Posterous theme by Cory Watilo as adapted by Jamie Graham

Filed under: politics

Imagine if this was a left-wing country

written on Monday 2 May 2011 and filed under [alternative vote] [elections] [politics] [voting]

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The other day, David Cameron made one of his lie-filled speeches about AV, and inadvertently blurted out a truth.

No, not the truth that he thinks that you and I are too stupid to understand numbering candidates rather than dabbing a big X next to their name, although that particular vote of confidence in the intelligence of the British population is duly noted. This accidental truth was when he said "First Past The Post has served us well over the years". He's right: First Past The Post has served the Conservatives really, really well over the past 60 years. In fact, it has given us plenty of Conservative governments we didn't want and couldn't throw out.

There have been 18 general elections since the Second World War. In the majority of those elections, the Conservatives came out on top, never once with more than half of the people supporting them. In 1951, Labour won 48.8% of the vote to the Tories' 48%. But Labour got 295 seats, the Tories 321. Labour would be out of power for 13 years and the Tories would be seen - and see themselves - as the "natural party of government" for the rest of the 20th century.

For reasons I can't quite fathom, history records that Mrs Thatcher won a landslide in 1979. She didn't. If Jim Callaghan had gone to the polls six months earlier, Labour would probably have been returned; Labour was not as unpopular in the late 1970s as the media now recalls. Mrs Thatcher won 43.9% of the vote in 1979 and this gave her a working majority. In the next four years, she blundered through the economy, basically destroying it. Unemployment hit 5 million - a plan her economic advisers had decided upon, not an accidental consequence of her callousness.

She went to the polls in 1983 buoyed by the Falklands War but still unpopular generally. Her share of the vote fell to 42.4% and she got a landslide majority. This landslide was the one that sold off our electricity and water to foreign buyers. She got an unstoppable majority, which gave her dictatorial powers, when 57.6% of the country voted for other parties. She would be in power until 1990, the Tories would be in government until 1997, all from what 42.4% of the vote could do. The post-war settlement, the agreement that the state would work to care for its citizens in return for their hard work, was torn up on the say-so of 42.4% of the population.

First Past The Post really served the Tories well there; but it destroyed my country and ill-served the British people. The next time someone tries to tell you that Mrs Thatcher's reforms had the support of the vast majority of us, remind them that 42.4% is a minority.

Recently, senior Liberal Democrats seem to be regaining their sense of decency. They have publicly opposed some of the more terribly right-wing things the government is trying to do. And good on them: in other countries with a coalition system, minority partners often go on television to complain about what the other half of the government is doing; this includes cabinet ministers. Here, the LibDems have been silent for too long.

Those senior LibDems have made a very good point: this country is actually a left-of-centre country. It doesn't feel like it, but it truly is. Put it this way: since the Second World War, the Conservatives have polled more votes than Labour and the Liberal Democrats just once - in 1955 they got 49.7% of the votes to the Left's 49.1%. Imagine that. Imagine the second half of the 20th century effectively without the Conservatives. Imagine no Stop-Go in the 1950s. Imagine no Three Day Week in the 1970s. Imagine no Thatcherism in the 1980s. Imagine no selling off of British Rail in the 1990s.

Imagine a 20th century where the only Tory Prime Ministers were Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, both briefly.

AV wouldn't quite give us that, and it's wrong to choose a voting system based on the likely outcomes being more to your liking, but still: imagine a 21st century without the Conservatives. We could get nearer to it, if we vote Yes on Thursday.

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Andrew Lansley, dangerous idiot

written on Wednesday 20 April 2011 and filed under [health] [nhs] [politics]

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When the Tories came to power (yeah, whatever), the party faithful and the new MPs were the most right-wing they had been in their entire history. They've liberalised their views on some social issues (they're now pro-gay, they say, although they still hate single mothers and other social deviants) but economically, they're neo-conservatives in the George W Bush/Tea Party stylee.

Unlike the neo-cons in the US, they know that the British people are basically centrist, so they have done a good job of hiding the breadth of their plans for selling public services to their friends in big business. We Brits don't tend to like that type of thing.

With the NHS, the Tory plan seems to have tested well in focus groups before the election. In broad terms, it does indeed sound good. Instead of remote boards and faceless managers deciding everything, the job will be handed to your friendly, cheerful, local GP to do. And, if he won't do it, well, don't worry, other groups (private businesses, but we won't say that loudly) can do it. All's well.

Except it isn't. This is a radical switch in power from those with a lot of knowledge to those with none. By making hospitals dance to the GPs' tune, the experts - specialists, consultants, nurses - in given diseases will have to do what the GP - general, jack-of-all-trades - wants them to do. And I've just experienced this.

I've been having tests at a local hospital. They're all negative. Yesterday, I saw the specialist and she was downright hostile. Why, she demanded, was I wanting all of these pointless tests? What was I trying to prove? Well, nothing. I didn't want any of the tests. My GP wanted me to have them. I really don't have the medical knowledge to decide whether the GP is seeking pointless tests or not.

She pushed further into my notes and wondered if they were incomplete. Did I know what the results were for such-and-such a test? Did I know what level something-or-other was at? No, I didn't, because I'd never had those tests. My GP had seized upon one symptom and was having the hospital probe that symptom over and over again; what he wasn't doing was attempting to find a root cause for all the symptoms. He hadn't stopped and looked at the whole body, he'd skipped to the likeliest outcome based on one symptom and passed me on to the hospital, rather than paying for the actually-needed other tests.

The specialist at the hospital will now be writing him a stern letter, reminding him to do his job fully first in future.

And here's the rub: when Andrew Lansley's "reforms" to the NHS go through, the specialist will never again be able to write such a letter. The power will move from her, with her a-lot-about-a-little knowledge, to the GP, with his a-little-about-a-lot way of working. The hospital will have to keep performing the pointless tests on one symptom until the GP is satisfied. The patient - me - gets a worse deal than ever, being poked and prodded and taking time off work for tests that aren't needed. The GP gets to make expensive financial decisions in the 4-minute slot allocated to each patient every day along with the medical decisions that we'd rather he made in that tiny time. The specialist doesn't get to specialise; the generalist has to do the impossible and get more specialised about more and more generalities.

This is all bad. Give me a remote, faceless bureaucracy any day.

Voting or not voting?

written on Sunday 17 April 2011 and filed under [elections] [politics] [voting]

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My quiet Sunday morning has been shattered... by something called the Wirral Egg Run. A ridiculously large number of motorcyclists gather at New Brighton, then ride 20 miles all over the Wirral to Clatterbridge hospital to deliver Easter eggs to children, watched by a ridiculously larger number of cheering spectators. And this takes place just outside my front door. For about 4 hours (there really are a ridiculous number of motorcycles involved). Still, it's for charr-i-dee.

Less shattering was a discussion on Twitter. Someone there made the decision to not vote any more. It's hardly groundbreaking, since 35% of people didn't bother to vote at the last election. But it's a subject that annoys me, since the people who don't vote are the ones that make the loudest noise about how dissatisfied with politics/politicians they are.

Frankly, I've never understood this. Put simply, if you don't vote - and you have the right to not vote in the UK - then you give up your right to complain about the outcome. If you didn't contribute to the result - even by going in and spoiling your paper if needs be - then how can you complain that you didn't get what you didn't vote for?

I can't think of any other subject where we allow the most noise to be made by the people with the least invested in the subject. People who complain about the state of the railways are the people who use (or used to use) the trains. A driver who never uses the rails doesn't comment - or if she does, gets shouted down by people who do, and rightly so. The same applies in other spheres of ordinary life. But if you don't vote, that seems to entitle you to complain about things that voting brings about and does or doesn't change.

Of course, it's worse when you don't vote rather than actually exercising your right to do so, because of the statement you are making. The argument is usually "the political system has disenfranchised people like me, therefore I don't/won't/can't vote". The problem is that politicians do all they can not to listen to us, except when we're saying what they want to hear. Or are saying something different that can be spun to sound like it sounds like something they want to hear. The only time we get to try to make them listen is at the ballot box; declaring that you've been disenfranchised and then disenfranchising yourself (you did it, not them) allows them to ignore you more than if you did actually vote. Worse, the politicians look at 35% not voting and take home a message: 35% don't care what we do. The number of people they can fuck over is vastly increased (for the record, it's people who voted against you + people who didn't vote, which, in our minority-votes system, means politicians are allowed to fuck over anything up to around 75% of the population between now and the next election).

Because of that, people who don't vote don't count - to politicians or to me. Why should I listen to the grievances of someone the government is fucking over when they did nothing - nothing whatsoever, not even the bare minimum asked of them, which is putting a cross in a box - to try to help themselves or try to prevent this outcome? Why should I have my ear bent by someone who can't even travel the half mile to mark a piece of paper to try to prevent other people being fucked over by the government?

To me, not voting is extremely selfish. You raise yourself and your circumstances above those of the other 65% of the population that, rightly or wrongly, believe they are contributing to the process, telling those 65% that your circumstances are so very important that you can't even begin to put a cross in a box, so fuck the rest of you.

Also, ahem, people died so we could have the right to put a cross in a box (and, with luck and a fair wind, a 1 in a box in future. See, that's not complicated, is it, Mr Cameron?). A woman threw herself in front of a horse race and died so that other women would have the right to vote. Men and women are dying even as I type in Libya, Egypt (still) and Bahrain amongst far too many other places, all because they want fellow citizens to have the right to put an X or a 1 in a box. Yet people in the UK stay home, don't bother doing the bare minimum, but do complain very loudly about how they're being ignored.

And then they call you a cunt for pointing it out. Oh well.