Think for a moment, if they had a good argument for voting against AV, why do they only use sniping and sneering? Why do they try to scare people with threats of “the BNP will be stronger” (far from true, ask the BNP)? It’s because they’re scared they’re going to lose their unfair advantage.

They don’t want the millions who voted against them in the last election to have an equal say. Despite this, if AV is so awful, why would so many Labour MPs be in favour of it when they know it’ll make their work harder? The reason is simple; they believe in democracy and AV will result in governments that are closer to what the WHOLE nation wants.

Here are a few No Voter myths exploded:

• “The Lib Dems would always be part of a coalition government” RUBBISH! – Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University has calculated that the 1997 election being run under AV would have given Tony Blair’s Labour Party an even bigger majority. In 2010, the LibDems would have only won about 20 more seats but that would have made a Labour/LibDem coalition more feasible, which probably better reflects what the 7 million LibDem voters and 9 million Labour voters would have preferred. In the 90 years that Australia has used AV, it has elected only one coalition, while Britain has had at least three and Canada’s provinces even more. Both of them use First Past The Post.

• “AV is unfair because supporters of fringe parties can end up having their vote counted five or six times.” TWISTING THE FACTS! What they’re actually scared of is that those voters have any say at all. Only one of your crosses on your ballot paper can actually affect the result. It might not be your first choice but it means your opinion is counted. For the first time, voters for party’s other that the main two are heard.

• “Only three other countries use AV” NOT TRUE. France and Ireland use similar systems. So do many British unions and the Conservative and Labour parties of Great Britain use it to choose their leaders. If it’s good enough for them, why not us?

• “It takes ages to count and it has to be done by machine” – NOT TRUE. The Australians have been counting their elections this way since before most of Australia had electricity. If they can do it, why can’t we?

• “The next election will cost £250 million under AV” – NOT TRUE. The only difference in cost is if we buy counting machines, which we don’t have to, and if we do the cost will be spread across several elections, so this is a CON.

• “First Past The Post is fair” - Only if you have a two party system. Remember the words of the Tory canvasser on your doorstep – under the First Past The Post, “a vote for anyone except us is wasted.” Very Fair I don’t think!

 • “First Past The Post is the most widely used system in the world” –  NOT TRUE. Various forms of proportional representation are much more widely used but the Conservative Party wouldn’t offer that option in the referendum. AV is the next best thing and far better that we vote for an improvement than stay with our tired old unfair First Past The Post system.

• “First Past The Post excludes extremist parties” – NOT TRUE. AV naturally gives a more balanced representation of a constituency’s electorate’s views because it takes everyone’s preferences into account. It is actually more likely to favour the parties towards the middle.

• “First Past The Post creates strong governments.” - Which is like saying we shouldn’t allow people who don’t vote for the main two parties to have their views heard. Why not go the whole hog and have a dictatorship?

• “AV would have no effect on safe seats” - NOT TRUE. It might not get rid of all of them but it will certainly reduce their numbers and it will definitely make all MPs work harder to prove their worth. It’s a good way of stopping them cheating on their expenses. 

• “Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats want the change the way we vote” – So do UKip, the Green Party and much of the Labour Party, including its leader, who was chosen by AV, and many millions of others who are sick of being told that their vote is wasted.

• “Under coalitions, any promises they made during the campaign are thrown out of the window.” NOT TRUE! Of course, coalition means compromise because the parties involved will have different views and must negotiate to see which of their policies get enacted. Don’t just take my word for it. Read the Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos from last year and compare to what they’ve done in coalition. You’ll find a surprising number of both parties’ policies succeeding, including over 60 Liberal Democrat policies. But under a one-party government, more than half the voters will never see the policies they voted for happening. Anyway, this coalition was elected under their precious First Past The Post system, so what has it got to do with this debate?

 Remember this, in the last election, over 10 million people voted against both Labour and the Conservatives. That’s more than voted for Labour. Under our current system, over one third of the country’s votes would have been “wasted”. Under AV, those voters would have been heard! I’m voting for AV because I’m fed up with being told my vote is wasted. An honest politician would be willing to fight his or her campaign on a level playing field. Take Karen Buck MP, an honourable Labour MP who is voting for AV even though she knows it would have cost her her seat last year. She’s voting for it because she knows the importance of honest democracy. Anyone voting against AV clearly doesn’t want to lose their unfair advantage. That is anti-democratic and like the NO campaign, as dishonest as a Duck House.

I want British people to vote FOR the preferences they want not AGAINST the party they don’t want. That’s why I’m voting FOR AV on May 5th.

I’ve always believed that nature and history are the best sources of advice on one’s philosophical and moral choices. True, they can be abused and misread but if they’re considered dispassionately and in depth, they can provide good guidance.  The problem is that most of us get all our nature lessons from TV and our history in lists and facts and soundbites. We forget why things are the way they are. People become so comfortable with the status quo, they assume it was always that way, not realising the pains their forebears suffered to create our system. The principles of Free Press and Free Speech and Democracy are accepted without question or reason – just as many Americans accept Jared Loughner’s right to buy an automatic assault weapon as inalienable.

But it is no good we armchair critics in Britain – and that includes our lazy news media – sitting and pointing at Sarah Palin and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh as though that would never happen here. Innaccurate and inflammatory reporting is rife in the UK. Newspapers and broadcast media alike are playing games with our lives just to see what might happen. It’s as though reporting history is no longer enough. They have to change it. 

For example, notice the way some big political “scandals” have been held back by editors for months to inflict the maximum pain on a political party.  Surely, the news media’s responsibility is to publish as soon as possible? Well, not if there’s an election looming that a news channel can deliberately destabilise.

Here in the UK, we still do things in a more sedate way than our American friends but the behaviour is no less immoral. This is not the journalism I was taught to admire. This is not the activity of a responsible free press. This is dangerous game-playing with people’s lives and with democratic society. The British media may not be as venomous or simple-minded as Fox News but it is equally manipulative. This is an abuse of privilege that is becoming more the norm than the exception.  

We smug Brits may think ourselves above our gun-toting cowboy cousins but dropped from a great height, even a fire extinguisher can be a lethal weapon. It’s about time our press woke up to the reason why it’s been given the power it wields and thinks long and hard about its responsiblities before it finds its hands covered in British blood.

Now some may say this means no change. After all, despite his protestations to the contrary, no council opposition group can vote down John Campion on the cabinet members he wants and his own team wouldn’t dare. But this stupid idea lets him do it legitimately – unless a few hundred angry people go down to the Civic Centre next Wednesday evening and demand the council agree to a mayor elected by the public. Who fancies standing?

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. On Monday, the Localism Bill was announced which, should a council so desire, makes it possible to end the dictatorial Blairite cabinet system and return to committees. It will take about 18 months to get through, so we have a long campaign to ensure that the one-party cabal that runs our district and our county into the ground is never allowed to do so again.

Neville Farmer

Parliamentary Spokesman

Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats

To we mere pawns it is no game, at all. Between them they are attempting to strangle the news media, kill off the BBC and wreck the only real opportunity for a fairer electoral system in Britain.  Already, Ashcroft lackeys are talking down the Alternative Voting system by twisting the way it works and scaring the public. Mark Garnier, the Wyre Forest MP, wrote the most distorted piece of disinformation about the way AV would have worked in the last election. He is just one of hundreds of Tories who recognise that AV means having to fight for their jobs, rather than just assuming they will win.

Meanwhile, Murdoch’s non-news channels are pulling the strings of the Tea Party movement that threatens to shatter intelligent political debate in the US. While here, he is running crying to the European Commission because he’s not allowed to buy 100% of BSkyB – a purchase that would give him domination of the British media.

His son is also stirring up a little tornado over the unfairness of the BBC’s funding. What on earth would he know or care about fairness? The BBC is flawed, especially under the watch of the visionless Mark Thompson, but it is one of the finest creations we have. Sky, on the other hand, is anything but. The BBC is a creator and sets standards (sometimes). Sky does neither. If life’s so unfair for Sky, why do the Murdochs want to buy it? Further, the Murdoch’s are trying to persuade Cameron to ditch the official ruling that news channels must be balanced. If they win we will end up with the kind of rabid rabble rousing rubbish that has given America the Tea Party – a movement of moronic, self-destructive idiocy whose success, if it does succeed, threatens the stability of the whole world. Imagine President Sarah Palin? Murdoch seems to think that would be a bit of a laugh.

What we are facing goes far beyond the moral fairy tales of Robin Hood and Citizen Kane. This is the sort of upheaval that required the Magna Carta in 1215. Almost 800 years on, we have learned little if we let these deeply selfish and detached people decide what we are allowed to know and say.

This month, Michael Gove, the Conservative Secretary of Education, will be announcing the results of his department’s review of capital spending project on schools, which will come along with the double whammy of George Osborne’s spending review – expected to be the most painful ever. So, when I went to the Liberal Democrats Conference in Liverpool two weeks ago, I wanted to collar any LibDem MP or Minister involved with schools to ask them to put in a good word for Wyre Forest. I know Mark Garnier told me there was nothing much I could do and I’m sure he’s doing what he can, but shy boys get no cake… and Wyre Forest schools haven’t had their fair share of the cake in the last 30 years.

Sadly, I was shocked to discover that Michael Gove’s department’s review seems to be a back-of-the-envelope job. As I wrote in the Shuttle last month, the agency in charge of capital spending, Partnerships for Schools, wrote to me to let me know that the DoE was taking evidence from schools, local authorities and construction firms to decide which schools needed the money most. I passed this information on to councillors, who in turn gave it to school heads and our MP.  It appears no-one was aware of this opportunity. Worse, at a meeting in Liverpool with MPs and Russell Hobby, Chief Executive of the Association of Head Teachers, I found they didn’t know about it either, including Tessa Munt MP, who sits on the Select Committee for Schools and who was shocked when she read the letter.  

It may well be that Michael Gove has no idea his Civil Servants are not doing their job, but it is his job to take responsibility for their actions.

Neville Farmer

Parliamentary Spokesman

Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats

Mark is picking a very warped way of looking at the system. The people who voted for Richard first might well have been elated, not because their second preference wouldn’t have been considered before BNP, Ukip, Liberal Democrats or Labour (in that order), but because as the second votes for each of those parties had mounted up until one candidate had more than 50%, Richard may well have beaten Mark. I think he would.

Mark subtly sells our current “first past the post” voting system as “a system we are all familiar with”. Well, after the expenses scandal, familiarity breeds contempt. He also says, “Electors are asked not to pick their favourite candidate, but to rank them in order of preference.” Typical political double-talk. He should have said, “Electors are asked not just to pick their favourite candidate, but also their order of preference for the others.” Isn’t it better to say to someone, “If you don’t get your first choice, who would you like next?” rather than, “You didn’t get your first choice so your vote is wasted?”

AV is not perfect, but it’s the system that both the Conservative and Labour parties use for electing their leader, so why not us? Are these people so much cleverer than us? Of course not. What the AV vote offers is the chance for people to vote for what they want instead of what they don’t. How many people reading this voted against Cameron or against Brown instead of for something? What way is that to run an electoral system?

AV also offers the chance for a regular turn-over of MPs, all of whom really have to prove themselves to win again, rather than sit smugly knowing no other party will ever oust them. It’s the multitude of safe seats across the country that lay at the heart of the expenses scandal. To be honest, AV may well not favour my party. It probably won’t but it’s better than an archaic system that forces people to vote tactically and gives us stale, complacent MPs.

Many of us inside and outside the coalition might be having a hard time coming to terms with this way of working. Yet, how much better is it to have several points of view at the decision making table than one with a massive majority riding roughshod over anybody else’s views as we have in Wyre Forest District Council and Worcestershire County Council? That’s why I’m voting in favour of a fairer voting system next May.

Neville Farmer

Parliamentary Spokesman

Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats

What really galls is the council’s constant use of words like ”consistency, fairness and equity” as the reason for the changes, while being anything but.  The people of, say, Franche or Sutton Park, don’t need parking permits on car parks because they have ample space on their drives or on the street. My father has a small house in Nursery Grove but it has sufficient drive and frontage to squeeze three cars; all free of charge.  In Mitton, Stourport or the narrow streets of Bewdley’s old town, many people have no parking space, at all. They can only use the car parks,  so, of course, fairness and equity are impossible. Indeed, the plans do not even attempt to be equitable. Why, for instance, is the proposed daily rate for parking in Vale Road, Stourport, double that of Blakedown? How is that consistent, fair or equitable? It isn’t and the council is either lying or in denial for saying it is.

People have cars because Wyre Forest cannot afford the comprehensive public transport system of a major city and because most people work outside the area.  It is the council’s duty to help their taxpayers to accommodate these vehicles and to do so at a fair price.  £260 per year is not a fair price. It is double that of St Johns Wood or Mayfair in London. The council knows it’s not fair, which is why it omitted the amount from its public consultation document and why it snidely remarked that the current Residents’ Parking Permits in Bewdley are “subsidised”. They are not. The council profited by half a million pounds on off-street parking last year. There is no subsidy involved in on-street parking in Wyre Forest. Anyone buying something in bulk in advance, should rightly expect a discount. It’s the same principle whatever they’re buying, including parking, and for the council, every resident’s parking permit paid for a year in advance is money in the bank.

 As to the free car park in Vale Road, the council seems determined to dig an even deeper hole for itself. Twice in the past the council has attempted to levy charges on its users, even though many of them are residents of Mitton with no choice; even though it would be damaging to the economy of Stourport’s main and beleagured shopping streets; even though everyone in Stourport believes the land was given over by Thomas Vale for the free use of Stourport residents. On both occasions the council was rebuffed by the family who gave the land for the road that bears its name, Vale.

Even the recently deleted council parking review document admitted that there was agreement that the car park would be free until a footbridge was built across the road. It gave the County Council’s disinterest in investing in such a crossing as the reason to ignore the agreement and charge fees regardless. It is a sad sign of the times that “a man’s word is his bond” is regarded as irrelevant when cash is involved. The council itself destroyed thousands of documents in the 1970s and now regards the lack of hardcopy legal proof of the agreement as reason to ignore the weight of public opinion that the agreement existed.

I met with members of the Vale family last week and they are convinced that there was such an agreement. They wrote to the council when they heard of the changes and were brusquely dismissed with a bill of sale from 1947 that “proved” the council’s right to do what it liked. The document was missing the page with the signatures and therefore was no proof, at all. It is currently posted on the council website. What else was on that missing page? And such documents usually follow a chain of correspondence to agree the terms. Where are they? Were they destroyed? The council seems happy to offer incomplete evidence as “proof” and yet dismiss the opinions of those who remember. Where’s the fairness and equity in that?

Neville Farmer

Parliamentary Spokesman, Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats

If they’d wanted it the other way, would they have put “Elected Mayor or Unelected Council Leader”? Either way, it’s wrong and anti-democratic and the council has a duty to be impartial.

Neville Farmer

Parliamentary Spokesman,

Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats

The result is a trap from which only those who already have their own homes can escape. Cutting house building will keep property prices artificially high – and therefore private sector rents, as well. Cutting housing benefit will make it impossible for many thousands of families to afford adequate accommodation. The long term cost of this is further social disruption, poorly educated young people and increased crime – all of which will cost Britain more in the long run.

In addition, those employed young people who are working to better themselves will be caught in the trap because increased pressure on banks for fiscal responsibility and the lack of affordable housing will mean they cannot get mortgages. These are the people that we older ones will be relying on to run the country when we retire. We are letting them down.

There is an alternative, however; one which would cut benefit bills and help get young people on the housing  ladder – a crash in property prices.  If British housing reverted to the sort of value it had in the 1980s – about three times the average salary, rents could fall, benefits could fall and working young people could buy their own homes.

Having spoken to a developer about this, such a crash will only work if land prices tumble, too but there is another problem blocking this. City companies have spent many years buying up land whenever it comes onto the market. Although land banking in the 19^th century started the honourable path to mutual building societies, these days it serves no productive purpose other than to make rich people richer – or to rip off naive investors. It also keeps the price of land artificially high by locking it away until the price is right, much as the De Beers company only lets its vast stocks of diamonds out in a trickle.  At current exhorbitant land prices, developers cannot profit from “affordable” house building unless the government subsidises it, which Pickles refuses to do. This is a vicious circle in which productive business and the most vulnerable of the British public are caught. It has to stop.

There is no doubt that a property crash will be painful for some. Those who have ridden the property gravy train since the eighties will find their portfolios collapsing in value. This is not to be taken lightly as it includes pension funds and many honest individuals. It will doubtless cause problems in the markets, as well. The government will have to protect those whose mortgages suddenly exceed the equity in the houses and the building societies will have to play along. After all, the building societies were the reckless ones offering outrageous loans on limited proof of ability to pay.

It will be painful but these are short term issues and certainly not as damaging as the measures the Government is planning against the poorest of our society. In time, perhaps we’ll get back to remembering that a house is not an investment but a home. Whether you live in it yourself or rent it to someone else, a home for everyone is key to a stable society and a prosperous future for Britain.

Neville Farmer

Parliamentary Spokesman

Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats