Damned if you do, damned if you don't

As you all know there's some local elections coming up. Here in Shoesville, with its unpopular LibDem council, who like the other two major parties have a long history of ineptitude, self-interest and inertia where running the local authority is concerned, it simply beggars belief that Labour, as the party most able to make large gains, is not putting up candidates in 14 of the 45 seats up for grabs! According to independent councillor Tony Clarke this is due to a collapse in the organisational capabilities of the Northampton North Labour Party since the defeat of Sally Keeble at the last General Election.

If Labour can't be arsed then why should the voters? The good thing is that Tony is predicting a hung council with the Independents/non-aligned holding the balance of power. Could be interesting. Read more here.
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The other issue to appear on the ballot papers on May 5th is the voting reform referendum. I still can't make my mind up on this. Proportional Representation is probably a good idea, but the option we're given in place of First Past The Post, namely the Alternative Vote system, is to put it mildly, bollocks. I've given scenarios on this before (second article) but here's another showing that AV is just as if not more unfair than FPTP. A seat that say has Labour at 40%, LibDem 30% Tory 20% Others 10% at first showing - after the Others drop out you've got Labour 42% LibDem 31% Tory 27%. The Tory voters are almost certainly going to put the LibDems above Labour on the list, so the outcome here would be a LibDem MP who started out 10 points behind the Labour candidate. Is that any better than FPTP?

You can also see why the Tories are dead against it because in any three way marginal there is no scenario under AV where they would get in as Labour voters will almost certainly put LibDem higher up the list than the Tories, and LibDem voters, despite their party's current unholy alliance are still more likely to put Labour above the Tories. As for Labour it's a case of swings and roundabouts for them, so maybe aligning themselves with the LibDems on this issue is a sweetener for possible future partnerships?

Although I'm generally in favour of PR, AV is a very poor system so I think I may vote No, as in addition it could be the start of the end game for the coalition if the LDs lose this core issue.

Happy voting!
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