“Britain’s First Past The Post voting system could be scrapped if Labour wins the general election, under plans which have been outlined by Gordon Brown. The prime minister wants a referendum on changing to an Alternative Vote system, where candidates are ranked in order of voters’ preference”.

Whereas superficially this proposed referendum to move to what appears to be a fairer voting system appears to be a step in the right direction, I believe the Alternative Vote system – in the context of English politics – to be fundamentally undemocratic.

Why? How AV works is the voter gets the list of candidates & ranks them in order of how much they want each candidate to win. The candidate who received the fewest ‘1′ preference votes then gets all their ‘2′ preference votes transferred to the other candidates accordingly, until one of the candidates has received over 50% of the votes available.

In a system where there are a multiplicity of parties – ie, where views within parties are sufficiently diverse that splits have occurred – that’s fine. But in English politics, and to a certain extent the other nations of the UK, we are, to all intents and purposes, a three party system. Sure, we’ve got the Green Party, the British National Party, the Unofficial Monster Raving Loony (Rainbow Alliance) Party, & Dr Richard Rogers’ Common Good Party, etc, but we only have three serious parties. And by and large, if supporters of Conservative or Labour are likely to put a second preference on their ballot forms, more often than not they are most likely to allocate that second preference to the Liberal Democrat candidate rather than to the other serious party or one of the amateur candidates.

Which means that in all but the safest seats, the LibDems will be favoured disproportionately to their actual support. All credit to the LibDems, they are saying the plan doesn’t go far enough.

It’s possible that if AV is introduced more serious parties might emerge – most likely as a result of the broad coalitions of the three main parties fragmenting, leading to such as the Judean Peoples’ Front and the Peoples’ Front of Judea, alongside the Popular Front of Judea. But would that really be such a good thing? Party politics is divisive enough, without it being made even more divisive; all that would happen would be the introduction of coalition governments comprising the same actual people, but just paying their subscription fees to more parties.

If Gordon Brown is serious about improving democratic accountability, then not only does he need to think about something better than replacing one flawed vote counting system with another flawed vote counting system, but also think more radically about the whole relationship between the People and our elected representives, and the system of cabinet government with winner-takes-all.

“The British armed forces could be forced to shrink by up to a fifth because of a lack of money, a military think tank has predicted.  The Royal United Services Institute said the number of trained military personnel could fall from 175,000 to little more than 140,000 by 2016″.

So? It’s already widely discussed that public sector spending needs to be cut anyway, so why should the military be exempt from the pain? Are soldiers more important than nurses, teachers, librarians, and benefits clerks?

As it is, defence spending is currently 5.8% of total UK Government expenditure. What would the RUSI cut in order for defence not to share the pain of public sector cuts?

“The home secretary has said he will back any request from police or local government to ban an Islamic group marching through Wootton Bassett. Alan Johnson said he felt ‘revulsion’ at the thought of Islam4UK’s proposed march through the Wiltshire town”.

Now indeed, it is quite offensive that the group is indeed planning on holding its protest march in the town which has become synonymous with returning dead soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, and by choosing to hold their protest march there – regardless of their rationale that by proposing to hold it their they well get maximum publicity which they almost certainly wouldn’t have got anywhere else, by choosing to protest in such an inflammatory manner, they will almost certainly drive more people away from their point of view than bring them to it, especially in the current climate of broad public sympathy for members of the armed forces regardless of broad public opposition for what those forces have been sent to do. If they have any sense, Islam4UK will reconsider.

However, what I do find even more offensive and repugnant is that the home secretary wants to ban the march, simply on the grounds that he doesn’t like it. So much for freedom of speech.

“Speaking on US network CNN’s State of the Union, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm Mike Mullen said: ‘This is obviously a political decision. On the same programme, influential Senators Joe Lieberman and Ben Cardin questioned whether the move had been made to improve British-Libyan trade”.

There has indeed been a lot of anger from politicos etc in the USA about the release of this person on the grounds that he is expected to die within three months, and us British people have the notion of ‘compassionate release’ built into our justice system.

I trust, though, that there isn’t going to be any backlash from people in California:

“California lawmakers are to vote on a plan to release 27,000 prisoners early. The proposal is part of a solution to a $26bn dollar budget deficit and the problem of chronic prison overcrowding”.

Because that would be hypocritical of them – wouldn’t it?

Not which party, but on what basis – did you vote on the European issues, on national issues, or what?

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I may add some kind of analytical comment on the results later, if it warrants it.

“Gordon Brown is said to be ‘very concerned’ about allegations ex minister Elliot Morley claimed £16,000 expenses on a loan he had already paid. Mr Morley has said it was a ‘mistake’ and has paid the money back – but his future as a Labour MP may be in doubt”.

“The Home Secretary is to pay back parliamentary allowances claimed for pay-per-view television services, reportedly including two adult films. Jacqui Smith said she ‘mistakenly’ claimed for the TV package while billing for an internet connection”.

For me, the fact that Jacqui Smith made a simple, and almost certainly genuine, accounting error of bundling a few pay-per-view films into her expenses claim isn’t the story.

The speculation – for it is still disputed whether the films genuinely were porno flix or just films which happened to be certificate 18 – about what kind of films a couple of them were isn’t even the story.

For me, what the story is is the fact that Smith actually thought to claim for the cost of her virgin media telly and internet package as a parliamentary expense at all.

I mean, yes, it’s reasonable for a working politician to be claiming legitimate expenses incurred in the course of doing the job which she wouldn’t otherwise have incurred – such as phone calls, mileage, and even rent (but as far as I’m concerned, absolutely not mortgage) on a second home. And I don’t even object to the notion of MPs and Ministers being paid a decent salary for what is – no matter how what one thinks of politicians – after all an intense job, with long hours, little thanks, and a great deal of responsibility for getting it wrong.

But claiming for your internet connexion? And your cable telly package? Has she also claimed for her telly license as well? And more to the point, given that it’s supposed to be her second home, at which she only spends two or three days a week, has she only claimed 3/5ths of the bill, or does she have the even bigger cheek to be claiming the whole thing?

It’s this kind of thing which well and truly brings the whole system of expenses, and the reputation of politicians into severe disrepute. Does she really think the public are stupid enough to believe that if she wasn’t an MP she wouldn’t have telly and the internet at home? Claiming as an expense something she would have anyway, which doesn’t have any extra usage charges (like eg a phone bill) is shockingly and arrogantly taking the mickey out of us all; it is the epitome of the noses-in-the-trough reputation that politicians have only themselves to blame for.

Jacqui Smith is the one who’s got caught – almost certainly because the media guns are clearly out for her. How many others are taking the mickey in the same way?