Power2010 email publicity
Ho hum. Email spammed again by the extremely well-funded Power2010 circus:
Dear Julian,
We’ve reached a major milestone. More than 25,000 votes have now been cast in our contest to choose the five reforms that will make up the POWER2010 Pledge.
Nick Riley, the person who last week cast the 25,000th vote, voted for a “None of the above” option on ballot papers. When Guy, our campaign blogger, asked Nick why he supported this idea, he said it’s the only way for him to register his “total dissatisfaction”.
“An abstention doesn’t seem to register with the political classes who seem quite satisfied when they have achieved, say, 30% of the vote on a 45% turnout! They then attribute the low turnout to apathy instead of the true cause, which is disgust!”
You’ve already voted, so I know that, like Nick, you want to change politics. Click here to vote for more ways that we can fix it.
25,000 votes is a major milestone, but we haven’t finished.
You can vote for as many issues as you like – and the more votes we receive, the more legitimacy we will have in the eyes of the political class when we take the POWER2010 Pledge to them before the general election.
So, for the sake of our democracy, please vote again:
http://www.power2010.org.uk/ourdemocracyThank you, and best wishes,
Pam Giddy
Director, POWER2010
What they’ve done is to take ideas for reforming the political system from thousands of people who don’t know how the current political system actually works, and then added up their votes on those ideas to provide a final list of reforms.
The reforms on the surface are pretty reasonable (for a set of reforms voted on by people who don’t know how the political system actually works), but they don’t get to the heart of the problem.
For example, Number 6 on the list is for a fully elected Second Chamber, which would be quite nice to have if you’re not concerned that it may be as bad as the fully elected First Chamber.
In this country people have got used to leaving all of politics entirely up to the parties to sort out, so it doesn’t exactly matter what the system is (proportional representation, appointed bodies, elected, income capped, whatever), because the parties will own it completely.
That’s where the trouble lies.
Until there is a mass understanding of how parties work, and a greater move for normal people to join their membership and influence their decision-making processes in order to determin the choices we have, nothing is going to change.
So it would have been nice if these emails went out with requests for people to upload leaflets they are receiving to thestraightchoice.org so we could all start to find out what is going on, because reform without understanding is just a shot in the dark
Although I’m one of the people who voted in this exercise, I tend to agree with you. And I’m concerned about the delight shown by a number of campaigning organisations today over Brown’s proposal for a referendum on AV. It’s playing into the hands of those who don’t want PR at any price, and it’s denying us the much-needed debate on all the options for reform.
I also voted with 2010 and took this to be an engaging brainstorming exercise and a challenge of sorts to politicians to engage with the voters. But Julian is right to point to the need for a well-informed electorate who is able to sift through media dirge and spin to come to an understanding of how best to use their vote. I live in hope that the Citizenship trained generation is more engaged and critical.
“Until there is a mass understanding of how parties work, and a greater move for normal people to join their membership and influence their decision-making processes in order to determin the choices we have, nothing is going to change.”
Amen to that, says a party member…