You Deserve Better

A Wasted Vote?

Is a vote for the Liberal Democrats a wasted vote? No, it’s a very positive step.

Express Route to the Lowest Common Denominator

I spent four hours in a car yesterday, so was already in a pretty foul mood. When I reached my destination, I saw that my messages contained a really ugly article by the Express. This concerns a fellow Liberal Democrat candidate, Katy Sykes, and I have had the pleasure of being on a panel show with Katy in the last few months. At no point did I think the accusations sounded like her usual persona at all, so I thought I would go back to her to get the real story. The Offending Article To call this an article would, in my view, be overly generous. It isn’t. It’s a very biased hit piece. Noteably, the Express did not bother to ask Katy for her side of the story before going to print with this garbage, so naturally it was entirely one-sided. Don’t believe me, though, judge for yourself: In 2013 Ms Sykes said: “Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I really really want to kill something.” Two months later she posted: “You better fn have nine lives coz I fn have eight knives.” She also threatened: “One more person calls me a weirdo or filthy c*** then I think I’m going to rip their vocal cords out and use them to slice their knackers off.” Ms Sykes posted in May 2013: “I hate the fg northeast, why is it I seem to attract the fg b*d scum everywhere I go, feel like either hurting them or killing myself.” Frankly, it is brutal that the Express trawled through Katy’s old posts like this to find anything that could possibly be held against her. We have all said things we didn’t mean online, and the fact that Katy has not been in the news for “ripping out someone’s vocal cords and using them to slice their knackers off” would certainly imply to me that this was an example of someone venting, not making actual legitimate death threats. Transparent Faux Outrage In response to finding these comments, naturally the responsible thing to do as a serious journalist would be to message Katy asking for an interview to discuss the comments. Naturally that’s what the Express failed to do. In fact, they went straight to a Conservative MP, Simon Clarke, for his view. His statements were: Approached by the Express for a reaction, local Conservative MP Simon Clarke said the posts from Nikita Sykes are “horrifying”. He said: “These quotes are horrifying, most especially in their repeated references to, and threats of, extreme violence. “It is very obvious Ms Sykes is totally unsuitable for public office and I hope the Liberal Democrats will act immediately to withdraw her candidacy – she ought never to have been allowed to stand in the first place. “I hope she can now find the help she clearly needs.” Simon Clarke Clearly Mr Clarke is new to the internet if he thinks that comments like that are horrifying (if he needs an education, then a quick visit to Reddit introducing himself as a Conservative MP will likely show him what horrifying really is!). I personally wonder what sort of environment he has found himself cushioned in where freedom to vent on social media has been so badly curtailed, especially as he is in the party that boasts about freedom to cause offence with their bigoted views. More to the point, the idea that this is a threat at all is entirely unfounded. A threat is directed against a person or group of people, and arguably it must be perceived as potentially real. Venting online and talking about wanting to harm or even kill “someone” is not a threat, it is merely venting. Now, you could argue that the language was inappropriate, especially if the meaning was actually literal. But in order to do that, you would have to actually approach the person who uttered those words and expressed those views, and you would need to be satisfied that a) they were actually meant to be a credible threat (they weren’t) and b) that they represent current views (they don’t). In short, this isn’t journalism, it’s a thinly-veiled hit piece against a candidate who made a number of statements a decade ago that she now doesn’t identify with. For fairness, I must mention that the article states that Katy was contacted for comment, but she tells a different story and says that the paper never actually made any effort to get in touch with her. To my mind, I am more inclined to believe Katy here, as most of us candidates have numerous ways for people to get in touch with us, and it is very unlikely that we would miss an opportunity to speak to the press. Conclusion This article really irritated me for a number of reasons: It’s easy to find out what views a candidate has these days. As an example, if anyone wants to find out what I advocate, they can look at my manifesto. They certainly don’t need to go back through my social media history looking for moments which don’t necessarily still represent my views today. By our nature we are a changing species, and as James O’Brien states “there’s no point in having a mind if you never change it.” The Express should be ashamed of themselves. This article isn’t journalism, it’s a pathetic hit piece that tries to take advantage of someone’s poor mental state from a decade ago as an attack on them now. Simon Clarke should be ashamed of himself. He took this opportunity to pass judgement on someone now based on a series of venting posts made during a period of mental fragility a decade ago. Rather than doing the right thing and reprimanding the “journalist”, he took the opportunity to attack someone for daring to have been vulnerable in the past. Anyone who reads the Express should consider buying another paper. If this is the quality of their journalism, then their paper is fit only to be used if you run

Campaign Launch – 2 Weeks to Go

When I first booked a date for my campaign launch, it felt like a very long time in the future. Now we have only 2 weeks to go, it feels like it has crept up on me very fast indeed! If you’re in the area and looking for something to do on Sunday 26 February between 17:00 and 20:00, I’d love for you to come along, chat with me about the things that matter most to you, and enjoy our refreshments. We’ll also be holding a raffle with some amazing prizes. If you’re looking for inspiration for things to chat to me about, my personal manifesto is here. You can find tickets and full details here, or in the flyer below.

A Musing on Proportional Representation

How might proportional representation be implemented if we make a change? Does it need to be complicated?

Campaign Launch

I am officially launching my campaign! Support me if you also like democracy, equality and integrity in your elected officials.

Charges & Fees Galore

As a New Year present (actually passed before Christmas, but this hardly feels like something fitting for the season of goodwill) it seems that Hillingdon Borough Council has decided to increase the fees and costs for a number of items outside of the proposed increase to council tax. Remember that this is a Conservative council with a Conservative-run government, so any claims they might once have had of being a party of low taxes are utterly ruined, as their own council now claims that they are unable to pay for basic services through the combination of council tax and grants from central government. If you are interested, here’s a list of fees and charges they are proposing to increase: Blue Badge Increase from £2.10 to £10, an increase of 376%. Cemetaries and Crematoria Increases of up to 25% on all charges. Local Land Charges Cost of a search to increase from £15 to £45, an increase of 200%. Development Control – Pre-Application Fees Average increase of 20% across all such fees. Food Health and Safety Cost increase of 30% for provision of export certificates, attributed solely to Brexit, a Conservative policy. Parking Uplifts in cost of between 10p and 50p an hour. Total effect not listed. Resident Permits New charge of £75 for a permit application, increased cost of 9% for additional permits. Visitor Vouchers Increase in cost from £10.50 to £13.00 for 10 vouchers. Increase of 24%. Refuse Collection Increase in the cost of collecting bulky waste items from £30 to £48, an increase of 60%. Golf Obviously an important one for the council, which has decided to introduce a discounted rate for 3-ball and 4-ball groups. Clearly a very important matter to offer discounts on at a time when so many other costs are increasing. Advertising in Hillingdon People Increase of about 30% across the board. Marriages Increase of about 30% for all non-statutory marriage-related fees. Baby-naming Ceremonies Increase of 30.22% to £237 Citizenship Ceremonies Increase of around 30% for either midweek (to £136.50) or Saturday (to £170.75). Civil Funerals Increase in cost to £300, representing an increase of 30% Civic Centre Room Hire Increase of about 30% for any room. Various Other Charges There are a lot of 30% increases for things like permits, library borrowing, mostly up 30% or so. Full details available in this document: In short, this is a result of a national government that does not do enough to fund local councils coupled with a local government that clearly didn’t set aside finances in years where the country was doing well. In both cases, the party responsible is the Conservatives, who currently represent 100% of Hillingdon’s councillors and also a significant majority of MPs at national level. Current parliament of the UK, courtesy of Wikipedia This cost of living crisis is already bad enough without a council that belongs to the party responsible for the national crisis (not to mention the other crises going on) increasing costs by more than the already staggeringly high rate of inflation. You deserve better.

(Yet) More Conservative Lies

Apparently the Conservatives have released yet another poster filled with lies. As before, I have marked the claims with red crosses to show where there are either factual errors or misleading statements. This doesn’t leave a lot of content on the poster which is both factually accurate and a fair representation of those facts. These Conservative lies make us all worse off, and as a result I wanted to dissect their claims. I will address each of their claims below under their own headings. Once again, it is disappointing that the Conservatives reach for such outright lies after 12 years of government. Their record is frankly atrocious, and one they should be ashamed of. The only thing they could do as a consequence right now is to call for a general election in the hope of letting someone more competent and less ideologically-driven run the country, as their policies have made life worse for everyone but the ultra-wealthy. The Conservative Party’s latest work of fiction. Saving £900 off energy bills What the Energy price cap actually means This is a genuinely bizarre claim to make. Yes, the government introduced a cap on energy costs, but that same government also presided over unprecedented increases in costs for energy. In fact, the £900 saving mentioned here only partially offsets the increase that we have seen to our household energy bills. As you can see from the chart here, the expected energy price is due to skyrocket from £1,138 to an estimated £3,615 from next month. Compared to this, an annual saving of £900 is meaningless. On top of that, this annual saving isn’t a gift, it’s merely a deferment of cost to future years, meaning the Conservative “gift” is actually just a debt to be repaid in future years. This is one of the Conservative lies that negatively impacts us all. Increasing NHS funding This is an outrageous misrepresentation of the truth. Yes, the Conservatives have technically increased the funding this year, but the reality is that this increase in funding is well behind the increasing costs due to inflation. On top of that, we already know that nurses and paramedics are currently striking for fairer pay, with junior doctors likely to join them in 2023. As such, we know already that the NHS is not being properly funded. Nurses striking, courtesy of the BBC What does £6.5bn look like to the NHS? Well, the annual NHS and social care budget is around £180bn, including care costs. Of that, some £153bn is passed to the NHS. Simplistically, that £6.5bn therefore represents 4.2% of the annual budget. Worse yet, this is spread over 3 years, so the actual annual increase is under 1.5%. Considering the current rate if inflation is likely over 10%, this represents a real loss of value of over 8.5% each year. Calling this an increase to NHS funding is frankly an insult to our intelligence as voters and to the staff of the NHS currently struggling to make ends meet because of Conservative incompetence. Recruiting 20,000 police officers This was a pledge, not an actual delivered target. That said, with three months to go before the deadline, the government has made steps in the right direction, recruiting some 15,000 new officers. Unfortunately for them: As such, this claim can be restated as “we have nearly undone the damage that we caused earlier during our tenure”. Not exactly something to brag about, in my opinion. Boosting school budgets Similar to the NHS claim above, it is useful to look at what this means in real terms. In terms of education funding, the budget is around £116bn, the increase in budget announced by Jeremy Hunt was £2.3bn next year and a further £2.3bn the year after that. For next year, that means the increase in budget is anticipated to be 2.0%, which again represents a huge real-value loss compared to an inflation rate of over 10%. Summary Once again, this poster is filled with Conservative lies and misrepresentations despite being pretty short. The fact that this is all they have to show for over a decade in power is genuinely pathetic, and any Conservative supports reading this blog should ask themselves why on Earth they support such blatant incompetence and dishonestly. For an alternative in the Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner constituency, try me. For all other constituencies, look at your local Liberal Democrat party.

An Early Christmas Present

We are very lucky to have a number of people working for the local party at Hillingdon Liberal Democrats, in addition to some great support from the national party. Those people keep us going. At this time, they have been working for some months on our new website, which went live for beta testing in the last couple of weeks. Our new website includes a number of great features: Jonathan Banks – Chair of Hillingdon Liberal Democrats If there’s anything else you’d like to see, feel free to get in touch and let us know!

♫ All I Want For Christmas Is… Fairer Representation in Parliament ♫

I’m not sure this will catch on as a Christmas song, but it certainly gives me a good opportunity to talk about my favourite subject – electoral reform! Given the festive season, perhaps I can talk about Proportional Representation in a slightly different way than usual. I have talked about proportional representation before in an article about cake and also on an episode of Family Politics. Who’s In Charge? Santa’s Elves, or at least a close approximation It goes without saying that Santa is the one in charge of his workshop. Of course, Mrs Claus is in charge of Santa, but for the purposes of this analogy let’s just consider Santa. This is effectively a hierarchy. What Santa says, goes. The elves have little say in how the workshop is run, despite making up the clear majority of the people present. Where the leader in question is a benevolent and competent individual, this system can work. Unfortunately, here in the UK, we have no such guarantees. Our leaders have proved time and time again that they are neither benevolent nor competent. So how might proportional representation fix this issue? Power Should Reflect Support As a basic principle, it is pretty clear that power should be based on support. Is that what happens now? The answer is no, as shown by the fact that the 2019 General Election resulted in the Conservatives getting 43.6% of the votes, 56.2% of the MPs and, as a consequence of getting majority control of the House of Commons, 100% of the legislative power. What does this mean? It means that with a minority of votes, our government got all of the power. Smaller parties, including the main opposition, have no real power other than to question the government. This means that: Party Vote Share Power Share Conservatives 43.6% 100% Labour 32.1% 0% Liberal Democrats 11.6% 0% Scottish National Party 3.9% 0% Green Party of England and Wales 2.6% 0% Others 6.2% 0% Source: Wikipedia You can see from the table above that the Conservatives are only in a majority position now by essentially stealing the votes that were cast for smaller parties, most notably the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. This is a consequence of our First-Past-The-Post system for elections, and this distortion is why the Conservatives fight so hard against electoral reform. If you look at this and think it’s fair, then I don’t know how to persuade you otherwise except to get you to think of how you would view it if your chosen party wasn’t a beneficiary of this system. Our current system is designed to give majority control to minority parties. Almost all other votes as discounted. This has the perceived advantage of allowing fast lawmaking, but that speed comes from a system which discourages co-operation for the good of the country. Indeed, the traditions and customs of the Houses of Parliament start with the assumption that there will be a government and an opposition rather than a collaboration. Incidentally, do you know how the distance between the front benches in the Commons was decided? It is two extended sword lengths, stemming from a time when crossed swords were actually a possibility if the benches weren’t sufficiently separated! Swordsmen getting ready for a fight An Alternative How might we fix this problem? A simple solution is just to assign seats according to votes. That would mean that the 2019 election would have resulted in the following: Party Vote Share Number of Seats Actual Number of Seats Conservatives 43.6% 283 365 Labour 32.1% 209 202 Liberal Democrats 11.6% 75 11 Scottish National Party 3.9% 25 48 Green Party of England and Wales 2.6% 17 1 Others 6.2% 40 22 Source: Wikipedia (and my own calculations) In addition to this is the Speaker, who is an MP but does not participate in votes or elections for the most part, which means that his constituency is effectively unrepresented as well. This takes the total to 650. If the system was adjusted to make seats match votes better, we would have 64 more Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons, and would be a very significant force that would need to be negotiated with and considered for all major decisions. On their own, the Conservatives would not have the power to implement any legislation, so this persuasion would be absolutely essential for introducing any new laws at all. This would give power to smaller parties in the form of influence to pass legislation for the price of support for their own initiatives at a later stage. Under Proportional Representation we would see much better representation of a multitude of views and backgrounds within government debates, and views would actually need to be understood and accommodated before laws could be passed. I can only see this as a positive. Close Representation Actual enquiry from a potential constituent One argument against a change is the break in ties between constituency and their MP. I would counter this by asking whether anyone considering supporting me feels well represented now. The current MP, David Simmonds, is a Conservative politician. I have already been approached by potential constituents that wanted to talk to me in preference to him because they felt that he did not represent their interests. As such, local representation is something of an illusion. How might it work with a more proportional system? Let’s take the Liberal Democrats as an example. If we had won 75 seats in the General Election, we could assign each MP to, say, 8 or 9 constituencies. Assuming a constituency size of 70,000 and a vote share of 11.6%, this equates to 64,960 to 73,080 constituents who likely votes for Liberal Democrats. In other words, the number of people in their patch who voted for them is broadly equivalent to the current constituency size (deliberately so). What this means for the Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner constituency is that we would likely share a Conservative MP with one other constituency, so Conservative

Labour Party Problems

Our current system is broken, in that it is essentially designed to make votes a choice between two major parties in charge of the country. In fact, this goes so far as to name the leader of the Labour party “the leader of the Opposition” – the assumption is that the Government and the Opposition are basically going to swap control of the country periodically, with no real prospect of third parties ever getting into power. In my mind, this system needs a major reform, but in the interim many people might say that the Labour party is better than the Conservatives. In one sense I agree, in another I wholly disagree. In this article I will talk about some of the problems with the Labour Party (ignoring the claims of antisemitism and focusing solely on their policies). Brexit It is pretty clear at this point that Brexit was a mistake. We have not gained any economic benefit, nor are we expected to for decades, if at all. We have not gained any sovereignty that we didn’t already have. We have not freed up £350m a week for the NHS. In short, all the benefits of Brexit were lies touted by the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Our missing EU Star It is vital to improve our relationship with the EU to secure our economic future and allow us to have influence over one of the largest political blocs in the world. In likelihood, this means undoing the disaster that was the 2016 referendum, whether that needs another referendum or not. I believe it is also necessary to hold the originator of these lies to account, as a lie to influence a referendum is tantamount to election-tampering. I strongly argue that the insistence on making Brexit work is one of the major Labour Party problems, as it is a wholly unachievable goal based largely on the wishful thinking of the rabid fringes of the Tory party and backed up by lies. Electoral Reform A ballot box As I have previously written, a vote for Labour while they do not support a change to Proportional Representation is a deferred vote for the Conservatives. Changing the way that votes are run to a more proportional system will almost guarantee that no party ever gets to form a majority government again, and unfortunately Labour’s leadership have shown themselves unwilling to take this step. For this reason, I do not believe that they are working in the interests of the country, but instead are focusing on short-term gains for individuals at the top of the party. In short, a major change to the way that elections are run is vital if we want to ensure that the Conservatives never get to do what they have done to the country again. Voter ID Coupled with the refusal to get behind electoral reform, Labour has aided the Tories in restricting the access to votes that we mostly take for granted by abstaining in the Lords on the fatal motion introduced by the Liberal Democrats to forestall the introduction of ID requirements that will likely restrict minority groups disproportionately. Ultimately it was extremely disappointing to see Labour peers refusing to do the right thing here. A UK Driving Licence, which will be accepted as ID if the current Bill goes into law. Elected Second House The Houses of Parliament I believe Kier Starmer is right to state that abolishing the House of Lords as it currently stands is a good idea, but replacing it with an elected second chamber seems pointless, as we already have one elected chamber which should represent the whole of the UK. Instead, I believe it is vital to change the mandate of the second house to one of an advisory role filled with genuine experts in their field and tasked with reviewing the actions of the main House and publishing their findings. Having two Houses with separate roles makes sense. Having two that are essentially elected in the same way seems pointless. If you are interested in my views on the aristocracy as a whole, I have written a piece on that. Strikes Sadly strikes have become a necessity for many workers to negotiate even reasonable terms. Nurses, for example. Labour have said many of the right things, but their insistence that their politicians do not join the picket lines is appalling. The Labour party should be completely on the side of workers, and while this may be a political game to win more votes from the Tories, it is purely a consequence of our broken electoral system, which the Labour leadership also oppose reforming. Summary I think the most powerful point I can make here is that a vote for the Labour Party and all their problems is merely deferring the time until the Conservatives get into power again. I see a lot of #GTTO hashtags these days, but if the goal is to get them out for good, a vote for Labour now won’t do it. Instead I would argue that the Liberal Democrats make the most persuasive case, in that we are open to the same fairness that Labour espouse, but we accept that the system needs to be changed to make the UK a better, fairer and more welcoming place.