British Politics: Coalitions, Cuts and AV

[C0ckney]

it's been nearly 1 year since the last elections and the coalition agreement between the conservatives and liberal democrats. which has provoked lots of amusing howling from both the tory right and certain liberals, who are finding that taking actual decisions is harder than standing on the sidelines shouting 'no!'.

although i'm now looking at it from an outside perspective i like a lot of what i see. i very much approve of the freedom (great repeal) bill, which gets rid of ID cards, unnecessary criminal laws and lots of other gubbins introduced by labour.

a big cuts (although maybe this is a misnomer as government spending is actually going to rise over the next 4 years) programme has been announced to deal with the deficit. people are already saying that the cuts are affecting the recovery, but the cuts only really start in april, which perhaps suggests that the economy is in for a difficult time in the coming months and years. at the same time there are plans to reorganise health, welfare, public sector pensions and eduction.

the alternative vote referendum is going to happen on may 5th. i support electoral reform but don't support AV, for various reasons. it's strange to see nick clegg campaigning for it so fervently after he called it 'a miserable little compromise' last year. i like david owen's "no to AV, yes to PR" campaign.

thoughts on the above and other UK politics stuff please

[OneFootInTheGrave]

freedom if for anything this was a good reason to have labour out, however

AV :whatever:

Nick Clegg

NHS reforms with a dose of ??? before we see it roll out in reality, but I am very sceptical

cuts - too much too soon

raising the cap on tuition fees - that is worse than all the rest put together, under the umbrella of the cuts... still even with Labour it would have been the same (even worse??? - no cap at all potentially), but UK students had it coming, I wander how will it work if you can get "free" education in Europe as a member of the EU - will we see a student exodus out? Maybe not, but only because they have no clue on what they are missing out... educated and debt free to start off... imagine that sooo 20th century

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12610268

[MikeH]

The problem with the AV referendum is that if we don't go for this, we'll never get any reform. But I don't think AV is actually very good. Hmm.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

well I guess AV is better than nothing, at least it gets some movement on that topic, but Lib Dems are a laugh, they should have left Cameron run a minority government, which than they could prop (which they would never have done on quite a few issues)... rather than selling out and destroying the third option (again?!? )...

I wander what will be the next third option - who will pick up the "real" liberals which are left without a vote at the moment.

[C0ckney]

ah this would be the amusing howling i talked about it the OP

i really can't get my head around it. when people voted liberal (including me) presumably they did so because they supported liberal policies and hoped that the liberals would form a government...now because of our electoral system, we all know it's impossible for the lib dems to win outright, so they got the best they could hope for. now we actually seeing some liberal policies being implemented, which seems to be a lot better than standing at the sidelines shouting 'no', while taking comfort in high opinion poll ratings and having no power. by better i mean better for the country and better for the liberals too.

i like the tory education policy as well, free schools and academies will be a good mix. it's about time too, the originals of academies (grant maintained schools) were set up in the 1994 education act, labour got rid of them when it came to power only to realise that they were actually a good idea and reintroduce them in the form of academies.

i agree with the sentiment mike, but i think it's very risky to change to a worse (IMHO) system in the hope of some change at some point in the future. i don't support av because it will produce perverse results, it will make some people's votes worth more than others, it may even produce bigger majorities for ruling parties and crucially it will not address the central problem with our electoral system, namely that the number of MPs does not match up with the national share of the vote. in an ideal world we would be given the choice of several electoral systems (FPTP, AV, AV+, additional member, STV and full PR etc.), instead of just the current one and the worst of the alternatives. that said i like the idea of making constituencies the same size (in population terms), and reducing the number of MPs, as this will reduce the inbuilt advantage that labour has.

[JackRudd]

I don't like Alternative Vote much, although I do prefer it to the Plurality system we have at the moment. There are a number of systems that work better with fewer paradoxes - Approval Voting and Range Voting among them.

Public spending cuts in a recession - John Maynard Keynes will be turning in his grave. Completely ludicrous idea.

[Krill]

AV is better than FPTP at forcing more coalitions...so yeah, time to **** up the Tories and Labour again

[Hauldren Collider]

Can a british person explain to me what exactly Nick Clegg does? If I were the minority member of a coalition I would at least demand some sort of important policy position but it looks like his job ranks just above doorman in terms of prestige.

[C0ckney]

jack, i see very few advantages to range voting or approval voting (this is just a type of the first, no?) and many disadvantages. there are good reasons why no country uses such a system.

HC, nick clegg is deputy prime minister which means he's in charge (in theory) when the prime minister is out of the country. he's also responsible for constitutional reform. the liberals have several (5 i think but i'm too lazy to check) ministers in the cabinet with responsibility for various areas.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

but most importantly liberals in the government are in charge of stamping over any or all liberal principles that they supported during the election when Tories say so, which Nick Clegg relishes in particular.

[JackRudd]

jack, i see very few advantages to range voting or approval voting (this is just a type of the first, no?) and many disadvantages. there are good reasons why no country uses such a system.

Approval Voting is indeed the degenerate form of Range Voting. I can see a number of advantages to these systems:
1) They satisfy the Favourite Betrayal Criterion: it is never in your interest to give your favourite candidate anything other than the best possible score. (Symmetrically, it is never in your interest to give your least favourite candidate anything other than the worst possible score.)
2) They satisfy the Participation Criterion: it is always at least as good to submit an honest ballot as it is to submit a blank one.
3) They satisfy the Monotonicity Criterion: if you change your vote by improving one candidate's score (keeping all the rest the same), this cannot cause the candidate whose score you've raised to lose an election he was previously winning.
4) They satisfy the Additivity In Precincts Criterion: if you set the election up so that a constituency is divided into several precincts, then each precinct can count its own ballots and report a total; the election result can then be computed entirely from those totals.

Alternative Vote satisfies none of these criteria.

[MikeH]

Can a british person explain to me what exactly Nick Clegg does? If I were the minority member of a coalition I would at least demand some sort of important policy position but it looks like his job ranks just above doorman in terms of prestige.

Yeah, kind of true. Basically like Vice President.

[MikeH]

mostly his bad prestige is due to people feeling betrayed at what he's agreeing to as part of the coallition rather than the office though.

[C0ckney]

i agree that alternative vote is rubbish.

1&2 are advantages, fair enough.

3 & 4 seem rather meaningless to me. as in, how can voting for a candidate ever damage their chances under any system, and the fact that our system of counting in elections is very solid as is.

i mentioned some problems earlier and here are the ones i can think of:

1) one man, one vote. these systems obviously throw that idea out of the window. i really object to the idea of having to give an opinion on every candidate at an election. people don't and can't be expected to have information on every candidate at an election, so you will get a 'random' selection, especially for lesser known candidates. if used 'properly' i could see it working, but that's a very unrealistic expectation in my opinion.

this is also an issue with av of course.

2) tactical voting. it would lead to massive increase in tactical voting, rather than people actually voting for the candidate they like best.

3) winners. i could see a situation where a candidate who would stand no chance under a pluarlity system winning under approval voting. presumably you could also see the defeat of a candidate who would win an absolute majority in a pluarlity system with approval voting.

[C0ckney]

mike, as a committed lib dem (IIRC), how do you feel about nick clegg?