LETTER: The referendum on AV

Let me explain. For many years now, a reported 70 to 80% of us have said we would like a referendum on the return of capital punishment, especially for child murder, the murder of police officers and cases of pre-meditated murder. I personally would chuck in the drug pushers as well.

However it’s always explained that we don’t do referendums. We can’t do it because of the cost, it would be too difficult to administer, etc.

The last three Prime Ministers - Blair, Brown and Cameron - all promised referenda on the dreaded EEC which is slowly destroying our country, corrupting our laws, and driving me up the wall. Again, all the above reasons were given for us not having one, when we all know the reason we won’t get one is because they (the club) know what the results will be, and won’t want to handle that.

But lo! Along comes the sandal-wearing, beard-stroking, navel-gazing Liberal Democrats (the last part of that title makes you laugh, of course. They are about as undemocratic as you can get (devious and underhanded has a better ring) and they force Cameron into a referendum on the most undemocratic means of voting man could have invented, the awful, nay almost evil AV or alternative vote.

We have always been brought up to respect one man, one vote once, and while that has not always been respected hereabouts, it’s generally fair.

Now we have a system being proposed under which your vote could be counted several times, and more important given to somebody you would not ever vote for given the choice.

For example take my case. In my 50 years of voting, I have also played my little part in trying to the best of my ability to stop Labour and the awful Lib Dems from ever getting any power, any time or anywhere.

Some I won, some I lost, but the one man one vote once worked fairly with no smoke and mirrors or jiggery pokery, and I was always content to accept the known will of the people.

Under AV, I could make my vote for my preferred candidate who, not getting 50% first time around (I would not rate the rest as number two or three and so on simply because I don’t support or want them) the whole system then goes mad.

My vote could now be issued to a Socialist or, heaven forbid, a Liberal Democrat, or even the BNP, and they get in on my back, using my vote that under normal circumstances they would never have got from me.

I feel so strongly on this that if this awful system comes in, I personally would never cast a vote again. I don’t see the point.

This proposed racket is designed for one reason only - to let the Lib Dems, who are the smallest of the three main parties and who actually lost seats at the last General Election, get themselves into a situation of being a permanent dictator to the other two parties.

They would be a small group deciding what the rest of us can do - and you can bet you won’t get another referendum to turn that around if we don’t like it in the future.

Alternative voting is only used by three countries in the world, and one of them doesn’t like it. We will end up like many other coalition countries in a state of endless flux.

I don’t like this present coalition arrangement at all, but am prepared to accept it to get the country sorted out.

Are we doing it the right way? Well the jury is still out on that, but the Lib Dems are already cracking when the going gets tough.

They are a protest group, nothing else, and we should make sure they stay that way, or better still get shut altogether for trying to get a rotten system forced on us entirely for their benefit only and treating the rest of us as voting fodder or dimwits.

MICHAEL SUTCLIFF

Kibble Grove, Brierfield