Short Term Thinking III

My last two posts provided the primer for a discussion of how post-industrial economies interact with the drive towards a democratic system from our current standpoint of an unplanned constitutional monarchy in which approximately two thirds of the country are not represented by someone they voted for, under any outcome.

Short Term Thinking I

The economy (and political map) of Britain have changed radically since 1977. This is not a controversial statement. We’ve gotten collectively richer, while in the process metastasizing tumours of disadvantage which will take not years but generations, plural, to heal. We’ve shifted our economy finally and irrevocably from one based on most people working in manufacturing or primary industry to one where better than two thirds of the country work in service, knowledge or other tertiary industries. We have not evolved adequate union models for an era in which increasing numbers of the under-40s are self-employed and multi-skilled but broke and completely disenfranchised by demographic accidents and a broken political system. And we’ve had two, very long, governments in that time, one Tory and one Labour.

Shambles

I’m considering shaving my head and getting a pair of antlers tatooed on it.

I thought I was indulging in black humour when I drew comparisons between the progress of Ghana toward democracy, and the current UK election. I really thought it would look funny later. But now I’m hearing about the kind of shit that used to happen under Achaempong. I’m hearing about police breaking through spontaneous protests of the disenfranchised outside polling booths.

The BBC report that hundreds of people in constituencies spread across London, Manchester, Chester, Liverpool, Bolton and Sheffield have been shut out of polling stations after multi-hour queuing. I fully expect to hear of more. I’m hearing about polling stations that ran out of ballots. I’m hearing about spontaneous protests at polling stations being broken by police.

The Electoral Commission have announced that they will be investigating electoral irregularities. 3 seats have returned and they are already saying this! In 1992, three separate sets of observers were in action; UN, some Swiss hired by the government and some Finns I never found out who hired. Everyone and the BBC agreed the elections were fair. One observer said on air, “If Eastern Europe could run elections this clean I’d be out of a job.”

Not if the returning officers of Sheffield Hallam have anything to do with it, mate. What we have here is students (the group most likely to vote LibDem) being separated from ‘residents’ into a separate queue. They were then processed so much more slowly that ‘hundreds’ (BBC) were turned away without being able to vote.

[ Edit 0040: Here is the 140-character saga of the Sheffield Hallam law student Rak Smith. Disenfranchisement in a modern democracy, tweeted live. I would like to congratulate Raksky for presence of mind and good liberal instincts in making a speech to angry riot police. And I would like to add my fury and support to the pleas of those who have been denied their right to vote. ]

This is scandalous. Leaving aside the convenient coincidence that this is Nick Clegg’s own seat; this is a travesty against one of the longest democratic traditions in the world. Be it conspiracy or not, it is most certainly cock-up, and that’s not bloody good enough.

We suspected that a hung parliament would reveal the bankruptcy of this system. There’s no evidence yet to suggest that the seats will accurately reflect the popular vote, so that is still likely. But it didn’t occur to me that we’d see the kind of voting irregularities we saw in elections run by the Bush regime.

I could never vote in Ghana. I campaigned, but couldn’t vote. And I remember what the polling queues looked like. Hundreds of people standing singing in the sunshine, baking and sweating and grinning their ears off. I remember hearing about violence in Gonja territory, and how fast it was dealt with. People were in jail by the end of the day. I predict now that no-one will go to prison for this. If we wouldn’t prosecute them for the Iraq war we won’t prosecute anyone for this.

BBC, in 2010, report that the police have broken picket lines in two places, where enraged voters who had been denied the chance to vote had blocked the ballot box until it carried their electoral rights within its seal.

The system is bankrupt. It cannot be permitted. I’ve heard calls for V masks in Parliament square. I’m inclined to echo them right now.

JQP in Brief

In general, I continue to be very impressed by the Independent, who are acting like it and clearly enjoying it very much. Hear hear!

I changed my mind

About going to bed. The BBC have just given me another look at the debate over the nuclear deterrant. And it sparked a thought.

First, a position statement; having said #iagreewithnick quite a lot lately, it’s interesting to discover I disagree with him on both nuclear questions. I suspect that nuclear power is going to play a part in bridging the energy gap, while we recover from 30 years of crass idiocy in ignoring the sustainability of our economy. I do not believe in the utility of nuclear weapons inside a biosphere. Nick disagrees with me on both counts. Interesting.

Myth Factory

Broken Britain?

I’m not alone in noticing that the Economist are doing a good job of contrasting Conservative rhetoric with the data. The most significant bits of the article for me:

Chief among people’s worries is their security. Under Labour, fear of crime climbed until by 2007 it had become the issue that pollsters identified as the main complaint among voters. The heightened fears are a puzzle to criminologists, who point out that over the past 15 years Britain has experienced a steady, deep fall in crime. The statistics are notoriously hard to interpret, but according to the British Crime Survey, the Home Office’s most reliable measure though still far from perfect, crime overall has dropped by 45% since its peak in 1995. […] Violent crime has fallen too. It is now almost half what it was in 1995, and no higher than in 1981.

JQP in Brief

Balls on the Back Benches

Not, unfortunately, Ed. Labour MP Graham Allen has written a very interesting post suggesting some out-of-the-box perspectives on British democracy. I agree with a considerable amount, if not all, of what he said but that’s not why I’m linking it.

JQP in Boxes

So, just after the house-move one of my full-time staff broke her leg, and is out for 6-12 weeks. So I’ve just done two weeks of most of her work as well as mine… and I’ve really had no reading time. Add to this a continuing state of internet fail at home, for reasons of BT, and I’m still on hiatus. Sorry…

In other news, really everyone needs to read this.

None Dare Call It Treason

The Climate Camp is back, and thoroughly established on Blackheath, scene of a number of very drunken evenings of burly cheer back when I was a Kent schoolboy rugby player. They’re slowly getting their message across in spite of all the distractions. They’re a broad, consensus-based coalition which carries no universal ideological burden. The only point of cohesion is that they are all dedicated to true debate, to collective action and to direct, rather than representative/corruptible political self-determination. They are able to be all of these things because they live in a society where the cost of entry into the communications market is so low that normal people can play too. And they’re winning the spin war, so far. Being factual, organised and in the right really helps with that. Mr. Cameron, take note.

Enlightenment: noun, apparently transitory

I sometimes wonder if I just need to stop reading the internet. Since I returned to the world of mass media (i.e. this morning) I have been made sequentially angry by 9 things, and was planning a fairly serious In Brief about them until the 10th thing came along and just overwhelmed my capacity to think for a while.

JQP in Brief

Allies

It may prove a strategic error for the Cambridge PD to have shown their collective asses right at the start of Blog Against Racism week. It practically guaranteed them the spotlight as “offenders of the week” at a time when thousands of honourable people were looking for a bigot to pillory. On the other hand, I didn’t even know it was IBARW until Jennie Rigg mentioned it: hat duly tipped.

JQP in Brief

So I’m back on the Metro run for the first time in a while, having spent 9 days in a field in Somerset making actual things out of wood. A short list of things I felt rant-worthy appears below.

Privilege checking

Jennie Rigg made a recent post which got me thinking about the blog-roll on here. I composed it in two, short, bursts of organisation, where I dumped the contents of my blog aggregator into links dialogues. Wasn’t really thought about; it was just ‘list o’stuff wot I read’ and ‘list o’stuff about beer wot I read’. The outcome was this:

One in the Eye

Look! Over there!

Bizarrely, from the Daily Fail, comes good news for British moderate muslims. While arguing with idiots on the internet, of both the UK and US varieties, I’ve become accustomed to certain stock insults being thrown about. Formulas, oft repeated, are much easier than nuanced positions which modify to fit the facts. One of the ones often leveled at the moderate muslim community (apart from “There is no moderate muslim community”) is that if they existed, and cared, and were not tacit fascists, they’d be out in the streets protesting against or confronting the militants in their own community. Where are the moderate muslims shouting down Omar Bakri? Where are the muslim Britons defending our troops from the insults of extremists?

The Confidence Trick

Expensive

I’ve stayed relatively clear of the commentariat’s dive into the Torygraph’s shark pool. Obviously, people needed to comment: for example, when the they smeared MPs someone needed to be telling them off.