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from In the Wetby Neville Shute |
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from In the Wet by Neville Shute is one of the background documents relevant to the document series that discusses limiting franchise directed to mitigating the worst consequences of unrestricted franchise within the context of poorly educated populations. | ||||||
introduction to franchise discussion documents | citizenship curriculum | The logic of ethics | ||||
franchise by examination, education and intelligence | power, ownership and freedom | |||||
the Magna Carta, 1215 a new English translation by abelard.org | ||||||
• from In the Wet by Neville Shute • utopianists : Robert Heinlein, H.G. Wells, William Morris • historic UK vote allocation |
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for related short briefing documents examining the world’s growing crisis, start at replacing fossil fuels, the scale of the problem |
index introduction introductionIn this story, Neville Shute describes a multiple voting system introduced to the British Dominions. The prime speaker here is an Australian pilot. (Interestingly, Australia has now moved ahead and introduced an enlightened form of proportional representation [PR] voting, termed the alternative vote system [AV]. Each voter is permitted to indicate a second choice if the first choice is not elected.) For more on Neville Shute and his writing, see below. from In the Wet by Neville Shute [first published 1953] [p.91] [p.104/6] The pilot raised his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know that. You don’t have it, do you?’ ‘No. How does it work out in practice?’ ‘I don't really know,’said David. ‘I've never thought about it much.’ Captain Osbome asked, ‘Have you got more than one vote, yourself?’ The pilot nodded. ‘I'm a three vote man.’ ‘Basic, education, and foreign travel.’ ‘The basic vote - that’s what everybody gets, is it?’ ‘That’s right,’ the pilot said. ‘Everybody gets that at the age of twenty one.’ ‘And education?’ ‘That’s for higher education,’ David said. ‘You get it if you take a university degree. There’s a whole list of other things you get it for, like being a solicitor or a doctor. Officers get it when they’re commissioned. That’s how I got mine.’ ‘And foreign travel?’' ‘That’s for earning your living outside Australia for two years. It’s a bit of a racket, that one, because in the war a lot of people got it for their war service. I got mine that way. I didn’t know anything about the Philippines, really, I when I came away, although I’d been there for three years, off and on.’ ‘You had a wider outlook than if you’d stayed at home,’ the captain said. ‘I suppose that's worth something.’ ‘I suppose it is.’ ‘So you’ve got three votes. How does that work out in practice, at an election?’ ‘You get three voting papers given to you, and fill in all three, and put them in the box,’ the pilot said. ‘You're on the register as having three votes?’ ‘That’s right. You have to register again when you get an extra vote - produce some sort of a certificate.’ They sat in silence for a time, looking out over the crowded harbour in the sunset light. Rosemary came to the saloon ladder and spoke up to them. ‘You can get more votes than three, can't you?’ she said. ‘Is it seven?’ David glanced down her. ‘The seventh is hardly ever given,’ he said. ‘Only the Queen can give that.’ She nodded. ‘I know. We get them coming through the office. I should think there must be about ten a year.’ ‘The others are straightforward,’ David said. ‘You get a vote if you raise two children to the age of fourteen without getting a divorce. That’s the family vote.’ ‘You can’t get it if you’re divorced?’ asked Rosemary smiling. ‘No. That puts you out.’ ‘Do you both get it?’ ‘Husband and wife both get it,’ David said. ‘What’s the fifth one?’ ‘The achievement vote,’ said David. ‘You get an extra vote if your personal exertion income - what you call earned income here - if that was over something or other in the year before the election - five thousand a year, I think. I don’t aspire to that one. It’s supposed to cater for the man who’s got no education and has never been out of Australia and quarrelled with his wife, but built up a big business. They reckon that he ought to have more say in the affairs of the country than his junior typist.’ ‘Maybe. And the sixth?’ ‘That’s if you're an official of a church. Any recognized Christian church - they’ve got a list of them. You don’t have to be a minister. I think churchwardens get it as well as vicars, but I’m really not quite sure. What it boils down to is that you get an extra vote if you’re doing a real job for a church.’ ‘That’s an interesting one.’ ‘It’s never interested me much.’ said the pilot. ‘I suppose I’m not ambitious. But I think it’s a good idea, all the same.’ ‘So that’s six votes,’ Captain Osborne said. ‘The basic vote and education, and foreign travel, and the family vote, and the achievement vote, and the church vote. What’s the seventh?’ ‘That’s at the Queen’s pleasure,’ said David. ‘I’'s a bit like a decoration. You get it if you’re such a hell of a chap that the Queen thinks you ought to have another vote.’ ‘Aren’t there any rules about getting it?’ ‘I don’t think so,’ said the pilot. ‘I think you just get it for being a good boy.’ [p.124] [p.241] [p.242/3] She nodded. ‘I think there is.’ ‘The Government seem very bitter.’ ‘Yes,' she said, ‘they are. People are usually bitter when they see something threatened that they believe in with all their hearts and souls. And this Government believes in the old principle of one man, one vote. They believe in that very sincerely.’ […] [p.272] Neville Shute and his writingNeville Shute was very much a story-teller. He was one of those people who is often in the right place at the right time. By far his most interesting book is, in fact, his autobiography, Slide Rule. I would recommend this book to anybody as background reading to the first half of the twentieth century. He was a youth in Dublin at the time of the 1916 uprising, his father being a high-ranking civil servant. He obtained a typical upper-class education, going into engineering at Oxford. He participated in the building of the great airships and the development of the De Havilland aircraft company. Five GoldenYak award, without reservation. Now to Neville Shute’s fiction Of Neville Shute’s fiction, I think I would recommend either of On the Beach and In the Wet are science-fictiony,
a métier which I do not think he handled as well as the great
sci-fi masters. Town like Alice - be not confused, as the book title says, the
plot is the building of a town like Alice Springs. Neville Shute’s full name was Neville Shute Norway. |
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In the wet by Neville
Shute £5.59 [amazon.co.uk] Edition used for quotations: |
email email_abelard [at] abelard.org © abelard, 2006, 6 february the address for this document is https://www.abelard.org/iqedfran/in_the_wet.php xx words |