A Space of Our Own

By crooky | June 29, 2009

Update: I just left City Hall. The space isn’t zoned for what we want to use it for. Go figure! It’s been rennovated to be an office space and it’s zoned for “storage”. I’m leaving this with the landlord. If he can get it re-zoned by September 1, we might take the space but in the meantime, the search for space resumes! Who spends all the money rennovating a space without checking to see if it’s zoned for that use? WTF?

Effective August 1, 2009 – Friuch Consulting Ltd. will be re-locating its offices to South Vancouver near the scenic Oak St. Bridge! Working from home and on the road has been fine for us for the past six and a bit years but there comes a time when you need to get more serious and this is our year. We’re very excited about moving into our new space and once we’re settled in, we plan on throwing a friends & family open house so you can check it out and meet the whole team. Here’s the view from the office:

office-view

We’ll put our new mailing address up on the website once we’re moved in but if you want to check out where we’ll be on the map…


View Larger Map

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Business of Consulting | 2 Comments »

Blog on Vacation Until August 1, 2009

By crooky | June 26, 2009

June has been a very busy month for Friuch Consulting as we grow our practice. The blog, as a result, has suffered. I’ve only managed four posts this month (as opposed to my target – 12). I also experienced a very demoralizing drop in traffic the past four days that I need to investigate. My blog normally gets 100-200 unique visitors per day. Since Tuesday, less than 15 per day. I can’t think of a good reason why traffic would have dropped off so precipitously unless there’s something wrong with my tracking urchin. Update: I upgraded Wordpress on Tuesday and it stripped my urchin code out of my Google Analytics plugin. Doh! I’ve fixed it so we’ll see if that helps the numbers.

blog-vacation

In the meantime, I’m going to put the blog into dormancy low gear until the rest of the team gets up to speed and can start writing more. The tone and flavour of the blog is likely to change as a result. My colleagues all have their axes to grind and favourite topics and we’re going to have a more organized editorial schedule to reflect that. This will start right around when we update the website content in early August to tell you more about our team, what we’re doing and where we’re going.

In the meantime, enjoy some sporatic postsings from me in July and look for a re-launch of the blog in August.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Business of Consulting, Events | 1 Comment »

21 Days Later: Friuch Consulting Ltd is Growing Fast

By crooky | June 21, 2009

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. It has been 12 days since my last post. It’s been a busy 12 days indeed. I’ve been trying to get more organized as we grow Friuch Consulting into the number one management consulting firm in BC by 2020. We’ve got a long road ahead of us but we’re looking forward to the journey. Here’s what we’ve done in the past 21 days:

  1. New Associates – Found

    Back in early May, we started the search for new associates [READ]. We had informal meetings with quite a few people and we’ve landed on someone who is going to be an integral part of the firm going forward. We’ll make a formal announcement in the next month as this talented individual ramps up full-time with us. We’ve also identified at least three other individuals who will be working with us on projects going forward. Again, we’ll make a formal announcement next month about these individuals and what skills they will bring to the firm in the coming month.

  2. Incorporation – Mostly Complete

    Our incorporation paperwork was finally completed on June 18 and our Chart of Accounts has been set up with our talented bookkeeper – Sandi McGill. Sandi was a big help in walking us through the process of incorporation – I recommend working with your bookkeeper or accountant when you’re setting up your incorporation paperwork. There are considerations that a good bookkeeper can advise you through. We still need to get our new bank account set up but as of June 18, we are operating as an incorporated firm – six and a half years after Friuch was founded as a sole proprietorship. This has been an interesting transition for us and while it doesn’t really impact our approach to the work, it changes how we see ourselves. I guess we feel more “grown up” now.

  3. New Office – Just Starting

    We have determined that for the next 18 months, we need an office space that can accommodate our growing operation. We’ve retained the services of Baljit Siekham from Alchemy Organizing to help us find and move into our new space. She’s got a lot of experience helping organizations of all sizes move into new space, furnish it and make the most of the space. We’re looking for space in South Vancouver, North Richmond and South Burnaby.

  4. Project Management Software – Found

    As we grow, we need to kick our project management up a notch – more systematic and more organized. To accomplish that, we’re bolstering our Google Apps back end with Basecamp HQ. We’ve only been using the system for a few weeks but it’s great. Allows us to assign discreet project tasks to the team more clearly and lets us open up the project to our clients. Our clients and the team seem to be picking up on Basecamp really quickly. We’re looking forward to exploring this tool in more depth and will write a full review of the service soon.

  5. Mission and Values – Work in Progress

    When we set out to build this firm, I set out a goal to build the #1 management consulting firm in BC by 2020. I got challenged on this simple statement by a friend. He posed some questions and I have some answers:

    Why do you want to be the #1 management consulting firm in BC?

    It’s all about people and helping people to be extraordinary. Together, we’re smarter and more innovative than we are as individuals. As we grow into the #1 management consulting firm in BC, we’ll be a powerful force for good in this community. The better our market position is, the more flexibility we will have to give back to the community and to be agents of goodwill and great work.

    What makes you different?

    We want to help people build. We don’t just advise. We get our hands dirty. We’ll work alongside our clients to explore opportunities and build something extraordinary. We’ll work as hard as they do and take ownership of implementation.

    What are your values?

    We do not align ourselves to any political parties, religious organizations or “schools” of thought. We approach every opportunity with an open mind and no pre-conceived notions. Every project and client is important – no matter what the scope and scale of the work. Every client gets our best work.

    We believe that there’s no such thing as problems – just opportunities we can help our clients exploit. There is always room to innovate and come up with something extraordinary. Our goal is to exceed the expectations of every client.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Business of Consulting | 1 Comment »

My Personal Adoption Story

By crooky | June 9, 2009

As if life isn’t crazy enough these days, I’ve recently decided to start looking for my birth parents with my Mom’s blessing. My Mom and Dad have always been great and I’ve never felt very compelled to look for my birth parents in the past. I was adopted by my parents in 1978 at 10 days old. I don’t know what it’s like to not be adopted (I get that question all the time – “what’s it like to be adopted?”). My parents couldn’t have kids of their own and I was available so it worked out for all parties involved. I was, of course, the perfect child.

crooky1984

In recent years, I’ve had some questions about my birth parents. I don’t feel like there’s anything missing from my life but they’d be 49 this year and I’m curious to see what they’re like. In a way, I wish I could meet them without them knowing who I am because I feel there’s a lot that could go wrong but…. after my Mom encouraging me to look them up, I think I’m ready.

As with the rest of my life, I like to share everything with the people I know so in the spirit of full disclosure – here’s everything I have in terms of paperwork on myself:

paperwork

If you click on the link, you can download the paperwork I came with after my adoption was finalized. It’s got some interesting stuff in there. Apparently my birth parents were hobbits. I’m 6′2″ so I’m not sure how that happened. I’m also getting the paperwork rolling with the government to access my original birth record. If my birth mother hasn’t locked down her records, her name will be on that form! Crazy!

I’ll post more on this when I find out some information. Just thought some of you might be curious to learn about this aspect of my life.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Levity | 6 Comments »

The Types of People That Use Twitter

By crooky | June 8, 2009

According to When Did You Join Twitter, I started messing around with the service 419 days ago. In these 419 days, I’ve seen a few trends and have been a little taken aback from the recent jump in popularity. Its membership has been growing exponentially since the start of 2009. I lump most of the people I follow into a few categories:

fail-whale

  1. Twitter Shitters

    These are folks who tweet about everything that they’re doing every moment of the day. I just stopped following three such people because they were driving me up the wall with the inane shit that they were posting. These people say that they’re the “real” users of the service. I think they just have too much time on their hands and an over-inflated sense of their own importance. I liken them to LinkedIn “LIONS”. [READ] They don’t really get what the tool is for.

  2. Lurkers

    There have been a lot of studies coming out this week analyzing Twitter’s users. [READ] One interesting stat is that 40% of Tweeters never tweet again after their first day. Some studies are chalking this up to people who have forgotten their login information but I think they’re actually lurkers – people who like to read the tweets but never respond and never tweet. They’re like eStalkers.

  3. Marketing Guys

    Someone in the last year put the bug in the ear of marketers that Twitter is a great platform for pushing your wares. Pho Citi Noodles (@phociti) in LA is a prime example. This Vietnamese restaurant tweets many times a day trying to get people to come in and eat at their restaurant. I don’t know how effective this kind of strategy is. It actually seems kind of dumb to me.

  4. SEO Junkies

    I think I fall into this category. SEO Junkies are typically bloggers that are looking to increase the exposure of their blog to the masses by using whatever means possible. I have a plugin for my Wordpress blog that automatically tweets for me when I publish a new blog post. I see Twitter as a platform to increase my exposure and I follow a number of people who use Twitter in the same way. I find their tweets useful and informative and to be frank – I’m glad these people don’t post about what they had for lunch.

  5. Facebook Lite Users

    The last category I would put people in are Facebook lite users who see the Twitter platform as a social networking tool. I’ve certainly responded to people who reach out to me via Twitter. I’ve had people in the last week as me for recommendations on moving companies, research methodologies, baby strollers and the like. I don’t mind answering these questions with a short reply or direct message. I think this is what Twitter’s founders were probably envisioning when they created the tool back in 2006.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m still not convinced that Twitter is a mature communications tool – especially when compared to other social networking platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook. It’s an interesting tool though and I’ll continue to play around with it. If I end up roaming into category 1 or 3, someone kick me.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Communications, Research Methodologies, Technology | 4 Comments »

Growing a Consulting Firm: Day 1

By crooky | June 1, 2009

Today is June 1, 2009 and today is the day that Friuch Consulting officially moves from being “me” to “we”. I want to document how we move forward on my blog because I’m hoping we’re going to learn some things that we can share with you as we grow Friuch into a going concern. I’m going to start with a recap of how we got here and in subsequent posts, get into the mechanics of the business.

Although I tell people that I started consulting in 2003, I actually started freelance work in 2001 when I used to do marketing and communications consulting. I wrote copy for a safety company and the Institute of Chartered Accountants. By 2003, I had jumped into consulting with both feet and was focussing specifically on science and tech policy. Like many startup consultants, I was a sub-contractor to more well-established consultants until I started getting my own clients in 2005. It was only last year that I stopped doing sub-contracting altogether.

When I had started, more knowledgeable consultants had told me that it would take me at least three years to get established. They were right. It was 2007 before things started to go smoothly. After that, my reputation and body of work had reached a point where I was no longer scrambling for clients. Business was coming my way in droves. By early 2008, I could barely keep up with demand. The follow charts shows my daily billable hours over the past year (June 1, 2008 – June 1, 2009). The red line shows how many hours most salary employees work. My totals don’t include pro bono work and business development work I do.



I was turning into the harried Technician from the E-Myth books – working 70 hours a week and getting burnt out. Late last year, when I felt like I was starting to drop balls, I started sub-contracting to people to make the workload more manageable.

Right now, I’ve got two sub-contractors working for me and I’m still working way too many hours per week. I can’t keep doing this and I’ve come to the realization that I need to make the transition from worker bee to business owner in the fullest sense of the word. Although I’m keeping the Friuch Consulting branding, it’s almost like I’m starting over again with an established client base. To ensure that the company grows (with or without me) I’ve taken the following steps:

  1. I am incorporating. I’ve already secured my business name (Friuch Consulting Ltd.) and I’m going to be filing the incorporation paperwork after consulting with my bookkeeper later this week.
  2. I’m seeking advice from my betters. I’ve haven’t been shy about seeking advice from people that I admire. On Friday, I’m having coffee with Stacey Cerniuk from Annex Consulting Group and the week after that I’m going to chat with Don Ference from Ference Weicker. I need to learn from people who have had success building medium and large consulting firms and I’m fortunate to know some key players.
  3. I’m trying to be a Manager. I am having my first staff meeting ever on Wednesday and I’m trying really hard to partially transition from Technician to Manager.
  4. I’m looking for more help. The business is still growing fast and in the next month, I’m going to be spending more time with three individuals who I think have a lot to offer and a lot to gain by associating with Friuch Consulting. With their help, the company will expand and increase its capacity to take on new and exciting projects.

My goal for Friuch Consulting is simple – I want to build the #1 Management Consulting firm in British Columbia by 2020. That’s a ways off but we have a lot of growing to do between now and then. I’m going to track our progress starting today and keep everyone up to speed on where we are going because as we learn, I’m hoping we can help others who are trying to grow their businesses.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Business of Consulting | 5 Comments »

Dear SFU Social Science/Arts Grads: Business is Not Inherently Evil

By crooky | May 28, 2009

I had the pleasure of attending the SFU Alumni Association Annual General meeting this past Tuesday night at the Segal School of Business. Business in Vancouver (BIV) was a major sponsor as were some of the banks. The panel discussion featured four SFU Alumni who are also BIV “Top 40 under 40″ award recipients in years past. These excellent speakers (including my friend Stacey Cerniuk) were talking about their secrets of success. There were some real nuggets in there but I think some of the audience members weren’t ready to hear them.

The extremely rude eye-rolling and snorting that some of the audience members were dishing out in addition to the ridiculously loaded questions about the environment and “profits” over social responsibility was disappointing. I’m going to assume that these snot remarks were coming from Arts and Social Science alumni and I’d like to call you guys out on your rude behaviour:

  1. Only two of the four panellists have a business degree. The other two are Arts and Computing Science majors respectively.
  2. The talk was not called “How to Rape and Plunder the Planet” – the theme was “secrets to success”.
  3. The advice was not directed at business people specifically – it was directed at those who want to build something and be successful. That could be someone building a dance studio or a non-profit association.
  4. Questions about how businesses can be socially/environmentally responsible could have been good ones if they weren’t asked like accusations.
  5. When someone asked what motivates these business people, people were snorting when these business people denied that they were motivated by profit alone. What’s so hard to believe about that?

I’m a business owner and I’m not a business grad. I studied Communications and Public Policy at SFU and I fell into being an entrepreneur. That doesn’t mean I lubricate my bank vault door with baby harp seal oil. Here are some hard truths:

Being successful and being socially/environmentally responsible are not mutually exclusive.

Social and environmental responsibility is a core consideration for most businesses these days. It’s not always talked about in terms of the social good that is done but for most companies, being socially/environmentally responsible generates revenue. It makes no sense these days to be unethical.

Not everyone who starts a business is some kind of Donald Trump wannabe

A lot of people (like me) who start businesses and try to be successful do so because it seems like the path of least resistance. This is not to say that starting a business is easy but for some of us – it’s a far better option that being an employee. I care about people and I care about the environment. I take issue with people assuming that I don’t because I need to make money to live.

Money isn’t everything

When you don’t have money – money is everything. When you have money, it’s less important. I heard a lot of scoffing when all four panellists denied that their primary motivation is money. I understood it perfectly. I’m fortunate to be in a position where I don’t need to worry about money and my big driver is success and the feeling I get when I help someone do something amazing. I spend a lot of time mentoring and volunteering and those are the things that bring me joy (aside from my work). I also have three little kids and a mortgage to pay so if my business makes no money, they don’t eat. I’m sorry if that offends some of you.

My own story

When I was in my undergrad, I took a lot of heat in my social science degree from people who perceived me to be “right wing”. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m almost apolitical – I go for the useful bits of policy wherever they come from. I worked through my undergrad to pay for school as a tradesperson. I was looked down upon by my peers for showing up to class smelling like welding flux, sawdust or varnish and when I spoke up about economic realities from the perspective of small business, I was decried as an elitist and a “right wingnut”.

One of my peers (who shall remain unnamed) took great pride in the fact that he never worked and spent a lot of time in developing nations helping the working people “fight for their rights”. Clearly, I didn’t understand the plight of these people. I asked him point blank one day “you say you don’t work – how did you afford all of these vacations to go down there to fight the man?” His answer – his Dad bought him the tickets. My question – what does your Dad do? “He’s an investment banker.”

I just about fell out of my chair. This punk, this trust-fund kid was calling me out for being out of touch with the working people when I actually was a “working” person and he was flying down to protest unfair economic policies on the dime of the very people who likely caused some of these problems. The irony just about struck me down.

The take home message

Don’t assume that everyone who runs a business is a bad person. Show them some respect for walking a very hard road and when they volunteer their time to come and try to share some very valuable pointers about success that are applicable to any field – shut your mouth and listen, asshole.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: social issues | 4 Comments »

Asian Captive Import Cars Nothing New for US Automakers

By crooky | May 17, 2009

I had to chuckle when I saw an article saying (effectively) “Oh no! GM is going to start importing Chinese cars!” [READ] The comments from Digg on this are priceless. A lot of noise about the death of the American auto industry and how “traitorous” it is for GM to be “taking food out of American mouths” by importing Chinese cars. Also known as “badge engineering”, captive imports are something that US car companies have been doing for decades already and American cars are still around. Captive imports hit US soil first in 1948 when Ford started importing British-made Angelinas and Prefects and selling them in the US as Fords. German-made Opel Kadetts were sold by GM in the US as Buick Opels between 1967 and 1972. After 1972, when GM decided to phase out Opel Germany but didn’t want to ditch the model, they started selling re-badged Isuzus and called them “Buick Opels by Isuzu”. Confusing, eh?

Let’s look at a few interesting examples:

Mitsubishi/Chrysler

Mitsubishi and Chrysler have a relationship going back to the 1970s. The Mitsubishi Astron engine was the engine of choice for 4-cyclinder Chryslers between 1973 and 1989. Found in “classics” like the Dodge Aries K, the Dodge Caravan (you know – the one with the drive train that liked to commit suicide), the Dodge Colt and the Chrysler Conquest, amongst others. You couldn’t buy a Mitsubishi in Canada before 2002 (unless you imported one) because of trade laws. Mitsubishi sells a lot more than cars and ran afoul of the Canadian Competition Bureau on more than one occasion. Before they could legally sell their cars here, they sold them as re-badged Chryslers.

In the picture above, you can see the 2001 Chrysler Sebring convertible on the left and the 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible on the right. They’re pretty much the same car. For several model years, the Sebring was built entirely by Mitsubishi. Same goes for the Eagle Talon (Mitsubishi Eclipse GS), the Dodge Stealth (Mitsubishi GTO) and the Eagle Summit (Mitsubishi Mirage). Some of the American versions of these cars have huge followings, even today.

GM and… well… everyone

I can understand that people are sensitive about China. China’s bad, right? They’re “commies”. To suggest that this would be a change is precedence for GM is laughable. Starting with Buick Opels from Germany in the 1960s, GM has a long history of utilizing captive imports. Here’s a partial list of notable GM Captive Imports from recent years:

In the picture above, you can see the 2008 Chevy Aveo on the left and the 2008 Daewoo Kalos on the right. They’re identical. However, the relationship between Daewoo and GM is very complicated. Daewoo, in a previous era, was partly controlled by Toyota. Since 1972, Daewoo and GM started joint operations. Between 1972 and 1996, all Daewoo cars were re-badges of GM cars. In the late 1990s, Daewoo ran into trouble during the Asian economic meltdown and just about went under. GM bought the majority of Daewoo’s assets in 2001 and formed GM Daewoo. Currently, GM owns 50.9% of GM Daewoo with Suzuki and SAIC (a major Chinese car company – oh no!) owning the rest.

Ford and awww… you get the point. Why?

I can’t stand Fords. I’ll cop to the bias. Suffice to say we won’t learn anything new by looking at them for this posting. They do the same thing Chrysler and GM do – captive imports. The real question that is left at this point is why? There are a few reasons:

  1. To fill a hole in a model line-up

     

    Some companies lack sub-compacts. Others, like VW, lacked a full-sized luxury minivan so they turned to Chrysler and have taken on the Dodge Grand Caravan as a captive import. The 2008 VW Routan is actually a Grand Caravan. It’s made in Ontario! You probably hear things in car commercials like “the best fuel economy in its class”. Car classification is complicated and subjective – Wikipedia has made a stab at cataloguing the classes [READ] – but the auto manufacturers look at each others’ models and try to have a comparable offering.

     

  2. To raise Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE)

    Introduced by the US Congress in 1975 in the wake of the Arab Oil Embargo (when the US first started looking at small cars in a serious way), CAFE is a benchmark that is set by Congress that sets and minimum harmonic average that a manufacturer’s fleet must meet. Companies who do not meet this standard have to pay a fine of $5 per 0.1 mpg they are under the minimum times the number of vehicles they sold that year. To avoid these penalties, companies like GM have counted their Captive Imports towards their CAFE. So while these cars do not contribute as much to the bottom line of the company as their domestically built cars, they help the companies avoid some potentially massive fines from Congress.

    If you want to read more on CAFE, the Wikipedia article is pretty good. [READ]

Update: May 18, 2009. Just saw Obama’s annocement that he’s going to raise the CAFE minimum to 42-MPG for passenger cars by 2016. [READ] Two reactions:

1. 2016? That’s right at the end of his presidency (assuming he gets re-elected). Wow! What a risk taker! (/sarcasm)
2. 42 MPG for passenger cars sounds impressive but if you read into CAFE more carefully, nearly half of the cars on the road are already exempt from CAFE so this change would have minimal impact of overall emissions.

My verdict is that this policy move is incremental at best and will likely get beat down by auto lobbyists – in 2016.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Cars | 2 Comments »

BC Liberals Win Third Consecutive Mandate, STV Dies at the Polls

By crooky | May 13, 2009

The results of the 2009 BC Election are in – Gordon Campbell’s Liberals are in for a third straight term (albeit with a smaller majority – something that does not shock me). What did shock me was how badly the BC STV electoral reform proposal got beaten in the referendum. Last time this issue was up for discussion, it garnered 57.7% of voters’ support. It needed 60% to pass. Because the vote was so close last time and many voters had expressed confusion about the option at a technical level, it was decided to run the referendum again.

The initial results on STV this year is 39% in favour of the change. Because of this substantial drop, the issue is effectively dead in BC and is unlikely to go to referendum again in the next few elections. Some pundits are claiming that this result has killed STV for a generation in BC and probably in the rest of Canada as well.

My theory as to why STV died at the polls is that voters never really understood how the process works and when they did, they had some fears about how it would affect the political balance in this province. I imagine that a good number of Liberal supporters voted “no” on the issue because they felt it would lead to NDP majority governments. I also heard some folks with concerns about coalition governments that “wouldn’t be able to get anything done”.

Other pundits have suggested that the way the question was framed this time impacted the results. Last time, voters were told that a group of citizens had recommended STV and they were asked to vote for or against it. This time, voters were simply asked to vote for the existing system (first past the post) or for STV. This could have scared some voters off because it put things in terms of “abandon the current system”.

In any case, it was an interesting election. Voter turnout was down to 47.6% this year (compared to 62% in the 2005 BC election). The NDP gained three seats and still no special interest parties represented.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Policy, social issues | 2 Comments »

Information on Proportional Representation and the BC-STV Option – Referendum May 12, 2009

By crooky | May 11, 2009

I want to start by saying that I neither advocate for or against BC-STV but I do believe that people should educate themselves before going to the polls. Tomorrow, in conjunction with the British Columbia General Election, voters in BC will have another chance to vote for or against and new election system called Single Transferrable Vote (STV). There are groups campaigning for and against this issue and there are some relatively neutral groups that are trying to provide unbiased information. I wanted to share some of the better resources that I’ve found while trying to educate myself:

  1. Understanding STV

    This site has an excellent lay-persons description of how the system would work at a technical level and shows an example of how election outcomes would change from previous elections if this system was in place. There’s also some great information in there about how this proposal came before BC voters and a reminder that the last time this issue went to the referendum, more than half of the voters were in favour of it but the threshold was set at 60%. Check out the very detailed section where this person outlines how the 2005 election might have played out under this system with various scenarios [READ].

  2. Ireland’s STV System

    In terms of use cases, one only needs to look to Ireland to see what an STV system in action looks like. They’ve been using it since 1922. As you can see from the above link, Ireland has debated doing away with the STV system on a number of occasions but when put to a referendum, people voted to keep the system. Obviously, the system works well enough for Ireland. How readily this would translate to BC is another matter and I leave that interpretation to you.

    Malta also uses the STV system as does Australia for its senate. There are many countries that use proportional representation as their voting system but these systems are slightly different that what is on the referendum. You can read up on Proportional Representation on Wikipedia with a full list of countries that use this system. [READ]

  3. Advantages of Proportional Representation Systems

    The Electoral Knowledge Network has a good summary of the advantages of a proportional representation system (STV is a PR system). The main arguments for it seem to be that it translates the popular vote more accurately into seats won, provides more seats to minority parties and reduces wasted votes. There’s a strong campaign for BC STV that you can read up on if you’re interested. [LINK]

  4. Disadvantages of Proportional Representation Systems

    Thanks again to the Electoral Knowledge Network, here’s a good summary of the downsides of PR systems like STV. The main arguments against it seem to be that it can lead to coalition governments (which have a bad reputation for lacking the power to push legislation through), it can lead to party fragmentation and it can give a platform to extremist parties. There’s an equally strong campaign against BC STV that you can read up on as well. [LINK]

Again, I see valid arguments on both sides of this argument and I do not advocate either side. I do advocate that everyone read some of these resources before going to the poll tomorrow so that you can make a more informed decision.

  • Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Policy, social issues | 1 Comment »

« Previous Entries