Been catching up on the backlog of e-mails on electoral reform but am rather
dissappointed at how timid the proposals are.
I mean in this post-modern, post-industrial, globalised, "we're all in it
together" society is it really right and proper that some knuckle-dragging
Milwall supporter should have as much say in the governance of this great
Monarchy of ours as David Beckham or Sir Fred Goodwin?
My proposal is this: every British subject will have one vote (to keep things
fair) but then (and this is the brilliant bit) anyone can buy as many extra
votes as they like!
This will ensure that the people who have the most stake in society: bankers,
hedge fund traders, professional footballers, Jonathan Ross, Bullingdon Club
members, Bernie Ecclestone etc will quite rightly have more say than those with
no stake in society: single mothers, benefits scroungers, disability
malingerers, scousers, economic migrants etc.
I need help in firming up this idea a bit as I'm not sure if we should have a
fixed price vote, say £1,000 per vote, which would mean that a fine upstanding
member of society such as John Terry would be able to buy 100 votes with a
weeks wages. Would we have different price bands for different elections? Say
£1,000 for a general election, £500 for local elections and 5p for a Euro
Election (as no-one votes in these anyway). Betty what would be a reasonable
price for a vote in the Scottish MSP elections?
Or should there be a market in votes? We could call it the vote exchange.
Think of all the valuable wealth creating activities the clever financial
people could come up with - secondary vote trading, vote shorting,
collateralised vote trading. Just think you could borrow money to buy
thousands of votes all backed up by valuable US mortgage debts or Irish
property.
Also should there be an upper limit to the number of votes available or should
the Government just print as many votes as required. Clearly it wouldn't be
fair to ask council staff to count all these extra votes so we would have bloc
votes, say 1000 votes per ballot paper. To save time the ballot papers could
also be filled in in advance as anyone buying votes is going to be voting for
the right party.
Obviously, as we live in a globalised world, non-British subjects would be able
to buy votes for use in British elections, as I'm sure that Russian oligarchs
or the Bahraini royal family would use their votes wisely for the benefit of
our Monarchy. And Ken Bates would be able to vote, God bless the saviour of
Leeds United!
All the money raised from this could go to cutting the deficit.
Simples
Graham White
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