£4.2bn cuts to the Universities?

Image by Nickster 2000 via Flickr

So it came to pass that the £4.2bn cut didn’t happen – whether it was on the cards, or was an erroneous leak, who can say. But this post isn’t going to be deleted – just left in place as a monument to a jerking-knee and as a constant reminder about Cameron’s pledge to science…

A quick and hopefully not too ranty post in which I point out that David Cameron is a liar.

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The great hall of Birmingham University is quite an imposing place. It is where I sat my final biochemistry exam and where my graduation was held in 2000.

 

It was also chosen as the venue for the 3rd and final election debate for the 2010 UK general election. On the 29th of April this year, the leaders of the three political parties answered a variety of questions on the public finances, education and business.

During this exchange, David Cameron responded to a question regarding the rebuilding of the manufacturing industry in the UK as follows:

“Let’s start with investing in our science base and making sure great universities like this are producing the scientists and entrepreneurs of the future.”

And despite these fine and (dare I say), wholly sensible words, today it has been revealed that the UK university and science sectors will have their budgets slashed by an amazing £4.2bn.

This is most certainly not investing in our science base.

This is destroying it.

As the Science is Vital campaign has been so good at pointing out, a supply of well trained graduates and the maintenance of world class centres of research and innovation are essential for the continued existence of STEM-based industries within the UK economy, which account for roughly 40% of our GDP.

This is a huge backwards step which will do nothing for the UK economy – the short term gain by saving £4.2bn will translate into long term pain, as STEM-based industries desert the United Kingdom for countries like the US, Canada, Germany, etc which have the presence and forethought to maintain investment in their universities and research institutes.

I am afraid that I don’t have the literary legerdemain to describe how annoyed, frustrated and depressed I am about this without descending into a tirade of profanity.

Science is Vital – a letter from my MP.

A letter from my MP, concerning potentially worrying cuts to the science budget

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He actually uses the phrase “Science is Vital” – which can’t be bad.

On the whole – I think this looks quite promising – however, a few alarm bells ring at:

“the government will continue to fund the most excellent science and research”

- this depends upon what the government’s definition of “excellent” is – is it Vince Cable’s 54% for example? In which case – much of UK research is for the high jump. He does make the point that science is an “important driver of economic growth” – which is good – and that a supply of technically skilled staff from UK universities is required to support STEM based industries. However – if the big cuts are made to the UK science and higher education budgets, that supply of technically skilled graduates will dry up.

On the whole, quite encouraging – but I’ll still be watching closely on October 20th with one eye on the overseas jobs market.

“45% of grants were not of excellent standard”

Image via Wikipedia

In which I get all huffy about Vince Cable‘s speech at QMUL this morning & his appearance on the today program.

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This morning the formerly well-respected UK Business Secretary, Vince Cable MP, spoke of impending cuts to the UK science budget. In his interview on the radio 4 today program, he said

“45% of grants were not of excellent standard.”

In his speech at QMUL, he said:

“It is worth noting in the last RAE 54 per cent of submitted work was defined as world-class and that is the area where funding should be concentrated.”

These numbers come from the Research Assessment exercise 2008. The RAE says that:

“The results demonstrate that 54% of the research conducted by 52,400 staff submitted by 159 universities and colleges is either ‘world-leading’ (17 per cent in the highest grade) – or ‘internationally excellent’ (37 per cent in the second highest grade).”

Which is obviously where Mr Cable gets his “54%” figure from, and I am guessing, the “45%” figure (I can’t find anything else that matches).
What Mr Cable fails to do, is read the next line of the RAE:

“Taking the top three grades together (the third grade represents work of internationally recognised quality), 87% of the research activity is of international quality“

In stating that 45% of research is not excellent, Cable is lumping together:

• “Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour (2*)”,
• “Quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour. (1*)”,
• the 2% of assessed work that “falls below the standard of nationally recognised work.”

Research that is “recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour” is not excellent? Sounds pretty excellent to me.

Conflating said internationally recognised research with research that “falls below the standard of nationally recognised work” hardly seems fair and scrupulous.

This is cherry-picking on a par with the homeopaths, and is no basis upon which to decide funding for the already cash-strapped UK research sector.

I shall await the budget on October the 20th with one eye on the overseas science job market.

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MASSIVE COI declared

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EDIT – so it turns out I was pretty much right – http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/news/100908

Homeopathy & Patient Choice: A rod for the PCTs backs?

Some brief thoughts on the department of health’s response to the homeopathy evidence check.

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The predictably “hands-off” response [PDF] to the NHS using and funding homeopathy by the current administration potentially falls into a couple of obvious traps.

Whilst it ducks the thorny questions, in attempting to sate both sides of the arguments it has fallen between two stools.

Pro-homeopathy types will perhaps not be enamoured with the fact that the “evidence base” for homeopathy gets very short shrift, with homeopathy rightly being labeled as implausible and entirely placebo-based:

the majority of independent scientists consider the evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy to be weak or absent, and that there is currently no plausible scientific mechanism for homeopathy.

Those with an anti-homeopathy viewpoint maybe annoyed that the government ducked the decision on nhs funding, and palmed it off to the PCTs, citing patient choice.

the overriding reason for NHS provision is that homeopathy is available to provide patient choice.

This is a curious and illogical decision to make, and it has the distinct whiff of some “Duchy original” tinkering. I suspect that the department of health will shortly be inundated with FOI requests to determine if this was the case.

By ignoring the evidence base and going with “patient choice” the government opens the PCTs to all sorts of (perhaps) spurious requests.

Should cancer patients denied expensive therapies on basis of cost re-request them, citing their patient choice as a major and important factor? Should those wishing plastic or cosmetic surgery be allowed to get it on the NHS, as it is their choice? Should I get a case of Innis and Gunn oak-aged beer each month, as I find it relaxes me after a hard day’s work? At the tax payers expense?

Of course not – the NHS cannot and should not fund everything. But the first place cuts should have been made is on faddy magic pills that do not work (and, I concede, my beer…).

Should those wishing a quick and painless “assisted suicide” get it from the NHS, as it is their choice? Should a rather vocal minority with royal approval get worthless sugar pills with no medicinal value whatsoever?

The DoH response clearly states it does not wish to get involved in ethical discussions -

We note also that it is not for the Department of Health to comment on the ethics of the use of a particular treatment in a particular setting.

- yet it continues to hold a tough ethical & moral stance on the euthanasia issue.

To me, this response looks awfully like an attempt to fudge a decision which allows continued funding of homeopathy, despite overwhelming evidence that it does not work and is a pointless waste of NHS funds (although, as has been pointed out, there are other targets within the NHS budget in need of trimming).

When patients suffer due to lack of NHS funding, shouldn’t every opportunity be taken to trim away waste?

Frenkel rides again

Does peer-review need a peer-review? Or should skeptics be more proactive with scientific journals?

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For those not in the know, Frenkel et al is an apparently peer-reviewed scientific paper from the MD Anderson cancer research centre, Texas, purporting to demonstrate that homeopathic ultra-diluted remedies (i.e. those with any active ingredient diluted to the point where the chances of finding 1 molecule of active ingredient is negligible.) can kill off certain cancer cell lines in the context of cell culture. Unsurprisingly, this paper has been widely toted by various pro-homeopathy websites, with cringe-worthy tag lines such as:

Skeptics May Have to Rethink Their Opinions–Homeopathy May Really Work

Sadly for homeopaths, perhaps rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of an epic skeptic climb-down, the paper turns out to be garbage. As soon as the paper was obtained it was clear that the experiments and the analysis thereof were fatally flawed. In a nutshell, the homeopathic remedies were made up in high concentrations of extra neutral ethanol (as is often done). The ethanol concentrations were not controlled for, which essentially makes all conclusions invalid because ethanol alone, even at low concentrations, can have profound effects on cells. For more information see take-downs by Dr Rachie and Orac. It is also worthy of note that it appears that an unwitting author on the paper has come forward to also cast doubt about the conclusions in the paper:

“Therefore, I believe this study demonstrated changes in alcohol percentages on cells rather than the efficacy of homeopathic medicine.”

So – we have a journal article that even some of the authors express doubt in the findings of.

Frenkel himself has apparently left the MD Anderson cancer centre (Hat tip to @medtek off of Twitter for that one) , and has set up his own company integrated oncology consultants

The website of IOCs has all manner of woo within, from “superfoods” to “homeopathy for cancer”. It also indulges in a bit of bait-and-switch – it says stuff like:

“The main benefit that these treatments provide is improvement in quality of life and enhanced wellbeing. Rather than competing with conventional cancer care, complementary therapies are complementing conventional care as part of comprehensive cancer care.”

– and elsewhere directs you to the aforementioned Frenkel et al paper – which seems to be suggesting that Homeopathy can indeed compete with conventional cancer care.

However, given the fact that Frenkel et al has been published in a relatively obscure journal, and has really only been a debating point on skeptical and homeopathy/altmed websites, what’s the harm?

The most asinine man in UK politics.

Well – recently the paper resurfaced again, as it was mentioned in UK Parliament by conservative MP for Bosworth, David Tredinnick, as part of his proposals for an integrated healthcare bill.

“and the university of Texas has shown the positive effect of homeopathic treatments in killing cancer cells while maintaining good cells.”

Following this, Treddinnick proposed a slew of pro-homeopathy EDMs, which are once again, attracting signatures from the more credulous member of parliament. One of these EDMs deals specifically with the Frenkel et al paper.

Followers of woo in the UK parliament will be aware that it was Tredinnick who proposed Early Day Motion 908 which expressed concern with the scientifically robust conclusions of the Science and Technology select committee evidence check into homeopathy – EDM 908 was deliciously relabelled by Prof David Colquhoun as “A handy list of dimwitted members of parliament.

Evidence based Policy?

But can we really blame Tredinnick for using this paper in parliament? Personally, I am all for MPs referring to peer-reviewed papers in parliamentary debates. “Evidence based policy” was an idea floated by various parties in the run up to the election, which I ( and I think pretty much all skeptics) were broadly supportive of.

So can we castigate Tredinnick for quoting a paper, which he may have taken on good faith as being scientifically credible? Tredinnick has no scientific qualifications and, assuming he has read the paper, may not have been in a position to question its accuracy, methodology or conclusions. Assuming he has read the paper.

If he has not read the paper, then should he be touting it in parliament? Probably not, although I imagine an awful lot of papers, books and articles get mentioned in parliament, without actually being read by the mentionner.

So sadly, whilst it would be easy to dismiss this as Tredinnick rattling his woo-sabre, whilst this paper has not been retracted, we cannot really fault an MP for quoting it in parliament. However much we might like to.

The continued existence of this paper is a failure of peer-review.

Dr Michael Brooks, writing in the New Scientist suggests that (because of this incident) peer-review needs an overhaul. Whilst I agree that this paper needs retracting, I think that an overhaul of peer-review may be a little premature. Let us not forget that according to PubMed 848,345 papers were published in 2009 — it is inconceivable that a few duff ones wouldn’t slip through the net.

Also, the formal peer-review process is just the first rung of the peer-review ladder, albeit the most critical. Every time a scientist reads a paper, that is another instance of peer-review. A paper’s conclusions and methods should be critically appraised by every single reader — this is why the “methods and materials” section is perhaps the most critical section of any paper. Flipping straight to the conclusions section without understanding how the authors reached those conclusions is folly.

In a case such as this, where:

• a paper is being touted to push unproven homeopathic therapies on desperate cancer patients,
• two scientists (Dr Rachie and Orac) have carefully demonstrated that the paper is fatally flawed,
• an author on the paper publically express concerns about the validity of the conclusions.

should we skeptics not take the fight to the journal editor?

After all, there is considerable overlap in the Venn Diagram of “research scientists” and “skeptics” sets. A letter to the editor of this journal, with suitable signatories, should produce the desired effect.

So… who’s up for writing that first draft?

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EDIT: Minutes after posting this blog post 2 things happened:

1. @JDMoffatt (himself a published scientist and academic) told me that he had, in fact, written to the editor of the journal in which Frenkel et al was published, but he hadn’t had a reply as yet.
2. @JDMoffatt received a reply from the editor of the journal in which Frenkel et al was published.

The reply was rather unhelpful, and hardly the full and proper response that one might expect from a journal editor:

“Thank you for your comments. We are aware that the subject is controversial. We would be pleased to evaluate data (my emphasis) supporting your views if submitted”.

This is NOT how peer-review works. If someone has issues with a published paper, they write a letter to the journal (for publication) and this letter is given to the original authors to respond to (if they wish) and both letters are published side-by-side. The onus is not on the person raising issues to provide new data to refute it (although they can). They are not ‘disproving’ the original article – they are raising issues with the work within it. Grr.

On the issue of homeopathy EDMs..

The letter what I wrote to my MP regarding the mass of homeopathy related EDMs

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(“Names have been removed to protect the innocent”)

I am writing to you to ask you to consider signing the following Early Day motions regarding the support of Homeopathy:

EDM 387, proposed by Peter Bottomley, MP.
EDM amendments 284A1, 285A1, 286A1 & 287A1 proposed by Julian Huppert, MP

To be clear on my point of view (and indeed, the scientific consensus) – Homeopathy does not and cannot possibly work.

It is pseudoscience and quackery of the highest order.

Homeopathic remedies are diluted to such an extent that not a single molecule of the “remedy” (which is often completely untested, unlike conventional pharmaceuticals) remains. Compare this with say, Paracetamol, where a standard 1000mg dose contains a touch under 1 million million milllion million (1 with 24 ’0′s) molecules of paracetamol. Repeated clinical trials and meta-analyses have demonstrated repeatedly that homeopathic remedies perform no better than a placebo. Homeopaths however, have built up a ~£40 million industry (in the UK alone) that pushes these pills without a jot evidence for their efficacy.

For more background information – please see the science and technology committee evidence check report: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/45/45.pdf

Whilst it is true to say that homeopathic remedies rarely have any side effects, a side effect of the lack of critical thinking that leads one to use homeopathy can be a failure to visit a GP to diagnose a potentially fatal disease. Recent examples of this include the tragic case of Pen Dingle in Australia, who died after she refused surgery to treat a case of stomach cancer which she would have had a very good chance of survival. Instead, she chose homeopathy and needlessly died, and in great pain. http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/nurse-tells-how-cancer-patient-penelope-dingle-was-writhing-in-pain/story-e6frg12c-1225880033776

Continued support and funding of homeopathy by the UK government and it’s agencies demonstrates a severe lack of critical thinking, and is most certainly NOT “evidence based policy”. It is an anachronism that the UK cannot afford to fund in the current climate – if people wish to use homeopathy and other alternative, unproven healthcare modalities, they should pay for it from their own pocket.

I have kept this message deliberately short — however, if you wished to discuss it in more detail please do not hesitate to e-mail or telephone me. I would be most happy to talk to you in person about this should your schedule allow it.

Kind regards…

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There we go  - I decided not to address Tredinnick’s original EDMs one by one, for fear of going “tl:dr”, and because Julian Huppert has already done that in his amendments.

Updates will be posted as and when I get a reply.

What Proportional Representation would have meant…

A quick note about what a PR system would have meant on Thursday night.

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Yes – electoral reform is on the cards. I blogged about this a week or so ago, and whilst it is a fair system, it does have caveats, albeit small ones.

So, going by figures on the BBC news website – these are the rough distribution of seats if PR had been applied to thursdays results:

	Proportion of Vote (%)	PR SEATS	FPTP Seats	Difference
Conservative	36.1	234	306	-72
Labour	29	188	258	-70
Liberal Democrat	23	149	57	92
Democratic Unionist Party	0.6	4	8	-4
Scottish National Party	1.7	11	6	5
Sinn Fein	0.6	4	5	-1
Plaid Cymru	0.6	4	3	1
Social Democratic & Labour Party	0.4	3	3	0
Green	1	6	1	5
Alliance Party	0.1	1	1	0
UK Independence Party	3.1	20	0	20
British National Party	1.9	12	0	12
Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force	0.3	2	0	2
English Democrats	0.2	1	0	1
Respect-Unity Coalition	0.1	1	0	1
Traditional Unionist Voice	0.1	1	0	1
Christian Party	0.1	1	0	1
Independent Community and Health Concern	0.1	1	0	1

Note) – numbers don’t completely add up due to lack of info on smaller parties and a missing seat.

So  - we can see that the Lib Dems do really well, as do the smaller fringe parties. This is at the expense of the major two parties, which is exactly what we’d expect — given that’s what the electorate voted for!

Proportional Representation is fair – but fair in the UK means that the BNP may get 12 seats, and UKIP may get 20 seats. Greens may get 6.

Click to embiggen

All this assumes that in the PR system the UK will hopefully adopt, no ‘margin’ (a threshold of the vote that a party has to get to to ensure it gets representation) is imposed. A threshold set at 2% would exclude the BNP, but also parties that currently have seats, and might expect to retain representation, particularly the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh national parties.

Anyway, if PR becomes a reality – we must be prepared to expect something like this. Just an FYI.

EDIT: Since I published this the electoral commission have done a more rigorous analysis of the May 6th Vote.

Wrote a note in my diary on Friday morning… it simply reads: “Bugger”

A quick and probably overly pessimistic look at why SciVote may have failed to have an impact.

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Numbers, numbers, numbers…

I heart science. I do science for a living. Science and me can generally be found sitting in a tree, and up to no good. Science has been a source of constant fascination to me for as long as I can remember. Science and the science economy is doubtless immensely important to the UK economy as a whole.

But the efforts to mobilise the science vote for the LibDems on the 6th of May failed.

Not only did the LibDems lose seats, the peerless science advocate MP Dr Evan Harris was pipped to the post in Oxford West by 176 votes. All this whilst the more inane members of the tory party ( “Mad Nad” Dorries, Woo-devotee Tredinnick ) managed to keep their seats.

So why is this? An oft quoted figure for the potential impact of the scivote was the “3.3 million science and engineering votes”, bandied around by the New scientist. This seems like a decent number. Over half the total number of votes the LibDems got in 2005 [PDF] — it all seemed credible and feasible — 3.3 million votes to put behind the party with the best science policies would have an impact.

However, the lack of obvious science vote and the general Lib Dem fail have caused me have a bit of think about this 3.3 million figure.

In my 2nd year of biochemistry, we had some lectures on career choices. An interesting fact was that less than one third of biochemistry graduates go on to do research for a career, whether it be in academia or in industry A rather depressing fact is that more than 40% of Biochemistry graduates went into banking.

According to the ONS (link – .xls file) there are 3.3M “professionals” employed in the UK. Of these, 1.03M are in the STEM sector (Science Professionals, Engineering Professionals, ICT professionals). This suggests that that the 1/3 of biochemistry graduates going on to use their degree as intended is broadly replicated across STEM disciplines.

Just beacuse someone has a STEM degree, doesn’t mean that they do STEM for a living, or indeed that they might have a vested interest in STEM investment, or that STEM might be an important election issue for them.

Voting intentions.

According to the higher education statistics agency,  there are 260,000 academic professionals (I think this means postdocs, fellows, lecturers, readers, professors) in the UK. Academics traditionally vote left-of-centre, with ~70% of them favouring Lib Dem or Labour (data from this 2001 THE piece – if anyone has more upto date info – please comment!).

So, based upon this, we have a group of 1M STEM workers, a good chunk of whom probably already vote for the Lib Dems or Labour. Sadly I am forced to conlcude that the SciVote initiative merely resulted in the shuffling of deck-chairs on the Lib/Lab titanic.

In order for SciVote to have an effect, it must reach beyond the scope of STEM workers, and into the general public. Publicity generated by high profile scientists, such as professors Cox, Hawking, Dawkins, and Al-Khalili could/should be used as a stepping off point to better engage the public in science – not just the “hey, look how brilliant science is” and the “wow! this looks ace” aspects, but the economic and social benefits of science [PDF].

Until this is done, the voter on the street is not going adjust their vote in order to benefit something in which he/she does not have a vested interest, or perhaps see an obvious and tangible return within the lifetime of a government.

SciVote must quickly engage with the new STEM recruits in the house of commons (full list here), and try and push STEM back up the political agenda as quickly as possible. This can and should be done in a cross-party manner, and irrespective of who has the keys for number 10. And as a matter of urgency.

The Campaign for Electoral Reform Begins here…

Time to get political… (it was always going to happen)

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This is the last weekend of the 2010 general election campaign.  It has been a fascinating few weeks for UK politics – the big story being (whether you happen to like him or not) Nick Clegg’s game changing appearances in the parliamentary leaders debates.

Before that, the Lib Dems polled around 20% of the vote – after the first debate, they polled around 30% and frequently find themselves in second place. Clegg’s public exposure transformed him an also ran and the butt of endless “the other one” jokes on “Have I Got News For You”, to a recognisable, genuine, credible candidate for office.

Fig 1 - Trends in the polls around the First leaders debate (central vertical marker) (Screenshot from BBC news website.)

Shortly after the first leaders debate, the BBC poll aggregator, a.k.a “Poll of Polls”, showed that:

• Conservative 37% > 33%
• Labour 31% > 29%
• Lib Dems 21% > 29%
• Others 11% > 9%

So whilst the Lib Dems took most votes from the Conservatives (perhaps those voting Conservative because they simply did not want to vote Labour, and hadn’t previously seen the Lib Dems as a credible alternative), they did gain from both sides of the political spectrum. With this levelling of the political playing field, you might assume that we’d have a hung Parliament – and you’d be right. But not in a good way.

Let us assume that the percentages of the “popular vote” – I.e votes cast for individual parties – in the election is 30:30:30:10 (Tory,Labour,LibDem,Others). In a democracy, you might assume that the numbers of elected representatives might be evenly split in a political debating chamber.

However, you might be surprised to learn that we do not live in a democracy (and I don’t mean this in a tin foil hat conspiracy sort of way).

Plugging these numbers in to the BBC news poll predictor (fig2) reveals that an even split of the vote results in a distinctly uneven split of MPs.

Fig 2 - House of Commons Seat prediction based upon a 30:30:30:10 split of the popular vote (Screenshot from BBC news website)

Note – there are a few caveats one needs to be aware of using such predictive tools – the first being that apparently the UK has a population of 100.1%. The second being that a major assumption of these tools is that the changes in vote are evenly spread across all constituencies.

Anyway, as you can see, an even split in the popular vote leads to a house of commons consisting of 31.8 % Tory, 48.3 % Labour, 15% Liberal Democrat and 4.4% others. There is no way that this can be seen as anything approaching fair and democratic.

The current “first past the post” system is clearly an anathema to reason and fairness.

Proportional representation – the way ahead?

The proportional representation (PR) system directly links the number of representatives per party to their portion of the popular vote. Clearly, a much more democratic and fair system.

If we assume 650 MPs, and divy up the MPs as per the 2005 election results (taken from this pdf – table on page 92) this is what PR would have given us in 2005:

	%age pop. vote	PR Seats	FPTP Seats	Change
Labour	35.20%	229	335	-106
Tory	32.40%	211	198	13
Lib Dem	22.00%	143	62	81
UKIP	2.20%	14	0	14
Scottish	1.50%	10	6	4
Green	1.00%	7		7
DUP	0.90%	6	9	-3
BNP	0.70%	5		5
Plaid	0.60%	4	3	1
SinnFein	0.60%	4	5	-1
UDP	0.50%	3	1	2
SDLP	0.50%	3	3	0
Independent	0.40%	3		3
Respect	0.30%	2	1	1
SSP	0.20%	1		1
Veritas	0.10%	1		1
Alliance	0.10%	1		1
No Description	0.10%	1	1	0
SLP	0.10%	1		1
Liberal Party	0.10%	1		1
Ind – Kidderminster	0.10%	1	1	0
Speaker	0.10%	1	1	0
English Democrats	0.10%	1		1
Socialist Alternative	0.03%	1		1
		650

(note – percentage figures from the original table were rounded to 1 d.p)

(PR seats = number of seats based upon proportion of popular vote. FPTP seats = actual seats after 2005 general election.)

So, what can we infer from this?

1. The incumbent party has most to lose from implementation of PR – which is probably why it hasn’t happened yet.
2. Fringe parties are better able to get representation in the house of commons – this is often touted by the major parties as a good reason to not implement PR. As we can see, the BNP would gain 5 seats in the house of commons – now, I find the BNP abhorrent, a vile, blinkered, nationalist party that prey on the unfounded fears of certain sections of society. However, if ~192,000 people choose to vote for them, a true democracy requires that their voices are heard in the political arena.
3. The Northern Irish parties seem to fare badly – I suspect that this may be because there are fewer inhabitants per constituency in N.I than on average.

However, despite these caveats, a political system based upon the principles of PR would be fair and democratic.

In order to allow efficient governance within a PR-based parliament, a coalition system would seem to be a fairly good way of achieving a workable majority in any legislative assembly. The major three parties still hold the balance of power, (583 out of 650 seats) but would have to ally with each other and work together to help push legislation through (either permanently or for certain issues). The smaller parties account for the remaining 67 seats.

The more right wing block of UKIP + BNP + English Democrats +Veritas would have 21 seats between them and whilst this is representation in the house of commons, it is not going to be sufficient to effect major change to the UK’s policies, certainly in isolation. They would have to ally with a major party or two to get legislation implemented, and one might hope that this would prevent more radical policies getting into law. So those that like to infer that PR leads to adoption of radical policies are almost certainly wrong.

The clutch of smaller left wing  parties would not fare as well (>10 seats), but then as 2 of the main 3 parties can claim to be centre-left, this sort-of balances out.

The fact that the seats are more spread across the parties means that lobbying on a party basis will be less effective, and should make the UK parliament more resistant to interference from vested interests *cough* Murdoch *cough*.

There is no doubt that there would need to be a major change in how politics is done in the UK, which IMHO is a good thing. Keeping the status quo because change is difficult or uncertain is not a good reason to not implement change, especially when it results in a fairer, more democratic system.

I think that this quick analysis of the vote and the effect that proportional representation would have on the house of commons effectively dispels some of the scaremongering that the major parties (i.e. those with most to lose) like to indulge in. Cooperation between parties would have to become more commonplace, which would hopefully lead to more legislation which effectively deals with concerns on both sides of the political divide, and in turn leads to a system of governance that better represents the views of the people. Which is kind of what democracy is all about, innit?

Interestingly, the wooden spoon in the 2005 election went to the “Telepathic alliance” with 34 votes.  <obvious joke> You’d think they’d have clairvoyance enough to stay at home and not waste their deposit. </obvious joke>