection policy" may be only generally correct due to our apathy, but quoting Ceausescu

and Zuma as examples was unwise - I clearly recall many objections to their

specific presences here. We actually have objected to many others, such as
Thatcher’s best pal Pinochet (the mass butcher of The Disappeared) as one notable example. But presuming he is right - that we never objected to anyone before

- his logic is that we are obliged to continue not objecting, that we lose

by default the right to invent the idea of objecting for this one more visitor.

"Two (or more) wrongs DO make a right", do they?

Ye and me - plus a surprisingly large number of growing moaners - object to
the visit, but we have taken no consideration of past visitors' track
records and how they were welcomed. We should not do so, as the objection is
only to HIM, NOW. Is there some mythical "bigger picture" that I'm missing,
or am I as bigoted as you?

"I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING...." (Clint Eastwood)

I actually object to the increasing abuse of the word "bigot" because it
became a precedent when applied to mind-reading by the gifted magician
Gordon Brown. He dismissed a woman as a bigot BEFORE she even brought up her
views on "immigrants from Eastern Europe" - views that WE never heard, so
could not judge her on. However, Gordy obviously knew the full contents of

her unspoken mind in order to be able to pass judgement. Some people are now branding
others as bigots, basing this on their PRESUMPTION of what the victim of
their supernatural probing thinks. Very dangerous..... I always thought a
bigoted (or not) person had to be judged solely on what thoughts they
EXPRESSED to others! Again, what am I missing?

Thought Police rule!

POLITICS/SOCIETY: DAVID CAMERON'S BIG SOCIETY

1.

 Before making any comment on the idea of the leader of a party I didn't vote for, it's probably a good idea for me to state where I stand as regards to politics and society as this will inevitably shade any comments I do have to make.

So, my basic stance is of the libertarian left (see the website The Political Compass for more details -the link is on the sidebar). One fundamental I do accept is that we live within a society which is run on the capitalist system and, currently, we have to work within the framework that this imposes. The days of smashing capitalism are over; controlling it, however, is something I'll get onto in a moment.

My belief is that the duties of the state or government (as far as this short essay is concerned I'm using the two terms interchangeably) are:

to create a viable growing economy which will benefit society on all levels;

to create a society which is just, fair and equitable to all individuals.

The devil, however, is in the details. To do this, I believe, the government should control and restrain capitalism according to the needs of society. The capitalist system too should serve society; it is a means not an end in itself.

My belief is also that the individual should serve society in order to facilitate the creation of a society which is just, fair, etc. I believe wholeheartedly in the welfare state but the problem with the system that we have is that it has created a dependency culture where generation after generation live on benefits and contribute nothing. This is just as wrong as letting the weakest go to the wall.

2.

So, what does David Cameron's Big Society actually involve? Funny thing is that no-one seems exactly sure. It does involve devolving some central government powers to local authority level which, in theory, is a good thing as it implies giving more power directly to the people. He also wants to involve local organisations and volunteers and, presumably local charities, to create active community involvement which, again, in theory is a good idea. What I've read and heard so far is somewhat vague but the noises sound right to me. It's way to early to argue whether or not it's going to fail but what is good about it is that it's actually an idea which could empower society and the individual.

From The Guardian, 19th July 2010

Cameron also outlined three strands of the big society agenda. These included social action for which the government had to foster a culture of voluntarism and philanthropy. There was also public service reform – getting rid of centralised bureaucracy "that wastes money and undermines morale" – and community empowerment, "creating communities with oomph", the neighbourhoods being "in charge of their own destiny".

In theory this does sound a good idea but what Cameron will need to do is to motivate society as whole, to change the current collective and individual way of thinking about the way the system can work. As I've made clear I'm not a Conservative supporter but I'm more than willing to have an open mind on this venture and actually hope it succeeds.

3.

Another idea announced just three days later is National Citizen Service.  I'll quote from The Daily Telegraph:

Among the activities involved in the National Citizen Society projects will be an outdoor challenge like orienteering, “a set of structured tasks involving visiting and helping the local community,” and a “social action task” such as clearing wasteland.

Youngsters will work alongside teenagers of different backgrounds, with a residential element of at least 10 days. 

New National Citizens with Dave

Again I like this idea because it  fits in with what I believe about the individual contributing to society.

What I hope Cameron will also do, and has indeed indicated this, is to reform the benefit system. so long as it fits within my creatia of being just, fair, and equitable. The last thing I want to see is people being forced into work who are genuinely incapable of it as is happening now, particularly with regard to the disabled. But what I would really like him to do is to wean able-bodied people of the dependency culture. Too many individuals see no reason to work when the State will pay for their needs. This is wrong: these people are not contributing to society and are effectively stealing from their neighbours who do contribute. To put an end to this I believe that the government should instigate a local community service for all those who can work but are unemployed and thereby these people can contribute to society and their community in particular.

I realise that the above could make me sound like some rabid right-winger when that is so far from the truth. It stems from my belief that contributing to society not only improves society but enhances the individual. It uplifts the individual. I've spent all my working life helping in my work as a librarian and I'm spending a large number of hours a week helping animals. I'm not claiming any great virtue in this: I worked as a librarian because I enjoyed it and I help animals because of my love for animals and I enjoy what I do. Doing something positive is life-enhancing -and this also fits in with my vaguely Buddhist sympathies.

4.

Of course I'm still pissed off at the new government because as part of their savings they have cut free swimming for under 16s and over 60s. Tomorrow I'm forking out £180 for a year's swimming subscription at my local sports centre.

 Tough shit, kids. Tough shit, granddad.

5.

Expect more from me on Big Dave's Big Society as it gets going.

POLITICS: CONDEM-NED

I suspect the LibDems have made a very big mistake and that the Conservatives will outmanoeuver them at every turn. My prediction is that they'll realise this within, say, 18 months top, probably less which, unless the fixed-term legislation has gone through, will result in another general election. Of course, they could always do a deal with Labour and form a different government with them instead.

That said, I'm not sorry to see Gordon Brown go and a period in opposition will help Labour reassess themselves.

POLITICS: A LABOUR/LIB DEM GOVERNMENT?

Well, personally, I hope so and I'm sure no-one is surprised by that.

There are a number of good reasons for it, primarily that the Lib Dems have far more in common with Labour than with the Cons (an appropriate contraction of the name because they were clearly trying to con the Lib Dems who haven't bought it). It might have been fair to initially enter into talks with the party that had the most MPs but in practice Labour was always a better bet. 

The biggest attraction for Clegg and his party is the offer of legislating the Alternative Vote system before the next General Election with teaser of a referendum on on full proportional representation. The Tories would never do this but would prevaricate and obfuscate until they felt they were in a position to go to the country and win without the LibDems. Labour was always a better bet for their cherished reform of the electoral system.

Apart from the fact that I don't want Cameron and his cronies in power, I'm a strong believer in proportional representation because it will enable all voters to feel that their views are being represented which is what democracy is all about. And, yes, I am aware that it will also give a strong voice to people with views I find repulsive like the National Racist Scumbag Party -sorry, I mean the BNP- but that is what democracy is all about. More likely is that it will see an upsurge in support for more positive groups like the Greens. This will revitalise British politics making it more flexible and adaptable to the new era we find ourselves in and actively engage the interest of a previously cynical population. 

The world is changing in so many ways that an antiquated system like our first past the post just doesn't work properly any more. Our country is far more diverse than when I was growing up and our system of government should reflect this. Simply having more female, openly gay, and ethnic minority individual as MPs isn't the same thing.

We live in interesting times. Let's hope they are about to get more interesting.

POLITICS: A CONSERVATIVE-LIBERAL DEMOCRAT ALLIANCE IS SHORTENED TO-

THE CON-DEMS.

Sounds like condom and condemn. I like both. Loads of fun for newspaper headline writers. Loads of laughs for us. Lots of contempt for them.

(Confession: someone on Amazon Vine Forum came up with the conflation, but I'm the one who's run away with it.)