In the interest of democracy

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(This was originally posted to the book of face)

Dear Internet,

It hasn’t failed to escape my attention that there’s a general election thingy fast approaching. So in line with posts I’ve seen from quite a few of my friends I would urge you all to get out and vote – but if you vote or even just think about voting for a party I don’t like please de-friend yourself immediately. As we’re all mature adults and capable of reasoned and intelligent debate please beware that I’m not interested in knowing your reasons or any details of your local situation or specifics of the candidates you have to choose from. It’s quite clear that democracy can’t possibly benefit from discussion of opposing view points and further I value you so little as a friend that your reasons are of no importance to me. Simply by considering voting for a party I disapprove of – for what ever reason – you have proved yourself to be so far beyond the pale that I must request that you remove yourself entirely from my social circle – I would do it myself but that wouldn’t be passive aggressive enough and would involve my taking ownership of my own narrow-mindedness (also we still have that awkward private ballot thing – and I have no way of knowing what you think).
No matter it is quite clear that only utterly reprehensible people could possibly even consider voting for parties I disapprove of and as such there is no value in talking to you about it if you are having such thoughts. No matter what other evidence I have from years of friendship that you generally have views worth discussing.

So I urge you once more please remember to vote for parties I don’t dislike and if you even think about voting for a party I dislike please remove yourself from my echo chamber as that’s the best way for a healthy democracy to work.

Thank you.

For those of you not fluent in sarcasm I refer you to my previous post on this matter.

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Money for old votes

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As the election draws ever closer once more come the exhortations to vote tactically to keep this party or that party out of power. The numerous articles telling us all how for many of us the seats are so safe it doesn’t matter how we vote, we can’t change anything. No doubt some of us will believe all this and then next time round the same voices will tell us once more our votes don’t count and how we must vote tactically for one of the big parties – pointing to how the election went last time.
“Look” they’ll say “the majorities were so huge last time, the only thing to do is vote for the same old parties we always tell you to support”
and maybe we’ll believe them again, never stopping to thing that if we stopped voting for the same parties because we’re told that’s our only choice to stop the “other lot” getting in then those majorities wouldn’t be so large and those seats wouldn’t be safe. No it won’t make an immediate difference and in many places we will get the same old faces, but we can get them on a shakier footing so maybe they’ll pay a bit more attention and if their majority doesn’t look so unassailable maybe next time their safe seat won’t be so safe and more people will ignore the voices telling them their vote doesn’t count and they must vote for Zor or Zam to make a difference?

There is of course another aspect to this desperate push to keep us voting for the same parties all the time, your vote is worth money to those parties. Not a lot of money I’ll grant you just 14p in fact. But all those 14p’s add up. There is you see this thing called “short money”. This is paid to all the opposition parties you just need either 2 MP’s or 1 MP and over 150,000 votes. I suspect it’s quite tricky to get an MP with less than 150,000 votes but that’s beside the point. For every party that manages to reach these thresholds they get £14k per MP and then £27.99 for every 200 votes cast for the party anywhere, plus travel expenses. It may not sound a huge amount, and for the main parties with big donors it may not be but it still adds up to tidy little sums. According to Wikpedia (not always the most reliable source but convenient), last time round this “short money” was worth £5,197,038.79 to Labour, £145,610.49 to the SNP, £129,249.39 to the DUP, £62,085.31 to Plaid Cymru, £51,325.79 to the Greens and £54,832.02 to the SDLP.
Votes really do pay, hardly surprising they don’t want to share the bounty with new parties.

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Counting the Turkey vote

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Turkeys don't vote for Christmas This is certainly one of those things that has been obvious to everyone but me, and is certainly terribly obvious as soon as I saw it. So much so I wonder how I missed it. In amongst all the “debates” as to the merits or otherwise of UKIP a trope which is run out quite frequently is that:
“Support for UKIP is low in areas of high immigration”
This is usually phrased in such as way as to suggest that it’s only people that haven’t experienced the many benefits of immigrant populations that could possibly be against immigration due to their ignorance and they just need to experience more immigration to realize their mistake. Superficially it can actually seem plausible, but then you have to stop and ask did those surveyed include higher numbers of immigrants, or did they just survey the local indigenous population? My suspicion is that it’s just survey of a given population, and as such it’s not actually that informative that areas with higher numbers of immigrants may not be as well disposed to a party which is widely portrayed in the media as being against immigrants. Likewise support for high tax parties is lower amongst those earning, and support for parties that are portrayed as being in favour of a smaller state are unpopular with those supported by the state. The fact that people tend to vote in their own self-interest tells us nothing at all about how sensible or reasonable the opposed policies actually are.

So next time you see someone saying support for UKIP is lower where there’s a larger population of immigrants (or bankers not liking Labour etc.), just remember that it may not be so much a case of an “enlightened populace” so much as Turkey’s not voting for Christmas.

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