The letters column of The Times has carried letters from readers for whom AV is causing problems as, for them, it means something other than the Alternative Vote. For some, for example, it means the Authorised Version of the Bible. I know the problem. I am a member of the International Political Science Association. However, telling colleagues in the Commons that I am a member of IPSA may not be wise.
Lord Norton: People are confused by my meaning all the time. And I’m not sure I want to put them straight, all of the time!
maude elwes: Indeed. You may possibly be too young to remember that twenty or thirty years ago the Metropolitan Police utilised a highly controversial unit, the Special Patrol Group, known by its acronym. I am a longstanding member of the Study of Parliament Group, also often known by its acronym. Telling someone in the 1980s that I was a member of the SPG aroused the occasional raised eyebrow!
Lord Norton:
Yes, I can see that may present you with an ‘odd’ misunderstanding.
As you raised police, I wonder if you saw this derogatory piece in today’s Mail?
I found it extremely uncomfortable reading.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375009/Political-correctness-crippling-police-force-Gay-Pride-badges-army-medals-out.html
The “””Alternative Vote””” is an ineffectual-sideshow, I’m afraid;
because it still fails to help either The People
or Workplace sectors (i.e. of Business, Science & Technology, Education, Illness-c uring, Health-building, and Governance)
to get to grips with even the short- and medium-term Survival-Predicaments, of both All-Life-Renewable-Resources and Other Non-Renewable Resources on-Earth, and of our own Human-Race’s essential survival and thrival therein.
————————————-
Because we lack a Sustainworthy Earth Citizenship, internationally as well as nationally and locally, there have burgeoned far too many ‘memeberships’, and thereby as Lord Norton head-words “Confused meanings”.
I am a founding member of the still-secretive ISHIARS –
you won’t be able to find it anywhere on the Internet, nor be able to contact any branch of it –
it is in terms of ‘critical-mass’, merely embryo as:
The Internationally Sustainworthy Human Individual & Race Society –
(and Its highly scattered membership still doesn’t yet know that I am both one of its ongoing founding-members and a currently-proactive member of its ‘exemplary-lifestyling-core-group’ ! ! ).
I can tell you no more.
————
Therefore I remain de facto a non-participative-citizen of any nation of People, and thereupon effectively a non-participative citizen of its Nation-State
which clever-British-governance overcame of old, by having the individual known simply, and merely, as a “subject”, under their historically and massively- inchoate List of “HM’s Subjects”.
————-
So yes, you do have large collective reason, up there, for being and feeling uncomfortable about so many ‘necessary’ and different ‘memberships’ and ‘legitimately-constitutionable-Purposes, Objects-of-association and Rules’.
————-
I have just been trying
(without success despite my having paid out over £2000 for Govt-trained and supported technicians and teachers to come and set up my computer, TV, SKYplus, and Toshiba DVD recorder and show me how to best use it)
to save-to-disc David Attenborough’s “How Many people Can Live on Planet Earth” –
from which is evident that “we humans” are destroying our own Lifesupports;
and by that, are also destroying the Lifesupports of countless other lifeforms on Earth;
and likely are rapidly destroying our own future hopes of finding and emigrating to another planet somewhere out in Space;
and in which it reports, not the present people of the world as speaking-up and asking,
“If you business, experts, and government-people know this Disaster to be already in train, why haven’t you acted to prevent it ?”
but that it is some future generation of “our children” whom we must await for the asking of it.
Once more the double-barreled question of “sustain-worthy leadership” and “personally-efficient Earth-citizenship” must arise:
and one question thereunder must be
“How is it that the more indispensable a single human ‘becomes’, the more human-livings*h-l s/he must draw/be given, out of the Common Purse and out of the Earth’s Lifesupports and future Carrying-Capacity ?”
———————–
(By the way, you can bet that every-one appearing as a ‘leader’ or ‘expert’ in governmental reports and TV documentaries is drawing/being given at least two-human-livingsh-l from the Common Purse and from the Earth’s Lifesupports Carrying-Capacity).
h-l = £200 per week is one human-living i.e. sufficient for an individual human-being to become and to maintain theirself healthy, citizenlike, and environmentally-supportive.
(This £200 per week becomes the individual personal efficiency index
i.e. at living healthy, citizenlike and environmentally-supportive in one’s lifeplace75% timeframe, regardless of one’s workplace 25% timeframe efficiency and costliness).
======================
So since we are given to choose between only two future voting-systems
.1. the traditional English Racecourse “only one winner” model, of “First-Past-The-Post” (regardless of all the needs of all the other “subjects”;
or
.2. the ‘preferential’, ‘or ‘reserve-players’ multiple-names model of “Alternative Votes” (still not meeting the Primary Need for a sustainworthy-future, and only minimally meeting the needs of all of the People and more importantly of All Life On Earth)
I may have to call in “sick” on polling-day.
2200Sn10April11.JSDM.
I suspect being a member of IPSA maybe preferred over being a member of the North Acton Zoological Institute.
And in a similar vein, I wonder who will be the first to volunteer to become the next Lord Lucan?
Another side track.
The NHS is already using private companies to carry out various clinical procedures as it moves toward a full privatisation of the system.
A friend of mine was sent an appointment that looked like any other NHS booking. Nothing indicated it was unusual in any way. When she arrived she was a little puzzled but felt she may have turned up early. There was no other patient in line. And as she sat there waiting, which was a very short time, no others turned up. She wondered how there wasn’t a line of people grouching about how long they had to wait.
Low and behold a nurse, who was clean from top to bottom, including washed and combed hair, and wearing a spotless white overall suddenly stood in front of her and asked in perfect English, if she was herself. She nodded and was taken to a clean room and asked to sit in the proper spot.
The nurse was polite and began to ready her for the test, not leaving the room or making any excuses. It felt very uncomfortable to my friend this was not what she was used to. It didn’t feel right.
Then, just as the medication was to be used, the young women asked her to sign a form absolving her company of any responsibility should the medication affect her adversely. My friend began to question her as to this unusual practice, only to then be told it was a private company contracted to the NHS via this Borough.
By now she was entirely uncomfortable and wanted to know fully what she was signing away. You are not asked to sign anything unless it is to eliminate a potential problem for the people who are asking you to sign. It was not to do with payment.
As a consequence my friend refused. She was then told her GP had made the appointment and arranged it with the consent of the people who pay the bill. And would my friend give this lady the permission to look into her computer details as she could not access them without her permission.
My friend left upset and fearful and again having to face another visit to her GP and possible admonition for refusing to use a private concern that had not been explained to her or agreed to by her.
So, all this open debate we are hearing about was a policy already put into motion by the previous government as it is not possible it would take such a short period to get into motion from the time this lot declared their intentions.
We are being lied to people. They already have the privatisation set up. And if you look at who is getting the contracts I have no doubt they will be foreign owned companies. Or, companies many in Parliament will have contacts with.
A revealing moment! Do listen to this recent bbc link, 8 minutes in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010dmhk/Victoria_Derbyshire_18_04_2011/
One thing that makes my blood boil is the ‘working assumption’ among media types that the ‘man on the street’ is a simpleton. Radio 5’s Victoria Derbyshire is caught out here. Transcript of this brief exchange below…
Victoria: How would you describe it?
Man: It’s a majoritarian system, but it tries to be a little bit more proportional than ‘first past the post’.
Victoria: Ok, is this the kind of conversation you have in the pub with your mates?
Man: Yeah, actually, we do have a little bit of this.
Victoria: Yeah? Majoritatarianism is in your vocabulary?
Man: Err, yeah …..