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  1. Originally posted by wangmaster:what really grips my shit is the fact that if the AV proposal is rejected, this tory government will, conveniently for them, be able to say that "people have shown they like FPTP", when in actual fact it's AV that's been discarded, not reform full stop. they'll have dodged the PR bullet by sidestepping it all together.

    and consequently the issue won't be raised again for another generation or so.

    I completely agree mate - however, all we can do if it does get rejected is to keep campaigning and look at the facts. Public opinion will change in 10 years, whether further towards or against the notion of a new voting system, because the population will have changed. That said, we won't find out 'til tomorrow, and voting has another 2 hours to go, so don't give up hope just yet just prepare for the fact that the chances are, DaveCam and his cabaret band will probably get their way.
  2. Originally posted by Andrew_C:i like Gillards new policy on teen mums. it will either make em think twice about having the kid in the first place, or make them finish their education so they dunt become a well-fare dependent family who contribute nothing to society


    Yea, we definitely don't need more children raised by parents who are either inept or unable to cope. Not only will they be a welfare family but their children will be far more likely to be delinquent as well, which just perpetuates the cycle.

    For AV - it seems to work alright over here.

    Antony Green - our top electoral commentator has written quite a few articles on a variety of topics related to the UK vote referendum refuting some misconceptions and discussing AV which may be interesting for UK voters
    http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/uk-alternative-vote-referendum/
  3. Originally posted by vanquish:Yea, we definitely don't need more children raised by parents who are either inept or unable to cope. Not only will they be a welfare family but their children will be far more likely to be delinquent as well, which just perpetuates the cycle.

    For AV - it seems to work alright over here.

    Antony Green - our top electoral commentator has written quite a few articles on a variety of topics related to the UK vote referendum refuting some misconceptions and discussing AV which may be interesting for UK voters
    http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/uk-alternative-vote-referendum/

    Harsh, but true. And cheers for the link, will read it now


  4. No prob, there's 3 pages of blog posts on the subject on a variety of issues so you should have enough info to answer your questions.
  5. Originally posted by vanquish:No prob, there's 3 pages of blog posts on the subject on a variety of issues so you should have enough info to answer your questions.

    It's just interesting to see what people have to say on AV etc. - the general positivity towards it, I just wish such positivity could be promoted here. Unfortunately we live under a Conservative-led coalition who are all too aware that they will suffer heavily if we bring in any kind of electoral voting system different from First Past The Post which benefits them most. Yeah I'm centre-left, but that's not the reason why I want AV - I want a system of vote where my vote will actually be recognised - in the 2010 election, my vote counted for nothing because of the stupid system we employ.
  6. I wish I knew whacha talkin' about... I know it was some referendum about changning or not the electoral system, but........
  7. Originally posted by LikeASong:I wish I knew whacha talkin' about... I know it was some referendum about changning or not the electoral system, but........

    The current system of voting we have here in the UK is called First Past The Post, i.e. everyone goes out to the ballot box on election day, puts a cross by their preferred choice, and then counts are made accordingly. It would work fine if we only had a bi-party system as in the States, but we don't, so it's not fit for practice.

    Here we vote for the individual MPs (Members of Parliament) in our constituencies, it's similar(ish) to the US structure with their states and voting for congressmen but it's not a complete mirror-image of that process because we don't have an equivalent of governorships and the like. In some ways we vote from the bottom up, and the party with a majority of MPs / seats won is declared the winner. In an ideal world. MPs that win seats don't actually win on the basis of a majority of votes - they win on the basis of who got the most votes, so essentially they win by getting 36% etc., which doesn't take a genius to work out that they don't have the majority of the support in their constituency. It furthermore means that a large majority of the voting electorate end up wasting their vote because someone who doesn't have a majority gets in. This gets reflected on a national scale when it comes to who has won the most seats - it's just who has won the most, not who has a majority. Granted, in a 'fair' election, you'd expect less than half of a country's population to have their vote 'wasted' because you'd expect the winning party to have gained more than 50% of the vote, thus coming to power, i.e. no prizes for coming second, which leads me on to another point - for some peculiar reason, a majority is only considered to be 40%, i.e. the 'winning post', but again, a majority of 100 is 50 or more, so it falls down again where it comes to logic and fairness.

    Couple of stats - the UK (as of 2009) had a population of c. 62m people. In the general election of 2010, 28m (not quite half of the population) actually voted. Of that 28m, only 8.5m people's votes actually counted towards electing MPs into the House of Parliament, so the government was elected on the basis of c. 20% of the population's vote, and certainly wasn't a reflection of public opinion. The Conservatives (traditionally centre-right) won nearly 10.8m votes, and won 306 seats - a majority of seats in the House of Parliament is 325, since there are 650 seats (each seat representing a constituency of the United Kingdom. The Labour party won just over 8.6m of the vote, winning 258 seats. The Liberal Democrats won c. 6.8m of the vote, and got 57 seats - if you aren't aware of the traditional ideologies in British politics, the latter two parties are traditionally left/ left-of-centre on the political spectrum. So, two things, a) there is no correlation between how much of the vote your party actually receives and how many seats you win because of the FPTP system, b) a greater proportion of the voting electorate voted in favour of left-wing parties than a traditionally right wing party (and I'm not including the smaller parties who won seats around and about the place and made up the final few seats that haven't been mentioned here). I grant that Labour and Lib Dems are not one and the same party, but they are left-wing and that is the attraction of them to their voters, my point being that nearly 17m people voted for both of them, whereas 11m voted Conservative, and yet the Conservatives were given a majority? Dunno about anyone else, but I think it's complete bollocks. In order to gain a majority in the House of Commons, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems formed a coalition government (as many countries in Europe do because of their Proportional Representation system), but it's a far from satisfactory conclusion on the basis of the votes actually cast.

    Granted, what I really would like to see here is a system of Proportional Representation, i.e. the people vote on a national basis and for the party they support, and then the parties are given a percentage of MPs to delegate, either through the party-list system as in places like Holland or other variants. If there's an overall majority, they are the winner - if not, coalitions are formed to form a majority. However, there's not a cat in hell's chance of that in the near future because the Conservatives (and to be fair, perhaps some of the other major parties) know that it would mean more coalition governments in the future and less chance of having a firm grip on ruling the country. That said, I've got no problem with coalition governments - Germany et al seem to get on just fine (from where I'm sat anyway). However, as part of the coalition agreement, the Conservatives granted the Lib Dems a referendum on bringing a system of Alternative Vote in to replace FPTP; interestingly something the Labour party refused to do during their 12 year stint in power. If we get AV, which it's not likely I'm afraid, it's a progressive step away from FPTP and towards PR, but it's a long shot.

    The Alternative Vote means that when we vote for MPs in our local constituencies, we have the opportunity to list them in an order of preference - you're not obliged to, i.e. you can put only one preference if you want, but that increases the chances of your vote not counting. Essentially, at the initial count, the 2 parties in a constituency 'make the cut', i.e. stay in - all other parties drop out of the running. Then, the votes that people made towards the parties that didn't make the cut are then assigned to the two parties that are still in the running if voters listed them in their preferences, so whoever actually wins the vote in a constituency will have actually won a majority of the vote. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than FPTP and increases the chances of a voter's chance actually counting towards the election of their MP. There is no way of actually telling how the 2010 election would have panned out under AV because there's no statistical analysis available to say who voters would have listed as their preferences, but I'm certain it would have panned out for more differently that it did using the old FPTP which is outdated and, quite frankly, shit.
  8. So, Al'Qaida announced their vengeance, anti-American protests all along the Pakistan, even in London..
  10. Originally posted by Yogi:So, Al'Qaida announced their vengeance, anti-American protests all along the Pakistan, even in London..


    Dude, one more post and you're at 2000

  11. Lol, no worries, unfortunately it was somewhat in vain 'cause the referendum came out as a No vote, but we move on

    And I'm hardly surprised about the threats - quite frankly I think they'd have been made in any case, like the sword of Damocles, always hanging there waiting. Bin Laden's death simply moved them into gear.
  12. so then no campaign got a fairly landslide win.

    clegg's gonna get some stick for this, methinks.
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