2019 Election - Just Another Day at the Office

Well, for this Liberal Democrat, it was just another day at the office. A lifetime of disappointments and false dawns has hardened me. I do, however, stick with my basic social liberal democratic philosophy of life. Onwards and upwards, as they say.

Whilst the Liberal Democrats' vote went up in most constituencies, they didn't win many new seats, and lost some they already had, including the seat of Party Leader Jo Swinson!

Conservative Leader Boris Johnson (who marked his campaign by refusing an interview with one of Britain's most forensic political interviewers, pocketing an ITV journalist's phone, and hiding in a dairy company's fridge) romped home to victory by somehow persuading hardened lifetime Labour suporters in the industrial Midlands, North West and North East to risk the psychological trauma of actually voting Conservative.

As for the Labour Party, their performance was so bad that their number in Parliament roughly equates to the representation they had back in 1935. Their programme almost made Michael Foot's 1980s manifesto ("The longest suicide note in history") look reasonable. Whilst enthusiastic Labour activists, in particular, their 'Momentum' group appear to be enthralled by their Party being led by a couple of pseudo Marxists, it turns out that this enthusiasm for hard-left politics is not shared by the general population.

To end with what I started with, Jo Swinson's personal, and Party's disappointing performance is, I believe, entirely down to her. She made two massive strategic errors, which stretched some Party members' loyalty to breaking point. Firstly, she stood before the Liberal Democrats' Conference and announced herself as Candidate for next Prime Minister. It reminded me of Liberal Party Leader David Steel some years back, telling Conference to go back to their constituencies and "prepare for Government". That went well, didn't it?! Secondly, by announcing her intention to cancel Brexit unilaterally, without a second referendum, she effectively told 17 million people who'd voted to leave the EU to get stuffed. She appeared to have misunderstood the meaning of the second word in the title of her Party.

Both Labour and Liberal Democrats are now looking for new leaders.

Happy New Year! (We hope)

Democracy - Why don't we care about it?

We've just had elections for Police & Crime Commissioners (for the first time ever).

We also had three Parliamentiary Byelections at the same time.

The turn-out was between 10% and 18%. This is disgraceful. The number of people bothering to exercise their precious right to vote has been falling dramatically in recent years and it makes me angry.

It makes me angry because over the centuries people have campaigned, fought and died in order to obtain the right to be heard, and the right to elect the people who govern.

I have no sympathy for anyone who doesn't care about exercising this right and then has the gall to complain about whatever governments are doing.

It is undeniable that over the years we have developed an understandable scepticism about our politicians and governments; they can't be trusted, they don't keep their promises, they are dishonest, they are in it for themselves, and so on. But these are not reasons to turn our back on democracy; they are reasons to increase our activity in it!

What do these people who don't care really want? Do they want dictatorship?

We are all human beings with manifold flaws in our characters, and people who aspire to be politicians are no different. But it is better to have imperfect human beings whom we elect than suffer oppression under imperfect human beings with absolute control over us.

Here in the UK we could improve things by abandoning this long-held tradition of voting on Thursdays. Why the hell does that happen? What's so special about Thursdays? What's wrong with voting on Saturdays or Sundays? There's also a lot to be said for making voting a statutory obligation. After all, we are legally obliged to pay our taxes, and the old cry is "No taxation without representation". So, why not a legal obligation to vote?! And before anyone says, "Well, I don't like any of these cretins", ballot papers in a compulsory vote would have to have a box for "Abstention", "None of the Above", "Anti-Democracy" .. call it what you will.

Come on Britain, wake up!

A Cock-up of Olympic Proportions

The Government announced today that the private security company "G4S" had failed to recruit sufficient staff to meet their obligations towards the provision of effective security at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Apparently they did not even start recruiting until January of this year. What a shambles.

Now the Government is proposing to fill the security gap by sending in the Army to the tune of 3,500 soldiers.

What was it the Conservative Party has been ramming down our throats for several decades now? Oh yes, I remember .. the only way to get things done properly and efficiently is to have them done by private enterprise.

The hackneyed argument has always been, Private Enterprise good, State Control bad. What we have seen in recent years is evidence that Private Enterprise can be both good or bad, and State Control can also be both good or bad. The banking fiascos of recent years knocks further nails into the coffin of the "Private Enterprise is best" philosophy.

UK Local Elections May 2012

Well, it would seem that David Cameron's Conservatives and Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats (partners in Coalition Government) received a good drubbing in these elections, losing many hundreds of Council seats and losing control of several major cities.

Ed Milliband's Labour Party made an impressive showing, picking up hundreds of Council seats and gaining control of the cities the other two Parties were busy losing.

Bucking the trend, Conservative Boris Johnson just managed to get re-elected as London's Mayor with "Red Ken" Livingstone snapping at his heels.

As usual we have been regaled with all the usual stories by the Party "spin doctors", and for all they tell us that the Labour Party has regained the trust of the British Electorate, this, and all the other stuff peddled by the winning and losing Parties means not one row of beans, for the most shocking number to come out of all this is that only 32% of the electorate bothered to vote. So when the political parties are trotting out their analysis of whatever votes they managed to pick up, they are indeed just talking about a percentage of a small percentage of the electorate.

You need a massive imagination or mental excursion into fantasy land to pretend that these elections tell you anything much about what the British people are feeling about each Party - except that most of them just don't give a damn! That's what it tells us.

Our attitude to democracy is a national disgrace. It is appalling that nearly 70% of the country is content to let a small proportion of its fellow citizens to decide how we are governed.

Another Mad Year - 2011

I had high hopes for 2011. I thought it was going to be unique. There’d never been a year called ‘2011’ before and the chances of their being another year called ‘2011’ seemed remote. Then I remembered I had high hopes at the beginning of every year and decided to be more rational in the future.

Anyway, this is how it panned out, in no particular order (as they say on the “X-Factor”).

Our Dear Leader, “Call me Dave” Cameron, decided that the National Health Service should be turned upside down, handing financial control to consortia of local GPs. None of this was in the Conservative or Liberal Democrat manifestos, but when were political manifestos ever worth more than a row of beans?

There was so much hostility from the professionals that the Government went away for another think. I think they are still thinking.

I hope they remember that basis of the NHS is that everybody, regardless of income, is entitled to receive hospital acquired infections free at the point of use.

The British Government (a Coalition of the Unwilling) held a referendum on changing the voting system. The Liberal Democrats had been pushing hard for this, and I supported it, being a life-long critic of the undemocratic “first past the post” system (which only works democratically if you have no more than two candidates). Anyway, the “Yes” Campaigners ran such an abysmal show, talking complete rubbish that the country voted for the status quo (which is Latin for rock music).

Some Arab nations protesting and fighting their way towards some kind of democracy, whilst a couple of European nations went in the opposite direction by being coerced into forming governments led by unelected technocrats.

Libya’s deranged Colonel Gaddafi

began losing control of his country after 40 years of dictatorship and farting in public. There was a major uprising in Benghazi (where the people were fed up with the stink) and the curly-headed madman used his Air Force to quell the uprising, declaring he would hunt down his own people like rats. Things were beginning to look so serious that the UN and NATO got involved, resulting in a NATO-controlled No-Fly Zone over the country, to thwart Gaddafi’s murderous activities. In a rare and relatively short display of successful military action involving no “boots on the ground” the Colonel was eventually defeated, meeting an undignified end being hauled out of sewer and shot.

As the flies began to congregate around his corpse I wondered about the efficiency of the no-fly zone.

A British comedian wondered why the self-styled Dictator only gave himself the rank of Colonel, putting himself no higher than someone qualified to sell fried chicken in a bucket.

Tunisia held its first democratic election in history and there was a 90% turnout. Imagine achieving that in Britain!

President Assad

(Arsehead?) of Syria got into a similar game to Gadaffi, slaughtering thousands of his own people who had the bare-faced cheek to protest against his repressive regime, but no sign of the Western Powers intervening in this case.

By the end of year it was reckoned that his forces had killed 5,000 and arrested 15,000 of his people, prompting calls for him to be brought before the International Court for crimes against humanity.

Then there was the “Eurozone” crisis. This was a crisis within a crisis. We already a worldwide economic crisis caused by a poorly regulated banking system either going berserk with other people’s money, or conducting fraudulent operations, or both. Within the European Union, countries like Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain reaped the whirlwind of their profligacy; Greece, in particular, was on the verge of collapse and required gigantic bale-outs from the rest of the “Eurozone”.

(Beware Greeks requiring gifts!)

American special forces located the whereabouts of Osama Bin Liner

(residing comfortably in Pakistan). They stormed the premises and killed him, thus ending a man-hunt that started after the tragic attack on the World Trade Centre.

Dave the Toff attended a special European Summit meeting in Brussels called to reach an agreement on rules to be followed to save the Euro. This currency had been doomed from its inception because it was set up without considering the political necessity to make participating countries function virtually as a single State for it work, and certain countries (Greece in particular) should never have been allowed to join, but the books were cooked (and the Greeks are not particularly noteworthy for their cooking). The UK had wisely decided to stay out of it. (Sterling work.)

Nevertheless, anything happening in the 17 countries using the Euro affects the UK’s trade with Europe and so it was necessary (along with nine other countries still using their own currency) to attend this Summit.

Instead of negotiating a deal protecting Britain’s interests, Cameron just refused to be party to the agreement signed by all the other 26 countries and took his bat and ball home to the rousing cheers of the Conservative Party’s rabid right-wing Europe-hating back-benchers. He was publicly criticised by his Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister and several others.

Cameron now has one foot on the jetty and other on the boat that is departing. We can only hope he’s good at doing the splits, but in any case there’s still bound to be a big splash!

America’s motley collection of Republican circus clowns called the Tea Party drove their political bus into the presidential circus ring and the doors fell off in time-honoured fashion accompanied by the hooting and honking of mad ideas, political amnesia, suspect intelligence, and sexual scandals.

I had a brief e-mail correspondence with one of these guys and he wrote me long essayson the American Constitution, and the evils of Government. He said the Minimum Wage was a disaster and American healthcare was “the best in the world, and anyone can get access to it” (!) Free-market capitalism was the only way forward. He told me that if he met anyone who “wanted to be

controlled by government” he would “send him to England” and perhaps I would like to “send him anyone I knew who loves freedom”.

One of America’s right-wing backwoodsmen came back into the fray on behalf of the Tea Party Movement: Newt Gingrich. Imagine having an American President with a weird name!

In Italy, Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi raised the tone of political debate by declaring the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to be an “unfuckable lard bucket”.

Japan suffered a horrific tsunami with huge loss of life and fatal damage to a nuclear power plant causing radiation leaks. This reopened the question in Britain of whether we should be building new nuclear power stations to secure our future power supplies. Meanwhile we continued to suffer from the installation of wind turbines – one of the biggest confidence tricks perpetrated on a gullible population (and government). There were now so many of these ineffectual eye-sores blighting the British countryside that if we could run them as propellers we could probably fly the country across the Atlantic.

What wondrous things are wind turbines!

When it’s freezing cold and we all need extra power, we can be without wind for days on end whilst they generate diddly squat. On other days when the wind blows hard they shut the damned things down to avoid damage. In one memorable instance a turbine was working so hard it caught fire. It’s hard to think of anything good to say about them unless you are a rich land owner getting even richer by allowing dozens of the things to sit on your land.

In Britain the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The same thing happened in America but to an even worse extent.

Cambridge lost the Oxford v Cambridge University Boat Race by about 3 lengths – more bad news (unless you happen to be an Oxford supporter).

During the summer London and several other major cities in the UK were treated to an unprecedented outbreak of rioting and looting, sparked off by the Police in London shooting and killing a young man. Businesses were ruined, the Police were ineffectual, and there were many instances of outrageous behaviour. Eventually there were thousands of arrests and cases heard in courts operating all night. Severe sentences were handed out. It was notable that these scenes were not repeated in Scotland or Wales, thus reinforcing my view that the English are in many ways a defective race of people.

Trade Unions objecting to austerity measures that were going to affect their pensions combined and called a one-day strike near the end of the year. That demure and sensitive soul, Jeremy Clarkson (of Top Gear fame) declared on TV that the strikers should all be taken out and shot in front of their families.

Clarkson also took the opportunity this year of letting us know that people who jumped in front of trains to kill themselves were being very selfish holding up everyone else on the train. The train driver should be replaced and the train re-started, leaving the foxes and crows to deal with whatever bits of the body still remained scattered about the track. Clarkson’s mouth is so big he can get both feet into it, and with a bit of effort (and luck for the rest of us?) might even be able to swallow himself.

Another vile dictator died: Kim Jong-il of North Korea. We watched thousands of North Koreans wailing and gnashing their teeth at this tragedy that had overcome them, demonstrating the degree to which they had all been

brainwashed, or coerced, or both. No doubt this man (who appeared to one of the select few in North Korea who got enough to eat) arranged for his headstone to be engraved, “I told you I was –il”. He was replaced by his son (also well-fed).

Once again we saw that Communism turns its own philosophy upside down and produces an elite dynasty of all-powerful dictators. “Power to the people”? .. bollocks!

Talking of political philosophies, we have now firmly established (except in the eyes of Cuba, North Korea and China) that Communism doesn’t work. We appear also to have firmly established that Capitalism doesn’t work either. What 2012 needs is a new “–ism” that does work. Nobody’s come up with any useful ideas yet.

Britain celebrated the Christmas spirit by having a fatal stabbing in Oxford Street, a knife attack in the same area on the same day, and a fatal shooting in Manchester.

In conclusion, 2011 has been much like any other year in recent times, and 2012 will probably continue much in the same vein.

In other words, plus ça change plus c'est la même chose – which is French for Isn’t this where we came in?

Happy New Year to my six readers.

The Murky World of Murdoch

I shall not be buying a News of the World tomorrow, even though it would have some historical interest as the final one of a 168-year history. I have never in my life purchased a copy of this newspaper, and currently I am studiously avoiding the purchase of any newspaper belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s stinking stable.

This paper has sunk to new and unbelievable depths in its bid for sales. The hacking of mobile phones belonging to celebrities and politicians was the first we heard of the Murdoch empire’s depravity, and to be honest, perhaps we were not too bothered by the fact that we were getting salacious gossip about film stars, entertainment personalities, and politicians.

But now that it has transpired that for years they have been hacking into the phones of families who have been the victims of abductions and murders it is impossible for us to avoid the nausea. Not only have they been feeding their stories from this illegal and immoral activity by accessing the phones and voice-mail messages of parents who have had their children kidnapped and/or murdered, in the case of Milly Dowler a murdered schoolgirl, they tapped into Milly’s own phone when the police were investigating her disappearance, and even deleted messages from her full-to-capacity voice mailbox so that her distraught parents could continue to leave their desperate messages on their daughter’s phone.

Rupert Murdoch’s reaction to all this was to give a few days’ notice that the News of the World would be closed down, thus throwing 500 people out of work (most of whom had not been tied up with these criminal practices). To add insult to injury, he has retained Rebekah Brooks in her job as News International’s Chief Executive, even though she was Editor of the News of the World when much of this sordid activity was taking place.

Prime Minister David Cameron comes out of this with egg all over his smug face as well, since he employed Andy Coulson (another previous editor who had resigned over earlier cases of phone hacking) as his Media Consultant, in spite of having been warned by the Editor of the Guardian newspaper that he had problems.

I hope that if nothing else comes out of this, we shall at last see the end of the decades-long love affair between our political leaders and the Murdoch empire. Please, no more parties, with Murdoch, his son, or his red-topped chief executive of ‘red-top’ papers. No more special access to 10 Downing Street. If our politicians can’t get themselves elected to positions of high office without cuddling up to Murdoch, then they don’t deserve our support.

David Cameron claims to have come to this understanding. Time will tell. Watch this space.

I also hope that Murdoch’s bid to buy up the remaining shares of BskyB TV and thus be in complete ownership of that enterprise will be successfully thwarted by the competent authorities on the basis that he is not a fit and proper person to be in such a monopolistic position with a major media empire.

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!

Balls Up?

When Ed Milliband became Leader of the British Labour Party (in Opposition) not so long ago, he avoided giving the post of Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer to the man thought most likely to be in the running for it, namely Ed Balls. It was rumoured that there was no love lost between them.

Instead he appointed Alan Johnson, a man with no particular financial credentials, and yet was someone who represented what is increasingly a rarity in British politics, i.e., a politician with the common touch who had once had a real job (he started out as a postal worker) before he entered politics. He was likeable and had a good sense of humour. Interviewed soon after his appointment as Shadow Chancellor, he told reporters that he would be busy reading his Economics Primer.

Now, sadly Alan Johnson is the victim of a failed marriage brought to a head by an affair between his wife and his police bodyguard, of all people! He felt the need to tender his resignation as Shadow Chancellor because of his domestic difficulties.

Now Ed Milliband has fallen back on Ed Balls to take this post. He is not a particularly likeable character, hugely ambitious, has a reputation for bullying (I wouldn't be surprised if he was a victim of bullying at school with a name like that), and more significantly was closely associated with Gordon Brown's failed economic management in the final two years of the last Labour Government.

It remains to be seen whether two Eds are better than one.

Return of Common Sense

Internet jokes about the death of common sense have been flying around in recent years, but I am heartened by a couple of recent announcements by the UK's new Liberal Democrat-Conservative Coalition Government.

The first relates to the over-zealous use of (often imaginary) Health & Safety Regulations by Local Authority officials to ban all sorts of enjoyable and traditional activities in the interests of health and safety, and the fear of compensation claims. Children's games (such as Conkers) have been banned without protective gear, traditional and slightly mad activities like pancake races and cheese rolling have been banned.

The Government is now making a plea for the return of Common Sense, and requires Local Authorities to make out a written case for banning anything under Health & Safety Regulations, and gives local communities the right to challenge any such ban. They also want a reduction in TV adverts for "no-win, no fee" legal services and a reduction in the so-called Compensation Culture.

The second piece of good news is that regulations preventing school teachers from physically restraining a child, or from offering physical comfort to a distressed child have been scrapped. Thank heavens that piece of nonsense has gone.

The Coalition's Emergency Budget

The Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer gave his emergency budget speech in the House of Commons today, bounded on one side by the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister and on the other by the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury, symbolic of the unfamiliar new Politics of Coalition Government.

The Budget contents were about as unpleasant as was expected, with the widely anticipated increase in VAT to 20% (to name but one item), but with a number of welcome ideas for reducing our dependency on out-of-control Welfare Benefits in some areas.

Harriet Harman, acting Leader of the Labour Party made a spirited response in a manner which made one ask why she herself was not a prospective candidate for the Leadership job to be settled in September. But I took issue with her cheap shots against the Liberal Democrats, because had we been given this Budget today by a 100% Conservative Government it would have been a lot more unpleasant than the one we got, tempered as it was in many instances by the influence of the Liberal Democrats within the Coalition.

UK GENERAL ELECTION - The Usual Farce

Current opinion polls suggest that about 62% of the British Public do not want a Conservative Government, and yet such is the stupidly undemocratic nature of our voting system, that if people vote as they say they intend to, then the likelihood is that we shall finish up getting a Conservative government anyway, and it will be representing about 38% of the population.

I've been driven to distraction by this tyrannical system for the whole of my life, and I'm fed up to the back teeth with it. As a point of principle, whoever I vote for in this election, I shall be making a point of ensuring it is not for any Party that refuses to accept the need for electoral reform.

I guess that rules out the Conservatives. Labour are promising a referendum on the need for electoral reform, so that puts them in a slightly better light. The Liberal Democrats, Greens, and UKIP are all in favour of a fair voting system.

I'm sure most of the rest of Europe think we are completely barmy to put up with this kind of thing.

UK GENERAL ELECTION

So now we know .. it's May 6th.

For the first time in my life I am a "floating voter".

I am a "don't know".

I am looking forward to the first-ever TV debates between the Leaders of the Labour Party, Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats, even though I'm sure it's not going to be a very spontaneous affair. It's a step in the right direction.

Even if (and it's a big IF) the Conservatives come up with some attractive policies, they are still opposed to the reform of the voting system. Our voting system is not democratic. I am, heart and soul, a democrat.

Therefore, as a floating voter, if I finish up floating in the direction of voting Conservative, then we can all look forward to some skating sessions on the frozen lakes of Hell.

What do we want from our Political Leaders?

All this media furore on the subject of Prime Minister Brown's alleged bullying of his staff (most of which has recently been thrown into doubt anyway), coupled with our apparent obsession with the man's general character, likeability, and so on, leads me to wonder why our democratic process has progressively turned into an "X Factor" competition without the music.

The Conservatives have been putting up huge billboard posters showing an airbrushed pretty-boy photo of their leader David Cameron and a message saying "we can't go on like this".

It's all become too personalised. It's a beauty contest. Where is the information on what the Parties are really proposing to do? Even when the Conservatives feel able to feed us with the odd policy proposal or two, after a couple of weeks have gone by they've changed their tune and the policy's been altered.

Who cares if Gordon Brown is a difficult man to work with? Who cares if he gets angry when he can't get things done that he wants done? It's what you might expect from someone who has anything about him with the demands of the top job on his shoulders.

Successful War Leader, Winston Churchill, was famously grumpy, irascible, prone to excessive drinking and bouts of depression. The people who worked with him accepted that and got on with the job. Now we have a load of wimps in No.10 Downing Street who can't hack it.

Clement Attlee, who led the immediate post-war Labour Government wouldn't have had any success at all in today's popularity stakes; he was quietly spoken and looked like an old-fashioned High Street Bank Manager. And yet Attlee successfully led a government that revolutionised a bankrupt British society after the ravages of war; he nationalised the railways, gas, electricity and water, and set up the National Health Service. And he did all this within 5 years.

I don't want our political leaders to be fussing about how popular they are, how nice they are, how good looking they are, how well they come over on television, how many people they are going to upset with some policy or other. I want them to be people with some kind vision about what kind of society they want, and have the ability to inspire the people around him to come up with the goods.

I don't think it is necessary for our Prime Ministers to be invited on to chat shows to demonstrate they are normal human beings who are able to weep in public about their personal tragedies.

Whatever one might think about Labour Party policies, Gordon Brown stands head and shoulders above the Conservative's David Cameron and the Liberal Democrat's Nick Clegg, both of whom appear to me to be lightweight wimps blowing around in the wind.

British National Party

Now that the BNP has changed its constitution to comply with a legal judgement against its original policy of allowing only white indigenous British membership, I wait with bated breath for the headlong rush of non-white UK citizens who have been waiting impatiently to join the Party!

Electoral Reform & the Conservative Party

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has come round to the view that we should replace our "first-past-the-post" voting system with something fairer. The cynical view is that, having recognised that he looks like losing the General Election this year, he has come up with this wheeze.

Personally, whatever his reason, I welcome his proposal that Parliament should vote on providing us with a Referendum on whether or not we should switch to the "Alternate Vote" system. As the Liberal Democrats have said, it doesn't go far enough towards true democracy (they want full-blown Proportional Representation), but this is a welcome step in the right direction.

Instead of placing an X against one candidate, we would be invited to number the candidates 1,2,3 etc. in order of preference. Candidates losing out on first preference would have their votes redistributed until such time as one candidate commands the support of at least 50% of the voters.

This at least would get rid of the current preposterous system, whereby any candidate who manages to get more votes than his nearest rival is elected - and more often than not finishes up representing well under 50% of the vote. When this is magnified across all the constituencies we finish up with the Party gaining the most seats forming a government which in reality often represents only 30% of the popular vote. And they call that democracy!

Whenever I hear the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, or any of his pompous acolytes supporting the present system on the grounds that it has "served us very well over the years" my blood pressure rockets and I'm tempted to reach for the nearest supply of Valium. What they mean is that it has served them very well over the years .. to pretend that it is democracy is nothing short of criminal stupidity.

It is only democratic in a two-Party system, and we do not have a two-Party system.

Wake up Conservatives! You are not getting my vote until or unless you agree to a fair voting system.

Nick Griffin (BNP) on Question Time

I watched the BBC's Question Time last night, with Nick Griffin (Leader of the British National Party) on the panel.

He was shown to be, and showed himself to be, pretty damned stupid. The anti-fascist protesters outside Television Centre trying to prevent him from appearing were wrong: the BBC did us all a great service.

He was no match for the other members of the panel who were able to show him up for what he is merely by the use of reasoned argument and the presentation of historical facts.

The audience (a political cross-section) allowed him to have his say, but made quite clear the contempt in which they held him. The more Griffin presented his own views the more he made himself look both disgusting and silly in equal measure.

Good job, BBC! Don't be put off by those who would stifle free speech.

British National Party

There is a great furore going on about the Leader of the BNP (British National Party) Nick Griffin being invited on to the panel of the BBC’s Question Time this evening. The BNP, however odious, has two elected Members of the European Parliament, and therefore are technically entitled to appear on such a programme.

This afternoon there were huge demonstrations by anti-fascist organisations outside the BBC TV Centre, and some managed to get inside the building – they were later ejected. At one stage it looked as though Griffin would not be able to get into the building, but this was eventually achieved by one of many back entrances in side streets. At the time of writing this it looks as though the programme will go ahead. It promises to be a somewhat stimulating debate, to say the least. No doubt the studio audience will become over-heated.

It seems to me that it is little good protesting at the BBC’s decision to invite Griffin on to the panel, since the BNP is a legitimate Party. My problem is that it should not really be a legitimate Party at all, and it should be up to the Government to proscribe it. After all, the Party’s Constitution states that membership is limited to the “Indigenous Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Folk” of Britain. To me, this smacks of Adolph Hitler’s dream of the pure Arian Germanic Race.

A recent Court Decision on the BNP’s Constitution requires the Party to open its membership to all. It remains to be seen whether they will make that change. Even if they did, I would be very surprised if any of our “non-white” community would ever wish to become a member! It is an openly racist Party.

I shall (as usual) be watching Question Time tonight, but with more than a little excited anticipation on how it will all turn out. Apparently Jack Straw, Secretary of State for Justice as agreed to be on the Panel, together with a senior MP from the Liberal Democrats. Should make for interesting watching.

This is an excerpt from the BBC Website – an article by the programme’s editor – which makes an interesting reference to the USA.

"There is something very British about Question Time.

Having just spent a sabbatical year in Washington - where politicians are in the most part astonishingly remote from their electorate - I am reminded that the programme represents a major investment in the democratic process by our political class

My American colleagues - some of them aides to top US politicians - would watch DVDs of the show in near disbelief, open mouthed.

This could never happen in the US, they would say, none of the senior politicians would be willing to mix with voters in prime time.

Yet back in the UK, that is exactly what happens, week after week.

Speaking at the weekend to mark the show's 30th anniversary, Harriet Harman said that Question Time can still make or break a political career - and it remains the most dangerous of political formats."

This is the link to the whole article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/8271710.stm

Afghanistan

Why are we there?

What have we achieved?

This, from today's New York Times ..

“We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on Election Day,” the senior Western diplomat said. “But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai.”

Besides creating the fake sites, Mr. Karzai’s supporters also took over approximately 800 legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai, the officials said.

The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10. “We are talking about orders of magnitude,” the senior Western diplomat said.

We are told by the politicians that our boys and girls in uniform are there (1) to make safe the streets of America and Europe from the threat of terrorism and (2) to encourage the Afghans to take the democratic path as an alternative to the tyranny of the Taliban.

Well, with regard to keeping us safe from terrorism I haven't noticed that our world has been a safer place in recent years, and with regard to democracy, the last I heard was that democracy has nothing to do with faking thousands of votes.

So - I want somebody to tell me again - why are we there, and what have we achieved?

Torture

So now we know .. it was OK for America to employ torture on terrorist suspects so long as strict rules were applied.

The Bush/Cheney regime .. a bunch of crooks and gangsters masquerading as Christians. They deserved to be kicked out of office.

The UK government hasn't been much better in quietly acquiescing to a lot of shady practices, including some carried out by our own security agencies. Election 2010: they are for the chop next!

Incidentally, for all this effort I don't notice the world becoming a significantly safer place - quite the opposite in fact.

New Speaker of the House of Commons

Just when we were slowly being conned into believing that the Conservative Party had ceased to be "The Nasty Party" the shits have come out of the woodwork again following the overwhelming election of the excellent John Bercow MP (left) as Speaker of the House of Commons.

There are rumbles and rumours that most of the Conservative MPs were firmly against the election of this particular Conservative MP as the new Speaker. Worse still they are already talking about a campaign to remove him if and when (though they say "when") they have a Parliamentary majority after the next General Election.

So what is their problem? Well, Bercow used to have quite right-wing views when he was first elected to Parliament for the Conservative Party, but over the years he has moderated his views considerably, to the extent that his colleagues think he would be more suited as a Member of the Labour Party.

They are now miffed that his election to the (non-party-political) post of Speaker, soundly beating the nine other candidates, could only have been achieved by the combined efforts of the Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs who rightly saw him as a committed reformer.

It is disgusting that the Conservatives cannot bring themselves to accept the results of a free, secret, and cross-party vote for the most important post in the House of Commons.

Recently I have been wearing rose-tinted glasses when looking at David Cameron and his team, but (1) their opposition to reform of our electoral system, and (2) this latest show of bad feeling against John Bercow have restored my eyesight to its former state.

http://bbc.co.uk/i/lg9jz/?t=1h01m22s