The ending, redefined.

The alternative vote voting system kills babies.

The alternative vote voting system kills soldiers.

Or so the No To AV campaigners are telling us. So much for an informed debate about the relative merits and drawbacks of changing the system used to elect MPs. The desperate politicians that AV hopes to get rid of have already resorted to that favoured persuasion technique; fear.

Comically, a leaked document from the government tells us that the cost of changing the voting system is a lie.

A campaign of fear based on lies? I don’t think I want people supporting this to run our country. Do you?

Whenever you hear people complaining about ‘overpaid bureaucrats’ or ‘public sector fat-cats’, it’s usually a right-wing supporter doing the complaining. Take UKIP and the European Parliament or the Conservative Party and the UK government as examples.

Curiously, I have experienced a couple of examples lately where it is the other way round. I contacted my local county councillor to enquire whether he had any power over the grotesque salary of our beloved Andrea Hill. Disappointingly, I received no response. Undeterred, I re-sent my question and copied in the other county councillor for my area. Amusingly, the councillor who didn’t reply is a Conservative and the other councillor is Labour. Naturally, the inherent competition between them led to a swift response. I was surprised to learn that the county councillors do have control over the salaries of staff and that the Labour group had put forward a motion to reign in costly salaries. Unfortunately, this was voted down by the Conservative majority council.

Next up, a proposal by Green Party Councillor Abbott to cap the remuneration of Essex/Basildon councillors to £27k, down from £40k or more. The Conservative majority council also voted this down, deeming £27k a year insufficient to survive on.

The money grabbing politicians aren’t just in the Houses of Parliament, they’re in our town halls as well, deciding how much to pay each other! Get rid of them; this May, next May and every year after.

Does anyone have an old useless laptop hard disk that they no longer want? Capacity is not a concern, the smaller the better in fact. Thank you!