Party funding

The Phillips Report recently recommended increased funding for political parties from taxation because they are unable to raise enough themselves legitimately to do all they want to do.

I don't want to give willy-nilly to Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, BNP, Respect and even the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parties for which I can't vote because they don't operate where I live. Come to think of it, the three main parties barely operate where I live because it is a safe constituency and we know the result long before the election.

There is a simple and effective solution to the problem. The underlying problem is that each party wants to spend as much as possible in the key marginal constituencies where elections are won and lost. The solution is to replace the 19th century “First Past The Post” voting system with the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. This makes all votes of equal value, it would force parties to consider the views of all voters instead of only those in certain areas (the present marginal constituencies) and it would remove their incentive to spend, spend, spend in those areas. Most votes, unlike under the old system, would affect the result and it would also produce a fairer, more proportionate result and provide Governments with a real mandate to govern.

Please visit www.stvAction.org.uk if you would like to know more about this.