William Hague: Reckless or Dishonest?

William Hague, today:

[AV] is the worst of all worlds. Even if one was going to embark on changing the electoral system this would certainly not be the system to move to.

You can argue for the current system, as I do, on the grounds that it is decisive. In the vast majority of elections it produces a clear decisive result with the party getting the most votes in the country becoming the government. Or you can argue legitimately for a proportional system, as in Germany for instance, where the seats won by the parties in Parliament is in pretty strict accordance with the votes received in the country.

The trouble with the Alternative Vote system is it's neither of those. It could produce - it is likely to produce if enacted - election results which are more indecisive, or more disproportionate, or even both at the same time, and be more complex and expensive to operate into the bargain.

So it is the worst of every world.

Then why are we having a referendum on this "worst of all worlds"AV system?

William Hague, May 10th 2010:

In the interests of trying to create a stable, secure government we will go the extra mile and we will offer to the Liberal Democrats, in a coalition government, the holding of a referendum on the Alternative Vote system, so that the people of this country can decide what the best electoral system is for the future.

That's right, it's the Conservatives' negotiating team who chose the referendum to be on AV. Hague was one of the "top four" negotiators for the Conservatives.

So why did he pick a referendum on AV when he could have picked a more "legitimate" proportional system? The Lib Dems would undoubtedly grabbed at the chance of a referendum on PR.

There are two possibilities:

1. Hague deliberately risked our country being subjected to what he considers to be the worst possible electoral system. This is a profoundly reckless attitude to our democracy.

2. Hague actually prefers AV to PR, which is why the referendum is on AV. This makes his comments today deeply dishonest.

I think number 2 is far more likely to be the explanation. The truth is that the Tories would be content with AV, but will say anything to keep hold of their precious FPTP system that many others despise.

AV has Something for Everyone

Another argument from No2AV is that the Alternative Vote is a 'voting system that nobody wants'.

This isn't true. Labour's manifesto [pdf] pledged a referendum on AV on the basis that the system will "ensure that every MP is supported by the majority of their constituents voting at each election".

Press a No2AV supporter on this and they'll explain that they meant to say is that it wasn't in either of the Coalition partners' manifestos.

This is true. The Conservatives have long advocated keeping the current First Past The Post system, whereas the Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a move to the proportional Single Transferable Vote system.

These two systems have two key distinctions:

• FPTP takes place in single member constituencies, where one MP is elected to represent all the people in the area. STV would have multi-member constituencies, where multiple MPs would be elected that would represent a wider variety of views of people over a bigger area.

• FPTP requires the voter to mark their ballot for one candidate only, and the most votes wins. STV allows the voter to rank several candidates in order of preference so that the winners have a bigger consensus.

AV shares features of both FPTP and STV - it has the single winner feature of FPTP and the preferential ballots feature of STV. While AV is not seen as the perfect system for the Tories or the Lib Dems, it has features which both parties like.


Yes, this does make AV a miserable little compromise. But compromise is a good thing when it means everyone getting a bit of what they want. It is blatantly fairer than one side having it all their own way.

The Daily Mail's Reckless Association of Homosexuality and Paedophilia

I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of Dr Hans-Christian Raabe's farcical appointment-then-sacking from the ACMD. For good summary of the background to this story, see Mark Easton. It suffices to say that it appears Dr Raabe was sacked for writing a paper that links homosexuality to paedophilia. As Tom Chivers explains, there is no link:

The University of California’s psychology department does a very good “facts about homosexuality and child molestation” section, and I’ve taken the following from there. First, the idea of “homosexual [or heterosexual] paedophiles” is not really an accepted one in psychological circles: “many child molesters cannot be meaningfully described as homosexuals, heterosexuals, or bisexuals (in the usual sense of those terms) because they are not really capable of a relationship with an adult man or woman. Instead of gender, their sexual attractions are based primarily on age. These individuals – who are often characterized as fixated – are attracted to children, not to men or women.”

Further, among those who are not solely attracted to children – those known as “regressed” child molesters – seem to be no more likely to be homosexual than the rest of the populace.

Sadly, it is still common to associate the two, despite the evidence. Paedophilia is clearly immoral behaviour, so it is up to those who value honest, factual reporting to counter the damaging myth that it is an any way linked to homosexuality.

Unfortunately the Daily Mail (and its Sunday sister paper) can't be relied on to provide such reporting. Their 'journalists' James Slack, Iain Drury, James Tozer, Stephen Glover, Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips have all written articles on Dr Raabe. All the articles mention his 'research', often uncritically pronouncing his work as 'academic' or 'scientific'. An unsceptical reader would be left with the clear impression that there is a clear evidence showing a link between homosexuality and paedophilia, when there is no such link. I consider this to be reckless.

In particular, Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips attempts to add more credence to this link by citing a government report. On Sunday, Hitchens wrote:

Who said these words? ‘Approximately 20 to 33 per cent of child sexual abuse is homosexual in nature.’ I will tell you.

It was the Home Office, on Page 14 of Sex Offending Against Children: Understanding The Risk, published by the Policing and Reducing Crime Unit in 1998. I have a copy.

You can have a copy too. The document is available on the Home Office website [pdf]. The specific words cited by Hitchens and Phillips are simply referencing a paper called ‘The heterogeneity/homogeneity of pedophilia’, a study from 1988. So what we have here is a single 23-year-old study. That's all Hitchens and Phillips are using, albeit with a drizzling of irony that the Home Office happens to have mentioned this paper (once, 13 years ago).

The aforementioned University of California's page on the subject has far more citations, including literature reviews that incorporate many more studies. The overall body of evidence shows there's no link. The science shows that sexual attraction to children is a different phenomenon to sexual attraction to adults (male or female).

That's why the same Home Office report cited by Hitchens and Phillips explicitly states in the very same paragraph:

Individual studies must be viewed cautiously before generalising from them.

The Daily Mail's inability to exercise such caution is likely to spread homophobic views amongst its readership.

Freedom Bill - Now and Then

Two years ago, the Liberal Democrats launched a draft Freedom Bill.

Today, the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister announced a real-life Freedom Bill.

Let's go through the 2009 list of measures to see how progress is going:

• Scrap ID cards for everyone, including foreign nationals - Already scrapped by the Coalition, but for British nationals only.

• Ensure that there are no restrictions in the right to trial by jury for serious offences including fraud - In the Bill.

• Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square, at the heart of our democracy - Fail.

• Abolish the flawed control orders regime - Already replaced by 'Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures'.

• Renegotiate the unfair extradition treaty with the United States. - Fail.

• Restore the right to public assembly for more than two people. - Fail.

• Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain. - Already scrapped by the Coalition.

• Strengthen freedom of information by giving greater powers to the information commissioner and reducing exemptions. - In the Bill.

• Stop criminalising trespass. - In the Bill.

• Restore the public interest defence for whistleblowers. - Fail.

• Prevent allegations of "bad character" from being used in court. - Fail.

• Restore the right to silence when accused in court. - Fail.

• Prevent bailiffs from using force. - Fail.

• Restrict the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes and stop councils snooping. - In the Bill.

• Restore the principle of double jeopardy in UK law. - Fail.

• Remove innocent people from the DNA database. - The Bill makes good progress, but suspects of serious crimes could still have their DNA retained for three years.

• Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days. - Permanently fixed in the Bill.

• Scrap the ministerial veto that allowed the government to block the release of cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war. - Fail.

• Require explicit parental consent for biometric information to be taken from children. - In the Bill.

• Regulate CCTV following a Royal Commission on cameras. - No specific mention of a Royal Commission, but further regulation is in the Bill.

So out of 20 items on the original Lib Dem draft Bill, 8 are happening, 3 are happening in a limited form, but 9 have yet to see any progress.

The situation basically looks like this:

There are also several bonus freedoms that are to be restored in this Bill:

• It will be illegal for a vehicle to be clamped or towed away by anyone but the police.

• Restrictions on stop and search powers.

• The Vetting and Barring scheme will be scrapped.

• Old convictions involving consensual gay sex will be stripped from criminal records.

• There will be no more restrictions on the times when a marriage or civil partnership can take place.

And that's still not all. In 2012 the Ministry of Justice plan to introduce a Defamation Bill to reform our suffocating libel laws and a Repeal Bill to remove unnecessary laws from the statute.

Given that the Lib Dems didn't have any of this as their Top 4 priorities in their manifesto (much to my disappointment), I'm delighted we've made significant progress in all these areas. My only concern is that the Your Freedom website had little to nothing to do with any of programme, but perhaps the Repeal Bill will take more inspiration from the public suggestions.

No2AV are Quoting Irrelavent Australian Polling

The No2AV campaign are circulating the findings from an Australian opinion poll commissioned by the right-wing Insitute of Public Affairs. On the face of it, the findings are devastating for the Yes campaign:

More than half of Australians would support FPTP, according to a Newspoll. Only 37% favoured the current preferential system. #no2av

Bad news? Not exactly.

If you've been following the AV referendum polling done in the UK, you'll be aware that the wording used in the question can significantly alter the outcome.

This is the question [pdf] as asked by Newspoll. The emphasis in bold is theirs, not mine*:

Currently, elections for the Federal House of Representatives, or lower house, use a preferential voting system. This is where voters indicate an order of preferences for all candidates, and these preferences are taken into account when deciding which candidate wins. (PAUSE). An alternative system would be "first past the post", where voters only vote for one candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. Would you personally prefer…?

1. A preferential system,
2. A first past the post system

The form of AV preferential system used in Australia forces voters to indicate a preference for every single voter. The form of AV that will could be used here in the UK won't have this feature. You will be able to indicate a preference for as many or as few candidates as you like.

Given that we won't "indicate an order of preferences for all candidates" if AV is adopted, it is wrong to suggest a poll that asks about an system where voters "indicate an order of preferences for all candidates" is relevant to our decision.

* I have quoted the question's text exactly as written and formatted in the poll's report. The poll was conducted over the telephone, so was read out by "fully trained and personally briefed interviewers". It is clear that the words emphasised in bold are intended to be emphasised when read out by the interviewer.

Unbelievable UKIP By Election Leaflet Squeezes BNP Vote

Kudos to Michael Greenfield for uploading a bunch of Oldham East and Saddleworth by election leaflets. I want to highlight UKIP's effort.

As a Lib Dem member I'm obviously opposed to what UKIP stand for, but even leaving that aside, there are three things in particular I have an issue with:

1) Using the result of the national European Election result as indicative of what may happen in a local by election is misleading. The issues are different, the electoral system is different, and the electorate is different. But at least they have labelled the bar chart, so this is my smallest quibble.

2) Stating that "Every week, 5,000 new people come to the UK to live" without stating the number number of people who leave the UK, which reduces the number to 4,100. They then blame this on the fact that citizens of new EU countries (Poland and Latvia) can move here. But these A8 countries are only responsible for net migration of 12,000 per year, which is only 5% of total net migration. The biggest contributors of net migration are foreign students (whose fees keep our Universities running and contribute £8bn to the economy).

3) This is the one that triggered me writing this post: UKIP are explicitly squeezing the BNP vote! By writing "Wasted vote" over the BNP column on the bar chart, they are actively trying to get the thickos and fascists who vote BNP to switch to UKIP. And it's not even true! The BNP beat UKIP in this constituency in 2010 by 2,546 votes to 1,720. The tactical racist vote is for BNP, not UKIP.

So I guess my message to UKIP is this: When your main competition is the BNP, perhaps it is time to reassess what you stand for.

Fisking Chris Williamson on AV

Chris Williamson, the Labour MP for Derby North, has laid out why he is against introducing AV. Here is my response to his points:

The central plank of the ‘Yes to AV’ campaign is disingenuous because its claims about AV being fairer than ‘First Past the Post’ are based on a false premise.

AV will make no difference to a large number of constituencies where candidates secure more than 50% of the votes cast. Even in the last general election - where popular support for the parties was closer than normal - more than a third of the candidates had over 50% of the vote.

No-one is suggesting it will make a difference in the safest seats where the winning party gets ~50% or more. But the big difference will come in all the other seats, where the winner will need to get the backing of a bigger number of voters to get elected. I don't see why MPs are afraid of this: why are you scared of trying to get more people to vote for you ahead of your opponents?

In the other constituencies, introducing AV could see second or even third placed candidates ultimately winning. That is the very antithesis of democracy. Our existing system is considerably more democratic by comparison and is well understood by the electorate at large.

AV will elect the candidate with the most overall support. Some MPs came first but with more than 2 in 3 electors voting against them*. Those 2 in 3 could between them prefer someone else. Why should 1-in-3 minority voters get their way ahead of 2-in-3 majority?

How can it be right for fringe party supporters to have their vote counted several times, while those backing mainstream candidates only have one vote counted? By any measure of fairness that is just plain wrong.

Every vote is counted the same amount. The last place candidate gets knocked out, their votes redistributed, then every vote for the remaining candidates is counted again.

Furthermore, at a time when the country is facing unprecedented cuts, this whole debate and referendum is a colossal waste of time and money, particularly when very few people actually want electoral reform. I have campaigned for the Labour Party in every local, European and general election since 1976 and I can honestly say nobody has ever raised this issue on the doorstep.

If it is a waste of time and money to have a referendum on AV, why did your manifesto call for a referendum on AV? Your constituents may not have specifically mentioned electoral reform, but I bet they've mentioned MPs' expenses and expressed apathy at politics and politicians. The two are deeply interlinked. The way we do democracy in this country needs root and branch reform, so that the public no longer feel taken for granted.

The Labour Party is Britain’s best vehicle to deliver progressive change and the outcome of the last general election offers an historic opportunity to rebuild Labour’s progressive credentials. That is why I am working for a majority Labour government at the next general election by appealing to those progressives who voted for other parties. By muddying the electoral waters through the introduction of AV, the guy ropes of Labour’s progressive big tent could be cut even before it is fully erected.

I don't care what effect AV will have on any specific party. I want a system that's fair to voters, not one that puts some parties above others. You care about the effect it could have on Labour. Fine, but don't pretend you are picking the electoral system out of fairness rather than self-interest.

The Liberal Democrats, who are responsible for installing this vicious right-wing administration, hope that AV would create continuous coalition government and give them the chance to be perpetual kingmakers.

No-one really knows what effect AV will have on creating majority vs. coalition governments, but assuming your guess is right, the only reason that the Lib Dems are kingmakers is because Labour and the Conservatives belligerently refuse to work with each other. Don't blame the Lib Dems for your own belligerence.

But Liberal Democrats are not a national party and their support in a few regional enclaves is inadequate to propel them into government without doing shabby little deals behind closed doors. Their shameful pact with the Conservatives will create untold hardship to millions of citizens and is damaging our economic recovery.

Absolute tosh. The reason the Lib Dems don't get many seats is because their support is too spread across the country, with too few regional enclaves. FPTP rewards divisive parties with strong regional enclaves. That's why Labour automatically win most seats in the urban North, and the Tories win most seats in the rural South. If Labour is your idea of a national party, remind me how many seats you won in South England last year?**

I'll tell you what is a shabby deal: a single party taking the reins of the country when most people don't want them. But that's what happened in 2005, when Labour got into power despite 65% of the country voting for against you. The same thing has been happening for decades. No wonder people feel so disillusioned by politics. At least with a coalition, the majority of people voted for the a party that's in power, even if that means the parties coming to a compromise. I agree that parties should be clear about their priorities during the election so that voters know what they can expect if their preferred party goes into a coalition. (By printing their top four priorities on the front cover of their manifesto, and getting all of them into the coalition agreement, that's exactly what the Lib Dems did.)

Do we really want to increase the prospects of Liberal Democrats having influence in future governments, when under our existing system they could and should be virtually wiped out? I think not. That's why I don’t want to see them being thrown the lifeline of electoral reform.

That's nicely partisan of you, but don't forget, if we go back to two party politics, for every majority Labour government there'll be a majority Tory government waiting in the wings to have it all their way. You may feel the Lib Dems aren't dampening the excesses of the Tories enough - well that's an argument to make sure the Lib Dems get more of their fair share of influence rather than less!

AV is bad news for democracy, bad news for progressive change and bad news for the millions of people who need the return of a Labour government at the earliest opportunity.

Well at least you're being honest in the last part of that sentence - your opposition to reform is based on what's good for Labour, not what's best for the country as a whole. The majority of the country has never ever voted for Labour.*** We have never wanted you in complete control of the country, and we never will.

* Chris Williamson is one of these MPs. He got just 33.0% of the vote at the general election. His seat, Derby North, is now a three-way marginal, with the Conservatives on 31.7% and the Lib Dems on 28.0%. So in the last election, FPTP may well have allowed him to cling on to his job. I'll leave you to judge what is motivating his resistance to reform now.

** The answer: In the South of England, Labour won just 8 seats out of 139 (5.8%), or 1,124,507 votes out of 7,067,683 (15.9%).

*** To be fair, in 1945 the country came very close: 49.7% voted Labour. That's still not a majority though!

Save the Sea Otter Pups from No2AV Flippancy

The No2AV camp are already resorting to a whole host of desperate arguments in its attempt to retain the completely discredited First Past The Post system for general elections. But there's one argument I find misleading to the point of nausea.

I'll quote from an official No2AV leaflet, but you'll hear the argument used by many of their supporters:

Fiji have had enough of AV and are about to ditch it

They will always use this argument in isolation, without any explanation as to the reasons why Fiji is about to ditch AV. Why might that be?

What they have failed to mention is that Fiji was subjected to a military coup in 2006 and elections were suspended by the new Fijian ‘Prime Minister’, Commodore Voreqe “Frank” Bainimarama. They should have held elections last year, but the military authorities stopped them.

So when the NO campaign says that “Fiji” is looking to get rid of their AV system, what they actually mean is that the military dictatorship currently in control wants to get rid of their version of AV… but hasn’t in the four years they have been in control.

For No2AV to be this flippant about the situation in Fiji is appalling. So appalling in fact, they have angered God. Anyone who paid attention at Sunday School will know that angry God loves nothing more than a bit of vengeance, and so it is with this:

Every time a No2AV proponent uses the 'Fiji is abandoning AV' line, God will slowly and painfully kill a sea otter pup.

In response to God's furious threat, a spokes-otter released the following statement:

So please, No2AV folk, be considerate in your attacks on AV, and think of the cute baby sea otters whose lives are now in your hands (despite the alpha-males of the species being total arseholes).

Cage Against The Machine for Christmas Number 1

Last year, Rage Against The Machine managed to steal the top spot of the Christmas chart from the X Factor winner, Joe MacThingy. Personally I wasn't bothered about that campaign. We swapped a song released on a major label for a song, ahem, released on the same major label. It didn't exactly feel like the machine had successfully been raged against.

Last year's success has prompted several copy-cat attempts to flashmob the Christmas number 1 using online social networks. One of these campaigns has come up with the perfect riposte to the bland muzak churned out by Simon Cowell's televised music factory: 4'33" of silence, courtesy of the late John Cage. Not so much Rage, but Cage against The Machine.

It is easy to sneer at deliberate silence and dismiss it as pretentious. But there really is no need. All you need to do to understand 4'33" is listen to it, and think about what you can hear. It is music that specifically encourages thought - the perfect antidote to the X Factor's intentionally thoughtless ditties.

An official version of the release has been recorded by a diverse bunch: the Kooks, Orbital, Enter Shikari, Dan Le Sac, Scroobius Pip, Suggs from Madness, Billy Bragg and Imogen Heap. I suspect this may be the only time these acts find music they can unite around!

The single has been released today on independent (yay) record label Wall Of Sound. Check the official website for the download links, including a remix package featuring interesting takes on silence by Fake Blood, Mr Scruff, Adam F, Herve, Aeroplane, Alex Metric and Japanese Popstars.

Oh and all profits will go to charity. How could I have not won your support?!?!!

Cage's biggest non-Cowell rival appears to be The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird, made famous by Family Guy. Don't get me wrong, I like Family Guy, but I really don't see how a song famous because of a TV programme would be a better number 1 than, err, a song famous because of a TV programme.

Now if you don't mind keeping it down, I've got some listening to do.

The Hilarious @krmcbe

Oxfordshire Country Council's Conservative leader Keith Mitchell CBE has been attracting plenty of attention on Twitter of late. He has been less than impressed at the protests by students over tuition fees, and wasn't afraid to use all his wit in expressing this.

First came this tour de force...
...which got him coverage on the regional news.

Now today he comes up with...
Oh man, this guy should do stand-up! Sure, water cannons have in the past resulted in permanent blindness, but at least you get a good wash! LOL!

But Keith's side-splitting material doesn't just stop at mocking protest. Wait until you hear his jokes about former Oxford West and Abingdon MP Evan Harris. Prepare yourself; you may need an oxygen supply on hand in case all this hilarity gets too much!

After seeing Dr Harris on TV discussing the Coalition negotiations, Cllr Mitchell tweeted:
Hahahaha! See?! It's funny because he lost his job!

Now fair enough, Keith has every reason to gloat, and indeed I have every reason to be sore. Keith no doubt contributed to Nicola Blackwood's successful campaign that took the seat from Evan. A bit of banter like this is standard political knockabout. Conversely, my campaigning failed to get Evan re-elected.

After this initital triumph, Keith must have realised he'd hit a comedy gold mine! In came this follow-up:
Genius! Now that Evan is no longer an MP, he can go to Zimbabwe for some reason! Hahaha!

And then another one!
Zaire! Those 'Z' countries are sooooo funny! Get a job there, Evan! How does he come up with them?!?!

But wait, there's more!
Hahaha! A proper job! I love this guy. He should be the warm-up act for Michael McIntyre's next sell out show.

Hahahahahahahahaha *breathes* hahahahahahaha! He phrased "a proper job" as a question this time! Michael McIntyre should be Keith Mitchell's support!

Encore!
Boom! Take that, Harris! Time you got a proper job! Best one yet! Move over, David, there's a new Mitchell comedian in town.

More! More! More! More!
A proper job! Wooooooooooo! I love this guy! He should go far to some far away country, like you said before! Err, twice... Still funny though! Nick Thornsby is so lucky to get that joke personally sent to him!

So there we have it. All that remains to be said is...

...Oh no wait there's more!
Evan hasn't got a job! Hahahahaha! Whew! Where does it all come from?!

All that remains to be said is I hope I get to meet him one day so I can get the full Keith Mitchell Comedy Experience first hand. That would make my day.