Proportional Representation (UK)

[oolon]

we may soon have a right of centre government, when most people in the UK have voted for a left of centre government.

Really? I think its to close to call that one., BBC was stating that the liberal spilt was 2/3 left 1/3 right

So Rights....
Con+LIB/3+UKIP+BNP+DUP+UCU
10706647+2275979+917832+563743+102361+168216=14734778

Lets see what the left has Lets give them everything left except Independants and Sinn Fein (do not vote)
(Total votes-INDY-SF (non voters))/2

(29653,638-319891-171942)/2=14580902 (goal post)

left gets 29653,638-319891-171942-14734778 = 14427027

Difference 14734778-14427027=307751 to the right.... thats about 1% to the right.


As you will see above its VERY close and think its arrogant to assume its anything other than straight down the middle, people are just assuming that all liberals are left with is not right. When you throw in tatical voting its impossible to call. left or right.

[oolon]

Labour+liberal numbers just don't stack up, to be honest the best thing for the conseratives would be for labour to side with the liberals as the government would collapse (clegg hates brown). Just because Gorden Brown says yes to voting change does not mean his party will allow it, they are the biggest winners over the old system. If a LIB+LAB government collapses we will probably then get a temp conserative minority one, who will look at the books publish them then go back to the people to get a strong mandate. Liberals will then be branded with being in a coalition of the losers and do very badly, likewise with labour who will look like they were hangingon to power. A lab+lib goverment is not strong enough to pass voting change, turkeys don't vote for christmas. So liberals willnot get it that way either.

To bring it back on topic though, if we had a referendum should other voting systems like STV also be listed? Should it be national based PR (that is mathematically the fairest) or like the europian elections large constituencies? For a true PR, system it is unfair that people can only vote 100% for a single candiated... perhaps grading 0-10? What voting system should we use for the referendum?

[SeriousSam]

It's a pointless argument... NO political system is fair because everbodies idea of what is "equitable" is different.

As an example I might be of the opinion that my views are better served by voting for a person to be my local MP rather than a national party who then decide who gets to be in parliament.

[samcross]

i was making the comparison between traders and chav's on job seekers. Can't you see that they both sponge. anyhow back on topic.

I think you should stop basing your views of the financial sector on what you read in The Sun...

[SiM]

I think you should stop basing your views of the financial sector on what you read in The Sun...

I heard that you can't get the FT up North

[j1979]

The only way I can interpret that is as a total contradiction.

How does someone who works very long hours, doing a job that is in high demand, with constant pressure to exceed performance, sponge.

In an economic point of view they are byfar a net contributor.

sorry, it's difficult to explain if you can't grasp a simple premiss. that someone that is a professional gambler does not produce, any goods or services of any kind! the money they obtain already exists within the economy! they offer no tangible benefits, the only tangible effect is market liquidity with as of the crash of 2008 their "liquidity benefits" caused huge market volatility. Traders live of the back of others.. fact. now please swallow the truth for once, and stay on topic.

[j1979]

I think you should stop basing your views of the financial sector on what you read in The Sun...

i have never read "The Sun" or for that matter any news paper.

[j1979]

As you will see above its VERY close and think its arrogant to assume its anything other than straight down the middle, people are just assuming that all liberals are left with is not right. When you throw in tatical voting its impossible to call. left or right.

are you saying 1/3 are right of centre or 1/3 agree with a Tory coalition?

[Lucio]

It's a pointless argument... NO political system is fair because everbodies idea of what is "equitable" is different.

As an example I might be of the opinion that my views are better served by voting for a person to be my local MP rather than a national party who then decide who gets to be in parliament.

This too is my biggest objection to PR, you have no control over the PERSON you vote for. It implies that all that matters to a making a fair democracy is voting for an organisation who claims to believe the things you do.


IMO, the biggest change this country could effect to ensure a fairer system would be to ban political partys and make everyone really look at who'se standing for local government. Make MP's responisible to reprsent the majority of the interests of their consituancy.

[JPreston]

What about all these Irish and Scottish parties? Unless I am mistaken, NI parties would have about 4 seats with PR.

What about them? There are NI and Scottish assemblies, to which power could be devolved to a greater or lesser extent to balance whatever change is made to the electoral system (and many people would say that NI and Scottish parties are vastly over-represented in Westminster currently). If you are saying that making millions upon millions of votes worthless is a price worth paying in order to send a handful of Sinn Fein and SNP MPs to sit in Westminster and then abstain from voting anyway, then I disagree.

Technically they will be over-represented since 100% of BNP supporters will vote, but the 35% (non-voters) who don't mind between Lab/Con will be under-represented. Plus yes, while no one will officially say it, disqualifying extremists in this way is probably a reason why they chose this system (corrected above).

If there is a solid case to do so, we should disqualify extremist groups by actually proscribing them explicitly and openly in law, as we do for the National Front, Hizb-ut-Tarir, or whoever - not by shadily rigging the rules so that they don't win (that often) and then trying to conceal that fact. This is the only method in which a modern state that values free speech can operate, when it comes to curtailing the voting wishes of its people. If BNP supporters really are 100% likely to vote - and being generally uneducated unskilled and poor white folk, they look very much like a demographic which we normally hold to be less likely to vote - then the maybe it would spur people with actual functioning brain stems to turn out as well...

IMO, politics in the UK is too fragmented for PR to be fair. It would too confusing for everyone to have every party as a choice on their ballot paper...

I disagree, because the greater part of the democratic world seems to manage just fine, and even if the UK really does have a remedial-class electorate we still manage to cope with the EU elections and the regional assemblies. Furthermore, choosing between several hundred parties and independent candidates on a massive ballot paper is simply not how PR is implemented.

It's a pointless argument... NO political system is fair because everbodies idea of what is "equitable" is different.

As an example I might be of the opinion that my views are better served by voting for a person to be my local MP rather than a national party who then decide who gets to be in parliament.

To say this is a pointless argument because no system is perfect is a fallacy. Even if your claim were true some systems would still be clearly superior to others and given that we must adopt one, we should take some care to pick the best one from those available rather than blindly stumbling on under the one we've 'always' had.

Re local representation; you might indeed be of that opinion, but a glance at the speaking and voting record of 'your' MP would very likely reveal you to be wrong. Unless your MP is a front-bench MP (and therefore far more concerned with their career in politics than your local swimming baths) they probably speak once or twice in an average parliament, and whoever they are they vote in line with the party whip. The whip system makes the notion of local representation under our current system a quaint fantasy. And probably, whatever function you seek a local MP to fulfil would perhaps be better performed by a local council with greater powers, which is one of your tory policies anyway isn't it?

Alternatively, why not have some variant of the New Zealand (and I think someone said here, Scottish) system where you have two votes - half of parliament is filled by local representatives selected by FPTP counted locally, and the other half filled from party lists counted nationally? It seems to me folk opposed to PR (and are any of you not dyed in the wool tories?) are just constructing the worst conceivable and obviously unworkable implementations of it in order to fling mud at the concepts of 'every vote counts and is counted' and 'elected representatives should be chosen in some way which reflects the numbers of votes cast'.

Which brings me onto "Sack Kay Burley! Watch the BBC!" (some language in video NSFW, but very very good for democracy)

[aidanjt]

Proportional representation, while being more fair.. is also not good enough. It's clear that the representative model is a failure, because the representatives are failures, it's time to move on to direct democracy, we have the technology to make it happen. The leading representatives can still make policy, the houses could still be free to propose and amend bills, but only the will of the people should decide whether to enact a bill and give it a force of law.

[abaxas]

Wow 3 pages of comment and no-one mentions....

We dont elect a government, we elect local MPs.

Hence any PR system will lower the level of local democracy to a more central version. Fine if you live darn sarf, not so good for us up north.

[kalniel]

but only the will of the people should decide whether to enact a bill and give it a force of law.

That would be terrible. Athenian democracy really didn't work, and neither would this.

[aidanjt]

That would be terrible. Athenian democracy really didn't work, and neither would this.

Not Athenian, full democracy (as I said, we have the technology to pull it off). And as if the current situation with corporate lobbyists lying to and paying off ministers, forcing through bills in record time isn't a disaster anyway.

[JPreston]

Wow 3 pages of comment and no-one mentions....

We dont elect a government, we elect local MPs.

Hence any PR system will lower the level of local democracy to a more central version. Fine if you live darn sarf, not so good for us up north.

How do you mean? I thought the current system would be as bad as it could get regionally speaking, because lo and behold we as a nation have a tory government even though they won practically zero seats outside the south east and just a third of the national vote. And explain in the queen's english please, not some kind of northern pidgin dialect.

And yes the suggestion of electronic referenda on each and every issue would result in unmitigated disaster. We hope for informed and capable leaders able to make decisions best in the national interest, not the effective random-number generator of appeasing 60 million gibbering primates by inviting them to text in whether or not they want to bring back hanging, or how to resolve complex economic issues that fewer than 1% of us could even articulate a coherent opinion on. This is why we have Britains Got Talent!

[TheAnimus]

sorry, it's difficult to explain if you can't grasp a simple premiss. that someone that is a professional gambler does not produce, any goods or services of any kind! the money they obtain already exists within the economy! they offer no tangible benefits, the only tangible effect is market liquidity with as of the crash of 2008 their "liquidity benefits" caused huge market volatility. Traders live of the back of others.. fact. now please swallow the truth for once, and stay on topic.

You again show how little you understand.

The concept your trying to refer to is a 'Zero Sum Game', now because I'm telling you its not, you might decide to say thats because I can't understand such thing, but to me it sounds like you can't understand the concept of a 'Second Order System' and confuse that with a zsg.

Its no different to a manager living of the back of those he manages. If you'd bothered to think about anything I posted in my previous response, or say googled about the history of futures, you would know its by know means perfect and often perverts the cause of the optimisation task its there to solve. An example would be tulip bubble. But then you say there are negative tangible effects.

So its able to impact the plebs negatively but never positively?

I can't believe I'm having this, your point is so clearly bollocks to the hilt, but it shows we have this bitterness towards achievement which is really crippling. But its up there with some of the twonks who were saying they wanted all the 150k+ people to leave the country, good riddance and all that.... Too stupid to grasp that they're cutting off their noise to spite their face.

I work with a lot of trading staff, Its a job I doubt I could do, my mind wanders after 10 hours of straight thinking, let alone the 16+ some of them where putting in. But hey, why don't you just tell yourself they are living off the back of others with their hard work..... If I didn't know better I'd say thats kind of how a community works? People specialise in certain things, those who do the less desirable and harder jobs become scarse so require extra compensation.

Given how investment banking is kind of the coal face of capitalism, if they could avoid paying 50pence to one of the hot shots, they bloody well would. You should have seen the effort I had to go through to get a pay rise despite having the best performance in my peer group by a factor of 3!