This is unbelievable:

AV will result in dead babies and dead soldiers

I keep expecting someone to say “Daw! Of course that’s not a real No to AV advertisement, you big silly! We’d never put out something as crass to make a political point – what do you take us for, a bunch of jerks?” But that doesn’t happen. It’s a real advert. It’s actually earnest, po-faced, this-is-what-we-think campaigning.

If you’ve not seen it, I’m sorry to have to bring it to your attention really. It’s a picture of a newborn baby, with the shouty slogan “She needs a new cardiac facility NOT an alternative voting system”. The implication is, I suppose, that there’s a binary choice – either we have a cardiac facility or a new voting system. There’s a pair of scales with electoral reform in one pan and the life of a child in the other. In another advert, we’re given the choice between bulletproof jackets for our brave boys in Afghanistan, or an alternative voting system.

You see… I like the current voting system, but I also like d…..

looks about as well thought out as a bnp campaign poster

Oh, and the £250 million bit is also not true, hobviously:

1. Some of the money included in the £250m cost is going to be spent anyway, since it includes the cost of the referendum itself.

2. The total £250m amount also includes a projection of £130m that would be saved if it wasn’t spent on expensive electronic counting systems that were liable to failure. But there are no plans to count the votes cast in the referendum by electronic counting machines – they are still likely to be counted by hand. And furthermore, even if the money were to be spent, it would relate to voting generally rather than just specifically to voting No in the referendum.

3. It is simply not provable that if £250m was not spent, it would automatically go on nurses or defence spending. There is no proof provided for this claim, since the clear implication from the ad in question is that it would otherwise be spent on hospitals and nurses.

4. The implication of the ad is that the opportunity cost of having a referendum is that babies in hospital will die. This is a highly offensive claim backed up by no proof whatsoever.

5. As part of their justification for the £250m claim, the campaign claims that the ‘cost of voter education’ with the new AV system will be £26 million. This is a wild exaggeration and based on the cost of the adoption of a different system, the Single Transferable Vote for Scottish Council elections, that is much more complex than AV.

Debunked

Actually, if we had an alternative voting system, perhaps we wouldn’t have governments voted in that can’t stand up to the US, and we wouldn’t need so many flak jackets?

Just a thought.

Libya has a “one man one vote” system. So did Egypt.

USSR was a country of one vote, fancy a bit of that?

Actually, if we had an alternative voting system, perhaps we wouldn’t have governments voted in that can’t stand up to the US, and we wouldn’t need so many flak jackets?

thumbs up.

TuckerUK – Member
Actually, if we had an alternative voting system, perhaps we wouldn’t have governments voted in that can’t stand up to the US, and we wouldn’t need so many flak jackets?