Voting Reform - The NO Campaigners Show Themselves

I wondered where they were hiding, but the "NO" campaigners have come out from under their stone at last, indicating their likely tactics in persuading us to stick with the existing "First past the Post" system.

Here are their key ideas: the Alternative Vote is more complicated; the Alternative Vote is more expensive; the Alternative Vote is likely to deliver more Coalition Governments.

Notice that the words democracy and democratic don't feature in any of this. That's no surprise because there is no argument in this world that can convince any right-minded person that a system delivering Members of Parliament representing a minority of their constituents (sometimes for life) is democratic.

On the issue of other systems being more complicated, are we not sufficiently intelligent to be able to cope? How on earth do the rest of Europe manage to handle it? Leaving aside the possible fact that they have clearer heads because they don't binge-drink like the British, I still think we can summon up sufficient intellectual capacity to deal with a slightly less simple method of voting and counting.

As for the cost, well we could make the thing a whole lot cheaper by abolishing elections. (Last time I looked, that was called a Dictatorship). Come to think of it, perhaps that's why 40% of our population don't bother to vote anyway, because they do not see it delivering anything relevant to their own ideas.

The "NO" campaigners are going to have to rely entirely upon fear and negativity in order to persuade us that it is better to accept the devil we know rather than the one we don't.

They should return to the primeval swamp from whence they came, in which inertia is the best method of survival, leaving the rest of us with brains to pursue our legitimate demand for more democracy. OK, some will argue that the "Alternative Vote" is not fully democratic, but from little acorns grow mighty oak trees.

More power to the "YES" Campaign!