Political Economy

Worse, Key Advisors on the English NHS Listening Project cannot Evaluate Evidence!

In a recent blog Sir Stephen Bubb  http://bloggerbubb.blogspot.com/ publishes a letter from friends in Australia describing vividly how AV  pushed

“a man named Steven Fielding from the Family First party (think American tea party, you know conservative, homophobic, sexist ”family value” type agendas) was elected into the Senate (where all laws have to pass through) on 1.88% (yes that’s right just under two per cent) of the vote in Victoria! . . . But that’s how the AV system works”

Unfortunately this is all rubbish. Elections to the Australian Senate use PR not AV and if you go to http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/results/sendVIC.htm you can see an example of a PR system whose demonic properties defies belief. Compared to it the d’ Hondt method used in EU elections here in the UK is child’s play.

The writer goes onto complain that in another election a deal done by the Greens to transfer votes to Labour who would implement Green policy resulted in Labour winning but not sticking to their agreements. Political lying is nothing to do with AV! What is more, because the PR system used for Senate elections uses a measure of transferability we do not know if this result was due to AV or PR.

Inability to Think Critically

However there is worse news to come. Sir Stephen is chairing the “Choice and Competition” strand of the coalition’s “Future Forum” set up to ‘Listen’  to critics of the bill on the English NHS. If you went to the blog above you will see that Sir Stephen thinks a lot of himself “This CEO blog promises to reveal the inside track of a third sector leader influencing in Whitehall, championing professionalism and causing a stir.” Perhaps he is correct.

However, as his publishing of the letter referred to above, before checking if it was correct shows, Sir Stephen is a prisoner of his prejudices – he supported the NO campaign – and is clearly not driven by checking facts and doing research. There is plenty of that available to him on how to produce high quality health care in England. See my blog http://www.politicaleconomy.me.uk/2011/04/can-the-english-nhs-survive-the-coalition/

It seems that the coalition’s listening campaign is not what it has been described. Perhaps the story above of the disappointed Green party in Australia was just a coded message from Sir Stephen about what we can expect from him!

The fact that there are so many voting systems in use around the world implies that the choice of system is more likely to rest on cultural values and context rather than on some scientifically developed, or socially accepted, theory.

The referendum today appears to be heading towards a defeat for the proposal to change to the Alternative Vote (AV) system. If that happens it will be a disaster on two levels.

On the level of national democracy we have been subject to an increasing number of parliamentary seats where the winner fails to win a majority of the votes. That means that the MP has failed to get democratic legitimacy for their position and is entitled to act in any way they wish, no matter how inimical that may be to the majority of voters who voted against them, provided they protect the interests of the minority. Currently only around 200 out of 630 seats in the House of Commons enjoys democratic legitimacy and this figure has been falling for decades. Under the current voting system it will continue to fall.

It is a disaster on the level of the English Democrats whose objective is a devolved parliament and government for England, the achievement of which will have been set back by decades by this vote. This is because under AV the winner has to get more than half of the votes (assuming all candidates are ranked by all voters). Since more than 60% of English voters want an English parliament and since more than 60% of seats currently fail to get a majority,  some, perhaps many, of the candidates would have to adopt support of devolution for England as part of their programme. Or if not devolution a referendum on leaving the EU! What’s not to like about that!

An early move to devolution for England will only happen if one of the major parties takes up the policy. Under AV it is reasonable to forecast that we would have an English parliament within 10 – 20 years. Under first-past-the-post system a better forecast is 60 – 80 years, if ever.

In a rational world all English Democrats would support AV but they do not; all those who say they believe in democracy, in the sense of rule by the majority, would support AV, but they do not; all those who want a voting system whose subtlety allows them to express their choices in an increasingly pluralistic world would choose AV, but they do not.

There appear to be two main arguments against AV. One is the principle of “One man One Vote” and the second is that it is “too difficult for people to understand”.

The first principal appears to come first from the USA where the framers of the constitution were keen to ensure that the number of seats in the federal Congress was apportioned on the basis of population so that equal population numbers gave rise to equal numbers of representatives and so, and this is the key issue, an equal chance to gain resources from the federal government http://bit.ly/kRzW4G.

In this sense the people of England have not had “One man, One vote” since the start of the Goschen formula in 1888 which was the start of systems to give more money to the People of Scotland and we are unlikely to ever have it in England. The “One man, One vote” mantra is in fact an argument for the equalisation of government funding on a ‘per head’ basis through the UK.   That Mr Cameron understands this interpretation is shown by his plan to equalise the number of voters in each constituency. In reality he wants to increase the likelihood of more conservative seats and hence more government resources to the Conservative Party money men. That he will not use the principal in its original form to make funding fairer in the UK is axiomatic – to do so would lose any chance of building up a significant number of conservative MPs in Scotland and Wales.

However most people will understand the slogan as meaning that one person has only one vote in an election. What they do not understand is that meaning in England dates only from the post-World War II period when most, but not all, plurality of voting was stopped http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_person,_one_vote. So Cameron’s claim that “One Man, One vote” has served this country well for centuries is false, and as a student of politics at Oxford he knows it is false.

Could you enhance the democratic legitimacy of the current system? Yes and quite easily. You run the elections in a series of rounds, each round separated by perhaps a week or less and with no campaigning between rounds. At each round if no one has more than half the votes one or more candidates is eliminated and the voting goes through to a second round where once again the electors cast their one vote. No one has more than one vote in the voting ‘pool’ at any one time. This goes on until one candidate has more than half the vote. It is tedious but it ensures democratic legitimacy and it is fair. It is called, in the USA, a run-off system of voting.

But AV is merely an ‘instant’ form of the run-off voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_vote. AV ensures that no one has more than one vote in the voting pool at any one time and, like run-off voting, ensures that everyone has one vote in the voting pool all the time, if they wish. So if you like FPTP and you want democratic legitimacy you should like AV!

The second reason that ‘NO’ people go for is that AV is too difficult for some of us to understand (actually they mean “some of you”). In 1963 I became an apprentice in an explosives factory. One of the weekly rituals was placing a bet on the horses (but not by apprentices!). The work of collecting the bets on behalf of the bookie and calculating the odds of the complex bets that were placed was given to the labourer.

Now in the industrial triad of Journeyman-apprentice-labourer the latter was definitely bottom of the heap. Yet the labourer could do more complex calculations of odds than I could then, and probably even now. That was when I learnt that anyone can learn just about anything provided they are motivated to do so and have the time, means and persistence. That was also the time when I realised how arrogant I had been. If you want to see how simple AV is then review the ‘choice of crisps’ analogy in this leaflet

Attending the lectures of Prof. Hans Morgenthau at the University of Chicago I learnt that in a democracy, when the people realise that they no longer have the means to control their state, violence becomes ‘existential’. If violence does occur then the people to blame are the political elites who allowed this situation to arise.

How we vote is one of the many means we have to preserve out control, but only if the mechanism works. FPTP does not work in today’s England because it cannot deliver democratic legitimacy.

That is why, if the referendum vote today goes against AV, the issue will come back. The fight is not over!

For democracy to be seen to done in an election the candidate chosen must get more than 50% of the vote. If this does not happen you get the situation that we in the UK are familiar with. Candidates and governments are elected with less, sometimes much less than half of the votes cast. To get around this the French use the “run-off” system in their Presidential elections. In this, if the leading candidate does not have more than 50% of the vote, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and the voters are called back to vote again. This continues until one candidate gets more than half the votes. Such a system ensures that a minority President, or government, cannot be elected. It is democratic and it is fair. But, with its multiple rounds of voting, it is arduous and time consuming.

The Alternative Vote system is nothing more nor less than a run-off voting system where you have to make you choices in how you would vote in subsequent voting rounds at the time you cast your first vote. It gives all the advantages of run-off voting such as fairness and democratic governments whilst avoiding the time and arduousness of the original version. (For more on the technicalities see the Note at the end of this blog.)

The already low standards of the “NO” to the Alternative Vote (AV) Referendum continue to drop.

Listening to BBC radio 4 on Saturday (19/3/2011) it transpires that a reason to vote “No” is that the AV will give someone who votes for the British Nationalist Party (BNP) a second vote. Notice that the speaker did not say that a reason to vote “No” was that it gave a Labour (or a Conservative, or a Liberal Democrat) voter a second vote! I do not like the BNP, but then I do not like the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberal Democrats either. However I do not make my dislike a reason to deprive a fellow citizen of their democratic voting rights.

The implication is clear. If you vote BNP, a legally registered political party, then you are not worth giving an alternate choice to. How fascist can you get?

I have said it before. The “No” campaign have used lies, deceit, anti-democratic and now fascist arguments to support their views.

A vote for the “No” campaign is a vote for a continuation of the status quo in our already creaking democracy. The speaker for the “Yes” campaign pointed out that the high point in the two-party system in England was in the 1951 election and that this was also the high point for the “first past the post” voting system. Now in a pluralistic political era we, the voter, desperately need a voting system that reflects the political realities and allows us the flexibility to vote in a way that reflects these multiple choices whilst giving us only candidates, and government, who have a majority of the votes.

Those who believe that the way to democracy is to cut voting costs should remember that this is what dictators believe. The fact that the “No” campaign believes this is no accident.

In reality what is not to like about the Alternative Vote system, the efficient, fair and democratic replacement for the run-off voting system?

Note for Readers.

Some voting systems require the voters to vote again if no candidate has more than 50% of the vote. At subsequent voting the bottom candidate of the previous round is eliminated.

The Alternative Vote System is an example of “Instant Run-off Voting. You have the choice to rank candidates – 1, 2, 3 and so on. When the votes are counted the candidate with most votes, provided this is more than 50% of the votes cast,  is elected. If no candidate has more than 50% then the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and their votes are given to their second choice. ALL the votes are now counted again and if no one has more than half the votes the new ‘last’ candidate is eliminated. This continues until a candidate has a majority. See Wikipedia

On the 5th May we in England will have our first opportunity, ever, to vote on the voting system that is used to elect MPs.

Let me say that again. “we in England will have our first opportunity, ever, to vote on the voting system that is used to elect MPs.”

Notice that I am not including the Scots or Welsh in this since they have already had a choice to vote in matters like this. It is only the English that will have this opportunity for the first time. The English who, remember, invented the parliamentary system and representative democracy are, at last, being allowed to vote on something that is of reasonable constitutional importance.

Perish the thought that we might actually vote ‘Yes’. Were we to do so we might get ideas above our station, ideas that we can actually change things, dangerous ideas that there are perhaps other things that we should change!

It is interesting therefore to review the ‘No’ vote campaign’s leaflet to see how they intend to steer us away from this dangerous action.

First off they claim that AV is not fair because some people will have their vote counted five or six times. Well I have some news  for the ‘No’ campaign. My vote hasn’t counted for 20 years. There are some people whose vote has never counted over 50 or 60 years – assuming that they still bother to vote. The fact is that the current system is undemocratic and broken. The ‘No’ campaign state that  the ‘First Past the Post’ system has served us well for hundreds of years whereas in reality the system has been failing increasingly since the introduction of universal suffrage in the last century.

The ‘No’ campaign have an equally dodgy approach to finance and budgets. They claim that machines will have to be used and that these will be very costly. Well so they might, in the first year. The next time and the time after that and after that, they will cost nothing because the machines will already have been purchased! And of course the greater speed of machines could mean that there will be savings in manpower, not just at the count, but also in the broadcasting organisations. It might be that the cost of a general election would actually go down.

But not only do the ‘No’ campaign begrudge the cost of machines to bring our vote counting practices into the 21st century, they also begrudge the cost of democracy, and hence democracy itself. Apparently the cost of holding referendums, and hence referendums themselves, is something we should not be countenancing.

I will not go into the advertising campaign claiming that the referendum is causing the deaths of babies and soldiers. Such deceit is a hallmark of the abysmal level to which public standards have fallen and which we the people must battle to raise.

All-in-all the ‘no’ campaign is hostile to democracy, solidly behind the hold that the two major parties have over parliamentary seats, indulges in deceitful financial analysis and is an example of the appallingly low standards which pass for good practice in public life today.

Vote ‘No’ if you must, but do not complain over what it will cost you in the future.

James Boxall reported in the 1st October 2010 Kindle edition of the Financial times that the CBI has said that the new rules restricting foreign workers from outside the EU must be reviewed. Why?

Put simply it is because the CBI’s members do not want to invest in English workers. In other words these CBI members are lazy and lacking either in vision or a desire to improve matters in England.

To do so would mean more support for English higher education, post-graduate and graduate students.

It would mean more support for local colleges and a greater investment in apprenticeships and in-house training for the English people.

It would mean funding more initiatives with our more challenged English schools.

And most importantly it would mean an open and collaborative approach to their strategic manpower planning exercises, with all their English stakeholders.

And finally these imported workers will expect the full use of the English welfare state, without them or their family having paid a penny for it.

So, yes, I do agree that the rules need to be changed to protect English workers from the lazy and greedy employers. My prescription is as follows:

1. Before making an application  to employ a foreign worker the organisation must show that it has tried really hard to develop home-grown English talent by carrying out all of the above activities for a minimum of five years. Surprisingly there will be some companies that already pass this test.
2. They must give an undertaking that they intend to continue at least this level of educational activity for the next 10 years.
3. They must show that the job requirement has a level of education (at least post-graduate from a university certified to have the same standards as an English Russell Group university), or significant experience (success at an international standard of achievement for at least five years in the same field as the job) is unobtainable from within England
4. They must deposit a sum of money with the government that will be sufficient to cover all the education and welfare costs of the worker, and their family, for his or her period of residence in the UK.
5. The worker must be paid a salary in the top 10% of national salary range for the job and must get exactly the same bonuses and benefits at other employees in a similar position.
6. Permits will be issued for a maximum of four years, renewable only once, and at the end of that period the worker and their family must leave and return to the country of origin of the foreign worker. There will be no possibility of acquiring British citizenship or of staying beyond that time.

Some might argue that this is not necessary because businesses and their employees pay taxes to the government to carry out all these duties. These are of course the same businesses that complain about the high level of taxation and about “big” government. On the other hand a 3% tax on their revenue might just possibly give enough tax revenue to solve the problem of lack of skill in the local workforce without these companies and their managers having to get out of their seats at all!

This demand from the CBI is just a big whinge, the epitome of the “moaning Pom”. It smells of greed and laziness and the people of England deserve a lot better than this shoddy mob.

With an approach like the one above the people of England would at least have the knowledge that the businessmen of England not only had their interests at heart but were working hard to improve them.

Now wouldn’t that be a change?

The Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrats do not want to give the people of England their own Parliament. The reasons they give are varied. Some, such as Straw and Prescott are quite happy to insult the English cultural identity and care not that this is a deeply racist action, under the Race Relations Act, and also offensive, confident that their position will give them protection.

Some of them mutter on about England being 80% of the population of the UK and therefore do not need a separate parliament. This argument is either based on an ignorance of Pareto’s principle or an attempt to manipulate people by misquoting it (see my blog at http://www.politicaleconomy.me.uk/2010/01/only-english-mps-voting-on-english-matters/).

None of them mention democracy. liberty, equity, dignity, rights, fairness, self-determination, birth-right, entitlement. All words one would expect a serious and committed parliamentarian to use with respect to this issue. But notice how in this election campaign they have promised “fairness for all” in order to get your vote! How dishonest can they be?

You will, therefore, probably not be surprised that the real reason why they do not want a parliament for England is quite different from the one they give, and infinitely grubbier. Yes, it concerns money, lots of your money and my money, in fact £2,000,000 of our money. Money that they do not deserve, money that they are happy to scam off you and I, just as they did with their expenses

They are trying to kid us that they have cleaned up the financial systems in Parliament, that they are squeaky clean, that it will never happen again. What is “it”? Quite simply “it” is the same greed that made them unable to tell when a rule is immoral, dishonest, or unethical. Remember that MPs caught out ‘flipping’ their houses to make untaxed capital gains off the taxpayer, or claiming repairs to their boyfriend’s house? All said “We were only following the rules” (see my blog at http://www.politicaleconomy.me.uk/2009/10/how-the-rich-and-powerful-scam-the-rules-for-their-own-benefit/ .

Well here is another big, fat, round £2,000,000 rule they are quite happy to follow even though in doing so they are taking money they have not earned, money that comes from me and you, money that they should not be getting. Not that is if they were men and women of integrity.

Many of the plum jobs as Secretary of State or Minister in the Westminster cabinet are for devolved matters. That is those that matters such as Education, Health, Justice and Transport to name a few. These matters have been devolved to national parliaments or assemblies either in part or whole. Westminster Secretaries of State basically administer only England in these matters. They should get paid the same as their equivalent in the Scottish Parliament. In the case of a secretary of state this is £44,000 less, of a minister £24,000 less if they were in an English Parliament (they would also get £7,000 less for their salary). There are around 70 of these plum jobs to be handed out after the 6th May adding up to excess pay of around £2,000,000.

Now you get “it”, the real reason why they do not want an English Parliament. Men of Honour? I do not think they know the meaning of the phrase.