Voting TaKtiX

New year, new writers, new look?

Well, I guess it’s about time to try to end the hiatus here. I’ve personally been busy wrapping up at my old job and enjoying a break, but while I’m still ‘between jobs’ as they say, and moving to London soon, that’s no reason to not do stuff here.

Anyway, I’m hoping to invite a few more writers on board over the next few weeks and months, and get back to a few that expressed an interest before. The first new writer is already on board; John Franglen is another friend from University I’ve kept in touch with, studied economics, and is now studying design; he wrote a peace for his journal that tied in with a few of my thoughts on a popular issue, so I asked if he’s like to re-publish it here, a nice little explanation about why hypothecated taxes are, generally, a bad idea.

I plan to update the look of this place (I’ve been learning Wordpress theming) as well, but that’s a medium term goal, and also install a few plugins to support OpenID login and thus authors from other sites writing here without registering, which will be nice. In the meantime, if anyone would like to write the occasional peace, comment here or email; contact address is currently on the About page…

January 4th, 2007 Posted by MatGB | admin | one comment

US election swingometer for the utterly obsessive

I get confused following US elections, especially for the House. Mostly because of the weird borders they’ve gerrymandered in order to ensure as many safe seats as possible. Lovely. Also, they don’t seem to do a ’swingometer’ style analysis, at all. It’s all about current polling data, very little public psephology. Fortunately, blogging allows all of us to exhibit our random obsessions, and Iain Weaver has prepared a fairly good swingometer analysis for the US 2006 elections. Definately a handy resource to refer to on results night.

And yes, I keep forgetting to post stuff. Sorry about that, I seem to have lost my anger recently, which is weird given the amount of stupidity around out there at the moment. I have however been in contact with a few potential contributors, so when I get things sorted out we might actually see the site moving again. Also? I hate rich text editors, no idea how I managed to turnt eh damned thing on. Ah well.

October 30th, 2006 Posted by MatGB | admin, elections, International, US 2006, United States | 4 comments

Myths, realities & voting systems - cutting out the crap

There are a large number of oft-repeated tropes about electoral systems and the impact of any change away from the Simple Majority system we use for Westminster. Most of them are either lies, fallacies or half-truths. I’ve written about electoral systems a lot over the last year, but I can’t cover anything. Fortunately, Paul Davies is paid to write about electoral systems, and he’s pretty good at it as well. He’s written a series of articles over the last week debunking the main myths, and they’re definately well worth a read.

A lot of these myths are based on examples from systems that no sane people are advocating for the various UK governments, and thus should be still-born. Unfortunately, they’re not, and it seems that there will always be people that think that shouting ‘look at Israel’, ‘look at Italy’ or ‘PR gave us Hitler’ are valid arguments against electoral reform.

October 13th, 2006 Posted by MatGB | STV, admin, electoral systems, Proportional Representation | no comments

Great Repeal Act and New Tory Labour

When I started writing at NLE, I wasn’t a member of any particular party; I was fairly disillusioned with the whole process of party politics generally and partizan sniping as a specific. Far too often, politics and politicians seemed to be about what you were opposed to, not what you were in favour of. The more I wrote, and read the thoughts and opinions of others, the more my views and opinions were refined.

September 23rd, 2006 Posted by MatGB | Liberty, socpa, LibDems, humour, National Identity Register, admin, Great Repeal Act | 3 comments

Template Fixed - yay!

OK, took less time than I wanted, many thanks to Pete and Dave for the assists, and Duncan for pointing out the obvious (I had Flashblock installed, it’s absolutely essential for browsing with dial up, but it was stopping the weird stuff displaying). So I now have my nice grey-sludge post background, curved boxes in Safari and Mozilla and blue links and purple visited links like what they’re meant to be. Cool beans. Now, Lib Dem conference stuff or The Cameron Project?

September 19th, 2006 Posted by MatGB | Xblogging, admin | 2 comments

New home, new platform

Well, it took me long enough. I’ve had the domain set up for months, it was just a question of timing and inclination. Got there now.

September 13th, 2006 Posted by MatGB | Xblogging, admin | 12 comments

Those nasty terrorists and billionaires

Terrorism, glorification and Peter Hain

OK, it came into force. As Garry observes, that means it’s now illegal to say nice things about, for example, this guy. In addition, Peter Hain will now have problems writing his memoirs (if/when he finally leaves office), as he’s also guilty of acts now defined as terrorist under laws he voted for.

NuLab changing the electoral rules in Wales - they got it wrong last time, they don’t win

Of course, Hain’s an arse anyway, his current wheeze is an attack on the idea of Regional top-up AMs in Wales. Well, yes Peter, we know they’re a crap idea. We told you that at the time. We said use a system that kept a constituency link, but oh no, NuLab had to adopt a system that (supposedly) gave it the advantage. Create a system, then decide it’s not working, so blame those that were forced to work within it instead of the system itself. Useless terrorist fool. Peter Black has more; he doesn’t like how he was elected, but you do what’s needed, right?

Italy, Berlusconi, cheating and stability

On the subject of Governments changing electoral systems in an attempt to give their own party an advantage, isn’t Italy watching fun? At least, it would be, if the media were actually covering the story properly. The best coverage I’ve found hasn’t been the BBC, nor any boradsheets, but blogs. The media is simply regurgitating cliches, and lying (or, to be charitable, simply not understanding) the way Italians vote. There’s an excellent description, including regional breakdown, here. Silvio tried to rig the system, owns most of the broadcast media, controlled a lot of the rest via the Govt, and still they voted him out (just).

Who would chose a list PR system?

The Italian electoral system, now I’ve read about it, is even more crazy than the Israeli system. It says something when two countries have system that are actually as bad, if not worse, than ours. Or, are they?

I’d have said yes, but look at those turnout numbers in Italy. Everyone voted, everyone took it seriously, it mattered. More parties than I can count, but everyone gets to vote for what they care about. You most certainly can’t say that all Italian politicians are the same. It’s still a daft system, but it does show how the “western malaise” supposedly affectig democracy doesn’t, necessarily, apply. Friend of mine was at a big trade fair show in Bologna over the weekend. Major stall holders were shutting up and leaving early, from their biggest annual event, in order to get home and vote.

Would us Brits bother doing that? The Italian electoral system (especially the new one that Berlusconi created) is unstable, and no one is seriously suggesting it for the UK. Instead, we want a reformed constituency system. I’ve gone on about it before, plenty of times, but Peter Blacks post above gives another good series of reasons why list systems are wrong.

The new Liberal Review, and NLE is moving soon

Life is busy, I’m busy, and light blogging mode is on. New project in the works, we’ll be moving soon, details to follow when I’ve got everything sorted out. In the meantime, on the subject of revamped blogs, take a good look at the new Liberal Review. I’ve been asked to write a bit onconstitutional refor (sorry Rob, swamped), in the meantime, it’s taken onboard the Apollo Project team, and taking guest columns, including a pretty good one from Tim.

G’night all.

April 14th, 2006 Posted by MatGB | NuLab, freedom, Xblogging, PR, admin, terrorism, Peter Hain, Italy, electoral systems, list PR, Proportional Representation, Liberal Review, Berlusconi, Prodi | no comments