What would a good compromise on STV look like?

A few days ago, James Graham eloquently made the case against the bastard electoral system AV+. All of the pain, none of the gain.

My conclusion was very similar. Some compromises are good. AV+ is a bad compromise, pleasing no-one.

But if we're to make progress, we have to come up with something better. It's perfectly OK to support STV and say loud and clear that it's the best system for our needs. Next, though, we need a direction to go in when negotiations start.

James suggested a Citizens Convention to take the decision out of the hands of the political parties. That sounds like the best way to go, but if we were in a situation of the parties sitting down to hammer something out, what would we say? If our compromise position shouldn't be AV+, what should it be?

My suggestion is STV with smaller constituencies.

A good STV system has constituencies electing between three and six MPs. A compromise would be to have each constituency electing between one and three MPs (STV electing one MP is, of course, the Alternative Vote - AV - system).

Remote constituencies like Argyle and Bute would remain electing one MP. Rural constituencies would be merged into two-member seats and urban constituencies into three-member seats.

The Pro-PR people could live with it because...

• It's more proportional than either FPTP or AV+
• It gives more power to voters. In most constituencies, voters would be able to vote against a candidate but still support their party.
• Were there a public will, it would be trivial and painless to convert it to full-STV with larger constituencies at a later date.

The anti-PR people could live with it because...

• It's some way from being fully proportional.
  
• A party would need at least 25% of the votes in a constituency to win a seat, so we wouldn't be flooded with MPs from fringe parties.
• It maintains a strong constituency link

But not everyone would be happy because...

It would still make hung parliaments more likely. No way around that, I'm afraid. The people who see any result where one party doesn't have an absolute majority of MPs are never going to be satisfied.

And it doesn't give voters as much power as standard STV, nor does it deliver a wholly (or even nearly) proportional outcome.

Who are no2eu?

"No2EU Yes to Democracy is an electoral platform. It is a trade union-backed alliance of political parties and campaigning groups. We believe the time is right to offer the peoples of Britain an alternative view of Europe."

So says the very neat and highly professional website.

The "alternative view of Europe" isn't as alternative as you might think - like UKIP, the BNP and large chunks of the main parties, they want out. In the exceptionally unlikely event that they get a single MEP, he won't take his seat. (Men hold the top slots on all their lists, so it would be a he). Quite what they would do isn't very clear.

Unlike UKIP and the BNP, No2EU are far from right wing (students of history will recall that the far right and far left aren't always as far apart as they'd like to think, but these guys are no racist thugs).

No2EU is a mainly left-wing group. Their candidates are mostly trades unionists, along with a good sprinkling of people unashamed to call themselves socialists, one proud communist (yes, we could have a Communist MEP if enough Welsh voters mark their cross for No2EU).

So why would you want to vote for them? If you want to cast a clear, unequivocal "get us out of the EU now" vote and can't bring yourself to vote for UKIP or the BNP, they may be worth a shot in the european elections.

Weighing in to the Lib Dem Euro website punch-up

Cowley Street asks some Lib Dem bloggers to big up the party's European manifesto website (disclosure - I was asked, and I did indeed link to it in a posting a couple of days ago).

Jennie Rigg took a look and was less than impressed, likewise staceyuk.

Irfan Ahmed is a bit miffed he wasn't asked.

Site designer Rob Fenwick, in Jennie's comments, defends his work and suggests Jennie's own site isn't a perfect example of great web design either (Jennie's defence is that she designed it for herself, not for Rob).

Obviously, my opinion is what's needed here. That'll make everything better.

Let's start with the positives. Someone's obviously spent a good deal of time on any website (in these cases, Rob and Jennie). I've successfully used both and had no problem finding the information I was looking for on either.

The European manifesto website looks decent and modern. It's bright and inviting. It works correctly on Firefox (amazing how many high profile websites still don't work correctly on Firefox 3, which most stats suggest is the most widely used browser at the moment).

Moving onto Jennie's criticisms, some seem niggly and unfair to me (very much in the realm of personal opinion rather than objective problems).

The photo of Nick looks fine. I had no problems with the European map - it was perfectly obvious that I needed to click on a region, and if you clicked in the wrong place, the following page gave you a choice of all the regions so you'd easily put it right. Not having a favicon really isn't a big deal either.

Jennie complains that the first mention of "Europe" is half way down the front page. Except for the heading at the top that says "The Liberal Democrat Manifesto for Europe".

What else? Jennie thinks having two slogans is terrible, there's too much white space (even if some of it is green) and the site navigation is poor.

Jennie also complains that the design has come before the purpose, but it doesn't seem that way to me. It looks like the site has been deliberately designed to offer people some key headlines on the Euro campaign and then offer them a choice of where to go next: a slightly longer summary, further manifesto information or a page for your region.

If you're trying to get across a simple message, it often makes sense to lead people through rather than present them with lots of choices.

Seems fair enough.

This is a perfectly good website. As with any website, it's one where some people will decide they don't like it and almost any web designer will have done it differently (if you didn't have your own ideas, you wouldn't be in the design game).

But it does the job. It looks clean, it works. It leads people through the key points and then offers them a choice of where to go next.

The content, I'm sure, aims to match what people will be looking for. We're talking about Europe, but we're not going to be daft enough to think that's the top issue everyone's concerned about right now.

My conclusion? I'd have been amazed if a web designer had looked at this (or any) website and not seen areas where they'd have done it differently.

It seems to me that there's a difference between that and taking apart someone else's work merely to be critical.

Jennie wants to criticise the Lib Dems - how about laying into Clegg's willingness to embrace for the rubbish AV+ voting system.

A more detailed look at Clegg's 100 days

Young Nick Clegg has unleashed "100 days to save democracy". Sounds very exciting, doesn't it. But we've had some proposals from Cameron and suitable noises from Labour, so how do Clegg's ideas stack up?

Two general points to note before we dive into the detail.

First, unlike Cameron, Clegg doesn't talk about vague ideas and aspirations, things to consider in the fulness of time. He talks about legislation to be enacted with a week-by-week program before the end of summer. All well and good, although how much of that is bluster might be questioned. Lib Dem MPs certainly weren't consulted about giving up their summer holidays.

Second, and more interestingly, Clegg has pre-conceded a lot of ground.

Normal negotiation involves starting with the most you think you might possibly achieve and negotiating to a compromise. On both electoral reform and parts of party funding, Clegg has gone in with a compromise position - with the former, a position that explicitely differs from party policy.

Expenses reform
MPs and Lords should agree in advance to accept Sir Christopher Kelly's proposals, whatever they might be. Simple and effective.

Recall MPs
Clegg proposes that, when an MP has been independently judged to have committed an offence, a petition signed by 5% of that MP's constituents would trigger a by-election. This would be retrospective, in the sense that those Members who have misbehaved in the last few years, and are now being unmasked, would be subject to recall.

In principle it's a nice idea. There's probably some good ways to make it work, so this isn't to knock it down. But there are certainly issues.

First, what counts as misconduct? It's not simple. After all, half the problem with the current expenses rows is that most of the people judged by the public to have misbehaved appear to have technically been within the rules. If an MP was found to have fallen foul of the rules, would he or she be able to appeal? How long would that take, with lawyers involved? Months? Years? How much would it cost?

Second, if Nick's proposal for the AV+ voting system goes through, many of the MPs in the Commons (and all the Senators in the shiny new Senate) will be elected from large regional constituencies. Would 5% of that much larger number of voters need to sign a petition? If so, it's a much bigger task and a huge job to hold a by-election across a region. If not, how will those parliamentarians be held to account?

Finally, are we happy for opposing political parties to actively work to trigger by-elections? I can't think of a way to avoid it, but there's something that doesn't feel quite right.

Replacing the House of Lords with an elected Senate
Clegg suggests following the Power Inquiry's proposals. Nick's document mentions Senators elected for 12 years, with a third elected at each General Election. Doubtless he'd also support the Power proposal that elecions not be by a list system that gives power to the parties. But does he also buy into a minimum age of 40 for Senators, to avoid career politicians?

And isn't twelve years rather a long time to elect someone for? A United States Senator's term of office is only half that.

Party funding
This is one of the two area the Lib Dems typically get accused of acted in naked self-interest. Having lots of money to spend is a big electoral advantage. Labour has lots. The Tories have even more. The Lib Dems rub by on a small fraction of the resources the other big parties can manage.

On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats are substantially richer than the minor parties like the BNP and Greens. I haven't noticed Lib Dem activists getting worked up about how unfair that is.

That's not to say there isn't a good case for limiting political spending and donations: the ability of wealthy people and companies to buy power and political favours is particularly pernicious to democracy. Both Labour and the Conservatives had had problems from donations (remember Bernie Ecclestone taking the shine off Blair's premiership) and big Labour donors appear to end up in the House of Lords more often than could possibly be explained by chance.

There's some truth, of course, in the Lib Dems seeing reform of political funding as a way to level the playing field between the three main parties without giving the minor parties any better chance.

But equally, the big two are happy to maintain a system where they get, and spend, huge amounts of money and their rich supporters win favours in return, and minor parties frequently benefit from one or two very wealthy benefactors (Sir James Goldsmith comes to mind).

Were Nick's plan to get off the ground, I've a hunch this issue would be the toughest to resolve. A good start would be for supporters of different parties to stop rather childishly accusing the others of taking a position for self-interest, accept that it's true for all the parties to a degree and see if a compromise can be reached.

Fixed four year terms
Of all the proposals, having fixed terms for parliamentary elections, just as we do for local government, the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and European elections, seems the easiest to me. The objections are impressively feeble when you consider that plenty of successful, stable parliamentary democracies around the world have had fixed terms for many decades.

Electoral reform: Alternative Vote Plus
Clegg's willingness to go into this offering to support AV+ (a fudge from the Jenkins Commission over a decade ago) is fascinating.

AV+ is a hybrid system. We would keep constituencies electing a single MP, though they would be a little larger than now. Additionally, there would be a small number of MPs elected from regional lists (like the lists we vote on in European elections).

Clegg's logic is that AV+ stands the best chance of getting support from a majority of MPs currently in the Commons, and this is all about what's possible to achieve in a hundred days rather than what's ideal.

My objection is that it simply doesn't fix any of the problems, so why bother? It doesn't reduce the number of safe seats. It doesn't move power from politicians to voters. It doesn't produce a proportional outcome.

Clegg also proposes slashing 150 MPs from the Commons - something I disagree with and I'll write about in more detail in the next few days.

I agree that STV won't be acheived in a hundred days. But AV+ is really little better than our current First Past the Post system and I'm not sure I could bring myself to campaign for it in a referendum. I'd just drop this one.

Reduce the power of the Executive in the House of Commons
Ever the dream of opposition parties and backbenchers, and the nightmare of governments, Clegg joins Cameron in putting forward a variety of proposals to empower MPs.

I've said in the past that too much independence isn't necessarily a good thing. Whipping means the electorate can vote for a party programme and be reasonably confident it's going through. Lots of independents mean that, instead of voting for what you want to happen, you get to vote for which nice person is going to make that decision for you: less democratic.

So there's a balance to be struck, and to be fair, both Cameron and Clegg clearly appreciate that.

There's something that Clegg doesn't seem to have considered though. A proportional voting system would mean more coalition governments. Not a problem, but the way parliament works would have to be changed: everything now is based on the assumption that one party runs things.

Since Clegg isn't proposing a proportional voting system, I guess it's not a problem that needs to be addressed in the 100 days, but it shouldn't be forgotten.

Conclusion
As a Lib Dem and a long-term supporter of reform, I like the 100 days concept: focussing on getting reform, on achieving what's possible, re-using past bills and agreements and seizing the moment.

But the plan is far from uncontroversial. I would have trouble arguing for AV+, even as an alternative to First Past the Post and there are issues in several of the other areas.

In particular, I can't see progress being made on party funding unless activists from different parties can all admit that yes, of course self-interest plays a part in our positions, but we need to find an accommodation anyway.

Grasp it quickly and firmly, or it'll get away

Stamping your foot petulantly and demanding voters make their decision on your agenda has never been a hugely successful election strategy, especially for a smaller party. That didn't stop the Lib Dems giving it a damn good shot in more than one election ("You will vote on PR, damn you. Don't ask us about coalitions.....please?").

More recently the party has taken the seemingly radical step of trying to stick to what people care about. Of Fair Votes you would not hear a peep. The talk was all crime, education, health, the economy. Quite right too.

The current Lib Dem european elections campaign has been all about the benefits Europe brings.

But just as we'd got that figured out, the voters, fickle as ever, decide they are quite interested in reform of the system after all - for a couple of weeks at least.

The whole party's been unsure of what to make of all this.

On the one hand, there's elation that the public may have finally stumbled on our guilty secret and the love that dare not speak its name can finally come out of the closet.

"My name's Costigan Quist and I think electoral and constitutional reform are quite interesting", I confess at the Reformers Anonymous meeting. Instead of the usual murmers of understanding and offers of help to keep me on the road to recovery, suddenly today the mood has changed.

"It's OK, brother Quist. You need be ashamed no longer. Shout it proudly from the rooftops: I want Fair Votes.".

But just as we're dancing a little jig, doubts start creeping in.

Are we going to become like the boring uncle who, on discovering little Johnny quite likes Doctor Who with that nice Tennant bloke insists on launching into a five hour lecture on whether Trouton or Pertwee best embodied the early Doctor, refusing to notice the growing look of pure panic in Johnny's eyes as he tries to work out how to get away without being too rude and so get grounded for a fortnight?

Yes, probably.

In a way, that's why I like Clegg's reforms.

Sure, they're all sensible and expose Cameron's feeble efforts for the political posturing they doubtless were; but Nick's realised that something happens quickly or not at all.

The electorate quite likes the idea of reform. The people of our great nation haven't suddenly been transformed into nerds debating the finer points of STV versus Condorcet (functionally pretty much equivalent, since you ask).

Before too long, they'll lose interest and then all the opponents of reform have to do is sit tight.

We need to grasp reform quickly. Cameron's vague ideas are no use. Text messages on the passage of bills? Consider fixed term parliaments at some undetermined time in the future? Please. My Grandfather's more radical than that, and he thinks the Great Reform Act of 1832 was a step too far.

So yes, let's cancel the Summer recess and get cracking.

Oh, and if you're an MP and you've already booked your summer holiday, don't worry - you can claim the cancellation fee on expenses.

Jo Swinson - a Guardian apology

Not exactly a complete apology for the Guardian's cock-up, but something.

The Guardian apology reads

"A further correction to our graphic surveying the expenses of certain MPs: In the category Cheapest claims, we stated without qualification that cosmetics were included in receipts submitted by Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire (23 May, page 6). Jo Swinson has denied claiming for these makeup items, telling the Telegraph, which originally reproduced one of her receipts, that the cosmetics appeared on a Boots receipt for other items she was claiming."

All true, but an apology for the Guardian making fun of Jo Swinson for having the temerity to buy make-up at all (the implication seemed to be "let's have a laugh at the silly girly MP for caring about her appearance") would be nice too.

Still, full credit to James Graham for getting the apology.

The Guardian mentions "A further correction...". Yes, their shameful treatment of Jo Swinson wasn't all the Grauniad is admitting getting wrong:

"A graphic surveying the expenses of certain MPs wrongly said that Yvette Cooper, chief secretary to the Treasury, and Ed Balls, secretary of state for children, schools and families, changed their second-home designation three times in two years - the implication being that this was done for financial gain (Flippers, 23 May, page 5). In fact, since his election in 2005, Ed Balls has always listed London as his second home. Yvette Cooper changed the designation of her second home to London (from Castleford) in 2005 after the rule obliging all ministers to list London as their first home was rescinded. In 2008, the parliamentary standards commissioner found that this decision was actually to their financial disadvantage, as it meant they paid a substantial sum in capital gains tax when they moved house in London in 2007."

Breastfeeding tots and toy boys have Mail hot and bothered

A woman in her forties has a fling with a man 11 years her junior several months after her husband walks out.

Sounds like a complete non-story, but not at Misogyny Central, also knows as the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

What I found especially fun about this story is the way the journalist ("Daily Mail Reporter") insists on comparing the boyfriend's age not to his partner, but to her estranged husband.

Every effort is made to portray the relationship as something odd and not quite right. The husband is angry, we're told. The boyfriend is the son of one of her friends. And he's 18 years younger than hubby. It's just sick, I tell you.

"The wife of TV doctor Hilary Jones yesterday admitted she is having a fling – with the son of one of his friends.

Sarah Jones, 48, said she has found love with Stephen Tristram, who at 37 is 18 years her husband's junior.

Jones, who appears on GMTV, is said to have gone 'ballistic' when he heard the news, even though he was the one who walked out on the couple's 19-year marriage seven months ago."

Breast is best
Then we have the shocking story about a poster promoting breastfeeding, which the Mail in the best traditions of British journalism has just lifted from the Manchester Evening News.

According to the Mail

"visitors and staff at the children's ward at Rochdale Infirmary - where it was put up as part of a campaign for National Breastfeeding Week - have called it 'disgusting'."

As far as I can see, one visitor and one staff member have objected. The visitor (a 39 year old grandmother, we're told) snapped the picture and presumably reported it to the local rag.

Sorry, but I'm struggling to see the problem. So desperate is the Mail to find anyone critical, they resort to quoting a comment on an Australian blog.

Did I just enter a parallel universe? Sure, we're all entitled to our opinions, but did when did a random person commenting on an Australian blog have any bearing on whether or not a poster in a Rochdale hospital is appropriate. Someone with an Internet connection agrees with me - that must be evidence I'm right.

Cretins.

More data losses highlight NHS IT mistakes

Two big data loss stories today.

140 NHS security breaches in just four months have seen thousands of patient records go missing.

Unencrypted files of hundreds of senior RAF officers, including details of extra-marital affairs, drug taking and use of prostitutes stolen from an RAF base, then lied about by the authorities.

The RAF one may be more worrying for national security (and entertaining for us prurient readers) but the NHS story is probably the bigger one.

Remember that the Government has spent the last few years trying to set up a "Spine": a big national database to contain all our health records, accessible by medical staff across the country.

The flimsy justification for this has always been that you or I can go into any hospital in the country and staff will easily get hold of our notes. Imagine if you were taken ill when on holiday and rushed to A&E. Quick access to your notes could save valuable hours and avoid mistakes.

The problem is, that sort of thing doesn't happen very often. In reality, nearly all visits are to local hospitals and our normal GP. The small number of cases where it does happen seems out of all proportion to the huge cost and complexity of maintaining a national database of medical records.

It might not have been so bad if the Government had been honest, but it wasn't. First, they claimed the system would be totally secure. IT people will know that there's no such thing; and anyone who's looked in detail at the plans will have realised that it was anything but.

To be on the safe side, the Government tried to ensure we had no choice about our records being put on the Spine. GP's were encouraged just to upload the details of all their parents. Then we were allowed to opt-out, but it was made as complicated as possible.

The more centralised we make our medical records, the more incidents like this will happen, simply because the number of people with access goes from tens to millions.

The Government has spent the last decade rushing towards big IT solutions, with little or no understanding of the issues involved, nor of the need to weigh up benefits against downsides.

We can see the result: failing IT projects, soaring costs and more of our private information being lost, stolen and misused.

Fast food makes kids stupid: anatomy of a media stitch-up

On 22nd May, the Times Educational Supplement (TES) published a story claiming that kids who ate a lot of junk food performed worse academically, even when other factors were taken into account.

"there was a direct correlation between how much junk food they ate and their scores in a series of literacy and numeracy tests.

Once other factors were taken into account, pupils who ate fast food between four and six times in a week scored 6.96 points below average in reading. Those who ate it daily dropped 16.07 points below average. And pupils who indulged three times a day dropped 19.34 points for reading.

A similar trend was noted in maths. Those eating fast food between four and six times a week scored 6.55 points below average. Daily junk-food led to a 14.82-point drop, and a three-a-day habit resulted in an 18.48-point drop."

The TES article helpfully provided the email address of the study's author, Kerri Tobin at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee.

So, needless to say, other journalists carefully checked the facts and made sure the story the story they were publishing was accurate. Stop laughing at the back!

The same story appeared in the Express the next day. Also on the 23rd it pops up on UPI.com ("100 years of journalistic excellence"), then in the Telegraph, Daily Mail, Times of India, and quite a few other places too.

Interested to find out more, I contacted Kerri Tobin. To her credit, Kerri got back to me pretty quickly (especially considering our conversation was over the weekend) and was more than happy to answer my questions.

Here's what Kerri told me:

• She had no idea the story was coming out and was never contacted by any journalists, even though they had her email address and could easily have done so.
• The paper has not been published, nor has it been peer-reviewed.
• The paper was presented in a roundtable discussion at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego in April this year.
• According to Kerri, a lady with a British accent asked for a copy of her paper at the AERA meeting. The lady did say who she worked for, but Kerri can't recall that information. The paper clearly stated "do not cite without author's permission."
• Kerri is not a doctor, she is a doctoral student. She has no idea where a journalist would get the idea that she has a doctorate from.
  
• As is common with studies of this sort, there were a number of limitations. Kerri says these are made clear in the paper, but have not been reported by the media. For example, the paper claims no causal link between junk food and academic attainment, merely noting an apparent correlation (headlines in particular imply causation). The real sample size is also significantly smaller than the 5,000 mentioned in the articles. Finally, Kerri did not question 5,000 children. She analysed data from another study (which you can find here). This is important as it limits what the paper can possibly show: data can be teased out from this other study (ECLS-K), but if something wasn't in that original dataset, it can't now be added.

So where does that leave us? As far as I can tell, someone took a copy of an unpublished paper that hadn't even been peer-reviewed from Kerri in April. A few weeks later, a journalist publishes a story based on that paper, without properly understanding it, without bothering to even email the paper's author and in violation of a clear request in the paper. The story gets lots of the details wrong and implies a conclusion which simply isn't in the research.

Other journalists around the world then copies the story, with the Chinese whispers leading ever further away from anything that might be considered to be reality, and again none bother to contact Kerri Tobin.

Meanwhile, the paper's author has done some interesting analysis of an existing dataset, hoping for publication and opening up lines for future research.

This story does not show journalists in an especially good light.

For a start, they were more than happy to publish a story they clearly didn't understand. But worse than that, they could have easily checked the details and didn't even bother. It wouldn't have required digging or dealing with shady sources. Merely a quick email to the study's author.

It's far from an isolated example. Ben Goldacre noted a few more just this week.

And the lesson? Never believe any science story in the popular press. I wish I could say otherwise, but the incompetence and mistakes are just too common, too everyday.

I wish Kerri Tobin every success with this paper and her future career - having your research grossly mispresented in media outlets across the world isn't the ideal start to an academic career. Colleagues and superiors may be less than impressed if they feel she's passing herself off as having obtained a doctorate, conducted an original study and then briefed the media before even having it peer reviewed. I can only hope things improve from here.

What everyone's been saying on electoral reform

Out we scurried from under the rocks and between the cracks, peeping our heads out from burrows, blinking in the Spring sunshine like small furry animals awakening from hibernation. Except our hibernation has lasted over a decade.

Not since the Jenkins Commission was so skillfully and completely ignored by Tony Blair in the early days of his premiership has electoral reform been prominent, and have its supporters dared to speak its name.

Most of the time, electoral reform is a huge turn-off for most of the people. Have no doubt that it will be again, before too long. There's only so long non-wonks can maintain an interest in the often bizarre and occasionally arcane ways different countries elect their policians to high office.

So we need to grasp the nettle and do all we can to bring change about now.

In that light, I was especially pleased to see the Observer comment section this morning.

Worryingly, the Observer editorial agrees with almost everything I've been saying over the last couple of weeks, from not calling a snap General Election to getting rid of safe seats and supporting the Single Transferable Vote (STV) as the best way to give voters more power whilst maintaining the constituency link.

Andrew Rawnsley take a similar line, argues against too many independents. He even questions the way MPs have become glorified Citizens Advice Bureaux (and, probably with some justification, suggests that one's down to the Lib Dems).

It would be lovely if I could say that they'd all been looking at my blog and thinking "My God, this Quist chappie's got it all right. We must regurgitate his every thought in our great organ."

The reality, I suspect, whilst not quite so ego-enhancing for me, is even better. Progressives from across the political spectrum are reaching very similar conclusions. It's a very good sign. An excellent way for reform to fall at the first hurdle is for reformers to collapse into internal bickering before they've even got near to winning over the sceptics.

If we're thinking along similar lines, and have a willingness to compromise, this is the best chance in over a decade of achieving real change in the way we're governed.

Here are some of my posts on the issue:

Back in November 2008 I suggested that asking MPs to be a Citizens Advice Bureau as well as a legislator might not be ideal, and perhaps the the functions should be split.

In September 2008, I noted that Lib Dem MPs are more highly rated by constituents and thought it might be because so few of them have safe seats.

In December I pointed out that PR might well be bad for the Lib Dem's electoral chances, but that we should have it anyway. However, I also noted that Westminster's rules and processes aren't geared up for coalition governments so there would have to be some reform to those if PR was to be successful.

A couple of weeks ago I noted a possible correlation between majority size and embroilment in the expenses scandal, only to be massively, and rightly, scooped by Mark Reckons' excellent analysis that went a long way to confirm the correlation (he'd actually done the work).

I've since made a few posts about electoral reform, laying out my own preference for STV but noting that there are arguments against, challenges to be overcome and compromises to be made.

This is my blog so I'm allowed to pimp my posts, but of course loads of other bloggers have been saying good things - not all of which I agree with.

To name just a few, a small elephant I know has a few things to say on General Elections, libertarian Jock Coats is having a bit of a downer with the whole democracy business, Alix Mortimer has been pushing the case for electoral reform over at Lib Dem Voice (which seems to be intent on maintaining a ratio of being eight times more popular than my blog), Bernard Salmon discussed the thoughts of the great ("If you were the only") Shirl ("in the world") and Mary Reid gave her excellent take on the issue.

Then there's Alan Thomas arguing for a quick election on Liberal Conspiracy and Charlotte Gore somehow finding time to argue against (inbetween being disappointed with Obama, disgusted with Labour and sounding a note of caution about that Mark Reckons research).

As Alix noted, even the Cleggster has been getting in on the act at PMQs. Even Labour Home have been getting in on the act, with this article from Matt Strong provoking a good deal of debate.

These aren't the only folks with good things to say, but unfortunately the battery on my laptop is running low and I probably ought to get up and do something more useful with my life day.

If you've written something on electoral reform around the current issues, go ahead and link to it in the comments. Even better if it's opposed to change - let's get those arguments out there and give them a good dusting off.

Poor victimised BNP claims exemption from rules

Have BNP activists got nothing better to do than post comments on Daily Mail stories and then vote them all up? (Yes I do appreciate the irony of a political blogger asking that question, but even so...).

The Daily Mail is running that story about how the people in the BNP Euro leaflet aren't British, don't support the BNP and certainly didn't say any of the things they're quoted as saying.

So, of course, the BNP fanboys have to pile in with all the usual stuff: they're sweet innocent people being victimised by all the main parties who do the same or worse. And some of those comments are just pure gold.

"All Parties use Actors in their literature."

I do remember some really old Lib Dem literature featuring John Cleese. Does that count?

"Oh dear, Caroline and Christian, I had intented voting for the BNP in the forthcoming Euro elections. Your fantastic expose has given me such a dilemma now. Can you suggest an alternative party to vote for please?"

Any party full of neo-Nazi criminals should suit you down to the ground, Dai.

"About time we had a change of government, even if it is right wing, at least they DO have the British people in their hearts and minds."

Or at least Nazi tattoos on their arms. Churchill would be fucking weeping.

"It's hardly news is it now, considering we're having a Constitional crisis/meltdown, due to fraudulent MP's and the current recession, with people losing their jobs and homes, not to mention our national debt which will reach GBP1.4 TRILLION - EQUIVALENT to almost 80% of the country's economy - after Darling's announcement that he plans to borrow ANOTHER GBP700 BILLION over the next five years, SO, even if true, this is hardly a news worthy item. "

That's right Donna. Political parties should be able to lie and cheat their way through any election campaign without anyone objecting to it, because the economy's a much bigger issue. Why didn't I think of that.

It's joyful to behold the self-delusion of the BNP fans. All parties misbehave from time to time (some more than others), but at least the main parties have the decency to be a bit ashamed when they're caught at it. The BNP seems think it's their God-given right to lie and deceive for the greater good.

So you want someone to sort out the mess this country's in? Can I suggest voting for a bunch of far-right thugs with criminal records and neo-nazi links who haven't got a fucking clue beyond spouting a few slogans abour jobs and immigrants might not actually achieve that?

No, of course I can't. I'm just part of the huge conspiracy that's keeping these criminal fuckwits misunderstood geniuses from taking their rightful place governing our nation.

Guardian criticises MP for buying make-up with her own money

Who knew we were in a country where a female MP would be made fun of for buying make-up with her own money.

Jennie Rigg wasn't best pleased with the Torygraph yesterday when it took Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson to task. Jo's crime was to have bought make-up and not claimed for it (it appeared on the same receipt as something else she did claim for).

Today the Guardian's jumped on this particularly odious bandwagon, under "Claims that Britain mocked", saying

"Jo Swinson: Cosmetics included in her receipts. Because she's worth it."

No, you crappy, useless sad excuses for journalists. This is not a claim Britain mocked, because it wasn't a claim. It was a woman buying make-up from her own money. Any of the female Guardian journalists do that?

In the same column, the Guardian also has a go at Norman Baker over his office, not bothering to mention the minor detail that Baker's rebuttal explains clearly how the taxpayer has actually gained from the situation. (Needless to say, that didn't stop certain bloggers calling him a hypocrite either, but who needs facts in the blogosphere).

My interest is more in the Lib Dem MPs, for better or worse, but I've no doubt there are politicians from other parties similarly on the end of this piss-poor excuse for journalism over what is, after all, probably the most important political issue in this country for decades.

And I would really hate it if decent MPs were wrongly smeared, or if nasty ones got off the hook by being lost in the crowd.

Guardian's bonkers ICM poll commentary
When is less more? When you're Guardian journo Allegra Stratton writing the commentary on the latest opinion poll.

The poll shows UKIP down 6%, but most of the article is on how well they're doing. Come again? Polls in the last couple of weeks have had UKIP at anything from 15% to the early 20s. If the ICM poll's trend is right, it's a disaster for them.

The real story of this poll is the main parties up 7% and the minor parties down (with only the Greens bucking the trend). And yet the online headline is "Voters turn away from mainstream parties". Oh yes, that well-known definition of turning away that sees 7% more people supporting you.

The poll might be garbage, but printing it and then spending an entire article trying to tell us it says something it very clearly doesn't isn't just bollocks. Come on Allegra, you can do better.

UPDATE: James Graham has complained to the BBC, Telegraph and Guardian on this issue and includes details on his blog of how you can complain too. I suggest you do.

UPDATE 2: More on this. Caron somehow managed to drag herself away from Formula One to take the Telegraph to task, I've already linked to Jennie's mini-rant, and here's James Graham's original piece and Stephen Tall's commentary on LDV.

Latest poll: UKIP, BNP crash and Greens soar

Euro polls are all over the place - perhaps unsurprising given recent events along with voters' long-standing willingness to use the Euros as a protest vote.

The latest Guardian/ICM poll follows the trend.

Conservatives: 30% (+3)
Labour 24% (+1)
Lib Dems 18% (+3)
UKIP 10% (-6)
Greens 9% (+3)
SNP/Plaid 4% (+2)
BNP 1% (-3)
Others* 3% (-3)

* No2EU, Libertas, Jury Team etc.

All the main parties up, UKIP and the BNP both crashing, Greens increase their vote by 50%, mini-parties squeezed off the map.

Not exactly following the script, is it?

Obviously I'm glad to see UKIP and BNP doing badly, but the polls are so volatile, I'm really not sure what use they are. Who knows what the polls will say in a few days time, never mind June 4th.

One thing to note though - real voting starts next week as the postal ballots hit doormats. Best guesses are that at least a quarter of all the votes cast will be done and dusted by the end of next week.

Electoral reform: we'll lose unless we have the right debate

Years ago the Lib Dems used to bang on endlessly about electoral reform, dampening the groins of many a Lib Dem activist and massively turning off just about anyone else, who thought at best it was totally irrelevent and at worst is was just the Lib Dems changing the system to benefit themselves.

Early signs are that we are entering a rare period where electoral reform can be seriously considered and both parties and public will be taking an interest.

You can read my recent posts on the subject here, here and here.

So there's an opportunity and we need to grasp it. How do we avoid having it slip through our fingers?

For a start, don't characterise it as FPTP vs. PR.

Most people have better things to think about that electoral systems, have only the vaguest idea of what they are.

Even worse, just saying "we want PR" or even "we want fair votes" opens us up to unfair attacks from opponents.

How often do you hear PR dismissed because of how politics works in Italy (sadly for the Italian system, moving away from PR didn't fix their problems, though having a billionaire crook who owns most of the media in charge seems to have made the system more stable).

Or attacks like "PR would break the constituency link"?

How do we avoid it?

Simply by dropping the jargon and talking about what we actually want to achieve.

You may disagree with me, but here's what I want our electoral system to do, in order of importance.

1. Slash the number of safe seats, allowing voters to kick out an MP without kickout out their party. Voters should have the power to say "I want a Labour MP, but I don't want that Labour MP".
2. Keep a link between MPs and constituencies. I'm OK with constituencies being 2-4 times larger than now - it should be balanced out by constituents having a choice of MPs to go to when they've a problem or an issue. Huge regional constituencies as we have for the Euros are just too big.
   
3. Make the number of seats a party gets more closely linked to the number of votes they get. Perfect proportionality is probably not desirable, but we should not have parties able to win a majority of the seats on 36% of the popular vote.

If I were going to the people, or going into negotiations behind the scenes, I certainly wouldn't be talking about proportional representation or fair votes and I wouldn't be laying down a particular system I was demanding (though I believe the Single Transferable Vote, or STV, system best achieves what I want to see, I'd be open to being persuaded otherwise).

I'd be going in saying "Give us a system that gets rid of safe seats, keep the constituency link and stops one party getting overall power on under 40% of the vote".

Calling for a General Election? Don't bother.

Until his hand is forced in May 2010, the decision on whether or not to call a General Election is in the hands of one person: Gordon Brown.

Sad as it may seem, Prime Ministers do not make that decision on whether the people should have a say over expenses, nor on whether their own government is sufficiently dynamic and cohesive. They don't call an election because the leader of the opposition has asked them to, nor because 60,000 people have signed an Internet petition calling for one (that's not even the membership of the Tory party.

No. Unless they have no choice, Prime Ministers call an election because they think it's their best chance of winning.

So can someone explain to me why anyone thinks for a moment that Gordon Brown, with a healthy parliamentary majority (many of whom will be very nervous about their futures and in no mood to throw themselves to the baying mob) would call an election any time soon.

Charlotte Gore and I both agree (a worryingly regular event in itself) that a quick General Election isn't a positive thing - that we need parliament to do more work on reforming itself first, not just replace this bunch of dodgy MPs with another bunch of dodgy MPs.

Darrell, who writes the rather good Moments of Clarity blog, disagrees. Commenting on Charlotte's post, Darrell writes

"This Parliament cannot limp on for another year in a situation where the government has simply ceased to be and to be able to govern.

All of this points to an Autumn poll being a kind-of compromise between Cameron’s ‘next week if possible’ position and those who think Parliament should limp on for as long as possible…."

Except that Parliament very clearly can limp on for another year. It limped on from 1995-97. It limped on in 1978-79. Darrell might prefer it not to, he might think it would be bad for the country (and he might be right). But it absolutely can limp on.

And the dates of General Elections are not a compromise. They are not up for negotiation between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

The General Election will be called when Brown thinks he can win it, or when he no longer has a choice. Not before, and certainly not when his opponents want it.

So don't worry about that. Put it out of your mind.

Instead, as Alix, Charlotte and even I have argued, and both MPs across parties and media commentators are starting to say, this is the time to grasp the nettle of reform: reform of the Commons, replacing the Lords with an elected second chamber and reform of the electoral system.

Buying more from Microsoft shows Govt. commitment to Open Source

That's the interesting claim from Labour minister Angela Eagle.

The Government has done a deal with Microsoft covering the whole public sector, avoiding the need for every individual body to negotiate their own little agreements.

Fair enough. The Government claims it "could save the taxpayer £75 million over five years".

Some might point out, rather churlishly, that for a public sector that spends around £16 billion on IT every single year, a saving of £15 million a year (less that 0.1%) is just a drop in the ocean.

Others might go even further and suggest that the saving is only compared to what would have been paid to Microsoft if the agreement wasn't there and isn't, for example, a saving over switching to Open Source Software which might be cheaper still in many cases.

But not me. I laid out some suggestions on how a lot more money could be saved in public sector IT back in January - feel free to read my wise words. Oh yes, I've got it all figured out.

Putting that to one side (I don't blame you, to be honest), let's look at what Labour minister Angela Eagle had to say about the deal.

"It also reinforces the Government's commitment to its Open Source Action Plan by setting up a facility to reuse and share licences across the public sector."

So a deal that helps lock the public sector into Microsoft products is, in Angela Eagle's, view, demonstrating the Labour Government's commitment to Open Source.

The anti-PR folks have got a point - but is it enough?

Over on LabourList, Matt Strong has a decent and positive piece on electoral reform and STV.

Of course, this brings out the folks rabidly opposed to reform, who think the current electoral system is far superior to a fair voting system.

The objections are worth a look, not least because they have some truth to them. There's no such thing as the perfect electoral system: they all have pros and cons. STV isn't perfect, nor is First Past the Post, list systems, Alternative Vote, AV+, Condorcet or whatever else you pull out of the bag.

The trick is not to find the perfect system, without flaws. It's to understand what you want to get out of the system and choose one that delivers.

STV, or Single Transferable Vote, you may recall, is where voters elect more than one MP in each constituency (typically 3,4 or 5). As a voter, you rate the candidates in order of preference. It's the Liberal Democrats' favoured electoral system, as an alternative to our current First Past the Post.

So, we have the comment from Guy M in response to the LabourList piece:

STV is a diabolical system which will ensure that the "middle" candidate more often than not will get elected. I'm sure the LibDems would be screaming for it to be enacted asap.

As for the rubbish about how it gives "power to the voters rather than politicians" it will likely do completely the opposite. If it led to elections with lots more minority governments instead of manifesto pledges being met we'd have more deals struck between partie in the old "smoke filled rooms".

This is just more of the same old nonsense. The issue at hand isn't about how you elect an MP, it's about what an MP does, how much he is paid for it and how transparent it all is.

Guy's first point, sadly for Lib Dems, is simply untrue. I guess the assumption Guy's making is that Tory and Labour voters will all vote Lib Dem in their lower preferences and that will tip the balance and get lots more Lib Dems elected. As we know, the reality is not quite so simple, especially when you have seven or eight parties standing, as is often the case these days.

Overall, the Lib Dems would probably win slightly more seats under STV, but not a huge number. The evidence for this is strong: not only in PR elections in the UK (e.g. the London mayoral election) and elections using proportional systems across Europe, where the centre party typically gets fewer votes than the Lib Dems do in the UK.

Guy's second point is more interesting. Under First Past the Post, it may be that only 35% of people who cast a vote did so for Labour, but at least we know what we're getting. Under a PR system, so the argument goes, voters have no idea what they're going to end up with until weeks after the election when the deals have been done.

The first thing I must do is to admit that it can happen that way. By creating a false majority, First Past the Post certainly simplifies matters. In national elections it produces a clear winner far more often than not.

But it's not quite as simple as Guy would like to think.

Under PR it's perfectly possible for parties to agree to work together before the election, so voters know that, for example, a vote for UKIP is also a vote for a UKIP/Tory coalition (if that's what they'd agreed).

Compare that to our current system. Did we vote for Gordon Brown as Prime Minister? And are we really voting for one party? You could argue that the deals between factions in the Labour Party are even more secretive and obscure than anything you'd see between parties in PR.

Did voters have the opportunity to express their preference for the Brownites vs. the Blairites? For Cameron's fluffy Tories vs. the old guard? For social liberals vs. the orange book brigade?

Finally, Guy tells us that "The issue at hand isn't about how you elect an MP, it's about what an MP does, how much he is paid for it and how transparent it all is."

Up to a point. Its not much good knowing my MPs a lazy crook if I can't get rid of him because he's holed up in a safe seat, or if lifelong Labour voters have to vote Conservative to kick out a character they don't like.

That's what it means to be accountable. It's not just about the people knowing what you're up to, it's about giving us the power to do something about it.

The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system gives voters more power by allowing us to elect one Labour MP and not another.

So Guy does have some good points. There are downsides to STV, although he's not right about all of them.

But there are even more downsides to our current system. General Elections are decided by a few thousand voters in marginal constituencies. Parties get majorities in parliament that don't reflect the will of the people. Worst of all, far too many MPs are holed up in safe seats.

We can improve our electoral system and empower voters, but any attempt to do so will be doomed to fail unless we can be grown-up about it, accept the good and bad points of our favoured solutions and reach compromises a majority can live with.

And there's the real issue. We're starting to talk about reforming our system as a real possibility; but unless people like Guy and myself can get together, talk, debate, understand each other's perspective and reach some sort of agreement, it simply isn't going to happen.

Some opponents of any reform will take the view that they can best achieve their aim by refusing to engage at all, refusing to countenance any sort of compromise. I can only hope that, with the public and political mood as it is, those people find themselves sidelined.

Sun calls for Tory MPs to be sacked

Or have I misunderstood?

Don't be conned into supporting a snap General Election

The call has gone out - we must have a General Election now, so the people can cast their verdict on each and every MP: the minority who have abused expenses and the majority who have not.

David Cameron, rightly for a member of the opposition, mentions it daily. Gordon Brown, sensibly for an embattled PM, resists.

Nick Clegg has tried to take a more subtle line - one he hasn't got across as clearly as he might have liked, but he's right.

We the people need a reformed parliament.

We need to get rid of the mostly spineless Lords, where the few who bother to turn up to the chamber vote more slavishly with the Government than MPs in the Commons.

We need an electoral system that gives real power to voters, to vote for the candidate or party they choose, getting rid of all those hundreds of safe seats.

We need a simple written constitution that's fit for the 21st century, that works effectively with both single-party and coalition governments.

And we need MPs pay and expenses to be fair, open and transparent.

A General Election will deliver none of that. It will give the illusion of change, the illusion of accountability.

Since many of the worst offenders in the latest scandal are in safe seats, a General Election will actually see many innocent MPs lose their seats whilst the guilty (especially Tories) sit pretty on their big majorities. That's not justice.

We need the main parties to commit to constitutional and electoral reform. The Lib Dems clearly won't get everything we want, and process will be incremental, but without that commitment, an election is shuffling the deck-chairs.

Lib Dems "detached from politics"

The Times wants Vince Cable to be the next Speaker of the House of Commons.

Clearly the news of St. Vince's canonisation has spread far beyond Lib Dem circles

"Dr Cable has managed, through the quiet authority that comes from his background as a professional economist and a courteous and reasonable manner in argument, to carve out a place for himself both as an economic prophet, which is slightly exaggerated, and as a man of great repute, which is not."

All well and good, except that the Times leader writer then lays down about the biggest insult to Vince it could hope to find.

"In these circumstances, it is crucial that partisan politics should be absent from the choice before the House. Liberal Democrats enjoy a detachment from the cut and thrust of parliamentary politics that they would not wish for."

What the fuck? The party might "enjoy" a lack of being in Government, or any real chance of it over the next few years. But how, except in a mentally-challenged journalist's wet dream, are the Lib Dems detached from the cut-and-thrust of parliamentary politics?

I can understand the party's opponents might wish it were so. When you're a lazy journalist, a two-party political narrative is so much simpler.

I wouldn't want to stress the Times' leader writer by asking him or her to think back more than a few months, so let's keep this contemporary.

How, exactly, were the Liberal Democrats detached when the party defeated Gordon on Gurkhas? Or when the Lib Dem campaign for expenses reform led, because the other parties resisted, to the current situation? Were the Lib Dems detached over the issue of whether Speaker Martin should go?

No, on all of these critical recent issues, the Lib Dems were not only very much involved, but leading the charge.

Here's a tip for The Times: whether you like it or not, and how ever much you wish it wasn't true, the Liberal Democrats are right at the heart of the current political battles. Yes, it is the third party and, yes, it stands little chance of forming the Government in the next few years, but the party is making a difference.

Suggestions that one of our leading political figures should stand down from partisan politics and take up the neutered and neutral role of Speaker are a joke and an insult, whatever nice things are said about Vince.

Why teen pregnancy is a good news story

I'm studiously avoiding blogging about the demise of Speaker Martin: having nothing to add, most bloggers seem to be restating the news or indulging in wild speculation.

Instead, let's talk about teenage pregnancy. Isn't that more fun?

Back in February, journalists across the world had no doubt that Alfie Patten had become a dad at the age of 13. Young Alfie had sex with his girlfriend when he was just 12. Politicians were concerned about youngsters having sex and about teenage pregnancy.

Writing in the Sun, journalist Jane Moore said

"What a damning indictment on Britain’s hugely expensive sex education programme in schools.

When boys as emotionally and physically child-like as Alfie start creating babies, it’s the thin end of a wedge that will break the existing cracks in society so wide open that there’ll be no hope of repair."

It now turns out that Alfie isn't the father after all, he's just another kid who lost his virginity young.

The Sun even managed a bizarre story about how much the couple could theoretically claim in benefits if they moved into their own home.

And all along the media coverage has entirely missed an important point: this is, in many ways, a good news story.

Might this story be, as Jane Moore suggests, something that's going to break society apart? No, of course not. Although we have one of the higher teen pregnancy rates in Europe, it's lower than in 1998. This story, which now appears to be one of two 14-year-olds having sex once and the girl getting pregnant, could have been reported in any year.

Did teenagers get pregant in past decades? In Ireland, many went into the Magdalene Laundries (30,000 girls over the 150 years of their existence). Young girls who fell pregnant were often hidden away, stigmatised. Their children were often whisked away, never to be seen again, or raised by their grandparents, believing their mother to be a sister.

So we do have a problem with teenage pregnancy today, and we can do better, but it's wrong to think it didn't happen in the past.

In fact, US figures show much higher teenage pregnancy rates in the 1950s and 1960s than today, even among 15-17 year olds. In Scotland, teenage births peaked in the late '60s and have fallen slightly since, and the story is similar in England.

Far from a collapsing society, we find teenage pregnancies have always been around and women now in their 50s and 60s were more likely to get in the family way as teenagers than today's girls are.

Even better is the way we deal with it today. Of course being a parent is tough, whatever age you are. But, when the mistake has been made, isn't it better that we help the young parents and children to live as a family, that we support them when needed, both with benefits and advice. That we can be honest about these things.

It isn't perfect. It isn't as good as it could be. But it's so much better than in the pre-liberal era. Better for the children. Better for the young parents. Better for all of us in society.

So, for all the hand-wringing and absurd collapse-of-society nonsense, this is a good news story. Fewer teenage pregnancies than forty years ago and better outcomes for those who do get pregnant and their children.

Our challenge isn't to stop a disaster, it's to build on modest success.

Jacqui gives ground to the honest strumpet

Every now and again, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith surprises everyone by doing something vaguely sensible.

You might remember a few months ago the Government proposed criminalising men who used the services of a prostitute when the sex worker was "controlled for gain". I wasn't impressed.

"Controlled for gain" would have covered some poor Eastern European girl smuggled into the country and forced at knifepoint to go on the game, but it would also have included someone who's made a free choice to work as a prostitute and, for safety and security, chooses to work for a pimp or madam.

Since ignorance would be no excuse, it would be almost impossible for a man to be confident he was staying within this law: how could he be sure the lady was really an independent operator? How keen would prostitutes be to advertise the fact that no-one was looking out for them?

That "controlled for gain" wording was not about protecting abused women, it was about making all prostitution illegal, with the lovely side-effect that any woman trying to stay within the law would find herself in more danger.

That's fine if your opinion of women is sufficiently low that you think the dear little things couldn't possibly sell their bodies through free choice - that those who believe they've freely chosen that path have been tricked by the evil patriarchy.

But I have this strange idea of equality - that women are just as intelligent as men, and just as capable of taking decisions for themselves. I've no doubt that being a prostitute isn't the greatest job around, that in an ideal world most prostitutes would prefer to be doing something else. That's true for a lot of jobs.

Sadly, we don't live in an ideal world. If a woman (or man) is willing and able to sell their body, either through offering sexual services or creating pornography, that's their choice.

So what has the Home Office come up with as a replacement? The new phrase is "subjected to force, deception or threats".

It's an improvement. It recognises the possibility that someone could be a sex worker through free choice, even if it isn't their ideal career. It doesn't force a prostitute to work alone, without protection, to avoid his or her clients breaking the new law.

But why do we need this legislation at all? What problem is it trying to solve?

If someone is a prostitute against their will and a client, who might reasonably know that, still sleeps with her, then surely that's rape. The criminals controlling the girls are clearly breaking the law today. And, when they've looked for all these trafficked prostitutes, the police have had a hard time actually finding any, suggesting that the problem might not be as serious as sometimes painted.

(For example, some studies have simply looked at where the girls came from and assumed that anyone from outside the UK has been trafficked).

I would suggest that a more effective approach might involve giving up the lost-since-lost war on drugs: the high street price and illegality of hard drugs drives many addicts into prostitution just to get their next fix.

It might also involve some degree of legalisation and regulation of prostitution - not by any means a panacea, but a sensible and positive move.

This is still a pretty poor law, following the now-traditional Labour approach of tackling the wrong problem and coming up with the wrong solution; but at least it's an improvement and I suppose we should be grateful for that.

UKIP gave us thieves & layabouts in 2004, so why vote for them now?

Perhaps last time there was an excuse for supporting UKIP. This time there isn't.

You want to cast a vote against corrupt politicians? If you vote UKIP, you've been conned.

In 2004 the British people elected 12 UKIP MEPs. Have they worked tirelessly for our interests? Have they buggery.

Let's see what happened to that happy band, standing firm against the European Gravy Train and fraud.

Tom Wise stole tens of thousands of pounds from taxpayers. He claimed nearly £40,000 was being paid to an assistant. In reality, it was going into his own bank account.

Ashley Mote was sent to prison after stealing nearly £65,000 from taxpayers by claiming false benefits.

And their leader thought UKIP was so great, he left to form another (short-lived) party - Veritas - and received unprecedented criticism that he was totally ignoring his constituents. He continued to claim his parliamentary salary whilst appearing on I'm a celebrity...

The remaining nine MEPs seem to have spent rather more time squabbling than doing anything remotely worthwhile - like a proper job.

And now these people seek to deceive the electorate, to paint themselves as the clean party, as our saviours. We should not be deceived.

I could bang the drum for the Lib Dems here. I'm an active member of the party, and I'll do it elsewhere, but my point here isn't about voting Lib Dem rather than UKIP.

The Conservatives are generally Euro-sceptic and appear to be cozying up to all sorts of extremist oddballs so vote for them if that's your thing. Libertas are generally pro-European but demand a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Jury Team may have an independent candidate to meet your taste. The Lib Dems are pro-Europe but rightly want an in/out referendum.

In 2004, 16% of us voted for UKIP and we got thieves, layabouts and squabblers. Let's not make the same mistake again.

Will Wolfram Alpha meet the politics challenge?

Wolfram Alpha is the new intelligent search engine, billed as a potential Google killer.

Not quite. The idea is that Wolfram Alpha will answer questions with factual answers.

So, I thought I'd take it for a little political test run. How does Wolfram Alpha stack up against Google and Wikipedia?

Test 1: Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam
Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

Google comes up with a string of relevant links: the Wikipedia page for the constituency, Nick Clegg's website, TheyWorkforYou.com and so on.

Wikipedia brings up Nick Clegg's page as the first option.

One-Nil to Google

Test 2: How many seats did Labour win in the 1992 General Election
Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

Google has a relevant Wikipedia page as the first result - it contains the answer to my question.

Two-Nil to Google

Test 3: Number of robberies London 2008
Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

Google has some links that pointed in the right direction. I didn't find the answer within a minute or so, but I would do with a little more digging.

Half a point to Google, so 2.5-Nil to Google.

Test 4: Population of Edinburgh
Wolfram|Alpha: 435791 (2004 figures)

Google: without having to click on any links, I get a figure of 471,650 (2008 figure, from Wikipedia) or 468,070 (from Wapedia).

I'll be generous and call that a draw, though Google gives me a more recent figure.

Final score
Google: 3.5
Wolfram|Alfa: 1

Wolfram Alpha is interesting technology, but I don't think it'll be surpassing Google anytime soon.

YouGov poll: 25% of LD support vanishes in 2 days

As reported on Political Betting, and in the Telegraph, second YouGov poll, hot on the heels of the last one shows little change for General Election intentions, but goes haywire for the Euros.

General election:
CON 39 (-2): LAB 22(+1): LD 19 (nc)

Euro elections:
CON 26%(-2): LAB 21(+2): LD 14(-5): UKIP 16(-3): BNP 7%(+4)

The General Election poll is fair enough: all changes are within the margins of error so, on its own, could mean nothing more than a different bunch of people were asked. The Tories might be slightly concerned to slip below 40%, but it's symbolic more than anything.

But someone explain to me how the Lib Dem GE voting intentions hold up completely but, in the space of two days, over a quarter of our supporters change their minds about voting for us in the Euros? Or how the BNP vote more than doubles in two days?

Something odd's going on here.

My guess is that we've seen both PPBs and election communications go out from the minor parties in the last few days. Not to everyone, but a lot of people have had that nice glossy leaflet from the BNP and one from UKIP and the Greens too.

That will have given a temporary boost, of the sort the main parties get in the wake of a successful party conference, only to see it fade after a week or two.

My prediction is that, as MPs start showing a clear desire to sort out the expenses mess, and as the main parties get their election material out through letterboxes, we'll see this reversing. I don't think anyone's going to do wonderfully (my best guess is still that everyone will end up polling similarly to 2004), but I'd expect to see the Lib Dems poll around 18%, and be ahead of UKIP, come June 7th when all is revealed.

The lesson is...never do Gordon a favour

Have some sympathy for Sir Victor Blank, Chairman of the Lloyds TSB Banking Group. He looks set for defenestration as the full implications of Lloyds TSB's disasterous decision to buy HBOS, with its mountain of toxic debt, has become clear.

For several years, Lloyds TSB had been the boring kid on the edge of the banking crowd. Whilst everyone else was getting stuck into dodgy investments for all they were worth (more than they were worth, in many cases), Lloyds TSB was being relatively sensible. Prior to the crash, its results were fair but unexciting year after year, its purchases of Cheltenham & Gloucester and Scottish Widows sensible and safe.

Then the call came from Gordon and friends.

"Please save us! This HBOS group is going belly up - we'll help you snap it up at a bargain price and Lloyds TSB will be a 500lb gorilla, a banking collosus."

It's right that he should go. Sir Victor is a grown-up; he was a key person making the decision to create this superbank and it was a very poor decision. Massive mergers are risky at the best of times, but Lloyds TSB has managed to attach a big ball and chain to its ankle.

As Vince Cable has said many times, both before and since that fateful day, a better approach would be to split risky investment banks from safe savings banks. If you want to take the risks, you can do so but you accept that you might lose. If you want to play it safe, you can do so without the taxpayer having to bail you out if the city boys screw up.

But have some sympathy. After years of light regulation with Gordon cosying up to his best friends in the City and totally failing to see what was happening, chickens came home to roost.

Lloyds TSB did what it was asked to do - it bailed out the Government (in the short term, anyway). Surely Sir Victor had a seat in the Lords in mind (something Labour's friends manage to get with amazing regularity, though donating money helps even more).

But no. He's out, and not a peep from Gordon in his defence.

Express says crime out of control in North Wales

The Express is running a story about police in North Wales being sent to catch litter-droppers instead of dealing with more serious crimes.

They may have a point, but one part of the Express article descends into farce.

The Express tells us that

"Compared with the same period last year, violent crime in North Wales has increased by 18 per cent, burglaries have risen by nearly 8 per cent and robberies have rocketed by an astonishing 115 per cent."

I'd imagine they got those figures by visiting this website page.

So let's have a look at those rocketing robberies. The good people of Wrexham, Llandudno and Bangor must fear stepping out of their homes.

In February, March and April last year (2008) there were a total of just 19 robberies. That's right. Across the whole of North Wales in three months, just 19 robberies were reported to the police.

For the same months of 2009, this figure "rocketed" to 41. As a comparison, Greater Manchester Police recorded 700 robberies in just February 2009.

To be fair, the population of Greater Manchester is about 3.5 times that of North Wales, but the number of robberies in February of this year was nearly 50 times higher.

So when the Express talks about robberies "rocketing" in North Wales, it is, to use the technical statistical term, spouting complete and utter bollocks.

North Wales is relatively crime free, compared to the rest of the UK (and crime across the whole country has been falling since 1995: though that's levelled off in the last few years, we're finally back down to the crime levels Thatcher inherited).

I don't know about any targets, but in terms of resourcing, it might well make sense for more police effort there to go into tackling the low level crime like littering which, as all good community politicians know, many people greatly dislike.

Taxman to use ID cards to snoop on us

The Daily Mail is reporting the distinctly unsurprising news that the Government has snuck through proposals to allow the taxman to snoop on us via the ID card database.

Whenever we use our ID card, say to open a bank account, get a mortgage or buy some high value item, the information will appear on a Government database.

Under new rules, laid before parliament just a few days ago, HM Revenue and Customs will be able to trawl through that database, looking for indicators that someone's fiddling their tax.

Sometimes, of course, they'll get it wrong: the database won't prove anything.

It does mean that anyone using an ID card will almost certainly be more likely to find themselves under suspicion from HMRC.

"Aha," you might say, "what's the problem. If you've broken the rules you deserve to be caught, if not, you've nothing to worry about."

I know people who have been investigated by HMRC. Investigations typically last for months, take up a lot of time and are hugely stressful. One colleague who ended up being refunded money because he'd mistakenly paid too much tax told me it wasn't something he'd ever want to go through again.

Nothing I've heard about ID cards convinces me that it would make my life significantly easier. I need to show ID for some official purpose like opening a bank account one a year at most, and it's never been a problem to find a passport, driving licence, birth certificate and utility bill.

It won't make my life easier and it won't make me any safer. If it appears that I'm more likely to be investigated by the taxman after I use my ID card, that seems like yet another excellent reason not to get one.

We need fair votes to restore faith in our system

Uber-blogger Alix Mortimer, writing on Lib Dem Voice yesterday, suggested that the expenses debacle was an excellent opportunity to make proportional representation (PR, or fair votes) sexy and vaguely relevant.

Alix is right. It's a point I've attempted to make, though less well, over the last couple of weeks.

Here's why we need a fair voting system for Westminster, and why Lib Dems shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking it's going to be a huge boost to the party.

In case you don't know, our Westminster MPs are currently elected under a voting system called First Past the Post. Several candidates stand in each constituency and the one who gets the most votes is elected.

The problem is that person could be elected with the support of a small minority of voters (if there are five candidates, the winner might only get a little over 20% of the votes).

Expand that across the country and you nearly always end up with a government which only a minority of people voted for.

No safe seats
The message voters have had the in past is it's all about parties. Proportional Representation isn't about anything much for voters, it's a game where each party wants the rules that benefit them the most. Unsurprisingly, most voters don't really give a stuff about that. They care about health, education, crime, the economy and the environment.

As the Lib Dems finally figured out, banging on about PR is a big turn-off for voters and looks like the party cares more about getting a few more bums on green benches than about what's good for the country.

If we are to campaign successfully for reform, we must remember who we are reforming for.

Most people know the problem of safe seats: there are many MPs on the Labour and Tory benches who are not going to lose their seats no matter how many moats they've cleaned or houses they've flipped because they represent an area piled high with supporters of their party. Not necessarily of them as MPs, but people (like me) who's desire to see their preferred party in power, and unwillingness to vote for one of the other parties, trumps all but the most heinous of crimes from their MP.

This is not a fact of life, it's a direct result of our First Past the Post electoral system.

If we are to clean up politics, we must have a system that allows people to kick out the MP and still support the party. A voter in a solid Tory area must be able to say "I'll vote Conservative, of course, but I don't want that Conservative" and, if enough people say it, get their way.

Single Transferable Vote
There are many different electoral systems, most of them with strange names and even stranger method for figuring out who's one. Condorcet? D'Hondt? Don't worry about the tedious detail, but do worry about whether they give power to the voters.

Our appalling list system (the one we use for Euro elections) doesn't. It piles up all the power with with the political parties. Each party comes up with a list. For the main parties, that means they can decide which of their candidates gets elected first. There's no way to say "I want to vote Liberal Democrat, but I don't want that chancer as my MEP". If she's at the top of the Lib Dem list, you're stuck.

Single Transferable Vote, or STV for those of us who deserve the label "sad", gets round that neatly. Instead of just electing one candidate in a constituency, you have three, four or five. As a voter, you simply give your preference in order so, instead of writing an X by the candidate you want to be elected, you write a "1" by your first choice, "2" by your second and so on until you get bored.

STV empowers the electorate. Parties can suggest a favoured candidate, but the voters can easily disagree. I can vote Lib Dem without voting for that Lib Dem candidate I really don't like.

The downsides to STV
No electoral system is perfect. They all have pros and cons and which one you choose depends on what you're trying to achieve. So what are the reasons we might not want to use STV for elections to Westminster?

One is constituency size. Under STV, each parliamentary constituency would need to be a good deal bigger than they are now (unless we want to have 1,500 MPs). That's fine in urban areas, but when you start looking at rural parts of our nation, and especially some of the Scottish constituencies, it's a bit scary.

The other is the way parliament works. Over two hundred years we've developed rules, conventions and laws to make everything run smoothly in Westminster. They're not perfect, but they do the job passably well.

The problem is that they're all based around the assumption of one party alone will be in government and the others will oppose. Outside wartime, coalitions haven't been hugely successful.

Nothing wrong with coalition government. Plenty of countries have them all the time and have governments at least as successful and effective as ours. But you have to be in a system that allows them to work.

So STV, or any other sort of PR, couldn't be a bolt-on to the current system. It would have to be part of a wider and ongoing reform of parliament to find ways of working effectively with coalitions.

Why STV isn't a panacea for the Lib Dems
The charge of our enemies, and the hope of our friends, is that proportional representation will benefit the Lib Dems. Now we have a number of PR elections, we can get some idea how true that is and the results are mixed.

What's happened is that the party now gets seats roughly in proportion to its votes (as you'd sort of expect in a PR system), but that vote often falls.

Since the electoral failures of 1983 and 1987, the party has become really rather good at getting the best from the First Past the Post system. With limited resources, the Lib Dems ruthlessly target where we can win. Looking across the country, you see islands of frenetic Lib Dem activity in a sea of quiet.

That's fine, but when PR comes along with its larger constituencies, we suddenly find that we've got enormous holes in our election machine - large areas where the party barely exists.

If we had the money or the media coverage of the big two, that wouldn't matter so much: who needs a Tory leaflet when they've got the Daily Mail or Telegraph hitting their doormat every day?

But we don't, and it does matter.

Anyone who thinks PR would sweep the Lib Dems into Government should think again. Has the party been in perpetual government in Scotland and Wales? Did we exploit the voting system to enhance Brian Paddick's vote in the London mayoral contest? Has our share of the vote shot up in anywhere where there have been PR elections? No.

Under PR we would probably have slightly more seats than we do now, with a similar or slightly lower share of the popular vote. We would expect to be a junior partner in some governments but by no means all.

The campaign for reform
Alix is right - now is the best opportunity we've had in a long time to get real reform in the way we're governed. A fair voting system is one important element of that reform: fair for the voters, getting rid of safe seats. No MP should be untouchable because of the colour of their rosette.

The Single Transferable Vote isn't perfect, but it's better than the alternatives. It takes power away from political parties and gives it to voters.

Also worth a look: Mark Reckons has a good analysis supporting a suggestion that's been made (and I mentioned yesterday) of a correlation between size of majority and abuse of te expenses system.

Eurofighter - the new Trident?

An unpopular government forcing through an arguably pointless but massively expensive defence project. Sounds familiar, but this isn't Trident - our opportunity to keep a not-really-independent nuclear deterrent.

This is Eurofighter - the European (and partly American) air-to-air fighter, probably the most advanced of its kind in the world.

Ashley Vance wrote about this in The Register yesterday and popped up briefly on Today. His point is that Eurofighter, conceived in 1985, is as much a cold war relic as Trident, perhaps even more so.

When are our armed forces likely to need state-of-the-art air-to-air combat ability? Hint: if it isn't in the next few years, it won't be state-of-the-art any more.

As we see brave men and women killed daily in Afghanistan, not to mention Iraq over the last few years, and as we take a greater role in international peacekeeping, is this really the best use for £20 billion.

As Ashley Vance notes, our net defence exports come in at a little over half a billion a year - hardly earth-shattering in the overall scheme of things. True, there are jobs involved - around 16,000 in the UK. Do the sums and £20 billion for 16,000 jobs works out as £1.25 million per job. A good deal for the taxpayer? Or perhaps money that could be more effectively spent elsewhere.

Opposition to Trident is an article of faith for many Lib Dems, perhaps this is another cold war defence project the party needs to be more vocal about.

Victory over secret inquests

Another pillar of Labour's war against liberty crumbles.

The BBC reports that Justice Secretary Jack Straw is backing down from introducing secret inquests.

Labour's original plan was that Government ministers should be given the power to make an inquest secret, perhaps if national security was at stake (of course, we'd never know whether it really was because that would be secret).

In the face of concerted opposition, they backed down and said High Court judges would be making the decision.

And now they've given up on the whole idea.

Have I got this Twitter thing right?

Have been playing with Twitter for a couple of months now, so have I got it right?

The etiquette of Twitter is reciprocal following: you follow me and I'll follow you. All twitterers seem to get sucked into the competition to build up the highest number of followers.

So I follow lots of people who I've no interest in, and they follow me in return. Neither of us has the slightest intention of reading each other's inane ramblings, but we've each picked up another follower and so can piss a little higher up the wall.

Occasionally you might find someone you really want to follow, but Twitter doesn't wave a magic wand and make us all interesting, it just distributes everything, good and bad, more effectively.

The other big benefit to Twitter seems to be allowing me to hear news several minutes earlier than I would otherwise have done.

To be fair, there are a small number of people on Twitter (probably around 10 or 20) who I'm genuinely interested in, either because I know them and like to see what they're up to (like Facebook but with even less privacy and security) or they post useful messages.

And I can't complain about Twitter bringing a few extra visitors to this blog.

But Twitter still feels like an application in search of a purpose, and when we all realise that the dick-waving over followers means about as much as me standing in the street and boasting that I shouted so 300 people could hear me, it might need to find one.

Sun's bad news for Labour and BNP

Interesting poll, rubbish headline - It's New Lowbour. Sorry, Sun, not up to your usual standards.

In the wake of the expenses scandal, the YouGov/Sun's latest opinion poll has the Tories on 41%, Labour down on 22% (surely this must be getting near the bottom of their absolute core vote) and the Lib Dems on 19%, up a little.

Compared to recent YouGov polls, that sees Labour falling even further (they've been knocking along at around 27% for the last month and in the low-to-mid 30s for a few months prior to that). However, Labour should take solace that their rating was 23% almost exactly a year ago and back up to 36% by last November. Crises and scandals pass and, with nearly a year left for Gordon to call an election, Labour MPs will be hoping the game isn't over.

At 41%, the Tories are hardly sky-high by opposition-in-midterm standards, but it's probably enough given Labour's position. The main opposition party rarely matches their mid-term heights when it comes to the ballot box, and a Tory vote in the high 30s might struggle to capture back too many Lib Dem MPs; though should be enough to topple Labour.

The Lib Dems will be happy enough to be on 19% - the party's highest YouGov rating for quite a few months and further evidence that Clegg's happy campers have escaped relatively unscathed on expenses.

Also good news for the Lib Dems is the way their poll rating is holding up when people are asked about their Euro voting intentions: the party stays on 19%, where it would usually expect to drop a few percent at least.

UKIP will be very happy this morning: if this poll is to be believed, the Tories will haemorrhage votes to Farage and Co, next month: a sure sign that being utterly useless as a political party is no barrier to European success. This poll has UKIP on 15% in the Euros, just a touch down on the actual votes they won last time round.

But the BNP will be gutted. Remarkably, their predicted Euro vote is lower than their general poll rating (3% against 4%) and well down on the 4.9% they got across the country in 2004.

Looking forward to the Euros, this poll suggests the final result this time will be very similar to five years ago.

In 2004, the Tories actually got 26.7% of the vote, Labour 22.6%, UKIP 16.1% and the Lib Dems 14.9%.

This poll suggests that the Tories and Lib Dems will do slightly better, at the expense of Labour and the BNP, but with margins of error and three weeks of campaigning still to go, that could shift a fair bit.

Somewhat predictably, Jury Team, Libertas and the rest all squeeze into the 1% "other" slice of the pie and won't be troubling the scorers come polling day (a bit of a shame since both Libertas and Jury Team are much saner and more sensible than UKIP or the BNP).

Fat police target five year olds

A story flying around today about an NHS trust bizarrely sending a letter to a mother saying her son was too fat: he was one pound over the "ideal" weight range.

Needless to say, it's silly and then some. Scaring parents and children about being outside the Government-approved ideal weight is pointless.

There is no childhood obesity epidemic. There is no type 2 diabetes epidemic. There's no tragedy waiting kids spending their days in front of the TV. We're starting to understand the weight of evidence that shows being moderately overweight can have health benefits and even being morbidly obese isn't terrible.

So why do anything?

Of course we should be measuring and weighing children, gathering data and running good clinical studies.

But this constant need to tell us off and scare us senseless about something that hardly registers as a serious risk in the cold light of day is weak, and the media are as much to blame as the Government.

Let's celebrate our children being healthier than any previous generation.

Retarded homophobes vs Adoption Nazis

It's smackdown time in the Daily Mail, and no prizes for guessing which side they're on.

The Mail's fury today is over a comment in The Pink Guide to Adoption - a book for gay and lesbian couples thinking of adopting.

According to the Mail, the book says:

'Children need good parents much more than retarded homophobes need an excuse to whinge, so don't let your worries about society's reaction hinder your desire and ability to give a child a loving caring home.'

I can't find the text of the book online so I can't see the context. The word "retarded" would seem to be a poor choice.

Unfortunately, the Mail mixes up different issues in a general mish-mash of unfocused rage against the modern world.

First, there's a serious question about which children should be put with which foster parents.

Should black children be placed with black foster parents? If there are no black foster parents available, should they be placed with white or asian foster parents, or kept in care?

Should foster parents who are overweight or smoke be excluded? How about foster parents who are elderly, or indulge in extreme sports, or are genetically more likely to die young?

The issue of which parents are suitable for which children is a complex one. I'd hope answers could be found by looking at the evidence of outcomes for children fostered over the last few decades rather than prejudice on either side.

Second, there's the issue of whether a straight foster parent can disapprove of homosexuality and still foster. Despite the complaint being about a book for gay and lesbian adopters, this different issue is the one the Mail spends most of the article on.

It wheels out a succession of Christian couples who disapprove of homosexuality (giving the false impression that all good Christians do) and who feel they're being blocked from fostering as a result.

I'm not convinced of the reality of those claims.

Simply disapproving of homosexuality should not disqualify someone from fostering, as long as they're willing to support a gay foster child fairly (with access to external help). We could come up with a long list of banned opinions under which virtually no-one at all would be able to foster, but imperfect parents are better than no parents at all.

Are there councils who really do rule out foster parents on that basis? Somerset, one of the councils complained about, say it asks foster parents to sign an "equality promise" but doesn't ask them to promote homosexuality.

Finally, there's the totally different issue of gay and lesbian couples adopting.

Since that's what the Pink Guide to Adoption book is all about, you might expect it to be the focus of the Mail's article, but they don't really have much to say about it at all.

The Mail manages one particularly nasty dig, saying that the first gay adopters in Yorkshire turned out to be kiddie fiddlers (but not providing a shred of evidence that gay couples are more likely than anyone else to abuse children) and having a moan about Scottish grandparents who weren't allowed to block a gay couple adopting their grandchildren.

The case against gay adopters is clearly the weakest part of their case, especially as the Mail is keen to stress the need for more adopters overall.

What this comes down to is perhaps a poor choice of words in an adoption guide for gay and lesbian couples.

The Mail uses that to have a general rant against homosexuals and the general decline of Britain all being the fault of those nasty lefty politically correct types.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, an opportunity to look seriously at the complex issues around adoption is wholly ignored.

UPDATE: Should we be complaining to the PCC? The author of a new blog "Don't Get Mad, Get Accuracy", thinks so.

Small majority = big payback, but why stop there?

Writing on the Telegraph website, Ben Brogan notes an apparent correlation between the size of an MP's majority and the amount they're offering to pay back. Phil Hope is offering to pay back over £40,000 to defend a majority of just 1517 (given that the seat is almost certainly a lost cause, he must be tempted to keep the money).

Brogan may be right, but he doesn't pursue it very far.

Of course it makes sense that MPs are more likely to do the right thing if their seats are at risk. So what should be done about it?

As I've long argued, to get better MPs, you need to give them an incentive to be better and that means fewer safe seats.

First Past the Post, with it's hundreds of safe Labour and Conservative seats simply isn't up to the job. The list system for European elections is almost as bad, allowing parties to leave their favored sons and daughters sitting pretty at the top.

We need a system that allows voters to say "I want a Labour MP, but I don't want that Labour MP".

The best option is the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. Voters in each constituency elect three or four MPs and do not have to choose the person the party tells them to. There are downsides. Some rural constituencies would be worryingly large and the way the parliament works would have to change radically to accomodate near-permanent coalition government. But it would be worth it.

There are other options worth considering.

Open primaries have all sorts of problems (and, as Jury Team have found, take a lot of effort to really make work) but are worth a look. That's when you invite all your supporters to choose the candidate, and hope the opposition don't all sign up to vote for the idiot.

They work in the US, but would people in the UK really be willing to put their party affiliation on the electoral roll, as happens Stateside?

As an aside, I've long thought that one reason Lib Dem MPs are rated more highly by their constituents than those of the other parties, is that most Lib Dems are in marginal seats and know perfectly well that they have to work damned hard if they want to stay in the Commons.

Expenses: let's not get too puritanical

Ah, the sweet smell of puritanism in the morning.

MPs expenses should be only what they need to do the job, and shouldn't be excessive. But we're in danger of moving from that to decrying any MP having any fun at all.

Let's take Andrew George's use of his London flat. No-one is suggested that Mr George shouldn't have had a London flat. Like other MPs living outside London, somewhere to stay in London is important and a flat can work out cheaper (and more convenient) than a hotel.

Having bought his flat, what's the problem with his daughter using it some of the time if it costs the taxpayer no more money?

I'm not sure of the exact details in this case, and there are other claims Andrew George has made that are certainly dubious. But if it's a one-bedroom flat and no additional money was claimed for making it suitable for his daughter, I don't see a problem.

Here's an example. From time to time, I've worked away from home for companies. Not unreasonably, I expectected the company to cover my accomodation, morning and evening meals and travel, which they all did.

It's normal these days for hotels to charge for a double room even for one person, or for a double or twin to be the cheapest option available. Budget hotels tend not to have single rooms at all.

So, on a couple of occasions, the lovely Mrs Quist joined me at the hotel.

Now, you could argue, as the Telegraph seeks to with Andrew George, that I should have only claimed half the room rate. But I'd argue that if Mrs Quist joining me costs the company no extra money - not one penny extra claimed on expenses - no harm's done.

The same common-sense approach should apply to MPs. If an MP has bought or rented a modest flat, within the spirit and the letter of the rules, why should I - or anyone else - care if their daughter makes use of it from time to time?

Of course, were the MP to then claim for hotel bills because he stayed in a hotel when his daughter stayed in the flat; or if the flat had two bedrooms and the taxpayer picked up the whole whack, that would be different.

I expect MPs to follow the same standards as the rest of us. I've no doubt some will cheat, just like millions of other people do, and I expect them to be punished when they're caught.

But I don't want our MPs to wear hair shirts and stab themselves with forks between courses.

UPDATE: I see Alix Mortimer has an update on the specifics of the Andrew George case.

Party politics and the myth of the golden independent

With all this brouhaha over MPs expenses, many are starting to sing the praises of independents. Freed from the constraints of party whips, of being told what to think and do, independent MPs and councillors are free to represent their constituents and not their parties. Or so the argument goes.

Clearly there are advantages to being under a party banner when it comes to getting elected. You have the party machine behind you, supporters who'll vote for any almost candidate with the right colour rosette (I'm one of those voters, of course, as are most political bloggers).

Where voters have the opportunity to vote for an independent, they typically choose not to. There are exceptions: some areas have a strong tradition of electing independents and occasionally (as with Martin Bell in Tatton) an independent candidate is on the right side of a big issue and that gets them in.

I've nothing against independent MPs and councillors, many of whom do an excellent job.

But I disagree strongly that independents are better than party MPs and councillors.

With an independent MP or councillor, you get someone who has no responsibilities beyond their constituents. They may choose to look at the wider picture on an issue, or they may not. They almost certainly haven't given their constituents an idea of how they'll vote across the whole range of issues from welfare to the economy, abortion to gay rights.

Nothing wrong with being a good representative for your ward or constituency, but especially at parliament, the job is more than that. MPs are there, after all, to pass the laws for the whole country and take decisions that can affect the whole world.

The party system makes that work effectively. It means voters can have a good idea how their MP is going to vote across all the issues, not just the one or two big ones in the campaign. It encourages MPs to look beyond their own constituencies and consider what's best for the country. It provides a support network of expertise and experience to help MPs do their job as best they can.

True, parties aren't all good. Sometimes MPs finding themselves acting for the good for the party rather than the country; and parties can develop negative traits as well as positive (such as on expenses where the mentality of "the MP next door is making £10k from this flipping business, so why shouldn't I" kicks in).

But overall, parties do more good than harm.

A parliament full of independents would be one further removed from the voters. With a party system, voters can mark their cross for the person they want to represent them, but also have the opportunity to vote for the bunch of policies they want the country to follow. With independents, voters are trusting some well-meaning person to do whatever they think is best.

And a parliament of independents would be less effective at running the country. A little less law-making would be a good thing, but the public would quickly tire of a system where a new coalition had to be painstakingly formed over every single issue.

Finally, where's the evidence that independents would be any more honest than party people when it comes to abusing expenses and the like?

The cry for more independents is misguided. Political parties have their faults, but are by far the better option.

If this is success, God help us if we fail

"The international cocaine market is "in retreat" after a year of successful operations around the world, the Serious Organised Crime Agency claims."

So says the BBC. Is the war on drugs finally being won?

Thanks, it's claimed to more successful operations across the world, the wholesale price of top quality cocaine has increased from £35,000 a kilo to £45,000 a kilo.

But luckily the price on the street hasn't increased - yay for consumer power.

"The data, collected by the Forensic Science Service, reveals how drug gangs are using increasing amounts of chemicals - so-called cutting agents - to dilute cocaine powder sold on the streets of Britain.

They include the cancer-causing drug phenacetin, cockroach insecticide and pet worming powder."

So let's get this straight. "Success" in tackling cocaine means the the suppliers still make as much money, because they just increase the price. Wholesalers make as much money because they just adulterate the cocaine more, with purity down below 10% in many cases. Users still pay as much but get a less pure, more dangerous product.

The war on drugs has been lost, we need a new approach.

I'm disgusted so many MPs believe nothing is wrong

I'm getting increasingly frustrated as a I try to get a grip on the MPs expenses debacle. So far I've been sticking up for MPs, as far as I reasonably can.

The reality is that most MPs are decent, hardworking people. I firmly believe that MPs are not some lower life form, nor are they (or should they be) better than the rest of us. Put 650 random people in the situation of MPs and I think you'd come out with something similar.

I don't know what proportion of MPs in each party have really been playing the system. I hope it's not too high, but it's difficult to tell ("MP is basically honest and decent" isn't an exciting story so we can't yet tally the numbers). I'm pretty certain today's MPs are no worse than previous generations and probably a good deal better.

If there is any justice, the Lib Dems deserve to come out of this reasonably well. The party isn't perfect, but I don't think Lib Dem MPs have been abusing the expenses system to the same extent as some of the other parties (including Sinn Fein, it would seem, who managed to claim second homes allowances even though they didn't attend the Commons). The Lib Dems have been actively trying to reform the system over the last few years and have always (as far as I know) voted for openness over secrecy.

So that's the positive side.

Against that, though, is the frankly shocking behaviour of a large number of MPs who seem not to understand that anyone's done anything wrong or that the public might have a legitimate interest in knowing about it. Who seem not to grasp that we might be just a bit pissed off if our expenses have to be wholly and exclusively for our work and we see MPs creating their own system and milking it for all its worth.

It's not the abuses themselves that are really annoying me. They're wrong, and I hope MPs lose their jobs over it, but I can understand how they came about.

No, it's the lack of any political will in the past, especially from the main two parties, to see that the system was wrong and to reform it. The shocking behaviour of the Speaker and a number of backbench MPs yesterday, acting as cheerleaders for the current system, was almost inexplicable.

I am one of thousands of political activists across the country and the political spectrum who give our time, and our money, because we believe in politics. We believe in the ability of the political system to improve people's lives, to make our country and world better.

All those braying MPs, all the apologists for Members of Parliament supplementing their incomes with expenses scams instead of honestly putting the case to be paid more, have let us down. They have failed us. They have sent out a message that they're all the same, they're all on the take.

Systems go wrong. This one has. As the Lib Dems have been saying for some time, it desperately needs to be fixed. Any MP who can't understand this is a broken system that must be repaired does not deserve to remain in the Commons.

Expenses: the "We didn't see it, so it didn't happen" fallacy

Amid all the revelations that some MPs (it isn't clear how many) have flagrantly abused the expenses system, is a bizarre feeling amongst commentators that this bunch of MPs have somehow let the side down more than the ones we had in the past.

One political commentator on the Today programme, for example, spoke of his belief in honourable members of parliament being damaged and Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer yesterday wrote of his slipping belief that most MPs were essentially decent and hard working.

Those MPs deserve to face the verdict of the electorate, but let's not kid ourselves that everything was rosy in the past.

To be fair to Labour, even though they fought to keep MPs expenses secret, the issue only arose at all because they passed the Freedom of Information Act a few years back.

Who is going to stand up and claim that, just because it was secret, MPs were all honest and honourable in the past. Bollocks were they. Many an ex-MP will be thinking thank God that High Court ruling didn't happen when I was in the House.

And when people moan about politicians in general, remember just how corrupt local government was in the '50s, '60s and well into the '70s in a way unthinkable today, with huge bribes and favours flying around.

Everything I've read suggests that the behaviour of MPs in the past would be, if anything, even more shocking to a modern audience than today's revelations. That doesn't excuse the current bunch, but it's important. The system needs to be changed and the bad apples rooted out; but many MPs in all parties have done little wrong.

More PFI chickens come home to roost for Gordon

The Observer reported yesterday that a second PFI project is being bailed out by the Government, this one for a waste treatment plant in Wakefield.

In case you missed it, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is a wheeze the Tories dreamed up in the '90s and embraced whole-heartedly by Gordon Brown back when he was at number 11.

The idea is simple. Let's say you want to build a new hospital or school. The Government might not want to fund it from cash lying about in the Treasury (there's never enough). It could borrow, but lots of borrowing looks bad on the books and Gordon was always one for prudence.

So, instead, they farmed out lots of contracts under PFI. Private companies raise the money to pay for them, safe with a guarantee from the taxpayer to repay at an agreed rate over somewhere around 30 years. With contracts protected by commercial confidence, fiddling the figures to make it look like it was a good deal for the taxpayer turned out to be relatively simple, as long as no-one looked too closely.

It's win-win. We get a shiny new hospital, school or whatever. The company or consortium gets a nice chunk of business. Since the whole deal's backed by the taxpayer, the banks lending the money can do so with confidence. And because it doesn't appear on the Government's balance sheet, Gordon maintains his shiny image. Who's going to worry about saddling our children with debts for the next thirty years?

So all a bit of a con. Buy now, pay until 2040 and isn't Gordon wonderful.

Unfortunately, the recession means some of these PFI companies are having trouble staying afloat, even with the cushy deals they've got from H.M.Treasury.

So, having saddled our children with three decades of debt to give us our shiny toys right now, we're having to bail them out anyway. Only a couple so far, but who'd bet against more to come.

Government's terminal decline shows Jury Team's mistake

As the BBC notes in a story today:

"Too many backbenchers see the best chance of saving their seats is to distance themselves from the government."

It's true. When your backbenchers believe rebellion and showing disloyalty is the best chance they have of avoiding the jobseeking experience after the next election, the best you can do is manage your decline gracefully (and there's little sign of Brown managing even that).

Jury Team take note: you guys think our country would be better governed if the Commons was filled with unwhipped independents, but this would be the normal state of affairs if that happened. No parliamentary discipline, every MP looking after number one.

It's fun to watch right now (unless you're a Labour supporter) but does anyone think this painfully dysfunctional state of affairs is a good way for our nation to be governed in the long term?

(Note: you might have never heard of Jury Team, but you'll have a chance to vote for them in the European elections. It's a vehicle to help Independents get elected, and has no real policies beyond some ideas on parliamentary reform. Some of those ideas are sensible, others like getting rid of parties are misguided and wouldn't work. I wrote a more detailed post on why Jury Team's opposition to whipping and parties was misguided last month).

Telegraph: obesity protects against swine flu

Never passing up the opportunity to keep the panic rolling, even as we're all angry about MPs expenses (scared and angry is good), the Telegraph brings us an update on Swine Flu. Over 2,200 confirmed cases in the US, apparently, and one person died in Canada.

Of course, in line with the standard practice established by the media over the last few weeks, the Telegraph wouldn't dream of mentioning that normal, seasonal flu kills over 30,000 people in the US every single year (that's an average of nearly 100 people a day, though obviously skewed towards winter months - it's not called seasonal for nothing). Still, puts their one death from swine flu in perspective.

But at the end of article, the Telegraph can't resist having a little dig at the fatties.

"Mexican officials said 24 percent of the dead were obese and many of the victims had diabetes and related cardiovascular conditions such as angina and high blood pressure. Diabetes is the nation's leading cause of death."

Leaving aside precise figures like "many of the victims", let's look at the obesity thing. Shocking that all those porkers are being struck down by a disease from porkers, you'll agree.

But, to paraphrase The Princess Bride, I do not think that statistic means what you think it means.

Because, by the standard measure, over 30% of Mexicans are obese. If 30% of the general population, but only 25% of swine flu victims, are obese that would suggest, if anything, that obesity must protect against swine flu.

In reality, given the tiny number of deaths from swine flu in Mexico, it probably tells us nothing at all.

But the one thing it can't possibly tell us is that obese people are more at risk.

So, even if unintentionally, thank you to the Telegraph for easing the worries of fat Mexicans just a little.

Four steps to fix the MPs expenses mess

1. Full disclosure and transparency of expenses now and in the future.

2. Expense rules to be set by an independent body, based on what the public would consider fair if they were doing the job.

3. Accept that MPs are no worse than the rest of us: if you took 650 random people and told them they can invent their own expenses regime, push it as far as it will go and no-one's ever going to find out, this is just what you'd get. Some good, some bad, some middling. Attack the bad ones, but don't lose sight that it's the system that needs to change.

4. Change our electoral system so there are as few safe seats as possible: something like the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system would do the job. Far too many MPs know there's no realistic possibility they'll lose their seats, whatever they do.

Expenses: MPs are only human, so what's the solution?

I've known many people who were happy, proud almost, to abuse expenses. I haven't (probably more fear of getting caught than some great moral goodness) but I've never had a problem claiming for things within the rules, even if it wasn't strictly necessary, nor can I say that I've never liberated company stationary from the office.

So I'm in two minds about the current MPs' expenses debacle. It's just so easy to say they're all terrible, snouts in the trough. But is it right? Or is there more to it than that and is attacking all MPs perhaps just a bit lazy?

You see, against this ultra-negative view of MPs, there's my personal experience that pretty much every MP I know at all well is decent and hard working, putting in much longer hours than I do, genuinely committed to their job, getting paid a middling salary and knowing they could find themselves kicked out in as little as three weeks time, not because of anything they've done wrong but just because the electorate has taken against their party, or politicians as a whole.

As you'd expect, the MPs I know well are all Lib Dems, but I'm pretty sure that description applies to the majority of the rest, too. Just like the rest of us, there are some complete bastards, some crooks, some people above reproach and lots muddling along in the middle.

This is not about excusing bad behaviour. If my employer caught me fiddling expenses, even a few pounds, I would expect to be disciplined and could even lose my job. MPs should have realised that there was more to their expenses than just staying within the letter of the rules; that the people are their employers.

I am opposing the idea that either MPs are worse than the population at large, or that they should be better than the rest of us.

What's OK for MPs to claim?
Like many people, I've had jobs where I've had to work away from home for extended periods. I'd prefer not to, but it was part of the job that I'd signed up to so I had no complaints (well, actually I had lots of complaints, but we'll leave bitching around the coffee machine to one side).

If I'm working away from home, I expect not to lose out financially and not to be forced to economise excessively. So I expect reasonable travel, food, acommodation and phone calls home to be covered. I don't expect to be told the company will pay for my dinner, but only if it's from the local chippy.

I might not get the presidential suite in the five star hotel, but equally I don't expect to be forced into the £10 a night B&B down behind the railway lines with interesting white stains on the duvet.

In the case of MPs, I have no problem at all with the idea that they should follow similar rules: they shouldn't be out of pocket and, whilst they shouldn't take the piss, we shouldn't expect them to live like monks either.

Where it makes sense for an MP to have a London flat, I've no problem with them paying to furnish it reasonably. £2,000 on the latest full-immersion cinema system is taking the piss, £200 on a new TV isn't. Is there really anything wrong at all with John Prescott having a properly working toilet in his London home? Or do we think that, if something breaks more than once, it has to stay broken and he should just live with it? Of course not.

That's worth keeping in mind. Some of the small items the media are kicking off about are reasonable. Why shouldn't expenses cover pot plants for a second home?

But playing the system seems morally wrong to me. Someone who maintains a London home even though they live ten miles away and can easily get back to their constituency at night. Someone who switches which home counts as their second to maximise the amount they can claim. Someone who rents out their second home, or sells it for a big profit.

Regardless of the letter of the rules, MPs should be able to live reasonably and not be out of pocket for doing their job, but they shouldn't be gaming the system to get the taxpayer funding their private lives.

How did we get here?
MPs are not worse that the general population. Really, they're not. There are millions of people out there who'll fiddle a bit extra out of expenses without thinking twice (I can't remember how many times taxi drivers have offered to leave the receipt blank so I could fill in whatever I wanted to claim for the journey, and the drunken admissions of the average salesman would make most MPs look like an angels).

Like the rest of us, MPs deserve to get into trouble if they're caught breaking the rules, but we shouldn't expect them to be paragons of virtue.

Why not? For a start, we didn't vote for paragons. We have a democracy in this country. If we want people of higher moral fibre than the general population, we need to vote on that basis. We simply don't. We might shy away from putting our cross against a complete crook, but the way us voters go about deciding who to support does not involve comparing which candidate is more morally pure and voting accordingly.

So to expect our MPs to suddenly be better than us is like employing a secretary because she's got big tits and then complaining bitterly that she's crap at the job. Sorry - if you wanted a good secretary, you should have dragged your eyes away from her ample cleavage.

Next we come onto human nature and norms of behaviour. When we, any of us, are in a job, we don't judge what's normal and acceptable by looking across the whole of the UK and seeing what everyone else is doing. We make that judgement by looking at our colleagues and listening to our managers.

If everyone else pinches office stationary and the managers turn a blind eye, you're far more likely to do it yourself. If you're out for a meal with your colleagues, on expenses, and they splash out on the most expensive bottle of wine, are you going to refuse a glass?

Some will, just as some MPs will. But when your parliamentary and party colleagues are all playing the game of switching second homes to maximise your expense claims, and when the authorities are saying it's OK and no-one's complaining, following the crowd might not be virtuous, but it doesn't make you a terrible person either.

Where do we go from here?
The electorate will make their judgement when it's all died down, but we need to move forwards.

Our politicians will continue being normal human beings. They won't suddenly become saints. The electorate could choose to elect the most saintly candidates next time round, but to be honest, we won't and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be up to the job if we did.

Our MPs will continue to claim what they can within the rules, to varying degrees, like the rest of us do.

If we can't change the nature of our MPs, we need the rules to be acceptable, transparent and properly enforced.

That shouldn't be a problem, but because many in the Commons have come to see expenses as a legitimate top-up to their salaries, it is.

The safe seats problem
I can't help thinking that, if our electoral system had fewer safe seats, this would all have been sorted a while back. There are severel hundred MPs who can be pretty certain of staying in the Commons come what may, and who are willing to ride this one out rather than see their income drop.

It's the failure of our electoral system to allow voters to kick out so many MPs that's as big a problem, if not bigger, that the proportional representation bit.

7 Reasons I joined the Lib Dems

Bah, have been tagged by the fine, upstanding Stephen Tall to give the seven reasons why I joined the Lib Dems.

Can I really stretch "I was drunk, I thought I was signing up to a subscription for Hustler, boy was I in for a disappointment." out that much?

I can't remember why I joined the Lib Dems and doubt any of the reasons were very good (I was young and foolish), so I'll tweak the meme and give seven reasons why I became an activist where I am now. It's slightly more recent and much worthier.

1. I like the people, especially the adorable DELGA folks and the lovely blogging crowd (the trouble really starts where they overlap, but I'll save those stories up to tell the grandchildren some day).

2. It keeps me honest. Like most people I get those occasional rushes of blood to the head known as "Daily Mail moments". Out there in the asylum that is society, it starts feeling normal. In the Lib Dems there's no shortage of people to point out, in the nicest possible way of course, that I'm being a complete arse.

3. What better way to feel good about keeping fit than delivering a few hundred Focus leaflets.

4. Conferences and social events are, contrary to the expectations of many, actually lots of fun.

5. I like the ability to make a positive difference, if only in a small, local way, to the lives of people in my area.

6. Nothing says "good time" to me more than addressing 500 blue letters of an evening, then spending the next day in agony, nursing blistered fingers and RSI.

7. Oh, there's probably something about me being a liberal, believing that people controlling their own lives is a good thing, that the State should keep it's nose out of our private lives, should be our servant rather than our master, political decisions should where possible be made closer to the people affected by them rather than in some Whitehall office. Mill's cool, Bentham's fun ra ra ra.

I shall tag that fine blogger and Eurovision fanatic John, over at Liberal Revolution.

Latest Lib Dem PPB, see it here now, read the review

I'm not a fan of party political broadcasts. They're pretty much uniformly dull. The Liberal Democrat ones are dull on a low budget, Labour and the Tories throw much more money at theirs but successfully hold onto the tedium.

So when I say that the latest Lib Dem PPB has exceeded my expectations, it's worth noting that I really wasn't expecting very much.

It doesn't try to be clever with whizzy graphics (unfortunately, when you've a low budget, it always seems to end up looking rather too much like a seven-year-old's been let loose in the video-editing suite and got just a little over-excited at all the cool buttons and dials).

It's Nick Clegg on one of his speaking to the people sessions, interspersed with dressing room shots (nothing rude).




It's clear and simple: a bit at the start about Lib Dem values, opposing the Iraq war, supporting civil liberties, a bit about tuition fees (apparently there was never the slightest question we were opposed to them) and then a chunk at the end on our tax plans: £700 off the tax bill of everyone on low and middle incomes, plus no-one earning under £10k pays any tax.

At a touch under four minutes it probably wouldn't have hurt to shave another thirty seconds off, but all in all not a bad effort at all.

The public meeting format keeps the budget low without the dire politician in front of a bland backdop or, even worse politician spouting words of wisdom across a desk and the message felt crisp - speaking to people's everyday concerns and worries.

I'd give it 7/10 - what do you think?

RoSPA nannies get it wrong

I can understand that RoSPA (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) feels the need to lobby for something to be done. Their name pretty much sums it up: preventing accidents.

I don't want to prevent all accidents. Having some accidents is an eminently sensible trade-off in a society where we don't want our children to be shut inside their houses and we don't want our every action to be constrained by a barrage of Heath-and-Safety laws.

But a report issued by the European Child Safety Alliance two days ago and promoted in the UK by RoSPA shows not an inkling of understanding that balance.

Children seated in cars
The report calls for all children to be in rear-facing seats in cars until the age of 4, and to sit in the back of cars until 13. Where, exactly, is the evidence that this will reduce accidents and injuries? Where is the consideration of balancing any claimed safety benefit against the loss of freedom?

To give just one example, I have often needed to transport four children in my car, so one sits in the front. Would they be better off if one of them had to be left behind?

Compulsory cycle helmets
The report blithely calls for making the wearing of cycle helmets compulsory. This is a well-rehearsed argument. The reality is that the evidence for cycle helmets is mixed at best. They do offer protection from certain types of accidents, but there's some evidence that they can make other types worse and make accidents more likely.

But, most of all, they stop people cycling. You know, that activity that's environmentally friendly, healthy and a cheap form of transport. Far fewer people do it when they're forced to wear cycle helmets.

Risk compensation
This nannying advice from RoSPA and its European counterparts doesn't just ignore minor details like personal freedom, it frequently ignores the evidence of risk compensation.

If you made wearing seat belts in the front of cars compulsory (as we did nearly 30 years ago, in 1983), you might expect to see a decent drop in road traffic accidents over the following year.

If you made it compulsory for bikers to wear helmets, you might expect motorbike injuries and deaths to fall in the following year.

If you make child seat-belt wearing compulsory in cars, you might expect fewer children to be injured and killed in the following year.

The reality is different. Despite a huge growth in traffic levels over the last 70 years, accident and injury rates have been falling, pretty consistently, year on year. There doesn't seem to be any correlation with improved car safety or with seatbelt laws and the like.

Seat belts
Wearing seat belts was made compulsory in January 1983. In the months after the introduction, there was a slightly greater fall in road deaths than previously, but closer examination shows that nearly all of that fall happened between 10pm and 4am and looks like a drop in drink-driving related to a campaign going on at the same time.

Deaths outside those night-time hours fell by 3% in 1983, about the same as the fall in other years before and after the law came in.

In other words, there's no evidence that compulsory seat belts have saved any lives at all, and yet the benefits of the seat belt law is an absolute article of faith for the health and safety people.

Child seat belts
In September 1989 it was made compulsory for children to wear seat belts in the back of cars. So child injuries and deaths fell, right? Wrong. In the year after the law, against the prevailing trend, 10% more children were killed in rear seats and 12% more were injured.

Motorcycle helmets
Who could disagree that bikers should be forced to wear helmets? Perhaps someone who looks at the evidence. In the year following wearing a helmet becoming compulsory in the UK (1974 - the law came into force in June 1973) the fatality rate for motorcyclists increased by 2% - for other motorists it reduced by 3%. Elsewhere in the world, the story is similar.

What's going on
What the likes of RoSPA resolutely fail to recognise is that we're intelligent beings able, albeit imperfectly, to judge risk and amend our behaviour to compensate. If, as a motorcyclist, I'm wearing a helmet and a tonne of padding, I'll drive faster and take more risks. If as a driver I feel both myself and my kids are safely belted up, I'll speed up a bit.

It's absolutely true, and undeniable, that in the event of a crash wearing a seat belt or a helmet protects you and lessens the injury (it's a little less clear-cut for cycle helmets). If you're someone who would do that anyway whatever the law says, you're better off doing it. This isn't about saying that the act of wearing a seat belt is dangerous.

But if I'm someone who wouldn't otherwise wear a seat belt, it turns out that, when I'm forced to wear one, I'll modify my behaviour. Taking all such people together, the evidence suggests that the increased number of accidents more than cancels out the added protection in an accident.

Why have accidents been falling?
So why has the number of road accidents been consistently falling over the decades?

It's open for debate, but the evidence of a consistent and gradual decline (rather than jumps when particular changes in the law or in vehicle safety standards come up) point to two reasons.

First, we're simply more used to motor traffic. Back in the 1930s a car was still a rare thing for many people to see. We didn't know how to act around it. These days we do - motor vehicles are an intrinsic part of our lives, almost from the day we're born.

Second, and less positively, we're separating motor traffic from the rest. On the plus side, major arteries like motorways for motor traffic only are probably good. On the down side, fewer children playing the streets and fewer people walking into their local centre for fear of traffic isn't great.

So we're back to where we started. Not only do the proposals from RoSPA and friends seem to rely on dubious evidence; the whole approach that says "minimise risk and damn the consequences for society and freedom" is a value judgement we should be taking as a society rather than allowing the health and safety industry to force on us.

How many murders has the DNA database solved?

...and why Factcheck got it wrong.

The DNA database contains profiles of over 800,000 people who were not convicted, but had a DNA sample kept anyway. The Government claim is that, had these 800,000 profiles not been kept, many criminals would have evaded justice.

Here's what the Home Office told FactCheck yesterday

"Between May 2001 and December 2005 approximately 200,000 DNA profiles held on the database which would previously have had to be removed before legislation was passed in 2001 because the person was acquitted or charges dropped, resulted in nearly 8,500 profiles from some 6,290 individuals being linked with crime scene profiles, involving nearly 14,000 offences.

"These included 114 murders, 55 attempted murders, 116 rapes, 68 sexual offences, 119 aggravated burglaries and 127 relating to the supply of controlled drugs."

FactCheck concludes that, although there's some haziness about the numbers, the claim is broadly true. FactCheck is, on this occasion, wrong.

You see, these figures aren't new. Gordon Brown mentioned them in a speech on 17th June 2008, again defending the policy of retaining innocent peoples' DNA. And after that speech, the nice people at Genewatch checked out the claim quite thoroughly.

Let's look at why Gordon was talking rubbish a year ago and Vernon Coaker was talking rubbish yesterday.

First, these figures are not from actual cases. No-one has gone through the DNA matches case by case and added up all the instances where the match was with a (previously) innocent person.

What they've done is looked at the total number of DNA matches against each type of case, made some assumptions, done a bit of maths and popped out a number that may or may not relate especially closely to the number of innocent people matched at a crime scene.

But let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Let's suppose that the 114 murders figure is accurate. So 114 DNA detections were made in murder cases against people on the DNA database but never convicted of any crime.

Unfortunately for Mr Brown, that number isn't nearly as impressive as it sounds - to the extent that using it is simply dishonest.

• A DNA match from a crime scene need not have been against a suspect. It could have been a match with the victim or an innocent passer-by. Multiple matches may have been made against one crime.
• Where the match was made against a suspect, it often won't lead to a conviction (just proving that someone's hair or blood was at the crime scene is not the same as proving they committed the crime. In the case of rape, where the issue is often consent, DNA evidence is the least of the prosecution's worries).
• Often the suspect is picked up by police anyway. In this case, the DNA database isn't relevant - the suspect's own DNA can be linked the crime scene sample without the database.
• It may well be that the DNA evidence simply isn't needed: the case is strong enough that the suspect is convicted with or without a database match.

I've not found one single real example being offered by the Home Office of where this sort of DNA match has been responsible for the conviction of a murderer who would otherwise have walked free.

DNA evidence is, anyway, less useful in murder and rape cases, both because the perpetrator is typically well known to the victim and, in sex crimes, the issue of consent I mentioned earlier.

It's most effective in burglary and vehicle crime, where it's much less likely to be obvious who dunnit.

So, we can be confident that the 114 murders figure is nonsense. The real number will be a small fraction of that and, if we were to really start looking at individual cases, might turn out to be zero or not far off.

Leaving aside the minor detail of civil liberties, we need to remember that the DNA database costs money. According to the official figures, reported on The Register, it helps to solve around a third of one percent (0.36%) of crimes, and this number has actually been falling as the database grows. It costs over £1.5 million every year to run the database.

FactCheck was far too generous. There is no way that the Home Office figures for the database are even nearly right. If they're lucky, they may only be out by a factor of ten.

Why would I want an ID card?

I've been racking my brains to think of any benefits an ID card could give me that would be worth spending £60 on.

If I was a terrorist, criminal or benefit cheat, I guess it would only be the decent thing to get one and give the authorities a fair chance at catching me. But I'm not (not that I'm admitting, anyway).

Like most people, I don't spend much of my time opening bank accounts. It's a once-every-few-years sort of event if I'm being honest. Might I cough up sixty quid, and go through the whole registration process, if it saves me half an hour digging around for my birth certificate, passport and a utility bill?

I suppose I might, but I'd really be keen on getting my money's worth so I'd be opening at least ten or twenty bank accounts to make the whole thing worthwhile.

Perhaps I might present it to make sure I can get served in pubs, but (perhaps sadly) that really hasn't been a huge challenge for me in the last few years.

Apparently, genuine ID cards make a distinctive twanging noise when you flick them (it's one of the two ways people are being advised to check them, the other being to phone up the Home Office and quote the number down the phone line to check it's on the database - I shit you not). So maybe an improptu musical instrument.

What else? Perhaps they'll gain some value on the black market after they're cracked so it might be possible to make a small profit selling my genuine ID card to criminals to hack and use for whatever dodgy ends they have in mind.

Sorry, that's it. Anyone else got any better ideas?

Labour's mentality now makes good government impossible

This is a Government absolutely, completely, convinced of its own virtue and rightness. They've discussed the issues (or Gordon's told everyone what to think) and that's enough to them.

The fortress mentality is obvious: everyone else is against them. They're all wrong and vindictive to boot.

If you're unpopular, you might want to listen a little. Labour is stranded around 28% in the polls - about the same vote as they got in the disasterous 1983 General Election, so you might think they'd be listening for all they're worth.

But no. Brown looks certain to go down in history as one of the few Prime Ministers never to have been voted for by either the public or his own party, (having been appointed unopposed, such was Labour's conviction that he was the best man for the job) and kicked out at the first opportunity.

The Government's psychological state makes a grim sort of sense. They know that they're fantastic people; talented politicians who have ruled over us successfully for 12 years. They've achieved so much (Gordon lists most of it whenever he's asked a question he doesn't like in PMQs).

But if Labour are so wonderful, why are they so unpopular and why is everyone attacking them? Why do their subjects not love them? They're under attack from all sides and the siege mentality has kicked in.

Instead of dropping ID cards, as even the Tories have long-pledged to do, given that it's an expensive white elephant with virtually no benefits for anyone, the Government push ahead and kindly offer them to the good people of Manchester (and force them on staff at Manchester Airport). All the experts explaining why ID cards won't work and could do more harm than good are clearly just opposition stooges.

Instead of bowing to the will of the people, the courts and finally the House of Commons itself, the Government is dragged kicking and screaming into doling out absolute minimum it can get away with offering the Gurkhas. After the vote, the Government spent a while suggesting that the Gurkhas' supporters were all idiots. Now Gordon has had a private meeting with Joanna Lumley and we'll just have to see how far his word can be trusted this time.

Instead of admitting that retaining DNA records of innocent people is wrong in most cases, the Government sticks to its myth that those records are solving huge numbers of crimes, ignores the experts in the field, and tries to get away with doing the very least it can. If you're wrongly arrested and then released, your DNA will stay on record for six years, or twelve if you were suspected of a more serious offence.

Instead of listening to teachers and scrapping the unloved and unwanted SATs, the Government sticks to its guns: SATs may be damaging children and harming their education, but the Government's need to measure everything, even if the measurements mean little in the real world, trumps the needs of our young people. Science SATs may finally be going, but the rest remain.

Instead of answering genuine questions in Prime Ministers Question Time, Gordon merely spouts whatever unconnected pre-learnt soundbite his team have prepared for him, and then proclaims himself "ashamed" that the Conservatives use PMQs to score political points rather than ask substantive policy questions.

And that's just in the last few days.

This is a Government which has lost sight of any idea that the needs of the country might take precedence over the infighting and jockeying for position within the Labour party.

Gordon desperately wants to be our Churchill, standing firm against the threat of international economic collapse. Instead, he finds himself cast as Richard Nixon, lost in political intrigue and plotting.

We should be worried.

Psychologically, the Government may now be virtually incapable of taking good decisions. They may have lost the ability to listen to anyone they don't perceive as being on their side or to distinguish between what's good for the country and what's good for the Labour party.

The sad thing for Labour is that the longer Gordon hangs on, the harder it will be for the party to recover after he's gone. It seems likely that he'll stay to the bitter end and hand the reins of power to the Tories just as we're getting over the worst of the recession and with Labour completely lost in squalid infighting.

Gordon won't go to the country early if can possibly avoid it - it's not in his nature - but for his party and his country he should do.

EU liberal comic book goodness

I recently had the good fortune to gain possession of two comic books from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE - the grouping of centrist European parties, including our very own Liberal Democrats).

They follow the exciting adventures of heroic liberal MEP Elisa Correr as she exposes illegal arms exports and sorts out the continent's energy problems, all the while evading the attentions of thugs along with corrupt politicians and businessmen.

The first story I have is Operation Red Dragon, the second is The Aida Protocol.

I was all set to rip them to shreds (blogging-wise). Dodgy-second rate comics, funded by the taxpayer, in a futile attempt to get down with da yoof and convince them European politics is cool, not gay.

But I find myself curiously sympathetic, perhaps because it's the sort of thing I'd have come up with myself had I tried.



The artwork is perfectly good - the artist is no Dave McKean but I've seen much worse in commercial comics (no, I couldn't match that. My artistic skills are best left unexplored).

The story and dialogue is pretty much what I'd have managed. The storyline is plodding and clunky. The character development is weak. And the dialogue is crisp like a wet flannel. Yep, just what I'd have come up with.

The comic books were originally in French, so they may have lost a little in translation, but dialog like "the revelation about your homosexuality is not the problem. In any case, a Liberal Democrat will never hold that against you." just makes me wince a little.

At the end of each story there's a few pages explaining how the life of an MEP isn't really quite that exciting, but the European parliament does lots of good and going into a bit of detail about how it all works.

And I can't help thinking that at least they're making the effort. It's not like someone else has come up with a better idea. Some might moan about taxpayers money being involved, but it really must be the tiniest drop in the ocean.

We all know the EU has a huge image problem, mostly through simple ignorance. Whether you are for or against the European Union, at least people have to know a bit about it - good and bad - to make a decision.

I might have a little chuckle at the exploits of Elisa Correr, but if it stimulates us to come up with something better to connect not just young people but all people and improve the knowledge the people of Europe have about one of the main bodies ruling their lives, it has to be a good thing.

iPhone lessons for politicians

No, not a post on how our politicians need to be more tech-savvy. Been there, done that.

This one is about the better solutions that might be out there, if only we'd take to the trouble to look for them; and the pitfalls in looking. Almost uniquely for me, I'm actually writing a follow-up article I said I would (but in my defence, only because Oranjepan, who's Reading List blog is worth a look, asked me about it).

The iPhone was a game changer in the smartphone market, not because it did anything very new, but because it made it an easier, more enjoyable experience to use the thing.

The point, though, is that we didn't know what we were missing until we found it. We vaguely realised the previous generation of smartphones were clunky and not too user-friendly, but it took the arrival of the iPhone to help us appreciate the solution.

What lessons can this teach us for politics? I could go on about how the truth is out there if only there's an Apple Corp. equivalent to discover the solution to all our problems. Possibly corrct, but not very helpful.

More useful is understanding the pitfalls we can fall into that stop us developing the best policy, some of the common traps we can fall into. And I'll illustrate them by looking at...

Learning from those foreigners
It's not that we never look abroad for inspiration. We do. We just don't do it very well. We tend to pick on our favoured country - USA, The Netherlands or Sweden, perhaps - and assume that whatever they're doing is really good.

So conservatives have often looked to the US with it's harsher criminal system, death penalty, workfare, zero-tolerence and three-strikes-and-you're-out type policies.

Social democrats seek inspiration in Scandinavia - a recent example being the Government plans to criminalise men attempting to procure the services of a lady of the night.

And liberals often look to the Netherlands with its more relaxed approach to prostitution and drugs along with superior public transport.

There are a few problems.

Poverty of vision. An ideal approach would look at policies in lots of different countries, evaluating them by outcome. We tend to take the short-cut of pre-judging which countries we like and only looking at those ones. (Similarly, within our own country, we'll take a lot more convicing about policies adopting by parties, or supported by pressure groups, we don't like).

Sometimes that's a useful shortcut, turning a mass of data into something manageable; but at the very least we should recognise that we're taking that shortcut and, as a result, will miss things from time to time.

Ignoring the negatives. If we like the country, and it's government's politics are similar to our own, we'll often be a lot less critical.

As an example: prostitution in the Netherlands. For a long time, liberal governments in the Netherlands took a relaxed approach to prostitution. It was legal, regulated, even has a prostitute's union (the Red Thread). Liberals, spurred on by the occasional fun visit to Amsterdam, accepted that this was the way to go.

I never heard of liberals examining the downside. Sure, there are big positives about the Dutch approach, and it may well be better that ours on balance, but I never heard a liberal pointing out that Holland still has a large illegal prostitution industry, closely linked to serious crime and involving trafficking of vulnerable women into the country.

Transplant failure. When a solution fits our preconceptions and we want it to work, we're far too quick to assume it can just be transplanted to the UK. There are some obvious issues: can a policy that works reasonably well in a small nation of a few million people really be transplanted to the UK with 60 million people? Maybe, maybe not.

Another example close to the heart of Lib Dems: proportional representation, or fair votes, for Westminster. PR can work for national parliaments. Around the world, and in Europe, many large, successful and stable nations use it perfectly well.

But, as supporters of PR, we often want the message to be positive. There clearly are issues and problems with it. I happen to think the benefits outweigh them, but we can wrap ourselves in knots to pretend they don't exist at all.

And even if we decide that PR is worth it for us (I hope we do), it's foolish to think we can just drop a new voting system onto a parliament that has spend two hundred years building up rules and ways of working around the assumption that one party will have an overall majority.

Different approaches can work just as well. Something I find fascinating is how totally different approaches can have remarkably similar outcomes.

Take healthcare. We encourage new mothers to breastfeed. In France, bottle-feeding is standard. We avoid over-prescribing antibiotics. In France, they're far more available. We encourage mothers to give birth in hospital; in the Netherlands home birth is the norm. Across the Western world there are all sorts of different approaches but overall outcomes are remarkably similar.

Or education. Around the world systems vary massively from the autocratic, regimented rote-learning still popular in much of the Far East to ultra-liberal schooling where the children do their own thing. At an individual level, a child may flourish in one system or another, but overall they all seem to do a pretty good job.

Because we approach issues through our filters, like ideology, we nearly always want to assume that one approach is better than the others. Traditional education is better or perhaps child-centred learning is better.

Perhaps we're less willing than we should be to admit that, whatever we'd like the facts to be, our varied approaches really don't make nearly as much difference as we'd like to think.

Report says we're drinking less, so why is the media saying the opposite?

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published its latest paper on the nation's drinking habits and, if you believe the headlines, its not good. You naughty girls are all out binge drinking. You're letting society down and, frankly, you're letting yourselves down.

The report is only out today, and you can find the 112 page pdf here.

So let's get past the headlines and ask some simple questions.

Are we drinking more now than a decade ago?
No. You can look at all the data and see that pretty much everyone, men and women, all age groups, are drinking about the same as we were in 1992 and in 1996.

The only significant change I can see is that drinking amongst young people rose from 1994 to 2000, but has been falling since and is now back to where it started. Indeed, Conservatives might like to bear in mind that by far the biggest increase in young people drinking was from 1994-1997, in the second half of the Major administration.

The figures are confused because of the new alcohol units measurement. Remember that the number of units in drinks was recently revised upwards (there was a big advertising campaign, with the new unit value in foam on the beer glass and things like that). Some of the so-called increase seems to be down to this revision - the rises disappear in the like-for-like figures.

As an example, suppose you drink a glass of wine a day, which used to be one unit. The reality is that your alcohol consumption hasn't changed. If we jump onto the new figures, it looks like you're suddenly drinking more units (last year you drank 1 unit a day, this year you drink 1.5 units a day).

The Rowntree report shows both. Unless I've totally misunderstood the figures, it makes sense to compare like with like for trends. On the like-for-like figures, we're all drinking about the same - some a tiny bit more, some a bit less.

Has binge drinking for women doubled?
The shock headline is that twice as many women are binge drinking, but that appears to be utter rubbish.

It relies on this new units system. Funnily enough, if you count a glass of wine as 1.5 units instead of 1, the number of women drinking more that six units in any day suddenly rises. What a shock!

When you compare like with like, the proportion of men and women binge drinking is lower in 2006 (the latest year given in the study) than for any year in the last decade.

Binge drinking, by the way, is defined in this report as a woman drinking six units or more in a day, or a man drinking eight units or more. Under the new method of calculating units, a woman becomes a binge drinker as she drains her second pint of beer or fourth large glass of wine.

Is that really what the term "binge drinking" brings to mind for the general public?

Does it matter?
The assumption behind this, of course, is that drinking is a bad thing, so if the figures increase it's a bad news story and if they fall it's a good news story.

For the majority of people who are moderate drinkers, even if we might "binge" on occasion, there's no real evidence to say that drinking a bit more is bad and a bit less is good. There's some evidence that drinking in moderation is healthier than being teetotal, and that being a consistent heavy drinker over many years is bad for your health.

ID card trial in Manchester this Autumn

Oh lucky people of Manchester. Oh joyful day. Dancing in Exchange Square will surely break out when they learn that Jacqui Smith is giving Mancunians the opportunity to apply for an ID card.

Come the Autumn, for just sixty pounds, any passport-holder in Manchester will be able to own their very own, shiny ID card.

I'm sure everyone will just be running to pick one up. What better way to spend sixty quid in a recession.

Jacqui Smith, who along with Hazel Blears is due for the chop if the Daily Mail is to be believed, will be singing the praises of ID cards later today.

She'll be telling us that "ID cards will deliver real benefits to everyone, including increased protection against criminals, illegal immigrants and terrorists,".

The same old lines, the same old lies. This stuff was debunked by the experts years ago.

Still, at least we'll have some fun with it. Look out for people pointing out all the flaws, errors and ways to get round the security as soon as these things are out there for real.

Let's just remind ourselves of the words of Meg Hillier MP in back February, in response to a question from Manchester Lib Dem MP John Leech.

"...perhaps I can give the hon. Gentleman a little lesson in how the cost of identity cards will work. There is not a big pot of money sitting and waiting to be spent on identity cards; there will be money to spend on them only if the general population choose to take them up."

So far, no-one has chosen to take them up. So according to Meg, the money hasn't been spent yet. Right, that makes sense. Was Meg actually lying to parliament or just being astonishingly foolish?

Will your online campaigning win the election?

A long, long time ago I had a moan about my local party's caution in joining the Internet age. At the time we had (and still have, I hasten to add) a perfectly servicable Prater-Raines website, kept up to date with relevant stories and information. We were talking about actively collecting email addresses and communicating by email and I was a little frustrated at the resistance from some.

That battle was won and we now do use email to communicate with a small proportion of voters (as anyone who's tried it will know, building up email addresses takes time and sometimes the bounces seem to outnumber your shiny new ones).

Our current discussion is over blogs, Facebook, Twitter, online petitions and surveys, plus integrating with services like FixMyStreet and TheyWorkForYou and the other MySociety goodness - all of which (with the exception of Twitter) we've used to some extent for local campaigning and we're considering which to expand.

So I've been following the debate about local parties who have failed in their Internet Duty with some interest, including great posts from Charlotte Gore and Stuart Sharpe.

Some local parties, it appears, do not have up-to-date websites, or their sites look old and clunky. Others don't have a website at all.

Stuart and Charlotte are both basically right - a decent up-to-date website is important. I agree 100% that the Internet is an important campaigning tool and that the Internet element of a campaign should run side-by-side with the more traditional elements.

But then things get a bit odd. Stuart writes:

"Why should anyone vote for you if you’re not even going to start trying to understand the world you live in? You can tell me how you’ll be all you like – but actions speak louder than words. Show me you’re prepared to put in the effort, and maybe I’ll be convinced that I should vote for you."

Hold on just a moment. Since when did understanding the world we live in become synonymous with having a good grasp of Internet campaigning techniques?

What about understanding the challenges faced by families living on the breadline, unable to find work. What about understanding the fear of those living on estates rules by criminal gangs? How about understanding the economic challenges we face, or the issues around integrated transport, or childcare, education, health, the environment, social services?

Are these not more part of understanding the world we live in than knowing how Twitter works?

So why would Stuart say, in effect "You don't understand the Internet, so I'm not going to vote for you" rather than "You don't understand the issues around poverty, so I'm not going to vote for you"?

He makes the point that, if a local party or a PPC doesn't understand the Internet, they need to take the time to understand it and to learn to use it effectively. If not, Stuart believes, they simply don't deserve to become an MP.

It's a fact of politics that there is never enough time or money to do everything you'd like to do, even more so when you're an under-funded local party fighting a non-target seat. Even the PPC who eschews family, job and sleep, charging headlong towards an inevitable nervous breakdown, all in pursuit of becoming a relatively impotent backbencher won't manage it.

Stuart won't vote for a candidate who hasn't taken the time to learn all about Internet campaigning. What about the candidate who had to decide between that and working to help poor families? Or the candidate who's decided that meeting people face-to-face is a more effective use of her time?

Might someone who knows everything there is to know about their local constituency and the day-to-day problems faced by their constituents, but who couldn't knock up a website to save their life (and has no intention of finding out how), still be a really brilliant MP?

I don't want to give the impression that I disagree greatly with Stuart or Charlotte. The basic point they make is one I agree with completely: maintaining a decent, up-to-date, local website, blog and email list is not only fairly easy, but (if it's any good) takes less time per voter contact than anything else and connects more effectively with younger people who probably won't read the leaflets you put through the door.

And, as I said at the start, there's definitely a case for doing more. I am doing a lot of this stuff. Not necessarily very well - I've a lot to learn. But I'm trying.

But we're in danger of forgetting that the Internet is a tool, and just one of many.

Sure, a local party could put in the time and money to replace their Prater Raines site with a really cool one on some cutting-edge CMS with funky css. But how many extra votes will that really get them? How does that compare with the number of extra votes gained by spending that time and money on other campaigning?

Maybe they consider it and decide it is worth the effort, but I certainly wouldn't criticise them for coming to another view.

My advice to local parties is: there are some things that are no-brainers if you're putting any effort at all into winning the seat. Having a basic website kept up-to-date is one (Prater Raines is just fine) . Collecting email addresses and sending out email bulletins is another. Collecting mobile phone numbers is a third.

For all of those, it's easy to demonstrate that your effort and cost per voter contact is relatively low.

Obviously, all of that is in addition to leaflets, direct mailing, canvassing and traditional campaigning.

Beyond that, don't be bullied into thinking that, if your site isn't the coolest out there, people aren't going to vote for you. There's simply no evidence to support that. In fact, the evidence around the ability of online campaigning in the UK to deliver votes is still sketchy and mixed at best.

You might choose to do more (I do). If you judge it's worth your effort for whatever reasons then great - good for you. Even if you decide not to, make sure you ask the question again every year - these things change quickly.

But you may be quite right in deciding that not using Facebook, not using blogs or Twitter left, right and centre, is actually for you a more effective strategy to win elections if it gives you more time to concentrate on other campaigning techniques that achieve more.

If you disagree, show me the evidence. Show me some correlation between electoral success and online presence in UK elections. Show me the campaigners who've fought elections and believe the slick website was what won it.

Drugs company Merck published fake journal

Big pharma doesn't have the greatest record when it comes to totally ethical behaviour.

On the plus side, at least they do test drugs, which is one up on most of the alternative medicine industry (and alternative medicine is an industry - a very lucrative one too).

But there's often more to the studies than meets the eye.

One study rarely tells the whole story - individual medical trials frequently come out with the wrong answer (suggesting that a drug works when it doesn't, or vice versa) so running multiple trials is critical.

But what if you run six trials of which two show your drug working and four show it having no effect? If you just publish the two that show it working, it looks like you've got a fantastic product on your hands..

That's Ben Goldacre from Bad Science supports a register of trials. The idea is that all trials are registered before they start. If you didn't register, you can't publish. Then it's a lot more difficult to cover up inconvenient results.

There's even more, like the way that lots of trials with negative results (i.e. the drug or treatment didn't work) don't get published simply because the authors or journals don't think it's worthwhile: positive papers on successful new treatments are much more interesting.

But Merck appear to have gone one step further. According to a report in The Scientist (free registration required), Merck had a magazine published that looked like a specialist peer-reviewed medical journal.

In fact, the journal - Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine - was a marketing exercise, stuffed with papers positive about Merck products. Not that a doctor reading it would have realised.

The faked journal has only just come to light, but was published in 2003 and 2004. We don't know if other faked journals are out there.

Whether the medicine is alternative or mainstream, whether it's natural or brewed up in a lab, doctors and the public need to know whether it works and what the risks or side-effects are. That means running multiple fair, well documented trials and publishing the results of all.

To do otherwise may be a route to quick profits, persuading doctors to prescribe your drugs by overstating the benefits. But it's little better than the homeopaths making millions selling water.

Figuring out how well a particular medicine works, and whether it's safe, is hard. If we're to believe the claims of big pharma, we as a society need to understand the basis of those claims and have confidence we're being told the truth.

Alan Johnson's mind games

Senior Labour MP Alan Johnson has been busy denying that he, or anyone else, would make a better Prime Minister than Gordon Brown. In an excellent post, Charlotte Gore mentions ten people (including, modestly, herself) who she's confident would do a better job. Go Charlotte.

But I wonder if Mr Johnson's comment was really an attempt to get his name on the list. Two days ago, few would have rated Johnson as even in the game to replace Brown as Labour leader.

Now, after his denials that he'd be better than Gordon, his name's in our minds. Sort of the reverse trick to a candidate striding onto stage and stridently proclaiming "I say to you now, I have NEVER slept with my sister" which, as Charlotte tells us, isn't a good thing to say.

Johnson's strode on and said "I say to you now, I WOULDN'T make a better Prime Minister than Gordon" and at some level we've all though "Johnson...better PM...Gordon...hmmm".

Worth a try.

Jacqui's other, secret, Internet database revealed

The Sunday Times and The Register are reporting that Jacqui Smith's climbdown on a central database to record information on all our emails, web browsing and phone calls was not quite what it seemed.

It appears that the Government had secretly allocated over a billion pounds to GCHQ to gather Internet data at key places in the network infrastructure and feed it back to Cheltenham, effectively achieving the same as the now-defunct master database by different means.

The project, called Mastering the Internet (MTI) was started last year and, it seems, has only come to light because of a loosly-worded job advert. American giant Lockheed Martin is one of the companies involved in delivering the project, which will involve huge numbers of probes at key points within the UK's Internet infrastructure feeding into some serious computing resources at GCHQ, Cheltenham.

It seems pretty redundant to point out how dishonest and duplicitous this all is, and how it involves the Government awarding itself, in secret and without consultation, the ability to snoop on the communications of people not suspected of any crime and with no evidence against them, but I guess I should - just for form.

To be honest, the idea that our Labour Government sees itself as anything other than our masters, free to do pretty much whatever it can get away with to the population because they know best is getting harder to sustain.

UPDATE: GCHQ has denied that this planned infrastructure is for a general collection and storage of Internet traffic. Instead, they claim (I think) that it's to help them collect information on specific indivuals under the existing legal framework. See BBC news.

iPhone lessons for Open Sourcers

An interesting little article in today's Observer talks about how the iPhone, revolutionary at its inception, is being rapidly matched and overtaken by similar devices from Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry et. al.

It got me thinking about how so readily accept whatever we've got now as the norm or the right way to do it, and how difficult it can be to break out of that pattern.

With smartphones, we've had years of clunky, painful interfaces where anything you wanted to do was buried in layers of menus or deep in some set of obscure options; where bending the phone to your will involved a lot of luck, impressive endurance or finding and working through a large manual.

Whilst far from perfect, the iPhone was a game-changer. It made a genuine leap forward in what people could actually get out of their smartphones. It wasn't that the iPhone did lots of things older smartphones didn't; it's that it made it easier for us to do them.

So far, so mundane. The interesting bit is that, until the iPhone came along, we didn't realise just how bad the others were. Sure, they were annoying and clunky at times, but they were also cool, the latest tech, so they must be good, right?

Sometimes, it isn't that the iPhone hasn't been invented; it's that you just haven't seen it (I'm getting metaphorical now, so hang on there).

Take Open Source Software, which I love dearly, use most of the time and am generally pretty happy with. That's fine, but how much of the allure of Open Source is down to the fanboys like me not being familiar with what else is out there?

A while back I came across the question "Which Open Source Software would you genuinely consider to be best of breed - better than all the proprietary alternatives?"

It's a tricky one since most of us, for most software, haven't tried those alternatives, but the list seems pretty short to me. Maybe Apache; perhaps Firefox?

Take the Linux operating system. In some ways it's great and, at its best, within spitting distance of Windows for quality and usability. But there are areas it falls down big time, and lots of the fans probably don't even realise it because they've not seen the (often venerable) alternatives.

As a server operating system, Linux is well behind the big boys of propietary Unix (HP-UX, Solaris and AIX) in terms of features. Linux's Logical Volume Management is still a pile of cack and at least a decade behind the rest; its management tools sometimes leave a lot to be desired too.

How about MySQL - the low-end database recently bought by Oracle? How many people are familiar enough with the likes of Oracle and DB2 to be able to judge just how many features MySQL lacks?

Or on the desktop we can look at desktop publishing, where the leading Open Source product, Scribus, is at best a contender in the bargain basement end of the market, video editing software is clunky, to put it kindly, and as for games...enough said.

The great thing about Open Source is that, for most people most of the time, it's actually good enough. Most of us don't need those extra features on a high-end database or Quark Express for DTP. We don't need the bells and whistles.

But Open Source fans often won't look at proprietary software on principle, which makes it very easy to ignore it. Plenty of conversations will involve someone comparing Linux today to Windows five or ten years ago - because that's the last time they seriously used it.

(The reverse is true too, of course: people who think of Open Source as scary stuff for geeks might be more than a little surprised if they used the latest version of Ubuntu or a Linux netbook).

The lesson is not to assume that, just because you haven't seen some piece of software, it can't be any good; and definitely don't assume that the software must be rubbish because it isn't free or isn't open source. You might quite reasonably say "even though this is good software, I'm not going to use it because it doesn't give me the freedom to see, change and share the code", but you shouldn't say "it's not free, so it can't be any good".

There's a project to create a fully open source mobile phone, so you can modify the software on the phone. It's called Openmoko and it's been going for three years. It's yet to produce a mobile phone that even the company itself would recommend for a normal phone user, much less matched the achievements of Apple, Nokia and Blackberry in the same time (though, to be fair, with massively larger budgets).

I was going to apply this "what else is out there" issue to politics, but I'll save that for another time.

Remembering Gordon's new world order

Inspired by the Grauniad, I took a look back at Gordon Brown's Mansion House speech from 20th June 2007, a week before he became our Prime Minister. It's quite a corker.

He described his period at number 11 as

"an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London."

Not just any era, but a new world order

"And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created."

Gordon re-stated his support for a "risk-based regulatory approach" - a euphamism for light-touch regulation. Those were the days when the Treasury thought it understood the risks and so could afford to let the City do whatever it liked. None of this regulatory nonsense the soft-headed Americans fell for.

"enhancing a risk based regulatory approach, as we did in resisting pressure for a British Sarbannes-Oxley after Enron and Worldcom,"

And Gordon reminded the bankers that he was keen to piss all over hard-pressed public transport users in the rest of the country if it made their journey to work a little quicker.

"And because I recognise the benefits Crossrail would bring to the City, we are using every effort to find a solution to its affordability."

How's Gordon getting on with his business-friendly aims for our education system?

"In future every single secondary school and primary school should have a business partner"

"for each pupil, a personal learning guide or coach to help them make the right curriculum choices and to act as an easy point of contact for parents"

Sorted.

Headteachers play with Balls, Govt authority crumbles

Is nothing sacred? Surely if there's one group in society we can expect to be law abiding it's our school Headteachers. But today the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) conference voted overwhelmingly to ballot its members on boycottings SATs for 11 year olds. And who's bet against such a ballot passing.

Ed Balls was there, warning them not to cross the line. He promised reform. But the Headteachers went ahead and did it anyway. They let Ed down, the let Gordon down and they let themselves down.

From the NUT, I would expect this. But the NAHT?

John Prescott might be donning a short skirt and pom-poms as Gordon's number one cheerleader, but even Prezza can't disguise not only the Government's authority but also their legitimacy is fading.

Government depends on the consent of the governed. This government, voted for by a quarter of the electorate and run by a Prime Minister who got the job without troubling anyone to vote for him.

All that's perfectly legitimate and within the rules of our parliamentary democracy, and wouldn't normally be an issue.

But when the nation's headteachers, with the Minister in the room, are seriously proposing schools ignore legislation just because they don't think it's a very good idea, you have to start wondering how long they're going to hang on.

Maybe this is something that not even John Prescott in a cheer-leading skirt can stop.

Questions for Labour MPs thinking of defecting

You might expect that a third party, out of power for the best part of a century and with no immediate chance of returning to govern, would be a perpetual follower.

That's how our political opponents like to paint the Liberal Democrats: Labour-lite, Tory-lite, a party with no ideology which will do and say anything to pick up a few votes.

Yet, over the last decade or two, the party has punched well above its weight, not only following a clear liberal path but pulling others in our wake.

Before I get carried away, I do of course recognise the realities of politics. There are times when the Lib Dems - like every other serious party - has acted from political expediency rather than firm belief. And there are times when the party has got it wrong, and been rightly criticised from inside and out for it.

But more often the party has got it right, and it's especially notable that these occasions generally aren't the ones where there were obviously votes to be had.

Some examples.

Hong Kong and Gurkhas
When Paddy Ashdown championed Hong Kong's British passport holders' right to settle in the UK, and when Nick Clegg took up the case of the Gurkhas, neither cause was high profile or a sure-fire vote winner. They might have stayed that way - plenty of worthy causes do. But in both cases, Nick and Paddy were right. They were sticking up for the liberal conception of justice and fairness.

In neither case was the party jumping on a bandwagon, trying win easy votes or grabbing the coat-tales of the bigger parties. In Nick's fantastic triumph over the Gurkhas it was far more the other way round: the Lib Dems leading, the Tories jumping on the bandwagon to grab some glory and Labour running behind desperately trying to get a hand on the tailgate.

ID cards
The Lib Dems have always been firmly and vocally opposed to ID cards. The public and the other two parties have not. When we started this fight, Labour, the Tories and (if you believe the Home Office polling) around 80% of the public were broadly in favour; looking for a quick fix to protect us from the terrorist threat.

The tide is turning now. The public are sceptical, the Conservatives are opposed and even senior Labour MPs are wondering if it's worth the price in these recessionary times.

The Lib Dems called it right, but it could have gone the other way. There's only been one successful terrorist attack in the British mainland in the last eight years but, had there been more, who's to say what the public mood would have been.

Iraq war
No need to review this one. Just to say, again, that the Lib Dem line was not only distinct from the other two parties but could easily have lost the party a lot of votes had things turned out differently.

Extreme pornography
Not on the scale of the others, but worth noting. The Government pushed through a highly illiberal measure to make the possession of "extreme" pornography a crime, even when no-one was harmed in it's creation, distribution or ownership. In the wake of a high-profile murder linked to S&M and "won't anybody think of the children" clarion calls left, right and centre, the measure was sure to play well with the Daily Mail crowd.

To their credit, the Lib Dems actively and intelligently opposed the legislation in both the Commons and the Lords.

Localism
A bigger issue, this one. Go back to the 1940s and there was no question that centralised, Whitehall-knows-best, control was the way to go. Time and again over the decades, Labour and the Conservatives ensured that local democracy was overruled as schools, hospitals, housing, transport, the economy and more were pu firmly in the hands of the men from the ministry.

Even under Thatcher, in theory an opponent of the all-powerful State, the Civil Service machine grew larger, Government spending increased and the top-down approach continued.

The Liberal Party disagreed - at a time when it had just a handful of MPs and many assumed it was not long for this world.

Slowly but surely, and without it winning the party huge public support, the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats have won the argument for localism and dragged the other parties along for the ride.

The debate has been won. Politicians of all parties now talk about giving people power over their own lives, about local control, local democracy, devolving power.

Sixty years ago that way was seen as a route to backwards-looking stagnation. It was thought that the people didn't know their own minds and running the country should be left to the visionary experts.

Today we understand that empowering, enthusing and supporting communities can have far more positive outcomes.

The gap today is in the reality of the actions of political parties. There are those in both Labour and Conservative parties who genuinely buy into this model. But, as we can see from the reality of the Labour Government and of Tory Councils up and down the country, there were many more who see it as the right thing to say as they go on in the same old way.

The battle is being won, but the enemy is far from routed.

Lib Dems leading the way
I've mentioned a few examples and tried to make them as varied as possible: from supporting the residents of Hong Kong to issues of political philosophy, war and civil liberties.

I could have talked about our leadership on the economy, about the way more and more UK elections are under a voting system that's fairer that First Past the Post, how we have a Human Rights Act enshrined in UK law. All clear examples of the Lib Dems being anything but Labour-lite or Tory-lite; of the Lib Dems leading the way and taking the political risks to promote our values.

Questions for Labour and Tory MPs thinking of defecting
I hear in the media faint rumblings that Labour MPs might, at some point, leave their party and might, after that, consider joining the Lib Dems. The question within the Lib Dems is whether we want them.

Here are some questions that would help me reach a view.

• What's your track record on putting time and energy into supporting causes that, whilst just, may not turn out to be popular or even make it onto the political radar?
• Is the State my master or my servant? A simple test: if you think the it's reasonable that the State forces me to hand over vast swathes of my personal information, puts it on big centralised databases and decides who sees it and what they can do with it, giving me no recourse, then you see the State as my master.
• Do you think what people get up to in their private lives, harming no-one else, is their own business even when you personally find those activities disgusting?
• How have you acted to give ordinary people, including those who disagree with you politically, more control over their own lives and communities?

Come to think of it, those aren't bad questions for Lib Dem politicians to ask themselves too.

Binge drinking culture laid bare

Figures from the Department of Health show alcohol-related admissions to hospitals have risen by over 50% in the last five years. Stormin' Norman Lamb attacked the Government for failing to do enough to tackle binge drinking and Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, criticised the Government's 24-hour drinking cultue.

Metro reported the news with the wholly untrue headline "Number of drunks taken to hospital soars by half". According to the Daily Express "The grim reality of Britain’s binge-drinking culture was laid bare".

The truth is a little more complicated...and interesting.

Let's go back and take a look at what these figures mean. When you hear about an "alcohol-related admission" to hospital, your first thought is probably along the same lines as the Metro journalists - drunks in A&E having collapsed after a night on the piss or injured in a drunken fight.

That's certainly part of it, but not all by a long way. If a woman develops breast cancer through drinking alcohol, and is admitted to hospital ten times in a year as part of her treatment, that's ten admissions on the figures.

There are a wide range of conditions that, it's believed, can be caused by alcohol. There are obvious ones like liver disease and less obvious like cancer of the rectum.

Ah, you ask, but how do they know that someone's rectal cancer was caused by alcohol abuse. The answer is that they don't. Studies have been done to estimate the proportion of cases due to alcohol and it's those estimates that are being applied.

Let's say that a hundred people get cancer of the oesophagus, making a total of five hundred hospital visits in a year. The estimate might be that, for men of a certain age group, 30% are due to alcohol, so that would be 150 hospital admissions on the figures.

OK, that's where the numbers come from. What could explain this 50% rise?

It seems counter-intuitive, but it could be partly explained by hospital treatment improving. This is just a possibility - I'm not saying it's what does explain the rise, just that it could.

Let's suppose that the NHS gets better at treating cancer, liver disease and the like. Patients attend hospital more often, receive improved treatment and live for longer. That means the average person's going to pay more visits to hospital, bumping up those figures. Improvements in diagnosing cancer (more patients through the door) would have the same effect.

Here's another possibility: an increase in drinking in the '80s and '90s. People don't get liver disease from a few pints. They get it from drinking heavily for years. Whatever you might think about 24 hour opening and binge drinking, changes in the last few years can't explain chronic diseases.

Perhaps those estimates of the proportions are wrong and that's skewing the figures.

Or it could genuinely be more people drinking more alcohol and getting injured or ill as a direct result.

So which is it? Perhaps a little of them all, but we can turn to this paper to give us some clues. It doesn't have all the details from 2008, but it does have the 2005 data.

You'll hear a lot about the loutish behaviour of young women, but it turns out that three times more women over 75 are admitting to hospital for alcohol-related conditions than 16-24 year old women. Indeed, when it comes to the ladies, the older you are, the more likely you are to find yourself in hospital with an alcohol-related condition.

There's a similar story for men, with a slightly earlier peak. Older men are more at risk than the young bucks, but it's the 55-64 age group who fare worst.

As you might expect, young people drink the most and are more likely to find themselves in hospital from mental and behavioural disorders, self-harming and road-traffic accidents. From 25 onwards, liver disease starts putting in a serious appearance but people are drinking a little less. We start downing the booze again in middle age and chronic disease takes over.

That the latest increases go across all age groups suggests the causes are varied. Fairly big increases in admissions among young people tell us they probably are drinking more and binge drinking is indeed an issue.

But the increases are across the board, suggesting that it's a much longer term change going back several decades. I would also guess (and it is just a guess) that improvements in medical care and diagnosis are partly responsible for the statistics.

Is there evidence that extended pub opening hours are contributing to this rise? Not that I've seen. Hundreds of pubs closing across the country doesn't seem to match up with more people drinking more alcohol in them. Perhaps young people are drinking more shop-bought alcohol. Maybe stricter controls on underage drinking in pubs is pushing more young people into drinking cheap alcohol on the streets.

That's more research to be found or be done - let me know if you think it already exists.

Swine flu: who's cashing in on our fear?

So a Scottish couple who caught swine flu "feared they might die" did they? What a surprise.

How could they think otherwise, with every media outlet in the world shouting doom.

This is the really scary thing.

"The last thing anyone would want is panic" says Today programme reporter this morning. So stop fucking running headline stories telling us everyone in the world is going to die, then.

I rarely disagree with Ben Goldacre, but I have to take issue with a piece he wrote in the Guardian yesterday. Ben's take on swine flu is that we just don't know. It's essentially unpredictable and the worst-case scenarios could happen.

Up to a point.

And that point is that Ben's assertion is true of lots of things. Sure, swine flu is unpredictable, but by the same token a lot of other diseases are too - all other other variants of flu, for a start. If we accept Ben's suggestion as an excuse for the media reaction, there should never be a time when the media isn't panicking like headless chickens about some disease or other.

The word pandemic does not refer to the number of deaths. It's entirely possible to have a flu pandemic where very few people die. It simply refers to the speed and ease at which the virus spreads worldwide - something entirely unremarkable, given the nature of flu and modern air travel.

We can also look at past experience with flu pandemics. Sure, as Ben says, this one could be different. It's possible that it could kill tens of millions, just as it's possible that a meteor could wipe out all life on earth later this morning.

But surely looking at what's likely is more sensible. If we prepared for every possible catastrophe, we'd all be huddled, alone, in caves, deep underground and wearing a tin-foil hat to avoid the alien mind rays.

In a normal year around half a million die from flu worldwide (including a thousand in the UK and 30,000 in the US). In the last pandemic, half a century ago, this increased to a million.

There's good reason to think that the the poverty, poor conditions and even poorer medical care available in 1918 were major contributors to the Spanish flu being so deadly. We're seeing that now: the few deaths we have seen were all in poor, impoverished Mexico (the one baby who died in the US was from Mexico and may have had other health problems).

Inside Mexico, so far, some people have caught swine flu of whom most have recovered and a small number have died. Outside Mexico, an even smaller number have caught swine flu, and they've all recovered.

That's what you'd expect. It's flu.

Instead we have PeTA spreading the absurd lie that factory farming and eating pigs is somehow responsible for swine flu (OK, I wouldn't expect any better from PeTA - the last time I wrote about them, it was to laugh at their campaign to get us calling fish "sea kittens". Kittens are cute - you wouldn't eat a kitten, would you?)

We have dodgy companies cashing in with fake medicines to protect against swine flu.

And we have a general panic which has the potential to further damage the world's already weak economy, if we were to start closing offices and factories as has been mooted.

The media has over-reacted. They're making money, as are the dodgy pill-pushers and the mask manufacturers.

But people like that Scottish couple are getting scared. Have I got swine flu? Will I die? What about my children or elderly parents?

Nothing like making money by increasing human suffering to give you that warm arms-dealer style glow.