Order of the Bath

Despite all the bad publicity we are not particularly unhappy Virgin Media customers. The phone does its job, the Broadband is good and we only gave up the TV because we weren’t watching it. We don’t use the phone a huge amount so don’t bother with any of the fancy packages; the basic phone is quite adequate. We subscribe to the standard (original) broadband and it is pretty reliable now. The upload speed is the best I have seen (specifications rarely even mention it) and that is important to me.

What really gets me is that we are locked in, and not just by the usual things like the hassle of changing email addresses. There are apparently dozens of great deals out there but when it comes to the crunch, none of them are available to us—we don’t have a BT phone line. To get one would cost us £125 upfront and even if we did there is no mechanism to get one without signing up to BT for a service contract. Look at the sign up pages and the first thing they ask for is confirmation that you have one. No mention of what to do if you haven’t (I have checked Waitrose, Orange, AOL, Global and Zen) Even the Which? report doesn’t address the issue.

When I first got my Orange mobile phone some years ago, I would send a text message and a short while later I would get a “Delivered” notice. If there was some problem like congestion or a poor signal then I would get a “Pending” notice and some time later a “Delivered” notice when the problem was resolved.

These days I always get both; one straight after the other. Has something changed or is the network always slightly congested?

The second thought on elections and voting relates to the scandal of the postal vote fraud in the 2004 local elections in Birmingham (and perhaps other places). This happened because polling booth voting has always been relatively relaxed with no requirement to prove identity on arrival and reasonably anonymous being quite hard to trace a vote cast back to the voter. They assumed that this could be carried across to a postal system with little change, no thought being given to possible intimidation and no checks made to ensure that the right people registered and that they were those that actually voted. With a postal system, rigging is much easier to organise as there is more time and it can be done out of sight of the officials.

It was said on the radio news that

Figures seen by the BBC suggest the problem was worse than first thought.

In four other wards, where there were allegations of fraud at the time but no formal enquiry, more than half the postal voters have disappeared from the list.

and I thought at the time that it was a rather rash assumption that all those that vanished were fraudulent. There are other reasons that could have influenced it; for example people who registered last time seeing the scandal and not wanting to be involved any more, or not wanting to go through the enhanced procedures being introduced this time. However I see from the written report that other wards have seen little change so perhaps there is some merit in it.

As a footnote, it is also my opinion that a large scale postal system denies the right of voters to hear and see all the arguments which typically are given right up to the day polls open. This typically works against the small and local parties who reply on the few weeks run up to polling day to get their message across.

It is May and our thoughts turn to elections. Somewhere in the country always has elections at the start of May and this year it is our turn, so I have a few thoughts around this theme to pass on.

The first relates to the story of the Fire Brigade’s Union which, in common with a number of bodies like this, has a problem with its council. For very good reasons I am sure, sometime in the past they wanted to make sure that their minority members were adequately represented so they arranged for their council to have a member to represent each of the Women’s, Gay and Ethnic Minority interests (women are a minority among fire fighters). Now, rather late, they have discovered that this gives some members double representation and a more or less effective veto on certain issues before council. To resolve this they are trying to abolish them.

As I heard it announced the first time it said “the fire-fighters union is trying to remove the gay, black and women representatives from the council”—a more poorly worded statement I can’t imagine! But even when we and they understand what they really mean, they still have a problem—other representatives on the council also represent minority groups, but of a more industrial nature. So it looks like they need to thoroughly review their constitution and understand what democracy really means.

The same applies to political parties, particularly the Labour Party. The unions have always had a block vote “on behalf of their members,” though this has been diluted in recent years. All the time it exists, some members who also belong to a union effectively have two votes on party affairs.
Another misguided attempt to manipulate the rules to try to equalise the representation is the biased shortlist—e.g. all women thus disenfranchising people before they even vote.

Representational government is only fair and seen to be fair if it is not tinkered with. If you want (as we should) to ensure proportionate representation of all groups entitled to vote they you must have a proportional representation voting system. There is no other choice.

Thanks to Paul James for the picture.
On this day 300 years ago, Great Britain was formed by the Act of Union between the thrones of England and Scotland. Queen Anne was on the throne at the time and a period of relative peace and stability was beginning. The standard also reflects interests in France and Ireland one of which would be quietly dropped and the other would give no end of trouble in later years.

It is my father’s birthday today and he was also born on Easter Day so the clever among you can work out how old he is as it has never happened in the intervening years. His mother always said that he popped out of an Easter Egg not brought by a stork like ordinary babies.