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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Spokes hustings / council voting
(47 posts)-
Posted 13 years ago #
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"Consider the transport benefits of Yogic Flying"
Oh Good Lor' no! All these people who can't afford aircraft cluttering up the skyways holding everyone up and endangering themselves, I bet most of them wouldn't even wear hi-vi clothing!
;-)
Posted 13 years ago # -
Correction to my previous factually incorrect statement(!)
The Calman commission *were* convinced that devolution of power to legislate over airguns may be passed to the Scottish Government, my confusion was over the SNP demands for greater (not just air gun) weapons legislation control.(Oh and their repeated comments about Scotlands particular air weapon "problem" (according to the home office stats, fewer incidents up here and a year on year fall in the number of incidents over the last ten years, iirc a fall of 75% over the last two recorded years, if anyone cares I can try to dig out the stats... but not tonight!)) rant off.... :-o
Apologies chaps es chapesses, memory clearly failing me tonight :-o
Posted 13 years ago # -
I think Gordon Brewer was looking for a Green policy on thorium reactors but Mr Harvie didn't seem to catch it.
Just watched it on iPlayer. I wouldn't say he was caught out. He was rightly sceptical about so-called 'clean' nuclear. Brewer's parting shot about renewables needing subsidy was disingenuous, as it did not take account of the huge decommissioning costs of nuclear. Just look at Dounreay to see just how expensive, how long it takes and how problematic the process is.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"Brewer's parting shot about renewables needing subsidy was disingenuous, as it did not take account of the huge decommissioning costs of nuclear"
Not really as simple as that. Dealing with old nuclear is expensive - and there is no real evidence that new nuclear will be 'cost effect', but that's not an excuse for justifying permanent subsidies for renewables (or anything else) if that is the only thing that makes them 'economic'.
Energy production is a bit like road building. Someone says 'we'll need more in the future', so it 'has' to be provided for.
There's an air pollution problem so build a tram.
Oil is running out so replace petrol cars with electric ones.
Etc.
Posted 13 years ago # -
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Last night the SNP's Election Broadcast suggest that you put 1, 2 and 3 against their candidates so that they could have the slogan "SNP 123".There can't be many (any?) seats with 3 candidates in one party.
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Tonight Lab doing same - "123 for Labour".
Are there any wards with 3 candidates from the same party?
Will most people vote for all the candidates in 'their' party?
Posted 13 years ago # -
There are several seats in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, and Glasgow (maybe others too), where one party has 3 candidates in 4 Councillor wards (4 councillor wards seem more common in these areas).
Posted 13 years ago # -
Thanks
Surprised that any party would expect to be able to get three seats in any ward.
Posted 13 years ago # -
A lot of people will put 1-3 or 1-4 against the people they would most like to see elected - most Edinburgh wards have 3 seats, some have 4.
Some people will favour their chosen party over all others in (the few) wards where their party has 2 candidates. Others will give their 2nd vote to another party.
You only have one vote, but you list the candidates you want to get it in order of preference, and then it transfers if your early preference has more than enough to get elected or hasn't enough to get elected. (Single Transferable Vote).
A party could win 3 out of 4 seats if it had 60% of the vote. The detailed results from the first STV election show some voting patterns that might seem strange eg votes transferring from one candidate for a party to another party rather than another candidate of the same party.
Posted 13 years ago # -
One of the telling things in in Glasgow is that Labour have not put up three candidates.
In at least one area, Langside, they have one, a Mr Archie Graham. This pretty much guarantees that he will be elected but also limits their possible success to one councillor.
Some deselected former Labour councillors have formed a group called Glasgow First which clouds issues a bit. They vote with the Labour group and hence are Labour in all but name. It remains to be seen what effect they have at the election.
More than you would ever want to know about the voting system available from the Peat Worrier:
http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/rank-local-election-wonkery-glasgow.html
In Airdrie there are some wards where there are three SNP candidates and only two Labour. North Lanarkshire is, I think, the last Labour controlled council in the country unless Mid Lothian still has Labour control. It really used to be a place there the didn't need to count the Labour vote, they could just weigh it. The Westminster seat hasn't changed hands since the war. If Labour are worried in Glasgow then we could be in for interesting times. I'm also wondering what the implications could be for Miss Lamont although I see nobody on the benches, outwith Malcolm Chisholm, who has the capacity to lead the party and he didn't stand at the last opportunity so she may be safe for now. It might not be good for them to keep her but ditching her wouldn't be smart either.
Of course, going back to Mr Graham's secure selection in Langside, this may have nothing to do with his wife being a well known mother by the name of Johann Lamont…
Posted 13 years ago # -
Not sure if Labour is any worse in 'jobs for the boys/family' than other parties. Galloway/Bradford shows it's not just Glasgow!
The SNP has had it's clans (appropriate word intended) and this today - http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/politics/snp-rivals-rigged-ballot-with-influx-of-family-and-friends-says-councillor-1-2229087
The Tories, of course, like the heriditary process.
The current council voting system has a lot to do with the Electoral Reform activities of Edinburgh's own Andrew Burns (from Aidrie of course).
Consequently he is not entirely popular with the 'weigh the vote' end of his own party - E.G.!
Posted 13 years ago # -
On the subject of nuclear power, which people were earlier, people might find this interesting, I did: Why more nuclear power does not make any sense.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Conclusion of LONG post from wfb's link -
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One major change which is likely to have an impact on that is a new phenomenon in Scottish politics: multiple candidates from the same party, standing in multi-member council constituencies. The peril, potentially, is that your vote is split between your candidates, and so neither wins, rather than returning two candidates of the same tribe, as intended. In Glasgow in May, the SNP will be running two candidates in twenty of the twenty one council wards, and as many as three in Govan. Similarly, Labour is running between one and three candidates in the various wards across the city.Unlike the closed lists used for our Holyrood elections, voters in Glasgow will be able to single our preferred candidates in their ward rather than simply selecting a party. The Labour voter, for example, who rates one candidate but despises another will be able to direct their electoral support accordingly. No doubt the headline council results and overall balance of power will receive the greatest attention in the press, but it will be fascinating to see just how far the parties' new multi-member strategies will work out - or precipitate unmitigated electoral disaster - in Glasgow.
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Posted 13 years ago # -
@cc useful link.
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If you invest a lot of money in more nuclear power plants, you can’t take any of that and give to a family in a failed state, like Somalia, to help fix there power shortages. But if you rather invest it in cheap solar power, like Nanosolar or First Solar, you can even sell a Somalian a power plant, at the family level, without a major risk to them, their surrounding or the environment, and it is simple enough for even my old grand mother to operate.The majority of the increased power need in the world is in the countries which are not well developed and it would be foolish to believe that we could help them by building and operating a nuclear power plant. In fact you can’t run an operate a nuclear power plant unless you have sophisticated infrastructure, in the shape of a functional government, national administration, education and technology, so it is no real help for the developing world.
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Which reinforces the view that 'energy obsession' in 'the west' is perhaps a bit selfish.
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On the other hand, things like energy efficiency, and some of the cheaper renewables are a factor of six better. So for every dollar you spend on nuclear, you could have saved five or six times as much carbon with efficiency, or wind farms,”"
Pretty much covers the political/technocrat obsession with 'big solutions'.
Posted 13 years ago # -
@crowriver Though the beauty of the electoral system is that you can vote for several candidates, in order of preference.
Of the order of least dislike/distaste...
;-)
Robert
Posted 13 years ago # -
It was pointed out to me recently that people who only put one or two preferences sometimes do not have their vote used fully.
This can either be because the one candidate wins with more votes than the threshold needed to become a councillor or when the candidate comes out bottom. In either case the votes are not reallocated because there are no choices on your ballot paper left to allocate them to.
Parties who ask voters to only vote one or two are contributing to a situation where Councillors are then elected with less than the threshold number of votes.
So rank the other candidates (after the Green party candidate, naturally) until you can no longer stomach ranking them.
Personally I'm going to look at my list of candidates again, to do a wee run through. Just to make sure I get it right on the day. One week to go!
Posted 13 years ago # -
and make sure you check out the POP 'political esponses section to see what your councillors and their parties have said: http://pedalonparliament.org/political-responses/
Posted 13 years ago #
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