250 million... what now?
Hi all,
So, my next post on the AV Referendum follows.
For starters, have you seen some of the No2AV campaign's publicity focusing on the £250m it will cost us to implement AV? If not, watch this advert now:
Now, you will already be aware that I plan to vote yes to AV and urge you to do the same, so I'm clearly biased, but even so. This is what is known in political theory as "flim-flam," or "hokum," or "a massive, and possibly criminal, misrepresentation of the facts."
Let's take a look at the figures.
Do you really mean £250m? Or actually £156m?
First of all, the £250m figure isn't actually £250m. Did you notice the way the advert subtly implied that implementing AV would incur an additional £250m cost, and that if we didn't have AV that £250m could be spent on something else, like schools for the poor little chilluns? (I loves me those poor chilluns. They should have schools.) No, wait, I'm getting words confused again. The advert doesn't subtly imply that at all, it totally fucking comes out and says that that is the case.
What they actually mean is that under AV, the 2015 election would cost £250m, instead of the £80m or so that the 2010 election cost. So for starters, that's £80m we will spend anyway, since we have to have an election in 2015; that's, like, the law. They're not talking about scrapping elections. Yet.
(NB: The number also would not be £250m anyway, since the numbers that they are adding to the £80m starting cost are £130m and £26m. Which is £236m. I guess they are rounding up, which is not something I normally do with tens of millions of pounds.)
£130m on Counting Machines? Really?
Now, let's look at the first sum they talk about: £130m for "expensive vote-counting machines."
This seems highish to me. How much are we talking about, per machine? How many machines do they think we would need? In a UK general election, there are around 40,000 polling stations in 650 constituencies. I believe counting is done centrally in each constituency; if we provide each count with, say, ten of these expensive machines (that's 6,500 machines total), then for the No2AV campaign's figures to be correct, a vote-counting machine would cost around £20,000. Even if we provide each individual polling station with a counting-machine, that's still over £3,000 per machine. I'm pretty sure they would be cheaper than that, especially buying in bulk. And, of course, you have to consider costs defrayed. However expensive the counting machines would really be, they would also massively reduce the manpower costs of a count. That's got to eat into the £80m. And they could keep the machines and use them again in later elections; over the years, it would probably pay for itself.
Except ha! It is all moot, because no-one is talking about buying vote-counting machines anyway! Just the No2AV campaign, and it would not be up to them. According to the Cabinet Office, most of the cost of running an election would be no different under AV: one ballot each, one pencil per booth. The only extra costs would be longer counts, and they can't be sure how much that would be. Hint: Not one hundred and thirty million fucking pounds.
£26m on Public Awareness? Really?
Then there's the second sum: £26m "telling people how the complicated system works."
Okay, first of all, it's really not that complicated. Not really. They do need to stop being such babies about all this. AV is basically the second-simplest electoral system going (where First Past the Post is the simplest). It's less complicated, for instance, than the Additional Member system used in the London Assembly Election, and millions of people use that, no problems.
Second, the government already spends millions of pounds publicising the elections, trying to ensure people know they're happening and when, and how important it is to take part. That's part of the £80m already mentioned. So, I'm pretty sure they could mention how the system works in the same ads? You know, use the existing avenue to pass on that information? Just a thought. So this is mostly another case of an existing cost being cited as an additional cost. Where the sum of all existing costs has already been cited as an additional cost, so this is an existing cost that's been cited twice as as an additional cost.
Actually, I'm going to start submitting my expenses this way at work. I'll make out like a fucking bandit.
Third, you don't actually need to. People who are interested in what's going on and how it works can find out pretty easily. What most voters need to know is, "Rank your preferred candidates in order." This can be put on a poster and stuck up in the polling booth. Bosh.
So there you go. The horrific £250m expense of switching to AV, broken down: £80m that we would be paying out anyway, £26m that's actually part of the £80m that we would be paying out anyway that they counted twice, £130m that they made up, and £14m of rounding up.
The actual cost of implementing AV is unknown; Clegg says the next election will cost around £120m regardless of which system we use, and Harper says that FPTP'll cost around £90m, plus an unspecified but probably not high sum for any additional counting the AV system would use. My guess? AV would probably cost an additional £20m or £30m, tops, which is really not an unreasonable sum for an electoral system I consider fairer.
Thank you for your time.
So, my next post on the AV Referendum follows.
For starters, have you seen some of the No2AV campaign's publicity focusing on the £250m it will cost us to implement AV? If not, watch this advert now:
Click to viewNow, you will already be aware that I plan to vote yes to AV and urge you to do the same, so I'm clearly biased, but even so. This is what is known in political theory as "flim-flam," or "hokum," or "a massive, and possibly criminal, misrepresentation of the facts."
Let's take a look at the figures.
Do you really mean £250m? Or actually £156m?
First of all, the £250m figure isn't actually £250m. Did you notice the way the advert subtly implied that implementing AV would incur an additional £250m cost, and that if we didn't have AV that £250m could be spent on something else, like schools for the poor little chilluns? (I loves me those poor chilluns. They should have schools.) No, wait, I'm getting words confused again. The advert doesn't subtly imply that at all, it totally fucking comes out and says that that is the case.
What they actually mean is that under AV, the 2015 election would cost £250m, instead of the £80m or so that the 2010 election cost. So for starters, that's £80m we will spend anyway, since we have to have an election in 2015; that's, like, the law. They're not talking about scrapping elections. Yet.
(NB: The number also would not be £250m anyway, since the numbers that they are adding to the £80m starting cost are £130m and £26m. Which is £236m. I guess they are rounding up, which is not something I normally do with tens of millions of pounds.)
£130m on Counting Machines? Really?
Now, let's look at the first sum they talk about: £130m for "expensive vote-counting machines."
This seems highish to me. How much are we talking about, per machine? How many machines do they think we would need? In a UK general election, there are around 40,000 polling stations in 650 constituencies. I believe counting is done centrally in each constituency; if we provide each count with, say, ten of these expensive machines (that's 6,500 machines total), then for the No2AV campaign's figures to be correct, a vote-counting machine would cost around £20,000. Even if we provide each individual polling station with a counting-machine, that's still over £3,000 per machine. I'm pretty sure they would be cheaper than that, especially buying in bulk. And, of course, you have to consider costs defrayed. However expensive the counting machines would really be, they would also massively reduce the manpower costs of a count. That's got to eat into the £80m. And they could keep the machines and use them again in later elections; over the years, it would probably pay for itself.
Except ha! It is all moot, because no-one is talking about buying vote-counting machines anyway! Just the No2AV campaign, and it would not be up to them. According to the Cabinet Office, most of the cost of running an election would be no different under AV: one ballot each, one pencil per booth. The only extra costs would be longer counts, and they can't be sure how much that would be. Hint: Not one hundred and thirty million fucking pounds.
£26m on Public Awareness? Really?
Then there's the second sum: £26m "telling people how the complicated system works."
Okay, first of all, it's really not that complicated. Not really. They do need to stop being such babies about all this. AV is basically the second-simplest electoral system going (where First Past the Post is the simplest). It's less complicated, for instance, than the Additional Member system used in the London Assembly Election, and millions of people use that, no problems.
Second, the government already spends millions of pounds publicising the elections, trying to ensure people know they're happening and when, and how important it is to take part. That's part of the £80m already mentioned. So, I'm pretty sure they could mention how the system works in the same ads? You know, use the existing avenue to pass on that information? Just a thought. So this is mostly another case of an existing cost being cited as an additional cost. Where the sum of all existing costs has already been cited as an additional cost, so this is an existing cost that's been cited twice as as an additional cost.
Actually, I'm going to start submitting my expenses this way at work. I'll make out like a fucking bandit.
Third, you don't actually need to. People who are interested in what's going on and how it works can find out pretty easily. What most voters need to know is, "Rank your preferred candidates in order." This can be put on a poster and stuck up in the polling booth. Bosh.
So there you go. The horrific £250m expense of switching to AV, broken down: £80m that we would be paying out anyway, £26m that's actually part of the £80m that we would be paying out anyway that they counted twice, £130m that they made up, and £14m of rounding up.
The actual cost of implementing AV is unknown; Clegg says the next election will cost around £120m regardless of which system we use, and Harper says that FPTP'll cost around £90m, plus an unspecified but probably not high sum for any additional counting the AV system would use. My guess? AV would probably cost an additional £20m or £30m, tops, which is really not an unreasonable sum for an electoral system I consider fairer.
Thank you for your time.