Votes at 16 for upcoming Local Council Elections

I've got a short piece in the local Newspaper today, on the issue of 'Votes at 16' - for those interested, I'll reproduce the main text below ...

Votes at 16 good for local democracy

On Thursday 4^th May this year, 16 and 17 year-olds will be able to vote in Local Council elections for the first time here in Scotland. Personally, I very warmly welcome this extension of the electoral franchise.

Evidence from the 2014 referendum, here in Scotland, shows that 16 and 17-year-olds had a higher turnout rate (75%), than those aged 18 to 24, and even those aged 25 to 34. And academics have also demonstrated that voting is habitual; one of the best predictors of non-voting is not having voted in the first election for which you were of age. 

And in a time of declining turnout, it’s right that politicians from across the political spectrum should get behind measures to boost the rate of first-time and habitual voting, encouraging more citizens to elect their representatives and to hold politicians to account.

So yes, I do welcome the fact that in June 2015, the Scottish Parliament unanimously passed a law to let 16 and 17 year-olds vote in all future Local Elections. No Political Party argued against it, and we should all be doing everything we can, between now and May, to promote as high a participation rate as possible.

This is a positive challenge for us all to embrace – as individuals, as Political Parties, for schools – to equip our younger citizens with the tools and the knowhow to get informed and to get involved.

And Scotland is by no means alone, or the first, to extend the franchise in this way. 16 and 17 year-olds can already vote in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey; while Wales is considering similar measures to those of Scotland. In fact, those elections where 16 and 17 year-olds are not yet allowed to vote (most notably Westminster general elections) are looking increasingly isolated.

But like all potential voters, 16 and 17 year-olds do need to be on the Electoral Register, and I would strongly encourage those who will be eligible to vote to check that they are duly registered. It’s very easy to do – it literally takes only a few minutes by visiting: https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote ; and you have until Monday 17^th April to register, which will then enable you to vote in the Council Elections on Thursday 4^th May 2017.

Votes at 16 – combined with balanced high-quality citizenship education – will better nurture tomorrow’s voters, activists and politicians, and contribute greatly to building a better local democracy.

Councillor Andrew Burns

Leader, City of Edinburgh Council

Canon Kenyon Wright

I was very sorry indeed to hear of the recent death of Canon Kenyon Wright - the news was reported here ...

... during the early 1990's, when I was heavily involved in many of the devolution-campaigns of the day, alongside colleagues like Campbell Christie and Bob McLean; Kenyon showed me an enormous amount of personal generosity; and was particularly helpful when we separately launched Fairshare (archived website here; and background here) - the campaign for a fair, local voting system.

I've even spotted an old BBC story of some 16-years ago, from the actual day of the campaign launch, which is fascinating to read all these years later :-)

My thoughts are with Kenyon's family and friends.

Working Together: lessons in how to share power

Electoral Reform Society’s new report on coalition and minority government, entitled Working Together: lessons in how to share power, is launched today ... some information from their website follows.

Chapter 5 from yours truly ;-)

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What is the best way for parties to share power? How can you make minoritygovernment work? And how do you negotiate a successful coalition?

These are some of the questions likely to be at the forefront of the party leaders’ minds over the next couple of months. As we near a General Election which is almost certain to produce a hung parliament, now is the perfect time to draw on politicians’ rich experience of power-sharing, both in the UK and across the world.

That’s why we’ve brought together a group of senior politicians to share their experience of working in coalition and minority government, in a new report entitled Working Together: lessons in how to share power.

The report offers personal insights from British and overseas politicians on how to negotiate and manage power-sharing arrangements. There are contributions from:

 

• Former whip and junior minister Jenny Willott giving candid insights into her experience of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Westminster coalition
• Rhodri Morgan, former First Minister of Wales, sharing his recollections of negotiating with Plaid Cymru and how to deal with the internal party politics of coalition
• Andrew Burns, leader of Edinburgh City Council, on his experiences leading Scotland’s only Labour/SNP coalition council
• Former Treasury special adviser Julia Goldsworthy on the machinery of government and how to make coalition work in Whitehall
• Former First Minister of Scotland Lord Jack McConnell discussing his time in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, demonstrating that coalition can be long-lasting and achieve real policy change
• Former New Zealand Labour minister and ERS Deputy Chief Executive Darren Hughes on the different ways in which minority government can be made to work

There are also important contributions from abroad, including former Irish minister Ruairi Quinn, former Prime Minister of Lower Saxony David McAllister, and Professor Dennis Pilon of Canada.

Working Together offers five key lessons for party leaders in May:

1. For coalition to work, there needs to be a common sense of purpose – clear aims and a united vision for what the parties want to achieve together
2. It takes time to negotiate. Deciding how to govern a country is not something that should be rushed. And sometimes, the longer it takes, the better the outcomes
3. Parties need to sign off on any power-sharing arrangement if it is going to achieve legitimacy. This can take the form of special conferences or other means of gaining party members’ assent
4. Power-sharing comes in numerous forms. Each nation can develop models of coalition or minority government which fit with their own political culture
5. Coalitions aren’t easy. They need constant dialogue, good personal relationships between protagonists and mechanisms for resolving disputes if they are going to work

People’s wishes have changed. In a poll by ComRes of the 40 most marginal Conservative-Labour constituencies (ie. the areas where the traditional two-party battle ought to be fiercest), we found that:

• 78% believe the Opposition should work with the government on issues they agree on (against just 9% who support the opposite)
• 54% believe Parliament works best when no party is too dominant so that cross-party agreement is needed to pass laws (against just 28% who support the opposite)

People want to see multiple parties competing for their votes, and then working together when they get to Westminster. Our new report offers tips and guidance on how to do just that.

Of course, the fact our broken voting system tries to cram people’s varied wishes into a two-party framework can make the whole process of power-sharing seem far from transparent. If parties were able to negotiate based on the real wishes of voters and not the disproportionate results of First Past the Post, then coalition and minority government would have the legitimacy it needs. We badly need to get rid of our outdated electoral system.

But in the meantime, let’s make sure parties are ready to work together after 7th May.

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Time for change; time for STV-PR

I posted a couple of weeks ago about a brief trip I made to Manchester, and a public meeting I spoke at - all here; including a video-link!

Well - guess what's happened in Manchester today:

But - it's not just Manchester ... here are Newham's results:

As I said on the 10th May - I really hope that those responsible for drafting UK Labour's 2015 General Election manifesto are paying attention??

It is surely time for change; time for STV-PR for English Local Elections.


(graphs via Electoral Reform Society)

Time for change

I'm down in Manchester next Tuesday night ... speaking at the event you can see on this poster.

Apparently - on Thursday 22nd May; there's a very real prospect that EVERY ONE (yes every single one!) of Manchester's 96 Elected Council Members could be Labour Party Councillors? 

Currently, Labour have 86 out of the 96 Councillors, with the remaining 10 Members (9 Lib-Dem and 1 Independent) all being up for re-election on the 22nd.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm a Labour politician, and being tribalist for a second, having 100% of Labour Councillors is an attractive prospect!

Problem is, Manchester Labour have 86 out of 96 (that's 90%!) of the Councillors on just 66% of the vote.

So - in a couple of weeks time, when Manchester goes to the polls for Local Government Elections; there's a very real prospect that Labour could end up with 100% of the City Council's Elected Members, on no more than two-thirds of the popular vote?

I'm sorry - but if ever there was a reason why England should follow Scotland, and legislate for STV-PR for Local Council Elections ... then this surely has to be it.

One can but hope that those responsible for drafting UK Labour's 2015 General Election manifesto are paying attention?

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**UPDATE**

Someone has made, and posted-up, a YouTube video of this event in Manchester - you can access it via this link ;-)


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Scotland can help England to be One Nation

I've written a short-piece for the Electoral Reform Society, to coincide with the publication of their Towards One Nation report ... my brief thoughts are below:

There are those in the Scottish Labour Party who are always happy to blame the introduction of STV-PR to elect Scottish Councils, in 2007, for the rise of the SNP and thus the electoral decline of Scottish Labour.

It’s a simple theory – everything was someone else’s fault, we have no responsibility, and if only the electoral system had stayed the same then all would have been fine?

Unfortunately, for those who propound it, this theory is also a million miles from the truth.

For one thing --- so much has changed in the last decade: technology, communications, twitter, facebook, banking collapse, crisis of the elites, the decline of deference, a Westminster Coalition Government, the rise of UKIP in England, and general institutional decline – right across the media-spectrum from the BBC to the tabloid press.

The idea that whatever happens, the Labour Party simply has to stay the same and try and keep everything as it was at the time we were most electorally successful, is frankly the worst kind of conservatism.

The truth is that all healthy, advanced democracies in Europe use voting systems that deliver seats broadly in proportion to the voters’ wishes. 

Regrettably, the UK lies 16^th out of the 25 countries considered full democracies, in the Economist Intelligence Unit 2012 Democracy Index[1] --- and all of those above us, have forms of PR for their elections except Canada.

And, of course, it was a Labour-led Administration and a Labour First Minister that actually brought in the 2007 electoral changes - not from narrow party interest, because the changes did initially hurt Labour to begin with.

It is all too easy to be principled when it’s in your own interests, much more difficult when it might harm them. Sometimes though, when you do the right thing, the right things eventually happen.

And the truth now, in 2014, is that on many measures Labour is in a better position in Scotland’s councils under STV-PR that we were under FPTP: 

•  more Leaders than in 2003 (16 now compared to 14 in 2003) 
• a say in governing more councils (19 now compared to 17 in 2003)
• Labour Councillors and Labour in Administration/s in places that we had never had them before i.e. Aberdeenshire

The Labour Councillors who were so heavily concentrated in certain parts of the country, are now spread more thinly but more widely across the whole country, doing away with ‘them and us’ areas and helping to create a real ‘One Nation Labour’.

And while throughout the time of recent Labour Governments at Westminster, Labour haemorrhaged council seats – losing 58% of all the councils it had held at the start of the decade – Labour has held, and actually gained councils, in Scotland under STV-PR.

As shown in the Electoral Reform Society’s recent report , ‘Towards One Nation’ [2] if Ed Miliband really wants to modernise British politics and to make the UK a better democracy, then seeking to adopt the Scottish Local Government electoral system for English and Welsh council elections would go a long way to achieving his goals.

By doing the right thing by the country, he may well do the right thing by the Party; and finally give Labour some control in Councils in the South of England.

Now, that really would be ‘One Nation’ – undivided.

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[1] https://portoncv.gov.cv/dhub/porton.por_global.open_file?p_doc_id=1034

 

[2] http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/images/dynamicImages/file/Towards_One_Nation_%2029Jan2014Final.pdf

 

Towards One Nation

Meant to flag-up this Electoral Reform Society blog-post from last week - link here; and I'll just paste the full text below for ease of reference:

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At the end of last year we published a report, Northern Blues, which made the case for a fairer voting system at the local level from the Conservative perspective. It had a real impact, convincing a range of previously sceptical Conservative commentators of the case for local electoral reform.

Today we are publishing its corollary, Towards One Nation, the Labour case for local electoral reform. It may seem strange that there could be a Conservative and a Labour case for a particular voting system, but the truth is that a fairer system – while ultimately giving the voter a better deal and improving our democracy – also benefits both parties.

Read the full report

For the Conservatives, it means being able to represent its voters in the north and urban areas, and starting to rebuild shattered activist bases in its weakest areas. For Labour, it is a path to realising its ambition to be a One Nation party with representation everywhere – whereas currently the party is locked out of whole regions of the country.

Our report shows that introducing the voting system currently in place for Scottish local elections (i.e. the Single Transferable Vote) across England and Wales would put Labour councillors in 27 of the 69 local authorities which were ‘Labour-free’ in 2011. Most of these areas are concentrated in the south of England and rural areas. It is fascinating to see how regions thought to have minimal Labour support are in fact seeing Labour voters severely under-represented by the voting system. In Castle Point in Essex, for instance, over a quarter of the electorate voted Labour and yet this didn’t yield a single councillor.

Naturally, Labour opponents of local electoral reform will worry about the effect on some of the party’s super-majorities in urban areas. But Towards One Nation shows how having the vast majority of representation on councils completely out of proportion to the number of votes won can in fact weaken the party in power. Labour has at some point lost control over around 60% of the councils in which it had super-majorities in the 1990s.

Another potential objection is that Labour has been weakened in Scotland since the introduction of a fairer local electoral system in 2007. Yet the party is in government in three more Scottish councils than it was in 1999 (when Labour was arguably at the height of its powers), and has the same number of council leaders.

For all its ambition to represent people from across the country, Labour is practically non-existent in parts of the south of England and rural areas. Thousands of people vote Labour in these places, yet simply don’t get the representation they deserve. Local electoral reform would allow Labour to represent its voters everywhere, giving the party a crucial toehold in areas where they need to rebuild their activist base.

Labour is striving to be a One Nation party and is renewing its structures to reach out to a wider pool of supporters and voters. Local electoral reform would help the party do exactly that.

Read the full report

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Electoral Reform Society Council

Saturday in London for the quarterly Electoral Reform Society Council Meeting ...

 ... amongst other subjects, good discussion about potential lessons from ongoing work in Scotland (see here) that may be applicable to ongoing campaigns in England.

London - as so often - was in truly stunning form, here's a view along the South Bank of the Thames with St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance.

Such a beautiful city.

Haggis, STV and trains

1st Burns Supper of the season on Friday (Burns!) night - organised by Edinburgh Southern CLP ... good evening had by all, and even the vegetarian haggis was edible ;-)

Straight onto the Caledonian Sleeper, for a Saturday morning meeting in London with the Electoral Reform Society ... and now back in a comparatively snow-free Edinburgh: there's LOTS of it across most of England!

Train journeys fine - if not slightly delayed; but wholly understandable given the weather conditions.

Publication of STV voting preferences (from May 2012)

PUBLICATION OF PREFERENCE PROFILE INFORMATION

Returning Officers across Scotland have today published the preference voting information from the May 2012 local government elections.

This is now required by law, thanks to the Scottish Local Government Elections Amendment (No. 2) Order 2012.

This Order required the publication by Returning Officers of information about the patterns of preferences marked on the ballot papers in Local Government elections.

The data for Edinburgh is now available to download from the elections area of the Council website, with a separate spreadsheet for each Ward: just follow this link for the explanatory information.

Ward 9 - Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart - data (as an EXCEL Spreadsheet) is here ...

... but, be warned, several hours required if you really want to analyse all of this ;-)

London weekend

Back in Edinburgh this evening after a weekend down in London ... attending the Electoral Reform Society Annual General Meeting.

Enjoyable days discussions (honestly!) about all things electoral-reform ... followed by the formal AGM etc.

You'll recall that last year, I narrowly lost out on continuing as Chair; well just 12-months later there's been another shake-up of the Officer Group with another new Chair taking on the challenge of leading the organisation: details already here ...

... I didn't contest any of the posts - never one to look backwards - and have more than enough to keep me busy at the present moment anyhow!

Very best of luck to Amy Dodd in her new position as Chair of ERS.

ERS Council (& General) Meeting

Talking of London ... off on the sleeper again late tonight for an Electoral Reform Society (ERS) Council & General Meeting in the big smoke on Saturday.

Catching the last (6pm, daytime) train back up on Saturday evening, so should be back in time for some much needed allotment-therapy on Sunday ;-)

Weather permitting, of course!

London bound

Off to London on the sleeper this evening - ERS Council meeting tomorrow!

Will actually be a bit of a welcome change of pace/topic in the midst of what's been a pretty full-on local election campaign ;-)

Back in Edinburgh very late tomorrow night.

STV, snowdrops and snow

Back in Edinburgh after an enjoyable few days down in London - so much colder down there at the moment!

ERS Meetings on Friday/Saturday as scintillating as ever ...

... and on Sunday we managed to fit in a family-visit to the Chelsea Physic Garden - I'd never been before and was very impressed with it all.

Was a special 'opening-week' for the emerging snowdrops, some of which where on sale as pictured here. Didn't buy any for transport Northwards!

East Coast train journeys, in both directions, absolutely on-schedule despite fairly significant amounts of snow in Northern and Central England.

Edinburgh is positively tropical by comparison at the moment ;-)

London-bound & Council-reflections

Half-term starts today: Junior and my Better-Half now off for a week :-(

So - down to London (to the in-laws) for the weekend ... Electoral Reform Society (ERS) Meetings on the Friday and Saturday mornings ... but some family-time in-between ;-)

Back up in Edinburgh on Sunday night.

Meantime, some quick reflections on yesterday's Full Council Meeting where the City of Edinburgh Council 2012/13 Budget was finally set ...

... not as much drama as Glasgow (thankfully!) but a fair degree of farce nevertheless: actual SNP/Lib-Dem Budget Motion wasn't tabled until 10.15am --- the meeting having started at 10am! --- with a 'missed' page being later-tabled at 1pm near the end of the debate :-(

On top of that, a last-minute adjournment was called to sort out the order in which the final vote/s were to be taken --- it all had the vague feeling of a bad comedy about it ... but sadly, it was all too deadly-serious ...

... because no amount of spin can hide the deeply, depressing facts underlying the finally agreed SNP/Lib-Dem budget:

• The City of Edinburgh Council now carries over £1.5billion of debt, an amount that has risen by a staggering 66% over the last 5-years
• That amounts to over £3,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in the city
• It’s costing the Edinburgh Tax-Payer some £110million every year to service that debt
• Which equates to over 11% of the revenue budget going into debt re-payments every single year
• Yes – more than £1 in every ten, of Edinburgh Tax-Payers money, that the Council manages goes on servicing a debt burden that’s been increased by 66% since 2007
• And of the 32 Local Authorities in Scotland, Edinburgh now has the 4^th highest debt-to-revenue ratio of any Council in the country

Glasgow may have grabbed the press attention, but here in Edinburgh there's a quieter ... but much more serious ... slow-burning, financial crisis stalking the City Chambers.

ERS Officers for 2011/12

Since that last blogpost, a few folk have been in touch asking for clarification on the full set of ERS Officers for the next year --- so here is the complete list:

Chair --- John Ault
Vice Chair-Management --- Jonathan Bartley
Deputy Chair-Campaigns --- Amy Dodd
Deputy Chair-Group Relations --- Keith Sharp
Treasurer - Chris Carrigan

Apologies if I haven't used the most appropriate web-links here!

If anyone wants further details, then please just e-mail me or get in touch via Facebook or Twitter ...

Back to the backbenches

Now, my local political opponents shouldn’t get too excited as I’m not talking about the City of Edinburgh Council ;-)

No, I’m referring to the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) ... as regular readers will know, the ERS AGM was held a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t report on events then as the election of Officers (of the ERS Council) was postponed for a couple of weeks due to a few absences from the meeting in London on the 3rd.

So, this Saturday’s Council Meeting had the task of electing the Officers for the next 12-months.

And yesterday, I stood to remain Chair and lost the vote by the narrowest of margins – 1.

And I should start these reflections by congratulating the new Chair – John Ault – and wishing him all the best in the role for the coming 12-months. He’ll have my 100% support.

I’d taken the decision before the meeting, not to contest any other Officer post if I didn’t get the Chair’s position – as the title of this blogpost indicates, I’d concluded it was either Chair or ‘back to the backbenches’.

And that’s where I’ll now be for the next while on the ERS Council. Less trips to London, a lot less e-mails and possibly a bit more time to spend on that allotment ;-)

Inevitably the events of Saturday have led me to reflect on the state of the democratic reform movement as we move on from last May’s referendum defeat and into a new phase of campaigning. I’ve not engaged in the endless post-mortems about last May and that deeply disappointing result ... and I don’t intend to dwell on it here, given the acres of print already expended on the subject. Suffice to say, all of us involved in that campaign have to accept a degree of responsibility for what went wrong.

But I do want to reflect on wider issues and put May’s defeat into some sort of context.

If I had a pound for every time (since May) I’d heard someone argue that the democratic reform movement was dysfunctional and had achieved nothing, I’d be a rich man :-(

Of course, the ERS – and all the other non-Party Groups – have their problems ... as do all the major and minor political Parties in this country. Stick a bunch of disparate activists together in a campaign (non-Party or Party) and an element of dysfunctionality is beyond certain ;-)

Democracy, properly practiced, with real people, is messy, difficult and bloody frustrating.

And thank goodness for it.

But it’s the claims of ‘just what has the democratic reform movement ever achieved’ that have become just a tad annoying for my liking. I want to explain just why I think that.

I guess I first became involved in the wider movement back in late-1990 when I joined Charter88 (as it was then) when I lived and worked in Stoke-on-Trent, and shortly thereafter attended the Charter88 Manchester Convention in November 1991. It was a complete turning-point in my political awareness and a period of a few months for which I will be forever grateful. If anyone involved in organising that Convention is listening – you changed my political life.

Shortly after, during late 1991/early 1992 I think it was, I joined the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), and in 1993 I moved back to Scotland (Edinburgh to be precise) and went completely native within the devolution-movement and the imminent 1997 referendum campaign, first being elected to the ERS Council in the mid-1990s and eventually being elected as a Local Government Councillor in Edinburgh for the first time in 1999.

Back then, in the early 1990’s, many of the newly elected Members of this year’s ERS Council would still have been at Primary School and here’s what didn’t exist:

• A Scottish Parliament
• The use of proportional representation (AMS) to elect that Scottish Parliament
• A Welsh Assembly
• The use of proportional representation (AMS) to elect that Welsh Assembly
• A Northern Ireland Assembly
• The use of proportional representation (STV) to elect that Northern Ireland Assembly
• A Greater London Authority (GLA)
• The use of proportional representation (MMP) to elect that Greater London Authority
• The use of proportional representation (Regional List System) to elect the European Parliament
• A House of Lords free from hereditary peers
• The Freedom of Information Act (England and Wales)
• The Freedom of Information Act (Scotland)
• The incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) into British Law
• The use of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) to elect Scottish Local Government
• I’m one of 1,222 Councillors in Scotland now elected by STV :-)

It’s not a bad list of achievements within a 20-year timeframe ... and we all too readily forget it.

If you never experienced it, I can understand it’s probably hard to imagine what the UK looked and felt like prior to these reforms – what can I say ... politically, it was a pretty dispiriting state of affairs for any genuine democrat.

But these hard won reforms are not enough for me, and come 2031, I’d like to see the list above added to by the following:

• The implementation of fixed term Parliaments at Westminster
• The use of proportional representation to elect English Local Government
• The use of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) to elect the House of Lords
• and yes, the use of proportional representation to elect the House of Commons
• Votes for those of 16-years of age, for all levels of Government
• The formation of Regional Assemblies in England
• All as part of a federal-settlement for the United Kingdom
• All contained within a Written Constitution

Do I really think these things can be achieved in the next 20-years?

Yes I do. The evidence of the previous two decades proves that these seismic constitutional changes can be won, with hard work, determination, and a willingness to learn lessons and keep going in the hardest of moments.

Just ask those involved in that first 1979 Scottish Referendum how they felt in the months after defeat?

But, many of those very same people were still involved in the later-1997 Referendum Campaign that led directly to the formal establishment of the Scottish Parliament.

Regular readers will know that I'm not really one for heroes - but looking back, if I do have any 'political heroes' it’s those people – some of whom I was lucky enough to work with in that 1997 campaign – the ones who kept the flame of constitutional reform alive after the darkest of days. And, eventually they did indeed achieve what they aspired for.

And I’ve no doubt whatsoever that the new Members of the ERS Council – and the many others who are working tirelessly for meaningful democratic reform – will see further achievements in the next two decades.

It may not seem likely right at this minute, but history tells me it will indeed happen.

But not if we spend any more time feeling sorry for ourselves or asking ‘just what has the democratic reform movement ever achieved’.

It’s achieved an enormous amount - literally having transformed this country’s politics.

But there’s some unfinished business and, for me, we simply now need to get on and complete the job.

Just like those 'political heroes' of 1979 did.

London-bound

London this weekend - off down on the train later this afternoon ...

... ERS Council Meeting tomorrow and some time with the in-laws on Sunday!

Blogging may well be light until Monday :-(

ERS AGM in London, then 50th in Liverpool

Council Meeting today - expect there will be significant ongoing press interest.

I'm then off down to London tonight, for tomorrow's Electoral Reform Society AGM. Looking forward to meeting all the new faces on the elected-Council :-)

Then, early Saturday night, northwards to Liverpool for a long-standing friends' 50th Birthday Party --- blogging may thus be light (if not non-existent!) for a few days now :-(

Re-elected to ERS Council :-)

Amidst all the tram chaos --- eagle-eyed readers will remember that I recently stood for re-election to the Electoral Reform Society Council ...

... well, delighted to report that I have been duly re-elected for another two-year period. I'm also genuinely pleased to see that a mix of new faces and existing experience will now form the new 2011-2013 ERS Council.

Believe me, the intricacies of the Single Transferable Vote are blessed light-relief after the last couple of weeks of local Edinburgh politics :-(
 
Its all as simple as 1, 2, 3 ...
 
... unlike that tram.