fahrenheit451:252

There really is nothing new under the sun. It's 2018 and we are still stuck with an ossified voting system. Labour and Conservative perpetuate,to their mutual advantage,the FPTP system and so keep the Punch & Judy tropes of British political discourse on an interminable respirator instead of switching it off.

So here's my original blog post And So It Goes...#768 from May 6 2016. A timeless classic...

Democracy.Voting.The democratic process.Ballots.Universal Suffrage. These are terribly important,not only concepts, but practices for the acolytes of that most noble of specious secular quasi-theologies, Democracy.
It has always struck me as an indelible flaw in their national character for the British to have persisted for as long as they have,with the eccentricities of  " The first past the post " system. Back in the days of the Reform Acts, of 1832 and 1867, there was plausibly nothing amiss with such a constricted,parochial settled kind of way of ascertaining the will of the people.
Time-honoured methods have without vigourous renewal become moribund and taken on the characteristics of arcane rituals. Geographic distances within the historically determined British national polity are no longer a precusor for division and rancour to any significant degree.Distinctions and differences matter far less than once they did.
And yet the legitimate expression of this innate plurality is stymied and devalued at every major opportunity. A Vote,the universal currency unit of political expression,is not equal to any other given Vote at any one time.
Parliament ought long ago have instituted a fair and credible system of proportional representation.
Each contending Party's ideological and practical political aspiration and raison d'etre-to win a majority for its policies and goals would not be compromised.
 After all winning a majority of the Sovereign electorate's Votes cast is per se more democratic in truth than winning a numerical majority of arbitrarily defined  seats.
All Votes must be of equal numeric value irrespective of where they are cast.
The alternative, as has been the sad dystopian reality for decades is the " marginals ". Usually calculated to be around 70 seats out of the 630 where historic voting patterns and voter behaviour subject to minimal shifts in opinion poll discerned party policy differences turn these seats into genuine contests which determine the overall outcome of all 630 seats. That is not democracy.
Legitimacy is after all a learned behaviour. Given enough cynicism coupled with disappointment,disillusionment and a powerful,cogent counter-narrative, methods other than the democratic ballot and universal suffrage begin to be contemplated.

Footnote :- I emailed this to the Wakefield Express and Yorkshire Evening Post the day after the local election results were announced on May 6.

Sir - iIrecall being in the Public gallery not so long ago when Wakefield's Labour Councillors unanimously voted through £27,000,000 in Budget cuts. I also recall Council leader Box inveighing against the Conservative government and its Austerity measures. The central point of his lengthy,self-indulgent diatribe was to call into question the legitimacy of the Tories mandate to impose Austerity measures having won an overall majority with only 24% of the votes cast in the General election. Let's put aside for the moment the Historic alliance Labour has with the Tories on the issue of first past the post system.Those two have been brothers-in-arms in colluding to maintain this palpably iniquitous and dysfunctional model of electoral representation. What,I wonder has Cllr.Box to say about last Friday's results in Wakefield ? The turnout was 30%, of the 245,000 registered electors only 74,000 cast their ballot.Of the votes cast Labour got just over half,which means that Labour's mandate to govern and implement without dissent let alone any form of active resistance the government's Austerity measures is 15% of the electorate. Go figure.

Louis Kasatkin ( TUSC Candidate,Wakefield West 2016 )

fahrenheit451:124

Yawn. Either the world has in fact gone crazy or a voluble,volatile cadre of faux-leftists are trying to make it appear so. The Democratic Party and its global elite corporate backers were never ever going to accept Donald Trump's maverick,outsider victory over their chosen one, HRC. The historically moribund and existentially irrelevant forces of the liberal ( and on paper not so liberal ) Left across the West are simply a situationist ,performance installation art re-enactment society on a grandiose scale. #stoptrump rallies/marches/demonstartions were promoted with  Pravda propagandist alacrity across the UK for Saturday,February 4 2017. Alas the heroic vanguard of Slogans With Placards was missing some of its stalwarts:-

Gill Mooney

5 mins · Leeds · 

 I'm afraid I'm full of cold today, so I can't come

  Will Shaw

21 hrs · 

Would love to attend but unfortunately have prior engagements!

.................

The future, let alone any tomorrow clearly will never belong to them!

 

fahrenheit451:105

Organised and ideologically driven antidemocratic seditionists are behaving in a consistent, co-ordinated fashion on both sides of the Atlantic when it comes to de-legitimising and seeking to overturn the results of the EU Referendum and the Presidential Elections respectively. For example, the content and tone of the language they both utilise in their vituperative hyperbole in slandering and defaming all those who voted for the winning argument in the EU Referendum and those who voted for the winning candidate in the Presidential Election, could not be more apparent. The self-referencing  " 48% " of the Remain campaign wish simply to have the Referendum result annulled by any means whatsoever. In the USA, the Democratic Party wants likewise the Election of Donald Trump annulled by any means whatsoever.  It is worth taking note of the constitutional complexities in the US as distinct from the less than iron clad constitutional arrangements for plebiscites in the UK.

The United States Electoral College is established by Article Two of the United States Constitution to select the President of the United States and Vice President. Citizens of the United States vote in each state at a general election to choose a slate of "electors" pledged to vote for a party's candidate.^[2][3] The candidates who receive an absolute majority of electoral votes among the states are elected President and Vice President of the United States when the Electoral College vote is certified by Congress. Gleaned from Wikipaedia is this dissertation on The Electoral College:-

There are currently a total of 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 Representatives, the 100 Senators, plus three electors for the District of Columbia as provided for in the Twenty-third Amendment. Each state chooses electors amounting to the combined total of its U.S. senators and representatives.^[4] The Constitution bars any federal official, elected or appointed, from being an elector.

All states except Maine and Nebraska have chosen electors on a "winner-take-all" basis since the 1880s.^[5] Under the winner-take-all system, the state's electors are awarded to the candidate with the most votes in that state. Maine and Nebraska use the "congressional district method", selecting one elector within each congressional district by popular vote and awarding two electors by a statewide popular vote.^[6] Although no elector is required by federal law to honor their pledge, there have been very few occasions when an elector voted contrary to a pledge .

And that's how it functions.And all parties accept this. Except that now there is an official attempt within the US Senate from the Democratic Party side to abolish the Electoral College! The " argument " as specious and dissembling as the day is long, is predicated on the notion of  "The popular vote ". The Democratic Party's ideological reference point is the strongly contested outcome of the Presidential Election of 2000 AD. The Electoral college was in effect deadlocked and Al Gore had polled more aggregated votes than G.W.Bush at the ballot box. It appears that Clinton has done likewise vis a vis Trump at the " ballot box ", whereas unlike Bush, Trump got a comfortable majority over Clinton in the Electoral College.

Logically and rationally there ought not to be the slightest basis for any kind of quasi-judicial or administrative challenge to or doubt cast upon the result. Donald Trump will be the next president of the USA. But reason and logic only serve as a basis for democratic politics just as long as the ideologues of globalism & PC multiculturalism deem it necessary and convenient. And in the UK and USA and indeed in many other " advanced western democracies ", the metropolitan domiciled globalist elites no longer find the verdict of sovereign democratic electorates either convenient nor legitimate.

The formerly prevailing notions of " Left " and " Right " were long ago made redundant, primarily by the cessation of the non- " Cold War " and the consequent dissolution of the USSR and other post WW2 socialist states. The real dichotomy that is now the dynamic engine of ideological discourse and popular political disputation revolves around the Sovereign Nation State v. Globalisation and its discredited corollary, multiculturalism and diversity. The historic triumph of #Brexit is the the most immediate and starkest expression of this existential struggle. The defeat and long overdue demise of that harridan Clinton replicated to a large degree what #Brexit first realised, the practical re-ordering of political allegiances and tribal loyalties.

Our New day has already dawned!! the Men of Action have returned.

fahrenheit451:104

The 48% ( for ease of reference ), that voted Remain on June 23rd. in the EU Referendum,have actively propagated the idea that those of the 52% who voted Leave are largely stupid,ignorant,uneducated,provincial ( almost exclusively Northern ) homophobic, islamophobic, racist, xenophobes. I'm only too happy to be identified as embodying all of those traits if, in the interests of balance and fairness, the 200 MPs of #LabourIn and their Remain Axis partners are equally happy to be pilloried for being the mendacious,antidemocratic,pro-sodomite,unborn child murdering,seditionist garbage that they in fact are. Which all in all doesn't get any of us anywhere. Then again it is the calculated intention of the #LabourIn Eurozealots to systematically de-legitimise, undermine and eventually overturn the verdict given by the Electorate on 23 June.  The Referendum was conducted at the behest of Parliament as a UK wide vote.The UK is a single,united political entity. No-one has ever argued that, for instance the losing parties in a UK General election call for the Secession of those constituencies which voted for them or that the consequences of the other party gaining a majority are to be ignored in all matters pertaining to their own constituencies or that even the result itself wasn't legitimate and therefore another corrective general Election had to be called immediately. And yet this is precisely what the " 48% " antidemocratic rabble have done and are continuing to do at every opportunity on every conceivable issue. The fantastically deluded SNP -led regional administration in Edinburgh has gone all out secessionist and has even tried and serially failed to engage with sovereign EU states in intergovernmental negotitations and have themselves sought for international diplomatic recognition. That is the measure thus far of their utter imbecility and hubris. In a former,kinder Age,the Sedition Act 1661 would have been antedote enough for such lamentable clowns. Then there's Northern Ireland and the antics of the former Kneecappers& Granny Shooters Association aka the Provos aka Sinn Gay Rights&Abortion Feinn. What the turf cutters and the marsbar friers have in common is that,yes as a geographical segment of the UK Polity as a whole, Scotland and Northern Ireland did record a localised pro-Remain majority. As did that other metastasising quasi-regional faux-entity Greater London. :-

24 Jun 2016 - Most London boroughs voted to remain in the EU - bucking the national trend. Across all 33 boroughs in the capital, 59.9% (2.26 million) voted in favour of remaining in the EU. ... Barking and Dagenham, Bexley, Sutton, Havering and Hillingdon were the only areas to support Brexit.

To be precise.

Heck,they even staged a " London is Open " conference the other day just to let the EU-sympathising 48% Remain world know that mass islamophobic xenophobia hadn't shut London down. Run by the seditionist #LabourIn  Daesh apologist Mayor Sadiq Khan, the metropolitan Wannsee conference on how to eliminate the Brexit problem,had lots of academicians and metropolitan domiciled bien pensants reinventing the Queen's English to mean the opposite of what they thought and meant. Especially on the EU's fundamental principle of neoliberal freedom of movement for workers.  Here's one such classic caught on twitter on the day.

Gemma Catney ‏@gemmacatney  

Need to be sensitive about language and discourse - integration loaded and need to be clear on social meaning& interpretation.

This is not going to end well at all, least of all for them.

fahrenheit451:100

I launched this missive earlier today posting it to the Wakefield Express.It concerns the local Labour MP, Mary Creagh one of the 200 seditionist #LabourIn MPs,who is particularly woefully out of touch with her constituents,and a 2015 failed Labour leadership contender who couldn't get enough endorsements to get on the ballot,unlike J.Corbyn who eventually did.

Wakefield Editorial

Today at 10:50

Sir- You  might find this to be of local interest given the Express' Politically speaking column.I'm sure the Wakey electorate - with whom our MP has been shown to be wildly out of step and at odds with-would like to read a coherent and plausible explanation for this.

Yours sincerely,

Louis Kasatkin 

.#MaryCreagh one of the 203 MPs (1 of 54 from Labour ) named in this article.

 

Guido Fawkes

2 hrs · 

This decision to appoint a crook to the Justice committee is one of parliament’s most shameful acts in recent years – and the Tories are the ones responsible…

Tory Whips Saved Vaz - Guido Fawkes

Tory Whips Saved Vaz - Guido Fawkes When 203 MPs voted for Keith Vaz to join the Justice select committee last night, everyone assumed Labour MPs ha...

On September 6,2016 the Labour supporting Mirror newspaper reported :-

Keith Vaz has resigned as chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

It comes after the Sunday Mirror revealed he had paid for sex with escorts in a flat he owns near his family home in London.

As chairman of the powerful Commons panel, Mr Vaz has publicly said he was “not convinced” that men who pay for sex should face prosecution.

But within weeks of a report from his committee, he himself paid money to escorts in a flat he owns near his family home in Edgware, North West London..

Clearly there is nothing further to be gained by expressing displeasure at the wantonly hubristic behaviour of the benchwarming rabble whose only response is to continually thumb their snouts up at the rest of us.

fahrenheit451:090

When it comes to sheer brass-necked impudence, the 200+ Labour Party parliamentary benchwarmers that constitute the official #LabourIn campaign, take first prize. Unmitigated Petainist trash that they are,they had and still have, as their sole political objective the continued subjugation of the British people to the diktats and tyranny of the European Union.  200+ Sediton preaching, street corner rabble rousing demagogues who tried in vain to persuade the British electorate that We somehow,were really  " Europeans ", and that the British have a european identity or values in common with say Poland or Latvia or whomever. They might've well as said that a dog shares a common identity and has values in common with the fleas that infest it.  And #LabourIn ,the very heart and sinews of the campaign to maintain EU servile lackeydom, pre-planned and co-ordinated demonstrations with platform speakers such as that vile treasonable wretch Lammy inciting crowds of euro-zealots to attempt the overthrow of the UK's constitutional government. At the time of posting, there are still quite significant legal challenges to the Referendum result in the offing. And given what seems to be a significant highly motivated anti-democratic upper middle class and academically elitist bias in the ranks of the #Remain zealots' camp,no doubt we can expect further inordinately complex tactics and strategies to be launched by them against the implementation of the Will of the Sovereign British Electorate. Though not all the news is bad for the Victorious #Brexit . Gleaned from the 19 September edition of Huffington Post :-

Labour needs to stop “sulking” about the EU referendum result and vow to end freedom of movement, one of the party’s northern heartland MPs has warned.

Jonathan Reynolds, who has represented the Greater Manchester seat of Stalybridge and Hyde since 2010, believes keeping the EU’s free movement rules in exchange for Single Market membership would be “unacceptable” to millions of Labour voters.

The Remain-campaigning Reynolds told HuffPost UK that people’s “genuine emotional concerns” about uncontrolled immigration cannot be dealt with just by pointing to reports and statistics which talk up the economic benefit of freedom of movement.

In a dig at colleagues such as Chuka Umunna who are calling for the Government to try and negotiate a compromise over freedom of movement in a Brexit deal, Reynolds said a “tweak” to the status quo “would not wash with people.”

UPDATE: Chuka Umunna: We Should Be Prepared To Sacrifice Single Market Membership To Axe Freedom Of Movement

The European Union and all  that it stands for and all of its works is merely the bacteria on the toilet seat of history. Time for some cleansing,don't you think?

fahrenheit451:089

So endeth the great Hohenzollern Imperial Diet in Pressburg ( Bratislava ) of September 16,2016. Berlin's principal stooge of the provincial satrapy of former Italy was quoted far and wide afterwards:-

" Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi stressed that the summit on Friday was a “wasted opportunity” and expressed his disappointment of the officials, especially the French and German ".

Such a wondrous expression of the Greater German Reich's remarkable cohesion.

To add to the surreal and at oft times anarchic mirth and jollity at the Imperial Diet in Pressburg, representatives/hetmen of a supra-national alliance of backward peasants calling themselves the Visegrad Four attempted to forecast,in the manner of their own shamanic cultural traditions, the official position of the Hohenzollern Reich vis a vis its evolving contretemps with the United kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland in respect of the matter of the latter electorate's expressed wish and desire not to be an underling and footstool of said teutonic tyranny in the foreseeable future.

 The Visegrad Four, being composed of the meagre hotch-potch shovelling together of shards of four preceding  eminent continental Empires, uttered an ill considered  calumny against Her Majesty's Government on the matter of continued unrestricted outflows of their poor and destitute mendicants into Britain in order to continue to lower the standard of wages for all workers.

 The Visegrad Group having a priori taken umbrage at the somewhat timid assertion thus far, by HMG that it might wish to exercise sovereignty over its own borders in preference to and at the expense of, millions of  uncouth turnip chuckers and cap doffers.

 Such are the vicissitudes of international politics and diplomacy.

Quite what we'll all make of it in another six months time,i.e. March 2017,is the proverbial anyone's guess. But woe betide HMG were they in the upcoming course of inexorable events to prove less than loyal and less than obedient to their true Masters, the wonderful,contrarian British Electorate.

fahrenheit451:084

Saturday 2nd.September 2016, deliberately on the 77th anniversary of the expiration of the UK's ultimatum to Nazi Germany; the brazenly antidemocratic demagogues of #LabourIn and their squalid Petainist co-conspirators of the discredited EURemain campaign under the fascistic slogan of "Let's take back control" of #marchforeurope have laid siege to the sovereign,democratic will and legitimacy of the British electorate as expressed in the Vote for #brexit on June 23.

fahrenheit451:083

A flurry of social and mainstream corporate media activity accompanied Jeremy Corbyn's  recent launch of his " Digital Manifesto ". One paragraph in particular struck me as more than just a little sinister in its implications.

 

" We will develop a voluntary scheme that provides British citizens with a secure and portable
identity for their on-line activities. The Digital Citizen Passport will be used when interacting
with public services like health, welfare, education and housing. "

 

Clearly we're deep inside Humpty-Dumpty territory where words mean precisely what those who use them want them to mean, no more and no less. " We will develop a voluntary scheme.." The use of the royal " we " in this particular context refers to a notionally future Labour Government where Corbyn, presumably is Prime Minister. Repeat apres moi develop a voluntary scheme.Presumably participation in the development of the scheme itself will be voluntary, as will the actual participation once this scheme is implemented. This scheme, " The Digital Citizen Passport " will be used when interacting with various public services. Where does that place the,currently estimated, 6 ,000,000 digitally excluded citizens? Surely the customary face to face interpersonal, over the counter transactions will be allowed to continue, won't they? In which case why introduce a digital citizens passportat all? Is the current blight of mass digital exclusion to be tackled first and every household and every citizen included via a government backed programme?

There will have to be either a very steep learning curve or a very long lead time ahead of implementation. Then again virtually all politicians of all persuasions adopt that insufferably haughty manner whenever trumpeting the next big thing that they'll be involved in bringing to pass.

Can't wait for the, what was it again? oh yeah, digital citizen passport..

 

fahrenheit451:076

Ain't democracy wonderful? Isn't mass participation by the ordinary electorate in public political discourse and a degree of activism a welcome indicator of the health of the body politic? Where are the corporate media Commentariat who are usually the first to applaud such happenings? Where for heaven's sake are those opinionaters who professionally feign to take an oppositional stance and their plethora of incisive leader articles and espousals of the immutable virtues of democracy? Well, in the case of The Republic of Turkey and its legitimate,constitutional government..all the aforementioned are precisely nowhere. Millions took part on Sunday 7 August in a Pro-democracy rally in Istanbul that repudiated the Military putsch attempt of July 15. Millions.  Mature Realpolitik discourse and polemics doesn't sit well with what passes these days for the western democratic pluralist tradition. Not that the West's authentic defenders of such traditions would  be capable any longer of discerning any lingering vestige of that which they once believed they were upholding let alone defending.  Turkey and its Political leadership has been consigned to the proverbial " doghouse ". Not that it matters too much or is of any significant concern to the Turkish state at the present moment. The truth, I would venture, is that the World is in a no more perilous or precarious an existential state than it was in the latter half of the 19th.Century. Wars, regional conflicts, trade disputes, population upheavals,diplomatic and political shennanigans and a plethora of domestic national instabilities contrived by unsympathetic outside influences and covert agendas. Plus ca change. 

fahrenheit451:070

Nearly 4 weeks after EU Referendum Day, the forces of Reaction & Remain continue to seek more ways to stymie and/or annul the decision of the UK Electorate to vote to leave the EU ( aka Brexit ). Petitions,demonstrations, legal actions,organised online forums, academics and prelates, commentators on every specialism - finance, foreign relations, international trade, have been brought to bear against the carrying out of the decision to leave the EU. Where does this heinous misbehaviour stem from, who are the main culprits? The facts are that Tory MPs were split roughly 50-50 on the issue, whereas Labour MPs were 90-10 for Remain.And given the enormous pro-Leave votes in a huge number of nominally Labour " seats ", it was #LabourInForBritain who were by some considerable distance wide of the mark. Not only were they not singing from the same hymn-sheet as their " traditional voters ", LabourInForBritain weren't even standing in the same pews in the same church as their core voters. And that is a good thing, irrespective of any other partisan ideological considerations, if indeed it can  still be argued that there are any of any merit left. Once upon a time matters such as Treason and Sedition meant something, the words and what they signified resonated with awe and gravitas. A fortnight or so ago, a pop-up campaign - The 48% - organised a protest rally in London.One of their keynote speakers, Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy actually preached Sedition and sought to incite the crowd against our lawful government and its acceptance of the EU referendum result. The metropolitan domiciled, self-referencing bien pensant with their faux-bourgeois manners and social affectations and faddish prejudices have been around for a very long time indeed. And it is something of a meta-historical phenomenon that they choose precisely this juncture in the overarching historical narrative to once again display and articulate in an unrestrained, undiplomatic fashion their utter contempt, loathing and hatred of the majority within British society.

Here's what I emailed to my local newspaper the other day, perhaps it'll get published, perhaps not.

Clearly our current MP for Wakefield has lost confidence in the electorate on whom she is dependent. It seems that our current MP is far from " chuffed " with the democratic and binding decision of the electorate. That's a pity because in over 40 years of community and Trades Union activism I have never witnessed such a mendacious and fundamentally dishonest campaign than that waged by the Remain block during The EU Referendum. Bear in mind that ‪#‎LabourInForBritain‬ provided Remain's pivotal,leading role with some 200 Labour MPs declaring for Remain. It is not the electorate that has to explain itself to its elected representatives,but rather it behoves those such as Mary Creagh to make an unreserved and unconditional apology to the Electorate.

Will any MP who supported and canvassed for Remain actually apologise? probably not. Will Brexit be declared null and void? probably not.

FOOTNOTE :- There is a General Election scheduled for May 2020, once invoked by the PM via Royal prerogative, Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty envisages a timeframe of 2 years for all subsequent negotiations. This government will not go into an election with that unresolved.

fahrenheit451:068

The outcome of History and its epoch defining events are not determined by nor somehow subject to petty bourgeois norms of civility.And yes the British wannabe, self-delusional, aspiring, all consuming, grasping, venal middle class really are entirely irrelevant to the entire process of Historical materialism and its outcomes and developments. The Sea Change in British and wider global politics and the balance of Class forces thereof, which occurred during the night of Thursday 23rd.June into the early hours of Friday 24th. June are irrevocable. The heretofore seemingly impregnable hegemonic dominance of politics as usual and its accompanying Media-driven narrative suffered a catastrophic aneurysm. This is how History is forged, to conflate Bismarck's dictum , decisions made at the ballot box are those of blood and iron ( though originally he uttered iron and blood ). And that is what, in the most rudimentary terms has caused not only the British-domiciled,but also the wider global capitalist, ruling elites and their political classes to shit themselves in full view of the public. Not inconsiderable numbers actually are in mortal fear of the sound of the tumbrils clattering down their leafy little suburb coming to take them away. Schadenfreude! No amount of venal, self-aggrandising huffing and puffing and attempted,orchestrated pseudo-intellectual intimidation of the People via the weaponising of pristine empirical facts and figures is going to make a blind bit of difference. An epidemic of existential dread is sweeping across the Ruling elites and their servile political toady class. What the Occupy movement had so fervently striven for and what other countless protest movements and civic indignation had longed to see take place right in front of their eyes as evidence of the 99%'s integral role in being the fulcrum and determinant in the liberation of mankind from Usurer-Capitalist Tyranny and enslavement, is now happening! Revolutionaries are engineers tasked with the demolition of the prevailing capitalist order, they are not economists.Hopefully,decades from now when the dust has eventually for the most part settled from this Krakatoa event,the word economist will be as arcane and obscurantist as that of leech-doctor.

fahrenheit451:055

It is Friday, June 3 and in three weeks time the British Electorate will have chosen to Leave the European Union. I believe this and and am fully committed to the Cause for the restoration of national sovereignty to the UK. Day by day, as the EU referendum debate draws to its inexorable conclusion, the bellicose hyperbole of the REMAIN campaign becomes increasingly vituperative and distanced from any semblance of logical,rational let alone coherent argument and cogent analysis. All manner of  " Official " bodies and foreign busybodying Heads of State have crashed this debate with their ill mannered,opinionated and wholly ignorant and unwelcome,witless sermonising on the issue of Britain's continued subservience  and vassalage to the Greater European Union. But it will soon be over. The egregious lying filth of the Petainist #LabourIn will be consigned to the dustbin of History alongside the plethora of  ideological cowards,traitors,chancers,hypocrites,carpet-bagging opportunistic cartel of politicians,charlatan experts and commentators. Starting 24 June,Britain shall reassert its alienable Right as a Sovereign Nation to determine its own Citizenry. No-one who fundamentally takes issue with this is forced to extend their otherwise temporary sojourn in these islands of ours. And So,it goes.

fahrenheit451:047

Democracy.Voting.The democratic process.Ballots.Universal Suffrage. These are terribly important,not only concepts, but practices for the acolytes of that most noble of specious secular quasi-theologies, Democracy. It has always struck me as an indelible flaw in their national character for the British to have persisted for as long as they have,with the eccentricities of  " The first past the post " system. Back in the days of the Reform Acts, of 1832 and 1867, there was plausibly nothing amiss with such a constricted,parochial settled kind of way of ascertaining the will of the people. Time-honoured methods have without vigourous renewal become moribund and taken on the characteristics of arcane rituals. Geographic distances within the historically determined British national polity are no longer a precusor for division and rancour to any significant degree.Distinctions and differences matter far less than once they did. And yet the legitimate expression of this innate plurality is stymied and devalued at every major opportunity. A Vote,the universal currency unit of political expression,is not equal to any other given Vote at any one time. Parliament ought long ago have instituted a fair and credible system of proportional representation.Each contending Party's ideological and practical political aspiration and raison d'etre-to win a majority for its policies and goals would not be compromised. After all winning a majority of the Sovereign electorate's Votes cast is per se more democratic in truth than winning a numerical majority of arbitrarily defined  seats.  All Votes must be of equal numeric value irrespective of where they are cast. The alternative, as has been the sad dystopian reality for decades is the " marginals ". Usually calculated to be around 70 seats out of the 630 where historic voting patterns and voter behaviour subject to minimal shifts in opinion poll discerned party policy differences turn these seats into genuine contests which determine the overall outcome of all 630 seats. That is not democracy. Legitimacy is after all a learned behaviour. Given enough cynicism coupled with disappointment,disillusionment and a powerful,cogent counter-narrative, methods other than the democratic ballot and universal suffrage begin to be contemplated.

Footnote :- I emailed this to the Wakefield express and Yorkshire Evening Post the day after the local election results were announced on May 6.

Sir - i recall being in the Public gallery not so long ago when Wakefield's Labour Councillors unanimously voted through £27,000,000 in Budget cuts. I also recall Council leader Box inveighing against the Conservative government and its Austerity measures. The central point of his lengthy,self-indulgent diatribe was to call into question the legitimacy of the Tories mandate to impose Austerity measures having won an overall majority with only 24% of the votes cast in the General election. Let's put aside for the moment the Historic alliance Labour has with the Tories on the issue of first past the post system.Those two have been brothers-in-arms in colluding to maintain this palpably iniquitous and dysfunctional model of electoral representation. What,I wonder has Cllr.Box to say about last Friday's results in Wakefield ? The turnout was 30%, of the 245,000 registered electors only 74,000 cast their ballot.Of the votes cast Labour got just over half,which means that Labour's mandate to govern and implement without dissent let alone any form of active resistance the government's Austerity measures is 15% of the electorate. Go figure.

Louis Kasatkin ( TUSC Candidate,Wakefield West 2016 )