Total Bankers

HSBC has been fined £10.5 million today for conning old people out of investment money. I won’t go into detail as its there in the news story and to be honest the actual detail isn’t what bothers me. What annoys this here Douieb is here is a case of a large multinational bank with billions of pounds and no chance of being hit by any recession or Eurozone crisis, taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable citizens of the UK. For doing this they receive a headline that’s not even picture worthy on the BBC site, so may go unnoticed by some and a fine that they could pay with the spare change in their pocket and still have enough left over to buy all the houses on your street and your dog and your dad. Probably. If anyone else hurts, confuses, or upsets the elderly in this country, its a big news story. If anyone attacks or causes harm to any of this country’s most needy, then they are scorned for the rest of their lives, with big newspaper spreads and media vitriol. Yet if the banks or the government do it, its much less of a crime.

I’m really not sure how this continues to happen. Well I do know, its because the banks have a veritable monopoly on this country and the way its run, resulting in them escaping paying proper penalties in government budget strategies – Osborne’s recent announcements included only a 0.088 percent rise in bank levy, while public sector pay takes a full 1% pay rise cap – and yet we are consistently being told that they need to be strengthened against the oncoming and constant financial crisis. I wish I was an inventor and could somehow find a way to add a bullshit-o-meter to everyone’s televisions so that every time one of these stories is released sirens would blare out across the streets causing dogs to be highly upset. Fact is, the UK still has a triple AAA credit rating. That doesn’t mean that we are even better at dealing with breakdowns than most, or that we have a far more extreme alcohol problem – though that’d wouldn’t be incorrect. What it means is that our financial system is still lauded around the world and our advice still sought after. Our banks are currently some of the strongest in the world, so our need to feel sympathy for them is really very minute.

Yes the Eurozone crisis may affect the British banking system but what will affect it more is the vulnerable being robbed of their money until they have nothing left to invest in them. The people being made unemployed and all pennies drained to the extent they can’t pay tax or contribute back into the system which will mean the government will lose even more funds to just throw at the banking system until they can all swim around like Scrooge McDuck. It needs to be highlighted that companies like HSBC, the same companies who have given their executives 49% pay rises in recent times, are exploiting people and the fines should be far far higher to reflect just how appalling it is. Sure Clegg has promised this weekend that the Coalition will be bringing in new legislation to curb these executives high pay, but getting Clegg to announce a policy basically seems to mean that it won’t happen or at least won’t happen correctly. I very much feel that he is the political equivalent of giving someone an albatross as a present to celebrate their new boat.

I’m not sure that anything will change anytime soon. The government are so heavily dictated by the banking sector that unless that changes, nothing else will. Notions of making political parties funded by tax payers were quickly shunned for fear that if they weren’t being bribed, politicians wouldn’t know what policies to back. Probably. Maybe we should all set up our own bank. Like the co-op but slightly easier to get to (there aren’t any co-ops near me). Monks started the banking system (which I think says a lot about the corroboration between religion and greed) and blow me if we can’t all get robes and bald patches and do it ourselves. I honestly can’t think of many other ways to deal with this aside from us all leaving us respective banks and keeping our cash in our mattresses from now on. Hang on. That is a much better idea than becoming a monk and far less sexually frustrating. Though judging by my bank account my mattress would be filled with pennies and I can’t imagine that’s all that comfortable for performing on either. God damn banks. Let’s all just hope this terrible corporate greed has a vicious demise soon.

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Ranty Rant Rant

I’m a whole bundle of vexed this morning. Not sure what a bundle of vexed would be like but I suspect it to be like the creature in Brett Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park. If haven’t read that, imagine Gnasher trying to eat himself. That’s probably about right. Why such rage oh Tiernan? Well blogees, let me tell you. Are you sitting uncomfortably? Good, that makes me feel slightly happier. So let’s start with selfish reasons to be a mini Zack De La Rocha:

Last night I had a mediocre gig. Yes, this could well be my fault. There have been several occurrences where my own incompetence or lack of experience has meant I’ve delivered a less than perfect show, and last night my slightly muggy head didn’t put me in as competitor for the best Friday night comedian awards. However, the main reason things weren’t stupendous and brilliant was because the room I was in was not at all suitable for comedy. There’s very little you need to get comedy right and while the audience may have had the things they need – good viewpoints, ability to hear – the comedians didn’t. From the stage it was impossible to hear anything the audience said due to acoustics, meaning as a compere I struggled to hear any responses often giving retorts that were way off the mark and a total inability to deal with heckles. On top of this, the lighting was so bright I could only see the front row, and every time I spoke I could hear my own voice echoed back at me three times. Essentially this gig was an ambush trap for MCs. The only way to play it was to do material out to the crowd completely ignoring them and making the whole event feel like we were just reading scripts out to a brick wall, as the laughter dissipated around the audience and not at all back to the acts. Yet this place runs comedy every Friday and Saturday night, knowing full well it should never have comedy in it. If you want comedians to give a good show, you have to at least let them have the tools they need to do that, rather than let them play with a handicap. I’ve got to compere again tonight, which is a shame. At least this time I’ll know not to give a shit, plough through and get off, feeling sorry for the audience that has to endure that.

Right, anger making thing number 2. Slightly less selfish this one:

Cameron and Osborne today have stated that the Eurozone crisis will affect the UK, warning that cuts will get harder. This is, once again, a huge bullshit tactic to make everyone accept another series of awful ‘money saving’ strategies that the government wouldn’t be able to get away with without an excuse. The Eurozone crisis won’t affect the UK in a way that will need to take cuts from the public sector. The UK is donating £40bn which it has from a reserve and has made concessions for as part of its overall cuts plan. Aside from that we still have to remember that while some countries in Europe are suffering that the UK still has its triple A credit rating, something even the US doesn’t have, as our debt is still far less than most Western countries. In fact investors are still very keen on pouring money into the UK, not least because of our tax avoidance system. The trouble is that the government don’t want to make that clear otherwise they would receive a much larger objection to their destruction of the welfare system, British education and public sector jobs, nor would they be able to allow the private sector to barge in and fill their pockets in quite the same way.

We have had, in one week, news stories about cuts to the army, William Hague receiving money from an oil company to bribe investment in Libya, MP’s telling the workers they can have a ‘token 15 minute strike’ – which is the most patronising thing I’ve ever heard, like telling a child they can have a sweet if they just calm down, an NHS hospital being privatised (which it appears, was actually introduced by Labour under Blair, and has been carried on by this government, proving that all the parties have the same selfish interests at heart) at the same time as we’re being told NHS patient treatment is poor. At no point are we told that the NHS would have better treatment if it was given better funding and care, and staff workers weren’t so overloaded with patients. At no point is the direction of the news in defence of our healthcare system. It’s just getting very tiresome hearing again and again why we should tolerate all these actions and yet the excuses and reasons are holding less and less water. I hope on November 30th all the union workers strike all day and damage our not as bad as you’d think economy as much as they can to make a mark.

 

Steam released. There will be jokes again tomorrow. Unless tonight’s gig sucks them from my soul.

Size Of The Fight In The Dog

I thought I’d wait and type today’s blog after watching David Cameron do his speech at the end of the Conservatives Conference. It’s the last of the three main parties meetings and probably, or at least I thought so, the most important to pay attention to for the key clues as to how much worse they are going to make things in coming months. So far there has been nothing I wasn’t expecting, with no further give on the NHS situation, more talk about avoiding Europe and Theresa May being a mega twat. However Cameron’s speech was slightly unexpected. Not in a good way of course, but more in the way that I really wasn’t expecting him to peddle such twaddle. Yes that sentence read nicely didn’t it? I know. Towards the end spouting such lines as ‘its not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog’ made it quite clear that he isn’t really saying anything. I mean what does that mean? Look at it. Read it again. Nothing. It means nothing. Unless he is planning on spending public money on one huge Trojan dog to carry out wars in? Or perhaps he is so blind to the reality of the world that he believes Innerspace to be a documentary? Or maybe know that the barbarity of fox hunting has been mostly curbed, posh Tories are resorting to boxing with dogs on their fists? Whilst grim, I’d like to see two young Conservatives hit each other around the face with a disgruntled pit bull.

 

Ultimately though, it was a speech that said what he thought he should say whilst completely ignoring any actual issues that face the UK. Harping on about aid abroad it felt like that obnoxious person you meet who sponsors a goat in Africa but would never buy a Big Issue or speak to someone that earns less then them as its slightly too close to home. Cameron spoke of being for ‘gay marriage’, as though he’d been reading what was the ‘right on’ thing to say from ten years ago, whilst then taking his values back even further when talking about just how important marriage is and the need to be a ‘family friendly government.’ They aren’t and they never will be as long as they continue to cut child benefits, damage the education system and make changes that can really harm a single parent. Unless its friendly to only some very specific families I assume? Ones that earn enough that none of the changes will affect their child’s chances of getting into private school.

 

Going through line-by-line it again seemed that all he wants to do is shirk responsibility back to the people most affected by the coalition’s changes. ‘So much of my leadership is about unleashing your leadership.’ Is there any clearer way of sounding like one of those bosses who allocates everything to his staff then puts his feet up and has ‘another day off’? Another classic was ‘those with money bearing biggest burden’. Really? What the burden of having to find somewhere else to hide their money offshore so they can contribute even less to society? It was all sickening. I honestly feel like he could have walked on stage and said ‘ You did it all! It’s all your fault! And you fix it!’ before announcing that no, he won’t be helping with costs, then laughing, jumping in a plane and going skiing. I guess that would have just been a bit too unsubtle and made sure that all those thousands of idiots that are still going to keep this government in aren’t completely brainwashed by his X-Factor style intro video and One Show quality jokes. No, thanks to today they’ll still be more concerned about where Samantha Cameron got her jumper from. The answer is: your toil, hard work, and tax payments. And is she grateful? No.

As he left they played the New Radicals ‘You Get What You Give’. Appropriate considering Cameron has a cabinet of bigoted, bumbling arseholes and a country in ruin. His fault. Not ours.

Living In A Shell

When there is a snail comfortably living under your sofa, I think its an indication that you need to clean the flat. It looked throughly upset to be disturbed, retreating into its shell with a look that almost conveyed dismay at the noise the hoover was causing and the upset and waking him up from his comfy slumber. I have no idea how long he’d been there but I unceremoniously lobbed him out into our garden with a lovely underhand bowl. We aren’t allowed sub letters in the flat. So that’s that. Now, instead of doing many of the trazillion things I should be doing I am making sure its a home for me and Nat again and not for slimy uninvited guests. There really are a lot of things I should be doing. Post-Edinburgh several things have popped up and all of them require the most boring of admin to get rolling. So knowing how important all these things are to further my career, I’ve spent time in the sunshine, listened to music I haven’t heard in ages and evicted a snail. I’m fully aware this is not helpful to anyone. Not least the snail. Who, to be fair, at least always has a home wherever he’s thrown, so it’s not too bad.

 

One thing I really should be doing is paying attention to the political situation of the UK. This is mostly because after writing an Edinburgh show about politics I have foolishly decided I should keep writing material on such a subject, happily jumping on board my high Shetland pony to spout what I think with jokes in it. Sadly I haven’t got much thought about anything at the moment. Hearing the unions are planning a national strike only confuses me as to my opinions. On the one hand – to be fair, the bigger hand – I am extremely pleased they are taking such action. Its really important that everyone sticks together and challenges all the proposed changes not only to pensions but also jobs and wages. This week we’ve seen both a rise in unemployment horribly juxtaposed alongside a banking reform that while it may be better for the economy is only going to affect personal customers charges most and leave the banks still gaining profit. So anyone that is willing to protest about that is a champion in my book. And my book is brilliant and only contains worthy champions. Like Danny. On the other hand, I know they will interrupt many people’s days, several things won’t work and I’m pretty sure that of all the days that I’m going to accidentally set myself on fire, it’ll be the day the Fire Brigade strike. Then as they put out my burning flesh and cradle me into an ambulance, I’m going to call my saviours ‘scabs’ and as a consequence be dropped from the ladder. Ok, so really, I’m just backing the strike, and I think, as I’ve said in my Edinburgh show, if you go on strike then you care about your job and you want to afford to be able to do it.

 

But beyond the strikes, I’ve really lost grasp of what’s going on. To be honest, it seems like a constant repetition of what’s gone before. More dismay about the causes for the riots, more upset about hacking to the extent the Met police have now hired a Liverpudlian Stazi leader to take over, and all the constituency boundaries are changing again despite only changing recently and once again probably benefitting someone or other in some way or other that I won’t understand. So that’s why I’m spending time creating snail mail instead. It is currently too dull to care about. This is terrible trap I have been in before and somehow must escape otherwise I’ll abandon all hope of continuing to be a political comedian and return to spouting the nuances of more mundane life. Or something. Hopefully the snail won’t move back in, Ken Clarke will say something racist or sexist and a former Nazi Youth officer will open a free school and we can be back on a roll anytime soon…

Freedumb

I never have to say those words again! AHAHAHAHAH! Never! Never ever again! HAHAHAHAHAH! Never do I have to repeat the same jokes and words again and again blurting them out like a dead behind the eyes automaton, trapped in a verbal groundhog day! Never do I have to go hide in my tiny dressing room/cupboard peeking behind the curtain at people sitting on the front row wondering if they’ll be nice again! AHAHAHAHA! Never will I have to deal with being unable to see out of the giant polar bear outfit stumbling around an inflatable igloo hoping I don’t accidentally knee a kid in the face again (yes, I did it once. That along with the children yesterday that ate the polystyrene snow despite me and Tim telling them not to mean there will surely be a court case on our hands very soon). Never do I have worry everyday that the news might mean I have to rewrite bits to do with a bear/riots/MPs/anything else. Never ever do I have to be concerned that incompetent flyerers are selling my show as ‘brand new Irish comedian’. Never ever do I have to go through the whole ordeal of this ridiculous month all over again! Ever! Well, until next year. Maybe. And until I do my solo show in Shoreditch in two weeks time. And the Adventurer’s Club over Christmas. Sigh. But until then….never ever again! I am a free man! I am not a number etc etc.

 

I’m bloody pleased it’s all over with again. Not that I’ve had a bad time. Far from it infact, but by Jove and who ever else it may be by, I’m a tired man. Last night, being the last night, I aimed to have a late one, drinking till the birds sang, and still ended up yawning by 1am and going home like Johnny Loser of Losertown. And you know what? By having a tame one, more good stuff has happened than ever before. Yes it could be just because I’ve (not my words or opinion. Or in fact anyone’s words or opinion. Merely a suggestion/lie) got a better show/s than usual. It could also be that I’ve now been going for 8 years as a comedian and so things are finally clicking. Or, and more likely, it could be because because I wasn’t drunk and/or hungover every single day and actually worked my arse off instead of working on drinking it off. I don’t want to put two and two together and conclude that the fun has drained from my existence but it seems to make sense. Even worse, and yes this is even worse, I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed not waking up every day with booze blues, whisky taste in my mouth, wondering where I am, before trudging off and hoping the nurofen will get me through my show and that I won’t sick on the front row (though that’s an impossibility as I’ve only ever been sick from booze 6 times in my life. 4 from downing 8 pints in a row, one from a milky coffee post drinking and one due to cigar smoking. FACT. I have a stomach of steel. And a body that hates me). Horrible isn’t it? It’s almost like I’ve been grown up about it all. I promise it’ll stop soon. Promise. Maybe.

 

What next? Well as the comedian’s new year will pass this evening – at least that’s how I like to think of it – I aim to spend the next day at Edinburgh zoo, and then go home and be in a coma till at least Saturday, at which point I’ll check my answer phone messages and then return to coma until Bestival where I will actually ruin myself to make up for my sensible month. And post that? We’ll see. Though ‘Tiernan Douieb Schmiernan Schmouieb’ won’t write itself…..

 

FREE! FREE I TELLS YA! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Yes to AV pt 2

So it turns out maybe not being on Young Person’s Question Time was a lucky escape. I think, but I’m not sure, the reason I was dropped was to do with the big agenda change to spending half of the show talking about Osama Bin Laden’s death instead of just AV, which seems more reasonable. And so in the end they may not have had Dawn Porter, but with a couple of panelists aside, they were mostly pompous old bigots who spent their time shouting over questions from young people, slamming them down without providing any real answers or solutions. Like a tiny analogy for the current government. Satire, eh? Satire? No? Oh. I would have spent the entire time telling David Starkey that he looks like a character from the League Of Gentlemen before saying ‘shut up shut up shut up’ consistently at him everytime he spoke, while insisting Tristam Hunt made eye contact with someone so he was forced to say something that wasn’t just his scripted ‘Tory in Red Clothing’ mantra, before jumping over the desk and punching Nick Boles. I could spend this blog telling you about every little thing that was wrong, but instead I want to follow up on my promise from yesterday’s entry on the whole AV thing. It saddened me that young voter’s on the show were so brainwashed by the No to AV campaign that they were getting worked up about things that were lies, with so few of the panel willing to explain what the truth of the situation was. Nor did anyone seem to express what I think is the main reason for voting Yes.

 

I understand that many young people don’t want to vote for AV because Nick Clegg is for it, and he’s let their entire generation down with his backstabbing decisions on tuition fees. But as I put on Twitter last night, voting No to AV because you hate Clegg is as ill thought out as saying you love abortion because you hate Justin Bieber. There’s no real correlation between the two. If AV comes in, Clegg has no extra chance of getting in than he did before. I’m fairly sure he’ll get even less votes next time regardless of the voting system because people don’t trust him anymore and never will again. Who wants to give votes to a turncoat? And votes are what count, not a voting system. If we change to AV and no one votes for Clegg, he still won’t get in. That’s how it works, that voting thing.

So having spent a blog explaining AV and FPTP yesterday, with help from cats, and throwing that extra bit in there, let’s dwell on the non-technical principles and more the moral and socialogical ones. Petty petty reason first – yes Clegg is voting Yes to AV, but Cameron, Rupert Murdoch and the BNP are voting for No to AV. I hate all of them and would never want to be on the same side of the argument as them on such a thing. That aside there are far more important reasons to vote yes. You have the fact that the No to AV campaign has run mostly on lies and hyperbole since it started. Yes, I don’t think a voting reform should need a campaign for either side to begin with. Its unnecessary money churning and spin doctoring, when, if there wasn’t such at stake for either side of the Coalition in terms of losing face and power within their leadership let alone anything else, then really we should just have one national campaign explaining both and saying ‘Hey, you’re all clever people, why don’t you just choose?’ Instead we have one campaign that’s hugely underfunded to promote saying Yes and one campaign that is supposedly cross party political and non-biased, yet almost entirely funded by Tory sponsors who have a keen interest in keeping them in power via whatever means necessary for their own private welfare.

Then, as I mentioned before, there is the fact that the No campaign has been run using factless statements and patronising themes. We’ve had all the adverts telling us that either babies won’t get incubator systems, or soldiers won’t get correct gear because choosing AV will take up £250 million in new machines and equipment to make it work, which is TOTAL BOLLOCKS. Australia currently has AV and doesn’t use machines at all. It would mean merely a change in the word document that is used to print the ballot papers and, I dunno, maybe the cost of an extra pencil or two from all the wearing down a nib might have making three markings instead of one. I guess. So already, you might ask, why would a campaign lie to get votes? Surely if AV is not the right choice, you should be able to persuade people of that with the actual facts and we can see it for ourselves?

But no, this was followed with Baroness Warsi saying a vote for Yes is a vote for the BNP, despite the BNP being quite clearly on the No camp. If anything, AV would hinder the BNP because they will never ever get enough 1st votes to avoid being eliminated in the first round. Then all the BNP’s voters second votes would be counted instead, avoiding any BNP seats reaching parliament at all, unlike the last FPTP European election where we gained two of the racist bigots. So again TOTAL BOLLOCKS.

We then have the arguement that only 3 other countries in the world have it. This is true, but then again, very few countries use FPTP either. Yes the US does, but it uses AV and PR within all its state elections which are a large part of its overall elections. We weren’t offered PR but that’s because it would be the best option and detrimental to both the Lib Dems and Tories so of course, they won’t make that an option. Tackling the last few No to AV points: 1) It will produce more coalitions. No. Wrong. The way people vote produces more coalitions and the fact that at the moment we are disillusioned  all the parties means whatever system we use we’ll probably have Coalitions for a while until someone decides to actually represent the people. 2) It allows the third placed candidate to win. No. Wrong again. Read yesterday’s blog for how it works and stop trying to confuse people. Admittedly, confusing people appears to be a main part of the No campaign, treating people like idiots and saying they won’t understand how it works. People are brilliant, intelligent and have invented things like rocket science and brain surgery to jump on a cliche. AV is none of those things and why we should ever support a snobbish, Eton elitish campaign that says everyone else to too thick to get it, I just don’t know.

But, and hopefully you’re still awake by now, the main reason I am voting for AV is nothing to do with any of that. Its do with the fact that its a change. Voting yes says you are unhappy with the way things currently are. In a society where people demonstrating and speaking their minds are ignored or worse, suppressed by the police state, we have this one rare opportunity to push ourselves a tiny step forward to making things different to how they’ve been for hundreds of years. Voting yes will Cameron on the back foot in a way he will be unable to ignore, unlike the 500,000 people that told him at the TUC march that we need actual change, not the misery he’s providing on the back of his electoral offer of the same thing. We’ve only ever had two referendums in the UK and the last was 1975. Things have been the same since then. So let’s embrace this and change it.

If you’re happy with how things are, then vote No. I really don’t mind. But please, overall, just vote. Just take the one thing that hundreds of years ago an entire sector of class had to fight for, then women had to fight for, and now people just treat with a yawn and ignore. Go tomorrow and whether its Yes or No, just take two minutes out of our life, put your cross in one box and vote.

Wow. I think that’s the most serious blog I’ve ever written. Let’s hope come Friday I can happily go back to complaining about Doritos deciding on the flavour of ‘cool’ once again, rather than screaming in frustration at the ignorance and apathy of others.

Questionable Times / Yes to AV pt 1

I was meant to be on Young Person’s Question Time tonight discussing the AV issue on BBC3, but sadly this morning I received a message saying I had been dropped as they had ‘found other panelists’. I suppose this is fair. There are panelists everywhere, as far as the eye can see, and it seems reasonable that they would drop me who’s spent some time researching it all and writing jokes about it and then put Dawn Porter on from Balls of Steel. Oh wait. No its not. Bitter much? A bit. To be fair, I was terrified at the thought of being backed into a corner about something that I would never have had a clue about, but at the same time felt I’d really got the grasp of all the AV arguments – for and against – and was willing to say my bit, no matter how sarcastic Richard Bacon got. So today’s blog will impart some of that knowledge as best I can and then you lovely people can make your own minds up come Thursday. You should watch the show anyway as the excellent Laurie Penny will be on, along with some other great panelists, and I think everyone should hear all points of view about it possible. I fear that all the Bin Laden news will swamp any coverage this important election will have so over the next few days you’ll probably find this blog is a bit inundated with it all. Fall asleep now if it’s not your cup of tea. If it is your cup of tea then ‘urgh you drink blogs in a cup. Weirdo.’

Tomorrow I’ll explain why I’m voting AV, but today let’s just explain the whole bloomin’ thing as best I can:

So firstly, there seemed to be a mass of confusion about just how ‘complicated’ AV was, and really its not. From No to AV campaigning so far, you’d assume voting using the AV system required you putting a X in one box, a smiley face in your favourite’s box, your star sign in another and then you put them all under three cups and swap them around, take a guess and whichever you choose is your vote. Or probably something like that. No. Its pretty easy. Let’s tell you like I’m being a patronising teacher and thinking you’re all as stupid as the No to AV party makes you out to be.

FPTP – This system relies on, quite simply, giving the first candidate to get the largest percentage of votes to be the winner. Largest percentage is not at necessarily the majority and in fact, is usually far from it. The Canadian election results today prove the major flaw in this system with the right getting 39.6% and the left getting 59.5% of the votes, but the right getting the leadership. How? Well because the right voted for one specific party and the left spread their votes over the left parties they would like to elect. This means that while most of the country do not want the winning party in, that’s what they get. This then leads to further tactical voting so you usually only get a two party race – Labour and Conservatives over here – as voting for one is the only way of evicting another, creating a stale political situation. FPTP is used very little around the rest of the world right now as its deemed a mostly unfair, archaic and unrepresentative system of electing a leader.

AV – Apologies for how this may come across at first, as it was how it was explained to me and I feel its only fair to do the same to you. Y’know the X-Factor right? That over exploitative culture ruining television show? Yeah? Well you know how you vote on that? Yeah? Well that’s AV only a long long process of time. In the first week, all the votes are spread across all the contestants, the one with the least is evicted. The next week the same amount of votes are spread across less amounts of people and so on and so on until all the people’s preferences are all rounded up to find one overall winner that the majority are happy with. This is essentially how it happens. You vote for as many, or as few – essentially should you wish to just put one candidate like FPTP then you can – listed numerically by order of preference. If you’re 1st place vote doesn’t acquire enough 1st place votes to be a contender, then they are eliminated from the election and all your 2nd place votes are used for that candidates overall count to boost their numbers. This means that chances are, while your first vote is very important and due to this country’s parties and opinions, will probably count, if it doesn’t, then your second favourite candidate is quite likely to be in instead. So if first choice is Green and second is Labour, then you still end up with a better result than getting the Tories in. The other added bonus to this is, and whether you believe this or not, that you’ve shown that your preference is Green and that those are the views and issues you want to have tackled. If enough people do the same the message will be passed on to the new ruling party that they were very nearly trumped to the post by another party and they’ll have to focus on what they can do to keep the lead for the future.

We are a generally progressive country with a small majority voting for the right wing. Unfortunately the right wing all vote Tory, whilst the rest vote for Labour, Lib Dems and various independents, spreading their choices across a wide range and meaning the right with their tiny stronghold, get through. Get it? No? Well try watching this then. It has cats in it which may help:

Better? Right. Well now you know that, have a dwell on it, and tomorrow I’ll explain why I’m voting AV. And no its not to do with the type of voting system – which incidentally is what Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and lots of other parties all use for their own in house elections – but more to do with principals, ideals and the need to make steps towards various types of reform. Excited? Oh, you’re asleep. Maybe its best they’ve got Dawn Porter……