This post will neither win me new friends nor endear me to the ones I already have, but the time has come to alienate a few people, for their own good. It is a sad fact to relate that some of my friends are idiots.
Those who know me know I believe in tough love. Sometimes people who are wrong need to be put right, and sometimes those who err deserve to be castigated; thrown from the sanctum sanctorum to the outer darkness. Int he past week, some of these people have made themselves known. Whilst I do not wish to publicly embarrass them, I do want to deal with their misdemeanours in one place, efficiently and effectively.
Some of my best friends think Gordon Brown is a good Prime Minister
This is just stupidity, and I ought to visit those people and slap some sense into them, but at least they can be given the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, they are lying in order to save face and put on a brave united socialist front to frustrate tories. Well done, you’re putting on the facade nicely. But we are loving it. You know, for a few moments there, it looked like you might put someone half decent into power, someone who could deny us an absolute majority. But your coward fellow commies botched the job, and good ministers went over the top to be shot down by your own troops. Well done on the whole unity thing.
News for you: you’re idiots, but like puppies, your enthusiasm and optimism is infectious and we love you for your little foibles! Believing in Gordon Brown as Prime Minister must be a little like having an invisble friend. Bless.
Some of my best friends think Proportional Representation would be a good response to the expenses scandal and think we can’t see what they’re doing.
Admittedly, the friends who think this generally aren’t good at the whole stats thing, and they are not qualified Hardcore Psephology Ninjas ® like me. In fact, some of them don’t even have Magic Vote Tally Trunks® for election day, so they often don’t have the first fucking clue what they’re talking about. I was going to explain, using numbers and shit like that, what the result of various PR systems would have on elections like at the weekend, but, ah, you’re too much of a bunch of simpering cretins to get it. So, as if to prove that I studied under Sidney Elliot, here’s a taster:
If you want to put power in the hands of people who are already pissed off with their politicians, then, believe me, putting more power into the hands of regional list committees is not how to win friends and influence people. Parachuting a party list member (AV+) into a regional constituency would not play very well at the moment. Give people more control over their local party by increasing your membership if you wan to gain the trust of the people.
PR systems are relatively complex, take a relatively long time to count effectively and put a layer of bureaucracy (and mathematics) between the voter and the candidate. I’ll bet any money the man in the street wants more transparency, not less. And it is unarguable that PR systems are less accessible to the chap on the omnibus than Simple Plurality.
“I voted for a chap and he didn’t win because more people voted for another chap” is much more accessible than “I voted for a chap, but he got eliminated in the fourth round, and the chap I really didn’t want to win was elected subquota because those chaps in that other party were all eliminated first and their votes overwhelmingly transferred to him. Bastard.”
Also, do you think people might be more or less likely to chuck a vote at the BNP in a multiple preference system? And have you checked the colour of your skin recently? I would, if I were you.
Your genuinely silly belief that we don’t see your atempt to shift the political goalposts is touching, and utterly self defeating. You’re an idiot if you think otherwise.
