In case you’re not aware, dear reader, of what happens after that: you get a “viva voce”, which is a several-hours-long presentation and interview where you a) prove that you know your stuff and therefore probably wrote it yourself rather than paying someone on the internet to do it, and b) defend your work as significant enough, new enough, thorough enough and substantial enough to be considered worth a PhD (Doctor of philosophy, called DPhil in Oxbridge). There are 2 examiners in the viva, one internal and one external, neither of whom can have helped you with your work at any point. After the viva one of several things will happen:

1. You totally fail. This is incredibly rare as people don’t normally make it this far with nothing to show for it, and no supervisor worth her/his salt would put you in for a viva knowing it’s likely to be a fail.
2. You get dropped down to an MPhil. This is worth maybe 1/3 of a PhD, gives you a research masters degree. It happens when you have done some good work, but not enough of it to make a full PhD.
3. Major corrections. You are given a long time (months to a year) to make adjustments to your thesis and do extra work to make it qualify for a PhD.
4. Minor corrections. You are given a short time (weeks to months) to make minor adjustments to your thesis and possibly a little extra work to make it qualify for a PhD. With corrections you don’t have to go through another viva, you just send off your corrections to the examiners and they say if they think you’re done. At this point, you may start referring to yourself as “Doctor”.
5. This never really happens, but occasionally a very clever and thorough person gets a pure pass. Not at all likely.

What do I think will happen to me? Well, I’m probably major or minor corrections. If I did exactly nothing for 8 months it’d be an MPhil. So, some work done, some still to do. If you’re curious as to what it’s been like to do a PhD, Jorge Cham has it covered pretty well - Piled Higher and Deeper!

“What makes music beautiful, then?” - in large part, it’s not putting in things that are awful. After that, the parameters are quite similar to what makes music sad. I can’t really give too many details when I’m trying to publish them - some enterprising soul might get there first!

“Did you enjoy doing a PhD?” - No. But I don’t think that’s the point of a PhD, is it? I have had points of enjoyment but mostly it’s been a long hard slog. I expect to feel satisfied when it’s done. I wouldn’t want to do it twice. If I could go back and pick a different more useful topic, I would.

“Will you be more employable with a PhD?” - Yes, about 5% more employable - it adds the chance to be a postdoc, of which there are very few in the country at the moment because no-one has any money. Hopefully this situation will improve when we properly dig our way out of recession. Every so often people in industry want a PhD holder, too.

“What’s next?” - I have no idea. Research or software engineering, most likely. It is highly dependent on what jobs are out there. Location is no object. Maybe Jim will get a job first and I’ll find one wherever that is, or vice-versa. Looking at the options I am tempted to do a genetics degree so I can work in bioinformatics - that field is huge! Looking for jobs is now my top procrastination device, even above social networks, and, of course: blogging.

It didn’t work for me. I won’t be pursuing this type of relationship in future. Polyamory is a legitimate and happy way for people to live, and I support anyone’s right to do so and not be harassed into persistent justification of their lifestyle. What didn’t work for me was the plate-juggling aspect of trying to keep everyone happy with the level of attention they were getting. I have enough trouble keeping one person happy! I didn’t want extra emotional attachments, I just wanted to be able to sleep with other people. Not very poly. It’s also hard to openly maintain a lifestyle that goes against prevailing social mores - I must admit that’s part of the reason my life is so much easier now.

I am irritated to find myself included in conversations where poly and open relationships are derided, as if “all that’s behind her now, she’s one of us normal people again.” I am tired of speaking up and find myself nodding along to keep the peace. It’s funny - I am now free of being constantly put on the spot about it, but I can’t help but feel that an erasure of history is being attempted. “She made a mistake”, “It was just a phase”, “That was then, this is now” and other dismissive comments about a time in my life that was turbulent and unpleasant but still happened, because I wanted it to happen. I think I needed to go through that to find out where my limits were, so to erase that experience would erase my way of knowing what I want from a relationship. For me, it was a phase, but there’s no call for “just”.

Plenty of people who knew the situation are surprised that I still have anything positive to say about polyamory, but I just don’t feel that my experience is generally how it goes. I had some awful times, but I put that down to the people involved including my own inability to set boundaries until it was far too late. I have met and spoken to several poly groups who are happy (and not suicide cult happy, just normal, everyday happy). They are at the point where the fact they are poly doesn’t even come up that often, they are just getting on with life. I’d wish them the best of luck but they simply don’t need it and it would be patronising to do so. I also have some admiration for their ability to live against the norm, which they aren’t doing for the sake of being alternative but for the sake of their own happiness and authenticity.

Dan Savage recently has something to say about open relationships, which triggered this post.

Nevertheless, the older I get the more useful role-models seem to be - and so the only women I can think of who I view as role-models are people I know and see often, about whom it would be rather embarrassing to write.

People like Jimmy’s mum - Joyce Carter, who fought her way through sexism in the banking industry back in the 70s. People like Hannah Dee who is not just a woman in science but one who actively sets out to get more women in science, being the deputy chair of BCSWomen. People like Edel Sherratt, whose enthusiasm for the theory behind computing has kept me inspired where other teachers would have had me nodding off. People like Amanda Clare who quietly gets on with very hard research, whose level of focus and commitment to her work is something I fear I’ll never attain. People like Su Wainwright, who has spent decades destroying stereotypes by working in the computer industry and somehow managed to be a mother at the same time.

So there you go, I couldn’t possibly write a full profile of any one of these women because it would just be a bit weird. It has been something of a surprise, however, to realise that I do have female role-models after all.

How it works:

You say what day you want it delivered and where to - I have mine delivered to work. You can go to the site and rate the > 100 different options so that you can influence what turns up in your box, but you don’t get to pick explicitly. I actually see this as a benefit as I love the surprise element! There’s the option to choose various kinds of healthy box of which the least strict is the eatwellbox - I’ve chosen this as there’s no point just replacing bad snacks with more bad snacks. It’s only a little food for the money (£3.49), but it’s interesting food and it stops me buying chocolate or crisps. When your box turns up it appears as pictured and thus you can open the snacks over the course of a few days if you like.

What I think of it:

It’s a great idea that’s perhaps a little too expensive to sustain long-term. I also feel slightly bad that it’s being shipped across the country when I could buy similar local produce, but that’s a whole lot more effort and the surprise element goes away. While I’m enjoying it and not noticing the money, I’ll stick with it. Everyone likes getting post, especially when it’s surprise food post!

If you want to sign up, your first one is free with this code: PJVR297 or PJVR2973 or PJVR297M (I’ve seen all 3, even though it’s supposed to be one unique code!) And no, I’m not suddenly famous enough to be getting commission or anything, but I do get £1 off a box (or to charity) if you do.

I always thought that cryonics was a kind of whack job money-making scheme, like homeopathy, astrology, mediums etc. Certainly a lot of money can be gained from vulnerable (dying, grieving) people who will grasp onto any hope, however slim. The thing with cryonics is that it doesn’t rely on magic, like the other things I’ve mentioned. It relies on future technology. Which, to the level that we understand it, is indistinguishable from magic, but the difference is it can exist.

The last time I checked up on this, we could freeze bodies, but ice crystals formed, making the revival impossible. Then, we started putting antifreeze in, which stopped the ice crystals forming, but was poisonous so the revived body would immediately deteriorate. At that point, I kinda stopped listening to the arguments, because it seemed pretty stupid. Now, a quite comprehensive paper has been brought to my attention, which *also* says that we can’t do full-body preservation but that there is a size limit such that organs might be individually preserved. The example for this is that a rabbit kidney was cryonically preserved, then brought back to a working state, re-installed in the rabbit, and it lived for 48 days on that one kidney before being euthanised for histological analysis. This is news to me. So, small organs can sometimes be preserved (I’m not sure how many rabbits *didn’t* make it, nor how long the vitrified kidney was stored that way).

My other major problem was knowing brain death means that the mind dies too. If the mind is gone, I see absolutely no point in preserving body parts except of course for transplant into a (different) living person at a later date. Now, true brain-death *does* mean the mind dies, but the cryonics claim is that you can get to the patient quickly after brain-death (I would suggest before brain death would make more sense but legal issues about assisted suicide currently prevent this) and the brain structures can be preserved. It has been known for brains to cease function (or appear to) in hypothermia and then “restart” - meaning the mind perhaps doesn’t need to be continually running for a survivable state.

It seems to me a very large leap from the current ability to preserve rabbit kidneys and the fact that a brain might survive for a little while without the “software” (terrible analogy, sorry) running, to “we can preserve whole human bodies *now* for the later revival by future humans with better technology”. There are so many assumptions:

• There are going to be future humans
• They will have improved on our technology to the point where this is possible
• The way we have preserved people, *in our time* will be good enough for them to revive us, in an appreciably better way than e.g. mummification.
• The *known problems* with what we do to preserve people now will not be problems in the future

And that’s just problems with the technology. I am quite happy to state that should the human race survive long enough to do so, we will develop some sort of “save my mind” technology. What I don’t agree with is that we can do a damn thing about it *yet*. I would probably not agree to be cryonically preserved unless I have seen evidence of someone being revived from cryonic preservation. If this means I miss the window, so be it. I will *certainly* not be paying for it!

Slightly woolier (moral) issues:

• Population control - we don’t have room for the living, never mind the “life-challenged”
• The massive assumption that the future people would bother to revive people from the distant past just because they wanted that to happen when they were last conscious.
• That humans will still be sufficiently “human” as we know it, to communicate with
• The idea that you might still have a place in society, even if the future people were happy to bring you back
• It’s very easy to abuse people’s trust and/or money in order to promise them an afterlife that can’t yet happen, and I think this is appalling.
• It’s another way of creating a rich/poor divide.
• Potential loss of organ donors

There’s one argument I hear rattle around my head when I think about this, and it’s this: “Any chance, however slim, to save a human life is morally justified”. No, it’s not. It’s a reality that resources are finite. Any resources going into preserving yourself after death could have been invested in giving thousands of other people better lives. There’s a sense of “If you’ve got the cash to do it, why not?” - Spend your money to plant that shade tree under which you’ll never sit, you selfish idiot.

http://www.brainpreservation.org/ are one group researching the answers, and who knows - it could be a short amount of time before we can do it. What I am certain of is that as yet we don’t even know if it works, and that’s not good enough for me to participate. I await any results with interest. I am fully in favour of research into the technologies in the area, I am of course not against research with no immediate return — look at what I study — but the extortion of money for the service is morally bankrupt and the technology has a way to go before it looks reliable (a vast understatement). As the Society for Cryobiology puts it:

The act of freezing a dead body and storing it indefinitely on the chance that some future generation may restore it to life is an act of faith, not science.

RationalWiki - which I read *after* writing this to avoid totally coming from the “it’s bollocks” side from the start, has more.

Last night we went out for drinks and curry and more drinks to celebrate mine and Dave’s birthday, which was very pleasant indeed. This morning Jim brought me a cup of tea and various presents to be opened, and I got more and more excited with each one. Jim got me chocolates and the game Dominion, which I’ve been pining after for a while. Jim’s parents got me a Steelpan with which I annoyed him for most of the morning. My Dad got me a set of decent headphones and a flute of a type I’ve never seen before - will have to investigate. Kevin deposited a beer on my desk which I didn’t notice for ages as I’m highly unobservant. Sandy got me the Game of Life Adventures, which should be a laugh if I can contain my feminism/alternativism for long enough. (”What, you can only be married to *one* person at once?”, “What, you can’t have children unless you’ve had a wedding?” “What, the career cards are blue, and the family cards are pink? What are they trying to subconsciously imply?”) - You get the idea.

Today, I’m in work as usual, but I may be leaving early because, hey, it’s my birthday, I shouldn’t be here at all, right?

At the weekend I may be sponging a lift down to Pontypridd for a different Dave’s birthday if I can justify disappearing on Jim right before he buggers off to Belgium for a week on holiday for work.

This result, truly the first result from the 8ball, amused me:

This is the sort of thing I do with my day.

The key thing you need if you’re stranded for an indefinite period of time is replay value. It’s no good having Betrayal at House on the Hill, because you’ll eventually run out of scenarios, not to mention that you’ll need more than one other survivor for a decent game. Factor in the traitor element that with sunstroke and lack of proper nutrition could spill over to real life and there, you’ve gone all Lord of the Flies.

Settlers of Catan
C’mon, you’re stranded on an island! Has to be this. You could even change the theming to be just like your island. Got flotsam for seagull? Also, it’s a desert island, so get out those blank tiles and colour in some more deserts*. That’s sure to make the time fly by. Bonus points for including the seafarers expansion and looking longingly at the ships.

Tigris and Euphrates
I think this one has true replayability, and you can play it with 2. That means the whiniest survivor, if there are three of you, can be sacrificed to save the others. You could even decide who that is by means of a Tigris game. Build a monument to your dead friend/acquaintance/co-worker/sworn enemy. Try not to lose the cubes in the sand, though.

Carcassonne
It’s got enough expansions and enough variety of outcome to last you until the cows come home. Or more likely until you die of starvation because there are no cows. Only little wooden pigs, which will not sustain you if consumed, and you’ll have rendered your pretend farm that bit more pointless, too.

N-Tropy
Couldn’t resist this one - it’s a board game mostly made out of sticks. Short, practically kindling-sized sticks. The object is to build a structure until someone places a stick that causes the whole thing to fall over. The skills you learn from playing this game will be invaluable in making that conical signal fire by balancing sticks, and guess what? Here’s the fuel, in your hand!

Gloom
In Gloom you have a family whose sole purpose is to be tortured into depression and then murdered one by one. At any other time I wouldn’t bother to recommend this game, but on a desert island it’s going to help to be reminded how much worse things could be. Just think: at least you’re not going to be bothered by badgers, or terrified by topiary, or die in despair… Oh, wait, forget that last one. Nevermind. The cards are plastic so it won’t be much use burning them for warmth, making this one likely to survive until the bitter end. Like dog’s milk.

*I’m aware that it’s more about the desertedness than the desertness, just go with it, alright?

There’s a lot of talk about AV being used only by 3 countries. This is true (if you don’t count Ireland’s president). What does that imply, though? Does it mean it’s not very good? Possibly. Does it mean it’s worse than FPTP? Definitely not. Voting systems by nation - here are the countries that use AV (IRV) for electing the house as per a Yes vote on Thursday:

Australia
Fiji
Papua New Guinea

Ok. So that’s not promising. But the thing is, have you looked at the list for who uses pure unadulterated First Past The Post for the house - as we have it now - as a No vote would guarantee remains our system for a generation?

Antigua and Barbuda
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belize
Bermuda
Bhutan
Botswana
Burma
Canada
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ethiopia
Gambia
Ghana
Grenada
India
Ivory Coast
Jamaica
Jordan
Kenya
Liberia
Malawi
Malaysia
Mongolia
Nigeria
Palau
St. Kitts
St. Lucia
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Solomon Islands
Tanzania
Trinidad and Tobago
Uganda
United Kingdom
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe.

So, FPTP fans, if you like it so much why don’t you go live there?

“Where’s everyone else?”, I hear you ask. They all have one of the myriad ways of implementing proportional representation. Mixed-member, party lists (including D’Hondt and Sainte-Laguë methods), or STV.

Sorry to go all first-world on your ass, but CIVILISED COUNTRIES USE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION.
List of countries by democracy score gives this top 26 of countries that have full democracy, to which I have appended the voting system each country uses:

1. Norway, Modified Sainte-Laguë method (Open list) which is a kind of Proportional Representation
2. Iceland, President by FPTP, house by D’Hondt method, which is a kind of Proportional Representation
3. Denmark, D’Hondt method, which is a kind of Proportional Representation
4. Sweden, Modified Sainte-Laguë (Open list) which is a kind of Proportional Representation
5. New Zealand, MMP: Sainte-Laguë method (51+ seats) / FPTP (69 district seats which also includes 7 seats reserved for Maori) which is a kind of Proportional Representation
6. Australia, Senate STV, House IRV (Alternative Vote)
7. Finland, Presidential Runoff, House D’Hondt method, which is a kind of Proportional Representation
8. Switzerland, D’Hondt method, Runoff for cantons, D’Hondt is a kind of Proportional Representation
9. Canada, First Past The Post
10. Netherlands, D’Hondt method for both houses, which is a kind of Proportional Representation
11. Luxembourg, D’Hondt method, which is a kind of Proportional Representation
12. Ireland, President by IRV (Alternative Vote and houses by STV, which is a kind of Proportional Representation
13. Austria, President by Runoff and house by Largest remainder and D’Hondt, which are kinds of Proportional Representation
14. Germany, MMP: Sainte-Laguë / FPTP, Sainte-Lague is a kind of Proportional Representation
15. Malta, STV, whichs a kind of Proportional Representation
16. Czech Republic, D’Hondt method and runoff for Senate, D’Hondt is a kind of Proportional Representation
17. United States, FPTP with primaries for senate and house, Electoral college for President. A kind of First Past The Post.
18. Spain, D’Hondt for congress, Partial Bloc for Senate. D’Hondt is a kind of Proportional Representation
19. United Kingdom, First Past The Post Yeah, we’re 19th. Lower than you thought, isn’t it?
20. South Korea, FPTP for President, Party list + FPTP for house. Party list is a kind of Proportional Representation
21. Uruguay, D’Hondt method, a kind of Proportional Representation
22. Japan, D’Hondt + FPTP (house or representatives), D’Hondt + SNTV (Councillors), D’Hondt being a kind of Proportional Representation
23. Belgium, D’Hondt, which as we are aware by now, is a kind of Proportional Representation
24. Mauritius, FPTP + best loser system, a type of proportional representation to do with the ethnic makeup rather than the voting preferences of the populous. Doesn’t really fit anywhere, tbh.
25. Costa Rica, Presidential Runoff, Largest remainder method for house, a type of Proportional Representation
26. Portugal, runoff for president, D’Hondt for house, a kind of Proportional Representation.

Skim the list of most democratic countries, and you find Proportional Representation nearly everywhere, and D’Hondt method prominent. What also becomes apparent is that there are nearly as many ways of electing representatives as there are countries doing it, but this doesn’t give them equal merit. We can learn from our neighbours what works for them, and decide what would work for us given our similarities and differences.

This has not been an argument for AV. This was an argument against No to AV’s campaign strategy, against FPTP, and for Proportional Representation. Here’s an argument for AV: Our best chance of getting PR is to elect MPs who will try to implement it. Our best chance to do *that* is by voting Yes to AV on 5th May.

This has been original and slightly rushed research using solely Wikipedia as a source. Rely on it at your own peril. Pointing out mistakes will be appreciated.

Play
Everyone gets a hand of picture cards and on your turn you choose a card, describe it with a sound, word, sentence, quotation etc. and place it face down. The other players must select a card from their hand that matches your description, again placing it face down. The selected cards are all shuffled. The other players then vote on which card they think was the original, but here’s the clever part - If they all get it, or if none of them get it, you get no points and everyone else gets points. You have to make your description a little vague to include one or two other cards, but not so vague that it no longer really describes anything. If you manage this, you get points, those who found your card get points, and those whose card fooled other people get points. The player with most points wins when all the cards have been drawn.

Components
The art on the cards is very pretty in itself, and each card is fairly enigmatic. The board is part of the box - you get little wooden rabbits to run around a field for keeping score. It’s a bit cutesy.

Experience
This game is very different to those our group usually plays, being about creativity rather than logical strategy. It is a nice break for between e.g. Eurogames, but would work equally well as a family game. It actually gets harder the more you play it as you have to think up new words for the cards you’ve seen, as using the same description again is going to give it away. Eventually the cards become a little familiar, but there are expansions out there to solve this, and simply not playing for a week or two helps with that.

Problems with our current system are numerous and varied. We probably can’t solve them all in a single change. Certainly I’d prefer proportional representation with Single Transferrable Vote, but that’s not on offer here. What’s on offer is a simple binary choice between First Past The Post (FPTP) and Alternative Vote (AV). Fortunately, that means the system by which we choose the voting system is fair - 2 choices makes FPTP and AV equivalent.

What is FPTP?

You pick the candidate you prefer. At least, that’s what you’re supposed to do. After the vote, the candidate with most votes gets in. In a close 3-way election, this can be as little as 34% of the vote. In a close 10-way election, it could be as little as e.g. 11%. Obviously, there aren’t very many 10-way close races. Those whose candidate doesn’t win often perceive their vote to be wasted, since it had no direct effect on the outcome.

What is AV?

You rank candidates 1, 2, 3, etc. until you no longer care about the order. At the end, if one candidate has >50% of the “1″ votes, they win. If that isn’t the case, the lower preference votes get used to top up their levels, but not until the last place candidate is removed from the running. This is important, as it makes certain that your later preferences cannot be used against your earlier ones. So, in AV the last place candidate’s ballots are redistributed according to their second preferences. If this pushes some candidate over the 50% line, they win. Otherwise, the process is repeated.

If you don’t understand how the counting works, it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that:

• When you vote, you get to pick a second choice and a third choice, etc. if you so choose
• In no circumstance can a later preference affect an earlier one.
• In some circumstances, your later preferences can make a difference to the final outcome.

Why is AV better?

• If you voted for the winner as your first choice, it’s exactly the same as FPTP - your vote is counted exactly once.
• If you didn’t vote for the winner, but you didn’t care about the rest, it’s exactly the same as FPTP - your vote is discarded.
• If you *do* have a second preference, tactical voting (e.g. a vote for Labour cos the Lib Dems can’t win in your constituency) is unnecessary - you can vote for your true preference, sure in the knowledge that if your second preference is required, it will be used. You still get a maximum of one vote that is counted. It may not be required, though.

Let’s look at some examples:

A constituency where Lab Lib and Con only stand:
Lab gets 40% of the votes. Con gets 45%. Lib gets 15%.

Now, it all hangs on the second preference of the 15% Lib voters. It’s therefore pretty likely that Lab will win here. FPTP would have had Con win. This means that similar parties would no longer be disadvantaged by separating voters.

A more comprehensive example:
Lab gets 34%, Con gets 34%, Lib gets 15%, Green gets 7%, BNP gets 6%, Independent candidate gets 4%.

No single minor group could be the kingmaker here. The FPTP answer is probably going to require a recount and a very slim victory for either Lab or Con. But it could be resolved before that were necessary with AV.

First, the independent candidate’s 2nd prefs are redistributed. Let’s say they all go to the Green party. Green now has 11%.
Now, the BNP votes get redistributed. Let’s say they all go to the Tories. Now we have Lab 34%, Con 40%, Lib 15%, Green 11%.

I’m going to divide the possibilities here.
a) Green gets redistributed. By now some of these are onto their third preference, and some people haven’t given one. So let’s say only 10% instead of 11% get reallocated, because that 1% put Independent 1, Green 2, and then nothing else. So that 1% is lost. Yes, lost votes can still happen in AV. The rest of the Greens voted for the Lib Dems. Lab 34%, Con 40%, Lib 25%.
Lib dems are redistributed, but many of those greens didn’t want Lab or Con so they left it. So only 20% goes to Lab, but it still pushes them over the line, Lab win.

b) Green gets redistributed. All their votes go to the Conservatives, because their logo is a tree. This makes the Conservatives win with 51%, and the Lib Dem votes are never counted. BTW, STV might fix this - it redistributes from top and bottom.

c) None of the Greens had a second/third preference. All their votes are discarded. All the Lib Dem votes go to Labour - Lab have 49%, Con have 40%. I *think* in this situation the Con votes are redistributed, and then if *none* of them voted Labour as a second, presumably the election has no clear winner? Or do Labour default win? I’m unclear on this very unlikely point.(See comment 4 - Labour win) Even this unlikely outcome is only as bad as FPTP in the same situation.

Still, AV gives you the chance that a second preference might be counted. This is inversely proportional to the chance of your first choice getting in. What I would suggest is that you put all your preferences in, as that maximises your chance of being counted. Australia mandates this, but they also mandate voting, and that’s an argument for another day.

One of the main problems of FPTP is that tactical voting is sometimes the logical thing to do. Tactical voting is where your preferred choice is unlikely to win, which under FPTP is a wasted vote. What you end up doing is voting for your second choice if they are one of the big 2, which still wastes your real preference and perpetuates a 2-party system. The whole system expects there will be 2 major parties — look at how the House of Commons is laid out! The idea is that this creates a strong government who can get lots of bills passed (non-majority wins can lead to a large majority of seats), but I’d rather have a representative government. Change should be difficult if over half the country is against it.

The Tories are against AV. This is because it offers them no advantage and may reduce their voter share. The Lib Dems are for AV, because it gives them a huge advantage. Labour are for AV, I hope because it’s actually a fairer system. Please vote for a fairer system by saying Yes to AV on 5th May. This isn’t about party politics, it’s about making the system better represent what all the voters want.

To those who are so jaded by politics that they don’t see the point:
We can actually fix one reason that you don’t think your vote is worth giving. It’s small, but it’s a start and it’s in the right direction.

As to the arguments against AV, Here are some myths about AV debunked. The only reason I can see to keep FPTP is if your party will lose from AV and you’d rather your party win unfairly than lose (more) fairly. That, or you’d rather the wrong party was in charge than that no single party had a majority. Let me know if, after checking out the myths, you have others.