Using Me!

Electoral Reform Addendum

The BBC has published a page on the electoral reforms that I was discussing yesterday. They explain the systems quite well but please please don’t take any notice of the figures they give for the number of seats in the election under the different systems. This is only guesswork as I tried to explain because we have no way of knowing who would choose what second preference or how having a second preference would change tactical- or non-voting.

It’s just typical of recent BBC trends… unattributed articles with not even a mention of assumptions that are made in them.

At least I tried to explain what changes might happen and why!

Electoral Reform (Part 2)

To follow on from my last post. I am left wondering…

In the AV+ system, why does the proportional part of the system only have one fifth of the weight of the AV part which for the most part is just first-past-the-post?

What if instead the House was made up from 50% AV and 50% proportional voting? You’d still have a regional MP but the overall result would be much closer to proportional representation and there would be almost no reason to vote tactically.

In fact if you’re going to go down this road you could turn it on its head and make it 20% AV and 80% proportional – or any other combination more balanced towards the proportional part of the equation.

Politicians defending the current system would probably tell you that as you move down that scale your local MP becomes less and less relevant to the views of the people in their region. And to a large extent they would be correct. But that is the whole problem with the Party system. If every candidate was an independant and the ‘party’ system only existed ephemerally as loose and shifting alliances on individual issues everyone could have a candidate who’s job it was to represent them rather than to represent their party’s views. The only time I ever wrote to my MP I got a response back that said my views were not those of the MP’s party and therefore could not be given any consideration.

Here’s another idea then…

You can keep the party system but each consituency is increased in size by a factor of 20. Each of these new mega-constituencies elects 20 MP’s on effectively the STV system. For each 5% of the vote gained by a party they put one MP in Parliament. After the 5%’s are knocked off the remaining votes generate candidates exactly as in the STV system with secondary votes being distributed.

Every region would have a range of MP’s that in and of themselves would closely resemble the voting in that region. Parliament itself would obviously also be very close to proportional representation. Any party that could attract 5% of the vote in a region would get a seat or seats.

It would genuinely lower the bar to entry to Parliament that prevents the smaller parties from having seats that represent their true popularity.

I hereby name this new system ‘Multi-Candidate per Party Single Transferable Vote System’ – MCPSTVS. That doesn’t roll off the tongue well…

Perhaps… 5PASM – ‘Five Percent And Secondary Mediation’. Henceforth to be known as ‘Spasm’.

Electoral Reform

In the near future the British electoral system may be overhauled. The Liberal Democrats want it as part of the price of their forming a coalition government as I have mentioned before. But what system will be adopted? There seems to be three possibilities.

Single Transferable Vote

- Liberal Democrat preferred system

Alternative Vote

- This was previously mentioned by Gordon Brown as a possible future system

AV+

- Possible compromise

So what are the details of the three systems and how proportional are they? All three of them keep regional representation but they differ significantly in their makeup.

Single Transferable Vote

This system requires a candidate to achieve one more than 1/(N+1) portion of the votes where there are N seats to be won in a constituency. e.g. When one person is to be elected they need one half of the votes plus one. When there are 5 people elected each needs one sixth plus one. Initially all votes are assigned as per the voters first preference. The results are then calculated in a series of rounds. Anyone already past the portion of the vote required is elected. Any surplus votes they had are assigned to the voters’ second preference in proportion to how the second preference was chosen. If no one is elected in a round then the person with the fewest votes is eliminated and all of their votes are assigned to the second preferences.

There is a good example of how this works on this Wikipedia page.

The question is… how many candidates should we choose to elect per constituency?

If we only elect one the system will produce pretty much the same result as first-past-the-post. The largest pool of votes needs a lot less secondary votes to reach the number required, if it’s not over the amount on primary votes alone. On the other hand if we elect three per consituency then in most of England the three main parties will be voted in and they’ll end up with roughly the same number of seats, probably something like 30% each with the rest split to mostly the regional parties, the Irish, Scottish and Welsh interest parties. If we elect more than three then we end up giving minority parties much more influence than their actual primary vote proportion would make fair. The minority parties as they are now would end up between them with at least 25% of the seats even if they only had their current 12% or so of the vote.

The right number, as far as I can see, would be two MP’s per consituency. This would mean there was a meaningful battle between the main three parties, and where a strong candidate stands from the other parties, one of them as well. The regional interest parties would most likely land one of the two available seats in most of their regions, the three main parties ought to land seats in the rest of the UK in proportion to their actual popularity with a few exceptions where strong candidates from the Greens, UKIP or even the likes of the BNP stand.

While I’m mentioning the BNP… on the radio this morning I heard people espousing that a proportional system was wrong because it gave too much power to the extreme parties like them. This is a total failure of logic for two reasons. Firstly you cannot possibly argue that democracy is good, except where it’s too democratic. And secondly because there is no way in the world that one of the major parties would give any power to such a party by forming a coalition with them as one caller was certain they would.

With two MP’s per consituency I believe this system would be a good approximation to proportional representation. The smallest parties would be at a disadvantage but if people learn how to use their two votes effectively over a few elections they could gain a good balance with their actual popularity. The three main parties would gain a number of seats MUCH more in accordance with their votes than they do today.

Alternative Vote

The Alternative Vote system runs exactly the same as the STV system except that it only produces one winner per consituency. It would be a little better than the current system but not by a very long way. Generally speaking I believe it is fair to say that most people’s primary AND secondary votes would be for one of the three main parties – or a main party and a regional interest party. Only where multiple candidates are quite evenly matched and a strong candidate is standing for a minority party and he/she picks up a lot of secondary votes would there be any difference from the current system. There may be some changes in that one might be able to show that one of the three main parties is more or less likely to pick up secondary votes from another of them, e.g. Lib Dem being more likely to pick up Labour secondary votes than the Conservatives are. Indeed one could argue that it seems reasonable that the Lib Dems would pick up more secondary votes from the Conservatives than Labour too. In relatively balanced seats this should tend to introduce more Liberal MP’s which would go some way to redressing their seat numbers relative to their overall votes.

AV+

AV+ or Alternative Vote Plus is being seen as a possible compromise that a Lib/Lab coalition might introduce or a Lib/Con coalition might offer a referendum on as a compromise between the parties’ desires.

Constituencies would vote under the AV system to elect a single member each and then a further 15-20% more MPs are assigned on a purely proportional basis.

Constituencies would have to be made larger so there were the same number of seats overall but if we had the same election voting over again with this system adding a further 20% of seats we would end up with 779 Seats split thusly:

Conservative – 352 Seats – 45% of Seats (-2%) – from 36% of vote
Labour – 296 Seats – 38% of Seats (-2%) – from 29% of vote
Liberal Democrat – 87 Seats – 11% of Seats (+2%) – from 23% of vote
DUP – 9 Seats – 1.1% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
SNP – 8 Seats – 1.1% of Seats (0) – from 1.7% of vote
Sinn Fein – 6 Seats – 0.7% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
Plaid Cymru – 4 Seats – 0.5% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
Green – 2 Seats – 0.3% of Seats (+0.15%) – from 1% of vote
UKIP – 4 Seats – 0.5% of Seats (+0.5%) – from 3.1% of vote
BNP – 2 Seats – 0.3% of Seats (+0.3%) – from 1.9% of vote

As you can see it’s not significantly fairer than the current system. However people would vote a bit differently. A lot of people either vote tactically or do not vote at all because their preferred candidate has no hope of victory. In this system there would still be a good reason to vote for your preference. I believe everyone except Labour and the Conservative Party would benefit at their expense. I would hazard a guess that perhaps 20 more seats would change hands because of this.

Election Speculation

Today the LibDems revealed they are talking to Labour about a coalition. Between them they do not have enough seats to form a majority but they would have more than the Conservatives and would have every right to form a minority government. They could pretty much count on getting enough more votes from the minority parties to work their way through most bills they might wish to pass.

The Conservatives for their part have offered the LibDems a referendum on the reforming the electoral system to use the Alternative Vote System. However the Conservatives are further away from the Liberals than Labour are, in their general ideologies and there’s plenty of backbenchers that aren’t keen on a coalition with them. Many of them would be happy to see a Lib/Lab coalition that pushes through the necessary unpopular tax and spending changes that will be needed to fix the economy and then in a few months force a general election on a vote of no confidence. They forsee themselves winning a majority in this second election because of the bills that need to be passed on the economy making Lib/Lab less popular and the fact that they can campaign on the message that the government is a coalition of losers – and with today’s revelation that Brown will stand down – that we again have an unelected Prime Minister.

However I foresee this backfiring BADLY on them. Most of the minority parties stand to gain (perhaps with the exception of one of the Irish parties) in an AVS electoral system. They mostly have a smaller share of the seats than their share of the vote. In addition those parties that failed to gain any seats would campaign hard for this system too. Remember from my earlier post that the BNP would stand to gain 12 seats and UKIP 22 in a pure proportional representation system. They wouldn’t gain that many under AVS (I still plan to write about why) but they could only benefit from it.

So, if Lib/Lab could push through the AVS system before a new election is called, by getting the backing of the smaller parties in Parliament as well, then in another election the two of them would start from having over 50% of the vote. They might lose a few, or even quite a lot of primary votes because of the above reasons, but they would most likely still pick up over 50% of the seats through the second or third votes that people place. In fact they would, in my opinion, more likely end up with closer to 60% of the seats between them. The conservatives would likely pick up around 35% of the seats and the last few would go to the minor parties. Lib/Lab could continue their coalition with a large majority.

Magnetic Therapy, the Evidence

In preparation for my pursuit of the claims made by the purveyors of magnetic bracelets I decided to Google “Clinical Trial Magnet Therapy” in an attempt to find some proper trials and evidence. Conversely if you Google “Magnetic Healing” you’ll find thousands of hits for sales of the devices, their claims and no evidence.

My top 10 hits were:

1. BMJ Article on trials in 2006.

I don’t have access to this full article but based on other articles that refer to it, the findings were negative and the trial was rigorous.

2. A website trying to sell books on Magnet Therapy

The front page refers to three trials that produced positive results but there are no references to any papers so I cannot check for double-blinding etc.

3. The American Cancer Society

Although there are anecdotal reports of healing with magnetic therapy, available scientific evidence does not support these claims. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers magnets harmless and of no use for medical purposes.

Enough said!

4. A Wikipedia Article

Magnet therapy is considered pseudoscientific due to both physical and biological implausibility, as well as a lack of any established effect on health or healing.

The above quote just from the introduction links to two books and one article alone.

5. Anesthesia and Analgesia

A very good summary on how hard it is to disprove something that has so many claimed benefits. Fortunately trials have been run in some specific areas and if one claim is shown to be false it casts the others in a very poor light. Not only that but when it comes to advertising you have to be able to show evidence for your claims not a lack of evidence to the contrary.

6. Strangely is the same as hit number 5.

7. The ‘evidence’ from a company selling Magnetic Therapy products

There is a vast amount of text on this site and I have read through a good chunk of it. By following a few links one can get some excerpts of research papers which have been published. Some of these excerpts show that the trials were improperly conducted. One on Asthma in children shows that there was no sham group to compare with for example. Another that stood out for me shows such extraordinary results that I wish I had a subscription to the Journal that published it to see if there were any follow-ups or rebuttals.

RESULTS: Wounds in the magnet group healed in an average of 15.3 days, significantly faster than those in either the sham group (20.9 days, P = .006) or control group (20.3 days, P < .0001). There was no statistically significant difference between the sham and control groups (P = .45).

CONCLUSIONS: An externally applied, low-power, static magnetic field increases the rate of secondary healing. Review of the literature reveals conflicting evidence regarding the use of magnetic energy to aid the healing of bone, tendon, and skin. Level I studies are lacking and difficult to execute but are needed to define conclusively the role of magnets in clinical practice.

Eplasty: Journal of Burns and Wounds. 2008 July. 25;8:e40. PMID: 18725953

The claim is that a magnet caused the rats’ wounds to heal 25% quicker. That’s an astonishing claim and one that ought to be researched further if there has been no flaws found in the trial. But putting myself in the place of a researcher on the trial I can think of a dozen problems that might be found, e.g.

• I made the wounds on the control group a little deeper
• I treated the control group a little more roughly when measuring their progress
• I fed and watered the magnet group with more/better food

etc. etc.

8. A site with links to trials with positive outcomes

There are more than twenty trials listed here but not a single one of them is one of those that reported nothing more than a placebo effect. Since those studies exist and since nowhere on this site, as far as I can find, do they mention any doubts about the efficacy of the treatment, there is an obvious bias here. I didn’t take the time to read all of the studies but to take the first one mentioned:

At 4 hours, VAS pain scores (+/- SE) on a 5-item scale (0-500, 500 worst) decreased 79 +/- 18 mm in the active group and 10 +/- 21 mm in the placebo group (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in any primary or secondary measure of efficacy between the treatment groups at 6 weeks. Despite widespread testing for magnetic properties, at study end, 69% of the active group and 77% of the placebo group (P > 0.2) believed that they had been assigned to the active treatment group. CONCLUSION: Despite our small sample size, magnets showed statistically significant efficacy compared to placebo after 4 hours under rigorously controlled conditions.

I don’t see how they can possibly have that conclusion! After a session the patients showed better pain reduction with magnets than with sham treatment. Fair enough but has there been any attempt to blind the medical staff giving the treatment from whether it is real or sham? Studies have shown that this is hugely important to the outcome. It is not mentioned.

The final outcome after six weeks of treatment shows no difference in efficacy. That alone shows that the treatment was no more than placebo. After the trial is over the subtleties of patient response to the professional will have decayed and the actual efficacy becomes more apparent to the patient.

Given that the above disagree with each other, I have to conclude that the response to a session must be down to some factor during the session, that possibly being the professional’s knowledge of which treatment is being administered.

9. Alternative Medicine at About.com

Reference is made to 5 papers and the site must be given some credit for appearing balanced. However it does end up being rather confused because of it. It starts by saying there is little evidence but then states.

Even though claims that magnetic therapy can treat diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis are unfounded, there is some evidence that it may help relieve pain related to these chronic conditions

It claims that Arthritic and Pelvic pain studies are positive. On the other hand it states that a fybromalgia study failed to account for the better quality of beds patients were resting in and that

in studies on the use of magnetic therapy for relief of chronic low back pain and wrist pain related to carpal tunnel syndrome, researchers found magnets no more effective than placebo treatments

Again, credit to them for at giving both positive and negative findings.

10. The National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

There is actually the best source of information in the top 10 links. It gives a good overview of what the treatment has been used for, historically and contemporarily, what magnets are, how they are used, what the speculation is over what they might do, and what the trials show.

Preliminary scientific studies of magnets for pain have produced mixed results. Overall, there is no convincing scientific evidence to support claims that magnets can relieve pain of any type. Some studies, including a recent National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinical trial for back pain, suggest the possibility of a small benefit from using magnets for pain. However, the majority of rigorous studies have found no effect on pain.

Notice they say preliminary and notice that they go on to say:

More research on magnets for pain is needed before reaching any firm conclusion.

More rigorous research is needed before reaching any firm conclusions about the effectiveness of magnets for pain.

They have been very professional in their approach to the topic but I do think those two statements indicate they really really want to believe it’ll work. I’d disagree and say that the best run studies have shown there is no benefit above placebo and that they constitute a large enough body of evidence to put the subject to rest. Either way it’s a good page on the subject.

Summary

So far I have not found any good quality trials with positive results. I haven’t even found any trials yet that cover most of the claims of the Trion:Z bracelets – reduced stress, better concentration, more powerful golf swings etc! The Cochrane Organization doesn’t have any meta-analyses on any Magnet-related subject.

The UK General Election

Well I am very disappointed at the lack of people voting for the Liberal Democrats this morning. Initially I wanted to say that people bottled it and decided to vote Conservative but if we look at the shift in votes for each party as a percentage of the total that doesn’t appear to be the case.

With 617 of 650 seats declared so far the voting for each party is:

Conservative

• 10,168,583 Votes
• 36.1% of Votes
• +3.9%
• 291 Seats
• 47.2% of Seats

Labour

• 8,236,191 Votes
• 29.2% of Votes
• -6.3%
• 248 Seats
• 40.2% of Seats

Liberal Democrat

• 6,435,621 Votes
• 22.9% of Votes
• +1.0
• 51 Seats
• 8.3% of Seats

Democratic Unionist Party

• 168,216 Votes
• 0.6% of Votes
• -0.3% Change
• 8 Seats
• 1.3% of Seats

Scottish National Party

• 482,823 Votes
• 1.7% of Votes
• +0.1% Change
• 6 Seats
• 1.0% of Seats

The shift in voting

In Elections a 5% swing is considered to be large and a swing of 10% is huge – roughly what Tony Blair achieved in 1997. The swing from Labour to Conservative in this election was 5.1%, with a few seats still to declare. So political commentators talk about this as significant and in terms of the numbers of seats it is indeed a big change. Still it seems pretty feeble to me. The net change is only 1 in 20 people decided to change from voting Labour to Conservative. I’m not going to attempt to analyse this as it would take an age to discuss all the issues and the tactical decisions that might be involved. There’s plenty of comment from more qualified people all over the networks. But I am underwhelmed by the change when you consider the nature of the pre-election discussions about the state of the economy and unelected prime ministers.

Proportional Representation

What really is interesting in this is how the constituency based, first past the post system skews the ratios of votes to seats. For the parties outlined above the number of seats per million votes is:

• Conservative Party 28.6
• Labour Party 30.11
• Liberal Democrat Party 7.92
• Democratic Unionist Party 46.56
• Scottish Nationalist Party 12.4

So a vote for the DUP is 50% more effective than a vote for Labour and four times as effective as one for the SNP. A vote for the Conservative Party is almost four times as effective as a vote for the Lib Dems. And voting for the DUP in Northern Ireland or for the Green Party in Brighton Pavillion is five to six times more effective than voting for the Lib Dems in general. If anyone fails to see the unfairness in this system then I despair!

If the seats were allocated on a pure proportional representation basis these 617 seats would be allocated:

• Conservative 222 (-69)
• Labour 180 (-71)
• Lib Dem 141 (+89)
• DUP 4 (-4)
• SNP 10 (+4)
• Sinn Fein 3 (-1)
• Plaid Cymru 4 (+1)
• SDLP 2 (-1)
• Green 6 (+5)
• Alliance Party 1 (+0)
• UKIP 19 (+19)
• BNP 12 (+12)
• UCU-NF 2 (+2)
• And a few others with 1 seat up from 0.

You can clearly see what an enormous impact proportional representation would have on the system. Electoral reform does appear to be on the cards and in my next post I will examine the Alternative Vote System that the Lib Dems want to see implemented and could make a requirement of any pact they make to form a government. The pure proportional system has the problem of not having MP’s representing specific regions. The AVS system tries to keep proportionality at its heart but have regional MPs.

Defenders of the current system say that it leads to strong governments. In the past this has been mostly true although I think that the critics of the system claiming that this one election proves this is wrong are themselves wrong. One anecdote does not make data. However I think that a hung parliament is for the best and proportional systems would almost always lead to one. It forces the parties to work together on the ideas that unify them and it creates some give and take which means the actions of the parliament more closely match the desires of the populace. In the current system a party can have a majority in the house with barely 40% of the vote and then run roughshod over the desires of 60% of the population!

War on bogus webstore claims!

Following on from my success with my ASA complaint about the Tourmaline bracelet I am now going all out to remove as many similar adverts from as many webstores as possible.

I’ve short-listed 20 websites in the UK that are currently selling these products and have initiated a conversation with the Trading Standards Institute.

Minus Ions are generally abundant in nature through plants, waterfalls, rain storms and forests. These Ions unfortunately are depleted in urban areas as a result of modern technology.

So the logical conclusion must be that before urbanisation and technology, the world was infused with ‘Minus Ions’. A Negative Ion is, of course, an atom carrying an extra electron. So the question is where did all those extra electrons come from back then and where did they go to since? Not to mention why de-ionising myself would be good, even if it happened, and by what method it might produce any of the results that the various sites claim – from reducing stress, to improving the power of your golf swing.

Most of the websites selling these things claim they use ‘Medical Grade Magnets’. I did a search for this term. It ONLY appears in the context of Woo like this, never in any official medical context. And what would a medical grade magnet be anyway? A particularly clean one?

I will update more as things progress.