Sunday 15 May 2011

Referendum

At last some people hitting the AV referendum on the head. These are letters from Metro:

Margaret Thatcher rightly called referendums "the device of dictators and demagogues". \The AV plebiscite proved her point. Adult politicians were reduced to demagogic populist attacks of each other full of half-lies, innuendo and grotesque exaggeration. And over what? In Gulliver's Travels the Lilliputians go to war over whether to crack a boiled egg at the big or little end. The difference between First Past the Post and AV is even smaller. No wonder the majority of voters said no thanks to participating in one of the most pointless and shameless playpen episodes in recent British Politics
Denis MacShane MP for Rotherham.

You mock the "chattering classes" in Inner London boroughs for backing AV (May 9), which was roundly rejected nationally. Is it not more telling that nationally Essex voted by the widest margin against AV, whilst Oxford and Cambridge, home of many of the most brilliant minds in the world, voted "yes" to AV?
Tom Brown, SW5