AV and Being Bothered

We the British people, the lovely United Kingdomites, the extended family of none other than the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, will be called to make a choice today.

AV it or Not AV it, mate!

For those of you in the further flung places of our wonderful world, we have a choice about our voting system. Currently we elect our politicians, like horses, in a 'First past the post' system where the chap or chappess with the greater number of Xs wins. The Alternative Vote is the choice that is on offer in this referendum, and in simple terms, is a process by which election candidates are ordered by preference. The winning condition is to receive more than 50% of the votes cast. Failure to achieve that means that the poor poppet who secured the least number of votes have the alternative choices on their ballot papers considered and re-distributed. In other words, if your No. 1 doesn't win, your No. 2 etc may gain from your vote. To me it is simple, though many are confusticated by the whole thing. 

Me, I am for the Alternative Vote. It favours a three-party system whereas the 'first donkey past the post' favours a two-party system. AV also means that, in the end, the winner of a given election has secured the greatest volume of support. The other system allows a government to be formed that may well not have the physical majority of the total of votes cast. The answer seems simple to me. It also means that my vote matters, unlike now when voting for anyone other that Tory in this area is a waste of pencil-lead. 

But my views are not why I have written this post. There is a societal cancer that lingers in the bones of our great nation. Apathy. In recent elections, the turn-out has been poor. People just don't seem to want to engage with the process. I am not sure if this apathy is born of laziness, not caring, or having too many other burdens already, but the problem is right there. AV or No AV - it is almost moot-point when the V is a minority sport. To gain half of the votes cast when only 36% of voters voted means that you can only claim 18% of popular support, and frankly, it makes little difference how we get there. However, a viable government 18% does not make, in my modest opinion.

As a Christian, I believe I have a duty to vote in this and all elections that effect me and my area. My reason for this is that the least in our society are affected by the outcome (and perhaps it is true to say that all of us are, and my ministry is to all people, not just the least by whatever measure we are working with). If I have a care for a just society I have to play my part in its formation and governance. If I have a love for neighbour, what affects my neighbour must be important to me too. Say 'Fair Trade', and you will bring every living-breathing Christians out in the goose-bumps of justice-for-all. Say 'referendum' and I fear that you will struggle to bring many out of the house. 

A New Year's Devolution

I read an article in today's Independent about the tactics that the British Government wish to employ to make us do what is right and proper. No, there won't be a deluge of the newly initiated police-people. No, there won't be a confusion of Czars - there is a special tool for people like us:

Emotional Exploitation The Nudge.

If you read this article, you will learn that the Coalition had set a seven-person working party to the task of determining what makes us tick so that they can use those emotional discoveries as tools with which to govern us. The idea of massaging 'egotism' and the fostering of 'social norms' is central to this, and is hoped, among other things, to increase giving, organ donation, the sale of condoms, and (I can only assume) making the correct decisions at successive elections - I guess that, in short, they want to make us feel bad enough to want to do the right thing. These plays to our subconscious, referred to tellingly as "Nudges" will form a part of government policy, now that its ministers have all been required to sit and read Thaler's book, "Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness" (I am assuming that I, with you if you are British, have paid for these books for them).

This is the tool to repair Broken Britain, revamp a morally bankrupt society, stop us being fatties, cause us to do for free what people used to paid for before they lost their jobs, pay for things that were once Government funded with money from our ever constricted sources of income - and in the end to be jolly nice proper people like wot we ain't at the moment, innit.

I once saw a film called 'Demolition Man' where a police-person was cryogenically preserved and defrosted sometime in the distant future. He found himself in a world of Nice, where there was never a transgression of any sort, and were one to occur, a benevolent voice would emerge from a hidden computer speaker to offer gentle chastisement. A Utopia or a Nice Hell - the film caused one to make that choice!

Anyway - I am left asking what the moral bedrock to all of this is? Where is it rooted. I see no facet of any faith in any of this, let alone Christianity. Its morality seems to be the one determined by a government based on the given needs of the given generation. In an age where that government thinks us fat and lazy, it will become immoral to be such - and we will made to feel that way. There is nothing of the 'Other' in what [little, I grant you] I have read - just a need for us all to conform to models not of our making. 

Like the world of 'Demolition Man', first instincts are that it is a wonderful wheeze. However, am I alone in thinking that it could very well be the most extraordinarily fearful development? 

Detescofication

No, I haven't got something stuck in my throat - I have been prondering the future effects of the Comprehensive Spending Review. 

As I sat and watched Gideon unwrap his plans I wondered what the real-time results would be. I noted, with some amusement that the word 'cut' was habitually replaced with the word 'saving' - prestidigitation perhaps but a shroud to the truth nonetheless. They are savings only for the Government, but without exception cuts for the rest of us. Euphemistic speechmaking at its best!

Anyhoo - I didn't want to become party political here so I won't. My role as priest is to watch and wait for the effects of these marvellous savings to become reality for the people among whom I work and to walk with them as they feel the pinch in their own way. 490,000 lost jobs - wow - that is two-thirds of the population of Buckinghamshire!

It seems to me that simple measures are the way forward, and this is but one example (not a comprehensive savings review) - and it surrounds the redistribution of wealth.

Using retail as an example, I turn my attention to Tesco. I am an example of Tescofied Man; a one-stop shopper, preferably online, for all my family's needs. Shame on me! I wonder what positive effect there would be on our local society if we all relied more on the local traders for our produce (lest we forget that it is still the harvest season). If I gave my bakery business to the High Street baker, my meat needs to the High Street butcher, my fruit and veg needs to the High Street greengrocers - and so on. I know Tesco employs lots of people, but employees-per-customer ratios for Tesco must be far lower than those for my local Butcher etc. Soon, many people will need jobs, and if we allow our shopping pounds to be more widely distributed, I wonder if more people will find some greater sense of security, that more jobs might be created somewhere. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think so. 

For me, my Tescofication is a product of over-busy living, convenience and yes, laziness. I need to rethink how I live, and yes, even spend just a pound or two more on what I buy. Surely it would be better for every shopper to spend a tenner a week more on their needs and for that money to more more widely distributed not among shareholders, but among the business stakeholders in their own community. I must also commit to this on an ethical level too, and the excesses of some Fairtradeism might have to be re-thought too. 

In short, we as Christians need to support, first and foremost, our communities and neighbours. It will cost us time, cash and convenience, but in an age where the word 'saving' means 'redundancy' then we have little choice.