The only given is that there will be a referendum sometime in this parliament – it’s in the coalition deal. So even if some people have the incentive to stop even that I won’t go into that issue.

What do the Tories want? They do not want AV because they think it will not benefit them. They do want a reduction in the number of seats (from 650 to 600) because that will assist them as city seats will be reduced. They want seat boundaries decided according to numbers on the electoral register, not numbers eligible to be on the register, because numbers on the register already are higher in their areas of support. Finally they do not want the referendum on 1st May 2011 as a higher turnout, especially in Scotland and Wales, will assist the Yes side.

What does Labour want? They mildly want AV as it might favour them, and will not favour the Tories. They do not want a reduction in the number of seats. Boundaries decided according to numbers eligible to be on the electoral register would assist Labour as younger voters and ethnic minorities are more likely to vote Labour and numbers on the register now are lowest among those groups. 1st May 2011 for the referendum is OK as it might assist the Yes side, and Labour is moderately in favour of AV.

What do the Lib Dems want? They strongly want AV as election reform has been a core party policy for as long as anyone can remember. They have argued for a reduction in the number of seats to reduce waste, and as they get some support in rural areas it might benefit them electorally too. It’s unclear what their position on the electoral register issue would be – here the Tories seem to be in the driving seat. They want the referendum to be on 1st May because that will boost turnout, and that will assist the Yes side.

What a mess! That’s no way to reform an electoral system…

How would it look if you applied some principles to it, rather than electoral advantage?

For a start you would not bundle the issue of the system and the number of seats together – those would be split as they are two separate issues. So the question would be posed as to what the system would be, and then the second question on whether the number of MPs should be reduced.

The clear, principled position is that everyone’s vote should count equally and that poor levels of electoral registration need to be addressed – so equal sized constituencies on the basis of population eligible to be on the register, not actual numbers on it now, is clearly the principled approach. Same for the referendum date – it should not be 1st May 2011 as this would boost turnout unequally across the country as not all of the country has local or Assembly / Parliament elections at that time.

So – on principle – you should have a referendum with two questions, constituencies on the basis of population eligible to be on the register, and a referendum date that’s not 1st May.

As it stands at the moment we’re going to get precisely the opposite – one question on AV and a seat reduction in the bill, constituency sizes on the basis of those on the register, and a referendum on 1st May 2011.

Berlaymont - CC / Flickr

Oh the irony!

A Member of the European Parliament – Inge Grässle (whose name sounds rather like graisse, the French word for fat) – has had a go at the European Commission for creating its hundredth Director General post. Parliament Magazine has the story:

Gräßle likened the commission to a “self-service shop” and said the latest appointments demonstrate “a display of a remarkable shortage of insight” in the face of austerity budgets in many member states.

This is the very same European Parliament that voted in January to increase staffing allowances for MEPs by €1500 a month, above the €16000 a month they already have for staff (meaning parliamentary assistants are sometimes on €6000 a month – that’s more of a scandal than €15000 a month for a Commission DG in my mind), taking the total budget for the EP’s annual functioning to €1.6 billion.

Essentially the problem the Commission has is that many of its staff have been there too long, and have been going up the hierarchy all these years. There are too many people over-promoted as a result. They are in their golden cages, often demoralised, but with no way to shift them (else the trade union rebels too), although this is admittedly more of an issue below DG level. Then once you’re a DG you’re essentially parked at that level until you retire. So the 100th DG is not a problem in itself – it’s just a symptom of the Commission’s much deeper staffing issues.

(Last paragraph re-worked for clarification in light of comments on Twitter)

A friend pointed me to the Working Document on a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the citizens’ initiative from the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs. Rapporteurs for this are Zita Gurmai and Alain Lamassoure.

This is not the first time I’ve dealt with this topic – I was critical of the Commission’s original proposal in April, and other Eurobloggers were united in their disdain. Maroš Šefčovič is the Commissioner responsible – hence why he’s pictured above.

Yet what have Gurmai and Lamassoure come up with? Surely the European Parliament should know a thing or two about democracy?

Seems not… Here are a few choice quotes from the document:

5.1. Would it make sense to ask for the organisers to have the support of some directly elected persons who would endorse the initiative? If so, how many of them should support it and should they come from at least a quarter of the MS as well or would it just introduce an unwelcome dose of representative democracy into the process?

5.2. Should we ask the organisers to provide a deposit which would naturally be given back to them if the ECI turns out to be successful – ?

10. In order to protect the Commission from being accused of deciding on the admissibility of an ECI on political grounds rather than on legal ones – which would undermine its credibility and cast doubt over the whole process -, it might make sense for it to not be the only organ that will make this decision in the first place. This would avoid the Commission being both judge and jury and it would also prevent it from being overwhelmed.

11. It might be more appropriate to appoint an ad hoc “wise people committee”, gathering some experts, scholars and/or jurists, so that they would be as impartial as possible.

So there we have it. Members of the European Parliament, when preparing a working document about the citizens’ initiative, ask whether it should be necessary for elected representatives to support it, whether financial means need to be demonstrated, and then propose to slow down and bureaucratise the process by getting a bunch of “wise men” to advise on the admissibility of an initiative.

As if that were not enough they propose no change to the 1 year limit to collect signatures (have either them ever tried to collect 1 million signatures?) and seem to confuse themselves about whether individuals or organisations (legal persons) should be doing the collecting.

The only positive point is that they state the admissibility check should be performed at the 5000 signatures stage (rather than 300000 as proposed by the Commission).

Now I know this is only a working document, but seriously, this document is dire. Utterly dire. How do 2 MEPs even think to raise the issue citizens would be asked to put forward a deposit to be able to propose a citizens initiative? While the Commission’s original proposal seemed to seek to distance that institution from responsibility, this working document from the EP aims to pour cold water on any notion that participatory democracy, as if that could somehow challenge the house elected by the people.

[UPDATE - 28.7.2010]
The European Citizens Action Services are running a short questionnaire about the ECI – do head over to their site and answer the few short questions!

The Newport spoof (ace, especially for me as I grew up there, 1.2 million views at the time of writing)

The Brussels (half-)spoof (where I live now, 26k views, some catching up to do!)

Set all of those playing all at once and you’ll sure get an interesting mix!

Dog - CC / Flickr

Right, this is a blog entry that’s going to annoy a lot of people. But I’m very annoyed. So here goes.

I’m totally, utterly and completely sick of dog owners.

Note I am not completely and utterly sick of dogs. I’m not unfriendly towards animals. A dog is a dog. It craps. It barks. It snarls. It chases things. It pees everywhere to mark territory. That’s just how dogs are.

The problem is then with what dog owners do about that.

In the last two weeks I have been doing a lot of sport – running almost every day and yesterday skating along the canal towpath between Delacroix and Buizingen. Dogs and runners / skaters don’t mix very well as dogs think that the runner or skater is some kind of rival, something to be chased and, because it’s going fast it must be either a threat to the dog or it’s something to chase after.

Yesterday was a particular low point when a dog owner let a rather fat boxer dog off its leash and it chased me for more than 200m, snarling the whole way. Thankfully good fitness, 105mm wheels and ceramic bearings in my skates meant I could out-skate the dog. But this is not acceptable. If the dog owner knows his hound is going to chase and endeavour to attack things then the dog must be kept on a leash. It’s not my responsibility to try to predict what someone else’s dog is going to do.

Same in Parc Duden where I run. Loads of dog walkers, all ambling along in large groups, blocking the pathways while nattering away, and completely oblivious to the fact that their dogs go for runners and crap all over the place. Get a grip! Control your damned animals! When I gesticulate and comment to dog owners (in French) they look at me as if I’m from another planet.

Here’s the deal folks. As a skater or a runner I don’t bother you at all if you just have a little spatial awareness and give me about half a metre of space on the 4 metre wide path. Just enough space for me to pass. That’s all. Nothing else. Oh, and the knowledge that your dog is not going to try to attack me, or crap where I am going to run or skate. It’s not that hard, is it?

Camels - CC / Flickr

It’s one of the problems I have as a freelancer, and I’m not alone in this – how much am I supposed to charge for the web design services I provide? An invoice running to hundreds or even thousands of pounds or Euros sounds scary for most of the people I work with.

Most of my clients are politicians – many MPs in Westminster – and they each, personally, get a salary of about £64000. Yet the only people they are used to paying are researchers and interns on a month by month basis and there’s no understanding of how a freelancer’s work is organised. One Brussels politician once told me €700 was the upper limit for payment for her complicated site, oblivious to the fact that she was spending €16000 / month on staffing expenses. OK, not the same budget lines, but go figure it out. Needless to say these politicians’ own salaries are at least twice my own.

Let’s look at this the other way – from the point of view of my expenses.

I’m moving to London in September as most of my clients are there. I’ll be working from home most of the time, I’m in my early 30s, and I need space to work. So no flat-sharing (I need a place to myself) so my rent is going to be £850 / month. Add telephone, internet, utilities, council tax and the total is about £1000. Add onto that HMRC self assessment payments on account of £415 / month and that’s more than £1400 before I have even bought some food at the supermarket… Then comes travel to meet clients, overheads for web hosting, costs for accountants.

Then take a working month. Theoretically (ha!) out of 30 days I am supposed to take weekends off, so 22 days total. At least one day a week I need to organise my finances, chase up clients that have not paid. So that’s 18 days.

I need to be invoicing at least £500 / week just to keep things turning, and ideally something close to £800. That means I need to launch 3 simple-ish WordPress websites each and every month. 36 new sites a year! There are already close to 100 sites still running that I’ve designed or developed in the past, each with their unique legacy, and that legacy never reduces in size. Alternatively I could take on larger projects that operate on the basis of some form of retainer.

So that’s the reason for the camels pictured here. I’m lumping a heavier and heavier weight onto my back. I have major responsibility for a huge number of sites and I have considerable personal financial responsibilities. And the gap between these things is rather narrow just at the moment.

You’re sure?

Perhaps it’s time for a bit of a guerrilla feminist campaign in the public space in the UK. All we would need would be 2 triangles of blue sticky back plastic, and 2 white triangles.

(Inspired by Sociological Images)

5 Years Birthday Cake - CC / Flickr

On 19th July 2005 I wrote a small blog entry about my frustrations with Ryanair, and also explained my blogging debut. “Am I too late jumping on the blogging bandwaggon?” I mused at the time. Looking back it for sure was not too late, and indeed many of the top blogs – especially those on the left in the UK – have ceased. When it comes to blogging about the EU, only Nosemonkey has been at it longer.

It has been an interesting road since then, racking up – at the time of writing – 1208 posts and 7584 comments. Almost every one of the posts has at least one image – rather rare for a political blog.

In 2006 the blog was rated 10th best in UK politics in Iain Dale’s lists (2006 and 2007 scores here) before dropping off the UK blogging radar due to excessive EU geekiness. My 2006 failure at the Commission entrance exams has created one of the most active places to discuss the concours with 3516 comments so far across 2 posts. A post in September 2007 (updated here) led to the creation of Bloggingportal.eu. The biggest thing I’ve ever done – the Atheist Bus Campaign – started from this post in 2008, while 2009 saw the Gender Balanced Commission campaign launched from the blog. In 2010 the blog has been rated 5th most influential about the EU.

My mind works in eccentric ways, and the blog posts reflect that. From my sporting pursuits to Eurostar to the travails of the European left, from the quandaries of food emissions to World Cup footballs to the stupidity of Boris Johnson’s routemaster plans – it’s all been covered.

From a technical point of view the blog started off on pLog and for the last 4 years has been running WordPress. It has been hosted in at least 3 places, currently by the excellent EZPZ Hosting. Over the past 18 months I’ve also become a dedicated Twitter user (@jonworth) to complement the blogging, and surpassed 2000 followers the day before the 5 year anniversary of the blog.

Above all blogging has allowed me to meet excellent people all over the place, to be invited to all kinds of events and to build all sorts of projects with the people I’ve met. It’s been a hard road sometimes, but I’m never short of ideas or thoughts, and the blog has been (and will continue to be) my canvas to express what’s on my mind. Here’s to the next 5 years!