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2010-05-09 Britain

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Posted by Fred 2010-05-09 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11129 views ] Top

#1 notice the electoral system is only 'broken' and in need of reform when the socialists fail to win.

Posted by abu do you love 2010-05-09 00:48|| 2010-05-09 00:48|| Front Page Top

#2 Britons want the Liberal Democrats who have entered into coalition talks with the Conservative party, which won most seats in Thursday's elections, to put voting reforms on top of their agenda and use it as their bargaining chip to reform the voting system.

Uh, thanks for speaking for us, Iran Press TV.

abu's right. The Lib Dems got 22% of the popular vote with a manifesto including a call for PR, and they're interpreting this as a mandate for PR? Get real! What we're seeing at the moment is the kind of shoddy back-room dealings you get with PR, in which deals are done in a most undemocratic fashion, and the electorate end up with a set of policies that no one got to vote for or against.

Clegg's dimwitted pro-PR demonstrators were seemingly placated by him appearing to them, regally, from amidst a typically PR-style backroom meeting, telling them that he wasn't in fact going to tell them anything - that he was busy advancing transparent politics. For a shocking, if blackly humorous, example of left-wing nonsense, watch this.

Posted by Bulldog 2010-05-09 04:08|| 2010-05-09 04:08|| Front Page Top

#3 shoddy back-room dealings

Is what separates men from boys. Just imagine Bambi in coalition negotiations.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-05-09 04:27|| 2010-05-09 04:27|| Front Page Top

#4 It's a myth that PR always results in coalition governments. Australia has PR (Single Transferable vote) and we have never had a federal election in which one of the 2 major parties didn't achieve an absolute majority in the House of Commons.

The Senate elections use a different form of PR (party list) which occasionally results in the main parties failing to get an absolute majority, but in 4 out of 5 elections they do.

Posted by phil_b 2010-05-09 09:56|| 2010-05-09 09:56|| Front Page Top

#5 The question is: do you want to be forced into proportional results and forced a majority, or do you want a results to actually mirror what the people want?

Posted by OldSpook 2010-05-09 11:42|| 2010-05-09 11:42|| Front Page Top

#6 I belive that disadvantages of "winner take all" are amply demonstrated by Britain & USA.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-05-09 12:23|| 2010-05-09 12:23|| Front Page Top

#7 I belive that disadvantages of "winner take all" are amply demonstrated by Britain & USA.

And the advantages of PR... Italy?

phil_b, in the UK PR would result in coalitions almost all of the4 time, if previous election results were repeated. And what's more, we'd have various forms of left wing progressiveness bullsh*t, as the celtic fringes ensured that profitable England never again managed to swing a Conservative majority. We'd have the tyranny of the regions in perpetuity.

I'd settle for PR, in return for English self-rule.

Posted by Bulldog 2010-05-09 12:55|| 2010-05-09 12:55|| Front Page Top

#8 PR would magnify, greatly, the voice of Britain's anti-American left. Britain's foreign policy would start to resemble that of a continental European nation.

Posted by lex 2010-05-09 13:00|| 2010-05-09 13:00|| Front Page Top

#9 Must have been some other Ranburg where, couple of years ago, everybody were complaining that both Donks & Pubs ignore the popular views on illegals.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-05-09 14:11|| 2010-05-09 14:11|| Front Page Top

#10 And the advantages of PR... Italy?

"We are becoming Mexico: a thin veneer of oligarchs protected by a compliant media and dominating a weak, incompetent regulatory apparatus and bankrupt state, with a swelling underclass and a shrinking middle class paying the inflated salaries and bloated pensions of a huge and growing public sector union base that ensures the oligarchs' continued hold on power."

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2010-05-09 14:15|| 2010-05-09 14:15|| Front Page Top

#11 The chances of PR being neutral in that regard would be very small, IMHO. Which leaves two possibilities: it would make things better or worse. Until I see an actual case that it would make things better, I think it's safe to assume it would make things worse.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2010-05-09 15:27|| 2010-05-09 15:27|| Front Page Top

#12 The chances of PR being neutral in that regard would be very small, IMHO.

Indeed. Neither Labour nor the Tories have, up till now, been open to the option of replacing first past the post with PR (although Labour have been busy screwing up the UK's historically tried-and-tested system of government in other areas since 1997) for the reason that it would make single party success - their success - almost impossible. It would mean that, instead of having relatively sensible, if ideological, big tent parties which represent the interests of the whole of the UK forming stable and predictable governments, they would find themselves having to scrabble together coalitions with the Lib Dems and/or a host of regional and special interest parties. 'Hello' disproportionate influence from the extremes, and 'hello' pork barrel pay-offs to the likes of the Scottish Nationalists, rival Northern Ireland factions etc., at the expense of the majority.

It ain't broke; it don't need 'fixing'.

Posted by Bulldog 2010-05-09 16:51|| 2010-05-09 16:51|| Front Page Top

00:01 49 Pan
23:51 49 Pan
23:13 ed
23:09 ed
22:48 ed
22:44 abu do you love
22:39 ed
22:27 Thing From Snowy Mountain
22:26 lotp
22:25 Pappy
22:20 lex
22:16 ed
22:13 SteveS
22:08 Thing From Snowy Mountain
22:07 trailing wife
22:03 Thing From Snowy Mountain
22:02 lex
22:01 Thing From Snowy Mountain
21:58 KBK
21:58 Barbara Skolaut
21:57 Thing From Snowy Mountain
21:51 Zhang Fei
21:39 lotp
21:34 lotp