The Politics Thread

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

And I'd accept that without reservation if that was the popular will.

[...]

Oh - and the majority should be 50% plus one to implement the change.

Would you be happy be for any question to be decided in this way?
Examples:

"Should we re-introduce the death penalty for society's worst crimes?"

"Should we take 75% of the property owned by the top 40% wealthiest in the country, and divide it up between the bottom 60%?"

In the end ad absurdam gets you to the absurd and i'm not getting into that particular philosopher's meander... It's too easy a way of avoiding addressing an issue...

Why should the people not be asked about the kind of democracy they want?

Advance your reasons. Let us reason and debate.

Well why should the people not be asked about anything and everything?

And isn't it right that big questions should be decided on something more than a bare majority, as they are in all kinds of institutions?

[William the White]

And I'd accept that without reservation if that was the popular will.

[...]

Oh - and the majority should be 50% plus one to implement the change.

Would you be happy be for any question to be decided in this way?
Examples:

"Should we re-introduce the death penalty for society's worst crimes?"

"Should we take 75% of the property owned by the top 40% wealthiest in the country, and divide it up between the bottom 60%?"

In the end ad absurdam gets you to the absurd and i'm not getting into that particular philosopher's meander... It's too easy a way of avoiding addressing an issue...

Why should the people not be asked about the kind of democracy they want?

Advance your reasons. Let us reason and debate.

Well why should the people not be asked about anything and everything?

And isn't it right that big questions should be decided on something more than a bare majority, as they are in all kinds of institutions?

Go ahead, if the debate has now shifted, offer your proposals... on other constitutional changes that have been decided by referendum or where a referendum was proposed, the majority has been 50% plus one - entry into europe, for instance, the proposed Lisbon treaty, which had them all dishonestly wriggling, but advance your argument why not...

[Prufrock]

I'm not sure what 'more than a bare majority' means, unless 50.00000001% isn't seen as enough, in which case 36.1% would seem far short.

As for the whole scene. I can't see a ConDem(ned) coalition. Clegg made a big point throughout the campaign of wanting electoral reform, even taking time today to tell a a group of protesters how important it was to him, and to be honest, it is massively in the interest of the Lib Dems. Cameron isn't going to give a referendum, committing only to an all party review, which given it is against the interests of both Labour and Tories, seems pointless. As for the Labour-LibDem coalition, Clegg, with 57 seats cannot be PM, nor can Gordy, given how many people believe him unelected, and how he presided over a loss of 91 seats. The Labour party can't have a leadership contest with the aim of finding a leader to enter a coalition after an election. Technically they could constitutionally keep Gordy as leader of the party but offer say Milliband as PM in a coalition, but that would be frankly ridiculous. All points to a Tory minority government, with no referendum, and us doing it all again within 18 months. Probably then a slim Tory majority, but if it were to be a hung parliament again, they'd surely have no option but to offer a referendum?

[Hoboh]

For those of you advocating PR take a long hard look at the result of our poll.

Planet hobo might quite like PR methinks

[Worthy4England]

No - the voting is nothing like proportional. If the seats were allocated in direct proportion to the votes, on Thursday's election, Tory's would lose 71 seats, Labour 69, Lib Dem would gain 93, UKIP would gain 20, the BNP would gain 12.

yeah, but how do you directly proportion the votes ? by amount of voters that voted ? the whole population ? percentage of population per mp ? and do you do it by town ? or count the country(s) as a whole ?.

if 31% of say 'farnworth' vote and labour win. they get 1 mp

but if a similar sized town down south vote and 70% of them do and the tories win do they get more mps ?

its all divided up like a pie, in such a way , that it is proportional now. the losers just can't see it.

No, it isn't. That's complete bollocks. Oh and don't forget the boundary changes that are invariably made by both parties when they get in (in the interest of fairness of course)

Never has been proportional for years - at a base level, Tory's polled 36% of all votes cast and won 47% of the seats, Labour polled 29% and won 40%, Lib Dems polled 23% and got 9%.

This system also inherently assumes that non-voters, would vote in line with the overall trend - so in that sense it matters not, whether you consider the whole population.

The question of "how to proportion the votes" is a valid one and usually the one that causes most of the debate.

[Worthy4England]

You're still voting for a manifesto that can be assessed against later.

It does make a difference to the cause, let's say for example, the Greens favoured the Lib Dems policies on transportation, but the Tories policy on taxataion, they could support the both if they sat cross-bench.

There is no fundamental difference between FPTP and PR. If one party polls more than 50% of the electorate, they get the same "rights" as the duopoly we have today - which was fine when it was a duopoly, but the Lib Dems polled 6.5m votes and only got 57 seats. The reason it's fundamentally opposed by Lab and Tory, is that they both fear they'd lose out to it. Which is probably correct.

Ha, I love the example of the Greens going with the Tories on taxation. (Love those Green policies, by the way - 35 hour working weeks, requiring 40% of board members of larger companies to be female within five years, and, my personal favourite, a rule that says the maximum wage in any organisation can be no more than ten times the minimum wage in that organisation.)

I disagree on the manifesto point - now we can say "have you delivered on these pledges or not?". It's a bit different when manifestos say "we will work as hard as we can to do deals on X,Y and Z".

I'm a bit tired of what I was trying to say about the BNP now - it's enough to say that I can't see the benefit of parliament being littered with extreme or single issue parties.

I might vote Green next time - didn't know they had a 35 hour working week in there That would save me a week, a week in spare time - not sure what I'd do with it all though.

It is a different type of political system, as generally, more than one party has to work together in a coalition.

I don't violently disagree with your manifesto point, there are certainly pros and cons, which is why you end up with coalitions of broadly like minded parties. On the "extreme" point, what could possibly be more extreme than having 326 people supported by 35% of the electorate (previous Labour Government) having a free reign to do what ever they wish?

[fatshaft]

No - the voting is nothing like proportional. If the seats were allocated in direct proportion to the votes, on Thursday's election, Tory's would lose 71 seats, Labour 69, Lib Dem would gain 93, UKIP would gain 20, the BNP would gain 12.

yeah, but how do you directly proportion the votes ? by amount of voters that voted ? the whole population ? percentage of population per mp ? and do you do it by town ? or count the country(s) as a whole ?.

if 31% of say 'farnworth' vote and labour win. they get 1 mp

but if a similar sized town down south vote and 70% of them do and the tories win do they get more mps ?

its all divided up like a pie, in such a way , that it is proportional now. the losers just can't see it.

No, it isn't. That's complete bollocks.

Indeed. I think a1 was trolling, but if not, oh my, then mummy is right, there is an awful lot of education required for people to understand PR.

[fatshaft]

Maybe many don't, but plenty do. The last Euro elections have shown them what PR can do, with UKIP, BNP and even the green loonies gaining seats in Brussels. Now people are beginning to realise that we don't have to swing aimlessly from Labour to Tory and back again, but actually vote for who yopu want, be that in Europe, or in the devolved assemblies, it just falls down in the most important election. It'll come, becasue it has to.

It'll come because it has to? That's a bizarrely fatalistic thing to say before a debate on a complex question has even got going properly!

Call me a Little Englander if you want, but I don't see how they make their decisions in Belgium or Germany, or the EU, the organisation the phrase 'democratic deficit' was coined for, has the slightest impact on how we should do things in Westminster. Sure, we can look elsewhere for an illustration that other systems can operate perfectly well, but it's no way inevitable that every country in the world should converge into using the same system.

And I've asked the question elsewhere - if we had a system in which the BNP would actually have seats, what impact would that have on decision-making? Would their racist agenda that some people find attractive be advanced at all?

As every other party is 100% against them on that issue, highly unlikely wouldn't you say?

However if your defence of our current 'democratic' system is based on undemocratically keeping a party from being represented on the basis of the number of people voting for them, I think you can see you're on a pretty sticky wicket no?

[fatshaft]

Ha, I love the example of the Greens going with the Tories on taxation. (Love those Green policies, by the way - 35 hour working weeks, requiring 40% of board members of larger companies to be female within five years, and, my personal favourite, a rule that says the maximum wage in any organisation can be no more than ten times the minimum wage in that organisation.)

And people question why I normally say the Green loonies, rather than just the greens.

[thebish]

I think that most people don't really understand PR, but a proper referendum with a genuine campaign, would soon inform them and allow them to think about it.

Right, well I'm glad you concede the first half of that, and I agree with the second.

What kind of % should we insist on though to abandon hundreds of years of consitutional practice and completely overhaul our political culture in this, the home of the mother of parliaments? I know you are in favour of doing both things, even (perhaps especially) so emotively phrased, but even you would consider that it isn't something that should be done on a popular whim.

My own take is that our traditions are not the property of this generation to give away, but I realise I am a small 'c' conservative pissing into the wind, in this company!

what on earth does that mean? can you expand? I am genuinely puzzled!

No you're not - you know exactly what I mean but you just disagree with me.

But, to clarify, it upsets me when we sabotage some of our historic political arrangements, because it's not something future generations can ever get back.

The post of Lord Chancellor, for example - we had no practical problem at all there, with a post that can be traced back to 1066 and beyond, but it had to go, sacrificed on the altar of progress like so much else.

yes - actually I was genuinely puzzled - because on the face of it it seems indistinguishable from this:

"people living today never have the right to change something that has been around for a long time because they will then deny the long-standing thing to future generations."

is that what you are really saying?

if not - what is the difference between what you are saying and that?

[thebish]

The debate has been going along happily for about a lifetime...

There was more recently the Jenkins Commission on Electoral Reform (1997 or 98) - whilst some of the parts got wrapped into other legislation - the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament etc. the purpose of if started out to be a proposal for the voting system to elect the House of Commons.

Assuming that the BNP are a legitimate (legal) party, then people should be allowed to vote for them, as for any other legitimate party. Or should only centre-right and centre-left views be allowed?

Largely in the intellectual margins, yes... I'm having it put to me now that a popular movement is forming on one side of the discussion.

I completely agree about the BNP. My point is that if they are as powerless to influence decision making in a PR system as they are currently, where does this leave the lofty argument for a more democratic way of getting things done?

it leaves it intact surely - the BNP have no significant support - so they'd have no significant influence. if they commanded mass support - then under PR they would gain influence - which would be democracy in action - and not to my taste, but how it should be.

[Worthy4England]

Interesting words from Simon Hughes on political reform - on Sky News now.

If what he's saying is correct - pretty much there'd have ro be a referendum and the Tory's would have to move their current position (which they haven't budged on yet), then the chances of the two parties forming a coalition looks a bit remote to me.

[CAPSLOCK]

Shall we have that referendum on capital punishment while we're at it?

[TANGODANCER]

Shall we have that referendum on capital punishment while we're at it?

A referendum on the actual meaning of a "life" sentence might help.

[Worthy4England]

Shall we have that referendum on capital punishment while we're at it?

Top idea - if we put 'em on the same ballot paper... I mean, no one would get their crosses mixed up and it would save money...

[William the White]

Shall we have that referendum on capital punishment while we're at it?

The referendum would be on which form of representative democracy we intend to have.

That's difficult enough.

[thebish]

It might be 1987 - but much of the meat of it still applies....

John Cleese explains how Proportional representation works...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSUKMa1cYHk


In 1987 it took 40,000 voters to elect a Labour MP, only 33,000 to elect a Conservative and it took ten times that number -- 340,000 voters -- to elect one Social Democrat or Liberal MP.

[Bruce Rioja]

Shall we have that referendum on capital punishment while we're at it?

Just the job for a hung parliment.


Sincere apologies etc. etc.

[Lord Kangana]

Now is not the time for gallows humour.

Here we go...

[hisroyalgingerness]

Yes, let's inject a bit of nonsense into what's become a very serious thread