Some time ago, I did this blog post about the amount of litter that can be found in public transport areas, such as bus and train stations. It is definitely under the category of ‘personal annoyance’, but it was something worth investigating. I found that there are few bins in these areas despite there being nothing in the relevant regulations which says you must not have bins under any circumstances. I realise there is a supposed terrorist threat, but things such as transparent bin bags and regular collections can help. Also, I doubt that terrorism is going to strike the likes of Hull Interchange or Doncaster train station (otherwise known as ‘Doncatraz’) any time soon.

That post was well received at the time and I was reminded of it recently when I heard about the latest Daily Mail campaign. This one is designed to get a streets cleaned up to make Britain tidy in the Diamond Jubilee year. It’s a noble idea and not something which has hints of the normal Daily Mail stereotypes. However, it’s always worth looking at the detail and what facts they’ve their arguments on.

Keep Britain Tidy logo

When newsreaders attack

I heard about the Daily Mail campaign because of news about the actions of Alice Arnold, a BBC newsreader. Those actions are described perfectly in the following quote:

“But when Radio Four newsreader Alice Arnold — racing commentator Clare Balding’s civil partner — saw an empty plastic bottle fly out of the car in front of her as they waited in traffic she decided enough was enough.

The 49-year-old Londoner got out of her car, picked up the bottle and hurled it back through the open window from which it had just been tossed.“

It’s questionable whether we needed to know that she was Clare Balding’s civil partner, but that’s an example of modern mainstream journalism and isn’t the point.

There are two things worth noting here. One is the rather casual attitude towards litter disposal that some members of society are demonstrating. The other is the reaction of the other side of society that is more respectful and less lazy.

The Daily Mail thought it was a great example of relevant outrage are using it as part of their ‘Spring Clean For The Queen’ campaign.

A rubbish survey

The following infographic was featured in this Daily Mail article:

Found on the Daily Mail website

The survey that Harris Interactive conducted clearly covered a significant number of people. You often see sample sizes like that in political opinion polls (done by e.g. YouGov). Unfortunately, a complete report or set of results is not available on the Harris website and isn’t linked to by the Daily Mail, but there is still some interesting information available.

It’s clear that the majority of people surveyed are concerned about the issue in their area and believe it damages the quality of life and as the Mail didn’t do the survey themselves, there’s an increased chance of legitimacy. It’s clear that people believe that offenders should pick up the litter of others as a punishment too (remember, the dropping of litter is against the law).

However, the overwhelming trend in the responses shows that the public wouldn’t do anything if they saw somebody dropping litter. Apparently, we (as a nation) are worried about violent reactions. There’s two possible reasons for this:

1. Britain is largely pacifist and even though it complains about society, it doesn’t want to do anything to fix the problems
2. Whilst the public think the dropping of litter is a problem, it’s nowhere near the most important thing in the world

I think it’s a combination of both.

There is one thing that the survey and accompanying articles don’t consider though – the lack of rubbish bins in suitable locations across the country. There are plenty of areas where you have to walk a significant distance until you reach a bin to dispose of litter that may have been created by buying something at e.g. a newsagents. Authorities such as Hull City Council have improved their provision, but it isn’t ideal.

Summary and Conclusion

The spirit of this campaign is good and it has the support of a substantial portion of the public, but there are gaps in the collection of information. Also, if the public aren’t willing to stand up for the cause, there’ll be no noticeable results. Instead, the issue will just be highlighted – something that the ‘Keep Britain Tidy‘ campaign has been doing for years.

So, what do you think?

Those of you who have read my blog in the past will know my opinions of strikes and votes on them in relation to public sector pensions over the last couple of years. For a long time (even going back to before my student union days), I have felt that many unions are far too reactionary and decide to go on strikes as soon as possible, instead of considering it to be a last resort. I also think that the votes which trigger these strikes are often worthless as the turnout is so low.

Strikes can cause an incredible amount of disruption to many people and the protesters often don’t get what they want. For example, the strike action in November 2011 didn’t do anything significant.

There is public sector strike action going on today about the pension issue. It features PCS members (and members of other unions such as Unite) from organisations such as the police and the prisons, as well as places like the job centre, immigration and the tax office. Once again, I feel that this action will generate plenty of news (it has so far), but it will not enure any seismic shifts in policy.

Photo taken by Felix Clay and found on the Guardian website

The strike

Live coverage of the events (well, live at the time I created this post) can be found here.

The following is from this BBC article:

“Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union – which estimates that an “overwhelming majority” of its 250,000 public sector members are on strike – told BBC Radio 5 live the cost of pensions was falling as a proportion of GDP.

This is in line with the rest of what Serwotka has said about this entire issue and also reflects what is being said about the other unions involved.

Whenever he (and other senior figures in trade unions) says “overwhelming majority” or something similar, I always question the validity of the statement. Back in June and November of last year, I noted that although the unions often claim a majority of the membership want strike action, when you look at the actual figures, it’s actually a high percentage of a very low turnout. This often means that the majority of members either don’t want strikes or don’t care enough.

The strike action and protests taking place today have a smaller number of people taking part. This will probably be for one or two reasons. One – it’s been some time since this was in the news more regularly and two – it might be that less union members care. Of course, many union members might feel compelled to join the action even though they don’t necessarily agree with it.

Police and prisons

One of the highlights of this most recent round of strike action is that it features police and prison officers. This caused several headlines on the TV news and was mentioned in many online articles (such as this on the Guardian’s website).

This point about police officers is an interesting one. Approximately 20,000 are going on strike – which isn’t an insignificant number. However, they are all off-duty officers. This (in theory) means it will not cause too much disruption to the police service and reduces the effectiveness. It’s also worth mentioning that police officers aren’t allowed to take part in significant industrial action:

“We don’t have industrial rights and we cannot do anything about the poor treatment we are receiving,” said Julie Nesbit of the Police Federation, which represents 124,000 rank and file officers. She added: “The police service is the ultimate public service. We are the people without whom the rest of the public services cannot function.”

Prison officers have (according to the PCS website) have “walked out”. However, not all agree with the action. I noticed this message from a serving prison officer on the BBC website:

The Socialist Worker

As you would expect, the likes of the Socialist Worker have plenty to say about the strikes. They often demonstrate an incredibly one-sided perspective, but it’s worth mentioning them. This article on their website states the “strikes can beat austerity” and features a quote from a health worker who calls for further strikes after this. The article also complains that the “mainstream media” is making this all about immigration at Heathrow. This is blatantly wrong as (on many occasions) I have seen other unions such as those linked to health mentioned. I have also just seen a lengthy (recorded) BBC interview with a senior police officer.

Summary and Conclusion

The government have stated time and again that they are only willing to work on the matter through negotiations. Whether you believe that is going to make any difference or not, striking is clearly foolhardy. Francis Maude, a Cabinet Office Minister who has been a key figure in the negotiations, has stated that “In March we set out our final proposed agreements on pension reform” and that ”Pension talks will not be reopened and nothing further will be achieved through strike action”.

I have said frequently that unions can do many great things and have helped out many hard working people in the past so they get what they deserve. They have a long history of negotiations on many issues. However, on this occasion, the senior officials are wrong.

So, what do you think?

So, the man who famously got dressed up as a cat on Big Brother and once made friends with Saddam Hussein has been given a position of responsibility in Bradford West.

George Galloway, the former MP for Bethnal Green and Bow (Respect) and Glasgow Kelvin (Labour) won by an overwhelming majority and embarrassed the three major (and mainstream) parties in the process. You have to wonder why the voters in that constituency thought he would be suitable.

Picture taken by DavidMartynHunt (Flickr, CC Attribution)

Previously…

Galloway started of as a Labour MP – getting elected on June 11th, 1987 in the constituency of Glasgow Kelvin (later changed to Glasgow Hillhead). According to this article, he caused immediate controversy after his election success and narrowly avoided be deselected. More controversy followed though. In October 2003, when he became an Independent MP because Labour expelled him due to his comments about the Iraq war. In normal circumstances, you wouldn’t necessarily criticise an MP for expressing their own opinion. It’s the way that he expressed it though that was the problem for Labour:

“But Labour chairman Ian McCartney insisted that party had been right to expel a man who “incited foreign forces to rise up against British troops”.

“He was the only Labour MP to do this and he has never taken back or apologised for these comments,” he said.”

It’s one thing to have an opinion and express it, but when it involves asking foreign forces to attack British people, it cannot be accepted – particularly when you’re an MP – a position of responsibility.

From May 2005 until May 2010 his was the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow (a constituency he has less of a link to) and was part of the Respect Party. During this time, his voting record was at an absolute minimum and barely performed any Parliamentary duties that you might expect of an MP.

Speaking of his voting record, you can find it (from 1997 onwards) at ThePublicWhip:

Clearly, the expulsion from the Labour Party wouldn’t have made him happy. However, that is absolutely no reason to almost completely abandon your duties in the Houses of Parliament. People elected him as their representative and he should have done that job. The full term as a Respect MP features one of the lowest voting percentages I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, the people of Bethnal Green and Bow were unable to eject him from the seat, as he didn’t stand as a candidate in the 2010 General Election. Instead, he attempted to gain the seat of Poplar and Limehouse. However, he finished in third place with only 17.5% of the vote.

By-election

We heard less from him since that election defeat.

Then, on March 1st, we heard that Marsha Singh – the Labour MP for Bradford West was to resign due to health reasons. He had been the MP for that area since 1997 and had even increased his majority at the 2010 General Election. His vote attendance was excellent (63% from 1997 to 2001, 59% from 2001 to 2005, 54.7% from 2005 to 2010).

In a Labour stronghold such as this, you would normally expect a by-election to result in a Labour win. However, there were reports that the campaign team was poor, Galloway had convinced some of them to switch sides and the candidate chose not to attend any of the hustings, even though the other candidates did. There was support from some Labour MPs, but that (clearly) wasn’t enough.

Controversy

This letter was sent by George Galloway to the Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission. Here is an extract:

“It is once again apparent in the Bradford West by-election that postal voters are being pressurised into voting for a particular candidate through friends and family and in a way that offends both against the spirit and the law regarding free and fair elections. The postal vote on demand system remains fundamentally and irreparably flawed because it entails the loss of the secret ballot.To add insult to injury in this election, I’ve been informed by the returning officer, chief executive of Bradford Metropolitan District Council Tony Reeves, that it is “custom and practice” for all district councillors to attend the election count as “observers”, thus swamping the counting agents of which there are seven per candidate and building in an extraordinary political distortion into the counting process”

He makes some serious accusations in this letter, but he supplies no proof in order to back up his argument the procedures relating to the election count should be changed.

Election Results

The following are the results for the by-election:

The turnout was 50.9%, which is better than some elections, but could still be better. All of the elections in Bradford West since 1970 have had higher turnouts.

On his campaign website, the victory was referred to as the ‘Bradford Spring’ – a reference to the long-running ‘Arab Spring’. This was in incredibly poor taste. How on earth can the two events be considered equal? The Arab Spring was a result of years of oppression by certain leaders and the public having little power to make a change. Galloway’s victory was a by election in one constituency that only came about because the existing MP became ill.

Summary and Conclusion

Iain Martin was correct in this blog entry. It is deifintely a humiliation for Ed Miliband. It was a safe Labour seat (one of many) and up until recently, he had been winning by-elections like these. It’s clearly a sign that there was some complacency and that there wasn’t enough effort in putting an effective campaign together.

Clearly, the voters were presented with a Labour candidate who was proving to be ineffective. There was little chance of the Conservatives winning due to the long-running political leanings of the constituency. George Galloway made his presence known though and is part of a party that has some success where there are large Asian populations.

The thing is, Bradford West have now elected a person who has a shocking vote attendance record, a history of public gaffes and a record which includes siding with those fighting against the British military. He’s not exactly ideal.

So, what do you think?

This week saw another Budget speech done by George Osborne, which was (mostly) leaked to the media beforehand. Prior to that though was another round of what some consider to be pantomime – Prime Minister’s Questions.

Its an institution that goes back years, but is it effective and do we need it any more? In this blog post, I will be going through some of the history as well as attempting to answer those two questions. As usual, comments are welcome.

Photo taken by Philip Stevens (Public domain, Wikimedia)

What’s the point?

The first Prime Minister’s Questions happened on July 18th, 1961. Before this, the Prime Minister rarely got to answer questions in an oral fashion, according to this page on Parliament UK. The original format for PMQs was two 15 minute sessions – the first on Tuesday and the second on Thursday (it has been one half hour session on Wednesdays since 1997). The first PM to take part in this ‘experiment’ was Harold Macmillan (his opponent at the time was Hugh Gaitskill). The transcript from that first session can be found here.

From the records, you can see that it is relatively civil – what you would expect from serious proceedings. According to this Independent article, the modern day style of arguments began in the 1970s, which saw Harold Wilson ‘debating’ with Edward Heath.

However, it still wasn’t quite as bad as today. Unfortunately, one of the main problems was the use of television. The first televised PMQs took place on November 28th, 1989:

You might not see too much of it here, but television was a reason for the increase in use of ‘soundbites’ – short statements that stand out in media coverage, but don’t often mean much. The heavy use of these can often mean that an MP doesn’t get an answer to their question – particularly if it relates to a controversial subject.

You also see plenty of ‘planted questions’ nowadays. Its a common tactic used by Governments so that they can put a positive spin on any activities and give them a chance of ‘burying bad news’. These are unfortunate as it does nothing to improve accountability. Most of the time, you can predict the answer and in some cases the answers have been given numerous times (soundbites).

The problem is, media coverage of parliamentary proceedings has to take place to increase transparency and improve accountability. It allows detailed analysis of policies and decision making that can be all-important during events such as General Elections.

Summary and Conclusion

So, in the era of planted questions, vague answers and soundbites, you would think that Prime Minister’s Questions is no longer effective/fit for purpose. It still needs to happen though. Without it, ordinary MPs would have less opportunities to raise constituency business with the Prime Minister or ask questions about important national and international issues. There is the Liaison Committee, which has met to as the Prime Minister oral questions since 2002. However, this isn’t particularly frequent and as only consists of Select Committee Chairs. Its longer than PMQs and streamed over the internet, but less issues are covered and local matters aren’t mentioned.

In short, there would be less scrutiny without PMQs.

So, what do you think?

It would be foolish to try and give a complete history of the Israel/Palestine conflict in a single blog post. It is one of the longest running disputes out there. Various world leaders have attempted to find solutions (e.g. that summit Bill Clinton had with Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat), but nothing has been completely successful. There is no denying that some knowledge of recent events would give you an idea why the Palestinian elections are important though.

The elections will be happening in May. Hopefully there will be some coverage of them in the mainstream media. It is so important that people remain aware of world events.

The flag of Palestine

Recent history

The Presidential election should have taken place on January 24th, 2010. However, they were both postponed. What’s worse is that it should have happened even earlier:

“2. The presidential office term shall be four years. He/she shall not be elected for more than two terms.”

The above is from article 3 of a 2007 Presidential decree, which annulled the previous law. The previous election happened on January 9th, 2005. This mean one should have taken place in early 2009. Various disputes between Fatah and Hamas (the two leading Palestinian parties) were the main cause of this. The election was rescheduled for July 2010, but then there was a further delay because the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority wanted to safeguard “national unity” and create some form of agreement between the two parties.

In December of that year, the Palestine High Court ruled that the delay was a violation of Article 10 of the 2005 law (which appears to be the same as Article 29 of the 2007 law). It’s interesting that the make a reference to the previous law that was made irrelevant before the delays began, but the issue of disenfranchisement remains.

There is also the issue of control of territories. At present, Fatah (affiliated to the Palestine Liberation Organisation) is in control of the Palestine National Authority. The PLO approves of a two state solution and the PLO has had the support of the US in the past. Mahmoud Abbas is recognised as the President of Palestine. However, in reality their current influence is limited to the West Bank. Hamas (the opposition and not PLO-affiliated) currently has influence in the Gaza Strip. This is because of violence that occurred after Hamas won the Parliamentary elections in 2006. A coalition had to be formed, but that broke down.

The unity agreement in 2011 was supposed to pave the way for a transitional government where Abbas would remain President and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal would be Prime Minister. However, meetings that should have taken place after this never happened. A meeting in Qatar was supposed to see a transitional government formed with Abbas becoming Prime Minister, but this possibility has come under fire and, at present Salam Fayyad is the Prime Minister (appointed by Abbas in 2007).

The previous election

These are the results of the previous election:

As you can see, Hamas did not enter a candidate. According to 2004 figures, there were 1,092,407 registered voters and 73.42% cast their vote. It was a landslide victory for Abbas, but then you would expect that when he is the leader of the only major party in the election. It was seen as a step forward in the peace process because Israel consider Hamas to be a terrorist organisation. However, since Hamas gained control of Gaza, that statement (echoed by many leaders) seems a bit foolish (rather like the infamous ‘Mission Accomplished’ message behind George Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003).

The new election

Mahmoud Abbas has been nominated by Fatah and if he were to win, then it would be his final term according to electoral law. It may be four years this time, but delays have happened before. In January, Khaled Mehsaal decided to not stand as the Hamas candidate at the next election. I cannot find anything that says who the Hamas candidate would be. However, they may do the same thing as 2005 and not enter a candidate. Talks have broken down, but considering the influence in Gaza and their parliamentary victory in 2006, they may stand a chance of winning.

The views of the United States and Israel are always considered important in this situation. Israel still considers Hamas to be terrorist. So do the US (as well as the UK and EU). Recently, Barack Obama has sided with Israel:

“At every crucial juncture – at every fork in the road – we have been there for Israel. Every single time.”

The Republican candidates also seem to be siding with Israel. For example, this is what Mitt Romney had to say recently:

“We will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally, Israel.”

Due to them siding with Israel, you’d expect continued support of Fatah controlling all of Palestine.

Summary and Conclusion

It’s good that there’s a date for the Presidential elections. The people have had to wait too long for a vote, which is their democratic right. Recent talks indicated that Hamas might take part, but there’s no guarantee. They may have a chance due to previous parliamentary victories and current influence, but international opposition would cause problems.

If the election does happen on the specified date, Mahmoud Abbas should win again. Violence will probably continue though. These elections would be an end to the cycle.

So, what do you think?

The Arab Spring is a hugely important (and ongoing) event in global politics. No-one can deny the effect that it has had. Leaders in multiple nations have been ousted and events in the likes of Syria show that this is probably going to continue. One of the major talking points was the resignation of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. There were celebrations when he handed over the leadership, but now the people want fair Presidential elections to take place. Then the country can start to move on.

It was recently announced that the first round of voting will take place on May 23rd. At present, there is a period where candidates can put their names forward. This is earlier than planned due to protests, according to Reuters:

“Army leaders who took over from Mubarak in February last year have faced street protests and widespread demands that they hand power to civilians sooner than the end-June deadline they had set themselves.”

The flag of the Arab Republic of Egypt

Survey of Values

Before going into the details of elections and recent news, it is worth establishing context.

It’s worth remembering that the uprising in Egypt didn’t necessarily start on it’s own. The actions of activists/protestors in other nations acted as a catalyst. The Arab Spring can be dated back to December 2010 in Tunisia, whereas the action in Egypt started in late-January of 2011. Presumably, it was thought that nothing could be done to make change happen before then.

According to the 2005 Egyptian sample from the World Values Survey, people had the following opinions of politics (sample size – 3046):

So, 62.7% of those people surveyed went for the two options that were least positive. It would be interesting to see a sample taken now. I would imagine that there would be a substantial difference. Remember, the figures above are pre-Arab Spring and shows the level of apathy that Mubarak created due to his autocratic leadership.

Other statistics worth noting are:

• 98.8% were not a member of a labour union (3051 respondents for this question). This is probably due to the fact that the Egyptian Trade Union Federation was state controlled, so it probably had a low quality of representation
• 95.7% (of 3051 respondents) were not a member of a political party. This will be due to the apathy I mentioned earlier. There were political factions, but due to the style of rule, their power was minimal.
• When asked if they were satisfied with life on a scale of 1 to 10, 47.2% (of 3050 respondents) gave an answer of 5 or less. So, nearly half wanted something to change for the better, but they believe the leadership wouldn’t do anything, or there’s nothing in place that enables them to do something for themselves.

Now you can see how important it was for the action happening in other nation to a) happen and b) be communicated. The Arab Spring created a surge of activism that couldn’t be stopped by Mubarak and he eventually gave in.

Presidential rules

According to this article from AllAfrica, candidates have to meet the following criteria, which were set out by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces:

This is the final post in my series that covers this year’s elections at Hull University Union. It’s also the third of the posts that looks at the results, which were announced on March 1st at Asylum.

Two of the winners from the elections this year

This particular post focuses on all the results I haven’t mentioned so far. I won’t be listing every results table as that would make the post too long, but if you are interested in the round by round results, please look at my complete results spreadsheet.

AU Exec

Seven out of the eight positions were filled as the election for Tour Representative had no human candidates. Four out of those seven positions had more than one person too, which made them a bit more competitive. The following are the results:

The elections for BUCS Rep, Comms Officer, Events Officer and Kit Rep only required one round. The lowest of the Droop quotas was 739.5 (Kit Rep). The longest running election was for Varsity Rep, which required three rounds and ended up with Eleanor Capstick beating Mark Hempel. Although some of the winners enjoyed high final round vote shares, remember that some of them were competing against a Re-Open Nominations option that has never won (at least as far back as I can remember).

Scarborough Exec

Three of the five elections had only one human candidate and the following is the results:

The numbers of candidates in these elections were disappointing and that is (possibly) one of the reasons for the low turnout. It’s worth noting that the overall turnout was higher compared to the previous two years though. Even though there are fewer students at Scarborough, it would be nice to see more candidates.

None of the elections went past the first round, although the Sport Officer election was relatively close. In the Education Officer election, experience and name recognition proved to be the advantage for Jamie Lawrence as the only incumbent retained his position.

Others elected in the first round

There are several things worth noting in this set of elections. Firstly, Hannah Pomfret managed to get nearly 55% of the vote n the first round of the Chair Media election, despite having four other human candidates and R.O.N. to compete against. It clearly shows her popularity, as well as the success of her campaign. However, in a previous post, I did note that she listed no HUU media experience on her nomination form. It will be interesting to see how well she does in the role next year.

I had thought that the Chair Disabled Students election was going to be relatively close too as the incumbent was running against a former Equality Officer from several years ago (although the latter didn’t state any policies on her nomination form). However, Daryl Jones won in the first round by a significant margin. His name recognition and more recent experience will have helped.

The best result for R.O.N. came in the Chair ISA election. Although Joy Makasi won with a margin of 1727, R.O.N. got 448 votes.  The large turnout is positive and Joy is obviously popular, but there seems to be a number of people who weren’t happy with her. However, it’s a positive sign that the amount of votes for this position is significantly higher than it was last year.

For the Student Trustee election, there was no R.O.N., which is strange as the option was available in all other elections. What if the student population weren’t happy with either candidate? Anyway, Thom Rawlinson won with a relatively small margin. A commenter on a previous post let me know that he will be in Westminster next year as part of his course. Maybe this was the reason for the small margin.

Others elected in the second

For Chair Campaigns & Democracy, R.O.N. was eliminated in the first round with 281 votes. The transfers actually benefited Adam Allnutt (the runner-up) the most as his vote total went from 786 to 834. However, it wasn’t enough to overtake Richard Brooks, who had gone past the second round Droop quota by 114 votes. It was good to see a big turnout in this important election.

In the Chair HUSSO election, both candidates got a similar number of transfers after R.O.N. was eliminated in the first round, but Kathryn Kay won with a significant margin of 248 in the second round. HUSSO is an important voluntary organisation within the student union which does a lot of work in the community. It’s structure has changed over the years, but it was good to see a turnout of 1724 – a bigger turnout than many of the other elections.

Others elected in the third

Leigh Debenham - the winner of the Chair Societies election

The only election that required a third round was the one for the Chair of the Societies Executive. The previous Chair – Ben Croft – had caused some controversy prior to the start of voting, so it was important to elect someone who was capable of doing a good job.

There were three candidates (four if you include R.O.N.), but Leigh Debenham had a significant lead at the start and maintained first position throughout the election. She won with a substantial margin of nearly 300.

Despite the initially high turnout of 1989, the amount of ballots without further preferences meant that the final round only made use of 1636 votes.

Summary and Conclusion

Aiden Mersh with some of the candidates, including Pippa (new VP Community) and Chris (new VP Scarborough)

I have enjoyed covering the elections this year. I have also been encouraged by and pleased with the responses I’ve received to my posts. There has certainly been plenty to blog about, such as the diversity of candidates, the increase in use of Facebook groups and pages and the different ideas people have had for campaign videos on YouTube.

I did this series of blog posts this year due to requests from other people. I’m not sure whether I’ll cover the elections for 2013 though. That will entirely depend on my personal situation and what people want.

So, what do you think?

In the previous results post, I looked at the results of all the elections for sabbatical officer roles. In this post, I am looking at the results of the elections for NUS Delegates and Councillors of Scrutiny. These two are the only elections that have multiple winners. They don’t always get the attention that they deserve, like some of the other non-sabbatical elections.

For the complete set of results, please see my complete elections spreadsheet. For links to all the previous HUU Elections blog posts, click here.

One of the voting posters at HUU

NUS Delegates

As I mentioned, this is one of the elections that doesn’t always get the attention that it deserves. You can see that by the total number of first preference votes, as well as by the rate the number of exhausted ballots increase.

There were 12 human candidates, as well as R.O.N., who turned out to be relatively successful this time. In an unusual twist, he made it past the first round, a round that saw Hasan Ali Khan eliminated. Despite only receiving 35 votes (roughly 2.2% of first preferences), Hasan would have another chance of success in the elections for Union Councillors.

Other points worth noting from round 1 were that there were two candidates with a significant lead over the others and they were the only people to go past 200 votes (at that point). However, as Tom Peel and Ashley Armitage are current sabbatical officers (Tom in his second and final term), they would have a lot of name recognition and popularity. With this in mind, you would expect the other sabbatical officer in the race (Matthew Barrow) to be in third place, but he was ranked below both Victoria Winterton and Jon Chambers. You could have put this down to Labour support, but that doesn’t seem to be a factor when you see that Kora-Lee Holmes only got 80 first preferences.

Two things to note from round 2 are that the quota is almost the same and that there were only nine of the votes for Hasan that had no second preferences. Nobody had gone past the quota at this point either. It’s worth noting that if this happened, surpluses may have been transferred as it is a multi winner election. Round 2 also saw the elimination of the ever-present R.O.N. (with no vote total increase). The person who saw the biggest vote total increase after round 2 was Tanvir Hassan.

Aimee Kent-Payne was eliminated in round 3. Her early elimination could either be a reaction to her well-known political views (she ran for the position of VP Welfare in the previous election and has a left wing and anti-cuts agenda) or it’s simply that the number of the candidates running for other positions meant that she didn’t have the same level of name recognition. You’ll note that nobody really benefits from the transfers after the previous round. This is because of a noticeable increase in the number of exhausted ballots (those with no further preferences).

Ashley Armitage has retained his first place position at this point, but hadn’t gone past the quota until round 6. You’ll note the R6 quota is 251.7, but the rules state that in the event of a decimal place, the quota is rounded down. At that point, there were four people over 200 votes (Ashley, Jon Chambers, Tom Peel, Victoria Winterton). Matthew Barrow was still surprisingly behind and had only seen an increase of 8 votes since the first round. Komal Tariq and Dominique Richards had already been eliminated and this round saw Kora-Lee Holmes go out (surprising, when considering the success of her VP Welfare campaign).

Round 7 saw Tanvir Hassan eliminated and Matthew Barrow had finally reached the 200 votes mark. Tom Peel and Victoria Winterton had also overtaken Ashley, with Victoria now being in first place.

The final round saw Daisy Baldwin finish bottom and she was the only one of the candidates in that round not to go over the 200 votes mark. Those candidates who became the NUS Delegates are Victoria, Tom, Ashley, Matthew and Jon. It’s worth pointing out that Matthew went past the quota based on the formula used by the computer that processed the votes, but the normal formula ((1424/(5+1))+1) gives a Droop quota of 238.3 (rounded to 238) and that would mean Matthew wouldn’t have been successful. Remember STV elections are about people passing a quota.

Councillors of Scrutiny

Ok, you’ll probably notice some interesting things about the above table. First of all, you might be wondering why all the candidate vote totals use decimal places after the first round. This is because two candidates went past the initial quota. This created surpluses and in multi-winner elections, a surplus is redistributed to other candidates using three weightings. This was then done for all subsequent rounds.

I could have included columns which show the redistribution of surpluses, but it would have added needless complexity and made the table too wide for my blog. I felt that this layout was easier to read for those new to HUU elections and/or STV.

This was also another election where R.O.N. made it past the first round – Dafydd Huw Wrennall was eliminated first.

Experience wasn’t necessarily a factor in this particular election as Timothy Sykes – a current Councillor – was eliminated fairly early on.

There were six places available in this election, which makes the short-form quota formula (Votes/7)+1. The successful candidates were Dehenna Davidson, Amber Whipp, Sean Brawley, Rosie Corrigan, Jamie Boote and Maijury Sriranjan. Three are Labour supporters, one is a member of Conservative Future and one is a Liberal Democrat.

Summary and Conclusion

The surplus wasn’t required in the NUS Delegate election. Under modified AV and First Past The Post, the results would have been the same. For the Councillors of Scrutiny election, the results would have been the same under First Past The Post.

The next post will be about all other other positions that I haven’t mentioned in the results posts so far.

So, what do you think?

The voting period is over and the results have been announced. Hull University Union has a new sabbatical team for the 2012-2013 academic year, as well as a new team of students in various roles in all zones of the union. This is the first of three post that will look at the results. It was going to be two, but the amount of information would have made the word count too high. This post in particular focuses on the sabbatical officers that were elected.

My complete results spreadsheet can be found here. It contains all the results, round by round and for the sabbatical positions, you can see what the results would have been like under the Alternative Vote system and First Past The Post. I have also included both Droop and Hare quotas (for an explanation of these, please see my post ‘HUU Elections 2012 – The voting process‘). The Droop quota is used in all the elections.

President

Only one round was need for this particular election as Magid Mah went past the quota by 21 votes. This, like all the sabbatical elections, only requires a single winner, so there was no surplus transfer needed. If Magid hadn’t passed the quota, then it might have only gone for another round because any transfers from R.O.N. wouldn’t give Dominic Brightmore enough votes to progress. This would have meant he’d have been eliminated at the same time as R.O.N. (I believe a similar thing happened in a previous President election when Stephen Wood was eliminated at the same time as R.O.N.).

VP Education

This was a close election. In theory, if all the R.O.N. votes had second preferences for Becky Day, she could have won in the second round. Victoria was only 40 votes off meeting the quota in the first round. Only 48 of the ballots contained no second preferences, which is pretty good, compared to some other elections. The second round totals had a difference of 1%.

Anyway, in the second round, Victoria narrowly passed the quota and became the successor to Matthew Barrow. Her campaign team was quite prominent during the results event and cheering her on at every opportunity.

VP Community

This particular election was a record breaker. According to current VP Community Tom Peel (@Tommy_Tp), Pippa was the first candidate to go past 2000 first preferences in any HUU Election past (or present). It’s a significant achievement that can be put down to a combination of her campaign and the efforts of Hull University Union to get more of the student population voting.

The election could have only gone for a maximum of two rounds anyway, but the maximum could have been three if Ben Croft was eligible (see the post ‘HUU Elections 2012 Extra – No confidence motion‘). The increased number of candidates would have also reduced the share of the votes for the others, but it is unknown how much the voting could have changed.

Pippa had nearly 64% of the vote, more than any of the other winners that night in the various sabbatical elections.

Pippa - the next VP Community with her soon-to-be predecessor, Tom Peel

VP Welfare

In the first round you can see that Kora-Lee Holmes (current Chair Campaigns & Democracy) had a significant lead of nearly 200 over the second placed candidate, Grace Woods. As was the case for the three elections mentioned above, R.O.N. was eliminated first.

Interestingly, although Catherine was the next to be eliminated, she was the one who benefited the most from the first round transfers as her vote total increased by 19.

Kora-Lee stayed in the lead after round 3, and benefit the most from Catherine’s transfers as her vote total went up by 60. Dominique was eliminated as she had a total that was 153 votes fewer than Komal Tariq.

Round 4 saw the elimination of Komal (current Chair ISA). Kora-Lee and Grace had retained their respective first and second place positions throughout the election.

In round 5, Kora-Lee was announced the winner, but the difference between her and Grace’s vote totals was at it’s lowest point (181), compared to the 198 that it had started at. The difference had been in the 190s for four rounds.

VP Sport

The first two rounds of this election were very interesting as Paul Harsent saw his initial lead of 20 go down to 4. Thomas Kharchi clearly benefited the most from the transfers after R.O.N. was eliminated. However, the 199 first preference votes for R.ON. didn’t turn out to be as significant as the transfers when Mark Weighill was eliminated. Paul’s total increased by a significant 439, whereas Thomas only saw an increase of 103.

VP Scarborough

Although the vote totals and quotas are lower than other elections, it’s worth noting that at several stages of the voting period Scarborough showed a notable increase in the number of people voting, compared to previous years.

The transfers in this election didn’t change the positions of any of the candidates. Christopher Long retained his first place position all the way through and the Sports Officer for the Scarborough campus executive now becomes the new VP Scarborough.

Chris is the successor to the controversial Matthew Brown. I describe him like that because of the events from last year (suspicions of him taking credit for the work of others, although he strongly denied this later). It’s also worth noting that whenever he was shown on the big screen at the results event, the were several boos and heckles.

Summary and Conclusion

Those candidates who were going for sabbatical officer roles and had the lead in the first round went on to retain their lead and win. It often happens in the HUU elections, but isn’t the case 100% of the time.

I have heard some rumours about negativity when it was announced that Magid Mah had become President. I hope this isn’t true, because all of the candidates have been positive contributors to these elections.

Some of you may have already seen electronic versions of raw results data on hullstudent.com. The eagle-eyed amongst you may noticed small differences between the quotas on there and the ones in the tables in this post. In a previous part of this series, I explained the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system to you. Basically, in single-winner elections, the quota is calculated by dividing the vote total by two and adding one. For some reason, the computer used for the counting has used a slightly difference formula. However, it has made no great difference to any stage of the elections.

The next post will focus on the results of the NUS Delegate and Union Council elections.

So, what do you think?

Many of you will have already voted in the HUU Elections and that’s great. You’ve taken part in a vital process which can make a positive difference to the future of the student union. If you haven’t made your choices yet, there is still time. Voting closes at 5pm tomorrow (for both campuses). You don’t have to vote in every election, but it would be great if you do.

This post is about the processes used for voting and counting. I’ll also be mentioning a few interesting bits of news about what has happened so far.

The voting system

Some of you will be familiar with the voting system that is used by HUU for it’s elections. According to the 2012 Election Handbook:

“The voting system is a transferable or preference voting system”

This doesn’t actually tell you the name of the system – there are many different flavours of preference voting. It;s worth noting that a mistake made in last year’s election handbook has been corrected though. In that, they put ‘the’ transferable or preference voting system. However, when looking at SO8001 (the standing order for elections), you find that it’s the Single Transferable Vote. The standing order provides this link, which did take you to a comprehensive explanation (I have looked at it in the past), but that link is now broken – so no complete definition is provided (or linked to) by the student union.

Interestingly, STV is ideal for positions where there are multiple winners and that’s the case for the NUS Delegate and Councillor of Scrutiny elections – nothing else.

From the voter’s point of view, STV doesn’t look much different to any other preferential voting system. All you have to do is put the candidates in numerical order. There are studies which look at the psychology of the ordering of candidates’ names on a ballot paper (or in this case, web page), but at HUU, everyone is in alphabetical order to make it as fair as possible.

The big difference between STV and the other systems is the way that it’s counted. Nowadays, the counting is done by a computer (when I was campaigning, it was people counting paper ballots), but it’s worth looking at the maths used by the computer.

The following is an example based on the assumptions that all votes are valid and there is one seat to fill:

The first thing to do is establish a quota. Any candidate who passes this will be successfully elected. The most common is the Droop quota, but STV was originally designed using the Hare quota.

Using Droop, you do the following:

(Total valid votes cast/(Number of seats available + 1)) + 1

Applying that to Round 1 of the above table gives you a quota of 7170. For single-winner elections under Droop, you can also calculate this by doing ’50% +1′. As yet, no candidate has reached the required quota. This means the person with the least votes is out of the election and their second preferences are transferred to the other candidates.

There is an added complication for further rounds. A common method used in STV counting is the Meek method. This specifies that each round has a new quota. This can be very useful as it would be extremely rare for every ballot to have a full set of preferences. The Warren (successful candidates don’t have their surplus redistributed) and Wright methods are also available, but Meek is probably the most frequently used.

To make this a realistic example, I have removed some of the votes from those that were transferred from Person D. Not everyone will have second preferences. The new quota is 7142.5, but the rules state that this should be rounded to 7142. Once again, no candidate has either reached or surpassed the quota

Person C is eliminated and the votes are transferred. As was the case with the previous round, not everyone has a full set of preferences and Meek specifies that the quota needs to be recalculated. Using the figures in the table above, we have a new quota of 6942.

Person A is the only candidate to have surpassed the quota. As there is only one seat to fill, surplus votes do not need to be redistributed to the remaining candidate (or candidates). Interestingly, if there does need to be multiple winners and not enough people passed the quota, there would be a new election.

At Hull University Union, all ballots include R.O.N., which is Re-Open Nominations. In the event that R.O.N. had the most votes (which has never happened), there would need to be a new election.

Earlier I mentioned the Hare Quota. Thomas Hare developed STV and stated that the quota should simply be Votes / Seats. In the case of the example above, the quotas would be 14338, 14283 and 13883. Using Hare would obviously create a problem as no-one will have passed the quota. If the Meek method were not used either, we would be left with the highest quota from Round 1 and that would not accurately reflect the latest figures.

Other choices

For the elections where there is only one seat to fill, there are a number of other voting systems that could have been used. For example, they could have used First Past The Post (what is currently used for UK General Elections). There is no quotas and no preferential voting. All that happens is the person with the most votes wins. Some of the arguments for and against this method in the recent Yes2AV/No2AV referendum were ridiculous, but there is no doubt that it is popular all over the world. Using the earlier example, Person A would still have won, but by a smaller margin. However, there are examples in previous HUU elections where the candidate in the lead hasn’t stayed the same in all of the rounds (e.g. when Ciarán Norris was elected for the 06/07 year). Theoretically, this could be modified for multi-winner elections, but you might as well choose the best system for the job.

Another choice would be the Alternative Vote. This preferential method simply states that a person who gets 50% or more (a majority) of the votes wins. In the above example, the transfers would be treated the same way and and the outcome wouldn’t change. As not everyone will provide a full set of preferences, it is unlikely that there would be a tie. However, if there was, there would obviously need to be a new election. AV is also widely used and in the recent national referendum, the respective campaign teams used some poor arguments to defend or attack the system.

Of course, there are many other systems that could be used and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. I will be happy to answer any questions about them or the subject in general.

Statistics and news

Anyway, the voting has been underway for several days now and there has been some interesting bits of news about what has been happening. I received this tweet from @hullstudent:

Statistics for the HUU Elections voting period

It’s an ambitious target, especially considering the total number of voters decreased last year. However, that decrease could be explained by the number of sabbatical officers going for re-election. This time it’s different, so the final number could be close to the target. James Brooks has made this set of stats available and it makes interesting reading. Currently, the vote total has exceeded the one from last year and both genders have voted more. There is a far higher number of international students voting compared to previous years, but the number of British students voting is down considerably. This might change though as many students leave it until the last day to vote.

Interestingly, the Faculties of Education and Health & Social Care have the highest share of voters this year (so far). In the previous two years it has been the Faculties of Science and Arts & Social Science. This doesn’t reflect where the candidates in all elections are from either.

Scarborough has also significantly increased their vote share compared to the previous two years. It would be interesting to know why this is the case. Perhaps the elections have been better publicised over their. Maybe the candidates are of a better quality in terms of policies and experience. Maybe they have done a better job of advertising themselves. It could be a combination.

First years seem to be the ones who have voted the most so far, compared to the previous two years where it has been second and third year students.

Of course, these statistics could (potentially) change dramatically by the end of the voting period.

Summary and Conclusion

The voting system used in these elections has been in place for a long time and I believe it was chosen due to the preferences of the Electoral Reform Society. However, there are alternative and a review of the voting system might be worth doing in the future, just to make sure that it is still suitable and students are still happy with it.

The next posts will be about the results. There will be no post tomorrow, but I will be at the student union keeping track of the results as they are announced and providing Twitter updates (@LifeDownloaded). The blog posts about the results will follow as soon as possible.

So, what do you think?