The Other Sarah

Category: Politics

  • What would Parliament under STV look like?

    This image shows what an STV-elected House of Commons would look like.

    As I said in my first posts, I am a believer in the Single Transferable Vote: it devolves power to the people, is preferential, and is proportional. I’m voting for AV as it does the first two, but I really want the third as well. But we can’t win them all. Indeed, as recent polls show, the No campaign — which has been running mostly on the “you’re too thick to count to three” message — may scupper the chances for even AV.

    The Electoral Reform Society did some research into this, but I found the results somewhat… strange. In Brighton, which has a strong Green Party presence, no Green candidate was elected under the ERS’s calculations. So I decided for myself, in my free time, to do a simulation for myself. (more…)

  • The No2AV leaflet

    The AV campaign is in full swing but strangely, I’ve only received campaign literature from the No campaign so far. As a Yes supporter, I find this amusing but disheartening: with only a week to go, where is the Yes literature? It is really squeaky-bum time now.

    In any case, they’re going full frontal on the Nick Clegg attack angle, after seeing no joy in the BNP argument. As the new Private Eye so eruditely summarises: Yes to AV’s arguments are about cleaner or fairer politics. The No campaign’s argument is a picture of Nick Clegg. And they list so many discredited arguments. (more…)

  • Anthropomorphic climate change and the 1998 myth

    As someone who goes through politics news often, the subject of climate change comes up quite often: how bad it is, does the data fit, and so forth. But even on a story about the Liberal Democrats as a whole, some people, often right-wing, will attack the party on its green credentials. This stems from a belief in climate change is a “hoax” of sorts. Like this comment on a Telegraph article:

    Yeah, Chris Hunhe off to Cancun, tilting at windmills, saving the planet.
    Didn’t you know that we’ve had no warming since about 1998?
    The Man-Made global warming idea is just a scam.
    And you wonder why the LibDems are held in contempt.

    (more…)

  • The deficit and all that.

    (Note, January 2013: This post was written when I was more naive to economic circumstances. It is best read in a perspective from before the cuts starting. It is kept in the purposes of transparency and does not accurately reflect my current thoughts on the matter.)

    Belt up, this is going to be a big one.

    So yeah. That march a couple of weeks ago. At a generous estimate, 400,000 marched against the government’s spending cuts. And while I sympathise with them, I also think that it was just a waste of time due to how it ended up. (more…)

  • Boundary Review

    The Electoral Commission has outlined rough plans on where the reduction of MPs from 650 to 600. As expected, traditional Labour strongholds will lose seats. But is it “gerrymandering”, as Labour have alleged?

    Not exactly. It’s an undeniable fact that the current system, as is, is horribly skewed towards Labour. The 2005 election, for example, gave Labour 90 more seats than the Tories in England, despite losing by 0.3%. Labour also enjoy their concentrated support in inner-city areas, which allows them to win a lot of urban seats (and the reverse for the Conservatives, in business districts and rural areas). This creates a squeeze on smaller parties with even support, such as the Liberal Democrats, but also the Greens and UKIP.

    Why does the skew exist? Well, there’s several reasons for this happening: (more…)