Britain says NO to the Alternative Vote

[Cavegirl]

It's my political philosophy not to vote, it has nothing to do with 'can't be bothered'. Problem is, somebody has to try and run the country so by not voting you are in essecence saying you don't give a damn who it is. Even got the wive voting as she used to be the same. If nobody voted you could end up with extremist parties like the BNP running the country, if they got all thier supporters to vote while all other parties failed dismally to get anyone to vote.

 

Or do you want to get rid of government and hand power back to the royals?

 

I want to get rid of government and the royals and hand power back to the people.

 

It's people that keep this country moving, they run the health service, they grow our food, they build our houses, they drain the sewers and much much more- all the government does is take our money by force in order that they can manage these systems and based upon the amount of complaining that goes on, they don't make very good managers. I believe that this form of bloated management, which relies on people who have no qualifications in these areas, is an unnecessary waste of money when we could support these systems directly by ourselves. In short, I'm up for taking responsibility for my own life- why are you so keen to hand that responsibility to someone else?

 

I realise I'm in a minority and that most people reading this have probably never even considered what life might be like if governments and related power structures didn't exist, but people like me are necessary for making the majority like you think about the world around you and consider whether it really is the best option available. If you can come up with good arguments against people like me then you can justify your views, if not, then perhaps you ought to consider some alternatives and start thinking out of the box.

 

I would say I hold the moral argument though. I don't see why people in government should be given the legal right to commit violent acts against their own citizens and against other government's citizens. Just consider Syria, Israel, Palestine, Libya and the US and UK's wars of aggression right now if you don't understand where I'm coming from with this. Violence is a terrible thing in society and we should all be against it, not propping it up with a voting system.

[Stoatwobbler]

The yes campaign was fronted by Ed Milliband but folks hate him as well.

 

As I've alluded to earlier in this thread, the Yes2AV lot ran a very poor campaign in my opinion. They seemed to regard anyone with any queries about the issue to be

 

a) Stupid

b) Unable to understand issue

c) Brainwashed

d) Tory dinosaurs.

 

And as such they failed to reach out to huge sections of the electorate, failed to explain properly how AV works, and failed to explain adequately what the benefits of AV might be. They were however quite happy to sling mud at their opponents, which probably benefitted the No2AV camp.

[HeadingNorth]

I want to get rid of government and the royals and hand power back to the people.

 

You could try Somalia; they got rid of their government twenty years ago or more.

 

 

Curiously, nobody wants to live there and everyone thinks the place is an utter hellhole.

[Cavegirl]

You could try Somalia; they got rid of their government twenty years ago or more.

 

 

Curiously, nobody wants to live there and everyone thinks the place is an utter hellhole.

 

I'm sure we've had this discussion before. Somalia was a hell hole long before they overthrew their totalitarian communist government led by General Barre and they are gradually (but slowly) improving that situation. They've never really been an anarchic country, they've always tried to have a government and this has resulted in the continuation of their civil war as each faction has attempted to gain control. In 2010 they issued in a new Prime Minister, they have a central bank and all the other trappings of modern government so your point here is pretty moot.

 

The Somali's did not take a philosophical decision en masse to set up an anarchic system, like the Russians tried to adopt liberal Marxism, they just entered into a civil war that prevented any group from taking significant control over the region. Outside countries also interfered and made the situation much much worse. Ethiopia supplied them with guns and two Italian companies paid the previous corrupt government to dump toxic waste off their coastline which the 2004 tsunami dislodged thus putting the Somali fishermen out of work and leading to the current issues with piracy. Personally, I find it hard to blame these pirates though I don't condone their violence.

[callippo]

Stalinists and Australians always think compulsory voting is the best thing since sliced bread. Everybody else thinks twice about it.

[Anna B]

Looking back on the last General election, remember how hard it was to know who to vote for?

Remember how sh** both Labour and Conservative were considered to be?

Remember people on this very forum talking about starting 'none of the above' parties?

 

Well this was people's chance to change things so that politicians didn't get it all their own way in future. To stir things up a bit so politicians would have to think a bit harder, appeal to a wider electorate, earn those extra votes. - No wonder Cameron didn't want it. He tapped into people's fear, and fear of change to profit from an old entrenched two party system, -this in spite of the fact that the country at the last election voted for three parties with a near equal split of votes.

 

Well the chance has gone, and I doubt it will come again, so don't complain when the only choice left is revolution.

[upinwath]

I have many thoughts.

 

That statement was a far greater shock to me than the total "bog off" the voters gave to the stupid AV idea.

It was a mish mash designed to give the ex liberals look like they'd actually achieved something.

Frankly, the Tories allowed it to keep the idiot lib dems in the government long enough to allow a Tory government (With it's work experience helpers from the lib Dims) to save the country from Labour.

No one with a brain was ever going to vote for it which brings me back to your quote.

[SheffLad76]

AV was a honey pot to make coalition alive and lib dem failed big time

[upinwath]

AV was a honey pot to make coalition alive and lib dem failed big time

 

That's what I said but I did it better.

[Stoatwobbler]

An excellent analysis of why the Yes2AV campaign lost.

 

http://www.liberal-vision.org/2011/05/08/the-humiliation-of-the-yes-campaign/

 

The scale of incompetence by the YES campaign simply cannot be overstated. It is so vast and so staggering that it won’t merely fill column inches for days, if not weeks to come, it will be the subject of PhD theses for decades to come. It is unlikely that a wilful infiltration of the YES campaign by the NO side – at the most senior levels – could have resulted in a more calamitous result. The enormity of this professional political campaigning disaster is without parallel in modern British history.

 

The YES campaign was eminently winnable. But it ended up being run by readers of the Guardian for readers of the Guardian. Readers of this newspaper are about 1% of the voting electorate – and are also a statistically extreme group. Their views do not chime remotely with mainstream British opinion. There is no purist Guardian editorial proposition that could ever come close to winning a referendum in the UK.

 

From the outset, the YES campaign was all about the tiny coterie of people who feel strongly about electoral reform. The emphasis was on these people “having fun” and being invited to comedy evenings. In email after email from the YES campaign, the quirky behaviour of this “producer set” was celebrated and the “consumer set” ignored. So, some bunch of local activists who had written the letters Y, E and S in big letters on a beach were hailed as creative geniuses. Others were highlighted for running a particularly successful street stall. From the point of view of any observer, it was all about “them”(the micro-percentage of constitutional reform obsessives) never about “us” (the people). None of this self-indulgent madness won a single vote for the YES side, but it probably lost thousands.

 

Matthew Elliott’s NO2AV campaign took a totally different path. They realised who their base was and utilised them, but – quite brilliantly – reached out immediately to their key target electorate (essentially traditional Labour voters and supporters.) If Elliott had spent his first weeks in post writing to hard-core Tories about how marvellous and clever they were, he may have lost. He didn’t. He made it his number one aim to build a coalition with Labour and deployed his left-wing allies superbly. Ed Miliband was left looking like a weakened man who couldn’t control the more charismatic and compelling beasts in his party like John Reid. This ability to build a wider coalition from the outset, rather than retreat into the comfort zone of centre-right, free market politics was central to the NO campaign’s success.