Electoral reform?

Gordon the Gopher announces his plans for electoral reform. Interesting proposals, even more interesting timing. Back in the Tony Baloney days, in the run up to the 1997 General Election, much was promised on electoral reform but little has been delivered other than some tinkering round the edges: Partial reform of the House of Lords, but some hereditary peers remain, and none of the peers in the upper house are elected, all are appointed, so the current system is arguably just as bad as the previous. We've had a degree of proportional representation with European, London Assembly and the devolved national assemblies. But not where there is real power, Westminster, County and Borough Elections remain as first past the post.

So why does it take 13 years after a 1997 New Labour Manifesto promise to get some real proposals laid before the House of Commons? Simple, because now it has no chance of getting on the statute books. The proposal that Gordon is laying down is simply to hold a referendum on his ideas after the next General Election. As he is not going to win this, the chances of him following up on this are nil. We know Cam's Shams are opposed to electoral reform, so we may as well stop this discussion now, it ain't gonna happen!

What's really sad is that Gordon's ideas are really positive. I've long held the view that the current system is far from democratic, as no party in my living memory has polled much more than 40% of the popular vote, but have often had strong majorities. More people vote against the winning party than for it, so it's on a loser before you start. The "alternative voting" system is much more likely to yield results that better reflect public opinion. The failing in this system though is the constituency boundaries which will still yield safe seats for all 3 main parties regardless of the popular vote, but MP's all support the constituency system so this isn't going to change. However, that aside, the real shame is that this proposal will be long forgotten by the time of the 2014/15 elections.

RIP Cadbury's you will be missed

The Cadbury board played a game of hard ball to get the best price for the company. Understandable. But the $11 billion takeover by Kraft will leave the new owners heavily in debt. So in order to make this substantial investment pay, Kraft will have no choice but to move production to where it is cheapest. Cadbury themselves were already planning production to Poland, so the Kraft acquisition will accelerate the departure of this once typical British brand from our shores.

On top of this tragedy, Kraft will also have to look to cheaper ingredients, and may even change recipes to save money. It's highly likely they will drop some of the less well performing brands too. So this really does signal the end of an era for chocolate.

Incidentally, Gordon the Gopher was making empty promises about safeguarding jobs. How can he? He's not on the board of Kraft, so there's absolutely nothing he can do. Further proof, if proof were needed that you can't trust a thing he says.

Read the BBC's story here.