Nomination for Board for Phil Hunt

[cabalamat]

I am nominating myself for the Board of Governors.

When the election was announced, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to stand for it. I decided that I would only do so if someone nudged me to stand. Since that has now happened, I'm standing.

I believe these are exciting times for the Party. Last month we fought local elections in three cities: in Manchester we got our best ever performance, and in Edinburgh and Glasgow we scored record results in those cities. Pirate issues are increasingly in the news, and our proxy of The Pirate Bay is bringing us attrention.

Our electoral performances are now at the point where we can realistically expect Pirates to be elected in the current cycle of elections. For example, Loz's result in Manchester was a vote share (>5%) sufficient to win a seat in the London Assembly. In Edinburgh, I got 13% of 1st to 4th preferences, an amazing result bearing in mind that only 14% of the electorate had heard of us at the start of the election. The electorate are increasingly fed up with all the big parties, who are seen as incompetent, corrupt, and only caring about the Westminster elite; they are looking for something new, and we can/will be that something. For all these reasons, I believe that if we are smart and make the right decisions, we will get Pirates elected to the European Parliament (2014), elected House of Lords (if it happens -- 2015), or Scottish parliament (2016).

I believe that my experience in fighting elections as a Pirate candidate and talking with voters gives me a good insight as to how the Party can win elections. With me on the Board, I believe we will be more likely to make the right decisions that will lead us to electoral success.

[azrael]

I would like to second your nomination Phil. Your experience working for the Party would be very useful to have in the Board.

[cabalamat]

I would like to second your nomination Phil. Your experience working for the Party would be very useful to have in the Board.

Thank you.

[liamreed]

As most of the governors have stepped down due to time restraints how many hours a week would you be able to offer the board in a general week? I am aware that a member of the board does not require weekly amounts of time but I see it as a good benchmark.

[cabalamat]

As most of the governors have stepped down due to time restraints how many hours a week would you be able to offer the board in a general week? I am aware that a member of the board does not require weekly amounts of time but I see it as a good benchmark.

This is likely to vary a lot. There have been some days -- for example when the party was first founded, or when I've veen standing for election -- where literally everything I've done all day (apart from bodily function) has been Party activity. Obviously that's atypical, and not sustainable on a regular basis. i would guess that in a "normal" week i might spend 4 hours doing Party activity.

I'm not sure it makes sense to differentiate board activity from other party activity -- whether or not I'm elected to the board I'll be doing party stuff, and if i am elected to it, I'll interpret the role of governor in a wide sense, and I'll see my main role as that of thinking about and advocating for long-tern strategy for the party.

[liamreed]

Your right activity is activity is activity regardless of its specific path.
Can you expand on how you believe you can help develop long-term strategy for the party and in what direction would likely to take with this?

[cabalamat]

To answer your other question, Liam, of where will the party be in four year time...

I recently posted a comparison of UK elections. To summarise: the best election for us, in terms for lowest vote share we need to get elected, in the London Assembly. That's expensive to campaign in; the Scottish parliament is cheeaperm and almost as good in terms of vote share.

In general, PR elections are a lot better for us than FPTP ones, so we should concentrate on them. In fact, I think we should only fight FPTP elections to raise our profile, not in a realistic expectation of winning. While we might win a FPTP council seat -- e.g. in a studenty ward -- it's pretty obvious that it's easier for us the get 5% of the vote (enough for London assy), 6% (Scot parl), 15% (Scot local govmt), than c. 40% (FPTP).

The medium-term objective of the party is to win a seat or seats in a parliament or assembly. The rest of this post describes my strategy for doing so.

If you look at what happened in Germany, once the Pirates won in Berlin, their national vote share soared, they got a lot more attention, voters saw them as a credible choice, than they've since got elected into lots more regional parliaments. The same if likely to happen to us: once we win our first seats, we'll look a lot more credible, we'll get more attention from the media, etc, and we'll find it easier to win more seats in future.

In 2014 we will have a European election. I think the party should make this election it's priority for then next 2 years. We need money to fight it. To stand everywhere in the UK would cost us £60,000, so we need to start a fundraising campaign now.

Regarding cmapaigning, there are 3 important ways: internet-based, leafletting, and tasking to voters of the doorstep. The last is the most effective, but unless we get a big upsurge in members, it won't be enough to have an effect. Leafletting is somewhat effective and we should do as much as we can afford, particularly in target areas. Our best area is Sputh East England, because it has trhe most seats (10) and therefore the lowest threshold (9.09%).

That leaves internet based campaigning. We should revamp our website, and use A/B testing or the multi-arm bandit algorithm to optimse it. We should also bring our cause to other websites, for example by doing [url=http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/rt90e/iama_pirate_party_candidate_for_edinburgh_council/]IAMAs[url] on Reddit.

Let's assume we do all this, and Pirate issues are in the news, and we have a good manifesto which has (1) lots of policies in lots of areas, and (2) explains those policies concisely and persuasively in easy to remember soundbites. I think we stand a decent chance of getting 5-7% of the voter nationwide, which could if we're lucky get us an MEP or two (the BNP got 2 MEPs on 6% in 2009).

If we win, we're on the next phase of our journey; if we don't win, we try again...

The next elections are in 2015 possibly for the new House of Lords, and also for the House of Commons. I don't know what the electoral system for the HoL will look like, or even whether that election will happen at all; it it does happen, it may well be about as attractive for us as the European election the previous year. The Commons will be elected under FPTP, and i suggest that unless our finances are vastly improved compared to now, we only run a small number of candidates. and then only in order to raise our profile for more winnable elections.

The next good election for us is the Scottish Parliment in 2016. We only need 6% there, and I'm confident based on this May's results that we will achieve that in Lothian region. If we haven't already got people elected by 2016, I suggest we regard this election as our top priority, as it is one of the best venues for us in terms of low threshold and low cost of entering.

[azrael]

Q1) What quality do you intend to bring to the Board that you feel is currently under-represented (or, that you feel is well represented, but think it is something the Board should have in abundance)?

Q2) One of the Board's core duties is in making sure the constitution is suitable for Party purposes. Do you think it is currently 'perfect'? If not what needs changing? Other than a few cosmetic things which might need tweaking to say what they ought to mean (though please highlight those too) - are there any clauses that are wrong in both wording and spirit and need to be done away with? Are there any gaping holes where new clauses need to patch previous oversights?

Q3) My perspective of how the Board currently operates is that it does so generally as a single entity. Each Governor is only a twelfth (ideally) of the Board and therefore does not speak individually with the full weight as when the Board issues communications. This has benefits (maximises the number of brain cells put in to making decisions) and disadvantages (takes 12 people longer to make a decision than 1 person). Clearly this benefit and disadvantage are flip-sides to the same coin.

What other advantages and disadvantages have you seen or can you imagine that this lack of individual 'authority' causes? Do you think this is the best way for the Board to operate or do you think individual Governors should have greater autonomy and decision making outside of the Board? If so how would this work?

Q4) What is currently in the remit of the Board that should not be?

Q5) What is not currently in the remit of the Board and should be?

Q6) Can you highlight any problems that the Board has had that you wish to fix, and indicate how you would fix them?

Q7) What level of autonomy should regions of the Pirate Party have? (I'm thinking particularly here of Scotland, but the same issues apply to other parts of the UK with devolved administrations -- Wales, London, and Northern Ireland.)

Q8) According to the constitution (8.7) "The Board may have other governance responsibilities which are as yet undefined in this constitution." what other responsibilities do you think the board should have?

[Gavman]

Ok so following on from a discussion in another candidates thread, I would like to ask a few questions

i) do you see it as a Governors role to be active within the Party outside of filling the role of Governor?
ii) do you think it should be looked into making it expected of a governor to be more involved?
iii) are you involved already in other areas of the Party? If so would you mind giving a quick overview?

iiii) Do you believe the board should have more/less power? If so please explain why and what powers you think the board should lose/gain

[cabalamat]

Q1) What quality do you intend to bring to the Board that you feel is currently under-represented (or, that you feel is well represented, but think it is something the Board should have in abundance)?

The biggest weakness of the party right now is lack of strategic direction. If anyone (apart from me) is considering these issues, I am not aware of it.

IMO our medium term objective should be to get someone elected to a parliament or assembly. Once that happens, it's likely we will "take off" in terms of publicity, awareness, members, and future electoral success, just as the German pirates did after they won in Berlin.

To achieve this objective, we need to decide which elections are best for us, both in terms of %age of the vote we need to win, and how much they cost to enter. Then we need concentrate our resources on those elections, and avoid wasting our resources on others,

For example, there will be a parliamentary by-election in Manchester in November. Should we fight this election? It's a FPTP election, so we're very unlikely to win. Maybe we should instead save our money for elections that we have a realistic chance of winning such as the Euros in 2014.

Fighting Manchester Central in order to win Westminster seats doesn't make sense. What might make sense is fighitng it to raise awareness of us, in order to win a seat in the North West England Euro-region. But it'll cost us £5000 to stand there. Can we afford it? If we do stand, can we afford to run a good campaign? Are we going to have a fundraising drive for the Euros? If so, when? Will we use A/B testing or multi-arm bandit to maximise the effectiveness of our website ofr fundraising? Has anyone in the NEC or BoG considered these questions? (Maybe they have, for all I know).

Spending £1500 on the Manchester by-election won't get us any parliamentarians. But spending the same amount of money in the Lothian region in the next Scottish parliamentary election stands a very good chance of succeeding.

I believe that since our resources are limited, we must consider very carefully how we deploy them, so that we deploy them to the maximum effect. I am sceptical of us running candidates in FPTP parliamentary elections unless we have enough money to properly fund PR elections (where we stand a vastly greater chance of winning). If we had unlimited money, i would want us to stand everywhere, but for now that is not sensible; in fact, it just wastes money.

[azrael]

Q1) What quality do you intend to bring to the Board that you feel is currently under-represented (or, that you feel is well represented, but think it is something the Board should have in abundance)?

IMO our medium term objective should be to get someone elected to a parliament or assembly.

To achieve this objective, we need to decide which elections are best for us

Can we afford it? If we do stand, can we afford to run a good campaign? Are we going to have a fundraising drive for the Euros? If so, when? Will we use A/B testing or multi-arm bandit to maximise the effectiveness of our website ofr fundraising? Has anyone in the NEC or BoG considered these questions? (Maybe they have, for all I know).

Spending £1500 on the Manchester by-election won't get us any parliamentarians. But spending the same amount of money in the Lothian region in the next Scottish parliamentary election stands a very good chance of succeeding.

I believe that since our resources are limited, we must consider very carefully how we deploy them, so that we deploy them to the maximum effect.

Given that these activities and decisions are likely to be taken by NEC members (or if not taken those same NEC members answerable for why), what will you do, if elected to the Board to make sure these activities get done and decisions get made?

If the responsible NEC member makes a decision you disagree with, what would you (if in the Board) do?

Depending on your answers, do you think the Board currently has the explicit/implicit authority on paper to carry out your answers?

[cabalamat]

Q7) What level of autonomy should regions of the Pirate Party have? (I'm thinking particularly here of Scotland, but the same issues apply to other parts of the UK with devolved administrations -- Wales, London, and Northern Ireland.)

Essentially, as much as they want.

Those areas of the UK with devolved government have such, in part, because the people living there want it. Therefore devolved structures of the party will help us do better in these areas. This is particularly important because the London Assembly and Scottish Parliament are the easiest places for us to win seats.

[cabalamat]

Q8) According to the constitution (8.7) "The Board may have other governance responsibilities which are as yet undefined in this constitution." what other responsibilities do you think the board should have?

(This also bears on some of your other questions, so consider this an answer to them too.)

One of the jobs of the Board is to think long-term. Let's say the Board does that, ansd writes a long term plan to achieve success. Then what? The Board doesn't have the authority to tell the NEC what to do. Maybe (and I'm thinking out loud here) it should do? Or would that lead to the party's internal structure being unbalanced?

[azrael]

Q8) According to the constitution (8.7) "The Board may have other governance responsibilities which are as yet undefined in this constitution." what other responsibilities do you think the board should have?

(This also bears on some of your other questions, so consider this an answer to them too.)

One of the jobs of the Board is to think long-term. Let's say the Board does that, ansd writes a long term plan to achieve success. Then what? The Board doesn't have the authority to tell the NEC what to do. Maybe (and I'm thinking out loud here) it should do? Or would that lead to the party's internal structure being unbalanced?

There is a lot of talk, discussion, and assumption about the separate roles of the NEC and Board, yet when you look at the constitution there is very very little it says about either.

It does seem like a natural divide, the NEC dealing with operational matters and the Board dealing with internal smooth running and long term management of the Party - but this isn't as precisely codified anywhere as discussions often make it seem (I'm just as guilty of talking about these things as if they are written in stone).

Do I take it therefore that you are precisely suggesting that there ought to be more detail in the constitution about everyone's roles, duties, functions, responsibilities, authorities, etc.? If so, can you elaborate and give examples? (I'm guessing these might include 'other governance responsibilities')

Or is this something that should develop naturally and rather than written down be a matter of precedent?