Poll: *** 2010 General Election Result & Discussion ***

[Glaucus]

I fear we are going around in circles now. With respect, the arguments for PR have been made time and again in this thread and they are very compelling in my view. The only reasoned argument against is a lack of understanding amongst the electorate and that can easily be remedied.

I''ve asked several times for people who "want" PR

what PR system do you agree with or all of them?
what makes them betetr and how it will help the country?

I think almost no one asking for PR actually no anything about PR and certainly not the pros and cons of different systems and which would be beneficial.

 

[The Mad Rapper]

Getting bored of Labour mentioning the 63% of the UK who didn't vote Conservative and conveniently forgetting the 71% of people who didn't vote Labour.

Perspective is wonderful isn't it?

 

[avec]

I fear we are going around in circles now. With respect, the arguments for PR have been made time and again in this thread and they are very compelling in my view. The only reasoned argument against is a lack of understanding amongst the electorate and that can easily be remedied.

Can it easily be remedied? How? By a massive advertising/propaganda campaign from all of the political parties?

It would just be another slimey spinfest full of Labour lies.

Also, there are more arguments against PR than an electorate lacking the knowledge of the subject matter.

PR will result in hung parliament style haggling for weeks after every election. It will result in the politicians having far more power than they do now and being able to decide who governs by themselves via backroom deals and behind closed door haggling. You run the risk of smaller parties holding the bigger parties to ransom in order to protect their selfish interests (hello SNP/PC).

If you are going to go anywhere near PR you absolutely need to have some of the protections Dolph has mentioned several times in this thread alone.

 

[lcg]

I don't have Sky - can I watch that any where?

http://tvcatchup.com/watch.html?c=34

 

[The Mad Rapper]

I think almost no one asking for PR actually no anything about PR and certainly not the pros and cons of different systems and which would be beneficial.

In this thread you mean?

 

[Glaucus]

In this thread you mean?

yes
and in the general population.
it's just liek how many people read and understood manifestos and how many just voted because they think they like the party.

 

[meghatronic]

I''ve asked several times for people who "want" PR

what PR system do you agree with or all of them?
what makes them betetr and how it will help the country?

I think almost no one asking for PR actually no anything about PR and certainly not the pros and cons of different systems and which would be beneficial.

Ditto. I asked a dozen people, ALL of them wanted it. NONE of them could tell me what it was - or even the systems involved.

People see "proportional" and think "fair". It's damn right dangerous. And giving the electorate too much credit.

 

[The Mad Rapper]

http://tvcatchup.com/watch.html?c=34

Perfect, thanks

 

[Ahleckz]

"force"? Good luck!

The only one I see working in the interests of the country is AMS - but even I don't understand it all and grow bored reading about it. What chances is there for the public?

I'd still prefer FPTP with standardised constituency sizing.

Aye, direct PR is never going to work.

Trouble is with ranking candidates, and having multiple selections on ballots causes a greater number of spoilt ballots. - We see that every election up here.

STV would be my preferred selection, if we had to go down the route of PR. But, standardized FPTP would be my first option - as long as we gagged Big Eck first!

Oh, and I'm actually one of the few people that actually understand PR systems quite well.

 

[Locky]

Gordon brown to step down

http://news.uk.msn.com/politics/general-election-2010/

 

[stockhausen]

AHHHH. Irrelevent. They did NOT vote for LIB AND LAB. FFS.

As ever, you are wrong; New Labour got 35.3% of the popular vote and the Liberal Democrats got 22.1%, giving a New Labour/Liberal Democrat Government 57.4%.

Despite all of this, I still believe that we will eventually see some sort of agreement between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats which will probably not last very long. the Tories just need to "get real" and move beyond accepting any Liberal Democrat policy proposal with which they happen to agree, rejecting anything they don't and trying to force through some of their completely barking policies such as increasing the IHT threshold.

 

[z3r0]

David Steel sounds like a boy who's just got his lollipop.

 

[The Mad Rapper]

It's damn right dangerous. And giving the electorate too much credit.

It is dangerous - to the two 'main' parties who have benefited from the biased system we've got. Politicians are there to serve the public, it doesn't matter if the public are stupid.

 

[Rich_L]

Why would PR be any better, why would it make a better goverment?

I make absolutely no assertion that PR would give a 'better' government, not to mention because as you can see in this thread, 'anything but Tory' is the worst government ever to happen to the country so it's entirely subjective. What PR would give was a government that better reflected the views of the populace - nothing more nothing less.

At the moment the system is based on your local area, which is why you have the large difference. If people in your area want labour they get labour. Why would a national system be any better.

No, if as little as 35% of people in your area want Labour, then you all get Labour and the other 65% votes are rendered worthless.

If you want FPTP, then arguably it should at least be AV so you can ensure that at least 50% of the constituency voted for that party/candidate as a first or second choice which gives a kind of proportional tolerance and tends to reduce tactical voting and allows people to vote for who they want.

I'm ambivalent between MMP/AVplus and STV, the former have the constituency link which I think is quite important due to the historical FPTP and expectations of the constituents.

 

[avec]

Perfect, thanks

I thought my link was better as it didn't require registration

 

[Merlin5]

It's really complicated - I suggest reading:

Thanks, I'll read through those articles.

No, it means that the % of seats you get is the same (or, in practice, close to the same) as the % of the vote you get.

Someone will doubtless explain this better, but say an election is held, everyone votes. The votes for each party are totalled and converted to a %. I think there are 650 seats in total. Imagine the Conservatives have 50% of the popular vote, they are thus given 325 seats (being 50% of the total of 650 seats). The other parties are then given their seats accordingly.

It's more complicated than that, but, as I understand it, that's the basics. Happy to be corrected if that's wrong

So would that have worked out better for conservative? Sorry for sounding so ignorant.

 

[The Mad Rapper]

Aye, direct PR is never going to work.

Trouble is with ranking candidates, and having multiple selections on ballots causes a greater number of spoilt ballots. - We see that every election up here.

STV would be my preferred selection, if we had to go down the route of PR. But, standardized FPTP would be my first option - as long as we gagged Big Eck first!

Oh, and I'm actually one of the few people that actually understand PR systems quite well.

You don't rank candidates in a true PR system. You just vote for a Party and the MPs are allocated to the seats won. Aren't you thinking of AV+?

 

[Glaucus]

It is dangerous - to the two 'main' parties who have benefited from the biased system we've got. Politicians are there to serve the public, it doesn't matter if the public are stupid.

it's dangerous to the country, to rush through any major change in law or politics with out careful planning and restraints on power.

 

[Neil79]

Wow, Boulton just raged at Campbell bigtime.

WOW

I thought the guy was going to smack him one !! , too damn right... Even myself I HATE the Labour party telling everyone else who they voted for and what they are thinking. I didn't vote for Gordon Brown i voted for David!

 

[meghatronic]

It is dangerous - to the two 'main' parties who have benefited from the biased system we've got. Politicians are there to serve the public, it doesn't matter if the public are stupid.

I disagree. Maybe (most likely) I'm wrong.

For instance, if a 1% income tax increase was needed or the country would sink, and the public were asked, there is NO WAY the majority would vote for the tax increase.

Similar things could be said about EU membership and so on. The public are fickle, and... flammable .

Thanks, I'll read through those articles.

If you do, report back! I got bored