Reforming the British Parliament ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Jul 252009
 

They have decided that reforming the British parliament is the only way of distracting us from the expenses scandal. Pretty good scheme as parliamentary reform is well overdue, but what makes them think that we would trust politicians (said in the same tone of disgust as you would say child molesters or investment bankers) to do an honest job? We are supposed to passively sit back whilst they thrash out the ideas and eventually vote yes or no on a reform referendum. It is our parliament and we should be telling them how it will be.

Fewer MPs?

The Conservatives have come up with the idea of reducing the number of MPs in parliament, and the idea of fewer politicians involved in government sounds pretty good. At least at first.

After all, fewer MPs means that parliament costs less. But are we really bothered by the costs ? Assuming that each MP costs £200,000, and as we currently have 646 MPs, then the total cost is £130 million. That sounds quite a lot, but in terms of the total cost of government it is not so much. The suggestion is to reduce the number of MPs to around 400, which would cost £80 million.

But why do we have MPs? It is to represent us the public. And reducing the number of MPs is effectively telling us that our voices are less important. Each MP represents a parliamentary constituency containing a number of us; given the total population of 61 million and averaging out the number of people per MP, each MP represents 94,000 people. So they do not get much time to talk to us!

In 1801, we had a population of 10.5 million with 658 MPs meaning each MP represented just under 16,000 people. It would (in theory) have been a great deal easier to bend the ear of your local MP! If we were to have the same ratio of MPs to people, we would have nearly 3900 MPs! Perhaps that is too many especially as the cost would work out at £763 million! But I believe more MPs would be better …

Why do the politicians want fewer MPs ? What fringe benefits are in it for them? Given our current crop of politicians, we should always look beneath the surface to see what advantages their proposals have for them rather than us. Sure fewer MPs will cost less, but is that the real reason behind the proposal?

Perhaps it is instead that fewer MPs makes a parliament more easily controllable by the party whips. Fewer rebelious backbench MPs to upset what the government wants to do. Do we really want that ?

I want my MP to feel rebelious and to ignore the party whips on occasion because they represent me and not their political party.

End Of First Past The Post?

There has even been a hint that some politicians without a yellow hue have expressed an interest in ending the first past the post electoral system. The current system where the person with the most votes in a constituency wins is undoubtedly the simplest possible voting mechanism.

The big problem with our archaic voting system are the millions of people whose voice is effectively ignored. If you are a fan of a smaller party, or live in a constituency whose MP is someone you did not vote for, then your views are effectively unrepresented. If you look at the last election in 2005, Labour held onto power retaining 55% of the MPs, with only 35% of the popular vote – a majority of those who voted did not vote for a Labour government.

And the raw statistics do not necessarily tell the full story. Many people (myself included) will not vote for an MP they really want because they know that their preferred MP has no chance of being elected. Instead we vote for an MP who has a chance of getting in whose views we dislike the least. This tends to favour the large parties.

I could ramble on for ages about the weaknesses of the current system and highlight possible alternatives. But without the time to model the behaviour of alternate voting systems I don’t have the right to go into too much detail. Remember that – anyone who advocates a particular voting system needs to have spent time modelling their voting system so they can have some form of evidence for the expected behaviour.

I can tell you what features a new voting system should have :-

  • It should end the travesty of “safe seats” where a particular party can almost expect their candidate to win. And let’s see an end to situations where political parties choose not to put up candidates to allow one particular candidate (like the speaker) a “free run”.
  • It should break the close association with the geographic area to allow minority views to be “grouped” in a larger area.
  • Constituents should have the right to recall their MP and fire him or her. This would have to be constrained in some way – perhaps a 3 month cooling off period after a motion to fire has been started.

Why London?

I am sure those Londoners reading this (all two of you!) will be horrified at the thought of the mother of parliaments moving elsewhere, but why is it necessary for the parliament to be located in London?  Whilst it has good transport links, it is really only convenient to get to if you live in the South. Moving it to Birmingham would make it more equally inconvenient to get to, and Birmingham has pretty good transport links itself.

But why do we need a physical parliament at all? This is after all the 21st century, and there is nothing stopping MPs from taking part in debates and voting from their constituency offices. This would solve the problem of travelling and second homes, and give us greater access to our MPs.

Afghanistan War Aims

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Jul 252009
 

Sometimes I really do not understand some comments that crop up from time to time in the media. Apparently there are many people who do not understand why we are fighting a war in Afghanistan.

Well I guess some people are so dumb they need reminding to keep breathing.

Or are so uninterested in what is going on that they never listen to media discussions on the war.

It is not as if the reasons have not been discussed many times. And it is not as if the aims are particularly difficult to understand – we’re there to establish a stable government that is not going to let Afghanistan be used as a solid base for terrorism. Sure, things start to get a little more detailed and confused when you dig down into more precisely how that will be done especially when combating the opium/heroin trade gets mixed in.

The terrorists in Afghanistan use the heroin trade to raise funds for their activities, so it is perfectly reasonable to try to stop the funds, but it needs to be done in such a way that it does not irritate the opium farmers whose livelihood depends on the trade. As I have suggested before, the simplest way of dealing with this, is to simply buy the opium for a fair price ourselves.

So the next time someone complains that they do not know why we are fighting in Afghanistan, remember that whilst it is perfectly reasonable to object to the war for all sorts of reasons, objecting because you do not understand the aims is just indefensible.

Rampant EU Phobia at the Sun/EU Legislation on Horse Meat

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Jun 282009
 

Of course anyone who has ever kept up with the Sun (a UK newspaper famous for thinking that topless woman is news, and for being keen on the “frothing at the mouth” school of journalism) will not be surprised in the least that they are jumping up and down and screaming at the thought that the EU is daring to interfere with our right to chomp through Rebecca’s pony after it has eaten it’s last bit of grass.

The news article is here (at least for now … newspapers are notorious for moving things around). But I dare say it is more of a waste of your time than reading this blog entry.

What has gotten the Sun so excited is that the EU is proposing European-wide legislation requiring the owners of working horses (which includes “pets”, riding horses, and racing horses) to sign a declaration that they will not allow the deceased horse to enter the human food chain.

What has gotten everyone involved so excited about being asked to promise something they would not do anyway ?

Well … perhaps. It turns out the British are not quite as horrified by the idea of eating horse meat as might appear. Seems that we will quite happily tuck into Rebecca’s dead horse if there isn’t any other kind of meat available. During WWII, horse meat was regularly supplied and eaten, and quite a few people have fond memories of certain dishes.

Before judging this latest EU proposed legislation, it is worth looking into why it is proposed. The idea behind it, is to stop the carcasses of horses that have been treated during their lifetimes with drugs inappropriate for food animals from entering the food chain. In other words if we do not stop such animals entering the food chain, there are many medicines that cannot be used.

So the people protesting at this EU legislation being imposed are essentially saying that they’re happy for horses across Europe to receive less than ideal health care because they do not want to make a declaration that they won’t eat their favourite horse. Ridiculous isn’t it ?

Of course there are those who say that this is all an indication of how useless the EU is that a law that is required for mainland Europe (where horse meat is widely eaten) has to be applied in the UK where allegedly it isn’t needed. But are we sure that it isn’t needed in the UK now ? Or in the future ?

It is essentially a sensible law, and the EU is being condemned for applying it over here! Anyone would suspect that in fact all this fuss was brought about by a newspaper proprietor with an axe to grind. The thing to remember about newspapers like the Sun is that they lie … they have been caught lying many times in the past, and they are not above trying to slant news to suit their own agenda. In this case a hatred of the European Union.

Iranian Islamic Republic In Crisis

 Politics  No Responses »
Jun 232009
 

The BBC today is saying that that the Iranian Islamic republic is in crisis, although that probably has been the case for days now (or even years if you are interested in human rights as I am). The thing is that nobody seems to have picked up on what seems obvious to me – just how stupid the current leadership of Iran is.

If you are going to ignore the results of an election, don’t have one. Come up with some sort of fake crisis that makes one impossible. If people feel they have a say in their government and it is ignored they get a bit more annoyed than if they don’t feel they have a say.

If you are going to rig an election to come out the way you want, you should at least try to make it look honest. Doing such daft things as causing 150% (or whatever) of the electorate vote for you is not going to keep the electorate on your side. Give the electorate at least some choice in believing the results.

If people are rioting in the streets because of your rigged election, don’t say that you’ll review some suspicious bits but the result still stands. That will just make them riot harder.

At a certain level of violence in the streets, it is no longer sensible to send the thugs in. It is time to start thinking of a sensible solution.

If all this were to occur some place other than Iran, it might be more understandable – still stupid. But when the leadership of Iran acquired power in almost exactly the same circumstances ? You could almost believe that they want to destroy the Islamic republic – the protesters were not originally calling for the end of the republic, but the actions of the leadership have pushed them towards it.

The Second Home Allowance for MPs

 Politics  No Responses »
May 102009
 

British MPs have managed to make themselves look corrupt in a spectacular way with the leaking of the details of purchases made on the second home allowance. It is particularly amusing that the biggest fuss is about somewhat trivial items such as loo brushes (that’s not a real example) and the like.

It is worth pointing out that the whole second homes allowance was introduced by the Tories in the 1980s to supplement MPs salaries during a time when Thatcher was grinding away at public sector salary increases. So this is not strictly speaking a Labour issue.

There have been a number of excuses floating around as to why MPs need a second homes allowance, and because MPs are so good at spinning rubbish it is easy to start to think that they may have a point. But lets compare things with not just the private sector but everyone else …

Normally when you take a job, you are expected to live within a reasonable distance of work. It’s not usually explicitly stated but you are expected to turn up to work every morning at a reasonable time, and stay for a reasonable length of time. Whilst you may get a more or less generous “bonus” to making moving easier, you don’t get money to pay for a home near work.

So MPs might have a point about a second home allowance but until such an allowance becomes common place outside of Westminster, they are going to look like pigs in the trough if they do have one. Under the existing system it does make sense to make some sort of arrangement for providing accommodation to MPs whose constituency is some distance from London.

But that can simply be provided by a block of flats close to Westminster – perhaps something on the river.

If MPs had sorted this all out before all this fuss, it would have been quite reasonable to abolish the second home allowance, spread the money used for it previously amongst the MPs as a salary increase. But because this was not sorted out previously the MPs should lose the money completely.

It would seem that many of the items coming to light are strictly speaking “within the rules”, but that is not good enough. We have to trust MPs to be honest and honourable as they make the rules that govern us. If they are apparently eager to exploit a system that is not quite as rigorous as it should be, what is to blame ? The MPs of course.

In any position of power, there are ways of abusing that power. It is the responsibility of those with power to not abuse that position. Can we trust MPs not to abuse their position ? Apparently not; at least not those MPs who have abused the system. Parliament needs to identify the 10 worst offenders and expel them for a minimum of 5 years.

Or if they do not have the courage to do this, perhaps we should identify the top 50 most serious offenders and refuse to re-elect them at the next election.

One of the dangers of so much concentration on the second homes allowance is that we are in danger of overlooking worse things. For instance, why are MPs allowed to take on jobs in addition to their job in Parliament?

In many situations (at least in the public sector), if you are in any sense in a senior position, you are effectively prohibited from taking additional jobs. At least without getting permission to do so. In the case of MPs, I see no reason why they should be allowed to have additional jobs – they already have an important and well paid job and any other job will take them away from what they are supposed to be doing.

There’s a tired out old excuse that MPs like to trot out whenever the second jobs question gets asked – that they need second jobs to keep in touch with the outside world. It is really an excuse to rake in fat cat salaries – after all how many MPs with second jobs work as nurses in hospitals ? Or anything that does not pay ridiculous amounts of money for trivial amounts of work.

Time to refuse to elect part-time MPs.

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