My report on Oldham East & Saddleworth by-election

[Finlay_A]

Yes, I wrote up a few things for Loz for the by-election. It would be good to collate them. Isn't this what the wiki is for? I seem to remember there being some of this kind of thing up there, studies and such. But then we don't have a wiki manger anymore.

If you do do something like this (and I hope you do) then I'd start with what's on the wiki, and that way everyone can add to it as new things come up. There was a news story recently about how patents are bad for small businesses, it would be good if there were a place to archive these things.

...whilst sales may have gone down...

Sales were up last time I checked, and we had a pres release congratulating the BPI on this

Although album sales are down, singles and digital downloads are up (by more)

Anyway, if you get the ball rolling, I'll happily contribute

[scuzzmonkey]

Ah, i knew it was something like that - lol.

If anyone wants to help out, please email anything and everything to my party address...in my sig

[borgs8472]

<snip>

Hi skuzz.

I would suggest the following process to support your ideas.

* Identify that shape of the revised manifesto (doesn't need to be complete)
* Pick core policies suitable for public consumption
* Research and reference this to a higher than normal degree
* Produce slogans / campaigns based on this.

tbh campaigns should be leading this process.

[scuzzmonkey]

Chris, you're missing my point.

We should not have an official working policy that has not been researched by the Party and found to be correct - I'm fundamentally object to us attempting to get elected based on policies that we don't know stand up, and end up going back on them - we are meant to be different, not the same.

Obviously not all proposed policies will stand up, but anything that is 100% party line definitely has to.

[samgower]

Fuck think, we know - and have independently sources research that backs us up - that Copyright Length is far too long, and any trend back towards a 14 year mark is a positive thing.

Yes, but why is it positive? It's far from a solid fact; common sense says that we want artists to create more, and that by rewarding them with stronger copyright is the way to do that. We can't just state that it's a good thing and leave it at that, we need to provide a reason.

We know the pay what you want model does work, vis Radiohead, NIN, The Humble Bundle 1/2, and countless other examples.

Why is this a better model than the current standard? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

We have proof that whilst sales may have gone down, gig revenue - and the overall revenue of the Music Industry - is continuing to rise.

Why should the music industry give up on sales?

Answering these questions gets us closer to what the party believes in.

These aren't bullshit beliefs based on redundant rhetoric with no evidence to back it up - this party is not a religion.

No, these aren't bullshit beliefs. We're just not justifying them. We're not saying why we think that they are reasonable policies when most other people seem to disagree.

I don't care about what sounds good, or can be made to sound good, I just want what is actually right - based on cold hard science and numbers - not someone's gut.

See, this is a belief. Probably quite a sound belief shared by a lot of pirates. It's this sort of thing that I mean. Don't confuse unjustified doctrine with reasonable beliefs.

[scuzzmonkey]

agreed, and we need to put together the packs of information that has made us come to our current conclusions.

I would also like to point out, that this approach would mean the Party would have to change policy if strong evidence came to a different conclusion - so maybe not so much "Pirate" as it is "Truth" Party

[Duke]

Well, personally I like to think that any Party I am involved in goes for fact-based or science-based policy [I don't like the word "truth" - far too imprecise].

[scuzzmonkey]

[Vanders]

agreed, and we need to put together the packs of information that has made us come to our current conclusions.

Agreed: this would be a good starting point. I'm personally quite willing to help out with this if others are.

[samgower]

agreed, and we need to put together the packs of information that has made us come to our current conclusions.

I don't even think that's totally necessary (ironically, most evidence will be under restrictive copyright anyway). Referencing always helps though, so that if someone sees a claim in our manifesto that seems unjustified they can either look it up or at least know we're not pulling policies out of our arse.

I would also like to point out, that this approach would mean the Party would have to change policy if strong evidence came to a different conclusion - so maybe not so much "Pirate" as it is "Truth" Party

Well that's the point of having a few well-founded beliefs, rather than just saying we'll support anything provided there's the science to back it up. Our beliefs, like our politics, are essentially about science/technology and how it's affected society, and what I want is for us to produce a coherent account of these beliefs so that we can go with confidence and ask people to support us. It's how every political movement really gets going, and piracy is no different.

[scuzzmonkey]

yea, but my point is that the policy should have a basis, and something we can point at and say "these smart people agree with us!" rather than the Big Society airy-fairy twaddle.

[cabalamat]

There may be an interesting debate in where money is best spent with printed materials versus paying travel expenses to get more members on the ground actively campaigning.

This is a very intelligent question. Our resources are limited, so we need to use them in the most effective way possible. To do that, we need to know what is the most effective. Some questions it would be nice to have answers to are:

1. if a voter has no contact with the party (apart from the media and our website, etc), how likely is it they will vote for us?

2. if they get a leaflet through the letterbox, how much more likely is it they will vote for us? What are the most effective things to say on a leaflet? How much difference does text / page layout / size and format of leaflet / quality of leaflet paper make?

3. if they get multiple leaflets, how much difference does that make?

4. if they have a conversation with a party worker, either on their doorstep, or at a stall etc, how much difference does that make?

5. how much effect do other forms of campaigning, e.g. beer mats, have?

My plan for the Edinburgh council election in 2012 (assuming I'm not elected to the Scottish Parliament, and other Edinburgh pirates don't wish to stand) is to stand in every Edinburgh ward, but only leaflet in one. Other pirates might want to do similar experiments in other council areas, then we can collate the information and get an idea of what works best.

[samgower]

yea, but my point is that the policy should have a basis, and something we can point at and say "these smart people agree with us!" rather than the Big Society airy-fairy twaddle.

There's no test you can run to determine whether or not socialism or capitalism is the right way to organise society. Nor for nationalism or globalism, liberalism or conservatism, or environmentalism or industrialism. In fact, the best solution is probably a balance between all of those things (and more) that shifts over time. You just can't test political philosophies in the same way you can scientific theories. Our policies should of course be evidence based, but they should also be based on a sound political philosophy, which I refer to as piracy (the opposite perhaps being a form of luddism).

[azrael]

I don't necessarily disagree with the notion of basing policies on evidence, research, and observation of reality, etc. but there is, IMO, a place for ideology.

Rampant monopolistic commercial exploitation may well be successful for some companies, but we shouldn't be judging based on success. If one takes a moral standpoint that X is immoral (and yes, morality is highly subjective, but we have them all the same) then we want policies to change X.

We might be in the minority of believing the world needs to change the way it thinks and behaves, but if we hold those views strongly enough we are allowed to champion them and try to persuade people why our random perspective of a highly subjective issue is better than theirs.

I think it isn't enough to have dry and boring facts/evidence. It isn't enough to have a 'vision' of a new and different world. It isn't enough to have energy and enthusiasm. We need all of it, in abundance. While I don't like seeing us so strongly disagreeing with each other on things, I do appreciate that it comes from an enthusiasm for us to be successful, and without that enthusiasm the rest wouldn't account for much.

[Vanders]

While I don't like seeing us so strongly disagreeing with each other on things, I do appreciate that it comes from an enthusiasm for us to be successful, and without that enthusiasm the rest wouldn't account for much.

Interestingly, and oddly, we seem to be disagreeing on things on which we all appear to agree on (E.g. policy).

[cabalamat]

Philip you're thinking far too far ahead - Scotland is "lucky" in the sense that you have a group of very, very passionate people pushing everything through in a (relatively) close proximity - there is no point in us specifically targeting certain election types, and areas if we simply do not have enough actives members to do it.

On the contrary, I think there is every point in us taking the long view, seeing which elections we're most likely to do well in, and putting our effort into them.

I agree that for some localities there may not be enough active members, but

The GE is a perfect example of us just saying "fuck it" and getting as much done as possible,

You seem to be saying that we can win by industriousness alone. I think we also need intelligent strategy.

We need more members.
We need more members working.
We need to increase our local profiles.

These 3 things are all required if we ever want to poll higher than 0.5%

Really? I have polled over 0.5% without them, as has Tim Dobson.

[scuzzmonkey]

no, what I meant was that an awful lot of the GE strategy was simply, "screw it, i'm just gonna do {this}" without any real consultation or co-ordination with the Party at large, the amount of articles I wrote and emails sent out without any contact with the people we were assigning quotes to was insane.

My other point was that whilst yes, we can plan ahead and target specific places, it shouldn't be done at the expense of increasing our profile and member base - and yes, apologies, you did poll higher than 0.5%, but I am sure you'd have done even better with a bigger campaign team, with more money behind you, and more feet on the ground - and this can only be assured by increasing the member base.

The idea of that if we target 1 specific place, and plough all our money in to it and that we'll win...is at this point in time, in my personal opinion...a pipe dream.

We are very much a small party, and whilst we should target every election we can, and accept the fact that we are more likely to do better in a AV/STV/PR election that we would in a FPTP system, it doesn't mean that by some magical act we will jump from 0.x% to 50% or whatever.

For me, the most important thing for the Party (at large) is to get out there and get our name on peoples lips - of course, it is slightly different for you guys with the Scottish elections coming up, but the "English Part" of the Party definitely need to focus on grassroots campaigning and exposure.

[cabalamat]

There doesn't seem to be very much visible constructive discussion about policies

There has been lots of recent discussion about policies, e.g.:

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=2957
viewtopic.php?f=75&t=2958
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=2959
viewtopic.php?f=75&t=2956
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=2960

Do you not regard this as constructive?

or the direction of the party,

Doesn't this thread count?

nor much discussion about important topics such as how we get our message out. It's no use worrying about a 0.3% vote in a by-election when there has been almost no attempt to establish a core campaign which lays out our policies and goals in a pure English.

I agree this is something that needs to be worked on. We need to be able to explain our core policies in a way that is both simple and compelling.

When I stood in Liberton/Gilmerton last year, I found it a lot easier to "connect" with people by talking about housing policy than by talking about the DEA and file sharing. In fact, the vast majority of the people I talked to who got what I was saying on file sharing weren't old enough to vote! (Which may help us in the future when they are old enough...)

This is, in part, a structural issue which we can't get rid of, because the foundation of pirate politics is on issues of information policy, that can be quite abstract. (Whereas everyone lives in a house, so feels quite at home talking about housing policy).

As an example, what is our strategy for the May elections? [...] By rights we should have had a solid strategy for the May elections in place long before New Years, yet all I've seen so far is a thread on the forums asking for potential candidates.

On the subject of this, when are candidates for the Scottish election going to be ratified? The nomination period closed over a fortnight ago.

[Vanders]

There has been lots of recent discussion about policies, e.g.:
<snip>
Do you not regard this as constructive?

I do. However, I do not regard it as visible. One has to trawl the forums, filtering out the noise, to find them. This brings us back to the internal communications problems that have already been mentioned. I feel that we have to accept that a BBCode web forum is not a suitable method to organise a political party, despite everyone's best efforts. Perhaps we need to look beyond it?

or the direction of the party,

Doesn't this thread count?

Sure it does, but as I wrote that in the context of this thread, it's a non-sequitur. Apparently up until now there hasn't been any real discussion about it.

[danbrett]

I agree with scuzzmonkey that we need well-researched information packs on policy. Providing members with coherent arguments for party policy would be an excellent idea. The reason I joined was because, having lived in India, I can see the direct effects of stringent patenting laws on the health of people in the developing world, even though the research and development of drugs has already earned a profit for pharma MNCs. I feel passionately that the elimination of material want can only be achieved by freedom of information and innovation and patenting law stands in the way. But I want to know how to argue more coherently for other areas of policy I am unfamiliar with. I've never done file-sharing, I've not downloaded songs or movies and I need to be more clued up to debate with people like my aunt, who is a Musicians Union executive. These are complex issues that need to be distilled into easy-to-understand facts and FAQs.