There's been a lot in the news lately about the rising cost of living. You can really see how bad things are when 'gifts under £10' cost £13.95...
I have an article forthcoming in the Journal of Politics - due out in next month's issue. They just published a post summarising/previewing the article on their blog here.
If you want a pictorial illustration, here's a word cloud (courtesy of wordclouds.com) that should give some idea of the content.
Back in September, I was in Colchester visiting relatives when this picture was taken:
There's a post-war estate that contains Churchill Way, Roosevelt Way, and - more controversially - Stalin Road.
This was featured in the local newspaper back in 2009, when it reported that only four out of thirty households responding to a poll wanted the name to change. It was back in the newspaper the other day though, in a more recent article that partly repeats the older one. This article was also reprinted further afield. However, this also gives more detail of the debate at the time.
First, it reports a tweet from the council (which I haven't located) according to which changing the road name would require consent from 75% of the residents. (It's not clear whether that's 75% of those who vote, or 75% of all residents - making abstention an effective no vote.) That's interesting, given that I've been teaching majority rule lately. Here we have an example of bias towards the status quo, as often used in cases of constitutional entrenchment.
Second, it reports disagreement over who should have standing here. One resident is quoted as saying, "it should be our decision" because it is the residents who would be inconvenienced by a change of address. On the other hand, another letter argued that the name is an embarrassment to Colchester (and even Britain) and that residents don't have the right to choose the name of their road. (For the record though, I think the latter point is something of a non-sequitur. The residents here didn't choose Stalin Road. Their objection is to having the existing name changed.)
This is also interesting, given that I've recently been discussing the so-called 'boundary problem' with students on my democratic theory module. This is a case where it's not clear what the relevant 'demos' is. If not the residents of the road in question, then who should it be? Everyone in Colchester? Everyone in Britain? What about residents of the former USSR?
Strikes are currently taking place at many UK universities, with staff protesting over workloads, casualization, and (in pre-1992 institutions) further cuts to the USS pension scheme. These grievances are not new and have been discussed elsewhere before, for instance here and here. But there’s been less discussion of the ballot (voting) system that’s led to the strikes, which is pretty interesting in its own right.
A legal
mandate for industrial action requires that more members vote in favour of
action than against it, but also that at least 50% of members participate (vote)
in the ballot. This is intended to ensure that there is wide support for
action. Without some provision like this, a small number of workers might claim
a mandate for action simply because of low turnout. But this requirement also
produces some rather surprising consequences.
In ballots
last year, a number of universities narrowly missed this turnout threshold,
meaning no mandate for industrial action even though a significant majority of
votes cast were in favour of it. For instance, at the University of
Southampton, 491
out of 998 members voted – only eight short of the required turnout. This
means there was no legal mandate, even though 348 of those votes (71.5% of
valid votes) were in favour of strike action. (These figures all focus on votes
for strike action, rather than action short of striking, and on the USS dispute
in particular. Further, all figures are from November 2021, though a number of
universities that narrowly missed the threshold subsequently held a second
round of ballots.)
Matters were even closer in some other cases. The Newcastle University
was just six votes short (619
out of 1,250). At the University of Manchester, the threshold was missed by
a single vote (1,094
out of 2,094). This despite, respectively, 80.1% and 77.7% of those votes
cast supporting strike action.
These figures reveal that some media coverage has been
misleading. For instance, the BBC reported that
staff at 58 universities voted in favour of strike action. While it is true
that only 58 secured the necessary turnout, this overlooks the fact that a
majority of votes cast at every university were for strike action. (The lowest
level of support for strikes was 61.6%
at the University of Reading.)
This isn’t simply a case of ‘near misses’ though. These
figures also reveal some surprising consequences of the 50% turnout
requirement. For instance, Reading
did secure a legal mandate
because 50.6% voted, albeit with only 61.6% of those (31.2% of eligible voters
[228 out of 731]) favouring a strike. In contrast, Newcastle
did not secure a legal mandate,
because only 49.5% voted, even though 80.1% of these (39.7% of eligible voters
[496 out of 1,250]) favoured a strike. This seems strange, to say the least.
The oddity of these rules is even more apparent if we
consider some possible ‘what if’ scenarios. As noted above, Manchester was only
one vote short of the turnout threshold. Had just one more person voted, then
they would have the necessary mandate. But this would be the case regardless of how that person voted.
Even had they voted against the
strike, their single vote would not have stopped yes from winning, but would have
met the turnout threshold.
In fact, support for strike action was so strong that it
would still have won even had an extra 576 of those who did not vote instead
voted against strike action. Again, it’s puzzling that a vote of 807-to-231
in favour of strikes fails to achieve a mandate, but 807-to-806 would do so.
Why should more people voting against
something give it a mandate it otherwise lacked?
This isn’t the end of the
strangeness though. As we’ve just seen, one more person voting against a strike
would have resulted in a legal mandate (807-to-232). But this mandate would
have been lost had one of those 232 opposed to strike action abstained, rather
than voting against it. So, not only can voting against a strike give it a mandate,
but not voting at all might serve to block strike action!
Ordinarily, we expect abstention to be a ‘neutral’ option,
between yes and no. In this case though, it was abstentions – rather than no
votes – that blocked strike action where ballots failed. It might well be that
some members realised that not voting was their best chance to avoid a strike
and acted accordingly. (And, perhaps, some others voted no – making a strike
more likely – because they didn’t want to block a strike in this manner.) However,
if this was the case, then this strategic abstention might have backfired.
As it happens, the strike ballots that failed to secure a
legal mandate did so because of low turnout, rather than low support from those
that did vote. But things might have been otherwise. It could have been that
turnout thresholds were met, but that the vote was a close one. In that case,
there might have been a narrow victory for strike action that would have been
overturned had strategic abstainers voted against it.
This means that some union members are faced with difficult
choices, even if they know what they want. It’s clear what those in favour of
strikes should do – they should vote yes to strike action. But opponents of
strike action are faced with a dilemma. It isn’t obvious whether they best
promote their cause by voting no or by abstaining. Either option might
unwittingly create the strike mandate that they sought to avoid.
While the working conditions that have led so many academic
staff to vote for strikes are the main issue, the success or failure of strike
ballots is often the result of voting rules, rather than whether workers support
strike action. The turnout requirement makes strike ballots harder to pass, but
also has some rather surprising results.
I was forced to cancel a lecture last Friday due to Storm Eunice.
It's not the first time I've known campus to be closed due to inclement weather. I had assumed that, in these post-pandemic days, classes would generally be moved online rather than cancelled. That is what many people did, but unfortunately my personal laptop chose the day before to die. (I think/hope it's a charger issue rather than the laptop itself, but don't have a spare to test it.)
Local damage is not as dramatic as some of the pictures that I've seen online, but there are a few broken/fallen trees around, including this one that blocked my route to the local shops on Saturday:
As I said, not the most dramatic, but this picture might be useful for lecture slides when discussing freedom and obstacles. If someone were to put a barrier across the path, then this would be a restriction on my negative freedom. A fallen tree, however, may leave me unable - but not unfree - to walk down to the shops.
Still on the subject of celebrity role models, but back to vaccination again, tennis star Novak Djokovic has confirmed not only that he is unvaccinated against Covid but also that he would rather miss future tournaments instead of getting jabbed. While he claims not to be anti-vaxx, and to be open to the possibility of vaccination at a later date, it’s unclear what might change his mind at this time.
I've blogged recently about footballers as role models. I was talking about vaccination, but this kind of thing has been in the news over the last week or so, since the story broke about West Ham's Kurt Zouma mistreating his cat. In this case, the PFA has acknowledged the responsibility of players for influencing society.
Despite being fined and condemned by his club, Zouma still played for West Ham against Watford, though he was then absent against Leicester - apparently due to unrelated illness. His brother, Yoan, has however been suspended by Dagenham for his part. (I haven't seen the footage, but I gather Yoan filmed it.)
Controversy around the issue no doubt reflects the widespread (self) perception of Britain as a 'nation of animal lovers' though - as Julian Baggini points out - there's an element of hypocrisy in this, given many people's indifference to animal suffering in other cases.
Still, this serves as another example of the responsibilities of footballers in the public eye.
