Posterous theme by Cory Watilo as adapted by Jamie Graham

Filed under: politics

The wrong answer

written on Friday 4 May 2012 and filed under [politics] [supervote] [voting]

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Image by Coventry City Council - CC-BY-NC-ND

Amidst a low turnout, the people of the English cities have largely rejected adopting a London-style Mayorality system.

The basic reason for introducing such a system is that local government is broken in England. Councils have either got permanent, unmovable majorities on one hand or shifting, unstable coalitions on the other. Neither is working well: permanent majorities lead to a lack of dynanism in councillors and stodgy, slow-to-react councils.

Shifting coalitions and their cousins - councils swinging between one party and another each election - mean that councillors spend their time fighting (sometimes literally), backstabbing, playing to the gallery and otherwise being very insular and political. This results in council policy forever changing and the council services being disrupted.

The Mayoral system is meant to stop that. Instead of such poor extremes, you get one man (almost always a man, alas) with the power concentrated in his hands for four years and the councillors act as the check and balance on him. This sounds great in theory but in practice it's the same again - either it's permanently the same man or it swings back and for between two wildly opposing men, albeit only once every 4 years rather than every May.

The solution is obvious to all politicians at all levels, but they don't like it. They don't want to let the solution in through the door because when people discover how well it works, they start wanting it for everything. The solution is the supervote, also known as the single transferrable vote (STV).

The supervote put all of the power in the hands of the electorate. The parties no longer have the power of patronage; there is no longer a need to vote for someone you dislike in order to avoid electing someone you dislike more; there are no permanent majorities; there are no dramatic swings. And above all there's no tactical voting. Because of that, the need to punish or reward the distant national government in London via a local election disappears.

What the individual votes for, the council gets. Your party's candidates are all elected together but you get to chose between them. Suddenly you have all the power over the parties and the councillors. If you're on the left of Labour, you can vote to push Labour locally to the left. Ditto if you're on the right of the Tories.

Supervote does result in more coaltions, but they are more stable - councillors don't have to guess what people want, they already know. Political infighting doesn't work because the public will use the supervote to punish it. We get more responsive councillors and a more responsive council. Turnout goes up because the vote means something. If your councillor is rubbish, you have another one to turn to. If they're all rubbish, you have the power to remove them - even without changing what party you vote for.

The power of the supervote is truly awesome. And that's why the politicians don't want you to have it.

We wake up, we go out, smoke a fag, put it out

written on Wednesday 18 April 2012 and filed under [cigarettes] [nhs] [politics]

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I'm a smoker.

I have been since my early teens. Smoking and me were made for each other. I love the taste. I love the smell. I love the sophistication that I feel with a fag between my fingers. Each cigarette is something I look forward to, enjoy lighting, enjoy drawing the fumes into my asthmatic lungs and enjoy stubbing out at the end. Smoking and me were made for each other. When I'm not smoking a cigarette, something is missing from my hand.

I'm an anti-smoker.

I don't like other people's smoke. As much as I would really enjoy a ciggy with a pint, I'd rather not share my pint with other people's smoke. I love a cigarette between courses of food but don't want someone smoking during my meal. A very long train journey is a nightmare for me without the gaspers. I'd rather not share a carriage with a single person puffing on a fag - let alone sit in a (now long forgotten) smoking carriage.

Perhaps that lets me make the following comment about current government policy on cigarettes.

Cigarettes are expensive. This is A Good Thing. The cost deters people from starting and makes the insane cost of nicotine replacement therapy seem reasonable. (Yes, a full weekly course of NRT costs less than a week of cigs, but smokers discount the cost of the daily packet as if it was background voices and inflate the cost of NRT because it seems so upfront).

The latest wheeze (ho ho) is to put cigarettes out of sight. You go to buy them and they're not there. The shop assistant unlocks a door, fishes them out and sells them to you blind.

I have my preferred brand - Silk Cut Silver, if you must know. It's low tar and low nicotine. Of course this is worse than not smoking at all, and I agree it it's probably no better than smoking Capstan Full Strength. But as I queue at the kiosk, if they don't have my brand, what do I do? Write off the queue time or buy something else? I'm human. I'll buy something else. And it'll be stronger. So for the next 24-48 hours, I'll be smoking something that tastes stronger, has higher tar and has higher nicotine. That'll help when the day comes to give up.

But the worst part of this stupid idea is that it makes the price of fags completely discountable. Yes, us smokers will choose by price to a degree, despite what I said above. But if prices continue to rise above inflation, the motivation for stopping increases. Poorer smokers - and I've been a poor smoker, even whilst in the arms of the welfare state - will buy a packet of 10 and eke them out when the price gets too much. Eventually, they'll turn to their GP and ask to be enrolled on the humiliation-and-hectoring course the NHS does free to help you quit (that would *so* not work for me - the words "who the fuck do you think you're talking to?" would bubble up uncontrollably).

What has happened here is that the price of cigarettes has now been hidden. Not the packets, not the subtle advertising, not the craving - just the price. As the cupboard doors appear over the fags, so the connection between price and the cost of smoking disappear. Already WHSmith do this - their railway station outlets put a £1 premium on the cost of 20 fags. The shop assistants usually warn you. "They're £8.10 here and there's a real shop down the street". When they don't warn you, you're faced with paying £8.10 there and then. And you do, because you've queued and because you're gasping and because you don't want to shop elsewhere and you don't want to annoy the shoppie… So you pay.

And so it will be when all the cigarettes are covered up. The supermarket hegemony will jack the prices because you can't see them. The local shops will undercut them, but only by a few pence. The NHS's major weapon against smoking, the control of the price, will be broken and the rewards will be taken by the large retailers and the tobacco companies who are about to get a cigarette-based bonanza of cash.

And the losers? Well, the slow but steady rise in the cost of fags has benefited the NHS via the Treasury for 30 or more years. It has also pealed off the more casual smoker who choses to give up on Budget Day. The forthcoming free-for-all in prices will benefit neither. Smokers will be quickly immunised to the prices. But the retailers and the tobacco companies will be minting it.

The only loser will be the NHS. But then we're under a Liberal-Conservative government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich, that believes that the NHS is for losers only anyway. So it hardly matters.

 

Tear down this Bill, Mr Lansley

written on Tuesday 14 February 2012 and filed under [drop the bill] [nhs] [politics]

The government's epetitions website is meant to be a place that we subjects can blow off a little steam without actually bothering our lords and masters.

That, however, isn't to say it isn't useful for those of us who want to take back parliament from the vested interests that are now running the show. When 100,000 people sign a petition, MPs have to look into having a debate about it - getting our voice into parliament, something many MPs (my own, Fester McVague, in particular) feel they were elected to prevent.

So here's a petition that can make a difference, even if the result is only to bolster the ineffective opposition parties and shake the smug, self-satisfied consciences of the Liberal Democrat MPs who have let power go to their heads and their hearts.

If you're a British resident, visit the Drop the NHS Reforms Bill epetition now - at the time of writing, it's agonisingly close to the 100,000 signatures needed to force a debate, most of which were gained today.

Whatever you vote, and I don't presume to know what goes on between you and a (secret) ballot box, if you're British you have reason to be grateful for our NHS. Yeah, it's not perfect, but it's ours and it's run by people who are doing it for love not money, for people regardless of what they can or should be asked to pay. And it is ours, not the government's, not big business's, not Lansley's, not anyone's. The NHS is ours and we need to stop it being privatised by stealth.