AFTER the general election, in editorials and articles, The Herald has variously described our UK-wide political "first-past-the-post" voting system as "iniquitous, anachronistic, perverse, unrepresentative, undemocratic, rotten and discredited".
Obviously, in Scotland, this analysis is supported and ref lected in the Holyrood voting system as well as the executive's promise of reform for local authorities. All well and good.
However, what is to be done about the so-called voting system in operation for housing stock transfers? When will this iniquitous, unrepresentative, undemocratic, anachronistic, rotten, perverse, discredited "first-past-thepost" system be democratised for the benefit of tenants?
Why is this system tolerated and used to push through housing transfers when the figures don't stack up?
According to the 1987 Housing Act, government ministers had to be convinced that a majority of tenants were not opposed to transfer proposals. This majority had to be counted against all of those eligible to vote.
Perversely, this was ignored by Scottish ministers who chose to misrepresent the provisions of the 1987 act in the case of the Glasgow housing transfer, where only a little over 29,000 voted Yes against an eligible vote of more than 80,000.
This deliberate misrepresentation of the legislation was instituted by Scottish Homes which introduced an iniqitous system using what was termed the "valid vote" allowing the landlord and Scottish ministers to do as they pleased in counting the votes.
This system was quietly installed in the Housing (Scotland ) Act, 2001, whereby housing stock transfers can be pushed through on a minority vote.
For instance, if only 60-per cent of tenants respond to a transfer survey and just over half of those say Yes, then ministers can give their consent to transfer on the basis of a minority opinion of the overall number of tenants. This rotten, discredited method will be used to determine housing-transfer proposals already in progress across the country.
The questions for the Scottish Executive, the parliament and all the political parties are why are tenants subject to such an iniquitous system of gathering tenant opinion and how soon can a dialogue with tenants be constructed on the system's replacement before any more undemocratic housing transfers take place. Over to you, Malcolm Chisholm, in the Scottish Executive.
John Carracher, Scottish Tenants Organisation, 17 William Drive, Hamilton.
MICHAEL Lennon, chief executive of the Glasgow Housing Association, has claimed (Problems hamper Glasgow housing revolution, May 11): "The process is proving more complex than anyone predicted." This is untrue and demonstrably so.
Back issues of The Herald letters page are full of many of us predicting exactly that and more. We predicted that the cost would be huge and the benefits to tenants problematic.
The 2004-05 GHA progress report shows that we were right. We also predicted that the main beneficiaries would be the banks; again, the evidence so far proves the critics of the transfer to be correct.
All of the achievements trumpeted in the GHA's 2004-05 report are, in reality, no achievements at all. Things like the letting of thousands of houses did not and do not require transfer;
they are the normal day-to-day work of any municipal housing department.
So far the GHA has contrived to spend a billion pounds on these nonachievements while at the same time admitting that the housing stock transfer, the raison d'etre, is not only no nearer, it has still to be proven to be practicable.
Bill Ramsay, 84 Albert Avenue, Glasgow.
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