Nice blog – regarding Romenys tax returns even if we look at those he has released. The stats I read was that he paid 13% tax for that year compared to the american average of 15-16%.

Interestingly, if you take a really concrete view of what he said, in some ways it is true, close to that mark do have some form of government support (although that was an unusually high year due to GFC).

However, you are absolutely right, its the attitiude it represents; we don’t care about them, they must not have worked hard enough. I don’t represent them. What a douche.

Best quote I heard about Romney which sums him up nicely was; ‘This guy was born on 3rd base and thinks he hit a triple’

I fundamentally disagree that most politicians primarily work hard at maintaining themselves in power – it just looks that way because this trait is strongly displayed by the ones that make it to the top (Cameron and Osborne, Blair and Brown…). I have worked behind the scenes in UK politics and Australian politics, and I have interviewed politicians and activists in eleven new central and east European democracies for my academic research. In every single country, political parties are populated by an uncomfortable mix of power-hungry egomaniacs and genuine people who go into public life to help their communities. For the most part, we don’t see much of the latter because they are quietly working away in the background.

Political parties always like to select candidates that have run something in real life. The Labour Party is crammed with MPs who ran trades unions in the past, and the Lib Dems very often choose candidates who have run charities or small businesses. Of course, when polling day comes, the advantage is usually with the incumbent, hence the victor is the one that has been an MP for the last 20 years.

Anyway, I do applaud Democracy 2015 for seeking to tackle the lack of responsiveness in our political system, which is a very real problem. I am fed up seeing good and talented people enter public life, only to be shoved to one side by those with ruthless ambition and sharp elbows. If any progress is to be made, Democracy 2015 needs not just to get a bigger variety of people into parliament, but also to work around the current the media environment (wedded to the two party system and more interested in personal conflicts than policy) and also to work out how not to be outmaneuvered by the Cameron and Osborne types, who have been honing their specific political skills (debating, strategising, media management) since their schooldays.

I will try to put together a blog post about this in the next few days, specifically seeking feedback on policy-making and the role of ideology in new political movements.

Good luck with Democracy 2015.

As to working hard, I don’t deny that most politicians work very hard, but largely at the task of maintaining themselves in power. Here is what the former Tory chief whip, Richard Ryder, said recently: “Both David Cameron and Osborne are “obsessed with management of 24-hour news”. “They are news editors, news managers, they are not strategists.” Another example: John Longworth, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the Government had made a series of economic-policy announcements that lacked substance while using “political calculation” as the driver of policymaking. That is what I want to get away from. Even harder than political marketing is governing well. But at least people who have run something outside politics – could be a charity or a school or a trades union or a business – have some of the necessary skills. On the whole, professional politicians don’t have this experience.

As to financing our movement, we have asked supporters whether they accept the principle of making occasional contributions, maximum £50. In the two days since launch, 90 per cent have said yes. Note also, that we won’t accept donations larger than £50.

Through you, may I ask your readers to go one step further and make suggestions about how we might achieve our aims.

It’s interesting that, after 20 years of democratic ‘consolidation’, 19% of Slovakian votes wasted. The idea of a threshold is that the number of parties is whittled down over time, more or less eliminating wasted votes after a couple of electoral cycles.

Regarding Scotland, there are 73 FPTP seats and 56 top up seats, and the top up seats are divided into regions. Both of these factors, particularly the latter, distort results. In any given region, parties need around 9% of the vote or more to gain a top up seat – although not formally a threshold, it works in the same way. As a result, the Lib Dems lost out and the SNP gained. The Scottish system would be much more proportional if the seats were divided evenly between FPTP and PR, and PR seats were allocated across the whole country rather than in regions. Nevertheless, it is still very unusual for one party to have an outright majority in Scotland – it wouldn’t have been possible without the collapse of Liberal Democrat support and a massive fall in Labour support.

What was the cause for the non-proportional results in Scotland? How did the SNP get 16 more additional member seats at the regional level even though the overall party vote shows they should have only gotten 3 or 4 additional member seats?

http://www.cbcuk.org.uk/ please feel free to visit our web site or even join our group.
Thanks and take care,
Mike.