Does it say 'from 2015' or 'from the date of the next general election'?

Apparently it explicitly says "in all general elections from 2015 onwards"... there's also apparently a clause that, if the new constituency boundaries aren't in place by 2013 (whether due to challenges from Parliament or courts), AV wouldn't take effect even if the referendum returns a "Yes" vote...

 

There's a piece here about some Tories' plans to force an election if AV passes: http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-p...coalition/14717

What a bizarre piece of logic. But then he's a Tory so I suppose it's not surprising. He seems to think that the Tories would be on to a winner if their campaign theme was "You know that referendum a couple months ago when you decided you wanted a change to the electoral system. Well, forget that because we have."

Really makes you wonder if it was worth senior Lib Dems throwing the party away just for this?

Long Post Alert

 

 

The standard of the debate so far has been dismal. Both sides have made incorrect or misleading statements with the No campaign easily the worse offenders.

 

Examples so far…

 

From the Yes campaign

 

It will mean all MPs have the support of 50% of voters - close but not quite. Some people won’t use all their preferences so the winner may not get support from as much as 50% of all voters.

 

It will mean an end to safe seats - no it won’t. However, it will reduce the number of safe seats. Therefore, the linked claim that MPs will have to work harder is largely true.

 

 

 

From the No campaign

 

It will lead to extremists being elected - completely false. It is likely to make it harder for extremists to get elected. Under the current system BNP councillors have been elected, generally with a relatively low share of the vote as the opposition to them is split. Under AV it is unlikely that the BNP will pick up many second preferences so they will probably win nothing. No doubt that is one reason why the BNP are opposed to AV.

 

AV is complicated - no it isn’t. What the campaigners are saying is that voters are thick and are incapable of counting up to five or six. Apparently we are less intelligent than Australians who cope with AV without any difficulty and a lot less intelligent than the Irish who use a more complicated system.

 

It will be expensive - no it won’t. First, the cost of the referendum itself is not relevant to the argument. It will cost a little more to count the votes in an AV election as the process will take longer. However, you could use that argument to do away with elections altogether. The voting machines mentioned by the No campaigners are a myth. There are no plans to use machines. Machines are not used in Australia.

 

AV is not a proportional system - true, but then nobody is claiming that it is a proportional system. Besides, most of the people saying this are opposed to any proportional system.

 

Parties will have to appeal to extremists for their second preferences - sort of true but that happens already. One of the people to use this argument is Tory Party chair Baroness Warsi. When she stood for parliament she made a direct appeal to BNP supporters to vote for her instead.

 

Some people will get many votes while others will get only one - utter rubbish. AV is effectively a succession of elections with candidates being eliminated until an outright winner emerges. If your preferred candidate is not eliminated then your vote is counted again in the next round. The system means that it is assumed - reasonably - that if you vote for party A given a choice of A, B, C and D then you would still vote for party A if the choice was between A, B and C.

 

It’s a referendum on Nick Clegg - no it isn’t. Nor is it a referendum on David Cameron or indeed anyone else.

You've distilled all my views precisely Suedey!

Glad to be of service :D

Great post Si.

 

I'm still on the fence on the issue, although gravitating more towards the 'no' camp at this point, as I can't really see the switch to AV resulting in much change to the system. Of course, there's still a month to go and I may end up changing my mind.

 

Of course, on May 5th there's more important elections that I'm keeping tabs on, namely the Northern Ireland Assembly and council elections.

Pretty much summed it up there. I miss the referendum by just over a month since I turn 18 in June, which is a little annoying. I'd be voting yes simply because of the minority parties struggling to win seats, AV would work in favour of the one(s) I like (Greens) far more than the ones I hate (BNP, UKIP etc.). It concerns me that in this day and age, the Greens still only hold one seat in Parliament.

Decided I'm voting "Yes" as my first preferece, and "No" as my second preference. I still don't think AV will make that much difference though.

 

I agree the campaign has been p***-poor. I don't know what's worse: Baroness Warsi's scaremongering claim that AV would help the BNP, or Chris Huhne likening her to Goebbels.

I'm still on the fence on the issue, although gravitating more towards the 'no' camp at this point, as I can't really see the switch to AV resulting in much change to the system.

 

Best to abstain then. A "no" vote is a "yes" vote to First Past the Post. Perhaps that's how it should be written - not "yes / no" but "select your favoured election method from the below".

It concerns me that in this day and age, the Greens still only hold one seat in Parliament.

It concerns me they actually have a seat in the first place.

 

Fucking retarded doesn't even begin to cover their transport policies. They are too busy flapping around like a bunch of f***ing morons about the car being the enemy that they fail to consider that 20 zones don't work, speed bumps used to enforce said 20 zones increase fuel consumption and emissions, buses are far more polluting than cars, taking the £30bn road budget away and giving it to public transport will allow our roads to fall into a dire state leading to more accidents not less, I'd love to see how they plan on getting people to get the train to Paris from London given that it's more than twice the f***ing price, they will lay off 1000's of road haulers and many haulage firms would go bankrupt, a tax on new cars that reflects emissions would be utterly unworkable as the cars needed for those with bigger families tend to have higher emissions and their already stretched budgets will have to buy older cars that aren't as safe to avoid that tax once more increasing road deaths, and their f***ing public transport bull$h!t is ridiculous RURAL AREAS HAVE TO USE CARS AS NO BUS COMPANIES SERVE THEM. It's not that hard a concept to grasp. You ask anyone who lives outside a big city what public transport is like and they'll tell you its $h!t

 

I could go on tearing every single one of their transport policies to shreds.

 

I'd vote for the SNP before i'd vote Green and the thought of voting for the SNP makes me physically sick.

 

 

When they get their head out of their arses and stop daemonising the car and the aeroplane [Given that the later accounts for 2% of emissions, some 10x less than power generation] and come up with practical, workable solutions that don't revolve around public f***ing transport then i agree that they deserve more seats. Until someone can make the environmentalists see sense, they should be grouped with the people like the BNP as nut jobs who don't deserve the time of day.

It concerns me they actually have a seat in the first place.

 

Fucking retarded doesn't even begin to cover their transport policies. They are too busy flapping around like a bunch of f***ing morons about the car being the enemy that they fail to consider that 20 zones don't work, speed bumps used to enforce said 20 zones increase fuel consumption and emissions, buses are far more polluting than cars, taking the £30bn road budget away and giving it to public transport will allow our roads to fall into a dire state leading to more accidents not less, I'd love to see how they plan on getting people to get the train to Paris from London given that it's more than twice the f***ing price, they will lay off 1000's of road haulers and many haulage firms would go bankrupt, a tax on new cars that reflects emissions would be utterly unworkable as the cars needed for those with bigger families tend to have higher emissions and their already stretched budgets will have to buy older cars that aren't as safe to avoid that tax once more increasing road deaths, and their f***ing public transport bull$h!t is ridiculous RURAL AREAS HAVE TO USE CARS AS NO BUS COMPANIES SERVE THEM. It's not that hard a concept to grasp. You ask anyone who lives outside a big city what public transport is like and they'll tell you its $h!t

 

I could go on tearing every single one of their transport policies to shreds.

 

I'd vote for the SNP before i'd vote Green and the thought of voting for the SNP makes me physically sick.

When they get their head out of their arses and stop daemonising the car and the aeroplane [Given that the later accounts for 2% of emissions, some 10x less than power generation] and come up with practical, workable solutions that don't revolve around public f***ing transport then i agree that they deserve more seats. Until someone can make the environmentalists see sense, they should be grouped with the people like the BNP as nut jobs who don't deserve the time of day.

 

I think it's grossly unfair to lump them with the BNP simply because, despite the obvious policy flaws you pointed out, their principles are solid and with some reworking would make a lot of sense - something you could never say about Griffin and co.

I think it's grossly unfair to lump them with the BNP simply because, despite the obvious policy flaws you pointed out, their principles are solid and with some reworking would make a lot of sense - something you could never say about Griffin and co.

They both have seriously flawed policies and are made up of utter lunatics. Sounds like a good match to me.

 

 

I do get where you're coming from in that the BNP will never escape that category while the Greens potentially could, but their transport policies need binning altogether never mind an overhaul

It concerns me they actually have a seat in the first place.

 

Fucking retarded doesn't even begin to cover their transport policies. They are too busy flapping around like a bunch of f***ing morons about the car being the enemy that they fail to consider that 20 zones don't work, speed bumps used to enforce said 20 zones increase fuel consumption and emissions, buses are far more polluting than cars, taking the £30bn road budget away and giving it to public transport will allow our roads to fall into a dire state leading to more accidents not less, I'd love to see how they plan on getting people to get the train to Paris from London given that it's more than twice the f***ing price, they will lay off 1000's of road haulers and many haulage firms would go bankrupt, a tax on new cars that reflects emissions would be utterly unworkable as the cars needed for those with bigger families tend to have higher emissions and their already stretched budgets will have to buy older cars that aren't as safe to avoid that tax once more increasing road deaths, and their f***ing public transport bull$h!t is ridiculous RURAL AREAS HAVE TO USE CARS AS NO BUS COMPANIES SERVE THEM. It's not that hard a concept to grasp. You ask anyone who lives outside a big city what public transport is like and they'll tell you its $h!t

 

I could go on tearing every single one of their transport policies to shreds.

 

I'd vote for the SNP before i'd vote Green and the thought of voting for the SNP makes me physically sick.

When they get their head out of their arses and stop daemonising the car and the aeroplane [Given that the later accounts for 2% of emissions, some 10x less than power generation] and come up with practical, workable solutions that don't revolve around public f***ing transport then i agree that they deserve more seats. Until someone can make the environmentalists see sense, they should be grouped with the people like the BNP as nut jobs who don't deserve the time of day.

Well clearly you haven't actually READ the policies as a large amount of them focus around subsidies for public transport (which deals with your Paris to London point) and universalising bus services around the country. Additionally, though buses are more polluting than cars, they also transport more people and thus give off less pollution per head. Additionally, just because there are ways around an emission tax doesn't mean it's unworkable - who says cars with fewer emissions are necessarily older ones? And they have many other policies other than transport, such as carbon crediting - which is effectively a personalised version of the carbon trading scheme, whereby everyone gets given a certain allocation of 'carbon credits' per year, and if they wish to use more then they purchase them on a carbon market - if they use less than their allocation then they can sell their credits, incentivising cutting down on emissions by making it profitable.

Well clearly you haven't actually READ the policies as a large amount of them focus around subsidies for public transport (which deals with your Paris to London point) and universalising bus services around the country. Additionally, though buses are more polluting than cars, they also transport more people and thus give off less pollution per head. Additionally, just because there are ways around an emission tax doesn't mean it's unworkable - who says cars with fewer emissions are necessarily older ones? And they have many other policies other than transport, such as carbon crediting - which is effectively a personalised version of the carbon trading scheme, whereby everyone gets given a certain allocation of 'carbon credits' per year, and if they wish to use more then they purchase them on a carbon market - if they use less than their allocation then they can sell their credits, incentivising cutting down on emissions by making it profitable.

I did actually read their transport policies page between fits of rage and tears of laughter at how f***ing ridiculous it is.

 

Public Transport has had investment and it just doesn't work. They can subsidise it all they bloody want but it won't be long before they start slashing services in rural areas as they will never be profitable and outside of the big towns and cities per head cars are far cleaner as the buses that are used in rural areas tend to be far far older and far far more polluting wiping out the per person reduction outside of places like London.

 

The emissions tax is a replacement for Road Tax [A yearly pollution based tax which i consider to be evil, I have a small car and pay £155pa and a diesel Laguna which is substantially bigger is the same] and would be charged on new vehicles, I pointed out that this would drive people who needed the larger more polluting cars into older ones that are even more polluting than the new car they were priced out of [After all it is a tax on NEW vehicles, nothing is mentioned on their site about a tax on used cars]

 

Their carbon crediting policy wasn't in their transport section and i was too pissed off to read any other utterly ridiculous ramblings by a crazy woman.

 

I'm all for reducing man's contribution to the natural process of Global Warming [After all, that's what climate change is. A man accelerated natural process.] but it's time to lay the f*** off the car/aircraft and start cracking down on industrial works, Public Transport and power plants. Combined they pollute far more than the car and plane combined. I don't see why buses in this country can't run on natural gas like they do in Brisbane. Now there is a green alternate i can actually get behind. A proper busway network and clean transportation. When the Green party in this country come up with something like that i'll be more than happy to vote for them, I notice you fail to mention anything about their 20 zones [which do far more harm to the planet than good] and their road haulage scheme which would make thousands redundant.

Public transport has had sod all investment outside of London! Our rail network has had terrible under-investment and so has our bus network as a result of privatisation.

 

Just because something doesn't draw a profit doesn't mean it needs to be slashed. The majority of public spending doesn't draw a direct profit, but you don't see the likes of Trident being slashed no matter how much money it costs to maintain them year on year :P Where public transport DOES have investment - London - it's worked astonishingly well. Bus usage was up massively as a result of Ken's investment off the back of the Congestion Charge, but that's going to waste now Boris is putting up bus fares in order to cut council tax.

 

I'm doubting public transport overall pollutes more than cars overall in this country (car usage is far higher than public transport usage, so surely it evens out?), but even if it does then it's far less of a pollutant per head. I didn't mention 20 zones or road haulage because it isn't exactly a centrepiece policy of theirs :P I'm not too familiar with the details of the road haulage scheme anyway.

 

I think you should probably take a look at their other policies as well other than transport :P

Public transport has had sod all investment outside of London! Our rail network has had terrible under-investment and so has our bus network as a result of privatisation.

 

Just because something doesn't draw a profit doesn't mean it needs to be slashed. The majority of public spending doesn't draw a direct profit, but you don't see the likes of Trident being slashed no matter how much money it costs to maintain them year on year :P Where public transport DOES have investment - London - it's worked astonishingly well. Bus usage was up massively as a result of Ken's investment off the back of the Congestion Charge, but that's going to waste now Boris is putting up bus fares in order to cut council tax.

 

I'm doubting public transport overall pollutes more than cars overall in this country (car usage is far higher than public transport usage, so surely it evens out?), but even if it does then it's far less of a pollutant per head. I didn't mention 20 zones or road haulage because it isn't exactly a centrepiece policy of theirs :P I'm not too familiar with the details of the road haulage scheme anyway.

 

I think you should probably take a look at their other policies as well other than transport :P

It'd take a lot more than £30bn to prise the networks up here from Stagecoach and First and then make them semi decent. To get a decent public transportation system in Scotland that works very well it would require substantially more cash as the rural services up here are just none existent. Not that it'd matter anyway given that it's a devolved matter. And our Rail Network has had decades of mismanagement, not under investment. They can throw all the money they want at Network Rail it'd make no change unless they overhaul the management.

 

The age of the trains and rural buses means they pollute a ridiculous amount. Newer transport, yes i agree it's greener [Not as Green as the Brisbane buses which are brill and really should be in use over here] but the rural stuff just isn't. Stagecoach aren't going to invest in new, clean buses for routes that lose them money.

 

They want to substantially increase road tax for haulage and move the transport of good from the road to the water and rail. Which is retarded as you kinda need road transport to get it from the rail/water to the final destination. There aren't many places north of the central belt of Scotland capable of doing that which would cause the price of food north and south of Glasgow/Stirling/Edinburgh/Fife/Dundee to rocket. You can't increase further the cost to haulers, the rising fuel prices are causing too many to go bankrupt as it is.

 

As a road user and a skint student I'm not going to vote for them because of their transport policies. They'd need to have some pretty amazing other policies to get my vote and given how much is devolved agreeing with them on Jobs and a living wage is no where near enough. Some of their NHS stuff is based on things that are already in place in Scotland.

Bloody hell, how anyone can say public transport pollutes more than the horrendous surplus of cars on the road is beyond me. As somebody pointed out earlier on - it's pollution PER HEAD that counts. If you take public transport away then all those people will be getting into cars and polluting a hell of a lot more. As for aeroplanes? That's a gigantic addition to anybody's carbon footprint.

 

As I began, it's the surplus of cars that is the problem. People in rural areas, fine...but cars are used far, far more than they ever should be in this country and I think it's right that unnecessary / lazy travel becomes a luxury.

 

Now, not entirely sure what that has to do with the referendum, but there you go.

Ugh, the "No to AV" leaflet has annoyed me so much. Trying to turn this into a referendum on Nick Clegg and showing a picture of a race where the guy in fourth (last) has a label saying "winner under AV". Gah.

Has anyone seen the 'No to AV' advert? Rik Mayall is an embarassment, he's ruined the Alan B'stard character. And the kid talking about the roulette wheel isn't going to do them any favours either.