Fair Votes

Fair Votes

The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has produced a report on the general election. It’s subtitled, “Volatile Voting, random results.”  First Past the Post (FPTP) claims to be designed to deliver Governmental stability, but in the last three elections, it has failed to do this twice. Furthermore it exaggerates local & regional differences, e.g. Scotland, Wales and the SE, where the leading parties margin of victory in terms of seats is higher than it’s vote warrants and the losers are under-represented. In this article, I have summarised what I see as the main themes and illustrated what ERS believe to be the impact of implementing a fairer voting system. I also make the point that different systems will cause different behaviour and I finish with a look at Germany’s PR system and a call for smaller constituencies in the belief that it will lead to a better relationship between MPs and their electors. …

Swing!

YouGov have looked at where the Party’s votes came from compared to 2015 and produced a Sankey Diagram, which I think is really cool.

I am not sure it shows the first time voters; there should be a black segment on the left with the label “Didn’t Vote”. The original has overlays showing the swing from Tories to Labour and the loss of votes by the small parties. Labour’s challenge was to win votes from everywhere including those that didn’t vote. It actually did this, although not enough to win the election; those who thought it was too much for one election were right. …

We have a choice

We have a choice

The events of the weekend have led me to the conclusion that my review of the manifestos as they relate to the internet and civil liberties were too factual and too dry. Over the weekend, three islamist terrorists attacked London with a white van and knives. It is now believed that at least one of them has been radicalised by Al-Muhajiroun a banned group and had been, yet again, notified to the security services and police. I suspect we’ll learn more over the next couple of days. This was a week after an attack in Manchester on a concert. Overnight the political parties agreed to suspend the campaign for the following day, but one of the parties broke that agreement. I look at the responses of May and Corbyn, linking to their speeches and analyse the meaning of the promise to deny the terrorists a safe space on the internet, to increase prison sentences together with the impact of the cuts to the police and intelligence service staff numbers.  …

Manifesto bingo, digital liberty and the internet

Manifesto bingo, digital liberty and the internet

I have had a look  at the manifestos and see what they have to say on the internet and Digital Liberty. I have been very influenced by the EDRi voting exchange and summarise the issues of Digital Liberty as e-citizenship, equality before the law, privacy and copyright reform, to which for this election we must add internet governance and industrial & innovation policy. I have created a table summarising the positions of the Tories, Labour, LibDems and Greens. Possibly I should have analysed the SNP manifesto since much of this is Westmister reserved powers. I was hoping to write something easy and quick to read. I don’t think I have succeeded. My super summary is in the figure immediately below, and here is the table I built to help me write this article. (I lost the excel file, so this will have to do!)  My main source was the ORG pages but I have been reading the Labour Manifesto also. I feel that the opposition parties have suffered from the surprise; they probably expected more time to develop their promises. All three opposition parties 2015 manifestos covered these issues in more depth.  …

Tax Fairness

Tax Fairness

Over the weekend, John McDonnell promised that Income Tax would not rise for most of the country but that a higher rate would be levied on those earning more than £80,000. Tax reform can be pretty technical; and so one needs to look at one or two things without losing sight of the idea that the richer should pay their share. Each tax payer has a personal allowance of £11,500 i.e. the first £11,500 of earnings is not taxed; this is clawed back if one’s income is £100,00 or more by levying a 60% marginal rate on those earning between £100,000 and £121,200. There is probably enough room for a new additional rate between the 40% levied at £42,000 and 60% levied at £100,000 and £80,000 p.a. is a lot of money; only 3% of income earners get that much. It will remain necessary to increase the amount paid by those earning more than £145,000 and redress the regressive nature of National Insurance, which negates much of the 20% band, converting it into a 32% tax burden. Labour’s promise is also that there will be no increase in employee NICs nor in VAT, although again that’s not enough … VAT has to come down from 20%. …

Campaigning

How to help Labour’s campaign in Deptford to re-elect Vicky Foxcroft a Lewisham Deptford’s MP.

    1. If not on the electoral roll, register to vote before the 23rd May, here…, if you haven’t got your polling card by 15th, apply again! I didn’t know you could vote if homeless, but it seems you can, the form is here; you’ll still need an internet connection, a printer and an NI number, although alternative proof of identities are acceptable.
    2. Register for a postal vote here …, before the 24th May; you’ll need a printer
    3. Join the Party here …
    4. Donate to the national party here…
    5. Join us on the doorstep, find out where & when here …, or here … we also run phone banks for those who can’t or don’t want to knock on doors
    6. Put a poster, or posters up in your window, or garden, tell us here …, you’ll need to say that you want a poster
    7. Donate to Labour’s campaign in Deptford here …
 …

And out of the traps

And out of the traps

Labour has selected Vicky Foxcroft, the sitting MP to stand as Labour’s Candidate for MP in Lewisham Deptford. I am pleased to support her and already have my “Vote Labour” poster up. Anyone who thinks that this election is about anything other than Brexit is fooling themselves. She was one of the rebels who broke the whip to oppose the bill authorising the UK’s Article 50 notice, an action I supported. Corbyn has a problem in presenting Labour’s policy as he needs/wants to say one thing about winning and being in Government, and another should we lose. …