AVery dubious alternative

THE FRIDAY THING: ARE you looking forward to exercising your vote for an Alternative Vote on May 5 as well as a vote for dumping out the Lib-Dems, whose passion for tinkering with our age-old and traditional first-past-the-post system knows no bounds.

The Lib-Dems and other minority parties fancy the idea of a new voting system not for your benefit or mine but because it gives them an opportunity of winning more seats.

It’s bound to when you think about it because the party that most people place third or possibly even fourth in the ballot (and that’s the Lib-Dems on a good day) could win the seat while the party whose candidate finished first on most voting papers could be the loser.

How could this be, you ask amid much head scratching? Well, parties who occupy second, third, or even fourth place in the AV sweepstakes will have their votes counted three or four times while the candidate who tops the list on most people’s ballot papers has his or her votes counted only once. Yes, I know, put like that it sounds barmy and it is significant that the AV system is used by only three countries around the world: Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia (hardly a ringing international endorsement).

And that is not surprising. What AV produces is government of fudge, compromise and secret deals in which parties try to patch together enough power-hungry opponents (including loonies and extremists) to form some sort of unholy alliance. But there is always a price to pay, usually in the shape of policies that the vast majority of us do not want and would never approve and certainly did not vote for.

First past the post may not be perfect, but it has served us well for generations and has been copied right round the world.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.


THOSE of you who wander around town clutching a thrice-used Sainsbury or Tesco plastic bag while you do your shopping have clearly not read the latest so-called fashion statement. Handbags costing £18,000 are the new must-have accessory.
As a mere man I wonder how anyone, apart from those who should be locked away for their own protection, could possibly pay £18,000 for a handbag? I would want something that could drive me home and that cooked my tea, cleaned the house and did a spot of decorating and DIY for a couple of years for that.

Victoria Beckham, who inhabits a different planet from the rest of us, has apparently designed the bag which is evidently made out of “ultra-precious matt crocodile skins” (certainly precious to the crocodiles who have been sacrificed in the name of fashion) and “her people” say unbelievably: “We haven’t found any price resistance,” which confirms that there are a lot of daft folk out there with pockets (or handbags) full of cards and cash and heads full of candy floss and Swiss cheese.

Actually bag Beckham is something of a snip among the ladies who lunch in the big cities of Europe. Chanel sells a bag (again thanks to a crocodile swimming around skinless) for £21,000-£25,000 and something or someone called Hermes Birkin has a bargain bag (yes, another crocodile whose innards have nothing to prevent them from floating down the river) for £37,000.


FINAL WORD: Will residents of Derker, whose area more and more resembles a war zone (a lost war, in fact) take comfort from the words of the council’s executive director for economy, place and skills when she says that the future management of “terraces like this” will be discussed by cabinet on April 27? How many more times will it be discussed before something is actually done about it following the unmitigated disaster that were Pathfinder and HMR?