How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, by The Lib Dems
Up until yesterday, I was willing to brave out the hard times because I had a belief that the core tenets of the Liberal Democrat party were still in place. Transparency and honesty are cornerstones of any liberal device, but it seems like that party, much like Labour and the Tories, only support honesty and transparency when it's in their interests to do so.
At the General Election in 2010, the Liberal Democrats ran on the mandate of an in/out referendum on the European Union. I knew they would support the 'in' campaign, but they did offer this referendum. To back up this position, they had an official campaign for the in/out referendum on their campaigns site.
The more tech-savvy of you will notice that this link directs to the Archive.org record of the page. This is because after I spread the URL on Twitter, the party decided to simply delete the campaign page with no formal explanation. This happened on the 21st or 22nd October 2011. In my mind, this is certainly a betrayal of transparency.
‘No’ Wins & Democracy Loses… For Now
Well, it looks like our worst fears have come true. The 'No' vote is romping home to a greater than 2:1 ratio victory, and we're probably going to be stuck with Tory and Labour votes counting for between four and infinite times as much as other votes for another twenty years.
| Party | No of Votes | No of Seats | Seats per Vote | Vote Value |
| Conservatives | 10,703,754 | 306 | 0.000028588 | 0.95 |
| Labour | 8,609,527 | 258 | 0.000029967 | 1 |
| Liberal Democrat | 6,836,824 | 57 | 0.000008337 | 0.28 |
| UK Independence | 920,334 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Green Party | 285,616 | 1 | 0.000003501 | 0.12 |
| BNP | 563,743 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
By standardising a Labour vote to a value of 1 (multiply 'seats per vote' by 33370), we are easily able to compare the values of votes for each of the leading six UK-wide parties.
The Unfounded Criticisms of AV & The ‘Miserable Compromise’ Argument
Fellow voters of the UK,
Regardless of how you're planning to vote on May 5th, I hope we can all come together in condemning the lies of the No2AV Campaign, which basically sum down to the following arguments:
- AV will be expensive - costing £250 million
- AV offers more votes to some people than others
- AV leads to broken promises / weak governments
- The third-placed candidate can win
- AV is a 'miserable little compromise'
- AV will help the BNP
- AV is complicated
Let's take a little look at each of these claims, and weigh up the evidence for and against them, then we can come to a conclusion about whether any or all of these claims stack up.
People of Britain, We Are Being Mislead!
Dear Citizen,
We are being deceived. I do not say this lightly, because it's a harsh accusation to throw at the government which ran this country for the last thirteen years, but I am also not known for pulling my punches where politicians are concerned. Over those thirteen years of Labour government, we lived on an unsustainable platform which I'm going to show you in detail.
First, we should look at Labour's economic legacy, then we'll go onto failing public services, and finally we'll look at the cuts being imposed by the coalition and why they're having to be made.
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