Guild Elections 2014 Post-mortem (Part Three)

or

View from the Sidelines: The Pirate Puusta Campaign

[DISCLAIMER: This is post of very niche interest. If you are among the 99.99999% of the human population who have no direct interest in the University of Birmingham Guild of Students elections, you may wish to look away now. Also in the past on TCOGB I’ve had a policy of “no Guild shit”. I’m temporarily waiving that policy].

[As previously noted, at the time of writing I have not read any other post-Guild Election commentary. This is to avoid developing any potential GroupThink-induced confirmation bias. The opinions and conclusions expressed are entirely my own.]

This year I casually observed the “Pirate Puusta” campaign. I’ve always believed that election campaigning should be fun – the Pirate campaign definitely lived up to that. The ethos of the campaign was one of not taking things too seriously, having a laugh, brainstorming inane ideas for cardboard signs, and generally tapping into their deep collective pools of despair and cynicism. Their private target was to finish at least fourth place among the five candidates, potentially (they hoped, dreamed even) of reaching as high as third. Well they smashed that target – placing a solid third, making it through to the third round of four under STV, securing a full 20% of the vote. Not bad for a couple of people who struggle to get up before noon.

I also hear that they rustled a few jimmies.

[Photo credit: Sven Richardson]

So what was the Pirate Puusta campaign about? Its roots go deeper than the Guild and Guild politics. They go as deep as to touch upon the very political philosophy behind representative democracy. The campaign acted silly to draw attention to a very serious issue. It mocked – not because issues and policies are worthy of mockery – but because our institutions, our organisations and our democratic structures are.

Modern social policy can be accused of being condensed to one simplistic formula: run input through policy framework, get favourable output. We assume that politicians as our elected representatives have an outcome – be it social or economic – in mind, and that they implement policy to achieve that outcome. Further we hope that representative democracy enables our votes to translate into a majority consensus, which in turn will mandate representatives to implement policy, eventually achieving the outcomes we collectively desire. Our votes are coins in the vending machine of policy. The snack retrieved from the collection draw is our legislation, our transformed society, our utopia.

But what if that framework breaks down? What if our desired outcomes are too complex or unpredictable to be modelled by systems analysis? What if our representatives – through active malice, incompetence, or inability – are unable to implement the policies that they were elected on? What if our representative bodies are not sovereign, and have no power to implement the change we vote for? What if the democratic structures themselves are the problem?

Returning to the vending machine metaphor; say for instance that we gave a mate some change to get us a Kitkat. We’d be quite pissed off, and rightly so,  if they came back with a Bounty. Say they’d decided that they knew better, or someone else they spoke to had persuaded them so. Maybe the machine was misprogrammed, or it jammed? It would be naïve in real life to assume that the only factor influencing public policy was the will of the electorate. A legislator or an executive will face other pressures – from their own supporters, from outside agents, from organisation and legal constraints. The will of their electors, their very mandate, will be but one voice among many. And so it is that when we vote Kitkat we often get Bounty.

Political apathy and low electoral turnout is on the increase across the developed world. The contract between elector and elected has too often been broken. Bad faith leads to cynicism.

Our Guild is a partial microcosm of real world democratic bodies. Much as unaccountable and unelected agencies like the IMF and currency markets can constrain the free actions of elected governments; so the Guild’s freedom to act and carry out its full mandate is constrained by its supplicant position relative to the University. Just as powerful segments of the establishment like the media, the civil service, and the monarchy can have undue power and influence over a Cabinet; so a Guild Officer Group will be buffeted by organisational obstruction and hindered by negative institutional memory.

The SubTV contract – signed and renewed since the dawn of time despite universal loathing. The increasing encroachment of commercial premises on student group spaces, in exchange for minimal rents. The reversal of a plan to make FAB completely wheelchair accessible. All of these have been done in the name of the Guild and its elected Officers, yet none of them have ever featured in an election manifesto. Conversely take a policy like “more live music events”. A policy that has appeared several times over in the past six years. A policy which has surely won a mandate in its own right. A policy for which an outcome is yet to be realised.

And so exists the disconnect between election promise and policy outcome. The Guild’s inefficiency as a functioning democratic structure is not the sole cause of this, but it is clearly a problem worthy of being acknowledged.

That’s what the Pirate Puusta campaign was all about. It was about being honest with the electorate – stating clearly and bluntly that they shouldn’t get their hopes up; that they weren’t going to get the moon on a stick in exchange for voting for the most bantereffic costume. It was a riposte to the faux sincerity of it all, to the prevailing insistence that we take these elections “seriously”.

Our democratic structures are imperfect. We can pretend that they’re not – and perpetuate cynicism and apathy when another set of well-meaning promises inevitably fail. Or we can tackle it head on, fire with fire, cynicism with cynicism; by treating our electorate as intelligent adults worthy of being told the truth.

Fear and Loathing and Bees: On the Campaign Trail ’14.

Fluffy intellectual justification aside, what was the reality of the Pirate Puusta Campaign? Or rather, what was the reaction to the campaign’s message?

Reported response on the doorstep was overwhelmingly positive. People appreciated the honesty, the refreshing bluntness, and the humour of the campaign. On campus people would offer impromptu shouts of “Biodome!” Online the campaign had the largest of all Guild Election 2014 Facebook Pages, with a reach in the thousands of users and high engagement levels throughout. While small numbers caused the campaign to lag in the ground war, they dominated online. Their videos clocked nearly 500 views in a matter of days – stratospheric for a student union election.

BIODOME!

A unique spin on cardboard signs freshened up an ageing tactic. One sign which simply read “Despair” proved remarkably popular. Combined with the online presence it was a branding which inadvertently tapped into a geeky internet-humour subculture.

Was there negativity? Of course. Opponent’s supporters were seen to rage against the campaign for not taking elections seriously enough. One even stooped to Daily Mail-esque misuse of the term “troll”. Critiques of organisational structure were misconstrued as personal attacks on organisation staff – a straw man interpretation so evidently fallacious as to suggest either calculated dishonesty or a paranoid bunker mentality. Other commentators tried to dismiss the campaign out of hand, to pretend that it didn’t exist, to stick fingers in their ears and go “la la la” at the discussion it created.

Some asserted that Ben simply couldn’t win – the certain knowledge of which would presumably imply either prescient foresight or electoral fraud. Others went to the absurd lengths of lying about the result after the fact.

Most unintentionally amusing of all was the not at all crushing judgement that the campaign simply wasn’t funny. Well fuck me with a spoon; apparently humour is objectively quantifiable now. Absurdity and surrealism, combined with world-weary bitterness and irreverence, isn’t for everyone.

“Swings and roundabouts”, to quote George Orwell.

A strong third place showing with minimal campus presence and a small team is something I would consider a phenomenal success. Throughout history some very good people have placed third in elections, people like Norman Thomas, Ralph Nader, James Hughes.

I can only hope that the lessons taken from the Pirate Puusta campaign are as follows:

1. Have fun.

2. Be honest and open about the limits of the system under which you hope to achieve change.

3. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

[Thus concludes my three part semi-serious analysis of Guild Elections 2014. All opinions reflect a personal view. All facts are correct to the best of my knowledge. Well done if you got the far. Comments on style and content greatly appreciated.]

NASH

Guild Elections 2014 Post-mortem (Part Two)

or

Hacks gonna hack: Obsessive Presidential Vote Overanalyis.

[DISCLAIMER: This is post of very niche interest. If you are among the 99.99999% of the human population who have no direct interest in the University of Birmingham Guild of Students elections, you may wish to look away now. Also in the past on TCOGB I’ve had a policy of “no Guild shit”. I’m temporarily waiving that policy].

[As noted in Part One, at the time of writing I have not read any other post-Guild Election commentary. This is to avoid developing any potential GroupThink-induced confirmation bias. The opinions and conclusions expressed are entirely my own.]

Note: This post contains Spoilers.

Each year the revelation of uncontested Guild Officer positions inspires disappointment. Perhaps it’s because our western-conditioned minds fall back on some imprinted value about the innate goodness of democracy. Seeing an election proceed with only one candidate and no opposition makes us slightly uncomfortable; it’s a bit too soviet.

For myself there’s a second reason to dislike uncontested elections – it completely eliminates the opportunity for preferential voting system multi-round redistributive fun!

Seriously, does anyone else just love the tension of the thresholds, the creeping bar charts, the anticipated eliminations? Will they squeak it in the final round? Will the front-runner’s lead grow or narrow? Single Transferable Vote (STV) is an election geek’s dream.

I’m also told that its better for democracy. But who cares about democracy when you’ve got charts?

Lookalike

While browsing through leading churnalist reddit-plaigarising site Buzzfeed earlier, I noted an amusing article titled “26 Pictures of Politicians When They Were Younger“. Looking through the photos was a mostly prejudice confirming exercise, until I got to number 22, showing former Chancellor and current leader of Better Together, Alistair Darling.

Presumably the photo was taken during Darling’s time as a supporter of the Trotskyite Fourth International, and before his Parliamentary career. Looking at that stern defiant gaze, that ruggedly handsome beard, we couldn’t help but think of another working class hero…

Ed Bauer vs. Alistair Darling.
One a ceaseless campaigner for the rights and welfare of those less fortunate than himself  – the other a former Labour Chancellor.

In true Private Eye style we have to ask “are they perhaps related?”

In other news: Congratulations to the 13 students against whom illegal and unjustified charges and suspensions had previously been brought by the police and the University of Birmingham respectively. All charges have now been dropped. The rule of law prevails over malicious myth-making.

Now might be a time for campus reactionaries to display some humility and offer a few mea culpas.

 

Guild Elections 2014 Post-mortem (Part One)

or

How to Win a Guild Election

[DISCLAIMER: This is post of very niche interest. If you are among the 99.99999% of the human population who have no direct interest in the University of Birmingham Guild of Students elections, you may wish to look away now. Also in the past on TCOGB I’ve had a policy of “no Guild shit”. I’m temporarily waiving that policy].

[At the time of writing I have not read any other post-Guild Election commentary. This is to avoid developing any potential GroupThink-induced confirmation bias. The opinions and conclusions expressed are entirely my own.]

This year’s Guild elections were perhaps the least interesting I’ve ever observed. That personal link takes us back to 2008, which I think we can all agree is an era lost in the mists of time. Dullness emanated from cardboard cut-out candidates. With but a few notable exceptions there seemed to be no drive, no passion, no courage to say or stand for anything that might have seemed slightly “controversial”, or “political”. The overall impression was of a dozen or so individuals “playing it safe”; it was more like watching candidates at a middle management job interview than bearing witness upon the next generation of inspiring leaders.

Et tu quoque, Putin?

Violating the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation is one form of villainy. Shamelessly engaging in blunt and blatant logical fallacy is quite another.

[note: this post has no referencing, mainly because it is a rant written on the fly, based on facts as I understand them at the time.]

Minority Rule #002

“A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “We are very disappointed that the NUT and NASUWT have announced they will be taking further strike action, which less than a quarter of teachers actually voted for.“” link here

Number of people eligible to vote in the 2010 General Election (roughly): 46 million

Number of people who voted Conservative in the 2010 General Election: 10,703,654

Percentage of eligible people who voted Conservative in the 2010 General Election (roughly): 23.27%

Level of hypocrisy: Mind boggling

MAX

Weekly Update #012

If he were still alive, here at Things Can Only Get Better we would like to wish a Happy 100th Birthday to former President of the United States of America, Gerald Ford. Ford passed away in 2006 and is the only President since the end of the Second World War to become Vice-President and President without ever winning an election.

We’d also like to wish a Happy 37th Anniversary of the day Canada abolished capital punishment in 1976. The practice dated back to 1759 and in that over 200 year period 1,481 people were executed.

Max would like to apologise for the inaccuracy of last week’s Birthdays and Anniversaries which were meant for this week. He will be punished accordingly.

You don’t have rights over your children, you have responsibilities to them

I think we would all agree that as parents (or if we were parents), that we would act in the best interest of our child(ren) and recognise that we are responsible for a human being who’s not fully capable of making decisions for themselves. We would provide love, care, guidance and above all; safety.

Thankfully, the Wisconsin state Supreme Court agrees that these are the basic tenants of being a decent parent. It turns out that parents are not allowed to neglect their child, they don’t have the right to withhold necessary medical assistance to their child and they do not have the right to get away with homicide through neglect.

Madeline Kara Neumann (A.K.A. Kara), who died in 2008 after parents refused to take her to a doctor to treat her diabetes instead opting for prayer.

Madeline Kara Neumann (A.K.A. Kara) died in March 2008 in her home from a case of undiagnosed diabetes. Despite gradually growing weaker and even being unable to eat, drink or walk, Neumann’s parents believed that visiting a doctor was akin to worshiping an idol.

She was 11 years old.

Did this not hold any magnitude with her parents? 11 years old. Not yet capable to look after herself independently. Not yet fully capable of understanding of what was happening to her body as she gradually grew weaker and weaker. And certainly not yet capable of making an informed decision of whether she believed a god existed (let alone the Christian god) and by extension whether she wanted her parents to pray for her rather than seek medical assistance.

“A child is no more a christian than he’s a member of the postal worker’s union.” – Marcus Brigstocke

The overwhelming majority of the time when I criticise it is critique ideas, conventions and modes of thinking. However, for most of this post I will be criticising actual people. Dale and Leilani Neumann are responsbile for the effective murder of their 11 year-old daughter and are outright despicable people for forcing their child to obey their cult rules. There are only a small number of people for in the world I reserve such distaste and lack of pity for, this for me, is a big deal.

You thought prayer-healing in itself was bad enough, it turns out 31 states in the USA have child-abuse religious exemptions (Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming).

Last week saw me on the upbeat. This week I’m just outright pissed. At least 303 children have died since 1975 after medical care was withheld on religious grounds, according to Rita Swan, director of the Iowa-based advocacy group Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty.

303.

That’s 303 children that could have been saved, or at least 303 couples who could’ve been prosecuted.

I have never been more aware of the dangers of believing stupid ideas for terrible reasons and assuming that parents have rights over their children rather than responsibilities to them.

MAX

Weekly Update #011

Today we’d like to wish a Happy 39th Birthday to the brilliant comedian, David Mitchell. One half of the comedy duo; Mitchell and Webb, and star of That Mitchell and Webb Look and The Peep Show.

We’d also like to wish a Happy 48th Anniversary of the firs ever close up photos of another planet by the Mariner 4 spacecraft that flew by Mars in 1965.

Max is only able to publish one post this week with course stuff looming on this Thursday.

One of the better news stories of the year.

‘We’ did it! For once, this isn’t going to be one of Things Can Only Get Better’s usual world-weary cynical despairing rants at society’s problems. For once, we can publish a celebratory post with limited analysis (much to everyone’s disappointment or relief).

‘Defence’ of Marriage Act (DOMA), that defined Federal benefits for married couples strictly between a ‘man’ and a ‘woman’; struck down!

Proposition 8 in California which banned same-sex marriage; struck down!

The world will live on with Gay Marriage! I recognise this is a clip from (Nash’s beloved country) New Zealand, but it’s still relevant (above).

There is still a hell of a lot to work to be done to progress LGBTQ rights in the USA. A mere 13 states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington) and the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage. And there is still far too much tolerance for homophobia and homophobic hate crimes.

This is in sharp contrast to the over 30 states banning same-sex marriage with 17 of those states also banning other forms of same-sex union (civil partnerships, etc) in their state constitutions.

A little too many stereotypes for my liking, but still a good video (above). Be careful about banning same sex marriage.

There are those who will complain that this unelected ‘Judicial Activism’. What, the same ‘Judicial Activism’ that ended bans on interracial sex-marriage?

Section 1 of the 14th amendment reads as follows:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Now this is the very same amendment that was cited by the Supreme Court in the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967, which struck down all state bans on interracial-marriage. Guess what grounds prop 8 was struck down under? Yeah, you’ve guessed it, the 14th amendment. Discriminating on the grounds of race is just as bad and unconstitutional as discriminating on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Yes, there’s still far too much to do to create true equality and further the cause of social justice. But my God, this is a step in the right direction and it is so refreshing to actually publish an upbeat post on this blog.

MAX