Last Thursday we voted for British Members of the European Parliament. Not many people know who they are. Even fewer people have ever seen them or met them. Yet they sit in Brussels and Strasbourg and decide our future. They make laws which we must adhere to and they are paid by the taxes of every one of us. For we pay taxes on food, clothing, through PAYE when we work, through Council tax through our cars and on our petrol amongst other things.
You have a vote so you can choose who you elect to look after your affairs in Brussels and Strasbourg. You see every month the whole European Parliament decamps from Brussels and takes their whole entourage plus mountains of paperwork to another country to sit there for three days, then they come back. All travelling costs and hotel bills paid of course. All food covered. It does not cost them a penny as you and you and you pay for it.
We have seen leaflets telling us who to vote for, yet these people are faceless. The leaflet I received from the Conservative Party showed me David Cameron. The leaflet from the Socialist party showed me no one and so on.
So we vote for faceless people who do not knock your door and ask if you have anything you would like to put to them. But this is democracy I am told. So I went to look for information about who to vote for and how I would be voting and this is what I found.
The Neath Ferret showed the ballot form. The only time I saw the ballot paper before going to the polls was on this web site. Thank you Neath Ferret.
So I could not vote for a person but for a party. It appears that if I vote for one UKIP MEP I am voting for them all. So choice number one had gone. To vote for people across the voting spectrum was not available. I had to choose my party and put my cross.
I visited the Electoral reform society site, wanting more information about this new way of voting and found the following information :-
The case for first past the post voting – which is what we have always had and which means there is only one winner – the one with the most votes.
The Electoral Reform Society states :-
First past the post is simple to understand and thus doesn’t cost much to administer and doesn’t alienate people who can’t count.
I found this a bit patronizing so looked at who the electoral reform society are.
“When we were founded in 1884 it was already clear that our political system
was failing to rise to the challenges presented by an emerging modern Britain.
First known as the Proportional Representation Society, the Society was established in 1884 by the Victorian naturalist, archaeologist and polymath Sir John Lubbock to bring likeminded people to the cause of fair votes.
I trust that Great Britain, the mother of Parliaments, may once more take the lead among the great nations of the world by securing for herself a House of Commons which shall really represent the nation.
Society founder Sir John Lubbock, 1884
First gathering at 7 Clarges Street, Westminster, the group quickly snowballed, its founding members drawn from academia, the legal profession and 180 MPs, drawn in equal numbers from the Liberal and Conservative parties.
They were quickly joined by leading luminaries including C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian), the Rev. Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), and Thomas Hare (the inventor of the Single Transferable Vote).
Since then we have been at the forefront of political change, and
remain the world’s oldest organisation concerned with elections and political
reform, recognised by the United Nations for over 30 years.
From securing fair votes in Scottish local government to exposing the
accident waiting to happen that was the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections, we have put voters first, highlighted problems and offered
common sense solutions.
- See more at: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/our-history/#sthash.t4yPM9rR.dpuf
So 180 MP’s sit on the board of the Electoral Reform Society. That does not seem like proportional representation to me.
I have some concern about the safety of the ‘secret’ ballot we undertake and I have seen it posted on the Neath Ferret website that there should be an independent body to hold postal votes. I think this would be a step in the right direction. However it has been stated that the Electoral Commission which handles all elections is in fact an independent body.
But it appears to me that what I think of as independent and what others think is not the same thing. The Electoral Commission is answerable to Parliament. It is governed again by MP’s :-
“An Independent body which reports directly to Parliament, responsible for supervising and implementing the new regulatory framework for the electoral system.”
So the people who handle the elections are either local authorities or Parliament. So politicians handle all affairs of politicians.
I would like to see a truly independent body set up to handle all elections and election reform.
I do not see much wrong with first past the post. At least you know what you are getting and you usually see the person you are voting for.
The EU is like some Government in a far off foreign land who holds sway over our lives and livelihood and takes billions of pounds for doing so.
So did you, like me, have no idea how they have worked out who gets in and who does not.
It is a mystery, my problem is, knowing if the mystery is deliberately created or am I one of those people who likes first past the post and could be alienated by my inability to keep count of a few million votes.
