Thursday 26 November 2009

PrimeMinister's Questions

PMQ

The PM falls into a booby-trap, confirming that the Iraq investigation will not be censored, excepting as required for public security — only to have a Labour-issued protocol dictating the censorship of the report, and retaining rights to censor individual points, waved in his face by Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg.

In the same session, Gordon Brown implies that we should adopt some parliamentary reforms that are 'absolutely vital to a modern participatory democracy'.

Well, great; but that'd require letting us know what's going on so that we can make informed decisions: i.e., you can't censor facts merely because they reflect poorly on you; in fact, knowing the facts that reflect poorly on the government are important in any democracy, participatory or otherwize.

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!

Can anyone think of a single instance where the British population has stopped the government from doing what it wants?

Sure, I can think of examples where the 'shadow' party has, utilizing 'rebel' MPs who refuse to tow the party line, defeated the ruling party; and I can think of examples where the House of Lords has denied the House of Commons permission to do what it wants.

And, there are cases where the government were 'considering' a course of action, only to then state that they had 'stopped considering' that course of action due to public reaction (whether they actually abandon their plan is another matter).

However, the above are all parts of The System 'defeating' other parts of The System; I can't think of a single instance where:
  • The government have said: 'we are going to do x'
  • The population have said 'No!'
  • The government have actually not done x.
Maybe the government plays politics like computers play chess, by going for the best guaranteed result: given a choice between a plan that is highly likely to result in something highly useful, or a plan that is guaranteed to result in something moderately useful, they'll go for the guaranteed win, knowing that this approach will definitely accumulate them power over time.

Or... is it a concerted effort to push the concept of resistance from our minds: 'the government always get their way; resistance is futile; just shut up, give up, and accept it; don't even consider what you could do to stop them'? Do you think the inner-circle of MPs specifically decline plans on the grounds that it might fail, and if us plebs defeat the government once we'll realize that it can be done and maybe get some funny ideas in our heads...

Now, you can call me overly cynical — you can say that, being democratic, the government will only commit to 'definitely going to do x' once x has achieved majority support in the population — but, I can think of many examples (say, ID cards), where the popular opinion has been against them, but the government has gone ahead and done it anyway; and, seemingly, they've never failed.

Seemingly, resistance really is futile...

Monday 23 November 2009

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: terrorist level controversy

From the Beeb:
Mr Vaz's disquiet centres around one section in which undercover [CIA-sponsored, USA] soldiers pose as terrorists and are asked to help shoot civilians. Footage of the section caused controversy when it was leaked onto the internet.

His objections must be because it's completely unrepresentative of what modern warfare's actually like: after all, the USA has never helped terrorists, nor directly killed civillians, and they've definately never even considered false-flagging as terrorists for any reason, ever; and even if they had, that kind of behaviour would certainly be all in the past.

OK, so Kieth Vas, Labour MP for Leicester East, apparently doesn't like violent video games (and, incidentally, didn't come out squeaky-clean from the expenses scandal), but I wonder if he realises that he's trying to censor an accurate — albeit unrepresentative — portrayal of exactly how America has (and still does?) behave in war, and if he fully understands the consequences of not allowing us to be exposed to the concept that our main ally could behave in such a way?

Which, intentionally or otherwize, is often the consequence of censorship: it reduces the number of people who have certain objectionable (to the State) ideas in their head...

On the other hand, it's nice to see the non-whiners getting their own pressure group, complete with supporting (founding) MP (Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East; who, incidentally, also didn't come out well in the expenses scandal).

The video clip in question can be found here for now, but in case the clip is taken down, look here

Sunday 22 November 2009

Democracy in action

From the Beeb:
In his conference speech, Mr Brown said Labour would hold a referendum "early" in the next Parliament on proposals for an alternative vote system.
Nice to know they admit there's a problem. But, why would they offer to fix the system that grants them total control half the time, and denies all but one other party the chance of ever winning?

From here:
The [parliamentary prospective candidates] argued that holding a vote on reform would see hundreds of Liberal Democrat voters switch to Labour, more stay-at-home Labour supporters coming out to vote, and every Tory opponent trying to explain why David Cameron would not give the electorate a say.
So, to win the election basically.

Well, I guess that's Democracy In Action: we want something so they have to give it to us in order to get elected :-)

From the Beeb again:
They have also queried the timing of a referendum, pointing out that Labour never followed through on a commitment to a referendum on electoral reform in its 1997 manifesto.
Oh, that's right, there's absolutely nothing to force them to actually do what they promise to do :-(

Our 'choice', then, is between:
  • Labour — a party that probably won't actually change the electoral system
  • Conservatives — a party that doesn't want to change the electoral system
  • Lib Dem — a party that wants to change the electoral system, but, because of the electoral system, wont win
Democracy In Action!

Saturday 21 November 2009

Our democratically elected representatives

In the last UK general election (2005):

16% of the population of the UK voted for Labour, whereas 15% voted Conservative[1], meaning that, even combined, they don't have the support of the majority of the population (only 31%).

What's going on here then? Surely a democratically elected government requires the support (i.e., the vote) of the majority of the population?

Well, lets not forget that not everyone is allowed to vote.

And lets ignore that allowing prisoners to vote would put a natural cap on how many people could be jailed (i.e., a natural cap on the extremes of authoritarianism); that it's inconsistent that several 16- and 17-year-olds pay taxes and can be tried as an adult should they commit a crime, but aren't allowed to vote ; and the unfairness of forcing younger teenagers, by law, to attend school (elsewize their parents are punished) without a say in the matter.

Lets assume, instead, that everyone who is disenfranchised is done so for a just reason, so it's fair to ignore them.

Labour got the support of 22% of those who are allowed to vote[2]; Conservative got 20%[3].

Umm... that's still only 42% of the vote: still not a majority.

The final piece of the puzzle — which gives our rulers the support of 'the majority' that they need in order to claim that they're a democracy — is the fact that not everyone who can vote does vote.

So: lets ignore those who don't vote because they feel that the system is corrupt, and who's 'no vote' is intended as a 'vote of no confidence', and assume that everyone who chooses not to vote either doesn't care, or is just too lazy to take part — either way, lets assume that it's perfectly OK and fair to ignore them.

Well, Labour and Conservative combined have the support of 67% of those who are allowed, and who choose, to vote[4].

Horay! A majority! Proving that, with some assumptions, our country is, in fact, democratic!

But wait: the Labour and the Conservative parties may have a majority between them, but they don't run the country between them: see, the Conservative's 32% of the votes[4] was enough to get them 31% of the power[5], whereas Labour's 35% of the votes[4] was enough to get them 55% of the power[5] — which is a majority, and thus enough for the Labour party to rule the country on their own.

And, because a majority (even only a slight one) is enough to essentially do whatever they want, the Labour party are in charge of the country with a minority of the vote, no matter how you look at it.

There's a lot more to this subject than the above — how these results come about (gerrymandering, peculiar counting methods, etc), the effect that things like 'wasted votes' have on constituencies, the exclusion of third parties by The System, and the fact that 'the Labour party' is held pretty effectively under the control of the Prime Minister (so, actually, it's one non-democratically-elected person who's effectively in charge of the country) and so on and so forth; but that's enough typing for one day.


Our 'democratic system' is not democratic. I wonder why they go to these lengths to create the impression that it is, rather than just outright admit that it isn't?

====================================

[1] 60.2 million in 2005 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/populationestimates/flash_pyramid/UK-pyramid/pyramid6_30.html)

9,566,618 voted Labour[4]

that's 9.6/60.2*100 = 16.0%

8,785,941 voted Conservative[4]

8.8/60.2*100 = 14.6%

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/constituencies/default.stm

[3] Labour votes = 9.6 million; conservative 8.8 million[4]; 8.8/9.6*100 = Conservatives got 91.6% of the vote that Labour did.

Labour won with 22% of the people who are allowed to vote[2], meaning that Conservative got 91.6% of this = 20.2%

[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/html/scoreboard.stm

[5] 198 seats for Conservative out of 646 total seats[4] = 198/646*100 = 30.7%
356 seats for Labour[4] = 356/646*100 = 55.1%

Friday 20 November 2009

Hello, world

So... lately I've been paying an increasing amount of attention to UK politics: specifically, I've been trying to work out how those who call themselves our 'democratically elected representatives' actually keep control, and enforce their will on the population of the UK; how they get their way.

How politics works.

This blog is mainly for me to organize my thoughts, but hopefully it'll be of interest to others, too, as food for thought; feel free to say 'hello' in the comments, and criticize my ideas as much as you want :-)