UPDATED: Writer’s Block

Yes, I too have been struck down with Writer’s [sic] Block. I have been able to start posts, but they soon fall flat. The confident assertion and ruthless criticism soon turn trail off…

At first I didn’t realise anything was wrong, I thought I was just tired. But then I saw Charlotte Gore‘s post on her Writer’s Block and I realised that it wasn’t just a passing phase.

I’m just so bored of our Politics at the moment. This is funny, but also a little sad. I’m confident that there will be no election until next year; and speculation on the Parliamentary coups which might prompt one are better left to Guido. The “election” in Iran is fascinating, but I have nothing to add to the debate. It looks like Paul Krugman thinks the UK Economy is the strongest in Europe, but what do I care. It doesn’t feel like that does it?

Good News!

I’m off to Glastonbury on Wednesday morning to spend 5 nights up to my nuts in mud. Hopefully I will return refreshed, revitalised and fired up (Tony Benn’s speaking at 4 on the Sunday!). It seems unlikely that anything is going to go up in the next couple of days so there may be a small hiatus on this Blog until then. Have a great time guys!

UPDATE: Although restrained here, I have been involved in an extended argument with “Woody” and “Andy Holder” over at Jamie Graham’s blog about BNP voters and refugees. Some people make me wanna hit my head against a wall.

UPDATE II: Thanks to Paul Cotterill at The Bickerstaffe Record for informing me of the widening malaise in the Blogosphere.

Filed under: Blogging, Blogging

Another Post Election Disection

Again, I think it will be a fairly good idea to begin with a round up of what people have already said.

• I would like to thank Charlotte Gore for apologising on all our behalf. We’ve all a lot to answer for.
• The hate our Government have relied upon has led Anton Vowel to conclude that New Labour got what they deserve, frankly I think he’s right.
• The folks over at The Third Estate has some lovely election geekery
• Though Cowards Flinch seem to think that it could be worse for the Left. Cheer up Comrades…
• Some at LibCon think that racists are badly educated…
• … but other think that they have been lied to…
• … and Paul Kingsnorth wants the left to face up and admit that the working class feel abandoned to immigrants and asks for a national debate.
• To me the most impressive work  of all has been done at the Daily (Maybe). Helping us all get to grips with statistics; browse and learn.
  

The BNP are the big story here, the collapse of the Labour vote, the rise of UKIP, the Greens reasonable gains were all expected, but what has shocked people if the election of two Nazis to the European Parliament.

As the results were coming out I quickly did a post in a rather tired and emotional state. I reread it 30 minutes later and thought I was being rather ineloquent about an important subject so I took it down. I hope I am able to write something more illuminating now the dust has settled.

The BNP are Nazis but their voters are Misled

The BNP leaders, rank and file are unadulterated racists. There is link, after link, after link, after link demonstrating so. And I don’t really feel like spending too much time discussing the arse wipes.

However, it is probably a little to soon to write off their voters as “arse wipes.” Some clearly are, there are still racists amongst us who believe whole  heartedly that “the indigenous population” are superior to those of other races. I don’t believe that there is a strong enough case to condemn these people.

It is all to easy to defend them by saying that they are working class people abandoned by Labour. But to argue that the lashing out is understandable is an error that risk validating it. There is no reason that feeling abandoned by a political party, or political culture, should lead to racism. They have different causes and effects. However, we can call this the “immigrants make people racist narrative.”

But, I do not want to write off BNP voters because they have not been given a fair chance. They have been lied to, our whole public discourse on immigration is steeped in Racism.

Some have argued that the BNPs voters are simply less inteligent than others. They went to bad schools and can’t process the wealth of evidence presented to them on immigration. This leads to them clutching at simple narratives, like “the blacks took my job.” The “thick racist narrative.”

Others still argue further, that the Press are culpable in pushing a bigoted and narrow minded agenda, which is picked up by BNP voters and used to validate their prejudices. The “‘Paul Dacre’ made them do it narrative.”

However I think these all miss out a seriously large part of the argument. This country has come a long way in the 60 years since the Empire Windrush landed on our shores. We no longer see rooms advertised “with no dogs, no niggers” as the criteria. Nor do we have election campaigns fought with the slogans “if you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour.“

However, we are still forced to discuss immigrations in terms of floods and influxes. Immigrants don’t go to the doctor in this country, they deluge them. illegal immigrants aren’t clandestine migrants, they are Asylum Seekers. [1] Newspapers contribute to this but they are not responsible, it infects the very language with which we discuss immigration. I don’t think it is fair to call people stupid for not recognising that their language is predisposed against a fair debate. I don’t think it is fair to say the blame lays with the press when they have to speak in a language their audience understands.

Our language is confused. And so is our debate on immigration. It is impossible to discuss the benefits because it is impossible to phrase it in the common parlance of floods.

We can call this the “we are unable to discuss immigration in neutral language or display the facts without bias narrative.“

Yes, the least snappy narrative also happens to be true. We have reached an impasse which we cannot pass. It is impossible to eradicate the BNP, or educate its voters while the debate we need to have is predisposed to prejudice.

There are obviously people who use this shroud of language to hide their disgusting opinions. Ian Dale is one of course. As Anton Vowel points out, he can’t really believe there are no border controls. He can’t really be using hyperbole. The Mail and Express fall into this category as well, .

But the point I am trying to make is that these are not just shaping debate they are shaped by it too. Immigration has been large, but it has also been temporary. Poles are now leaving more quickly than they are arriving. As has been the case with previous migrations they came because there were jobs, and now there are none they would rather be at home.

The BNP cannot be saited by giving concessions to the anti-immigrant lobby. We still don’t know what people want. If Britain had 100,000 application for asylum each year than I would understand peoples reticence or hysteria. But we only have 3%, far less than we could or should handle. If people knew the real facts, or could discuss temporary increases in migrant populations without exaggeration or distortion I think the BNP would shivel and vanish. Moreover, people would be a damn sight happier too, as they realise things aren’t nearly as bad as they thought.

[1] Hollyoaks, (2007) Soap, Episode: Family Values, directed by Phil Redmond (UK, Channel 4; 6:30 pm 11th March, 2007) – yes Hollyoaks, and yes I used it in an essay, and no I didn’t get thrown out of University.

Filed under: Politics, Democracy, EU, immigration, Language, nationalism, Scum Watch

Selected Reading 11/06/2009

One of the advantages of shift work is that I occasionally get a day off during the week, this week it is “Thursday.” Although it would usually be a good opportunity for some blogging I am more inclined to enjoy the sunshine so I thought I would present some links for your delectation.

• James Graham has some insight into who exactly votes BNP: Scum and Idiots.
• “No Platform” is a position I have always found a little odd. Especially when dealing with people whose arguments are such bunkum. Charlotte Gore wants us to Platform the Bastards
• … on a similar tact I have evidence of why Platforming will work so well: A transcript of the recent interview of Doncaster’s new English Democrat Mayor.
• And Sunny Hundal gets angry at people blaming the Left for racism.
• We’ve recently had some speeches or other from Gordon Brown suggesting the introduction of an AV voting system. AVhat? Next Left explains.
• Freemania belives that this may be a golden opportunity to achive some sort, any sort, of voting sytem that stops those Bloody Bar Charts!
• Unfortuantley it appears that AV will be just as usless as FPTP. Stuart Weir explains why.
• Lenin is understandedly jubilant that Nick Griffin got egged and chased off by demonstrators. And it is obviously also an excellent opportunity to link to this.
• Beau Bo D’Or’s genius never ends, and I can only imagine the amount of work which went into this.
• Possibly the best “blog” which I subscribe to, if you want to see some truly spectacular and beautiful things I cannot recommend it highly enough.
• … and if you have never seen it before this is Wolfram Alpha. This is becoming an invaluable tool for searching for data. Try it, just type in your home town’s name and hey presto!

And I don’t want to alarm anyone but apparently some of those pesky Americans think Gordon Brown is doing a good job… No really, I mean it… Seriously look… He’s got a Nobel Prize and everything.

Filed under: Blogging, Politics

Why Universities need a say…

A great deal of debate on electoral reform has already occurred…

• Mark Reckons has a post full of ‘canard busting’ brilliance on Cameron’s intentional PR illiteracy.
• The Guardian comes out in favour of the STV and explains why it is a good mix of proportional and constituency based systems.
• Costigan Quist proposes a STV compromise and also draws attention to James Graham’s demolition of AV+.
• Liberal Conspiracy’s Lee Griffin does a good job exposing some patent flaws in FPTP…
• …in reply Sunder Katawala gives a good account of the perverse way FPTP can give the losers more seats than the winners.
• The Bleeding Heart Show’s Neil has a good ruminate on what needs to be done to reconnect people with politics.
• (and obviously, we cannot finish a round up without mentioning Mark Reckon’s seminal, if unscientific, post connecting the “safeness” or seats to the “corruptness” of the members)

But, I would like to delve a little deeper into the specifics of a new system. I would like see a change to the narrow geographical boundaries which mark out our constituencies. If a more proportional system is introduced, and lets hope it is, then I think it is time to reintroduce some quirkier features of our democracy. This is why I advocate a reintroduction of multi-member University Constituencies.

We are used to constituencies being constructed on a continuous geographical basis. For example and for no particular reason consider Newbury, Sedgefield, Dundee West and Warrington North [1], these constituencies exist because they loosely represent the community which will elect that area’s MP. This is big bonus of the Constituency system, people are directly connected with their local representative. However, the cohesiveness of these seats also leads to them becoming safely Red, Blue or Yellow. This is bad for democracy because elections are then only really conducted in 150 marginal seats, and millions of votes cease to matter.

This problem can be solved with multi the introduction of member-seats, with MPs elected under a system of Single Transferable Vote. For instance, imagine the grandeur of the currently fictional 8 member seat for Berkshire.

1. Bracknell CC
2. Maidenhead CC
3. Newbury CC
4. Reading East BC
5. Reading West CC
6. Slough BC
7. Windsor CC
8. Wokingham CC

An End to the Tyranny of Geography

However, constituencies do not need a continuous area in order to be representative of those who would be its electors. There can be circumstances that link me more culturally, emotionally and politically with a call centre worker in France than a Tory Grandee in Sleaford and North Hykeham. As an ex-student, there are also very obvious reasons to believe that I have more in common with the people I eat with, drink with and study with across the country than the community I visited for 3 months out of every 12.

As a student, for 3 years (and sometimes more) half the young people in this country leave their homes and enter a new community that isn’t so much described by geography as by its “Studentness.”

These would be more representative in two main ways. First of all they would give students a say in the community to which they belong (should they choose to register there of course). Secondly, as a consequence of the reallocation of voters, local communities which the students have left will have a more equitably and fairer say in their own affairs.

How many MPs should students get?

According to Wikipedia, the last chance saloon for the blogger seeking “reliable” figures, there are currently 646 MPs, corresponding to approximately one for every 92,000 people in the UK. For ease of calculation we can approximate this to 1 MP per 100,000 head of population. At the turn of the century there were 1.8 million students in the system. I think we can safely say the 2 million is now a fair approximation of the number of students in Higher education in (although certainly an underestimate, it is again an easy number to work with).

Using these rough figures we can calculate that the multi-member seat for modern Universities would have 20 MPs. Or perhaps separate smaller seats for the Universities of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In any case this would be an improvement on the situation today.

Students could express their preferences, be they for a Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Green, UKIP or perhaps a new Student’s Party, and these members could then sit in the Houses Parliament to represent them. Rather than be constrained by their dispersion across the country they could make their voice heard collectively.

Lazy Student Bastards…

There are obviously some criticisms of this idea. One immediate criticism would be that just a cynical ploy by The Left to gerrymander constituencies.

However, the assumption is that students are all left wing, environmentalist, sandal wearing, green tea drinking Communists who “know nothing about the real world” is two dimensional to say the least. As the head of the NUS, Wes Streeting illustrates, they can actually be quite right wing. Moreover, the Conservative student group, Conservative Future is the largest student political group in the UK.

Another criticism is that this system would cause a disconnect between the student and their old home, and also between the student and the new area they have moved to. I think this is a weak criticism for a couple of reasons.

People who live near students know how anti-social they can be. Their antics at 2.01am with trolleys, smashed bottles of Smirnoff Ice, traffic cone etc. are well known. However, allowing them to register in their local area has not stopped this sort of behaviour in the past. In fact, I believe giving students a more representative voice will help bring them closer to their local area as they become more political.

Slightly more concerning is the idea that by enfranchising University Constituencies we would be stopping people engaging with their local politics back home. It could be true that students will lose touch with their old local politics, but more importantly students will have the option of where to lay their allegiance. They will have the option of where to vote, campaign and unite.

Lastly is the idea that students would only care about student issues, and only vote on things that concerned them. In a way this is a very specious argument, of course they are going to vote on issues that affect them, that’s the point of democracy. To treat it seriously you have to assume that the issues of students are removed from those of everyone else. However, speak to a student, they are concerned about jobs, about debt, about housing and about illegal wars. Their concerns are everyone’s concerns and we should not be afraid of giving them a voice.

At the moment Governments rarely represent the people that vote for them, if they did 35% of the seats would be empty and the Greens would have 15% of the seats that did exist. No, a true proportional system is pretty much impossible, however University Constituencies are one way that a reformed parliament could reshape politics for the better. By connecting people with their MPs and by connecting the Houses of Parliament with a representative collective student voice these new Constituencies will help rebuild the link between people and Politics

[1] Find them all and I will add you to my Blogroll!

Filed under: Politics, Democracy, Electoral Reform, Students

If this is democracy then I’m Robert Kilroy Silk

Is it just me or is voting incredibly underwhelming? I understand I am expressing a right which people have died for, which people have killed for, which billions lack… and yet I find it all a bit dull. Which leads me to believe that there must be something more to democracy than this crass expression of preference for my overlords.

In this election we are presented with a difficult choice because so many of the Parties involved have become tarnished. On top of this, even some very good Parties like the Greens have some terrible policies, this is not enough to stop me supporting them, but it is enough to cause a pause.

But the main problem is the problem with our system is the disconnect between cause and effect; between my vote and the political settlement ultimately reached.

I don’t want this post to be about voting systems, or the failures of the European Parliament, manifold though they are. This is about a deeper malaise caused by the distance between the parties we vote for and the politics that affects our real life. Labour party membership is at its lowest ebb in a century precisely because they have abandoned the connection which once allowed them to claim they were the party of the people.

I can understand why some people might not vote. The odds of making a difference are incredibly slim, occasionally single votes do decide elections, but these events are so rare that they only highlights how little our vote matters. People are worried about their jobs, about their health, about what it is the EU is actually for, about immigration[1], about deindustrialisation, about sexism, about racism, about a illegal wars and the special relationship.

Politics will not rediscover its flavour with the election of David Cameron, nor will it excite people if by some miracle Gordon Brown hangs on at the General Election. Politics does not need to be enlivening for itself, but if democracy and liberty do not excite people then something is clearly missing.

What is missing is a dedicated campaign to achieve something positive[2]. The campaign 38 degrees is a worthy start, even if it has a crap name, towards building a larger movement, but until that disconnect between little “p” politics and big “p” Politics is bridged voting will remain an underwhelming act.

[1] Whether they are hatemongers like the Mail and Express or citizens concerned for immigrants rights people care about this subject.

[2] The biggest campaign I have seen this election has been the anti-fascist campaign. They have done their research, they have mocked them, they have made videos and they have got people out to vote but it is not a pro-active campaign, it is a reaction.an

Filed under: History, Politics, Brown, Cameron, Democracy, Economics, Environment, EU, nationalism