Voting for what we want and voting against what we do not is to vote with both head and heart. We can look carefully at the individuals standing as candidates and evaluate their worth. If they have served before, did they serve us, some other interest, or did they serve themselves? For candidates newly offering themselves in our constituencies and wards, are they standing for a party that is in keeping with our ideas of how to make and run our social order? And when the party for which they stand is in power has the Party behaved well, kept to its electoral manifesto, met circumstances with measures in keeping with its claimed values and with our own?
We musn't be swayed by attempting to second guess the actions of others and their interaction with our electoral process. There are too many variables to successfully resolve outcomes that are beyond the reach of our action in voting today; recognising our reach we can only satisfy our consciences. To remedy bad outcomes is for other days and other campaigns.
Our criteria and our judgements may yield different results for our choices in the national election and in the local elections some of us have. Local politics and its expression still flickers fitfully in the baleful climate produced by the pressures from the centre to control everything down to the colours of our front doors and the contents of our dustbins. Locally more then nationally we must choose who will resist the destruction of democratic choices by the centre, rather than who is toeing their Party's line.
We must vote, there can be no backsliding into abstention. Not voting in a fever of disapproval of the lot of them ends in democratic death. The bamboozling of the electorate with psuedo-political science and arguments for the need to set aside the obvious disqualifications for office of individuals and party, in favour of some meta reality, is a cowardly attempt to avoid being considered on what they have done. We must choose our man or woman, choose our policies, stop second guessing the unguessable, and vote.
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Locally more then nationally we must choose who will resist the destruction of democratic choices by the centre.
That will locally in Tuscany?
It's quite scary voting locally in Tuscany. The ballot sheets (not papers) are enormous and multi-coloured; the hammers and sickles face this way and that, the trees and flowers wave at me from the little boxes. Variations on a set of words - democratic, national, league, people, free, etc., combine in hallucinatory choices.
And there is a tribunal readily accessible if there is any jiggery pokery over the election. Only voters in person, armed with an electoral registration certificate, and with cell phone surrendered before entering the polling booth (no photos of ballot papers to prove bribes have been earned); it's not like England.
And if the Liberal Democrats get their foolish way over proportional representation we too will have to have a codified constitution, constitutional court, state-funding of parties, and a never-ending government within which shifting alliances are substituted for throwings out by the electorate for betrayal of everything a party (Labour, for instance) is supposed to stand for.
Nothing wrong with the Tuscan way but we'd have to take on the entire political system not just a bit of PR.
Anyway, I've said my part since the Brown regime inflicted itself on us; now I've done my bit and have the aching feet and nipped, letter-boxed fingers to prove it. Lets hope the country will turn round.
Here's a report on what previous elections gave Britain and Italy - politicians with criminal connections and friendly to each other. http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/12/blair-berlusconi-mafia-cia.html
Also it reports similar economic problems for both countries.
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2010/05/italy-and-other-countries-with-trobled.html
Perhaps the Italian genius for tax evasion will enable them to survive better than the more rigidly bureaucratic British,and their leaders remain able to give ours lessons in criminal finesse!
Berlusconi founded Forza Italia because it was cheaper to become prime minister than to go on paying the then political elites for what he needed.
There is remarkably little attention paid to the criminal economy, I feel, Raven, particularly in the UK, as it can be larger thaqn the legitimate economy at times. Italy's economic stability is built on sound banking practices (odd to think of in these days but Draghi blew the whistle on silly behaviour before the subprime and criminal financial practices crash) and there are very low levels of private debt.
The tax situation has tightened up a lot in recent years; I'd hesitate before crossing the tax inspectors and collectors - it's the computer systems and cross referencing.
The English have a reputation for being law-abiding and not criminal and the Italians the other way round; not any more though. Brown has seen to that with his 'light touch' clunking incompetence and evil intent.
PR no, Alternative Vote (what I used to know as the Single Transferable Vote) yes. The latter is basically the same as First Past The Post but with AV the post stands at 50% of votes cast.
I don't see how this would necessarily lead to hung Parliaments, coalitions and weirdo fringe MPs, indeed I think it would help avoid them. You'd get more of a fight for the centre ground, but you'd get an MP that was more likely to have reflected some level of your choice so you wouldn't feel disenfranchised. And I think you'd get more examination of policies to determine 2nd and 3rd choices.
Turnout this time in the natioonal elections was reportedly 65%, less than at any time in the 75 years from 1922-1997. And that's after market panic, credit crunch, the near destruction of the banking system, general hoo-ha, fedupness with Brown (how much of the vote depends on emotional spasm?) and Sam Cam's bump.
The present system is effectively useless and corrupt, which is why it will continue. I expect David Cameron to offer a Royal Commission and then do nothing, since the current arrangement suits Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
I wonder, S, if the PR demand is really a portmanteau demand for extensive adjustment of our way of delivering democratic choice and democratic control.
We certainly need a wholly elected revising Chamber, and a constitutional court accessible to every member of the electorate, like in Germany. I feel that attempting to codify the British COnstitution in one fell swoop would have consequences that we could regret, and losses of flexibility and response to circumstance that are unavailable in more rigid regimes. But a constitutional court would do a steady codification plus adjustment job that would be a boon.
We need to refederalise the UK too.
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