Cameron is Gordon Browns long lost twin

I saw a poster today for Unison. It said "Stop having children" as the public sector cuts are so dramatic that there will be a shortage of midwives. It also said to "vote for the party for public services". Well I dont know what that party is, but it certainly isn't Labour.

Despite labour and the Tories claims. Tories are not actually cutting any more than labour. Osbourne is cutting £8 for every £7 that Alistair "eyebrows" Darling proposed before the election. The coalition is only cutting public services by 0.6% this year, and 3.6% in four years. And also, it is predicted by the OBR that there will be more than enough increase in private sector jobs to make up for these lost jobs (source: http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6899298/camerons-new-cuts-narrative.thtml)

So to conclude, the coalition is not cutting public services by anything like what has been publicised by labour/the unions. And the conclusion that the cuts are more for "ideological" reasons rather than for financial ones is just plain bullshit. The cuts are only very slighty more than what labour proposed a year ago. If anybody is doing anything for purely "ideological" reasons it's the greedy public service unions, indirectly using taxpayer money to spread their bullshit propaganda, which has no factual basis whatsoever.

What happened to freedom of speech? #2

Superinjunctions.

There's been a lot of debate in the past few weeks about gagging orders which prevent the press saying that Ryan Giggs cheated on his wife with Imogen Thomas, Ewan McGreggor Hugh Bonneville (EDIT 28/4/11, heres a funny link from the telegraph: http://tinyurl.com/6hf7rq8) slept with the same prostitute who had a threesome with Wayne Rooney, and that Alan Shearer and Gaby Logan have been seeing each other. This is because of the Human Rights Act, which allows the right to privacy.

To be honest, there are many human rights to be fought for. Democracy, free speech, fair and open trials, freedom of religion, freedom of association etc. When I think of the right to privacy, It means that the government has no right to go through your personal records or your property without first obtaining a warrant. I don't think that constitutes the same right as stopping the Sun from telling the public what sort of sleasebag you are to protect your sponsorship deals.

This law is certainly for the rich. Most people can't afford to take superinjunctions. Also, you can't stop people gossiping. Imagine if everybody took an superinjunction every time there was an embarrassing photo on Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg would be in the dole queue by now. Privacy laws are useful in instances such as rape cases, or military secrets. Where the line between privacy and free speech should not be determined by unelected judges, but by the scrutiny of the public. The MPs expenses scandal is a case in point. That was technically an invasion of privacy, but was totally justified because it exposed the MPs to be lying bastards. To be honest, these celebrities have probably shot themselves in the foot, as you can just find out about them on twitter anyway, and the story has got infinitely  more press attention as it would otherwise get.,

Bullshit about AV/FPTP

There as been a lot of bullshit being scattered about by both sides about the AV referendum. And I am now going to debunk all of them.

From the NO side:

AV is costly

First of all, its not going to cost £250 million pounds to switch to AV. And all elections cost money. If we want to save money, lets just not have any more elections and make David Cameron PM for life.

AV is complex and unfair

Ranking people from 1-5 is not complex. And if it is unfair is entirely a matter of opinion as I will explain:

Imagine there are three parties, A (right wing), B and C (both left wing). (You could argue that right/left wing is very simplistic, but for the sake of the argument I'll use these terms.)

Say 40% vote A, 31% vote B and 29% vote C.

Under FPTP, party A would win, but under AV, if we assume all the 2nd choice votes for C went to B, then party B would win. You could say that FPTP is fairer, as the party with the most 1st pref votes wins, however, most people voted for a left-wing, not right-wing party. Hence you could argue that AV is fairer. 

AV is a politician's fix

Australia had more hung parliaments under FPTP than AV. Also, I don't think hung parliaments are a bad thing. Negotiations between parties for a middle ground seems fair to me, if in the result that no party gets an absolute majority. And anyway, we got a hung parliament now under FPTP.

AV means some people get two votes

Wrong. Everybody fills in one form. Just that if your first preference gets knocked out, your second preference counts. I think this example explains it best.

 "If you go to the chip shop, and order cod and chips but they are out of cod, and you choose pie and chips instead, you have still only had one meal."

AV forces you to give a second preference

Wrong. You can vote for one or all of the candidates. You can always just put a "1" like you did before.

And now from the YES camp.

MPs working harder to earn - and keep - our support

Tackling the ‘jobs for life' culture

I suppose in "swing seats" the difference in voting system will make a difference. But in about 200 of the 650 odd seats the winner got over 50% of the vote anyway. At the end of the day inner cities will probably still vote Labour, and rural affluent areas will still vote Tory

AV is proportional

From the Electroral reform society (who fund the YEStoAV campaign)

AV is thus not a proportional system, and can in fact be more disproportional than FPTP... It does very little to improve the voice of traditionally under-represented groups in parliament, strengthening the dominance of the 'central' viewpoint.

AV will give roughly the same amount of seats to Labour/Tories as FPTP does. The smaller parties will still be screwed as it keeps the "Constituency link", so parties like BNP, UKIP and the Green party will still have fuck-all seats in parliament. I don't even see the Lib Dems getting significantly more seats, as their support is more uniform geographically and in socio-economic status, whilst Tories are for the rich in the country, and Labour are for the poor in the cities. It is the constituency model (Which AV keeps) which means even when Lib Dems gets 23% of the vote they get <10% of the seats, whilst Tories get 36% of the vote and 47% of the seats.

The party that will probably benefit most under AV is Labour, as they generally get more votes than the Lib Dems anyway, and Lib Dems are more likely to vote Labour than Tory. I don't really see how the Lib Dems benefit more under AV. 

At the end of the day I'll probably vote "yes", because I think it AV is fairer than the current system, (see my second point). To be honest, I understand why some people would vote FPTP, but its usually for all of the bullshit reasons which are explained above. The only real difference between them are explained in my second point, and it is for that reason people should vote Yes/No, rather than because they don't like Nick Clegg.

Alternative voting

I read in the news the other day that Tory peer baroness warsi is campaigning against AV, as she says it will "give oxygen to extremist parties", and her comments were soon picked up by the anti-AV Sun newspaper.This is because she says AV is one step towards PR, which was a system which the BNP won seats in the euro elections. First of all what does baroness warsi know about elections? If she actually won one in her life she might have an opinion worth listening to. Second of all, who the hell does she thunk she is? She is basically implying that the public are too stupid to not vote for the BNP etc, and thus cannot be trusted with a fairer voting system. First of all, the BNP are campaigning for a no vote, as AV doesn't promote extremist parties. And secondly, even if it did, if enough people vote for a party, they should have their voices heard, even if they are extremist. FPTP is flawed as it is biased toward Tory and labour, and thus these parties are less accountable to the people. I would much rather have a system which allows the extremist parties (however bonkers they are) to allow the "mainstream" parties to have a kick in the balls once in a while, than the Labour-Tory duopoly we have now.

21,000 addicts on incapacity benefit for 10 years

Theres an interesting article on the BBC today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13152349) about how 80,000 addicts are claiming incapacity benefit, whilst 22,000 of those have been on it for 10 years. With each person earning up to £4,700 per year, it adds up to quite a lot. However, what figure was more shocking to me was that out of the 2 million people on incapacity benefit (thats roughly 3% of the total population), over 900,000 haven't worked in ten years. For those 900,000 people the welfare bill adds up to over 4 BILLION pounds per year. (To put that into context, thats roughly £100 for every person over 16 in work in the UK) Now I'm not suggesting that all of these people are hypochondriacs or anything like that, but lets not forget that who is ultimately paying for all of these benefits, the taxpayer. Obviously many of these people will have serious illnesses, but I find it hard to believe that 1/60 people in the total UK population can't do any work at all. IB should be a "safety net", not a lifestyle. The incentive should be on what jobs you can do, not those which you can't. And if anybody dares to say thats the government crackdown is for "ideological" purposes, they should start giving a considerable proportion of their wages to charity, before they make everybody else pay for these benefits.

What happened to free speech?

There is a story in the Sun today about a former squaddie-turned-EDL member Andrew Ryan, who has been jailed for 70 days for burning a Koran which he stole from the local library. Comparisons have been made between this incident and the infamous "Poppy-burner", who got fined £60 for burning poppies on Armistice day, (although in the interest of fairness it does mention that Ryan does have previous convictions of "indecent and racially aggravated language".

My take on the situation is firstly, its a disgrace that the poppy-burner got fined £60. He shouldn't have been fined at all. Yes his opinions were offensive to many, but the whole point of freedom of speech/expression is that it protects UNPOPULAR opinions. You cannot fine somebody for simply having an opinion.  And before anybody says 'I believe in freedom of speech...... but you shouldn't offend anybody", there is not right not to be offended. If you're so thin skinned that one nutcase burns a symbolic poppy somewhere causes you to be offended, then you're the one who has a problem. There are many things to get worked up in the world, a poppy burner should be far down the list. Infact, those soldiers who dies in the war were supposedly doing so for our freedoms, like freedom of speech.

And so I go on to Mr. Ryan. First of all, I think this sentence has less to do with public morality, and probably more to do with the fact that if the extremists in Afghanistan get to hear about it, they could use it as propaganda for Taliban recruitment against our Forces in Afghanistan. And anyway, if were not allowed to criticize the Koran, which if taken literally encourages homophobia and sexism, then what can we criticize? Religion is (or at least should be) a personal choice, nobody is "born" into a religion, and thus that choice should be open to debate.

And lastly, censoring anybody (however much of a nutcase) is more likely to turn them into a martyr, instead of exposing them for the nutcases that they really are. A case in point is the BNP. The BNP were regularly censored for their views on immigration. However, many people, rightly or wrongly, were upset with the Labour governments policies on immigration, and were wrongly branded "racists" by self-important Islington liberals, and thus leading a semi-censorship of their opinions. Hence, BNP support increases, and they won seats in the EU parliament. This lead to them appearing on Question Time, which lead to Nick Griffin making a fool out of himself, and thus the BNP did really badly in the 2010 elections.

Therefore, censoring unpopular opinions is firstly immoral, and secondly is self-defeating. The best way to combat extremist views is by open debates, not by "No Platform" policies. And lastly, freedom of speech is a right that is all-or-nothing. Either you let everybody have the right, or there is no freedom of speech. If you truly care for freedom of speech, you should defend the rights of holocaust deniers, Islamic extremists, and for all those with opinions you find repulsive, otherwise you're basically saying "Only I have the right to an opinion because I'm right, and you're wrong", which is possibly the most bigoted opinion of all

Why the NHS sucks

It has been said that the NHS is one of the greatest British institutions, and was one of the greatest successes of the post-war labour government. However, there has been much opposition to the reforms which have been proposed by the coalition government, saying it would lead to privatization of the NHS (like it's a bad thing). Basically, I think social healthcare in general is a bad thing, and actually brings about WORSE healthcare for the working classes, rather than better healthcare.

Myth 1: It would make healthcare unaffordable for the poor.

There are many basic things that humans need to survive, which are arguably more important than healthcare. Food, clothing, electricity and housing for example. However, there are no calls for the government to nationalise Tesco's, or to take money out of everybody's salary to pay for Primark clothes. If you can't afford it, the government pays for it via welfare and benefits, not by nationalising the whole company. And as for housing, the amount of council houses there are are very limited (but thats for another day), and the government are more likely to pay the rent for you now than to put you in social housing.

Myth 2: Private healthcare put profits before people

This is a complete myth. According to WHO, France have the best healthcare system in the world, which is a combination of Private and public healthcare. Basically, if you cant afford it, the government will pay for it, but it doesn't mean that the government actually run the hospitals. Yes there should be some government intervention for the very poor, but privatisation means competition, and nobody is going to spend their hard earned cash on a healthcare system which doesn't care for people.

Fact: NHS deprives patients of choice, and is nothing more than a glorified cartel.

Only the very rich can afford private healthcare like BUPA, and if you're lucky then you're employer might offer "top-up" healthcare. For the rest of us, we have to take what we're given and, and the quality of care that we get largely depends on our postcodes. The fact that there is only one system allows drug companies to charge extortionate prices for drugs, allows for poor quality care without any reprocussions (think stafford hospital) and allows to the NHS to be stupidly expensive and overstaffed (it is the biggest employer in the UK). Many of the fears about a private healthcare system have been scaremongered by greedy GP's who are afraid that people might wake up to this gravy train. Just think what would happen if Tesco's was the only supermarket available? Would there be any motivation to have the cheapest prices and the best customer service if they knew their customers didn't have a choice?

To conclude, I'm not against the government paying for healthcare, especially to those who can't afford it. But the NHS is one big monopolistic dinosaur. For good quality healthcare, we need competition, and that includes some sort of privatisation. If it works for Gas, Electricity, food and clothing, then why not healthcare?