The crisis currently facing politics in the UK is massive. Citizens feel detached from the political process and trust in politicians is rock-bottom. It’s been widely noted that this is a perfect opportunity to reform the rotten system.

I only want to briefly cover the main ideas for reform, so I will use The Guardian’s “A New Politics” supplement (PDF link) as the basis for this article. It gives a good overview of the most common suggestions for political reform in the UK.

One thing before I start though. Ten years ago in Scotland, when the Scottish Parliament was set up, there was a lot of talk about what the “new politics” would look like. I think it’s fair to say that most of us have been disappointed with what the political elites came up with.

On with The Guardian’s suggestions.

Written constitution

For a while now, I have been sceptical of the desirability of a written constitution. I’m sceptical about rules in general. After all, it was rules that got us into this expenses mess in the first place. Politician after politician lined up to excuse their behaviour: “it was completely within the rules”. In many cases, their behaviour was in the rules. The overwhelming message to the voters was: screw the morals, I only care about the rules!

Think to yourself, why is murder taboo? It certainly isn’t because murder is against the law. It is because murder is absolutely abhorrent. You don’t need rules to tell you that. So what would a written constitution do? It might give people with dubious morals a set of loopholes they can exploit, with a ready-made excuse for their behaviour.

As for Timothy Garton Ash’s suggestion that every schoolchild should be taught about the importance of such a constitution, can we not leave that sort of cheesy crap to the Americans?

The monarchy

I am no monarchist, and I really wouldn’t mind if the monarchy was abolished. But who really believes that doing away with the Queen would restore trust in politicians? The Queen is probably the one person involved in the government that anyone has a modicum of respect for at the moment.

Electoral reform

As you may guess from my previous post, I have a strong interest in electoral reform. For several years I have felt that the voting system is the most important part of the system to get right.

For me, the First Past the Post voting system is the thing that stinks the most about Westminster. As I pointed out, it is the sort of system that allows a party to gain a thumping majority having gained the votes of just 16% of the population.

It also means the creation of safe seats, the modern equivalent of rotten boroughs, where voters are utterly neglected. Incidentally, there appears to be a correlation between the safeness of an MP’s seat and their likelihood of being implicated in the expenses scandal.

John Harris seems happy to settle for the Additional Member System currently used in the Scottish Parliament. But this system has enough problems to merit its own post. His other suggestion of Alternative Vote Plus is not ideal as it has the same problems as AMS, but with the added “bonus” of being rigged in favour of the larger parties and having a relatively low level of proportionality.

For me, little other than Single Transferable Vote will suffice. STV vastly reduces the number of safe seats and places more power into voters’ hands, and takes it away from the smoke-filled rooms of political parties. I am quite perturbed that John Harris neglected to mention STV at all.

Parliamentary protocol

Here, Hugh Muir seems most concerned with the quaint traditions such as Black Rod and “blather about “honourable” and “right honourable gentlemen”?” As with the monarchy, though, I see little harm in these things, and it really isn’t the issue at hand. I would certainly like to see a less stuffy approach though, and I think the Scottish Parliament has just about got the balance right on this sort of thing.

House of Lords

Jonathan Freedland wants an elected House of Lords above all else. But I think more elections and more elected politicians are the last thing we need. Of course the present system is unacceptable in many ways, but there is no denying that it has saved our skin a number of times by holding the government to account in ways which I doubt an elected House of Lords would ever be able to do.

One possibility would be for people to be appointed for a term at random, like doing jury service (this is also one of The Guardian’s separate sections, so I consider it further below). Perhaps it would be good for Lords to be appointed, but by a wider range of bodies, not just the Prime Minister.

Local government

Simon Jenkins suggests that MPs have a dual role, and they must do a lot of local work in their constituencies which would have been “unheard of 50 years ago”. He suggests that there should be local mayors to relieve MPs of these duties. Again, I would be reluctant to introduce more elected officials. Surely the answer is to strengthen the already-existing local authorities.

The speaker

I have no firm views on how the role should be reformed, but none of Jackie Ashley’s suggestions sound undesirable.

MP numbers

Given some of what I have written above, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I would be in favour of reducing the amount of MPs. 400-odd sounds about right to me. Again, the increased workload of each MP should in fact be absorbed by local government.

Representation

I would not be against attempts to increase, say, the number of female MPs. But stunts such as quotas have no place in a truly meritocratic system. Moreover, it is well known that voters tend to see such initiatives as an insult, and a backlash ensues. This is certainly not one way to restore faith in politics.

Direct democracy

Julian Glover says, “use the jury system as a model”. That is one suggestion for reform of the House of Lords, so I wouldn’t be totally opposed to that idea. I doubt many would be too keen on that idea though, and I don’t think I’d be up for taking five years out of my life either.

Mr Glover seems to think there is something fundamentally wrong with the concept of representative democracy, but I really do not think so. The role of such juries should be limited, and I wouldn’t give them much of a role in the House of Commons.

And other questions about Scottish Roundup

This week Scottish Roundup has come in for criticism from Slutty McWhore, who has basically accused the website of being sexist. There were other comments on last week’s roundup, which was written by Anne McLaughlin (aka Indygal).

The Devil’s Kitchen added his thoughts on his blog. The other main editor of Scottish Roundup, Will P, responded to the comments on his blog. Slutty McWhore added more comments on Will P’s blog.

Coincidentally, there were some other comments about different aspects. As I am the person who started Scottish Roundup a year ago, I feel as though I should offer an explanation.

It all started a few months ago when Indygal sent us an email asking why her blog wasn’t featured often. The email included a tongue-in-cheek comment about how few female bloggers are featured in Scottish Roundup.

Will and I discussed the email. While we thought it wasn’t a fair criticism, we decided it would be a good idea to to ask Indygal if she would like to be a guest editor. We suggested that, if she wanted, she could do a special roundup focussing on woman bloggers.

Indygal fully intended to do that. But despite having plenty of time to prepare for it, and having spent the entire day writing the post, she decided that there simply wasn’t enough material to justify it. Instead, Indygal wrote a normal roundup followed by a comparison of the styles of female and male bloggers.

I am not sure that Slutty McWhore’s criticisms are justified. It is true that Scottish Roundup tends to contain more posts from males than females. But this is because more males than females blog, so this is inevitable.

Incidentally, contrary to Indygal’s claim, there has not been any week where no females were featured — not as far as I know anyway (it’s hardly as if I keep count). The week Indygal sent the email the roundup in fact contained one post by a female. Is that enough? Probably not.

But posts are included on merit only. We are not interested in box ticking. Scottish Roundup is designed to highlight the best of Scottish blogging. This is what we try to do every week. No other factor is taken into account, and that is the way it should be.

I don’t care about the gender of the blogger, just as long as the post is good. If, one week, not so many women are featured in the roundup, it is simply because their posts haven’t caught our eye. And — this is an important point — it means that they haven’t caught anyone else’s eye either.

It should also be remembered that there is the opportunity for people to nominate their own posts. Indeed, we are constantly begging people to nominate posts, because we cannot reasonably expected to keep on top of the entire Scottish blogosphere.

While I can’t speak for the other editors, when I am in the hot seat any nominated posts are guaranteed to make it into the roundup (unless the site’s contents are utterly abhorrent). Guest editors are always encouraged to include any nominations.

I have gone out of my way to make sure that it is as easy as possible to nominate posts via a variety of methods: email, Delicious or via the very simple form that appears on every page at the Scottish Roundup blog. I did not do all of this for fun.

At the end of the day, if you think we are not featuring enough of X, Y or Z, we can not be to blame for that if you didn’t nominate it. Slutty McWhore accuses this of being us taking a “passive stance”. But speaking for myself I could hardly be more active in this regard. I spend hours every week trawling the blogosphere deciding what to include in the Roundup. I can’t be expected to do even more, particularly if you are intent on not doing anything to make my job easier.

Slutty McWhore tries to make suggestions as to how to make Scottish Roundup “attractive” to women. But I am not interested in making Scottish Roundup more “attractive” to women. I am only interested in highlighting the best of the blogosphere. The only audience we are hoping for is an audience of people interested in Scottish blogs, whether they be female, male, or whatever.

Incidentally, there is some irony in the fact that Slutty McWhore’s suggestion was to have a “Women’s week”. This is precisely what was attempted on Sunday, and it blew up in our faces. So, thanks for the suggestion, but no, not again. Not after the way you reacted to it.

Slutty McWhore also suggests that we should broaden our definition of what is “political”. But we already have a very open policy as to what can be included. Scottish Roundup is mainly focused on politics, but not exclusively. Posts of all kinds are accepted. Sure, there is a slant towards politics. But if you think we have the balance wrong, the answer comes back to the nomination form. If you see something good, nominate it! Then it will be included.

I am always worried that it looks as though Scottish Roundup includes the same blogs over and over again. I am sorry that Slutty McWhore was left with the false impression that the vast majority of bloggers featured in Scottish Roundup know each other in the real world. This isn’t true. I have never met a single other blogger in my life.

But there are only so many blogs that I can keep up with (I am already subscribed to around 100 Scottish blogs — all are in with a shout of being featured). If you think Scottish Roundup looks too cliquey or something like that, I once again have to point you in the direction of the nomination form.

One of the reasons why we have guest bloggers is to ensure that a variety of viewpoints and styles are featured in Scottish Roundup. We invite bloggers of all stripes to be a guest editor. Slutty McWhore was under the impression that Indygal was the first female guest editor, but this is not true. In fact, our second ever guest editor was a woman, so there has been a female presence on Scottish Roundup since the earliest days.

Once again, this isn’t a box ticking exercise. There have only been so many weeks since Scottish Roundup began. Inevitably, some “types” of bloggers have not been invited yet, including some very popular ones. But we will get round to it. Once again, we welcome suggestions for guest editors, but of course we will only choose people if we think they will do a good job at it.

There is another point that has come up in the past few days. Ontheoutsidelookingin and Mike Power both expressed their surprise at being included in the roundup.

As I said above, we are really liberal about what can be included. In fact, you only have to meet one of the following three criteria:

1. Live in Scotland
2. Come from Scotland
3. Blog about Scotland

There are no other criteria. It doesn’t have to be about politics, you don’t have to be a male and it doesn’t even have to be a blog.

Whenever I say “blog” in relation to Scottish Roundup, I am using the word loosely to capture the entire concept of Web 2.0 and citizen journalism. We are eager to incorporate all sorts of content — YouTube videos, podcasts, community sites, message boards, wikis, whatever.

That is part of the reason why the word “Blogging” was removed from the name of the site. “Scottish Roundup” is not a very descriptive name, so I’ve always wondered if it was a mistake or if the name should be changed back. As usual, feedback on that is very welcome.

Once again, we can only do this if you nominate things. Please do let us know any old way you want about anything that you find interesting and fulfils the really loose criteria.

Andrew at Definition Britain has a post about Coke Zero, so called because that’s how many people buy it. Seriously, sales of Coke Zero are falling after the initial launch buzz.

It wasn’t as if Coke Zero seemed to be selling very well anyway. Coke Zero launched just before I started working at Woolworths. What was notable was just how much of this Coke Zero (which I had never heard of) was lying in the stock room. We couldn’t bring them up because they simply weren’t selling.

Coca-Cola really messed it up if you ask me. A lot of people thought that Coke Zero was actually replacing Diet Coke! It’s not — it’s just Coke’s version of Pepsi Max (only about ten years after Pepsi Max launched). Funny how Coke decided to call theirs ‘Zero’ while Pepsi’s is ‘Max’. I see that the new Pepsi Max adverts are making fun of this.

Anyway, Coke Zero was designed to be a drink that appealed to men because Coke has become too closely associated with women. So say surveys and whatnot, apparently. It’s true though. Everybody remembers those Diet Coke adverts with those women cooing over a builder taking his shirt off. The advert was so strong that the whole Coke brand has become girly.

Normal Coca-Cola just about escapes. At around the same time as the famous Diet Coke adverts, normal Coca-Cola was all “Eat football, sleep football, drink Coca-Cola”. Nobody was really convinced, but at least it provided distance from that awful Diet Coke campaign.

But when I first saw Coke Zero I thought, “That must be aimed at women.” This was despite the distinctly non-girly packaging and the (awful) adverts with blokes talking about blokey things. And this is the worst bit of all about Coke Zero. The adverts are possibly among the worst I have ever seen.

“Wouldn’t it be great,” says a fictitious knuckle-dragging reader of Nuts and / or Zoo magazine who was created by a marketing man, “if you could have work without the boss?”

A banal thought. What is the point? But it doesn’t end there.

“Why don’t you get girlfriends without all the plans? Why don’t you get bras without the fumbling? Why can’t you get a holiday where you don’t have to come home?”

Yes, this is the most contrived advert I have ever seen. It is trying so hard to be blokey, but it just comes across as what it is: a really, really bad advert.

And have you ever actually met somebody who would actually say, in a normal conversation, “Great Coke taste… Zero sugar!” It couldn’t sound more like Teleshopping if it tried. Even if a normal person were to say something like that he would say, “This tastes just like Coke. And it’s got no sugar.”

I hope that Coke Zero is off our shelves very soon, just because of those terrible adverts.