Today is not turning out to be a day to be happy. At best it’s turning out to be a day to think, and it’s not proving to be the sort of thinking that leads to outcomes I like.
Why?
Well I’ve got a simple ambition – simple to define that is, certainly not simple to achieve. I want to be a mainstream, published writer, with an agent, a publisher, and books in bookshops around the world. I don’t want writing to be my hobby. I’d like it to be my job.
I received two emails today, both very nice, both very polite, and both trying to be as constructive and helpful as possible.
The first was from a fan of Critical Miss urging me to forgot about mainstream publishing and instead self-publish.
The second was an agent who, in a very thoughtful, constructive and helpful email… turned me down. Mainly this was due to my writing not setting him on fire. That’s fine. Writing is, as he himself said, very subjective, and I think humour is doubly so. But he also said something else, that I’ve previously heard from other people, which (paraphrasing his words) is this:
As far as the mainstream book world is concerned there isn’t really such a thing as a market for, or genre of, humorous SF/Fantasy. There’s just a Terry Pratchett market, and that’s that.
I can believe this to be true, which is what makes it so doubly depressing. But it seems perverse. Terry Pratchett became the best selling UK author of the 1990s by writing humorous fantasy, and the conclusion that was drawn from this was that there is no market for humorous fantasy? That’s he so cornered the market that there’s no room for anyone else?
Trying to break into the fiction market is hard enough as it is. It’s not enough to be good, I know that. You have to be great, and even then you have to find people whose tastes are aligned precisely enough with yours that you’re their kind of great.
But if you’re writing for a genre that doesn’t exist, then what’s the point? You may as well give up and go home. Or in my case, leave home and go to work (a.k.a. the day job).
Three years back, I wrote a book, Game Night, which people loved. It wasn’t technically self-published, but it was self-marketed. It wasn’t in any bookshops save a handful of Waterstone’s, where it appeared due to the efforts of individual staff who were fans. It was about a subject perceived to be even more niche than humorous fantasy. You think humorous fantasy’s niche? This was humorous roleplaying game fantasy! There was no marketing budget. There were no PR people. Hell, there were no editors.
There was just me.
And yet it’s sold nearly two thousand copies, which I’m told is pretty good for books.
At 2008′s Eastercon I had two middle-aged, female, Terry Pratchett fans who’d never played a roleplaying game in their life buy the book. They loved it. One came back the next day to say: “I was awake half the night, and it’s all your fault, because I couldn’t put it down, because it’s brilliant!”
A few months later we went to the 2008 Discworld Convention, which is, as the name suggests, basically a Terry Pratchett fan convention. We sold 76 copies, which amounts to a little over one in ten of the people attending. I’ve since met many of those people again, and they’ve all told me how much they love the book.
I’ve got a page on my website listing literally dozens of seriously nice quotes about Game Night, many of whom compare it favourably to Terry Pratchett’s works.
Barely a month goes by without someone asking me when me next book will be out. Nagging even. (I mean that literally. For the record, the most recent time was at a party in Wincanton on Saturday 5th March, whose attendees included several Terry Pratchett fans. I’m not making this shit up.)
And each time I have to tell them sorry, don’t know, but it’s a long time away at best.
Which is what I find so frustrating. On one side I have a bunch of people who like what I’ve written thus far, and who not only want more but are getting annoyed at my failure to produce something. And on the other side I have a book industry that says there’s no market for what I write.
I should stress again that I have no bad feelings whatsoever towards the agent who said this. I respect him, and value the kindness that led him to send me a personal written rejection rather than a standard form reply. If I thought his words were falsehoods backed by poor judgement they would be easy to dismiss. It’s that I believe his words to be truths backed by hard-earned knowledge that’s made me so depressed.
It’s probably a little unprofessional to confess to being depressed on my blog (strictly speaking I’m pissed off and miserable rather than actually, clinically depressed) but I figure what’s a blog for if it’s not to be occasionally honest?
I’m not about to give up. There’s still more agents out there, and I’ll keep plugging away, although it worries me that if publishers really do all believe that there’s no market for humorous SF/fantasy, then any agent who might take me on is apparently, by definition, a fool who doesn’t understand the market.
And if we get to this time next year with no progress made, then maybe I will look down the self-publishing route. But if I do, it will be with a heavy heart. I don’t want to be a salesman or a publicist or an editor. I just want to write. I’d like the prestige of being a “published” author, rather than the dubious honour of being part of a process that I once heard a big-name SF author describe as “evil”. I’d like to believe that I might one day be a guest at an SF convention, rather than just the bloke with a stall in the dealers room trying to sell his self-published “crap”.
And I fear that the day I go self-published is the day I give up on the dream of ever making a living at this. I’ve tried selling a book and it isn’t anything like as easy as people think. But maybe that’s an impossible dream anyway. Very few authors make a living writing, and in the “information wants to be free” Internet era I suspect that number will be even further reduced.
It’s not about the money. I’ll never earn as much as a writer as I currently earn as a programmer in the City. And it’s not just about wanting to do a job I enjoy – although that’s a big part of it. It’s about wanting to have time to write all the stories in my head. I bought myself a notebook recently and on the first page, wrote a list of all the novels I already have ideas for.
There’s eleven of them, eight of which are in a genre that apparently doesn’t exist. I’d like to arrange my life such that I might actually get to write them one day.
Here’s hoping.
My first novel Game Night had a gaming theme and was consequently published by a gaming publisher, Magnum Opus Press. My second novel has a wider theme and so I’m looking to get a mainstream publisher for it – which means looking for an agent.
This is a quite depressing process.
What keeps me going is the occasional comments of approval I get about Game Night via email, Facebook and Twitter. So for purposes that consist pretty much entirely of boasting about my compliments in order to boost my fragile ego, I thought I put up some of the Twitter comments I’ve received over the last few months. (It’s only the last few months because Twitter doesn’t seem to allow me to go any further back than that).
@nicholsonj
@jonnynexus @wilw Oh, definitely. Satisfied customer over here!
[link]
I think that was in response to me saying something along the lines of thinking that Wil Wheaton would probably enjoy Game Night.
@nicholsonj
@jonnynexus Then I’ll see you at Eastercon, and add to your woes by wanting to buy a new book that you don’t have yet!
[link]
I think that was in response to me saying that my second novel was finished, but that it would be a long while before it saw publication (as I had to find an agent first, and then they would have to find a publisher).
@multiclassgeek
@jonnynexus It’s OK, you’ll be at #Red11 in spirit via my love of #GameNight
[link]
That was when I said I would be at Redemption 2011 (an SF convention). I read that one out to my wife, my sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law, who were all with me when I first saw it.
@Arcgrim
@jonnynexus Just wanted to say how pleased I am to have found you on Twitter. Bought Game Night after @wilw blogged about it – loved it!
[link]
@jonnynexus Ah, it might have been @muskrat_john. If @wilw hasn’t read Game Night, then he should! I’m sure he’d love it!
[link]
@jonnynexus Sorry if I got you all excited for nothing! Still wherever I heard about it, I love the book & also bought one for my brother
[link]
That did get me a bit excited for a while about the idea of Wil Wheaton having blogged about my book, but I don’t mind that it turned out that hasn’t. Just meeans I can still look forward to him reading it. And yes, I’d be lying if I said a big (but not only, he’s a writer I really admire) part of that is the thought that he might recommend it to his 3.55 Wheatons worth of Twitter followers. And if someone’s bought Game Night twice? That’s awesome on top of awesome. That really made my day.
I really do appreciate any and all complements that come my way. Thank you to anyone who’s even helped me along with some words of encouragement.
We’re still playing Spirit of the Century, but John has now stepped in to take a turn in the GM’s chair.
Moment of the Night: One
We were in a room at a museum, talking to an woman who wanted to hire Addison Grey, TAFKAC’s “I see dead people” private eye, to find an item (the Sioux chief Crazy Horse’s war-shirt) that had been stolen by a bunch of Red Indians on motorbikes. With Addison were Lord Edward Silver, my gorilla with a man’s brain, and Quintilious Drummond, General T’s Mountie character.
At some point we got:
Quintilious: [Says something that's perhaps a little daft]
Addison: [Pointing at him] He’s Canadian.
Me: [Out of character] Sorry, is he wearing a full Mountie’s uniform?
John: Yes.
Me: So let me get this straight. You’ve just pointed at a bloke wearing a full Mountie’s uniform and said: “He’s Canadian”?
TAFKAC: Yeah?
Me: Just seemed a bit of a “no shit?” job…
I don’t know why I found that funny. I think just the mental image of someone pointing at a guy wearing a full Mountie uniform (brown hat, red jacket, black jodhpurs) and pointing out that he was Canadian.
Moment of the Night: Two
A little later, we were discussing how we might search for the Red Indians (yes, I know “Native Americans” is the term used nowadays, but this is supposed to be 1920s pulp), and someone (can’t remember who) suggested that a lot of them work in construction, especially in skyscrapers. Suggestions were being made that we could go and talk to Indians working in construction, in the various skyscrapers that were starting to be built around this time, to see if any of them might know about the blokes (presumably Sioux) who had stolen Crazy Horse’s war-shirt.
Me: No, that’s not all Red Indians. It’s just one tribe, Mohawks I think, on account of them not being scared of heights. [As it happens, I was right! Yeh me!]
John: Is it?
Me: I think so.
John: Well if you spend a FATE point, you can make it be so. [SotC has a system where you can spend points to "declare" certain facts about the setting].
Me: Right. [Thinks].
John: Do you want to spent a FATE point to make it so that it’s only Mohawks work in construction?
Me: Will that screw things up?
John: Not really. It will just change things a bit.
Me: Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll spend a FATE point to make it so that it’s only Mohawks who work in construction.
There then followed a bit of discussion about where we could go to talk to Mohawk construction workers, which ended with us visiting the Chrysler building, which we decided would – in our game – be under construction during this mid-1920s point. We climbed all the way up and had a long, rambling conversation with some Mohawk construction workers who had absolutely no idea why anyone, Indian or otherwise, might want to steal a Sioux chief’s war shirt.
Note: Mohawks come from upper New York state. The Sioux are from about two thousand miles to the west.
At which point…
Me: Hang on a minute. Did I just spend a FATE point to make it so that we couldn’t find anything out by talking to Indian construction workers?
John: Yes.
Oh well. Next week, South Dakota.
I’ve had cable for nearly twenty years now. And in all that time, as Windsor Cable became The Cable Corporation, and The Cable Corporation became Telewest, and Telewest became Virgin Media, one thing has remained constant: that the biggest argument against going with cable, and in favour of going with Sky (satellite), is that having cable requires you to suffer through the appalling customer service that seems intrinsic to the cable experience.
Last winter, we spent a month or so with no broadband or TV (we have no outside aerial, and we seem to be in a deadspot when it comes to transmissions, so when we lose the cable TV, we end up down to about two, very fuzzy channels) due to a fault with the equipment under the pavement outside. While I appreciate this was a technical problem, Virgin were slow and inflexible to react, and afterward appeared to be of the opinion that we were owed no refund whatsoever.
(We were told that we would only be entitled to a refund for the period after they made their first visit, which due to us being away over the three days between Christmas and New Year and me not being able to get additional time off outside that period was about three weeks into the downtime. And even then, we would have had to wait until after we’d been billed the full amount and then contact them to ask for a refund. Given that we’d been having some very difficult interactions with their call centre, we just didn’t have the energy or resolve to attempt this. That, and I didn’t appreciate having to beg to have money returned for a service we’d never received.)
Then this last autumn we decided to downgrade our TV package (we have phone, TV, and broadband), after realising we didn’t watch most of the obscure channels they were supplying us with. We called up, arranged the new package… and then the next month we were billed the previous amount, with the bill showing we were still on the higher package. When we called up again, the woman on the call centre said that there was no record of any call from us. I insisted that I had called (I had my notes from the call scrawled on the previous bill) and she looked again and again insisted that I had made no such call.
At this point it felt like I was being called a liar. I very politely insisted a third time that I had called, pointing out that I had the notes from the call written down in front of me. She said she would go away and check again. This time, she was away a little longer. Eventually, she returned and said something like:
“Yes. You called on xx of xxx and asked for your package to be downgraded from XL to L. That didn’t happen because of a technical fault.”
That was pretty much it. No apology that I recall, either for twice insisting that no such call had occurred, nor for the fact that they’d agreed to do something, and then simply hadn’t done it – and had billed us more money as a result. I asked if we could be refunded the amount that we’d paid extra on our last bill (i.e. the amount we would have saved had they downgraded our package as we’d asked them to), and was told that no, we couldn’t. Again, no apology that I recall.
(I say “that I recall”, because it’s possible that on these occasions they do say the word “sorry”, but that it’s said so robotically, in a tone so lacking in any emotional context, that I simply fail to register it).
But if I wrote all of these various incidents down, from eighteen years until now, starting with being left without a phone for four months when I moved into a new flat in 1995 because the then Cable Corporation kept on telling me (when I called them from work) to “…call back next week and we’ll be ready to arrange an installation of a phone. What’s your home phone number? What’s that? You don’t have a home phone?” we’d be here for ever. So I won’t.
(I eventually gave up and went with BT, by the way).
So given all of that, just how have Virgin Media managed to lower the bar even further? How have they managed to take a customer service experience that was already lying drunk in the gutter and somehow shove it down a drain and into the sewer?
Well last week I decided to upgrade our Internet package, from L (up to 10 MBit) to XL (up to 30 MBit). I hadn’t realised when I called that they would have to upgrade our cable modem (I, perhaps naively, thought they would just flick a switch), so I was rather taken on the hop when the call centre woman asked when I would like the delivery made. (To be fair to me, I would have been less taken by the surprise if she had begun her sentence with something like” “We have to send you a new cable modem to enable the faster connection, when would you…”
Of course, we then hit the old problem of them only being able to deliver Monday to Friday, office hours. But when I asked her if it would be one of those deals where if we were out they’d leave a card and we could arrange a redelivery or pick it up ourselves, she said it was, so I accepted the default delivery date of Monday (yesterday). I was hoping it would be getting delivered by ParcelForce, because I could then nip into the ParcelForce office on the way to the station the next morning and only be a little bit late getting to work.
Now perhaps I should at this point explain how I would expect this process to work.
1) Customer orders the faster connection.
2) New modem is dispatched.
3) Customer receives new modem.
4) Customer installs new modem and contacts cable company to have it activated, connection switched etc.
It is of course important to note that firstly, step three might not occur on the original specified date, and that step four might not occur on the same day as step three. The customer might want to put off installation for a few days until they have a spare evening, for example. Or perhaps the person who picks it up is not the “technical one” and installation will have to wait until the “technical one” is around.
But this is how (based on my experience at least) Virgin Media do it:
1) Customer orders the faster connection.
2) New modem is dispatched.
3) On the scheduled delivery day, the old modem is remotely bricked, regardless of whether the customer has even received the new modem.
So during the day, a little “Sorry you were out” card was delivered by some delivery company or other. They had a web address I could enter to arrange a redelivery, so I grabbed my laptop, entered the web address into the URL bar at the top of my browser, and…
…got bounced to the address “act2.virginmedia.com”, which displayed a webpage blank save for a link saying:
“Please click on this link to proceed with Broadband Activation…”
This page was displayed regardless of whatever address I entered. So my broadband was connected to Virgin, but they weren’t connecting me to the wider net. And when I tried clicking on the link, I got a page that said something like, “Oops, we’ve got a technical fault”. (I think because that page will only work with the new modem we don’t yet have).
It was pretty obvious what had happened, so I called the customer support line.
I should pause at this point to say that Virgin have both an English call centre and an Indian one and I’ve never quite figured out why sometimes I talk to one and sometimes to the other. Every time I find myself talking to the Indian call centre my heart sinks, and I hate that, because it makes me feel like some sort of racist. I don’t want to be that man that complains about Indian call centres. I don’t read the Daily Star. I don’t think England needs defending and if it did, the EDL are the last people I’d select to defend it.
But I just find my interactions with the Indian call centre to be really difficult. Often, I literally do find it difficult to understand what they’re saying, with them finding it equally difficult to understand what I’m saying. And when I can understand what they’re saying, I still often find that while we might be understanding the words each other are saying, we’re still nonetheless engaged in different, parallel conversations, like two trains passing on opposite tracks. I’ve had conversations so difficult that I’ve handed the phone to my wife who, finding herself equally unable to communicate has ended the conversation by saying, “No, it’s okay, we’re fine, no don’t worry, no we’ll call back some other time, no it’s okay, bye!”
I try to tell myself that it must be an awful horrible job for them. Working in a call centre’s probably not the easiest of jobs at the best of time, but when you’re doing it in the middle of the night in a foreign language, it must be particularly difficult. Put me on a phone like at 2 am in the morning and tell me to talk to a German bloke from Berlin whose broadband is down and I doubt he’d end the conversation with a positive impression of the experience. But the fact that both parties in the conversation are suffering isn’t really much consolation.
So anyhow, I call up, from my cable supplied home phone. And although that means they know who I am, they still make me go through a procedure where I have to enter three separate letters from a password I can’t remember giving them into the keypad before they let me get into the menu system. This is a new and unpleasant innovation to an already depressing level of customer service, and as you can imagine, it didn’t help my already fragile demeanour. But a couple of minutes of furious button pressing and much swearing later, I managed to get in, and after a minute or so on hold my call was answered.
By an Indian voice.
I explained what had happened, as politely and clearly as I could, and then the conversation went something like this:
Her: So would you like to arrange redelivery of the modem?
Me: No. I’m happy to arrange the redelivery myself. I want you to get my broadband back working.
The thing is that at this point my main concern was getting my broadband back up. My wife needs it, and Tuesday (tonight) was supposed to be a gaming session, via Skype. (I’ve now had to cancel it). And I really wanted to arrange the redelivery myself, because I wanted to be able to go to their webpage and see what options were available. Could we pick it up ourselves? Or get it redelivered to my work address?
But she seemed adamant that we had to deal with this first.
Her: Do you want me to arrange a redelivery?
Me: No. I’ll do that myself. I want you to get my broadband working.
Her: [Sounding a little pissed off now] I can arrange a redelivery. Do you want me to arrange a redelivery?
This was delivered in very much a yes or no, last chance only tone. As it happens, since I called last week I’ve ended up taking Thursday off as annual leave for other reasons, so I caved and asked her to redeliver it this coming Thursday. I’m a bit hazy at this point, so I can’t recall exactly what she said next, but I think it was sort of, in tone if not in content, something like, “Was there anything else you wanted me to do?”
I should stress at this point that I recall getting no apology whatsoever for what had happened to us. Not even any indication as to whether it was what they always do (which I doubt) or some kind of unfortunate cock-up (which I’m hoping it is).
I doubt this is the fault of the poor girl in the call centre. I suspect that they have neither the training nor the authority to fully interact with the customers. I suspect they’re forced to operate to a script that doesn’t allow for apologising. But it’s very frustrating when all you really want is a: “Sorry, what can we do to make you feel better?”
So I explain that I would like my old cable modem re-enabled, so that we could have broadband until the new one arrived. She went away and did something and then asked me to try it. Still the same problem. She then did something else and asked me to do a full power-down modem, router and computer and then power them back on sequence. I already done a modem reboot before I called, and I couldn’t see why I had to reboot my laptop but I did this.
And found that I now had no Internet connection at all.
She did a bit more fiddling around, and we got back to where we had been when I started, with every address getting bounced to the activation page. At this point she said something like:
“We cannot get the old modem out of registration setup.”
It was said pretty matter-of-factly, with an air of this being the end of the process. There might well have been a sorry in there, but as I’ve said before, if there was, it was of such a scripted nature that it didn’t register as an actual apology. I quizzed her a bit further and was told that basically, this was it. We were just going to have no broadband until we received and installed the new modem and that was that. I asked if I could have the modem delivered to a different location (my work) and was told that no, it couldn’t be delivered to any other location. So Thursday it is.
I then, trying very hard to be polite, said something like:
Me: Now I know now of this is your fault. I know there’s nothing you can do about it. But we are very, very upset about this.
Her: [silence]
Me: I’d be very grateful if you could note down how upset we are, somewhere, and perhaps pass it on, so that procedures can be amended to stop this happening to someone else.
Her: [silence]
Me: Anyhow, I guess we’re done now.
Her: [silence]
Me: Okay, erm, bye.
It was a very strange end to the phone call. I suppose that maybe I should have done the old “can I talk to your supervisor?” thing, but I shouldn’t have to. Even if working to scripts, if the script ends at a point where the customer’s issue simply hasn’t been resolved and the customer is actually stating that they are very unhappy, surely the script should automatically lead to the customer being passed onto a higher level customer representative?
But apparently not.
So no broadband at all until Thursday, and that’s assuming I’m in when the delivery driver comes, or that the delivery doesn’t just cock up in some other way. And with no suggestion that we might perhaps be due a refund, for the three days of broadband that we will be paying for but not receiving because they bricked our modem. (Let alone anything for general hassle and inconvenience).
We were in Starbucks on the weekend, and I ordered two coffees, one decaf, one non-decaf. They both came back decaf due to a mix-up. They offered to remake them, but I insisted that it was fine, wasn’t bothered etc. etc. and went away to the table where my wife was waiting.
A few minutes later the server appeared and insisted, again over my protestations that I really wasn’t worried, on giving me a voucher for a free coffee, at any Starbucks, to make up for the mistake.
Virgin Media: that’s how you’re supposed to do customer service.
I’ve been following the recent Irish general election quite closely (those of you who’ve suffered through my various tweets and posts can feel free to put in a: “No shit! Really?” here).
It’s not news that Fianna Fáil suffered a disaster of epic proportions. But I thought it might be nice to knock up a graph showing just how badly a catastrophe had befallen them. (It’s not a terribly good graph. I’m not sure lines are the best way to go here, and it would be nice if the X axis was proportionally spaced. But I think it does the job.)
Here it is:
(Click on the graph to show it full size).
A few things you should note.
1) Ireland has a pretty proportional STV electoral system. To win more than 50% of the seats in such a system is a very, very impressive feat. Fianna Fáil did it several times.
2) Although Ireland had two major parties, it wasn’t a two-party system in the popular sense of that phrase. If you define the winner of an election as the party that gains either the most seats or the most votes, Fianna Fáil won every single election between 1932 and 2007, on both of those counts. For Fianna Fáil, “defeat” was when they were still in first place, but with a number of seats less than the total of those parties in second and third places, thus enabling a viable coalition to be formed that didn’t involve them.
3) Fianna Fáil was so dominant that it not only managed to form the government for 61 out of 79 years, for most of those years it did so as a single-party government, not needing to form a coalition to achieve power until 1989. (Again, not an easy feat under PR).
4) Between 1932 and 2007, the lowest share of first preference vote it ever got was 39.1% in 1992. In the same period, the highest vote ever achieved by the second party Fine Gael was 39.2%, in 1981 and 1982. (e.g. Fianna Fáil’s worst ever post 1932 vote was only a fraction lower than Fine Gaels’ best ever vote). And even in the “landslide” of 2011, Fine Gael only got a vote share of 36.1%.
And then in 2011 Fianna Fáil lost. Hugely. Epically. And it’s a defeat made more marked by just how dominant they previously were.
This wasn’t a two-party system. It was more akin to places/times like Northern Ireland through most of the twentieth century, where the Official Ulster Unionist party always won, or apartheid South Africa, where the Nationalist Party always won.
Why?
Well perhaps one thing Fianna Fáil had in common with those parties was that it wasn’t based on ideology and didn’t sit on the left-right scale. It was instead based on identity, a particular sort of patriotism, and a general populist appeal, thus enabling it to be all things to all men, and allowing it to be broadly centre-right in policy and yet still achieve widespread support among working people. In that, it was perhaps similar to the Gaullists in France and the Peronistas in Argentina.
And then of course, there was the appeal of power itself. I read somewhere that Fianna Fáil was almost like a career and life enabling alternative to university; those who hadn’t had the benefit of an education could still “better themselves” by joining Fianna Fáil and making their way up its ranks. Loyalty was achieved not through altruistic joint-purpose but though collaborative shared-achievement.
(A bit like joining the Masons or the Rotary Club, except those latter two don’t stand in elections).
But for that to work you have to keep winning. I think we can probably say that the alternative university is now closed. One look at the graph makes it clear. Whatever Fianna Fáil was, it ain’t that now.
Yesterday, I blogged that many in Ireland were calling for it to abandon its current Single Transferable Vote (STV) electoral system in favour of the Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP) system used for the Scottish Parliament, among others.
This makes me sad. I love STV. It has a purity and elegance against which MMP looks kludgy and contrived. I should at this point pause to point out to UK and US readers that contrary to what many people in those countries seem to think, there is no such system as “proportional representation”. Instead, there are many possible electoral systems, each of which can be judged against various factors, such as:
Proportionality: The extent to which a party getting a certain percentage of the vote will get a similar percentage of seats in the resulting parliament. The First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system used in the UK and the US fares particularly badly here. In the 1983 UK general election, Labour got 209 seats (33%) on 28% of the vote, while the SDP/Liberal alliance got a measly 23 seats (4%) despite achieving an only slightly smaller 25% of the vote. In February 1974, the Liberals got a pretty impressive (for a third party) 19% of the vote, but got only 14 seats (2%) in return. And in 1951, Labour scored 48.8% of the vote to the Conservatives’ 48.0%, but the conservatives got 51% of the seats – an overall majority.
Geographical Link: The extent to which individual members of parliament represent specific geographical areas, and thus the extent to which communities are specifically represented in parliament. FPTP is very strong here, as you have a large number of small constituencies, each represented by a single member.
Member-Voter Link: The extent to which voters can select the specific members that represent them. (As opposed to parties effectively selecting who will get elected). FPTP is pretty middling here. Where there is a tight contest, then yes, the voters get to choose who will represent them. But in the 80% of seats that are “safe”, the winner is almost inevitably the candidate chosen by the leading party, so it’s the party selection contest that effectively determines who will be the MP. (The USA kludges around this by opening up the party selection process to voters, which gives power to voters, but at the cost of depriving parties of the right to decide which candidates they wish to offer up for election). This aspect also includes the ability for independent candidates to both stand and get elected.
Effectiveness of Legislature: The extent to which the system delivers a functional legislature. It’s often suggested that it’s beneficial for a system to require parties to get at least a meaningful level of support before they start winning seats. If you assume that decisive, stable government is a good thing (and that’s a big if), then FPTP scores quite highly here, as you tend to end up with a small number of large parties (as opposed to a squabbling plethora of small, single-issue parties). Many proportional systems kludge this requirement by requiring parties to get over an arbitrary share of the vote. Get 5.01% of the votes in Germany for example, and you’ll get 31 MPs. Get 4.99% and you’ll get nothing.
As a comparison, let’s look at the “pure” proportional representation system used in Israel, which is probably the polar opposite of FPTP. The entire nation is one single constituency, with each party submitting a list of candidates, ranked in an order chosen by the party itself. Voters can choose between parties only. If a party gets X% of the vote, then the first X% of candidates on their list are elected. If there are 200 MPs in the legislature and a party gets 0.6% of the vote then they get 1 MP. If you’re not particularly keen on a party which is likely to get it’s first 5 candidates elected, but you love the bloke they’ve got at number 8, then tough. There’s no way whatsoever for you to vote for him.
I hate that system. I’d rather have FPTP. I want to vote for people, not lists.
Which is where we come to STV, the system I’ve loved ever since I found out about it in the 1980s. STV uses large, multi-member constituencies (in Ireland they have between three and five members) where voters are presented with a list of names not parties, and then rank those names in order of preference (until they have no further preference). Parties are free to suggest an order in which they would like people to vote for their candidates, but people are free to ignore this.
Imagine you lived in a hypothetical UK four-member constituency, in which the candidates were:
Dev Alahan (Conservative)
Peter Barlow (Labour)
Janice Battersby (Independent)
Hilda Ogden (Lib Dem)
David Platt (Labour)
Graham Proctor (Labour)
Dierdre Rashid (Green)
John Stape (Conservative)
Rita Sullivan (Lib Dem)
Kirk Sutherland (Conservative)
Sean Tully (BNP)
Kevin Webster (Independent)
You might have noticed that the parties aren’t putting up the maximum four candidates that you might expect. There is a reason, and we’ll get to it.
Now the Labour party, say, might ask you to vote for their candidates in the following order:
1. David Platt (Labour)
2. Peter Barlow (Labour)
3. Graham Proctor (Labour)
But what if you’re broadly a Labour supporter, but you think David Platt’s a complete wanker? And what if you also have some sympathy for the Greens, and think that Kevin Webster, the independent, is a good bloke with a particular interest in the welfare of small children and young women? Well you’d be perfectly at liberty to vote in the following way:
1. Peter Barlow (Labour)
2. Graham Proctor (Labour)
3. Dierdre Rashid (Green)
4. Kevin Webster (Independent)
5. David Platt (Labour)
But how does STV actually work? Well the counting is a bit complicated, but we only really need to concern ourselves with how you vote (which we’ve described above), and what the end result is likely to be.
Imagine a town in the UK which currently has five FPTP constituencies. For the purpose of this example, we’ll assume that all the constituencies are the same size (i.e. have the same number of voters) and have the same turnout (i.e. the same proportion of people voting).
---- Con1 Con2 Con3 Con4 Con5 City Total
Labour 66% 65% 75% 58% 22% 57%
Conservative 7% 16% 5% 14% 57% 20%
LibDem 26% 17% 19% 27% 19% 22%
Others 1% 2% 1% 1% 2% 1%
Winner LAB LAB LAB LAB CON
So under FPTP, we get four Labour MPs, one conservative MP, and no LibDem MPs, even though the LibDems actually scored a higher percentage of the vote across the city than the Conservatives. Also, note that every single one of those five seats is a “safe” seat. Unless future elections deliver huge swings from one party to another, we pretty know that the result is always going to be four Labour and one Conservative. Which mean the actual selection of the MPs is entirely in the hands of political parties themselves.
So how would it work under STV? Well this city would form one large constituency, rather than five small ones, with this single constituency returning five MPs. Given the above voting patterns we’d expect the final result to be three Labour MPs, one Conservative MP, and one Lib Dem MP.
Even if the vote proportions don’t change much, this is still going to deliver a tight, meaningful election. Why? Because parties would typically put up at least one more candidate than they were expecting to get. In other words, they would put up the number of candidates they would hope and dream they would get, if their campaign went well.
So lets say that at the previous election, the vote shares were as above, Labour 57%, Conservative 20% and LibDem 22%, with the result being Labour 3 MPs, Conservative 1 MP and LibDem 1 MP. But now imagine that since that election, Labour have significantly lost support, with both the Conservatives and the LibDems increasing support. In this case, both the Conservatives and the LibDems might hope to increase their share of the vote enough to pick up a second seat.
Labour would probably only put up three candidates – their existing three MPs, just hoping to hang onto all of them. But both the Conservatives and the LibDems would put up two candidates each, their existing MP plus a new candidate. So you now have a right old dog-fight. Seven serious, major-party candidates, each with a realistic chance of being an MP, fighting for five seats.
Two LibDems fighting for what will most likely be only one LibDem seat. Two Conservatives fighting for what will most likely be only one Conservative seat. And three Labour candidates fighting for what might well turn out to be only two Labour seats.
You’ve got Conservative versus Labour to push Labour down to only two seats. LibDem versus Labour, again to push Labour down to only two seats. Conservative versus LibDem, fighting over who will get that third seat, should they prise it away from Labour. Labour versus Labour, to ensure that if that third seat is lost, they’re not the MP being lost. Conservative versus Conservative, to ensure that if the Conservatives remain on only one seat, they’re the Conservative that gets it. And LibDem versus LibDem, to ensure the same, that if there’s only one LibDem seat, it’s them.
And this is before we add in the effects of transfer votes, with parties appealing to supporters of other parties to give them their later transfers (like the Labour voter in the above example voting Green) and individual candidates appealing to voters to rank them higher than their fellow party candidates (like the Labour voter in the above example ranking the Labour #2 and #3 above the #1).
This is why I love STV. It delivers a broadly proportional result, while eliminating tiny fringe parties (but without any arbitrary threshold), and yet still manages to be all about individual candidates rather than parties. Independent candidates have just as much chance to get elected as those belonging to party. Every contest is meaningful. No party can afford to impose (“parachute in”) an unpopular candidate, because they risk losing that seat. Power really is in the hands of the voters.
The obvious disadvantage is that the constituencies can be rather large, but that can be partly mitigated against (with some loss of proportionality) by having three member constituencies in thinly-populated rural areas where five member constituencies would be huge. And I think that losing some geographical linkage (but only some) is a worthwhile price to pay for all of STV’s other benefits.
So what’s the “problem”? If STV’s so great, why is Ireland thinking of moving away from it, to systems that, while still proportional, rely on party lists.
Well put simply, where every single contest turns into a huge, vicious dog-fight, where no candidate is ever safe, and candidates are often fighting their fellow party members as much, if not more, as they are the opposing parties, politics can become very insular and local. When there is such a strong bond between voter and individual representative, when voters have so much say over who represents them, national issues can go out of the window in favour of local issues.
In our FPTP system, voters ask: “Why should I vote for your party?” After all, you only have one candidate per party, so it’s usually the party that is the determining factor between each candidate. Add in the fact that 80% of the constituencies are safe seats with the result a forgone conclusion, and you end up with an election that is very much fought nationally, on national, “political” issues.
But under STV, voters can end up saying: “Okay, you’ve convinced me that I should vote for your party, but why should I vote for you?”
And that too often leads to voters asking not what the candidate can do for their country, but what they can do for their local area. They became literal servants of the people, whose job it is to fix problems and get resources for their area. Future loyalty is bought by the services they’ve rendered in the past.
And they can never relax. No seat is safe. Even in an area that is solid for their party, a lack of attention to constituency issues (perhaps because they’re busy serving the country as a cabinet minister) risks their local party putting one extra candidate up at the next election who will be fighting to take their seat away from them.
I love STV. But I can see how, in Ireland’s case, a system where general elections actually consist of 43 viciously fought local elections isn’t perhaps the best way to run a country.
On 5th May 2011, the British people will be asked by referendum if they wish to change the way they elect the members of their parliament, from the existing First Past The Post (FPTP) system to a system of Alternative Vote (AV). The “Yes to Fairer Votes” campaign list the following as some of AV’s benefits:
Your next MP would have to aim to get more than 50% of the vote to be sure of winning. At present they can be handed power with just one vote in three. They’ll need to work harder to win – and keep – your support.
Too many MPs have their ‘safe seats’ for life. Force complacent politicians to sit up and listen, and reach out to the communities they seek to represent.
So no more safe seats for central party leadership to “parachute” candidates into. Good thing, right? Are you sure? Consider this:
Since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, no bald man has been elected US president, despite the fact that male pattern baldness (MPB) affects roughly 40 million men in the United States. So that’s a baldy-free run of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush Snr, Clinton, Bush Jnr and Obama. (Yes, Gerald Ford was bald, but he was appointed by the US Senate).
Looked at in this light, (Black) Barack Obama’s victory over (balding) John McCain appears less of a historic breakthrough, and more of a depressing confirmation of a clear historical trend – that in today’s looks obsessed society, bald guys don’t get elected US President. (And add in the fact that Obama’s taller than McCain, another factor that often suggests the winner, and it’s pretty clear that McCain’s campaign had early on boarded a direct flight to Failure City, Republic of Loserland).
And this bias against chrome-domes isn’t something unique to the US Presidency:
Research from the early 1990s found that the proportion of bald men making it to elected office in the US was four times less than the number of follicularly challenged males in the population at large.
…
The last time a bald politician was elected to Number 10 was Winston Churchill in 1951 – and he was up against the equally receded Clement Attlee.
[BBC News]
Where am I going with this? Well that’s just if you’re bald. Imagine how difficult it would be to get elected if you were not merely bald, but ugly as well? And how about if on top of being bald and ugly, you suffered from what could perhaps be most charitably described as a certain lacking in the charisma department? Actually, we don’t have to imagine that one.
He was up against a widely despised, smug, lying war-monger, and lost huge. You get what I’m saying.
Now I wasn’t sad to see Howard lose. But what about more talented candidates? Imagine you have someone who is simply brilliant. Who will make a terrific lawmaker, tenacious in committee and analytical in debate, someone who will surgically remove the flaws from proposed laws and expose the lies and evasions of those who parliament is required to hold to account. Someone who might make a brilliant cabinet minister. The sort of man or woman you want in charge of the economy in difficult times like this.
And then imagine that this brilliant person, this person who all concerned agree would be an asset both in Parliament and in government, is cursed by being both ugly and uncharismatic. Is there not possibly an argument here in favour of safe seats? Is there not perhaps some benefit in having seats where a non-domiciled, pedophile pit-bull terrier could get elected provided you shoved the right colour rosette on it?
Now you might say that I’m being over-cynical here, and yes I am a bit, and my tongue is somewhat lodged in my cheek. But only partially. It’s all very well saying that surely we can trust the electorate to make the right choices, to pick the brilliant but ugly bald guy over the slick, smooth-talking wanker with a sharp hair-cut and a well-worn suit, but they don’t do they?
Dwight Eisenhower. 1956. Fifty-four years of hurt. Bald men should perhaps stop dreaming.
And it’s not just me thinking this, although those other thinking it might not describe it in quite the same terms. Some believe that the roots of Ireland’s economic disaster lie in its highly democratic STV system, in which every MP is directly elected/chosen by the voting public, and in which there is pretty much no such thing as a safe seat. This has supposedly led to TDs (MPs) who are good at getting elected, but perhaps not so good at making laws or running a government.
Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have committed to changing the electoral system, to a still proportional, but more list based system. But perhaps the most succinct explanation is given by journalist and campaigner Fintan O’Toole in his petition for reform:
3. END CLIENTILISM
Change the electoral system that turns TDs into constituency fixers. Replace it with a mix of direct election and a list system similar to that used for the Scottish parliament.
Such a system would massively remove the power of individual voters to select who they want to represent them. Most of the direct election seats would be “safe”, meaning that it would be the relevant local party who would ultimately select the MP. And then the list would provide extra opportunities for central parties to “parachute” in bright and brilliant but ugly and tongue-tied candidates.
And I can’t help but notice the similarity between the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign’s “Force … politicians to … reach out to the communities they seek to represent” and O’Toole’s “[End] electoral system that turns [MP]s into constituency fixers”.
You know, this was supposed to be a satirical post. But I don’t think it is. I really am starting to think that an electoral system can be too democratic.
Which is a bit of a pisser really. Bugger.
I’ve been having a bit of a hankering recently to do some GMing (games mastering). Given that I’m not only at the other end of a Skype link from my gaming group, but also spending quite a lot of time writing novels, it’s pretty clear that I’d need something that:
a) was an abstract game not requiring much in the way of battlemaps or plans; and
b) could involve a lot of improvisation based on limited, sketched out preparation.
I initially thought of some kind of pulpy superhero game, but quickly ruled that out as superhero games tend to involve detailed combat, which wouldn’t really work via a remote Skype link. But when I thought about it further, I remembered that most of my superhero games then to devolve into detective stories where the characters spend most of their time “out of costume”.
So I started to think of something more detective based, and segued from there into a sort of pulpy new-age thing that might be way too overblown for a novel, but perhaps good for the broader-brush, larger than life setting that I think an RPG sometimes required.
Anyhow, this is what I eventually knocked up and sent to the guys in the group. At this point, it’s no more than a vague suggestion for some possible future date, but I figured that having written it, I might as well shove it up here.
(It’s as I sent it, except that I’ve added in links to make it more understandable).
* * * * *
Hi guys,
Been thinking of something. If I did it (big if, as yet), I’d probably use the Gumshoe system (Esoterrorists, Trail of Cthulhu et al) modified to include some simple magic and ESP.
Children of Selene
New-age, paranormal private detectives on a living, breathing Moon.
History
It’s hard to remember now what the world was like before the 60′s, so utterly did they change things. New ways of living. New ways of thinking. And then came the revolutionary year of 1968, and two revolutions that were the seed in the ground and the crack in the wall that would eventually smash the old world apart.
In Paris, an alliance of students and workers overthrew the Fifth Republic and sent de Gaulle packing. And in Prague, the massed ranks of a people united stared down the tanks of the Soviet empire.(1)
The rate of change, already bewildering, increased yet more. Old ways fused with new. Old lore, long ignored but not quite forgotten, was relearned and regained: the power of the mind, ESP, and the power of the universe around us, magic. Equipped by the latest techniques in meditation and sensing, far-seeing scientists began to make break-through after break-through. And through all of this, both capitalism and communism continued to crumble, new organic, anarchic structures
growing up to replace them.
When Apollo 14 lifted off her pad in the January of 1971, she represented the last gasp of a dying order, a final flourish of a nation not far off existing in name only. On the journey to the Moon, Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell experienced some kind of spiritual epiphany. An awakening, even.(2)
When he arrived on the Moon, his consciousness now expanded, something happened, something incredible, something that could not have been foreseen and that is still not understood.
Selene awoke.
Dormant spell of unimaginable power? Intervention by the Gods? We do not know. We know this Before Mitchell landed on the Moon it was a dead world, bereft of both life and magic. This world was Gaia’s stillborn twin.
Mitchell’s arrival resurrected the twin. In just minutes, as he and his commander Shepherd watched, the sky turned from black to blue, grass, trees, birds and insects appeared all around them, and a wide sea filled the lowlands around the Fra Mauro Highlands upon which they’d landed.
Mitchell and Shepherd were now trapped; their Lunar Lander could not fly into orbit through a thick atmosphere. As the third member of their crew, Stuart Roosa, headed home alone in the Command and Service Module, a host of brilliant minds back on the mother planet were already mobilising to design a cargo carrier that could be parachuted to them through the Moon’s new atmosphere.
In the meantime, Mitchell and Shepherd explored what was now the island of Fra Mauro, surrounded by the Ocean of Storms to the north and west, and the Sea of Clouds to the south and east. They found a rich world, full of edible fruits and clear, fresh water.
More people followed, both to Fra Mauro and elsewhere. Shepherd would eventually return to Earth some five years later. Mitchell stayed, founding a spiritual study centre at what had become the town of Birthplace.
(1) In our world, both revolutions failed, and the idealistic dreams of the sixties gradually died, as the world moved into a more pessimistic decade of economic decline.
(2) Mitchell did actually have a kind of spiritual epiphany, and has spent the time since his flight promoting a new field of study that he hopes will fill the gap between science and spirituality.
The Moon Now
Thirty years have now passed since Selene’s awakening and the Moon is home to around 200,000 people. Most of these people are concentrated in the central area, between the Ocean of Storms to the west, and the Seas of Nectar and Tranquility to the east. The capital, Brighton, is located on the west coast, with the second city, Armstrong, on the east coast.
Birthplace, on Fra Mauro island, is small, but influential. A place of spiritualism and magic, it is regarded by the majority pagan faith as the holiest place on the Moon.
There are other smaller settlements scattered along the western coast of the Ocean of Storms, and the eastern coasts of the Seas of Fertility, Tranquility and Serenity. The far side has few seas, and is, for the most part, a wide expanse of hostile desert.
Like Earth, the Moon operates as highly decentralised, near anarchic state, with no government as such, and the only authority being a network of legislatures/courts used to determine laws and resolve disputes. Commerce consists almost entirely of co-operative businesses, most quite small.
Magic on the Moon is slightly more powerful than on Earth, perhaps reflecting Selene’s younger state. Whilst still subtle (magical practitioners can’t cast lightning bolts or fly) it can be a powerful
force.
You
The Moon might be a peaceful utopia, but even a utopia is full of people, and people will always have problems. Worried people looking for missing relatives; plaintiffs in a dispute gathering evidence for
the courts; wives concerned that their hand-fasted mate might be straying.
That’s where you come in.
XXX, XXX and XXX: paranormal detectives for hire. Skilled in the use of conventional techniques, magic, and ESP.
Even a utopia needs people to peer beneath the rocks.
A Note On Magic and ESP
Neither of these are very powerful. As a rough rule of thumb, things which some people in our world think work (astrology, divination, curses, telepathy, precognition, “aura sensing”, love spells, and so on), in this world, do actually work. But things which no-one in our world would suggest might work (lightning bolts, flying etc) don’t work in this world, either.
Oh, and there’s two maps that might be useful. One shows the near-side of the Moon as we see it, and is useful for having the names of things on there:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/moon_landing_map.jpg
The other shows a full, Mercator view of the entire Moon, including the far side:
http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/moon/moon_8k_color_brim16.jpg
As a rough rule of thumb, anything dark is sea, anything light is land. (i.e. The “seas” have become actual seas). Where it’s a bit murky, you’ll have chains of islands within a sea.
That’s it…
The story of PC Mark Kennedy, a.k.a. eco-activist Mark “Flash” Stone, is like something out of a Hollywood movie:
 He turned up with long hair, tattoos and an insatiable appetite for climbing trees. Few people suspected anything odd of the man who introduced himself as Mark Stone on a dairy farm turned spiritual sanctuary in North Yorkshire.
He had come alone on 12 August 2003, in the middle of a heatwave, for a gathering of environmental activists known as Earth First.
Apart from the fact that “Stone” was apparently well-paid and ate meat, he appeared no different from the hundreds of other activists who gathered under marquees to smoke weed, play guitars and plan protests.
What no one could have known was that, despite appearances, the 33-year-old “freelance climber” was actually PC Mark Kennedy, an undercover police officer beginning an audacious operation to live deep undercover among environmental activists.
Source: The Guardian [Full Story...]
But after seven years undercover the story took a sensational turn.
Kennedy’s personal journey also appears to have ended with a remarkable twist. In recent weeks, after protesters discovered his hidden identity and circulated news that he was a police agent, Kennedy is said to have “gone native”. He has expressed remorse to betrayed friends and is seeking some way of securing redemption.
…
Kennedy is now living abroad, but recent developments suggest his desire for redemption is sincere. In email exchanges with activists and their lawyer, Kennedy talked of taking a “leap of faith”, giving the defence evidence that would “assist” them. “I want to help,” he said.
Kennedy is now apparently in the USA, but what should he do now? Well I think the course of action he needs to take now is clear. See, when I said that his story was “like something out of a Hollywood movie” I was speaking only a partial truth. It is like something out of a Hollywood movie, but only the start of one. There is half a story here, a beginning that leads to personal growth and then to a painful transformation, but there is no ending, no redemptive arc.
Kennedy needs to get back into the environmental movement, openly, as himself, offering the insights that only a poacher turned gamekeeper can offer, and endeavour to earn the forgiveness of those who once counted him a friend but now consider him an enemy.
Because only then is his story complete. And only then is his story option-able to a Hollywood movie-studio for a shitload of money.
That we last visited the Moon in 1972 and have never since returned is usually regarded as both a disappointment and a surprise. Certainly, people at the time assumed that once Apollo had reached the Moon mankind was there to stay – just as once Columbus reached the Americas, many others followed. But something I read today has made me question that.
Do you know what happened on this day, fifty-two years ago? No? Then I guess unlike me you didn’t get an “On This Day” desk calendar from your sister-in-law for Christmas, because I did, and hence I do know what happened on this day, fifty-two years ago.
On January 4th 1958, a party led by Sir Edmund Hillary (of Everest fame) reached the South Pole after an overland journey. There were actually people waiting for them; the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station had been established by air over the previous two years. But when a US Navy party led by Admiral George J. Dufek had landed at the Pole in a C-47 Skytrain aircraft on 31st October 1956, they were the first people to stand at the Pole since Scott’s party, in 1912, forty-four years previously.
Like Kennedy and Krushchev, Amundsen and Scott had raced for the honour of being first to a destination, only to find out that honour aside, there was no reason to go there. Given that it took us forty-four years to return to the South Pole, is it that much of a surprise that our return to the far-harder-to-reach Moon is at thirty-seven years and counting?
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