Funny thing, our democracy

To form a government a political party in the UK needs a large majority of seats in Parliament. Once it has this majority then the government cannot be forced into calling another general election and its MPs cannot be recalled. We are stuck with the government and their large majority means that they can do whatever they want (like go to war in Iraq). This has gone on for decades with Labour and the Conservatives taking it in turns to have a decade or more in power. Power only changes hands when the public are so sick of a party that they will do anything to see a change of government.

In this election we have a real chance to change the status quo. If there is no outright winner then the Liberal party will become very important in any coalition government. This will almost certainly mean electoral reform so that proportional representation is introduced meaning that the number of votes cast for a party will count and not the number of seats that they gain. The awful spectre of a party finishing third in the popular vote but still gaining enough seats to win the election will be removed. It will mean the end of Conservative majority government. For ever.

Just think about that. Never again will the Tories get into absolute power. The party that represents the rich and the priviliged. The party that decimated northern England in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The party that ruined our place in Europe and will further isolate us to the margins if elected this time. The Tory party that will not give precise figures in its manifesto and will not explain exactly how its 'big society' policies will work.

Party politics as a whole doesn't work. All three big parties support a free market, privatised, PFI backed, business led Britain in which the gap between rich and poor widens every year and society crumbles.

So I'll be voting tactically to stop my MP from being a Tory. I want a hung parliament. I want consensus & issue based politics (like that in Germany and many other places in the world) to take over. The end of the party whips. The end of MPs doing as they please in seats for life. The end of MPs working for lobbyists and the end of former Prime Ministers making £20 million from oil companies for taking us to war against an oil rich country.

If only....

Wishlist

• Scrap Trident and cancel the aircraft carrier and Eurofighter contracts
• Break up the banks
• Ban short selling
• Tax foreign exchange transactions
• Raise capital gains tax
• Raise income tax for the rich while reducing it for the poor.
• Set a maximum wage and give workers seats on corporate boards.
• Re-nationalise the railways
• Curb the power of the supermarkets and gas/electric companies.
• A living pension for everyone over 80
• Raise benefits in line with average earnings
• Scrap tuition fees.
• Abandon ID cards
• Stop detaining asylum seekers
• Shift sentencing away from prison and towards restorative justice

Think this is impossible? The people of Wales get this choice with Plaid.

The Leaders Debates

The first ever UK television debate between the three people who hope to be prime minister was held the other night. We expected a dry, safe stage managed affair with little participation from the public. In fact it was surprisingly engaging and opened up genuine differences between the parties.

Nick Clegg was the clear winner. He spoke to the camera and to people who asked him the questions. He tried to answer the audience questions fully and he remembered the names of the people who asked the questions. Brown and Cameron seemed to be bickering amongst themselves. Out of the three parties I would choose the Lib Dems. Unfortunately I live in a Labour seat where the majority shrunk to 8000 at the last election from 20000 the time before. I need to make sure that Caroline Flint doesn't lose her seat to the Tories.

I absolutely do not want a Conservative government. The last time our economy was in this state the Conservatives made things ten times worse by making premature cuts and putting millions into unemployment. Their policies on small government and handing back power to the people are just back door privatisation and deregulation. Deregulation and free markets don't work because human beings are selfish and greedy and will always play the system. And who is going to have time to run a school and do a full time job and look after kids?

Labour have some very interesting policies this time around but I just don't believe that any of them will be enacted. Gordon Brown appeared statesmanlike during the debate and he certainly didn't finish last. My perception was that he hammered Cameron. The problem is that Brown is a political animal. His party seems tired and decaying and corrupt.

My ideal scenario would be a Lib Dem victory and if I get the faintest whiff that they can take our constituency then I'll vote for them. The more realistic scenario is to keep the Tories out and hope for a coalition government (with Vince Cable as chancellor). To get this I'll have to vote Labour for the first time in my life. Yuck.

Party politics is still a poor system. If one party holds a large majority then all sorts of horrific laws and backstage deals get under the radar (see any issue of private eye). The three parties still offer a narrow variation on a theme. Our degree of EU membership has never been put to the public. And the system of deregulated, privatised, PFI, free market capitalism that we are forced to live under is not going to be questioned or altered in any way.

It's a real shame that voters are not being offered any great variety of choice and that people like me cannot vote for the things I want and instead have to tactically vote for the lesser of many evils.

Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival

Government investment in nuclear missiles : £20 billion


Government investment in hybrid/green/electric cars : £20 million

Harriet Harman

The equality minister Harriet Harman is planning to make it legal to discriminate against people in a job interview. If you are a white male and you are up against a woman or a person from an ethnic minority of equal ability then it will be perfectly legal for them to turn you down because of your gender or the colour of your skin. This is grossly unfair on the person being denied a job. In all situations the best person for the job should be chosen. It is never the case that there are two candidates of identical ability that can't be distinguished after a second interview.

Harriet Harman declared that she was the best person to be deputy PM because she was a woman. It certainly wasn't because she was the best person for the job. She has been a disaster in parliament and has long been considered as an over promoted New Labour appparatchik who agrees with whatever the party line is. Harman became "the politician we all love to hate" during her tenure as social security minister when she carried through widely unpopular lone parent cuts affecting mostly women. She sent her kids to a selective school far away from her constituency. Her voting record is; voted no to a transparent Parliament, voted for introducing ID cards, voted for introducing foundation hospitals, voted for introducing student top-up fees, voted for Labour's anti-terrorism laws and 42 days, VOTED FOR THE IRAQ WAR, voted against investigating the Iraq war, voted for replacing Trident (cost £20bn). In 1990 Harman co-authored a report entitled "The Family Way". It criticised the family unit and mothers who stay at home. In particular it questioned whether men were an asset to families at all and whether "the presence of fathers in families is necessarily a means to social harmony and cohesion". Critics such as Erin Pizzey described such statements as a "staggering attack on men and their role in modern life". She wore a stab vest to walk around the streets of her constituency. She accepted illegal donations to her campaign to become deputy pm. In 2003 Harman was fined £400 and banned from driving for seven days after being convicted of driving at 99 mph (159 km/h) on a motorway, 29 mph (47 km/h) above the speed limit.

Energy Costs

The cost of cleaning up after the last generation of nuclear power plants could rise as high as £73bn. This has to be paid by the taxpayer. The next generation of nuclear power plants has already been approved. The government has decided our future is nuclear.

The cost of completing the national grid so it runs all the way from Scotland to Southern England and then onto France is about £4bn, which includes wind farms in Scotland. The idea is we could be a net exporter of energy within a generation. Britain is blessed with amazing wind and wave energy resources. We also have a commitment to cut our greenhouse gases and increase the proportion of our energy from renewable sources. That process has started but most serious proposals are stuck in the planning process and very few make it through.

Here is my plan;

1) Approve a mix of big and small projects
2) Streamline the planning process and be biased toward green energy schemes
3) Add incentives for communities that host wind farms
4) Allow any user to sell energy back to the grid at a fair price; feed in tariffs

Above all just do SOMETHING and do it NOW. The Germans are far in front of us

Margaret Thatcher

As a person who grew up in a Yorkshire mining region in the 1980s my natural inclination is to hate Thatcherism because of the misery it caused for me personally and for many many others. However, the recent spate of programmes on TV has made me rethink. Here are one two interesting articles that offer opposing views.

The balance seems to be that although she made some calamitous mistakes and our entry into the Falklands war looks like downright evil political opportunism with hindsight, her economic and social reforms were a bitter pill that did transform the country into a lean mean modern machine. This is why New Labour didn't drop any of her major policies. It is also why in the space of one generation I went from being destined to work in a coal mine to taking a place at University and earning a PhD.

Say No to 42 days

The latest great idea from the Government to stop terrorism is to make it legal to hold people and question them repeatedly for 42 days without charge - without even telling them why they are being held. The Equality and Human Rights Commission says it goes against human rights law and may breach the Race Relations Act, while Geoffrey Dear, former chief constable of West Midlands Police and HM inspector of constabulary says passing the law will be a PR coup for Al Qaeda

The Rachel from North London blog explains all this better than I can, so please have a read of her thoughts on this and then go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/notadaylonger/ and sign the petition against 42 Days which a)threatens our civil rights and b) won't do the slightest bit of good in 'the war against terror'anyway. Please take a minute to sign, not because I asked and not because a load of bloggers are going on about it, but because it's the right thing to do.
Niczilla xx

Democracy 0 MPs 1 (2)?

Today is a crucial day for Democracy in the UK. Parliament is to debate the EU treaty. The people of Britain want a referendum. The government know that the outcome of the referendum would be that the people would reject the treaty (as part of a wider rejection of EU authority over British citizens and the subsequent dilution of our democratic rights). So the government has rejected the idea of a referendum even though they were elected on the promise (in their manifesto) that the people would be granted a referendum. They claim that the treay now isn't the same treaty on which the referendum promise was made which is complete hogwash. Those who redrafted the treaty themselves admit this. It all boils down to the simple fact that the pro-Europe stance of parliament is completely out of touch with the feelings of the people. We are being denied our say because the government believe we lack enough knowledge of the situation to be involved in the decision making.

The simple fact is that we don't want to be ruled over by mainland Europe. We fought in two wars to prevent European integration. Europe as a trade zone is a great idea. Europe sticking together in its dealings with the superpowers makes sense. But a federal Europe with a single currency and a central law making and governmental institution is too far. The politicians want to go all the way. Why? An increase in government and bureaucracy (and in power and budgets) is what they want. Government bureaucrats measure their success by the size of their workforce and budgets. Anyway. Please parliament let us decide. You ignored millions of us over the pre-Iraq war protests and we were right. We couldn't vote the government out of power to protest this because the alternatives were the Tories (no way) or the Lib Dems (not a serious proposition). Another failure of party politics (see earlier post). Don't let this be the second time in recent years that the overwhelming will of the people has been brushed aside. I could be wrong. A referendum could reveal public opinion to be in favour of Europe. Either way. Give us our say.

Defence Spending

The armed forces are woefully underfunded. The living conditions for some army families are a disgrace. So it makes people very angry when the government spends £33 million on asylum centres that were never built. That's right. It cost £33 million pounds for the government to even just think about building such centres, such as the one at Bicester. Think about how many army homes could have been rebuilt with £33 million. And think what we could do with the £20 billion that the Trident nuclear 'deterrent' will cost.

In other news Tesco has launched its US operations. The stores are called 'fresh and easy'. They chickened out on using 'Tesco' because if the venture fails they don't want to taint their name. What I find ironic is that their selling point is cheap fresh food for home cooking. Tesco UK are lousy for fresh food. In my experience their fruit, veg and meat is terrible quality.

Migration Impacts Forum

Cambridgeshire police force has an £800'000 bill for translation services. It has to deal with 83'000 legal migrants (that are known about) and more than 100 languages. The immigrant population carry knives and drink drive back in their home countries so they think it is OK to do it here. This has put a massive burden on local public services.

This is just one example of the problems caused by the vast numbers of migrants into the UK. We are told that the UK economy is propped up by such workers. I'm pretty certain that the tax and council tax they pay (if they pay it at all in certain cases) does not cover the extra costs imposed upon schools and hospitals and the police.

What is the solution? A lot of the problems are caused by social differences. Like the Polish drivers in South Yorkshire who think it is OK to park on a roundabout while they retrieve something from the boot of their car. There are some incidents where the people bring problems from their own culture. Like the group of somalis who attacked an ambulance in Bristol in which a man dying of stab wounds was being treated. They dragged a paramedic out by her hair. This went unreported nationally for some reason (see my earlier posts about the liberal BBC). These violent somalis should have been deported to their civil war ravaged country. Maybe once they were back there they would realise how easy it would have been to stay in quiet peaceful Britain, a country where public services are in place to look after anyone. Even stab victims from within a violent immigrant population.

The government solution is to "set up the Migrant Impacts Forum so public services can help shape our tough points system which is introduced in around 150 days time." Yes, that's right. The government is going to invite everyone around for a chat. What about charging some of the factory owners and gang leaders to contribute to some of the costs their slave labour workforce imposes on society? How about immediate deportation (at their own expense, they managed to get here so they should be able to manage to get back) for anyone who commits a serious crime or a series of small ones? And before I get labelled as a Daily Mail reader I do have lots of friends who make up the law abiding immigrant population and who do contribute to society (in some cases more than I do).

Party Politics

"People became eclectic in their choice of stances on individual issues as they were in their choice of morning newspaper, building up a portfolio of attitudes which defied simple categorisation." All Must Have Prizes, Melanie Phillips.

Party politics is no longer valid. In the past the two parties had clear constituencies; Labour stood for the working class and fair treatment for all. The Conservatives were for supporting those who worked hard for themselves and prospered under their own steam. Labour and Conservatives, do-gooders and moralisers. The face of Britain has now changed beyond all recognition and the old battle lines have dissapeared. Voting Labour does not mean getting an ideologically consistent package of ideas in the way it used to.

What frustrates me is that I agree with party x on some issues and with party y on other issues but I do not agree with any party on all issues. How should I vote? Prioritise issues? We now have the ridiculous situation where most people don't vote and the ones that do vote get mostly ignored. Iraq stirred up a huge well of public opinion which was ignored. The party political system is the number one enemy of democracy in British politics today.

How can this be fixed? Get rid of political parties. For each issue (schools, prisons, police, NHS, immigration, economy etc) vote for one person every three years based on their proposed policies for each particular aspect of their department. If they fail, boot them out. A bit like the mayor of London. Local MPs could then be responsible for making sure the head of each major department did their job according to the especial preferences of their local constituency. Party and personality politics have destroyed democracy in this country and the electorate have switched off, bored and disillusioned by Thatcherite "tough medicine" and the squandered promise and spin of New Labour.

Schools PFI

A programme to spend £45bn on rebuilding many schools took its first major step today. A new state of the art school has just opened in Bristol and it looks stunning. It came in on time and on budget. Other PFI initiatives across the public sector haven't worked so well. Like the classic case of the two hospitals in Coventry that needed refurbishing at a cost of £30 million pounds. To attract PFI money this plan was scrapped and a single new hospital was built at a final cost of £410 million pounds. The NHS trust is now in debt and owes the private sector partners loads of money. So Coventry swapped two hospitals for one that has less money and less beds and nurses and doctors for a total saving of -£380 million. By the same scale up of costs the schools rebuilding programme will cost £615bn, a debt that will have to be paid in future generations. Gordon Brown loves PFI because he doesn't have to raise taxes to get public service investment andhe passes the debt forward to a time when he won't be in power. Read Captive State by George Monbiot or talk to anyone who works for a privatised company or a joint venture or PFI initiative and share in the horror of what is to happen to our schools.

News from the front line

There is no news. We've been at a major UK science facility for two weeks now but we have done no experiments and have yielded no data due to technical issues. C'est la vie. I wish I could give more details but I might say the wrong thing.

Tessa Jowell has said that the cost of the Olympics has not trebled to £9 billion. It has increased from £2 billion to £3 billion because of unforseen costs in the construction of the Olympic village. The other £6 billion is to be spent upon regeneration projects in London. Are these not associated with the Olympics? Should they not be included in the total cost figures? Would these areas have been regenerated regardless of the successfull Olympic bid? I smell another Millenium Dome. And that logo is ugly.

In other news the chain of Track records stores is to close. This is a crying shame because track records was all about music and variety; they never gave 50% of their stores over to DVDs like HMV and Virgin and cut down the music range to high volume items like Coldplay and the Kaiser chiefs. HMV is in financial trouble too. Of course, the internet will be blamed which is just crap. If HMV continued to sell things that people could not get on torrent sites then people might be more inclined to continue shopping there. Take this weekend. I was shopping for the 'I Am Kurious Oranj' album by The Fall and the Trojan Records Dub box set. I could find neither item in one of the largest shopping malls in the country. I could find crappy reggae compilations and overpriced Fall boxed sets but not the particular items I wanted. The space was taken up by piles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman Begins DVDs.

Harriett Harman and Madeleine McCann

Harriett Harman, the unflushable underachieving turd of the labour party has made her bid to be deputy PM. Her main selling point is that she feels there should be a woman at the top of government. Excuse me? You think you're the best person to help run the country, to take charge when Gordon goes on holiday because of your physiology? We should positively discriminate and give you the job even though you have been a dismal failure in the past just because of the configuration of your genitalia? Go away, step aside and let the best person get the job.

On another note an interesting point was raised today on Question Time about the Madeleine McCann abduction case. Her parents are both doctors. If they were unemployed would their two children have been taken into care because of their negligence? Many children go missing every day. MPs never wear ribbons for black kids that go missing in Peckham. A complete double standard because of the media attention and the location of the abduction (and our ability to sneer at local Portugese investigative techniques) and the status of the parents. Why people buy Rupert Murdochs mouthpieces I will never know. I guess it's to read in their white vans and on the train.

Tony Blairs legacy to me

1. Impossible housing market
2. Student debt
3. Pensions crisis
4. Failing NHS
5. Roads clogged with lorries

At the next election I will base my vote on these issues

The Iraq war
Trident
Effective privatisation of NHS dentistry
The price of petrol
Road pricing and commuter charges
Green taxes and their use/flight price hikes
Target/table culture in the police/NHS/Schools
Funding and policy for scientific research and education
Road safety/traffic police/drink driving policing
Bus lanes/transport and congestion policy
Council tax and refuse collection (local issues but local councils are failing on this and Whitehall needs to step in)

and I'm sure I'll think of more

The colour coded budget

I'm sure you noticed the way the PM and the chancellor were colour coded yesterday. For every colour Brown was wearing Blair was wearing the equivalent but more subdued and pastel coloured. Brown had a vibrant red tie, Blair had a gentle pink tie. Brown had a crisp navy blue jacket, Blair had a nice greyish blazer. All deliberately done of course to promote the image of Brown as the fresh vibrant replacement for our PM. Shame he won't be elected by the people like Blair. As for the budget, meh. It was just shuffling piles of money from A to B with no net gains. The £1.5 bn in green taxes was interesting. I would very much like to see how this will be spent. Will the money be put back into green initiatives like wind farms? Or will petrol duty be reduced to compensate? What do you think?

British Telecom profit gouging and Trident

British Telecom owns much of the telephone and internet infrastructure of the UK. Once upon a time it had a monopoly but in recent years it has struggled to compete as first mobile phones and then the home internet phenomenon took off. In an effort to encourage customers to pay by direct debit the company has just announced that it will charge customers £4.50 to pay their bill in cash. I can see their point; it costs more to process cash transactions and automated payment will save them money. But come on. It is the right of everyone to restrict access to their bank details. A person should be allowed to use money if they wish. As long as bills are paid on time then BT should not add penalty costs. It amounts to profit gouging to save costs in every part of the business by a desperate company who are prepared to inconvenience their customers if it will save them money. But this is Britain today. No consumer protests will happen. There will be no boycott. People will not notice or care. Vivienne Westwood hit the nail on the head yesterday when she said that people were too busy with their lifestlye/consumer interests to care about the fact that the governement is about to spend £20 billion on a renewal of our cold war defence system. £20 billion to provide the armed forces with pointless busy work in the form of nuclear warheads to maintain.

Britain decides to renew Trident nuclear missile system

A quote from Yes Prime Minister Series 1

Sir Humphrey: "Don't you believe that Britain should have the best?"

Jim Hacker: "Yes, of course."

Sir Humphrey: "Very well, if you walked into a nuclear missile showroom you would buy Trident - it's lovely, it's elegant, it's beautiful. It is quite simply the best. And Britain should have the best. In the world of the nuclear missile it is the Saville Row suit, the Rolls Royce Corniche, the Château Lafitte 1945. It is the nuclear missile Harrods would sell you. What more can I say?"

Jim Hacker: "Only that it costs £15 billion and we don't need it."

Sir Humphrey: "Well, you can say that about anything at Harrods."