Election and Referendum Chaos Coming To A Ballot Box near You

Election and Referendum Chaos Coming To A Ballot Box near You!

Author John Of Gwent

 

Remember when "electoral reform" was the
way Labour would save itself from extinction?

GA's article below citing the report by Ted Castle in the "Public Finance" site set me thinking.
Is it any coincidence the people of Wales face not one but three sets of ballot papers next year ?
Of course it isn't. The hope is that the people will be so weary of turning out three times they won't bother,and the arguments over three separate trips to the ballot box, and three separate set of school closures, are already being rehearsed. Look at this page on the BBC site whingeing that schools are being forced to close too often already.
So why three trips to make your mark ?
Well, the first is the ultimate waste of time that is Cameron And Clegg's presentation Of Gordon Brown's Survival Plan. Gordon, as you know, based his master plan to stay in Number Ten on the parable of the talents - that strange biblical tale whereby to he who has everything shall more be given, while from he who has nothing shall even that nothing be taken away and given to him who has. 
A bit like that verse in All Things Bright and beautiful :-

The Rich Man In His Castle, The Poor Man At His Gate,
God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate

We used to sing that in Assembly when I was in Infant school under a Tory Government - but for some reason under Harold Wilson that verse vanished from the school assembly - I wonder why ? Surely Labour could see God had ordained that there would be rich, and poor, and that was how it was, for ever and ever amen ? (!!!)
But I digress.
Back to Brown's AV Westminster voting system. A scam well suited to a man who called himself a "son of the manse". Brown proposed to throw the existing system away and replace it with one in which the last candidate in any election had their votes stolen and handed to the others, whom the voter had not wanted, until one of them in the list could say, with utter falseness of course, that they were elected by more than 50% of the electorate.
The truth is that the Alternative Vote system is actually LESS representative than what we have now.
But how typical for a control freak of a failed ex leader of a failed ex government that such a travesty of a system should be presented as a fairer way of doing things. By the way here is an analysis of what it would have meant at the last election.
Now the funny thing is, The Con Dem Tricksters have picked up this failed plot and propose to run with it.
GOD KNOWS WHY
Cameron is on record as saying he will vote AGAINST the measure when his own government introduce it to the Commons. And the party that elected Clegg as their leader reject it out of hand, demanding truly proportional representation instead as the only acceptable voting reform. Which has forced Lib-Dem diehards into some of the most spectacular back-pedalling I have seen since the days when their party only made it to the headlines when they referred to labradors and shotguns.
So that is the first disaster wales face nest year, and it may be the iceberg that may sink Cameron and Clegg's Titanic. Which of them will take the part of DiCaprio, and which of them puts on the dress to play Kate Winslett remains to be seen, but I can hear the sound of deckchairs being rearranged so as to better hear the band already.
So what will be the second trip to the ballot box then ?
Why, it's the Plaid Curry Independence Roadshow. The demand that the eleventh EU region of what used to be called the United Kingdom get full powers of legislature and no longer have to get them in drips from a man who looks like he's got a strange suntan, or a woman who looks every inch the dithering fuddy duddy grandmother.
And the third is of course the Welsh Assembly Elections themselves, whose PR system will see at least three of our people take their rightful place at the table this time, and see the turncoat shia islamist Mohammed Asghar, who discards political allegiances like you and I discard yesterday's shirt into the laundry basket in favour of a freshly ironed one to face the new day, thrown into Cardiff Bay where he belongs.
But already the siren voices are clamouring. The politicians, realising the vote on whether you want more powers all at once or drip by drip as they are at the moment, clashes with the Assembly Election itself, call for a delay to the Election. Denying the people their rightful say in disposing of the has-been government in Cardiff the same way they chicked Brown out of Downing Street
And now it seems those two also clash with the Cameron/Clegg showdown.
Oh de