I was going to stay away from politics in this blog. Fi says I can rant at the radio with the best. But, current situations require a few comments. I did vote last time, after all, and I’m going to link two particular thoughts.
LIBYA: the “coalition of the willing” is already looking like a mess. William Hague, interviewed on the radio yesterday, would not discuss the UN resolution in detail. Why? What does he have to hide or was he being purposely evasive ? The latter, probably. Already the US wants the NATO alliance to take the reins, for understandable reasons. There is confusion as to whether or not they can target Gaddafi personally. It is clear that there is no strategy of what to do next after disabling the airbases. So, 3 or 4 days in, it’s beginning to look like a cock-up. (Let us not forget also that Britain has been selling arms and training forces of certain Arab dictators for the last few years. This led to the hapless sight of William Hague, in a previous interview, stating that there was no evidence that it was “British teargas being used in Bahrain”. – so that all right then!!! ) Yesterday, the Commons voted 557 – 13 in favour of the UN resolution. A resolution, it would appear, that is confused and ill conceived.
Now;
AV: In May we will be voting in a referendum to decide on a change to our voting system. Those who prefer the status quo will tell you that AV is a) too difficult (can’t the electorate think about more than one person) b) throw up minority influence too easily c) or even, take too long to find a result on Election Day (!) d) what we’ve had for 100’s of years works fine (!).
Consider this, is it right that MP’s supported and elected by a minority, represent the majority ?
At the 2010 General Election, 66.7% of MPs, a staggering 434 out of 650, were elected with less than 50% of the constituents support.
….and this figure has been rising steadily for the last 30 years. Simple maths will tell you that recent Governments have been elected by a minority – whatever it’s colour. It is these “leaders” , representing a minority, who are making the decisions above.
AV will give us;
a) Voice for the majority
b) An opportunity to make your smug “safe-seater” work for his money
c) An opportunity to wrest, just a little bit, influence from big business and the Elite
d) An opportunity to elect leaders who represent the majority in some form, and, as a consequence, can make decisions on our behalf.
So, think on……………….what we have is not democracy.
“In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.” – Aristotle
singlemaltmonkey 
Hmmm..isn’t this Democracy? Despite not having majority someone still has to assume the power..atleast this is Zillion times better than some dictator driving us Crazy..
You are right to a point, Narendra. However, it is a flawed voting system, in my view, and the fact that we have had it for hundreds of years does not make it the best we can do. If the trend of voting contiues as it has the ext General election here could see over 70% of MPs in the House put there by a minority. This then begins to challenge the relevance of the vote for the majority and hence the relevance of the system itself………and the relevance of the democracy it represents. It’s a scary thought…………my thanks and appreciation for your readership, Narendra, it’s good to talk. 🙂