Campaigning for Health

Have just been on Grumpy RN, where it appears that civil servants from Westminster have taken a jolly to New Zealand to look at their voting system. Now, the voting system that New Zealand works is the same as the Scottish one; a mix of FPTP and a regional top up vote. (The New Zealand local elections are on this year, so I suppose that's why they went there to see it in action.)Does this mean that Westminster are considering STV after all?!


PS New Zealand also hold elections for their District Health Boards, so maybe some of our MSPs and health board CEOs should take a trip out and observe..

So now that the Lib Dems have sold their soul to the Conservatives for PR, what are they actually going to get for it? There's talk that the Conservatives might agree to AV, (Alternative Vote). It's being touted as proportional representation. It's not. It's a slightly more sophisticated FPTP system and will not usher in the new politics for Westminster if it's introduced. Let me explain why.

The problem with the FPTP system is that the country is divided into discrete parts, or constituencies. Each constituency is only allowed one MP, so regardless of how many votes that the Lib Dems may get across the country, that's not going to translate into seats.

Under AV, a vote can be transferred to another candidate. AV is the system used by political parties to elect their leader; it's also known as 'Instant Run Off'. The voting goes through several rounds, the least popular in each round dropping off until one candidate holds 50% or more of the vote. Now here's the problem. If you vote first preference for one of the big parties; Labour or Conservative, your second, third and fourth preferences will be unavailable to other smaller parties. It is only when your candidate is eliminated in a round, that it transfers to someone else. And because there is only one seat available and thus only losers that get eliminated, this means that the biggest parties hold on right until the final round. So votes will transfer from smaller to bigger parties, but not the other way round and thus you are in much the same position as FPTP.

The single transferable vote system is different. Under this system, there is more than one seat available in each area,(a multi member system) and when a candidate reaches a certain number of votes, they get elected,drop out and their surplus votes pass onto the next round. So what a party has to do is to reach a quota of votes through the rounds, say 20%; once they have accumulated that, they gain a seat and drop out. This would make a substantial difference to Westminster; the Lib Dems would have far more seats and it would be much more representative of how Britain actually votes.

So why aren't the Lib Dems pushing this? One of the factors that they may be considering is that using STV in a multi member system does tend to lead to a larger number of MPs. This is because you are trying to balance a national preference for a party, with a local preference for a particular candidate. For example, the BNP got enough votes regionally in London to get an MP under PR, but who would that MP represent? And what area would want them? The way we get round this in Scotland is that we have a 'mixed member system'. This means that 73 candidates are elected in the traditional FPTP system and then 56 are elected on the larger regional vote. But this means we have 129 MSPs, compared with 59 MPs. That's more money and more expense. Westminster would probably double in size if PR proper was brought in and in the wake of the expenses scandal, that ain't going to be popular.

The Lib Dems have some choices to make. Increasing the number of MPs is not maybe the way to win friends and influence people just now and so introducing electoral change gradually, looks more attractive. But given that they have gone into coalition with the Tories and alienated a large section of their vote, they may not get another chance to change the system and noone is going to thank them for replacing one form of FPTP for another. It's now or never for the Lib Dems and it has to be STV or bust. If they manage it, it may be the only benefit that the UK receive from what has been an uninspiring and negative election.

So, it's begun. The cuts are coming and one month from now we are having the budget. Here in Scotland, Greater Glasgow Health Board have cut 500 frontline jobs and more look set to go.

Now, we know that cuts have to be made. And you might argue that the government has no control over what a health board or trust does with its budget. But actually it has.

Here's my genius idea for anyone to take up. If the government is serious about keeping frontline staff, then it should legislate for it. That is, have a minimum legal staffing requirement in hospital wards. Also have a minimum nutrition requirement and expenditure. That way, trusts will have to turn their attention to the top heavy administration to find savings instead of skimping on nurses and food. And then maybe we might get an NHS that works and some of the waste that does go on might be eliminated.

Dear Dave; use the rapier for cuts. Not the broadsword..

The Scots are two peoples. There are those who stay and those who leave. For most of them, the high road to England is the natural departure point and as I write this I reflect that of my family, three of us have stayed and three of us have left. It's only natural - after the Union of Crowns and Union of Parliaments,all power worth a damn went to England. Those wishing to better themselves all took the road to England and for this England is envied and despised in turn; envied for the opportunity it offers, but despised for beggaring Scotland of its brightest and best. Even Bonnie Prince Charlie could not resist its lure; he did not stop at chasing the English out of Scotland, but set his sights on London. One wonders what would have happened if he had contented himself with the Scottish Crown instead of pursuing the English one as well.

In 1999, things changed. We got a parliament of our own. At the time it was disparaged as 'the wee pretendy Parliament' and 'a parish council' by the likes of Billy Connelly, but it was a shift. For the first time in 300 years, the Scots had a say over their own government. It was limited, some of the politicians weren't great (the talent had gone to Westminster as usual)but it did things.The different views on the health service, free personal care and the way that Holyrood ran itself; all these started to slowly but surely snap the leading strings between Scotland and England. We looked on bewildered at the expenses carry on in Westminster. In Scotland, all MSPs expenses go online and their interests. David McLetchie had to resign over taxi fares fraudulently claimed. In Westminster, MPs were quite happily handing out dosh for clearing out moats and building tennis courts. Henry McLeish's status as First Minister did not protect him from being called to account over the rent of his constituency office. It's not perfect but Holyrood does think and run differently from Westminster.

So why am I rabbiting on? Well, this week another change took place. The Lib Dems united themselves with the Conservatives, and unless Nick Clegg is really stupid, did so in the sure and certain knowledge that the Lib Dems in Scotland will be completely wiped out for this in the Holyrood elections next year. In all the possibilities that I had considered for the outcome of a hung parliament, I never once considered a Lib/Con pact. And I didn't, because in Scotland it would be absolutely unthinkable, political suicide. We do allow the SNP and the Conservatives to vote together on issues and bargain; but a formal pact would be completely out of the question.

I can see it from the Lib Dem point of view. No matter who they aligned themselves with, they would lose voters. Gordon Brown was discredited as a leader and any alliance with Labour would dissolve within a few months as a result. They wanted to be sure that they would get a PR referendum through before this happened, and the only way of doing that was to align themselves with the Conservatives, who are united. But ideologically, the Lib Dems have now gone to the right and there is a gaping hole on the left wing of the political spectrum in England. Labour went that way with Tony Blair in 1997; now the Lib Dems have followed.

This move has consolidated a general train of thought in Scotland; that the only truly left wing party in Scotland is the SNP. Many voters who are not inclined to nationalism are turning to the SNP because it represents the socialism that Labour used to offer. And in that respect we have been leaving England for a while. But with this move, England has left us. The past couple of days have had a quality of unreality about them as we watch at a distance and wonder where we go now.

Westminster feels old and tired and far away. And those of us who care about the NHS are asking ourselves whether the moment has come to cut loose and leave the English NHS to sort itself out. There isn't a single political party in England that we can vote for to help it; all we can do is to vote to save our own. How sad that an institution that was the vision of a Scot, given political shape by a Welshman and implemented by the English, should be on the ropes. And how ironic that three of Scotland's sons who took the high road to England; Blair, Brown and Cameron, should usher in the beginning of the end of the Union that they espoused.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

This is the end of the Union coming. And I thought I wouldn't care, but I do.

So, the phoney war is over. The doors have been knocked, the babies kissed, the hands shook, the leaflets posted and all the campaigners will be heading home for a good nights sleep before their vigil at the polls. There are a number of things that can happen tomorrow.

1.) It could be the last time that we have a FPTP poll; we could be switching to PR.

2) The BNP and UKIP could win their first seats.

3) The Tories could win, signalling the start of a break up of the UK. Nothing will boost the SNP in next year's Holyrood elections like a Tory win.

4) The SNP and Plaid Cymru might hold the balance of power and we might see some sensible policies on health (no privatisation) and PFI (get rid of it).

5)We could have a Lib Lab pact and have a fairly non -descript government for a couple of years, followed by a PR election. This would be the equivalent of a huge enema for Westminster and would get politics, real politics moving in the way it has in Scotland instead of all the yah boo rubbish.

The butterflies are fluttering above the path and depending on which one we tread on, we will end up at a different destination. There isn't that much in it.

In all of this I have been reflecting on the importance of hope in politics. Hope isn't the dream of fools - it's the very stuff of politics. It's the determination that you will get to a particular destination regardless of the difficulties. And it's about doing all the small things, seemingly insignificant in themselves, that lead there.

Tomorrow we need to do that small insignificant thing. We need to vote. We need to choose our direction as a nation because if we don't do it, rough men will choose it for us. And we need to have that quality of hope to do it. Outcomes aren't inevitable. Bad doesn't always have to triumph. Sometimes things do happen for the best. Sheelagh Pugh sums it up in her poem 'Sometimes'


Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.


May it happen for you and the country tomorrow.