If you wouldn’t call the Labour Party socialists, what the hell would you call them?
At least we’ll now see the end of the ‘But the Lib. Dems. have no experience of government’ argument, which was always bollocks anyway since experience often seems inversely proportionakl to competence in politicians.
The Cons./Lib. Dem. coalition is actually what I was hoping for since the first debate, so I’m pretty happy with the outcome. Not so happy about settling for AV but realistically it was the best they were going to get and a decent compromise to get some sort of reform on the table.
That’s because not all economies rely as heavily on the financial sector as a sizable chunk of their GDP as the UK does.
And yet they’ve been happily privatising various formerly public services for the last 13 years, including continuing on with the railway privatisation scheme started under John Major. You’re not going to see much change between Labour and the Conservatives in terms of “socialist” policies, especially with the current state of the economy. Labour does carry the support of the trade unions, although even they have often felt left out of the loop by the New Labour government.
There have been projections of what the results would have been under AV compared to what we got under FPTP (basically, Lib Dems do 20 seats better, Tories twenty seats worse, overall it’s no more proportional and helps Labour even more), but what I want to know is how they arrive at those projections.
It might be reasonable to assume that not many people would vote 1. Conservative 2. Labour, or vice versa, and that many people would have Lib Dem as a second choice. But what about people who list just one party (or just one party that can realistically win the seat)? AIUI, if that party doesn’t win their votes are discarded, as in FPTP.
Yes this is fucking annoying. So, in a year or so, we’ll get a referendum on AV. The question will be ‘Do you want AV or not?’ with a box for ‘Yes’ and a box for ‘No’, because any more sophisticated question would blow our fragile little minds. Then I’ll have to decide. If I tick ‘Yes’, I’ll be voting to change to a system that is generally no more proportional than FPTP. If I tick ‘No’, the Conservatives and the Daily Mail will be able to joyfully scream at the top of their lungs about how I’m one of the millions of Brits who ‘is very happy leaving our current system as it is’. :mad:
Unless, that is, the LibDems actually grow a pair (can they get Balls? OK I’ll stop now) and mount a big public info campaign to inform the public what a croc AV is. But then they’d have to explain why they bent over so readily.
There may well be support for the premise from polling data, but in a practical sense I believe the incantation includes;
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog”
There is no practical way to estimate how a voter, who in elections past simply put “1” against their favoured candidate, will respond next election when trying to decide whether they put Labs 5th and Lib-Dems 4th or the other way around because it might make a significant difference.
The abilities of the various parties to determine their flow of preferences and how closely their supporters follow it are totally unknown
Some voters will scratch their heads in puzzlement and others will just number them in the order they find them on the ballot (in Australia this is called the ‘donkey vote’) because anything else is too difficult for them.
Indeed, but “donkey voting” is now less than 1% and that’s with compulsory voting.
In the UK with optional voting, and therefor people in the polling booth who want to be there, it’s likely to be less than that in the longer term. For the first couple of polls, I’ve got no idea.
There is a polling method which, instead of asking voters their preferences, uses what is essentially a mock-up of a real ballot paper to get people to show their voting style. This has had some initial success although the method is relatively new and the bugs are not yet out of the system AIUI. It has the advantage of mitigating the effect that presentation of the choices has on the vote (including, one would presume, the “donkey vote”).
I don’t know why everyone’s so down, there are a lot of highlights on there;
Civil Liberties
The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.
This will include:
* A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.
* The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.
* Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
* The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
* Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
* The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.
* The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.
* The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
* Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
* Further regulation of CCTV.
* Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
* A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.
All of which I agree with - many non-Brits may not understand why things such as libel laws are so important right now but they have been a massive civil liberties problem lately.
In addition the Lib Dems will prevent the Conservatives from being to anti-European and push harder on banking reform and I doubt they will let the inheritance tax increase through and its iffy on the ‘marriage credits’ as well - the pact says it will focus on raising the start of taxation to 10,000£ first.
I’m pleased to be able to say this, but that document really does look eminently sensible. It seems to be bringing together the best of each party’s policies rather than simply ending up as the bare minimum of what each could get the other to agree on.
ETA: Elendil’s Heir - we don’t know, it hasn’t been written yet.
It’s Douglas Carswell’s idea. The basic idea is that the public will comment on laws and regulations that are overly burdensome, and then a bill will be passed to repeal all the burdensome laws.
I’m very, very glad they’ll be adressing civil liberties. Labour has arguably been the most authoritarian government his country has seen in modern times.
