Politics – Page 28 – More Zonkyness

Why Bother Voting?

May 252024

Voting doesn’t change much of anything, so why bother? Particularly with our present voting system (FPTP) which tends to favour establishment parties. Which is particularly off-putting to those voters who want to see real change. Which probably consists of mostly young voters plus a few weird old farts (like me).

And we need real change :-

We need to reform the voting system away from a system that effectively disenfranchises the majority who don’t vote for the incumbent MP in a constituency. If you look past the “sexy news” in an election where seats change from Tory to Labour or Labour to Tory, a massive number of seats stay passively with the incumbent. That’s not good. Particularly when the majority of voters went for someone other than the winner – if you look at Wycombe, in 2019 the Tory winner had 45% of the vote; the others added together came to 55% of the vote.
Taxation needs to be reformed to be fairer and less evenly distributed (i.e. the rich should pay more – and I’m one of the “rich” relatively speaking as I’m a higher rate tax payer). Close loopholes that allow the rich and companies to avoid paying their fair share of tax.
…

Are any of the mainstream parties likely to do these reforms (although I’ve only listed 2, I could go on for so long that both of us would fall asleep)? Of course not. Labour might tinker with tax a bit and they might have a look at voting reform.

But which one is the worse?

Vote against the one that’ll probably be the worse. Is that negative? Sure it is, but with the present system it’s the best we can manage.

And voting only takes 30m. So vote!

Tactical Voting

If you are currently in a constituency represented by a bloated Tory, who do you vote for to get them out?

You could just pick the party that you prefer, but if you vote Labour and all the pissed off Tory voters all vote LibDem, you may well find that the Tories win by default. A tactical vote may be of more use.

Visit https://stopthetories.vote in a week or two to see where your vote would most usefully be dropped to get the Tories out. Be very, very wary of other sites; not all will be using the best analytics to come up with a prediction. Some may even be stealth Tory “tactical voting” sites intended to sabotage tactical voting.

Don’t feel good about tactical voting rather than voting for your preferred party? Well, don’t. Just bear in mind that you could end up with a Tory as a result.

Is A New Tory Party Leader A Good Idea?

Politics No Responses »

Mar 172024

Well yes, the Tories need a new party leader to rebuild their party after the next election. Before the election? The new leader will just be a sacrificial lamb that’ll probably be thrown out onto the slag heap (hopefully a nice soggy wet one) at the next election.

It’ll almost certainly not save them from being wiped out (and that’s from 6 months ago; if anything, things are even worse today) at the next election.

An overwhelming majority of people want an election now and changing leaders now in what will be seen as yet another undemocratic move (it isn’t; it’s just people like to think they’re voting for a particular PM when they’re just voting for their MP) is likely to make the Tories even more unpopular.

If I were Starmer, I’d launch a parliamentary vote of no confidence as soon as the replacement showed up in parliament :-

The people don’t want you.
We don’t want you.
The other parties here don’t want you.
And if they were honest, half of those on your side don’t want you either.
– Me putting words in Starmer’s mouth.

He’d lose of course, but the people will see it as an honest attempt at doing the right thing.

A long road to the gatehouse — Dover Castle Gateway

Reforming the Commons Pigsty

Politics No Responses »

Mar 132024

The current crop of clownish criminals in the House of Commons just goes to show that the regulation need a bit of a brush-up. Here’s a few of my suggestions :-

Secret electronic voting. Which has the downside that we can’t see what our MPs voted for or against, but does allow them greater latitude in ignoring the party whip when it comes to things that shouldn’t be passed.
Electronic voting should make this easier: MPs should recuse themselves when their vote could influence their income – for example MPs who are also landlords should not vote on motions involving landlordism.
MPs should be allowed to do jobs outside of their work as an MP, but their income should be capped at an hourly rate equivalent to their salary as an MP; any extra goes into the general taxation fund. Sound unfair? There’s plenty of senior public sector workers with exactly that sort of contract. It would allow MPs to keep “in practice” but not encourage them to seek outside work.
MPs who change party allegiance or lose the whip should be subject to the same recall petition mechanism that being found guilty of “wrongdoing” makes available.
Accusations of lying should be permitted which should invoke an investigation. A false accuser gets sanctioned (which opens them up to a recall petition) and an accurate accusation gets the accused sanctioned (likewise).

I’m sure there’s a whole bunch more to add but that’s enough for now. I’m sure MPs will hate it, but to be honest, the more an MP hates a regulation, the more likely it is to be useful.

B&W picture of the sea and some old wooden posts. — Ruins

Right-Wing Terrorism In The UK

Politics No Responses »

Mar 102024

The frothing-at-the-mouth loons on the far right are all over themselves whining about Islamic terrorism including counting the weekly marches against what is happening in Palestine as Islamic terrorism. Islamic terrorism in the UK is a legitimate problem, but the elephant in the room is far-right terrorism. There’s a fair amount of it going on :- (sourced from the Wikipedia article listing terrorist attacks in the UK)

2022-10-30: The Dover firebomb attack.
2019-03-16: Vincent Fuller “used a baseball bat to attack the home of a neighbour of Indian descent and several cars driven by non-white drivers, shouting “Kill Muslims” and “white supremacy” according to witnesses, before stabbing a 19-year-old Bulgarian man”
2017-06-19: The Finsbury Park van attack.
2016-06-16: The murder of Jo Cox.
2013-04-29: : Pavlo Lapshyn, a Ukrainian student and right-wing extremist, fatally stabbed Birmingham resident Mohammed Saleem.
2013-06-21: He detonated a home-made bomb outside a mosque in Walsall.
2013-06-28: He detonated a second home-made bomb near a mosque in Wolverhampton.
2013-07-12: He attacked a mosque in Tipton with an improvised explosive device containing nails.
1999-04-17: The London nail bombings.
1999-04-24: The London nail bombings.
1999-04-29: The London nail bombings.

Excluding a 2007 attack that was anti-authoritarian in nature (so could be said to be either right-wing or left-wing), and a joint IRA and Red Faction attack in 1993, the last genuine far left terrorist attack was in the early 1970s from the Angry Brigade.

Now that list of 11 attacks isn’t huge and hardly compares with the number of Islamic extremist attacks, but it’s there. And more than justifies keeping a close eye on right-whingers.

Diesel Generating Electricity for Electric Cars

General, Politics No Responses »

Mar 042024

I recently came across a post talking about how insane it was for a diesel generator to be generating electricity for an electric car charging station. Well, yes but it might not be quite as bad as it seems.

The first thing to bear in mind is that very few cars will charge here unless they really need to – most car users will charge at home and will only use public chargers when they have no other choice. And this one is undoubtedly in a remote location where a suitable electrical feed is not available. As a remote location, it’ll get even fewer users than most public chargers.

Probably only those who haven’t properly charged their car overnight and are ‘caught short’.

The second thing to bear in mind is that although it’s a more polluting solution, it is still almost certainly far less polluting than using a petrol car. For a start, most of the electricity used in an electric car is off the grid which whilst not completely clean is at least getting cleaner (the UK is currently generating 36% with renewables and is in late winter when demand is quite high).

Next, a diesel generator is a very efficient device – far more so than a diesel vehicle because it can always run at its most efficient (assuming a sensible load and it’ll have been picked to supply the load for an electric car).

But hopefully it is just a temporary solution until someone has enough nous to set up a solar farm and a battery backup.

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