Eff off, Cameron.

[quinara]

On the BBC: [ETA: or at least it was when I posted this; they seem to have edited it out of the article now]

The prime minister will say that too much of the debate about the alternative vote (AV) has so far been dominated by "scientific" evaluation of the two systems' merits.

"But for me, politics shouldn't be some mind-bending exercise. It's about what you feel in your gut - about the values you hold dear and the beliefs you instinctively have," he will say.

"And I just feel it, in my gut, that AV is wrong."

Getting past the question of how you can value or believe in writing an X instead of a 1 with any sort of dearness or instinct, that is some seriously offensive bullshit you're spinning. Fear change! Fear science! (Never mind the government's continual argument that science is the only valuable academic discipline anyway; I can see where this is going...) This is even worse than your mindless modelling of an economy on a household budget. (Most households I know don't pay themselves; you're not our daddy working down the office.)

Grumble.

(I have another post about some fic I wrote for sb_fag_ends, but the plan is to write a bit more, and it doesn't really belong in this post anyway. But I'll write that at some point.)

Comments

[evilawyer]

I know nothing about this AV and I hardly live in a bastion of political perfection, but:

It's about what you feel in your gut - about the values you hold dear and the beliefs you instinctively have

And since the instinctive beliefs that live in lots and lots of peoples' guts are often grounded solely in fearing and loathing of people and things outside their sphere, we end up with hatred, racism, sexism, ageism, intolerance, prejudice, inequality and bloodshed. Then again...

But for me, politics shouldn't be some mind-bending exercise.

Bending a mind does require actually having a mind to start with.

[quinara]

AV is Alternative Vote, which is a different style of voting to the First Past the Post System we have at the moment, which is going to a referendum in May - basically, under the current system, each constituency votes for one representative, and the candidate with the most votes wins, while under AV it becomes required for the candidate to receive 50% of the votes before they can be elected. The way that happens is that voters pick out a number of candidates and rank them in order of choice from 1 through to whenever they want to stop giving a number. A first count is made, and if no candidate gets over 50%, the ballot papers of the least popular candidate get redistributed to their voters' second choice and the piles are counted again. If that doesn't give a candidate a 50%+ majority, the next least popular candidate's papers get redistributed to 2nd/3rd choices and the piles are counted again. And so on. The people who don't like the system (generally the politicians who get in on small-but-comfy majorities) reckon it is the most complicated thing in the world and unfair because 'some people's votes count twice' (apparently having your paper put against the same name twice in a row means something less than having your paper put against two different names). It's not a perfect system, but it represents people's wishes better than what we've got, but currently the 'no' camp are coming out better in polls because of mudslinging and this sort of pathetic rhetoric. And this is our prime minister.

And since the instinctive beliefs that live in lots and lots of peoples' guts are often grounded solely in fearing and loathing of people and things outside their sphere, we end up with hatred, racism, sexism, ageism, intolerance, prejudice, inequality and bloodshed.

Exactly. 'Instinct' about things like immigration and abstract political concepts are all defined by your environment and what people around you say. Exactly not what you should rely on to run a country.