apparently, there has been a riot outside my house.  i didn't start it. in fact i was in the hill grove porter stores talking about 70s sitcoms and innuendo in batman with the bristol sci-fi group. we did hear a helicopter over head and wonder why the pub was so quiet. and then we noticed lots of young people outside the Croft (a nice pub where i sometimes hear folk music) and some police men with horses. and lots of cars. i am currently sitting in clarrie's house eating brie. if people start throwing potential petrol bombs, we shall potentially fiddle. honestly, nothing to see here, i'm fine, probably going to walk home in half an hour. going to church tommorrow and to see morris dancing on Saturday. but feel very spontaneous and immediate and cyber.

not actually literally outside my house, but if the police barricade had'nt been there they might have got to the bottom of my street, possiby

What if they gave an election and no-one came (4)

So: why are the "no" camp putting forward arguments which they know (unless they really are lunatics) are not true?

The easy, cynical answer would be "self interest". The Fluffy Bunny party wants a system that will favour Fluffy Bunnies, and the Swivel Eyed Warmongers and Smug Posh Racists want a system which will favour the Warmongers and Racists party.

The Fluffy Bunnies currently argue that  a system in which 25% of the votes equates to 25% of the power is preferable to one where 25% of the votes equates to 0% of the power, but since that's not on offer, they'll settle for one where 25% of the votes equates to 1%, or 5%, or 10% of the power. But the Smug Posh Racists and the Mad Warmongers are quite happy with a system where 49% of the votes equates to 100% of the power. Why would they change it? But if the Fluffy Bunnies believed for one moment that they could win under First Past the Post, they'd abandon their principled commitment to P.R pretty damn quick. When it looked as if Labour could not win an overall majority, Tony Blair argued that a pact with the Liberals -- the price of which would certainly have been electoral reform -- was morally right: but once he looked like getting an overwhelming majority by himself, he mysteriously forgot that the Liberal party existed.

But I don't actually think that this is the reason, or the main reason, that most of the Red party and all of the Blue party hate the idea of constitutional reform. I think the real reason is simpler and sadder.

I don't think that most politicians really care, very strongly, about their parties, and certainly not about their parties' policies or ideologies. How could they? The Red party and the Blue party are now virtually indistinguishable -- which is to say, indistinguishable to anyone who isn't a member of the Red party or the Blue party. Oh, party animals who read this column will take up their pens to tell me that the Red / Blue party is evil in all respects and whatever the Blue / Red party may have done in the past, the Red / Blue party would have been far, far worse. Unemployment going up? Yes, but it would be going up faster under Red / Blue. Involved in three pointless foreign wars? Yes, but Blue / Red would have got us involved in five! Blue / Red party reintroduced stoning for adultery? Yes, but the Red / Blue party would have introduced crucifixion. Freud called it "the narcissism of small differences": as esoteric to someone who isn't a supporter of one of the two big teams as the doctrinal differences between Baptists and Methodists are to someone who doesn't believe in a god of any kind. [*]

I think that what politicians really care about is The Game. One politician may call the other a pinko Stalinist commie working for the abolition of freedom throughout the world, and the other may retort that the first guy is capitalist pig who'd start sending little boys up chimneys if you gave him half a chance. But that's only like one boxer punching another boxer very hard in the face, or one checkers playing huffing the other checkers players king. Once the bout is over, they are the best of friends. When a politician dies, all the others queue up to say how wonderful he was. If Cameron really believed half the things he says about...about whoever the hell's leader of the opposition this week, you can look it up as easily as I can....then he would refuse to stand next to him, have a cup of tea with him, speak to him. He would throw mud in his face whenever he saw him. As a matter of fact, I think that there are lots of people who should be spat on and have mud thrown in their faces if they appear in public: Melanie Phillips, Nick Griffin, people who drive bicycles on the pavement. But Cameron doesn't think that of Thingy, and Thingy doesn't think that of Cameron. It's all theater: like one of those wrestling tournaments where everyone pretends to have a personality but all the moves are planned in advance.  

Some people positively like going to church. They like the smell of incense, they like the music. They like old fashioned social events, home baked cakes and little knitted mittens and terribly old fashioned children's parties -- a social world that somehow got fossilized in the 1950s. Many is the vicar who has lamented that the most trivial organizational change within his parish is resisted with a theological zeal.

"Maybe more young people would come if we held the service at 2PM rather than 10AM?"

"But services have to be at 10PM. It's in Leviticus. Or even if it isn't, it should be. We've always done it this way. WE'VE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY."

There may be some conservative theologians who can give you chapter and verse about why a lady man can preach a good sermon, run the Sunday school, sing in the choir but can't, for ontological reasons, be a priest. But 97% of those who sincerely regret the introduction of female clergy-people do so because it fundamentally changed the social role of the Vicar and the Vicar's wife. Church isn't like wot it used to be in the olden days.

There's nothing terribly wrong with this. Churches depend on people like this, and people like that do lots of good, unglamourous work in their local communities. They never start wars and they hardly ever set fire to Korans. But they do tend to alienate the kinds of people who are quite interested in God but have no real interest in jumble sales.

Similarly, some people like politics. That's why they make it their hobby, or their profession. Oh, doubtless some people join the Swivel-Eyed Warmonger Party because they studied the works of Marx and Spencer and decided to dedicate their lives to securing for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of the industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Doubtless some members of the Smug Posh Racist party originally joined up because they agreed with Milton Keynes that unfettered free markets are the only way to really establish prosperity for all, except the common people. But most of them aren't really in it for that. They're in it because they enjoy the game. They like standing on hustings and kissing babies; they love the noble traditions of the House of Commons, making funny "hear hear" noises and trying to remember exactly how honourable the member opposite is meant to be. At a lower level, they like running fund-raisers and putting leaflets though doors and organizing committees and canvassing votes. Asking three streets if you can rely on their vote next Thursday is great fun, if you like that kind of thing. (This is equally true of the big brave extra-parliamentary demonstrators. Oh, there may be a certain amount of genuine popular outrage spilling onto the streets. But there's also an awful lot of people who are secretly quite pleased that the Tories are back in power because protest marches are such fun.)

The Party is a finely oiled machine, not for winning arguments, but for winning The Game. It isn't enough for someone to support your party: they have to make a positive decision to walk down the road and vote for it. (It will probably be raining. It usually is.) An election doesn't tell you which party had the most supporters: it tell you which party's supporters were most willing to get off their bums and walk to the polling station.

Which may, for all I know, be a very good system: it may very well be that the person who can't be bothered to get out of their armchair doesn't deserve a say in how the country is run, in the same way that Robert Heinlien thinks that anyone who hasn't been in the army doesn't deserve a say in how the country is run, and Richard Littlejohn thinks that anyone whose first language uses a non-Roman alphabet doesn't deserve a say in how the country is run. But it has an unintended consequence:  elections are not about persuading people to vote for you: they're about mobilizing the people who were going to vote for you anyway to stand up and walk down the road. Who goes round to the largest number of supporters houses and says "we notice that you haven't cast your vote, would you like a lift to the polling station?" wins.

Change the system, be it ever so slightly, and the rules of The Game changes. Once my participation in democracy is extended from "put a cross next to the candidate of your choice" to "put the numbers 1, 2 and 3 next to your first, second and third choice of candidate" then it becomes harder for the Labour Candidate to say, as he once did, outside the convenience store at the bottom of Picton Street "Even though you think my leader is a swivel-eyed lunatic, and even if he really did lie about a war, I implore you with all my heart not to waste your vote on the Liberals, because that might let the Tories in." (I paraphrase, slightly. The Liberals were meanwhile sending me hand-written letters imploring me not to vote Labour, because that might let the Tories in.) They would have to start saying "I know that you are a Liberal Supporter, because you believe in personal freedom; but can I ask you to consider the many ways in which Labour has promoted personal freedom, and consider putting us in second place."

To campaign, slightly more, on the issues. And that changes the rules of the Game. And if the Game is what you believe in, that's a hard thing to swallow. 

Don't worry. It is most unlikely that the "Yes" campaign will carry the day in the referendum. Even if they do, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that a "Yes" vote will lead to the 2015 election being fought on AV. If the Yes team wins, I imagine Cameron will point out that the turnout was very low, and that a vote by 30% of the population doesn't imply a clear "mandate" for constitutional change. But he will have a period of contemplation during which he listens jolly carefully and then does whatever his intestines tell him. So the Reds and the Blues will retain their hegemony for few more years. The Great Game -- in which we all agree to pretend that Red are so evil that we have to vote Blue to keep Red out, and that Blue are so evil that we have to vote Red to keep Blue out will carry on.

And the result will be that it won't just be commies and anarchists and cynics who say that they can't be bothered to vote. Faced with increasingly indistinguishable horses more and more people will stop paying attention to the race. Disinterest will be come mainstream. No-one will be able to remember the name of the leader of the opposition. Oh, a few people will still bother to vote, just as few people still bother to morris dance and a few people still bother to renovate old steam engines. But it will be a weird hobby for nutters. And, sooner or later, the whole archaic muddle will get ripped up and chucked in the bin, and someone will thrash out something better. Compulsory voting? Voting via the internet? Regional assemblies? Decentralized power? Regular referenda on specific issues? A directly elected president? Two proportionally elected houses of parliament? Or maybe something more outre: non-professional politicians "called up" to serve a year or two in parliament, like jurors or magistrates? Who knows. But surely, surely surely, in an age of i-pods and interwebs, we aren't going to carry on walking down to a shabby church hall, standing in little coffin shaped urinals, secretly making a stubby little cross on a stubby little bit of paper and then folding it up and poking it in a box?

But change won't come as the result of a new chartist movement. It won't be initiated by the people we now think of as politicians. They'll just wake up one morning and find out that the rest of us have long since stopped paying any attention to their funny little "election" game.

[*] I don't say there is no difference. There is a difference. I believe I could explain it. It has to do with free will, like most things. But I wouldn't expect anyone outside the God club to care very much.

A useful summary of both sides of the argument

Why David Cameron Is A Liar

by Peter Bensley

published on Facebook on Thursday, 21 April 2011: reprinted with permission.

Here's the full text of Cameron's speech on AV: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12504935

I don't mean to give the impression that there is only one lie in this speech. This is not at all the case. But rather than enumerate and refute them one by one I want to focus on one and make it absolutely clear why I am convinced that the Prime Minister is trying to mislead you.

"Supporters of unpopular parties end up having their votes counted a number of times…

…potentially deciding the outcome of an election…

…while people who back more popular parties only get one vote."

Let's look at a sample AV Election:

First Round: E is eliminated.

■A 22

■B 21

■C 20

■D 19

■E 18

Second Round: D is eliminated.

■A 27

■B 25

■C 24

■D 23

Third Round: B is eliminated.

■A 34

■B 32

■C 34

Fourth Round: A is the winner.

■A 55

■C 45

According to David Cameron, E voters are counted four times: For their first choice in the first round, their second in the second, and so on, while A voters are only counted once.

This is a lie.

The fact is, the votes for all candidates are counted four times. The votes for A are counted in the first round, then again in the second round, then again in the third and fourth rounds.

If the A & B votes truly were counted only once, and weren't counted as many times as the C/D/E votes, the election would look like this:

First Round: E is eliminated.

■A 22

■B 21

■C 20

■D 19

■E 18

Second Round: B is eliminated.

■A 5

■B 4

■C 24

■D 23

Third Round: A is eliminated.

■A 6

■C 25

■D 25

Fourth Round: C is eliminated. D is the winner.

■C 24

■D 26

If you vote for a candidate who is never eliminated, your second choice never comes into play, but your vote is cast in every round, and keeps your candidate from being eliminated in every round.

So when the Prime Minister says that E voters get many votes while A voters only get one, there are only two possibilities:

1.The Prime Minister of the UK does not understand how runoff voting works.

2.David Cameron is deliberately lying to us all for political gain, and hopes that we will be too naive to catch him doing it.

We've all heard a lot of jokes about how lying is to politicians what swimming is to fish, so it's easy to be cynical and blase about this kind of dishonesty. It's easy to keep on voting for someone even when he clearly has this much contempt for you, because, hey, the alternatives are all politicians and therefore liars too, right?

By treating this behaviour as inevitable we've made it acceptable, and that's what I'd like to see change.

What if they gave an election an no-one came (3)

WARNING: VERY LONG INDEED


"I am on neither side in the present controversy. But I still think the abolitionists conduct their case very ill. They seem incapable of stating it without imputing vile motives to their opponents. If unbelievers often look at your correspondence column, I am afraid they may carry away a bad impression of our logic, manners, and charity." - C.S Lewis, letter to the Church Times 15 Dec 1961

So: come Thursday fortnight we all get to traipse down to the polling station and have a vote about how we want to vote. A sort of meta-vote. "Yes" if you want to go over to the first, second and third preferences system; "No" if you want to stay with the simple majority system. There is no way of indicating that you'd rather have Proportional Representation, or that you think that the vote-counting system isn't the main thing which is screwed up about our version of  parliamentary democracy.

If I could be bothered, I might make out some posters saying "Vote 'Maybe' On May 5th." 

If I were the "No" campaign, which I hasten to say that I am not, I could muster a number of perfectly sane arguments for sticking with the system we have at present, however crazy that system it may be.  [1]

1: The crazy system was not invented by anyone. It just grew. Gradually, and incrementally. Having an organic constitution that isn't written down in any one place is one of the special and unique things which make us British, like Morris dancing and the shipping forecast. We should, therefore, only change it gradually and incrementally, and there should always be a presumption to the status quo. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is a good principle. "Even if it is broke, be careful of fiddling with it if you don't know what you are doing, because that may very well make things worse" is a pretty good principle too. Presumption in favour of the status quo does not mean "never change anything, ever" any more than "presumption of innocence" means "never find anyone guilty, ever". It just means "be pretty damn sure you know what you are doing". Wait until there is an overwhelming case. Beware of unintended consequences. The case for giving women the vote in 1928, or giving all men the vote in 1832, were pretty overwhelming. Counting the votes in a more convoluted way, not so much. 

2: Some people quite like the kerrazy system. Practically no-one likes the "alternative vote" system. The supporters of AV really want a PR: they are pretending to like AV because that was the only system that the people who don't really want any change at all were prepared to agree to a referendum on. [2] We're going to a great deal of trouble to replace a system which some people like and some people don't like with one which nobody likes. We're going to a great deal of trouble to replace the worst system imaginable with the second worse system imaginable. At best, there's a huge fuss and palaver, we conduct the 2015 election on AV, and in 2020 or 2025 we have to go through the whole process all over again. At worst, we spend the next 100 years saddled with a system that no-one wanted in the first place. (And the people who object to all change on general principles will, of course, say "You want ANOTHER referendum? Will you NEVER be satisfied?") 

3: The supporters of AV appear to take it for granted that an election result which accurately reflects the "will" of the people is the most desirable result. This does not seem to me to be self-evident or axiomatic. Granted, a minority of die-hard Black Party supporters don't really care what is done to the country, provided it is done by a person wearing a Black rosette and a minority of die-hard White Party voters don't care what is done to the country provided it is done by a person wearing a White rosette. But what everyone else wants is good, efficient, competent leadership -- a prosperous country, low rates of crime, clean hospitals, well educated children, Folk Waves returned to its Monday evening slot Radio Derby, et cetera et cetera et cetera. They don't actually care all that much about parties. Oh, we may have our own personal opinions on whether the Blue party policy on law and order is better than the Red party policy on law and order, in the same way may happen to have a personal opinion about whether the committee of the Little Gidding swimming club should spend this years subscription money on installing hair dryers in the changing rooms or on fixing the diving board, but what really matters to us is that the police catch criminals and the swimming pool stays open. It is at least arguable that a parliament with an overall majority of Red MPs -- even if the Red party does not command an overall majority of support among actual voters -- will do a better job of actually organizing the police force than a parliament consisting of equal numbers of Red, White and Blue MPs would have done, even though an equal number of Red, White and Blue votes were actually cast. Hung parliaments necessarily involve lots of messy compromises and back-room deals, and all three parties having to pretend to support policies which none of them actually agree with. You might very well think it best that the Red party gets a chance to put their policies into practice without being blocked all the time by the White party -- even though you yourself like the policies of the White party better. For most people, party politics is not like supporting a football team or signing up to a religion. It's more a set of vague preferences. The "Yes" campaign seems very good at showing that "first past the post" marginalizes smaller parties and tends towards two-party rule. It seems rather less keen to show why that is necessarily a Bad Thing.

However, the naysayers do not appear to arguing for the principle of conservatism; or that we are being asked to replace one unpopular system with another unpopular system, or even that single party rule is preferable to perpetual compromise. In fact, it is hard to work out what their real case is. They claim that AV is more expensive than FPTP. They point out that the referendum has cost £91 million, although it isn't clear if that money is refunded if everyone votes "no". They argue that the £130 million we are going to spend on voting machines to administer the new system would be better spent on hospitals, bombs and duck-houses, which would be a fair to middling argument if anyone had proposed buying voting machines, which they haven't. They argue that it would let extremist parties in, which is hard to reconcile with the fact that the extremist parties are against it. [3] 

Cameron's speech yesterday was beyond parody. He keeps appealing to a weird constitutional essentialism under which the Alternative Voting system is "un British." I think I understand what "un British" means. For example, Eric and Ernie are "British", and Groucho Marx is "un British"; bacon, eggs, and fried bread are "British", if consumed at breakfast time, but blueberry waffles are  in the same context "un British". I suppose, then, the present system is British because that's the system we currently have in Britain, and a different system is, at the moment, not British because that's not the system that we have in Britain at the moment. How's that an argument? He repeated the ridiculous claim that under the proposes system, some people get more votes than others which is. Just. Not. True. [4] And he said that " It could mean that people who come third in elections will end up winning." In case this concept is too hard to grasp, the Naysayers campaign leaflet [5] helpfully provides a photo of four sprinters crossing a finishing line. The man in third place is marked "The winner under AV".

"It is wrong that the person who came second or third can overtake the person with the most votes and be allowed to win because the second, third or even lower choices of supporters of extreme parties such as the BNP are counted again and again and again" it explains, a trifle breathlessly.

As an argument, this really is on the same level as saying that you ought to believe in God, because that's the only way to avoid being an atheist, or that we ought to reintroduce capital punishment because otherwise we won't be able to execute any murderers. If you define "the person with the most votes" as "the person with the most first choice votes" and "the person who came second or third" as "the person who would have come second or third under first past the post" then it is a no-brainer that the "person with the most votes" will sometimes come second and the "person who came second" will sometimes come first. That is, AV will sometimes come out different to FTP. That is the point of it, you ignorant little maggot. We have a thousand people: each of them with a different set of preferences between the Red Party, the White Party and the Blue Party. We have to turn those thousands sets of preferences into a single man -- a Red Man, a White Man or a Blue Man. Some people think that "the man who was some people's first choice, lots of people's second choice, a few people's third choice, and hardly anybody's last choice" fills that role better than "the man who was a few people's first choice, but the everybody else's last choice." Cameron has literally said "The only possible system is the one where the largest single minority wins, because in all the other system,s the largest single minority doesn't win." This is just not an argument. 

And Cameron must know that it is just not an argument because he resorted to possibly the weirdest thing ever said by a British Politician

"Politics shouldn't be some mind-bending exercise. It's about what you feel in your gut, about the values you hold dear and the beliefs you instinctively have. And I just feel it, in my gut, that AV is wrong."

Yes, of course, many of our most important and deepest beliefs come from instinct, intuition, or, if you insist, gut-feeling. I don't imagine that I could prove that you should never use force until all peaceful means have been exhausted; or that we should treat everyone as we ourselves would like to be treated; or that it's better to be kind than to be cruel. When you comes up against conflicting, irreducible gut feelings, then the argument is at an end. "You'd be willing to give up quite a lot of your freedom in return for security" I say "That's interesting. I'd rather live in a dangerous world provided I was free to go to hell in my own choice of hand cart. Well, then, we'll just have to agree to differ." But the person who invokes "gut feeling" and "I just know" to early in the discussion -- the person who says that he doesn't care what the boffins say, he just knows that global warming isn't happening; or that he doesn't care what the boffins say, he just knows that vaccination causes autism; or that he doesn't care what the boffins say, he just knows that human beings can't have evolved from monkeys -- is simply not worth talking to. He's a fanatic, a zealot, a fundamentalist, or, let's be quite honest here, a loony. [6] To say "I am opposed to this or that constitutional system because of a gut feeling" is really the equivalent of saying "LA-LA-LA! NOT LISTENING! NOT LISTENING!" The existence of politicians who resort that kind of argument is one reason why a lot of us think we need a better way of electing them.

Above: something essentially  British

Under the present system, choosing the government is often reduced to a kind of pesphological prisoner's dilemma. I like the Fluffy Bunny Party. I hate the Swivel-Eyed Warmonger Party. But I hate the Smug Posh Racist Party even more. I fear that few other people will vote for the Fluffy Bunny Party; but that quite a lot of people will vote for the Smug Posh Racists. Therefore, I must vote Swivel- Eyed Warmonger (who I hate) to prevent the Smug Racist Party (who I hate more) from winning. No-one votes Fluffy Bunny because they don't think that the Fluffy Bunny Party can win because no-one votes for them; the Swivel-Eyed Warmonger claims a popular mandate for whatever daft scheme pops into his head over the next five years because so many people thought he was the least worst option who had a chance of not losing.

In 2005, many disgruntled Labour voters threatened to shift their support to the Liberal party on the not unreasonable grounds that disgraced former Prime Minister Tony Blair had (as I may have previously mentioned) lied about a war. You might have expected the Labour Party to have responded by saying that lying had been the most honest thing to do under the circumstances, or that he hadn't actually lied, or that the war hadn't actually happened. But no. They argued that this kind of voting (voting Liberal because the Liberals were the only party to oppose the Really Stupid War) would be "self-indulgent" and indeed undemocratic since the Liberals couldn't possibly win because no-one was going to vote for them, even the people who agreed with them, because voting for them would be self indulgent and undemocratic because they couldn't win.

It's demented.

Some of the "No" campaign appear to think that AV would be a Bad Thing because it would make this kind of voting harder, or, as they put it, because people would not "understand" how to "use" their vote. It's easy to say "I like the Fluffy Bunnies, everyone likes the Fluffy Bunnies, but I am not going to vote Fluffy Bunny because I don't think that anyone else will vote Fluffy Bunny (because they also don't think anyone else will vote for them.)" It's much harder to say "I will put the Posh Smug Racists in second place, because, although they are really my fourth choice to run the country, putting Fluffy Bunny, who are actually my second choice to run the country in second place is more likely to result in a victory for Swivel Eyed Warmonger, who are my first choice, if, as I suspect, people whose second choice is really Raving Loony will be putting Fluffy Bunny second to keep out the Posh Racists...."

But this seems to me to be the scheme's main -- possibly only -- advantage. The idea of "using your vote" as opposed to "voting for the party you actually like best" seems to me to be undemocratic to be the point of wickedness. I've actually heard it floated, by people who believe in the "three cups of tea" theory, that the sensible thing for a Labour supporter to do would be to put Monster Raving Loony in first place and Labour in second , so that they can get a free extra Labour vote in the second round, which is Just. Not. How. It. Works.

Put your cross by the person you actually think would do the best job running the country. Under the new system, but 1 next to the best, and 2 next to the second best. Anything else and might as well not bother with elections.

"I am not producing arguments to show that capital punishment is certainly right; I am only maintaining that it is not certainly wrong; it is a matter on which good men may legitimately differ" - C.S Lewis "Why I Am Not a Pacifist."

[1] A very wise man once pointed out that the English language was crazy: if you can say that a retired teacher "taught" why can't you say that a retired preacher "praught"? But that's not necessarily an argument for wholesale spelling and grammar reform.

[2] So it is pretty shitty underhanded of the naysayer to say that only Fiji and Narnia use the AV system. Wikipedia lists 165 countries which use PR. The Liberals wanted a referendum on PR, but Cameroon wouldn't let them have one.

[3] Of course they are. Of course they are. They are a few peoples' first choice, and everybody else's last choice. That's what "extremist" means.

[4] Well: Mr Smith writes the numbers 1 - 7 by each of 7 candidates, in order of preference, while Mr Jones writes the numbers 1 - 5 by the names of the 5 candidates he wouldn't mind winning -- but nothing at all by the names of the two candidates he wouldn't want under any circumstances. I suppose it is literally true that, if the count went to the 7th round, Mr Smith would have voted in all 7 rounds, where Mr Jones would only have voted in the first 5 rounds, but that doesn't equate to Mr Smith having had more say in choosing the candidate that Mr Jones. (Or does it: can someone do the maths?)

[5] The No-To-AV campaign leaflet is quite the most hateful document I have ever read, and I speak as one who has made a special study of the works of Dave Sim, and once read the Daily Express every day for a month.

[6] "Thus, you may meet a temperance fantastic who claims to have an unanswerable intuition that all strong drink is forbidden. Really he can have nothing of the sort. The real intuition is that health and harmony are good. Then there is the generalizing from facts to the effect that drunkenness produces disease and quarrelling, and perhaps also, if the fanatic is Christian, the voice of Authority saying that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. Then there is a conclusion that what can always be abused had better never be used at all - a conclusion eminently suited for discussion. Finally, there is the process whereby early associations, arrogance, and the like turn the remote conclusion into something which man thinks unarguable because he does not with to argue about it." C.S Lewis "Why I Am Not a Pacifist."

continues