If you want to change the system, you have to do a darned sight better job of explaining why than the Yes2AV campaign managed. They were always behind the story instead of out in front, always distracted, never campaigning.

In fact, if it weren't for the No2AV adverts, nobody would even have known there was a referendum going on. And people were getting overpaid good money to run this sort of nonsense, whose side were they really on ?

And to cap it all, these supposedly professional campaigners seemed shocked to discover that tories (and David Blunkett) tell lies to achieve their ends, again and again and again. It's as TBG wrote in his diary

1. Reduce arguments to trite dog-whistle talking points - such as flip-flopper, tax-and-spend, "soft on defence", and so on.

2. Lie. Repeatedly, in public, with no moral consistency in their talking points.

If you accept that the purpose of politics is power, not integrity, neither of these becomes shocking.

Do they not pay attention ? Gah !!

I have to say I was disappointed that Labour seemed so half-hearted about campaigning. A bit of Ed Miliband here, a bit of Eddie Izzard there. But a poll reveals that 60% of Labour voters didn't know that Labour were in favour of reform, largely cos the only labour politicians we saw campaigning were John Reid, David Blunkett and Margaret Beckett, all of whom were on the No side.

If Labour really wanted AV to win, then they didn't really give much of a sign.

keep to the Fen Causeway