Voting TaKtiX

Jonn Elledge on the mainstream media’s middle class bias. As he is also a mainstream media journalist, glass houses?

Paulie on an idiotic LibDem, Red Ken and the Standards Board for England (again). Note to Mr Tuffrey. Term limits are neither Liberal nor Democratic; if you don’t like an incumbent, campaign to get him out. If I do manage to move to London, no idea how I’d vote for the Mayoralty, Ken seems to be both great and awful at the same time. I doubt, however, that Mr Tuffrey will get a vote from me.

John Band is back. He stopped blogging just before I started, but I remember the discussion about why he had to, and the whole ‘anonymity’ thing. I’m glad I went with using my name openly, but it was a close call. Good to see you doing more than the occasional post at The Sharpener John, although that one is rather fine.

Oh, Boris on the House of Lords. He does go on a bit at times doesn’t he? Interesting idea, not sure I like it, but all ideas are good as long as it’s not “Tony choses them”.

Also, welcome ContraTory to the blogroll; an example of the importance of going forth and commenting, most of the blogs I read regularly I’ve found through decent comments made by their authors elsewhere

Meh; by the time I finish that Israeli post they’ll have had another election. Incidentally, anyone seen a decent write up of the Ukrainian results with an explanation as to voting system? I seem to be not finding one.

The bill got passed. We are all to be numbered and categorised. I will not submit. So, we have some heroes, some villains, and some dodgy characters. Heroes (more…)

I just don’t get it. First off, the government tries to say that passports wont be compulsory because people don’t ‘need’ to have passports. The opposition see it for the lie that it is, and rightly oppose it. Charles Clarke gets laughed at in the house of commons for uttering such a barefaced lie.

Fast forward a couple of weeks. Same situation, the government is now trying to convince everyone that everything about the ID card system is fine, because it will be delayed by four years. This time though, the opposition buys it, hook, line and sinker.

Why? Why, after opposing the bill for so long and forcing the government into ever increasing ridiculousness, after laughing at this country’s Home Secretary for the length to which he was willing to lie for Tony and his bill, after it has been proven time and time again that ID card wont help to stop terrorism, wont reduce crime, will be abused by the police and the government, why did they cave in just like that?

I honestly thought this was going to go all the way to the Parliament Act, and at least to some extent I can hold my head up high and say that my party of choice did try their best to ensure this happened. I completely agree with the comments on Spyblog about the lack of trust over civil liberties from the Tories; slim chance though it was, David Cameron has just lost any chance of getting my vote.

I honestly do not think that I have ever got this riled up about any act or bill or law ever introduced, and that includes the fox hunting ban which I campaigned to be introduced quite passionately. This system will not only destroy a good deal of our ‘civil liberties’ and ‘personal privacy’, but it will almost certainly be a huge failure will gaping security holes which will compromise individuals across the whole country.

I will not carry an ID card, and I will not allow my personal information to be held on any register. I would urge everyone to follow Mat’s ideas below and refuse to vote for any candidate in an upcoming election that will not vote to do away with the national identity register.

Analysis of Israeli electoral system is in draft stages. It’ll hopefully be up tomorrow, short version: their system of voting is possibly worse than ours

So, how long before I need to renew my passport then?

The Lord have caved in with a compromise that makes it worse, not better. You’ll still be stamped and categorised, they’ll still put your data on a centralised “secure” register, but you can have the sop of believing that you don’t need a card.

Central pledge required from all candidates at the next General Election:

I will vote to abolish the National Identity Register

If they don’t sign up to it, campaign against them. Regardless of party affiliation. I refuse to be ‘registered’.

Henry Porter at Comment is Free:

The failure to register will be punished by a maximum fine of £2,500. The failure to apply in a manner prescribed (whatever that means) to renew your ID, or to inform the national identity register of a change of your details, or to surrender the ID card, or to notify the register of an invalid card, will all incur a maximum fine of £1,000.

Read that through again. £2,500 fine if you forget to tell them you’ve changed your details?

£2,500 fine?

As someone who perpetually forgets to file paperwork, whose drivers licence is still the one I was first issued 13 years ago registered at my parents address (perfectly legally I add), this scares the shit out of me. Why do they need a £2,500 fine for what they’re selling as an ‘entitlement’ card?

• Nosemonkey:

The Lords have fallen for it. After a heroic, drawn-out defence they’ve been conned into believing it’s the cards, rather than the database that backs up the cards, that’s the problem.

• Bookdrunk on Burnham:

To describe any part of the ID card mess as ‘absolutely clear’ is either laughably delusional or grossly dishonest. The problem with Burnham is that it’s hard to decide which applies.

• And again:

More able to control access to my identity? What is this rubbish? How does an identity database protect my fingerprints, date of birth, iris pattern etc. etc. from being stolen? Doesn’t it store all of those things in one handy central place? How does this stop my credit card or name being used? Answer: it doesn’t and it won’t.

• Spyblog:

Most Conservatives abstained, but 24 of them including their Home Affairs front bench spokesmen David Davis, Edward Garnier and Patrick Mercer voted with the Labour Government. Only 8 Conservatives voted against the motion with the Liberal Democrats.

It seems that David Cameron’s NuTories cannot be trusted on civil liberties issues any more than Michael Howard’s Tories could be.

• Porter (again):

People are beginning to see that ID cards are not being introduced so that they can identify themselves but rather so that the government can identify them and keep track of every important transaction in their lives.

We have to get them out of office.

They’re a corrupt bunch of liars as well.

News of the day is obviously about the national strike of around 1.5 million public sector workers over the governments decision to remove their right to ‘Rule 85′ and early retirement.

Now let’s just talk for a minute about dangerous precedents shall we? We seem to hear the phrase banded about all over the place as a way of interrupting an argument before it’s even begun - voluntary ID cards, set a dangerous precedent, religious hate laws set a dangerous precedent, but then it often seems that nothing comes of them, or that they can’t be proved either way anyway.

When the government promised to keep Rule 85 for civil servants, teachers, the police etc. they absolutely set a dangerous precedent which has now come back to bite them on the arse. Sir Digby Jones may think that the current strikes are “a disgrace”, (BBC NEWS) but what seems like more a disgrace is the fact that the government is telling one part of it’s workers that they can retire early, and another section that they can’t. Quite simply, that’s not on; it was obvious that this move was going to cause friction from the off, and it was equally obvious that whilst the government might be able to calm some sectors with the promise of early retirement, that they could not do it to all of them. I can’t help but think that it smacks of short-termism - placate one sector at the cost of enraging another just a few months down the line.

The problem of course is that whilst the government is wrong to treat some of it’s workers differently to the others, it is entirely right in saying that not everyone it employs can retire at sixty - not in the current pensions environment where it all looks like we’ll be working to 70ish and millions may face a rather uncomfortable penny-pinching existence. It has to draw a line somewhere and say that early retirement is not an option, and wherever that line is is likely to be a hotly divisive and bitter place. But seriously, drawing that line between your own workers? What were they thinking? Did they really think that people were going to accept this and not complain?

I really hope they didn’t, and that there’s some sort of hidden grand-plan behind all of this, because unless the government gets it’s head around the current pension “crisis” and sees it for the massive issue that it is (and realises that a line cannot be drawn arbitrarily between those who can retire early and those who can’t), today’s pensions strike is going to go down in history as the beginning of the storm than a quick shower which was weathered and quickly forgotten.

Hmm…
BBC NEWS | Politics | Capita boss quits over Blair loan:

Mr Aldridge, who has run Capita since its foundation in 1984, said: “At present, the group’s reputation is being questioned because of my personal decision to lend money to the Labour Party…”

Get that? The group’s reputation is being questioned because of his decision to loan money to the Governing party.

No Aldridge, your company’s reputation is being dragged through the dirt because >it’s crap and feeds off government contracts. Nosemonkey has more starting here, then here, here and here.

Long term? Jonn Elledge:

both parties have an interest in the status quo, because it allows them to maintain nice big war chests and safe seats. The two-party system institutionalizes undemocratic and corrupt behaviour.

Voters don’t share that interest. Neither do they have anything to gain from the current opaque party financing regime in Britain. If there is to be genuine pressure for reform, it has to come from the public - and the media.

I have a full copy of the Power report, their suggestion to allow us to nominate a party to receive a small amount of cash when we turn up to vote seems interesting, need to read it through properly.

Party finance reform is needed. However, all the discussion about where they get their money from, why not also look at what they spend it on and how it could be changed? They already need less money because of party political broadcasts, etc; individual candidates face campaign finance caps. Why not enforce national financial caps, and instead ensure more media coverage, etc?

So, Charles Clarke has decided to go on the offensive. Anyone surprised? Unity:

So the fact that the party treasurer was kept in the dark about a series of secret loans from millionaire business that, according to one of the lender, Dr Chai Patel, were specifically solicited as loans and not donations in order to avoid having to declare them to the Electoral Commission is a sign that Dromey may not be up to his job, not that the party leadership have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar?

Honestly? I think it may be both. VampWillow:

You are the Finance Director of the organisation and last year you spent �18 million on a very public project, only �3.5 million of which you actually know where it came from.

A friend of your boss ‘acquired’ the other �14.5 million and you have no idea where it came from or under what terms and this didn’t cause you any worries, even though everyone in the world knew the money had been spent.

Can we get Tired Tony and his cronies out of office please?

You may get the impression that I’m bashing the Tories almost every post at the minute - I’m not really, it’s just the issues that have caught my eye recently.

Take the cash-for-peerages debate at the minute. I could easily write a post attacking Labour sleaze, but then everybody is doing that and frankly we don’t expect much more these days. Labour has been badly wounded by this scandal, but for me, the more interesting thing has been the resulting debate about party funding as a whole. Therefore, what caught my eye far more, was the fact that Tories have announced that they will not be revealing the sources of their loans.

Now that is interesting. Because it means that whilst the Tories are rightly attacking Labour for the way they’ve gone about their finances, the Tories clearly have something to hide themselves by not publishing their own list. This is of concern for obvious reasons, but also because the Conservative party gets around two thirds of it’s funding from donations, whereas Labour’s total donations account for only about one third. Labour has been caught with it’s pants down with the consequence that they’ve been forced to reveal their list, but at least they’ve done it. Just because the Tories don’t have peerages to give out doesn’t excuse from the fact that their finances must still be kept in order. Which, of course, they probably are, but with everything kept closely to their chest, we’ll never know.

Basically, we need far clearer funding of our political parties, without the possibility of loopholes which allow funding to continue via side channels. Personally, I think that the only way to keep political financing transparent is to make public all incoming monies over some reasonably small amount of money like, say, £5000.And that includes gifts and cash in kind like big parties and functions as well as loans and donations. If people want their donations kept quiet, then everybody else should probably be asking why they don’t want their political affiliations known.

Alternatively of course, the parties could just get their membership up and get more money in through membership fees. It isn’t going to happen, but if it did, it might go some way to convincing people that politics is about the people rather than about a small cadre of millionaire businessmen and the politicians they can influence with their money.

Chris at Stumbling and Mumbling asks Do we need parties? and gives a list of reasons why parties damage politics. Given that I’m something of a fan of representative democracy, and believe that some sort of party system is a useful tool within a functioning parliamentary system, I thought I’d do a brief analysis. (more…)

In the last two days, I’ve read two rather good articles on electoral reform. I have a few issues with them, and dispute a few points, but overall, they’re very good. Both on the same blog.

Normally, this would be great, right? I just link and get on to writing something substantial. OK, I’ll link. Here and here. There, I’ve done it. I’ve linked to Neil Harding without taking the piss.

OK, the problems with his analysis. (more…)