MVC Campaign Update: Summer Recess 2008
Posted by malcolmclark on August 11, 2008 | Comments (0)
Our latest supporter newsletter is now available to read online (pdf).
Proportional Representation and the ‘Disappearing Voter’
Posted by malcolmclark on April 20, 2007 | Comments (0)
On 28 March, ERS and MVC hosted a fascinating seminar by academics John Curtice and Steve Fisher on Proportional Representation and the ‘Disappearing Voter’. Their presentations - based on Chapter 6 of the 23rd British Social Attitudes Report, edited by Alison Park et al (2007) - are now available online and are well worth a browse.
John Curtice - Why voters are still staying at home
Steve Fisher - the impact of the electoral system on who votes
Words of Wisdom
Posted by pauldavies on February 01, 2005 | Comments (0)
Miscellaneous
Posted by pauldavies on February 01, 2005 | Comments (0)
"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." —Hermann Goering
"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." —Hubert H. Humphrey
"I told him that a Chief Minister of State… made use of no other passions but a violent desire of wealth, power, and titles; that he applies his words to all uses, except to the indication of his mind; that he never tells a Truth, but with an intent that you should take it for a Lie; nor a Lie, but with a design that you should take it for a Truth; that those he speaks worst of behind their backs, are in the surest way to preferment; and whenever he begins to praise you to others or to yourself, you are from that day forlorn. The worst mark you can receive is a Promise, especially when it is confirmed with an oath; after which every wise man retires, and gives over all hopes." —Lemuel Gulliver to the Houyhnhnm chief, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." —C.S. Lewis
"All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia" — George Orwell
"Opposition is about asking awkward questions." —Jim Hacker
"And government is about not answering them." —Sir Humphrey
"Government is born of wickedness." —Thomas Paine
"The minister, whoever he at any time may be, touches it as with an opium wand, and it sleeps obedience." —Thomas Paine, on the British Parliament
"Whatever you said about the Brits, whatever their snobberies and limitations, they understood the relationship between the present and the past. They never pretended that their system of government was some ash-and-aluminium example of perfected modernity. They knew their democracy was an inherited conglomerate of traditions, bodged together, spatchcocked, barnacled and bubblegummed by fate and whimsy." — Boris Johnson, Seventy Two Virgins
"Tony Blair is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall." —Boris Johnson
"What was the Third Way? No one ever knew, but it was somewhere between the Second Coming and the Fourth Dimension" —Francis Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World
"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary." —Robert Louis Stevenson
"Redwood did that unforgivable thing: followed arguments through to their logical conclusions. This was seldom good politics." —Matthew Parris, Chance Witness
"Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking." —Clement Attlee
"Anyone who wants to be a politician is very obviously unfit to actually be one" — Jeremy Clarkson, Born to be Riled
"The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Now this refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see a thing exactly as one sees it, is almost the first condition for all those who belong to a party in any sense whatsoever: the man who belongs to a party perforce becomes a liar." — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist
"Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." —Friedrich Nietzsche
"More than anything in the world, I hate admitting that my enemies have a point. Damn sight better to kill the bastards, I've always thought. Neatest bloody solution." —'Hamza' in Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
"The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it." —George Bernard Shaw
"It is easy to obtain confirmations or verifications for nearly every theory – if we look for confirmation." —Karl Popper
"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock" —Harry Lime in Orson Welles's The Third Man
"Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgement." —Seneca
"Political stories, like politics, are about power." — Andrew Marr, My Trade
"In every human society that has left a record, power is an obsessive, fixating, cultural magnet." — Andrew Marr, My Trade
"Without stories of human power, nine-tenths of history and much of art and literature would be void." — Andrew Marr, My Trade
"In politics there is no honour." —Benjamin Disraeli
"Damn your principles! Stick to your party." —Benjamin Disraeli
"Thus our democracy was, from an early period, the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic, in the world." —Lord Macaulay, 1800-1859
"Politicians neither love nor hate. Interest, not sentiment, directs them." —Lord Chesterfield, 1694-1773
"The worst sort of tyranny the world has ever known: the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts." —Oscar Wilde
"The difficulty of governing in a common-sense, empirical manner partly explains a frustrating paradox that everyone in political life experiences: voters almost always believe that things are getting worse, that “the country is going to the dogs�; yet by almost every objective measure — material living standards, longevity, health, housing — life is improving considerably from one generation to the next." —Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, Nov 3rd 2005
"Before they go down this road, Europe's leaders might ponder another fable, this one by Aesop. The frogs are living happily in a pond, until they decide they need a proper king (and constitution). They ask Jove for one. First he sends a log, but they get bored by such a passive ruler. Then he sends an eel, but it proves too easygoing. So the frogs demand another ruler, and an infuriated Jove sends them a heron—who eats them all." —'Back From the dead', Charlemagne, The Economist, Jan 5th 2006
"In the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and
instead of principle governing party, party governs principle." —Thomas Paine
"Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from
the subjects of it... The history of liberty is a history of
limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it." —Woodrow Wilson
"If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it" —Ken Livingstone
"When politicians fling their arms around you it is often just to find the tenderest spot in which to plunge the knife" —Simon Hoggart
"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." —Thomas Jefferson
Arthur Schopenhauer
Posted by pauldavies on February 01, 2005 | Comments (0)
"There is no opinion, however absurd, that men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted… They would sooner die than think."
[On the people] "lazy and credulous adherents"
"Those who venture to speak are incapable of forming any opinions of any echo of others' opinions. Nevertheless, they defend them with all the greater zeal and intolerance."
"There are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?"
"As Hobbes observes, all mental pleasure exists in being able to compare oneself with others to one's own advantage… Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his own vanity."
"Scarcely one man in a hundred is worth your disputing with him."
Winston Churchill
Posted by pauldavies on February 01, 2005 | Comments (0)
[On the qualities needed to be a politician] "The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen."
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
[On the parliamentary candidate] "He is asked to stand, he wants to sit, he is expected to lie"
"It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and rapidly as folly."
[On making speeches] "The art of making deep sounds from the stomach sound like important messages from the brain"
"You will never get to the end of the journey if you stop to shy a stone at every dog that barks."
"Where there is a great deal of free speech, there is always a certain amount of foolish speech."
Hunter S. Thompson
Posted by pauldavies on February 01, 2005 | Comments (0)
"[Politics] is an evil trade on most days, and nobody smart will defend it… except maybe Ronald Reagan, who seems dumber than three mules."
"There is no need for the President of the United States to be smart. He can be hovering on the grim cusp of brain death and still be the most powerful man in the world."
"Political gibberish is not a purely American art form, like jazz and safety blitz. But in only 200 years we have raised it to a new level of eloquence beyond anything since the time of the Caesars or even Genghis Khan."
"Why has every Republican politician since Abraham Lincoln been so crooked that they need a brace of Secret Service men to help them screw their pants on every morning?"
[On Politics] "It's the meanest game in any town"
[On Politicians] "unemployed lawyers, pimps and stockbrokers"
"Politics has its own language, which is often so complex that it borders on being a code."
"Just because a person can subject himself to the degradations of a lifetime in politics and finally end up in the White House is certainly no reason to respect him"
"All career politicians should be put on The Rack – in the name of either poetic or real justice, and probably for The Greater Good."
"any politician who insists on telling the truth: he is mocked, vilified, ignored and abandoned as a hopeless loser by even his good old buddies."
"Skilled professional liars are as much in demand in politics as they are in the advertising business."
H. L. Mencken
Posted by pauldavies on February 01, 2005 | Comments (0)
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."
"In every politician there are hopes of a Hitler."
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."
"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favour of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."
"I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind."
"It is so in politics, which consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all."
"It takes four days' hard work to concoct a speech without a sensible word in it."
"All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organisation, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are."
"The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be realised in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed from these scenes and taken up my public duties in Hell."
"[Politicians] are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged. It is a talent like any other, and when it is exercised by a radio crooner, a movie actor or a bishop, it even takes on a certain austere and sorry respectability. But it is obviously not identical with a capacity for the intricate problems of statecraft.
Those problems demand for their solution – when they are soluble at all, which is not often – a high degree of technical proficiency, and with it there should go an adamantine kind of integrity, for the temptations of a public official are almost as cruel as those of a glamour girl or a dipsomaniac. But we train a man for facing them, not by locking him up in a monastery and stuffing him with wisdom and virtue, but by turning him loose on the stump. If he is a smart and enterprising fellow, which he usually is, he quickly discovers there that hooey pleases the boobs a great deal more than sense. Indeed, he finds that sense really disquiets and alarms them – that it makes them, at best, intolerably uncomfortable, just as a tight collar makes them uncomfortable, or a speck of dust in the eye, or the thought of Hell. The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache."
"Votes are collared under democracy not by talking sense but by talking nonsense."
"Democracy, like Puritanism is immovably grounded upon the inferior man's hatred of the man who is having a better time."
"The democratic politician, confronted by the dishonesty and stupidity of his master, the mob, tries to convince himself and all the rest of us that it is really full of rectitude and wisdom. This is the origin of the doctrine that, whatever its transient errors, democracy always comes to the right decisions in the long run."
"One of the merits of democracy is quite obvious: it is perhaps the most charming form of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far to seek. It is based upon propositions that are palpably not true – and what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true. Truth has a harshness that alarms them, and an air of finality that collides with their incurable romanticism. They turn, in all the great emergencies of life, to the ancient promises, transparently false but immensely comforting, and of all the ancient promises there is none more comforting than the one to the effect that the lowly shall inherit the earth. It is at the bottom of the dominant religious system of the modern world, and it is at the bottom of the dominant political system. Democracy gives it a certain appearance of objective and demonstrable truth. The mob man, functioning as citizen, gets a feeling that he is really important to the world – that he is genuinely running things."
"I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing."
"No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to conversion by evidence… They must get at such men through their feelings or resign getting at them altogether."
"I have often pointed out how politics, under democracy, invariably translates itself from the domain of logical ideas to the domain of mere feelings, usually simple fear – how every great campaign in American history, however decorously it started with a statement of principles, has always ended with a violent pursuit of hobgoblins."
[On politicians] "They have to abase themselves in order to get it, and they have to keep on abasing themselves in order to hold it."
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage."
"The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic."
"Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven."
Bertrand Russell
Posted by pauldavies on February 01, 2005 | Comments (0)
"The world is in the condition of a drunkard anxious to reform, but surrounded by kind friends offering him drinks, and therefore perpetually relapsing."
"The problem of finding a collection of 'wise' men and leaving the government to them is an insoluble one. That is the ultimate reason for democracy."
"Political opinions are not based upon reason."
"All history shows that government is always conducted in the interests of the governing class, except in so far as it is influenced by fear of losing its power."
"Life should not be too closely regulated or too methodical; our impulses, when not positively destructive or injurious to others, ought if possible to have free play; there should be room for adventure."
"Politicians do not find any attractions in a view which does not lend itself to party declamation, and ordinary mortals prefer views which attribute misfortune to the machinations of their enemies. Consequently people fight for and against quite irrelevant measures, while the few who have a rational opinion are not listened to because they do not minister to any one's passions."
"…love of power, vanity and rivalry. These obviously play a very great part in politics. If politics is ever to allow of a tolerable life, these glory-impulses must be tamed and taught to take no more than their proper place."
"The instinctive appeal of every successful political movement is to envy, rivalry or hate, never to the need for co-operation."
"We do not want to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. It is so depressing to think that we suffer because we are fools; yet, taking mankind in the mass, that is the truth. For this reason, no political party can acquire any driving force except through hatred; it must hold up someone to obloquy. If so-and-so's wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy."
"A well-intentioned person who believes in any strong political movement is merely helping to prolong that organised strife which is destroying our civilisation."
"An honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid… because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation."
"Knowledge exists, and good will exists; but both remain impotent until they possess the proper organs for making themselves heard."
"In Western Europe the Renaissance produced a brief period of intellectual and artistic splendour, leading to political chaos and the determination of plain men to have done with this fooling and revert to the serious business of killing each other."
"Perhaps in time men may come to feel that intelligence is an asset in a community, but I cannot say that I see much sign of any movement in this direction."
"Most men think that in framing their political opinions they are actuated by desire for the public good; but nine times out of ten a man's politics can be predicted from the way in which he makes a living."
"The liberty of the individual should be respected where his actions do not directly, obviously and indubitably do harm to other people. Otherwise our persecuting instincts will produce a stereotyped society, as in sixteenth-century Spain."
"So long as men continue to have the present fanatical belief in the importance of politics, free thought on political matters will be impossible."
"One of the peculiarities of the English-speaking world is its immense interest and belief in political parties. A very large percentage of English-speaking people really believe that the ills from which they suffer would be cured if a certain political party were in power. That is a reason for the swing of the pendulum. A man votes for one party and remains miserable; he concludes that it was the other party that was to bring the millennium. By the time he is disenchanted with all parties, he is an old man on the verge of death; his sons retain the belief of his youth, and the see-saw goes on.
I want to suggest that, if we are to do any good in politics, we must view political parties in quite a different way. A party which is to obtain power must, in a democracy, make an appeal to which the majority of the nation responds. For reasons which will appear in the course of the argument, an appeal which is widely successful, with the existing democracy, can hardly fail to be harmful. Therefore no important political party is likely to have a useful programme, and if useful measures are to be passed, it must be by means of some other machinery than party government. How to combine any such machinery with democracy is one of the most urgent problems of our time."
"The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves; the skill of the expert consists in calculating what really is advantageous."
"The power of the politician, in a democracy, depends upon his adopting the opinions which seem right to the average man. It is useless to urge that politicians ought to be high-minded enough to advocate what enlightened opinion considers good, because if they do they are swept aside for others."
"Since politicians are divided into rival groups, they aim at similarly dividing the nation, unless they have the good fortune to unite it in war against some other nation. They live by 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'. They cannot pay attention to anything difficult to explain, or to anything not involving division (either between nations or within the nation), or to anything that would diminish the power of politicians as a class."
"A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible."
"Democracy is successful in so far that the government is obliged to respect public opinion."
"[I]n fact almost any opinion worth either advocating or combating is sure to affect someone adversely."
"Our beliefs result from the combination, in varying degrees, of desire with observation. In some, the part of the one factor is very slight; in others, that of the other. What can be strictly established by empirical evidence is very little, and when our beliefs go beyond this, desire plays a part in their genesis. On the other hand, few beliefs long survive definitive conclusive evidence of their falsity, though they may survive for many ages when there is no evidence either for or against them."
"The success of insanity, in literature, in philosophy, and in politics, is one of the peculiarities of our age, and the successful form of insanity proceeds almost entirely from impulses towards power."
"The problem of the taming of power is a very ancient one. The Taoists thought it insoluble, and advocated anarchism; the Confucians trusted to a certain ethical and governmental training which should turn the holders of power into sages endowed with moderation and benevolence. At the same period, in Greece, democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny were contending for mastery; democracy was intended to check abuses of power, but was perpetually defeating itself by falling a victim to the temporary popularity of some demagogue. Plato, like Confucius, sought the solution in a government of men trained to wisdom. This view has been revived by Mr and Mrs Sidney Webb, who admire an oligarchy in which power is confined to those who have the 'vocation of leadership'. In the interval between Plato and the Webbs, the world has tried military autocracy, theocracy, hereditary monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and the Rule of the Saints—the last of these, after the failure of Cromwell's experiment, having been revived in our day by Lenin and Hitler. All this suggests that our problem has not yet been solved."
