Just a quick one: http://johnnyedge.blogspot.com/2010/11/these-events-took-place-roughly-between.html
sounds fun.
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Friday, 22 October 2010
The burden on the young
Hi to the one or two people who read the stuff I post here. I doubt you're still following given how long it's been since I've posted, but maybe a facebook update or something along those lines will get you back with me. Not sure if I'm going to be posting future updates - I've always just been doing this when and where I feel I have a topic to discuss. And right now is one of those times.
Recent proposals coming from the mouths of politicians and those who inform them include the idea of increasing the cap on tuition fees and possibly even making them unlimited. I think this is wrong, but moreover I think it's symptomatic of a worrying pattern whereby a younger generation (ours!) is being made to pay for the mistakes of our forebears. I want to make sure I emphasise here that it's not that our parents are going around splashing the inheritance or just generally being arseholes out of spite or wilful neglect or anything along those lines. It's more like there were a number of mistakes made and now the people paying the price are by and large the young.
Tuition fees is merely the thing that has prompted this post; it's not the focus of it. In fact, I can understand the arguments for increasing the cap on tuition fees: namely, that universities are having their funding cut and they need some other way to support themselves. You can debate the rationality of cutting the funding in the first place, but then we're kind of in a fiscal morass and there are cuts going on around the board. It's messy and it's complicated. Nevertheless, it is true that it is young people who will pay the larger share of such increases, notably those whose parents can't afford to support them through university (in fact the real risk with any such tax raise or whatever is not the pressure it puts on the poor as the poor are generally protected as much as possible for the political kudos that generates - it's the pressure on those who make enough so that they're not counted by needy, but who will struggle to pay any increase. I'd guess systems like the NHS and all that jazz generally favour the bracket of population in the middle as the rich can pay medical/tuition/whatever fees and the poor have them payed by the government.) But forcing students to take on large amounts of debt to get through university, like is currently the case in the states? Talking to people online, the sums they are having to pay are simply frightening. I don't know if that's a path we want to go down.
It's not the only way that the young are suffering, either. With the economic downturn, the young have again suffered. In terms of unemployment, in 2009 global youth unemployment reached a record high. Consider that. If global adult unemployment had reached a record high, we would certainly have heard about it. Some of this is due to the developing world (where it is of course, also a problem and I don't want to downplay it, but it's a problem for a different blog. This blog is the opinion of a well off caucasian male, and as such he's not concerned about the petty problems of the wider world,) but some of it is also due to the situation in the west. I'm sure you've seen the short sections on the news but here, for reference, is a list of articles in the ILO database about youth unemployment: http://www.ilo.org/Search3/search.do?searchWhat=youth+unemployment&locale=en_US
So young people are going to have to pay more for their education and be less certain of a job when they leave education. That's not great. But there are other long term issues that the young will have to deal with which have been exacerbated by the inaction of their elders. Most notably, climate change. We waited so long to take action, that the sweetspot passed, and it seems now that we're going to have to simply deal with the consequences rather than stop them happening in the first place. Scientists find modelling climate an intensely difficult task, so knowing exactly what is happening is difficult, but recently I've been seeing more and more articles where the opinion of scientists is now that a certain rise in temperatures is inevitable, and that that rise is such that it will cause some of the recursive effects that we had hoped we could avoid. That is, when the temperature rises, that in and of itself causes more carbon to be released into the atmosphere after certain tipping points. So the fact that those older than us, who had the power to act, did not, has left us with a huge steaming turd of a problem on our laps.
What's more, demographic pressure means we're going to have to confront these issues whilst supporting a larger and larger elderly population. The elderly not only have greater demands on society but also contribute less back - they've already made their contribution and earnt their rest, but it places a greater burden still on the young. Spiralling health care costs are already an issue in the states, and they will be an issue here too (though thankfully we have a saner system, and as such we won't have as great a cost. But we'll have to see.)
So the youth of today are faced with major short term challenges in rising tuition fees and falling employment) and major long term challenges. There are even more issues which I haven't touched on - for example, there's a coming global water crisis, and there's the fiscal issue, and so on. All problems which will affect the youth of today, and many of which could have been avoided with action from our parent's generation. So what can we do about it? I'm not sure - most likely it's simply going to be a case of toughing it out.
Of course, it's not all doom and gloom. To end this on a happier note, here are the things that our parents generation has done for us: Computers, the internet, mobile phones, uncounted pharmaceuticals and medical advances, printers, and so on. The digital revolution, baby!
Recent proposals coming from the mouths of politicians and those who inform them include the idea of increasing the cap on tuition fees and possibly even making them unlimited. I think this is wrong, but moreover I think it's symptomatic of a worrying pattern whereby a younger generation (ours!) is being made to pay for the mistakes of our forebears. I want to make sure I emphasise here that it's not that our parents are going around splashing the inheritance or just generally being arseholes out of spite or wilful neglect or anything along those lines. It's more like there were a number of mistakes made and now the people paying the price are by and large the young.
Tuition fees is merely the thing that has prompted this post; it's not the focus of it. In fact, I can understand the arguments for increasing the cap on tuition fees: namely, that universities are having their funding cut and they need some other way to support themselves. You can debate the rationality of cutting the funding in the first place, but then we're kind of in a fiscal morass and there are cuts going on around the board. It's messy and it's complicated. Nevertheless, it is true that it is young people who will pay the larger share of such increases, notably those whose parents can't afford to support them through university (in fact the real risk with any such tax raise or whatever is not the pressure it puts on the poor as the poor are generally protected as much as possible for the political kudos that generates - it's the pressure on those who make enough so that they're not counted by needy, but who will struggle to pay any increase. I'd guess systems like the NHS and all that jazz generally favour the bracket of population in the middle as the rich can pay medical/tuition/whatever fees and the poor have them payed by the government.) But forcing students to take on large amounts of debt to get through university, like is currently the case in the states? Talking to people online, the sums they are having to pay are simply frightening. I don't know if that's a path we want to go down.
It's not the only way that the young are suffering, either. With the economic downturn, the young have again suffered. In terms of unemployment, in 2009 global youth unemployment reached a record high. Consider that. If global adult unemployment had reached a record high, we would certainly have heard about it. Some of this is due to the developing world (where it is of course, also a problem and I don't want to downplay it, but it's a problem for a different blog. This blog is the opinion of a well off caucasian male, and as such he's not concerned about the petty problems of the wider world,) but some of it is also due to the situation in the west. I'm sure you've seen the short sections on the news but here, for reference, is a list of articles in the ILO database about youth unemployment: http://www.ilo.org/Search3/search.do?searchWhat=youth+unemployment&locale=en_US
So young people are going to have to pay more for their education and be less certain of a job when they leave education. That's not great. But there are other long term issues that the young will have to deal with which have been exacerbated by the inaction of their elders. Most notably, climate change. We waited so long to take action, that the sweetspot passed, and it seems now that we're going to have to simply deal with the consequences rather than stop them happening in the first place. Scientists find modelling climate an intensely difficult task, so knowing exactly what is happening is difficult, but recently I've been seeing more and more articles where the opinion of scientists is now that a certain rise in temperatures is inevitable, and that that rise is such that it will cause some of the recursive effects that we had hoped we could avoid. That is, when the temperature rises, that in and of itself causes more carbon to be released into the atmosphere after certain tipping points. So the fact that those older than us, who had the power to act, did not, has left us with a huge steaming turd of a problem on our laps.
What's more, demographic pressure means we're going to have to confront these issues whilst supporting a larger and larger elderly population. The elderly not only have greater demands on society but also contribute less back - they've already made their contribution and earnt their rest, but it places a greater burden still on the young. Spiralling health care costs are already an issue in the states, and they will be an issue here too (though thankfully we have a saner system, and as such we won't have as great a cost. But we'll have to see.)
So the youth of today are faced with major short term challenges in rising tuition fees and falling employment) and major long term challenges. There are even more issues which I haven't touched on - for example, there's a coming global water crisis, and there's the fiscal issue, and so on. All problems which will affect the youth of today, and many of which could have been avoided with action from our parent's generation. So what can we do about it? I'm not sure - most likely it's simply going to be a case of toughing it out.
Of course, it's not all doom and gloom. To end this on a happier note, here are the things that our parents generation has done for us: Computers, the internet, mobile phones, uncounted pharmaceuticals and medical advances, printers, and so on. The digital revolution, baby!
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
How we sell our privacy
Every time you use a supposedly free web service, the price you are paying is a hidden donation of a slice of you life. Filling in one of those forms that are absolutely typical of most websites that require a login, have you ever stopped to wonder what happens to your first name, last name, date of birth, username and password? In fact, how often is that stuff even relevant to the content the website is offering? If you're choosing to sign up for an internet forum to discuss movies or computer games or DIY carpentry, then your actual name is pretty much irrelevant. Yet still you blithely hand over facts about your private life without so much as a second glance.
But what happens to that information? Most of the time it goes into a profile of some kind which you can choose to display or not to display. Sometimes it's used elsewhere. But the key part is that it is stored. Copies of your information are on a server somewhere, bits of information about you and your private life stashed away, available to people and organisations who may not have your best interests at heart. A name can lead to a phone number and a home address, a home address and information about your private life (say, a post you make on a fitness website about how you go to the gym every thursday at 3 pm) could be used to plot a burglary. I haven't personally heard of this kind of information being abused in such a way, but frankly we're only at the tip of the iceberg here.
The next step is you buying stuff online. When you buy stuff online,y ou don't just type in your name, address and phone number, you also give away that most crucial of pieces of information, your credit card details. That is all that is needed to steal vast amounts of money from you. That information is also stored, in a form that companies can retrieve if they need to: take this document from microsoft detailing the information they can provide to the police http://file.wikileaks.org/file/microsoft-spy.pdf and in particular the section at the bottom dealing with xbox live services; now while I hope none of my readers are having any trouble with the police right now, consider this: if microsoft can retrieve that information on request, if at some point someone were to hack microsoft's servers what would stop them retrieving the same information? Presumably microsoft's servers are a tough nut to crack, but then you'd think the same about the US department of defence and that didn't stop Gary Mckinnon. Now consider that every service you've ever paid for online potentially has a copy of your credit card details.
We're not done yet.
Recently all this privacy jazz has been taking centre stage in the news, too, with the almighty backlash that confronted Facebook over their changes to their security policy. This baffles me somewhat; shouldn't it be immediately obvious to anyone signing up to a site whose purpose is to create a profile of you and share it with others be surprised to discover that this is a threat to their security? Regardless, with regards to privacy, facebook is to my mind far less insidious than google. How many people know that google stores their search histories? Everything you have searched for is stored somewhere on a google server linked to your ip address. Servers that recently had personal information stolen from them (granted, from gmail accounts rather than from search histories).
Indeed, google's business model is to use information about you to sell targeted ads; this is what makes them so successful. A company buying ads with google knows that they are likely to get a better return than with other services because of google's vast pool of data about you that it can use to target ads at you; geographical location (from your ip address), what you searched for, the content of the site you are visiting and so on. In other words, Google sells personal information about you to companies that want to sell you stuff. That thought is to me rather chilling.
Here is a quote I sourced from wikipedia (whoo journalism):
But what happens to that information? Most of the time it goes into a profile of some kind which you can choose to display or not to display. Sometimes it's used elsewhere. But the key part is that it is stored. Copies of your information are on a server somewhere, bits of information about you and your private life stashed away, available to people and organisations who may not have your best interests at heart. A name can lead to a phone number and a home address, a home address and information about your private life (say, a post you make on a fitness website about how you go to the gym every thursday at 3 pm) could be used to plot a burglary. I haven't personally heard of this kind of information being abused in such a way, but frankly we're only at the tip of the iceberg here.
The next step is you buying stuff online. When you buy stuff online,y ou don't just type in your name, address and phone number, you also give away that most crucial of pieces of information, your credit card details. That is all that is needed to steal vast amounts of money from you. That information is also stored, in a form that companies can retrieve if they need to: take this document from microsoft detailing the information they can provide to the police http://file.wikileaks.org/file/microsoft-spy.pdf and in particular the section at the bottom dealing with xbox live services; now while I hope none of my readers are having any trouble with the police right now, consider this: if microsoft can retrieve that information on request, if at some point someone were to hack microsoft's servers what would stop them retrieving the same information? Presumably microsoft's servers are a tough nut to crack, but then you'd think the same about the US department of defence and that didn't stop Gary Mckinnon. Now consider that every service you've ever paid for online potentially has a copy of your credit card details.
We're not done yet.
Recently all this privacy jazz has been taking centre stage in the news, too, with the almighty backlash that confronted Facebook over their changes to their security policy. This baffles me somewhat; shouldn't it be immediately obvious to anyone signing up to a site whose purpose is to create a profile of you and share it with others be surprised to discover that this is a threat to their security? Regardless, with regards to privacy, facebook is to my mind far less insidious than google. How many people know that google stores their search histories? Everything you have searched for is stored somewhere on a google server linked to your ip address. Servers that recently had personal information stolen from them (granted, from gmail accounts rather than from search histories).
Indeed, google's business model is to use information about you to sell targeted ads; this is what makes them so successful. A company buying ads with google knows that they are likely to get a better return than with other services because of google's vast pool of data about you that it can use to target ads at you; geographical location (from your ip address), what you searched for, the content of the site you are visiting and so on. In other words, Google sells personal information about you to companies that want to sell you stuff. That thought is to me rather chilling.
Here is a quote I sourced from wikipedia (whoo journalism):
On December 2009, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared after privacy concerns: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."[13]"
It is often tempting to treat the internet like we treat the sea; a vast dumping ground for everything and anything, where our data will be lost in the great seething vastness of it all. But like the ocean, it all washes up somewhere. Anything you type, anything you've said, anything you have told others can and will be used against you. How long until a political scandal is broken via facebook? Remember, nothing you say or do on the internet is ever truly lost, and nor is it ever truly private.Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Government and opposition
The conservatives and the lib dems have an unprecedented opportunity here to show what they can do. Ultimately, it's going to end in tears and name calling when Labour gets its act together and starts slamming them about the cuts they have to make in order to balance the books that grew wildly out of control during Labour's term in office, but until then the conservatives and the lib dems have to make hay. Which it appears they are doing, with the political reform that is ocming through looking like some kind of liberal's wet dream.
It's true that the voting system is not being reformed to the extent that I would like - I honestly believe that proportional voting would be fairer and more representative of the views of the people of britain. But if we get an elected second chamber that is voted in by a proportional system, then the need to further reform the voting system becomes less urgent. The current voting system favours regional interests over national interests - hence the strength of nationalist parties who pick up massive amounts of seats relative to the amount of votes they get, and the weakness of the liberal democrats who get similar vote shares all over britain. An proportional voting system would represent interests on a national scale; big picture stuff that gets people fired up but not a specific set of people. Having one chamber elected proportionally and one elected with a constituency link gives to my mind a welcome compromise between small picture local and regional interests and big picture national interests. This is especially so if we move to AV, which will eliminate the other source of unfairness in our current voting system; that is, tactical voting. With AV, there is literally no reason not to vote for your preferred candidate, and that is a good thing.
The other point about the political reform was the promise to ask for a referndum on laws to repeal. Liberal bugbear the digital economy act may be one of these. I haven't seen anywhere suggesting it yet but there was a major backlash against the bill from commentators on the web. I'll be interested to see how that develops.
In other news, it looks like Clegg got the backing of party activists in the meeting he had with them some days ago. This to me seems to be the first inkling that despite all the rage and fury, the downsides to the lib dems in terms of vote share need not be as drastic as had been thought. The committed lib dems recognise that this kind of coalition government is the only way to get some of their policies enacted and hence are (or ought to be) delighted that they finally have some say in how the country is being run. The only area it might hurt is in terms of labour supporters who voted tactically for the lib dems. Time will tell how much of a factor that will be, but any belief that this deal will marginalise the lib dems for a century is clearly unfounded.
Finally, the Labour leadership election looks very dull. I hope I'm the only one who simply doesn't know what any of the candidates stand for - what makes each one different from any of the others. We have the brothers Ed and David Miliband, both of whom strike me as smart guys and good salesmen, but about whom I have no real idea of their political beliefs or motivations (beyond that they are Labour ministers.) And then there's Ed Balls, who if we were going to go by the media coverage of him, has a singular claim to fame - he is a close political ally of Gordon Brown. Frankly, what I've seen of him on shows like Question Time hasn't impressed me that much. Labour should be picking their leaders based on the substance of what they are offering, not based on their political alliegances. This man, after all, is presumably their candidate for prime minister. Why should I trust him?
It's true that the voting system is not being reformed to the extent that I would like - I honestly believe that proportional voting would be fairer and more representative of the views of the people of britain. But if we get an elected second chamber that is voted in by a proportional system, then the need to further reform the voting system becomes less urgent. The current voting system favours regional interests over national interests - hence the strength of nationalist parties who pick up massive amounts of seats relative to the amount of votes they get, and the weakness of the liberal democrats who get similar vote shares all over britain. An proportional voting system would represent interests on a national scale; big picture stuff that gets people fired up but not a specific set of people. Having one chamber elected proportionally and one elected with a constituency link gives to my mind a welcome compromise between small picture local and regional interests and big picture national interests. This is especially so if we move to AV, which will eliminate the other source of unfairness in our current voting system; that is, tactical voting. With AV, there is literally no reason not to vote for your preferred candidate, and that is a good thing.
The other point about the political reform was the promise to ask for a referndum on laws to repeal. Liberal bugbear the digital economy act may be one of these. I haven't seen anywhere suggesting it yet but there was a major backlash against the bill from commentators on the web. I'll be interested to see how that develops.
In other news, it looks like Clegg got the backing of party activists in the meeting he had with them some days ago. This to me seems to be the first inkling that despite all the rage and fury, the downsides to the lib dems in terms of vote share need not be as drastic as had been thought. The committed lib dems recognise that this kind of coalition government is the only way to get some of their policies enacted and hence are (or ought to be) delighted that they finally have some say in how the country is being run. The only area it might hurt is in terms of labour supporters who voted tactically for the lib dems. Time will tell how much of a factor that will be, but any belief that this deal will marginalise the lib dems for a century is clearly unfounded.
Finally, the Labour leadership election looks very dull. I hope I'm the only one who simply doesn't know what any of the candidates stand for - what makes each one different from any of the others. We have the brothers Ed and David Miliband, both of whom strike me as smart guys and good salesmen, but about whom I have no real idea of their political beliefs or motivations (beyond that they are Labour ministers.) And then there's Ed Balls, who if we were going to go by the media coverage of him, has a singular claim to fame - he is a close political ally of Gordon Brown. Frankly, what I've seen of him on shows like Question Time hasn't impressed me that much. Labour should be picking their leaders based on the substance of what they are offering, not based on their political alliegances. This man, after all, is presumably their candidate for prime minister. Why should I trust him?
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
On the art of Compromise (and why people are WRONG.)
I've been hearing a lot on the message boards and twitter and wherever from a lot of people saying that the Lib Dems' deal with the Conservatives will kill their vote share and that it was the wrong thing to do. In particular, there are a lot of people claiming to be Lib Dems voters who "would never have dreamed of voting tory" or claim that they "are normally labour voters who voted lib dem but now they've sold their souls". This is the issue with voting for someone to keep someone else out. You are bound to be disappointed at some point, either when your second choice starts instituting policies that you disagree with, or when your second choice (legitimately!) decides to work with that party or person you wanted out.
A Lib Dem supporter would be pleased, nay, delighted, to see their policies coming to fruition, whereas a person who just voted for them to keep the tories out should have known better, frankly. Vote for the party or person whose priorities and policies most closely match your own; then, no matter what the final result, you can be sure that your vote has gone towards influencing the result towards your preferred outcome. Vote against, you risk your vote having the opposite outcome to the one you had intended. Vote for, and you know that your goals will be advanced.
What's more, there's been a lot of talk about electoral reform and how much of a priority it is for the lib dems and how they musn't leave talks without it. It's true - and I myself have advocated a change of the voting system - that it is important, in fact it's a priority, and it's right that the lib dems should negotiate hard for it. But to claim that they should walk away unless they get it is a misunderstanding of the nature of compromise. The tories, for whatever reason, do not support electoral reform. They received significantly more votes than the lib dems. Their offer of a referendum on AV is frankly pretty generous. The Lib Dems and their supporters need to understand and accept that they can't have everything. Negotiations involve give and take, and in this particular set of negotiations the lib dems have actually done rather well.
Particularly for advocates of a system that would regularly produce hung parliaments, the lib dems have to understand that a coalition doesn't mean a lib dem government. It does mean that the lib dems can reign in the conservatives on areas which they see as unfair - for example, the inheritance tax cut - and that some lib dem policies will become governmental objectives. But that's all taht can be said about that.
I don't believe a lib-lab coalition would have been, somehow, more legitimate that a con-lib one. I know that it will hurt them in terms of votes (though I suspect that is also overstated - most of the lib dem voters are presumably people who have voted for the lib dems many times before given their tiny increase in vote share, and who thusly agree with lib dem policy and will probably return to them in time), but I think that working with the conservatives here is not just the best thing for the country and for the party's priorities.
A lib-lab coalition doesn't have a majority of seats. Labour lost. The Lib Dems and Labour are not conjoined twins, and there are subsantial differences between the two, which mean that a so-called progressive alliance would have required similar amounts of compromise etc.
A Lib Dem supporter would be pleased, nay, delighted, to see their policies coming to fruition, whereas a person who just voted for them to keep the tories out should have known better, frankly. Vote for the party or person whose priorities and policies most closely match your own; then, no matter what the final result, you can be sure that your vote has gone towards influencing the result towards your preferred outcome. Vote against, you risk your vote having the opposite outcome to the one you had intended. Vote for, and you know that your goals will be advanced.
What's more, there's been a lot of talk about electoral reform and how much of a priority it is for the lib dems and how they musn't leave talks without it. It's true - and I myself have advocated a change of the voting system - that it is important, in fact it's a priority, and it's right that the lib dems should negotiate hard for it. But to claim that they should walk away unless they get it is a misunderstanding of the nature of compromise. The tories, for whatever reason, do not support electoral reform. They received significantly more votes than the lib dems. Their offer of a referendum on AV is frankly pretty generous. The Lib Dems and their supporters need to understand and accept that they can't have everything. Negotiations involve give and take, and in this particular set of negotiations the lib dems have actually done rather well.
Particularly for advocates of a system that would regularly produce hung parliaments, the lib dems have to understand that a coalition doesn't mean a lib dem government. It does mean that the lib dems can reign in the conservatives on areas which they see as unfair - for example, the inheritance tax cut - and that some lib dem policies will become governmental objectives. But that's all taht can be said about that.
I don't believe a lib-lab coalition would have been, somehow, more legitimate that a con-lib one. I know that it will hurt them in terms of votes (though I suspect that is also overstated - most of the lib dem voters are presumably people who have voted for the lib dems many times before given their tiny increase in vote share, and who thusly agree with lib dem policy and will probably return to them in time), but I think that working with the conservatives here is not just the best thing for the country and for the party's priorities.
A lib-lab coalition doesn't have a majority of seats. Labour lost. The Lib Dems and Labour are not conjoined twins, and there are subsantial differences between the two, which mean that a so-called progressive alliance would have required similar amounts of compromise etc.
Bye Brown!
Goodbye, Mr. Brown.
All the best. Let's see what the future brings, now, for the country and for labour.
All the best. Let's see what the future brings, now, for the country and for labour.
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Echoes
Hey, I'd invite anyone who is actually reading this blog to post comments. I've made it so you don't have to sign in or anything, just write your comment below the blog.
Now, there's been a lot of talk in editorials and comments sections and the like that I've been reading that have been talking about the Lib Dems shouldn't be working with the tories because they don't agree on too many things, most notably proportional representation. These people tend to prefer a "progressive alliance" of the Lib Dems, Labour, and a number of the smaller regional parties. They point to Labour offering the Lib Dems everything under the sun, including, crucially, electoral reform. But I don't think that offer is credible.
A Lib/Lab coalition would also require the support of numerous smaller parties like the northern irish parties, like plaid cymru, like the SNP. But what reason do these parties have to support electoral reform? The current system, with its favouring of regional politics over national politics, suits them fine, I would imagine. This is the point no one is discussing: Labour's offer of electoral reform simply is not credible because the smaller parties necessary for their coalition would baulk at such a prospect. I mean, look at Alex Salmond; he's a perfectly reasonable man, a capable politician and a decent governer, but he would throw his granny under a bus in exchange for power, and he certainly wouldn't want to risk turning his party into a tiny bit part player as would inevitably happen under proportional representation. The SNP received less votes than the BNP or UKIP. You think they would want to become the sixth largest party?
Proportional representation can work, but people need to understand that it's going to require compromises. Here, the compromise might be that we lose proportional representation. IN exchange, we can moderate the extremism in a tory government, we can roll back some of the civil liberty infringements of the Labour party (an area which distinguishes the Lib Dems from labour - heck, almost defines their reason for existence!), we can even get some aprts of Lib Dem policy implemented. The Lib Dems have a lot of power here - top tory people want to work with them, so they'll be willing to compromise on a lot. And that, to my view, is only right, when you consider that it's only the sick voting system that means that the Lib Dems have so little power in the first place.
I desperately want proportional representation, but I don't see how Labour could possibly deliver it. Their offer isn't credible.
Now, there's been a lot of talk in editorials and comments sections and the like that I've been reading that have been talking about the Lib Dems shouldn't be working with the tories because they don't agree on too many things, most notably proportional representation. These people tend to prefer a "progressive alliance" of the Lib Dems, Labour, and a number of the smaller regional parties. They point to Labour offering the Lib Dems everything under the sun, including, crucially, electoral reform. But I don't think that offer is credible.
A Lib/Lab coalition would also require the support of numerous smaller parties like the northern irish parties, like plaid cymru, like the SNP. But what reason do these parties have to support electoral reform? The current system, with its favouring of regional politics over national politics, suits them fine, I would imagine. This is the point no one is discussing: Labour's offer of electoral reform simply is not credible because the smaller parties necessary for their coalition would baulk at such a prospect. I mean, look at Alex Salmond; he's a perfectly reasonable man, a capable politician and a decent governer, but he would throw his granny under a bus in exchange for power, and he certainly wouldn't want to risk turning his party into a tiny bit part player as would inevitably happen under proportional representation. The SNP received less votes than the BNP or UKIP. You think they would want to become the sixth largest party?
Proportional representation can work, but people need to understand that it's going to require compromises. Here, the compromise might be that we lose proportional representation. IN exchange, we can moderate the extremism in a tory government, we can roll back some of the civil liberty infringements of the Labour party (an area which distinguishes the Lib Dems from labour - heck, almost defines their reason for existence!), we can even get some aprts of Lib Dem policy implemented. The Lib Dems have a lot of power here - top tory people want to work with them, so they'll be willing to compromise on a lot. And that, to my view, is only right, when you consider that it's only the sick voting system that means that the Lib Dems have so little power in the first place.
I desperately want proportional representation, but I don't see how Labour could possibly deliver it. Their offer isn't credible.
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