Georgie tells it how it is

If they win the electoral reform vote next month it will be the end of the matter as far as the conservatives are concerned "This settles it for a long time" George Osborne told the Mail today.

One of the key arguments made by the No campaign's Martin Cross at the Evening Standard debate on AV last week was that 'voting for AV is not voting for Proportional representation'. That's a truism, but what George has nicely pointed out is that voting against AV hammers the nail in the coffin of PR for the foreseeable future.

His message is clear. If you ever want to see a government made up of the parties that the population actually voted for you must vote Yes. PR will never happen if you vote No.

AV itself is only slightly more proportional if you're a Liberal, if you're a Labour supporter it'll probably make not a jot of difference. If you follow the Tories however there's a real chance that, for the next couple of elections at least, AV will reduce the number MPs returned to Westminster. This is why they really aren't interested in changing. George might like to suffocate the brown children of poor people with Waitrose carrier bags (Or he might not, we'll probably never know) but he's not stupid. He is likely to be very unpopular at the next election and would really rather keep his job as an MP. How else is he going to afford his council tax and carrier bag collecting hobby?

It's also why the main donators to the NotoAV campaign are big Conservative funders. Posh bookmaker Michael Cruddas gave a cushty £400k, another city wide-boy Michael Farmer gave £100k and shopkeeper Lord Sainsbury coughed up further £100k. These are all big Tory donors and don't want to see their hard earned (cough) cash donations end up without a little say in what sort business environment they'll be working in.

People don't donate to political causes because of hard intellectual ideals, the contribute because they want their life to be easier when their boys get the power. George Osbourne knows this, but still thinks that the Electoral Reform Society donating to the Yes to Fairer votes campaign "stinks". It "stinks" that a society that campaigns to change the way we choose our leaders is supporting a campaign that wants to change the way choose our leaders.

It didn't stink quite so much when another Tory & NotoAV donor Andrew Cook donated to the Conservative war chest. This bought his company a nice little kick-back when the incoming government dropped a loan to help his competitor Sheffield Forgemasters expand.

It also didn't stink quite so much when Rupert Murdoch supported his political party with paper bags stuffed with used fivers and in return got Vince Cable sacked and subsequently the opportunity to buy Sky and tell us all who to vote for and what to buy for the rest of our lives.

Rare image of Mr Osborne in his part time
role as assistant till operator at the Jolly Frier

You know what does stink? George Osborne. He stinks of chips apparently, not vinegar you understand. Chips. He thinks it's sophisticated. Tweet

It's not guns that kill, it's letting idiots have them

I do like, no wait a minute like's a strong word, I do read Big Dick Littleboy's column padding. You know the bits at the end of his main rant about speed cameras or BBC2 documentaries or whatever he's noticed in the 25 minutes before his deadline. He must ping up an idea in that cavernous head of his and then bang it out on his Amiga word processor.

He could and he does.

"Hmmm, word count function shows I'm a couple of hundred short of cheque collection. That leaves me with two options. One; I can look deeper into the topic I'm writing about, perhaps do a little research and see if there really are 3 billion Polish carpenters living in Slough who all claim on the sick and yet still manage to undercut British chippys by 20% while eating swans and stealing church roof lead. I could, perhaps, start by speaking to a Carpenter perhaps see what the real deal is..."

"Actually as I've only 17 minutes until deadline bites I'd better plump for option two. Make up an opinion about something I half caught on the news and, seemingly, know jack-shit about."

And so that's how we get this pearl of wisdom about the horrendous shooting in the Netherlands last week.

Being a vigilant top-drawer journalist for a quality publication he keeps abreast of world events and so managed to catch the news between rounds - when he remembered to take off his 3D glasses. From this deep analysis of the media reaction he seems to think the world's taking a swipe at the gun crazy moonshine drinkers of America.

Apparently if a shopping mall rampage happened in the States we'd be analysing why these things happen in the US so often and talking about fear driven gun cultures, whereas when it happens to drippy liberals it gets ignored, swept under the carpet.

Not true, the shootings got a lot of coverage all over the world. around 8,000 stories about Alphen aan den Rijn on Google news, from sources as diverse as Latvia, Vietnam and even America. I recall it being on BBC & Sky news in the UK and it wasn't missed by any of the daily newspapers.

The reason there's less debate about the causes of the tragedy is that it's such an exceptional event, the debate following a similar atrocity across the Atlantic would focus around "Why does this keep happening?"

In the US, where guns are seen as a right there are around 7 murders per 100,000 people using a gun. In the Netherlands, where guns are seen as a privilege, there are around 0.4.

It's not less significant that it's happened in the Netherlands, it's more significant that it happens so often in America. Tweet

But why?

Maybe there's a major story brewing and they're gauging their readership's views. Maybe the news editor got caught behind a woman with 3 kids in Waitrose, or maybe they've just run out of things to ask.

What have I missed, why is this a poll in the news section?

Looking at the photo the little girl seems to think so. She'd fix the family size at three and happily deal with that usurper baby brother if left alone with him for five minutes.

In a timely but unexpected leak from Richard Littlejohn's computer (He does find them difficult to work and the coffee cup holder's broken on his new Amiga) I've been telexed upcoming polls for the next week...

• Is torture ever morally right in today's comprehensive schools?
• Isn't it time to sterilise anyone on less money than you?
• Or with browner skin?
• Maggie, would you?
• Would things have been all that bad had we lost WW2?
• Do we know too much, should scientists stop now?
• Does this cause cancer?

I look forward to the results.

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What a twat

Oliver Letwin - first class arse

I certainly hope not Ollie.

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Dave's Top Tips for the Nay-sayers

The debate is on. The big guns have begun pounding as our Prime Minister sets out the real reasons to say No in the electoral reform referendum.

He kept it simple and clear sticking to three major themes, clever strategy from someone who thinks we're all too thick to understand AV anyway.

Certified sane by doctors

Propping up his chart at number three is the fact that only Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia use the system, so if nobody uses it it must be bad eh?

Oh and Ireland use it too to elect their President, and Northern Ireland for the assembly, and the Scottish assembly. Yes and the London Mayor of course. Apparently the President of India's elected this way too. And the House of Lords and New Zealand city mayors. And a lot of private elections such as leaders of Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives (to some extent). Of course Big Brother and the X-factor use a longer drawn out version to get nutcases to dial 0898 numbers and waste their incapacity benefit with BT.

So more than three sunny paradises then, some right shit-holes use it too.

In second place of David's big reasons to vote no is the fact that BNP hooligans get two, three or four votes whereas your honest to goodness taxpayers only get one go. This is crap as I mentioned before. AV doesn't benefit racists, that's why the BNP supports the No to AV campaign.

And at Tip-top top of the the shot number one in the hit parade is the thought that AV allows candidates who come third to end up winning. Not really Dave, the winner ends up winning. That's why they're called the winner. What you mean is that some candidates are so like Marmite that the majority of the constituents will never support them, whereas other candidates are more like cheese & onion crisps and people will pick them and enjoy them if there's no scampi flavoured fries left. Remember MPs are elected to represent their constituents, therefore they have to be acceptable to the majority of them.

How must the Investment banker feel if he has to go to his local MPs surgery to discuss his off-shore tax issues only to be faced with an ex-mining union official with 4lb of spuds on his shoulder as his representative. Disenfranchised that's how he feels. Life would have been great if the old Major who once burnt a village school down in Tanzania while hunting rhinos had won, but after the incident with the lady-boy at the vicarage (Turns out people aren't as liberal as they like to make out) he was never going to get a majority. He'd even prefer it if it was the limp-wristed vegetarian that nobody really hated  sat there listening intently to his money problems. Unfortunately his only hope for financial assistance in his hour of need hates him and got his position with less than 30% of the votes cast. The majority of voters could well hate his chippy socialist attitude but we live in a minority rule FPTP country, he doesn't need a majority to rule.

So that's it. These are the three biggest reasons not to vote Yes (There's another one he mentions, something about that dog that sells insurance, Winston or something?). No mention of why first past the post is so much fairer, no explanation of the benefits seen by the voter of FPTP and no reasons why a FPTP government is so much more effective.

Just Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt about AV. That's all he's got. Tweet

Vote yes and we'll gag Kris

Don't vote yes - they're all racialists. This appears to be a key argument being used by the No campaign and sustained by the Mail.

First there was the lie about the BNP thugs getting more votes than normal people and now it seems that a Yes leaflet in London has a picture of a black poet on it and in Cornwall and other places a picture of Baldrick.

The Yes campaign explain this by saying "We have a number of endorsers and we vary the endorsers we use on our leaflets." Presumably using celebrity endorsers where they feel they'll have the most resonance and relevance.


The charge of racism is still further undermined as the Yes campaign, bafflingly, used annoying runner Kris Akabusi as a positive reason to vote for them. Maybe the angle is "Vote for us and we promise he'll never laugh again."

Is it Kris or Carlton Banks?

The main reason for pushing a racist agenda onto the Yes campaign is a pre-emptive defence against the fact that the BNP supports the No campaign. Surely this fact alone should be reason enough for everyone with functioning sense of self respect to vote yes. 

BNP support NotoAV campaign

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Don't you worry your pretty little head about it

The Mail has decided to back the No campaign in the electoral reform referendum. This is, obviously, well within its rights and dovetails nicely with its standpoint on life that anything developed after 1957 is scary-darey and might bring you out in hives

Personally I'm quite please as I'd decided to vote Yes and so would have felt uncomfortable holding the same view as our cancer obsessed friends. I'm not convinced AV is the best system in the world, but I don't feel it's any less fair than the current system. However should No win the vote there is little-to-no chance of another referendum in my lifetime and so no chance of me ever seeing proportional representation choosing the government we've all actually voted for.

While I'd be happy to participate and learn from a cerebral debate about the merits and dangers of each system that's not likely to be available as the No campaign seems to be following the lead of oil companies poo-pooing climate change, tobacco purveyors pouring scorn on lung cancer and religious nutjobs ridiculing Darwin's work. They've got it easy, they have no need to get involved in serious debate about the issue, they just have to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD).

I'll try and hunt down the lies, mistruths, deliberate mis-understandings and fear-mongering published till May 5th like an overweight country solicitor chases a fox through the fields of Berkshire. By that I mean I'll be dressed oddly, ignoring chest pains and accompanied by 28 badly treated dogs.

Here we go...

"So why do we oppose the AV system?  Firstly, the reallocation of losing votes, until somebody gets 50 per cent, destroys the principle that every member of society has one equal vote, counted only once.

Votes initially given to extremist parties such as the BNP will be counted two, three or even four times — and will prove decisive in some constituencies."

The insertion of BNP into this paragraph is outright scaremongering, you could easily replace this with Monster raving loony party or Conservatives in many Northern constituencies or Labour in the Home counties. Everybody's votes get counted the same amount of times. It's like the X-factor, after your favourite has been eliminated you have to decide who else to vote for instead, or give up and watch Strictly instead. If your crooner's still being belittled by Simon Cowell you vote for them again.

"Worse, AV will dramatically reduce the likelihood of a single party winning a general election outright ever again.

Instead, hung parliaments will become the norm — with the make-up of governments decided in shabby backroom stitch-ups.

Party manifestos will be reduced to meaningless wishlists to be discarded the moment the election campaign is over."

There's nothing to show this is true at all. Australia uses AV and has a hung parliament at the minute, as do we. We had another one in 1974 and Australia had one in 1940. So far from massively increasing the odds of coalition government it'd be the same or less.

"Experience overseas should also tell Britain to avoid AV. It is used for national elections in only three countries — one of which is Australia, whose citizens are known to loathe the system."

I've had a look around for evidence of this and can find none. A lot of Aussies hate the idea that they are forced to vote whether they want to or not, but not a lot of bile directed against their Preference system (as they call AV). Perhaps they just made this but up to fill the column up with more words.

"Mr Clegg, who once called AV a ‘miserable compromise’, only wants it now because he knows more hung parliaments mean more power for the Lib Dems. 

Each time they agree to form a coalition with Labour or the Tories, the Lib Dems will demand more steps towards proportional representation. This country would soon be on the path to the type of permanent coalition government that has led to paralysis and corruption in countries like Italy."

We won't get any more hung parliaments than we do now. Clegg wants this as he know's it's baby steps towards PR, not because it means he can privatise prisons and the NHS.

"These are the arguments Mr Cameron must make with passion and vigour — even if it upsets his LibDem partners."

The reason he has to use these arguments is because they make AV seem scary and if he'd struggle to find any real reasons for first past the post other than "It's what we've always done" he'd get nowhere.

You, my friend, are too stupid to understand AV.
Whereas I got my job because of it.

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