Another new website can't cope.

The newly launch website to handle petitions for a parliamentary debate is suffering from overload:

You didn't really want to sign did you?

I think those first two lines sum up a lot really.

High demand in the early days was predictable of course. The problem is if it can't cope with petitions with publicity as they come up.

PS I got this as I was trying to sign one of the petitions against the reintroduction of the death penalty as advertised over at LibDem Voice.

Update: Sorry for an update so soon after posting but the site started working (briefly).  I think there must be more fundamental problems than usage levels given the low number of signatures on the petitions.  The highest is about 1800 (at the time of writing) for Martin Shapland's anti-death penalty petition above.

Been a while hasn't it...

Well the election happened in my absence. I was somewhat busy campaigning and didn't write much. In the parliamentary campaigns I was involved in (to various extents) the news was mixed but on balance disappointing. A win, a good loss (as it were) and three disappointing defeats.

Some questions I may rant about arising from the election are...

• Why is it we keep believing good opinion polls and ignore the bad ones?
• Why do we lose in three way marginals?
• How do we chose target seats so badly?
• Why are we disappointed with our best ever total vote as LibDems?

Some have easier answers than others...

However for now I think things have moved on enough to ignore these and instead move on to issues that don't concern me.

Things That Don't Concern Me 1: The Deputy Leadership

I had no idea the membership didn't vote for the deputy leader of the party. Mind you I ought to have done the '06 and '03 elections were done the same way and I was a member for both.

So we have two candidates:

Tim Farron backed publicly by Ming, Tessa Munt and Chris Huhne.
Simon Hughes backed publicly by Beith, Vince and Sarah.

See the list on LD Voice for current state of play.

In my opinion Hughes must win. His speech at the special conference was superb. He is a voice from the outside of the coalition. He is a liberal fighting against Labour by being better than them at fighting for social justice.

So I hope my MP votes for Hughes, and I hope he wins. Then we have a strong, experienced voice critical of the coalition within it. Hooray!

Things that don't concern me 2: Which Milliband

I really don't care. Balls would be less of a disaster for Labour than some people seem to think. People say they dislike combative opposition but the mud will stick. Milliband E and D are interchangable.

STV considered... normal? (somewhere!)

There is a nice article on STV by an Irish political activist over at Libdem Voice.

Whilst no voting system is perfect, indeed it is impossible to invent one which is (see below), STV has many nice features and the article us written by someone with experience of the system.

That's one key feature of STV conservatives (small c, many are in the Labour party too) miss: it is being used successfully in other places. Heck it is being used in the UK: in Scottish Councils and in NI's Euro elections. It isn't a dangerous experiment.

Currently we have a system that gives a landslide to a party polling under 40% of the votes cast. ConLab get 86% of the seats for 67% of the vote. That means just under half the seats haven't changed hands since 1970 (40 years), and just over 1 in 4 (29%) haven't changed since 1945.

This isn't healthy: it leads to a sense of entitlement that explains the ConLab attitude to the other parties. Why don't we know our place and accept the crumbs? A sense of entitlement that creates the expenses system.

For those who want to know why you can't gave a perfect election system have a look at wikipedia's article on voting systems.