I love how Dan Hodges completely ignores the comment by Yonmei, about how his figure was TOTALLY debunked (just check the Guardian archive). Hodges likes to claim his figure was robust, but doesn't like to explain that belief.
The problem with the ad was that it was demagoguery: it was the politics of the gut, not of reason. And the politics of the gut instinct will lead to the odious.
In all honesty, I've read this website for two years without ever noticing Dan Hodges :) Perhaps that explains his approach to political advertising :)

It's a shame Dan, a journalist as good as yourself has to resort to such emotive fallacies.

Both sides of the AV debate have produced an extravagant amount of hyperbole around the subject.

In reality, away from all the posturing, we know that there will be little difference between an AV voting system and FPTP. And taking into consideration there will not be a considerable difference I'm on the 'no to AV' side- your side.

However, I feel it would be better to explain, if you really want to since it's such a boring debate, that there won't be that much difference so it's not worth spending our money on- a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' position.

Ian,

You think that's bad you should have seen some of the other stuff I used to get up to.

You forget that you were also blatantly lying about the cost of the introduction of AV.

Dan, you're a fantastically astute writer and reading your pieces is usually a treat, even when I'm not 100% in agreement with you. This one however just makes me feel nauseous, its negative campaigning at (almost) worst in that rather than making a positive case for FPTP, it relies on exploiting people's fears by suggesting babies will literally die if we chose to change the mechanism via which we elect our MPs, which can in no way be proven. Its reminiscent of the rebublican/tea party "death panel" hysteria regarding Obama's health reforms.

Furthermore, you say its only 1% of people have identified it as an one of the most important issues facing the country, I agree and I'm a real politics geek. This is not to say it is not important at all though, and if it changes the parliamentary dynamic, it will obviously have an impact on decisions that do involve more important issues.

As an STV purist I will of course by voting for AV with my nose peg clipped firmly on.

Wasn't the scaremongering "It'll cost £250M" just completely rubbished? In order to claim that AV "costs" £250M, the NoToAV camp had to assign the entire cost of the referendum to YesToAV, claim that extra polling stations would be needed, and outright lie that AV requires electronic vote counters.

"I was desperately trying to make relevant a subject that 99 per cent of the public find a complete, utter, total irrelevance."

And for the NotoAV campaign work, people have to continue to find elections a complete, utter, total irrelevance. I suppose you could have framed it as "VOTE APATHY - Vote No To AV!"

Mind how you go blunttrauma - enjoy that "arc of prosperity" with Iceland, Argos, and wherever.
You do realise that the English now have a larger majority for independence from you than vice-versa? Jolly good...

To be fair, at least the claim that Nick Griffin is going to vote against AV is actually true. The blatant insinuation that tiny babies will be put in danger due to funding being diverted away from medical care is completely dishonest.

Dan, I cant lie and say that I admire your journalistic prowess, so I wont. However, should I ever need a publicity campaign cruder than Chubby Brown I now know where to go.
Well done. How proud you must be.

Dan, that's just not good enough. Your add says either or, so your system will mean half the babies will die and half the soliders. You monster.

And there is something i don't get: if Labour had AV in the manifesto, they should all vote for it then surely?

@Dan

The clear inference is that there is a binary choice between a different voting mechanism and maternity care. Not spending money on maternity care lessens the survival prospects for babies, especially those born prematurely. Ergo, vote No or babies will die. It is disingenuous to claim otherwise.

There are plenty of flaws in AV; problem is they don’t excite people (e.g. exaggerated swings), so the No campaign went for a crude attempt at scaremongering.

You’re also being disingenuous saying that only 1% of people care about electoral reform; that’s not true, only 1% see it as one of the most important issues facing the country which it obviously isn’t. Many people I’ve spoken to say they’re not going to vote not because they don’t care, but because they feel both systems are equally crap.

You also identify a wider malaise which is that government does things there is no popular mandate for, one could cite many New Labour initiatives here; PFI, liberal immigration policies, (which I agree with incidentally), the Lisbon Treaty, introducing student fees, oh and of course the Iraq war. The reason why we’re getting a referendum on AV and not the other ones is because it’s the bastard child of coalition policies, neither party wanted it, other than the Labour party. This brings me to my final point: would AV be acceptable to you if it had been imposed unilaterally by a Labour government? Or is the holding of a referendum on an issue of marginal public interest that that you find offensive?

Orange Booker,

"Many people I’ve spoken to say they’re not going to vote not because they don’t care, but because they feel both systems are equally crap".

Well that puts you in a pretty select group, because none of my friends who are not involved in politics have mentioned the referendum to me once.

"The reason why we’re getting a referendum on AV and not the other ones is because it’s the bastard child of coalition policies".

Exactly. It's addressing an issue of interest to the politicians, not the people.

That's why I think the whole exercise is damaging.

I have to agree that this whole debate is an irrelevance. The AV has shown in Australia to stifle smaller parties and independents, where at least under FPTP we have had more independents and small parties in the past few parliaments, we even have a Green. We get AV, we get it for good, do you really think Labour will have a manifesto saying lets got to AV+ now post-2015? Or the Tories for that? NO of course not. Its a bad system, and a non choice. We should have at least had a broader choice, possibly AMS etc which are more proportional.

As for its timing, well it comes on May 5th, what's going on then? Oh elections that actually count for something, that matter on big issues like jobs, schools, the NHS and more day to day things. This referendum, as a Scot, will be decided by the Welsh, Northern Irish, Scots and those English who have local elections. I can tell you this now, my mind is set on a real election, not some fictitious choice between the two most unreflective and un-proportionate systems in the world.

I'm sorry with all you who want this change, but no matter how much you disagree with the advert, the fact remains, this is a peripheral issue, a distraction to the major issue of the economy slowing down to a halt, rising youth unemployment, tuition fees, university funding crises in Scotland and so many other issues across this nation. It really just doesn't feature on the political landscape right now.

I think I found an errant word where you talk about the emotional blackmail disguised as No2AV advertising- surely the word "robust" should be replaced with "false" when talking about the £250m figure, as various trustworthy sources such as Channel4 News' FactCheck & HM Treasury have proven that much of the No2AV concocted figure is make-believe. Rational truth seems to have been the 1st casualty of this campaign- sorry Dan, more the fault of the No camp than the Yes camp, though neither side are totally honest.

My major worry outside of the AV or FPTP debate is that the standard of political campaigning in the UK seems to be following the kind of US Republican/Tea Party garbage you see in their elections. The price of all this is even more distrust of politicians, & even greater disillusionment among people towards the whole political system- & from all the leafleting & stall sessions I've done over the past 6 months most people are already very disillusioned with the current system in general. Your "Vote No or the baby gets it"/ "Vote No or we can't equip our troops (though we can afford to help have a go at Gadaffi)" is pure GOP low-down emotional blackmail.

The only positive I have to say about CCHQ is that their Coleshill base is right in the path of the proposed HS2 route, so hopefully they'll be moved far, far away from where I live (though I'm not keen on HS2 either).

Leaving aside the false dichotomy the advert uses and leaving aside the fact that the advert was conceived by someone who was deliberately provocative in order to boost his own profile, shouldn't the No campaign have refused to use the public money provided to them by the Electoral Commission?

I mean, instead of campaigning for a No vote, why didn't they allow the money to be used to save babies' lives? Or how about Mr Hodge's friends, the wealthy elite and big business, financially backing the No campaign, why not support disadvantaged children instead?

Pretty crap advert anyway. It's about as edgy as Harry Hill. To be truly shocking and controversial you need to be creative, intelligent and daring, not Dan Hodges!

In all honesty (and I'm neither a yes or a no voter, I'm still undecided)as a political advert its pretty much tame when you compare it to some of the things you see in the USA, and its a lot more tame than say Cameron scare mongering about the UK economy last May. Its there to shock, to provoke, if it makes the Yes side win, then its a political miscalculation, but I have to agree with Dan on this, there's been worse than this. Not to say I fully condone it, I think its a bit too blunt and doesn't detracts from the real issue at the core of the NO argument. But freedom of speech allows it, and its certainly a lot less brutal and tame than the scaremongering and tactics that we see politicians speak about in their speeches at election time.

Dan: All your points about how people are not interested in this issue are surely arguments not to hold a referendum, not arguments that in such a referendum it is better to vote no.

I don't believe for one moment that you really think the "£250 million estimate of the introduction of AV" has "proved to be a pretty robust figure"; I think you knew it was a complete fabrication right from the start.

Klarth,

Precisely the point of the piece.

Though now we've got this referendum nobody asked for, I'll obviously be voting no as well.

Eh? Given that we now have the referendum, for better or worse, it is not obvious on this basis that it is better to vote no rather than yes.

@Dan Hodges: "Who decided this issue was of such import it should be placed in front of the British people?

Because the British people certainly didn't."

Dan

The problem is that for your average member of the British electorate, the link between the process of acquiring power and that of actually wielding it, seems beyond their powers of comprehension - sad but true.

Usually, just around General Election time, public interest in this subject erupts, only to settle back into the background, post election - of course this time it didn't because, horror of horrors, FPTP didn't do what it's designed to do - create an outright winner via a corrupt mathematical process.

I'd argue that people do realise that FPTP is a busted flush - they just don't see how it can ever be changed so they focus their interest directly on individual policy outcomes rather than how that policy came into being - effect rather than cause?