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Please vote Yes on Thursday.
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Excellent Richard. Already forwarded to a number of people I know who are cat lovers but struggle to understand AV. I hope it’ll make a difference as we need to win this one. Mind you, it’s going to be tough not least because it appears the majority of the parliamentary Labour Party are against AV – including my own MP. Not that I expected anything else from dinosuars such as Blunkett, Prescott and Reid. Dead wood and dead-heads who have never shown any interest in promoting democracy – only in the pursuit of power.
As I pointed out to my own MP, had he spent years teaching government and politics to undergrads, as I and friends and colleagues have, he would realise that the overwhelming view of young people is that our democracy (and therefore by definition our politicians) is at best discredited and at worst badly broken. And the fact that FPTP utterly fails to reflect the plurality of views, opinions and beliefs that young people hold and believe important is nothing short of a national scandal.
Still, our political masters have failed to rise to the challenge on so many occasions now (climate change, banking, inequality, etc. etc) that one more pathetic cop-out come Thursday will simply confirm what the majority of the population of this country already know: for the majority of our politicians when push comes to shove self interest trumps wider interests nearly every time.
I usually disagree with just about everything that you say – but in this case I’m with you 100%. AV may not be the ideal solution (PR, AV+, MMCs all being preferable in my opinion) but it’s a lot better than FPTP.
I just wish people could look at it from a point of view that puts aside petty differences. “So and so is voting for it, and I don’t like them, so I’m going to vote against it.” Sounds rather childish to me. The BNP are against AV, so by that reasoning, anyone voting No is clearly a BNP fan… No?
It’s not just about voting Yes to AV.
It’s about voting NO to FPTP, the machine that generates Tory overall majorities on a fraction of the overall vote.
Vote to keep FPTP if you like one party Tory rule.
Anyone else who votes to keep FPTP is a turkey voting for Christmas.
I think I’ve finally got it – the power of AV is not what it does, but what it stops! Its the peoples power of Veto.
Essentially the coallition came into power by means of a vote redistribution along the same lines as AV, but with the choice in the hands of a few senior Lib Dems, not the people. The rules under AV are set before the game starts, rather than being thrashed out afterwards. That sounds like increased democracy to me
Its finally clicked and I think I know what I will do tomorrow