Ho hum. There was a disappointing result - from my point of view - in last week's Fun Online Poll:
Do you want the UK to adopt the 'alternative vote' system instead of 'first past the post' for electing MPs?
Yes - 32%
No - 68%
I just don't see the problem - provided you are not forced to use all your votes, then those people who are accustomed to just putting one cross (or only like one candidate) can just their first vote - what have they lost?
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This week's Fun Online Poll is a wider philosophical/economics question:
People value things more highly and use them more efficiently if...
... they have to work hard and put money aside to pay for them.
... they are 'free'; subsidised by the taxpayer; or bought with easy credit.
This applies to obvious things like 'free' NHS treatment or 'free' state education, but IMHO the same applies to land and buildings.
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
Grand theft Labour
2 hours ago
11 comments:
My vote is fine; it's other people's votes that cause the problem.
I'm weird, as I can and do honestly appreciate and value and not take for granted the things that are provided for me "free", which means of course financed by other people, and equally appreciate and value the things that I have obtained for myself through my own efforts. Were it not for the "kindness of strangers", that being a compelled kindness I appreciate, but hey, I would not be walking around as a "fat" old balding git, but hobbling around dragging a club foot with me "fat" old balding git. Yes, the NHS fixed my club foot, and pretty well too, when I were but a very wee sprout. My parents could certainly not have hoped to find the funds for this themselves, nor even via a whip round amongst families and friends. If I were attempting to answer your question from an "objective observer's" viewpoint I am afraid that the evidence of my eyes and ears suggests that I would still be in a quandary, because I see plenty of evidence that a lot of people don't really value in the true sense a lot of what they acquire through their own efforts, they just see their store of precious shiny things as a way of measuring themselves against others and how many fewer or more or bigger and better and newer precious shiny things they have got, and when it is provided free, well they have "a right to it" don't they !
I empathise with your disappointment about AV. It strikes me as a far better system than the one we have.
As someone said to me recently - I like this coalition thing as it works on checks and balances, but how do I vote for it again?
BFOD, that appears to be the majority view: "I don't want a second vote, so you can't have one either". Not very democratic.
Anon, good anecdotal. On the whole I think people do value free healthcare, but not as much as if they paid it themselves. But then again, it's an insurance thing.
D, that's a good one. I hadn't heard that yet.
I've seen an awful lot of "AV isn't the system I want, I want PR/AV+/STV/whatever so there's no way I'm voting for AV"
Which seems to be missing the point - if the referendum comes back and says people want FPTP then the politicians will just keep FPTP - they'll use the referendum as "proof" that everyone is happy with it. AV isn't my first choice, but it'll give the chance for changing to something better down the line...
....which, following on from Rational Anarchist's point, may well account for a good chunk of those who voted for FPTP in your poll. I did, because I'm not convinced that AV is the best of the options and I can't shake the conviction that if the government wants me to choose one or the other, they're not telling me the full story.
In a formal referendum, I'd vote AV if that was the only other choice, because I'm certainly not a fan of FPTP (used to be, but changed my mind a while ago now) and as RA says, it might lead to something better in the future.
Driven by a fatuous sense of idealism I'd like to see separate elections for the Government (ie PM and Cabinet) and MPs, who in my ideal world would all be independents, there to hold the Government electees to account and to approve or deny - according to the wishes of their constituents - the intentions of the electees. MPs elected by Party affiliation are just there to drive the majority party's wishes through, and it's the socialists between 1997 and 2010 who really showed how such a system can be corrupted. Giving a Government freedom to act is important, but so is making sure the bahastards can't hog-tie the populace at every turn.
I'm not holding my breath for such a change, though.
RA, that purist-head-in-the-sand approach winds me up no end. In this life, you take what you're given.
FT, there appears to be a natural law of human behaviour that people will form, join and vote for political parties rather than individuals. Dunno why it is like that, but we might as well learn to live with it.
Isn't the question really:
What is the real purpose of voting? For ourselves or for everyone ?
Why does it matter about the voting system anyway. Once the substance in a democracy has gone, why does the form of it and how it is delivered matter?
This is all good technically. But isn't it irelelvant. Apologies I do realise you have gone to great effort.
It was very clear from the flow of results that both sides were cheating and voting more than once because they knew that the results would show up in a tidy graph in Wednesday's paper with all disclaimers in mousetype that no one would read.
RS, what we have in Britain may not be a democracy and be more of an elected dictatorship. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and improve the way we elect our dictators.
Bayard
Preposterous. Complicit. Cowardly.
That is the attitide that has got us where we are. I'm far more hopeful than that. And see great hope if we can convince the likes of you that justice is better than injustice and is worth striving for.
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