Is the current way of voting for leaders and policies actually working?

[Jairzinho]

5 minutes ago, Captain Willard said:

Who would you exclude ? 

People whose favourite colour is ham. 

[Bjornebye]

2 hours ago, Elite said:

Tories.

 

 

[Pureblood]

It should be mandatory not to vote.  After the election, when all parties and candidates have zero votes, tear down the system and kill it with fire.  Then make a better one, banning all who have previously served as MPs and anyone from Surrey or a county with "shire" at the end of it.  

[Anubis]

On 24/01/2013 at 16:38, JohnnyH said:

 

Question 1 - Should everyone be allowed to vote?

 

 

6 hours ago, Jairzinho said:

No.

 

4 hours ago, Captain Willard said:

Who would you exclude ? 

 

4 hours ago, Elite said:

Tories.

Oh, Willard, you so walked into that one.

[PestiRed]

10 hours ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Bump 

 

There's a lot of Labour people publicly coming round to the idea of proportional representation. (Pause momentarily while @Strontium allows himself an understandable smug grin.) Personally, I don't think it goes far enough. 

 

I think the fundamental problem is the lack of separation between the Executive and Legislative branches of government.  Even under PR, we'd still have the leader of the party with the most MPs being able to use the promise of Cabinet posts to control those MPs. At present, an MP has two main roles: to represent the interests of their constituents and to scrutinise proposed legislation (most of which is put forward by the Government). Under the PR proposals I've seen so far, we'd risk losing the former, without gaining much of the latter. 

 

Personally, I'd prefer a directly-elected head of Government (our first ever democratically elected Prime Minister!), MPs - who are not allowed to hold Cabinet posts - elected by something like the current system, and the House of Lords replaced by a chamber elected by PR. I'd also like to see a lot of other reforms - votes for 16 year-olds; tighter rules around donations and campaign spending; modernise Parliamentary procedures; etc. - to support these reforms. 

 

I've seen plenty of people campaigning for various reforms, but not for a separation of the Executive and Legislative branches. I've no idea why that is. Am I missing something that would mean it's a terrible idea?

 

 

I think that the type of model that you’re proposing would involve getting rid of the monarchy and it doesn’t seem like Britain is ready for that just yet

[Jose Jones]

Apparently (according to my Kiwi mate) the New Zealand system is the "fairest" and best.  I think you still have an individual elected member of parliament for your seat, but then there is a bit of PR involved so that MPs from a party's list then also get elected based on percentage of vote across the whole country.  Think that might be right, although @General Dryness can probably tell me its a load of bollocks.

Not sure if/how they do an Upper House though.

 

In the UK, you obviously need to get rid of the house of Lords and replace with an elected upper chamber.  I'd also have an elected "Queen" as head of state.  Needs to be a gay fella or Queen Latifah, or one of the ex-members of Queen.

[PestiRed]

54 minutes ago, Jose Jones said:

Apparently (according to my Kiwi mate) the New Zealand system is the "fairest" and best.  I think you still have an individual elected member of parliament for your seat, but then there is a bit of PR involved so that MPs from a party's list then also get elected based on percentage of vote across the whole country.  Think that might be right, although @General Dryness can probably tell me its a load of bollocks.

Not sure if/how they do an Upper House though.

 

In the UK, you obviously need to get rid of the house of Lords and replace with an elected upper chamber.  I'd also have an elected "Queen" as head of state.  Needs to be a gay fella or Queen Latifah, or one of the ex-members of Queen.

Exact system that Orban put into Hungary a few years back and he’s built an elected dictatorship out of it

[Jose Jones]

5 minutes ago, PestiRed said:

Exact system that Orban put into Hungary a few years back and he’s built an elected dictatorship out of it

Didn't realise he was gay.

[Mudface]

2 hours ago, Jose Jones said:

Didn't realise he was gay.

He loves the cock. Hungary for it, you might say.

[AdamD]

I lived in NZ for 8 years and as I saw it the main problem was that the minor parties who got over the threshold ended up being the king makers and therefore had disproportionate leverage compared to their share of the vote. The MPs are equally as useless as our lot. On the one occasion I had the need to contact mine for a legitimate reason he was fucking useless. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

5 hours ago, PestiRed said:

I think that the type of model that you’re proposing would involve getting rid of the monarchy and it doesn’t seem like Britain is ready for that just yet

It's fair to say that I would never advocate a system that involved keeping them. I'm hoping that once Brenda's gone, with the growing number of people who want rid will increase even further.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

I can't help thinking that the people who are now - and those have been for years - campaigning for PR aren't motivated primarily by a love of real democracy, but by a desire to get more bums on seats from their party.

[Jose Jones]

16 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

I can't help thinking that the people who are now - and those have been for years - campaigning for PR aren't motivated primarily by a love of real democracy, but by a desire to get more bums on seats from their party.

It would be interesting to see what would happen should PR occur. Would the same voting patterns still happen?

Would Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, SNP band together to keep the Tories from ever being in power. Or would the conservative vote go up as voters compensated? Would there be a rise of a right wing populist party?

 

The Lib Dems would obviously try to position themselves as the sensible centre willing to work with everyone to get into a coalition, but how would that effect their vote? Especially considering the cratering effect the coalition has had on their support.

Would the SNP vote go down? Or would they be able to lever coalition government for another independence referendum?

 

We’ll never find out obviously, unless you can bring in PR and invent a time machine.

[VladimirIlyich]

15 hours ago, Numero Veinticinco said:

Well, only that the public are either mongs or sheep, but that’s a different part of the solution. Also, fire the royals into the sun. 

Correct.

[VladimirIlyich]

26 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

I can't help thinking that the people who are now - and those have been for years - campaigning for PR aren't motivated primarily by a love of real democracy, but by a desire to get more bums on seats from their party.

Probably,well almost definitely. On the flip side,the process needs to change and it wont ever under the tories as they change boundary lines to suit more often than the VAR operators do on LFC offside decisions. While I am not against a well thought out PR system I can't help thinking there are other systems as good or better that don't get mentioned. 

[Arniepie]

1 hour ago, AdamD said:

I lived in NZ for 8 years and as I saw it the main problem was that the minor parties who got over the threshold ended up being the king makers and therefore had disproportionate leverage compared to their share of the vote. The MPs are equally as useless as our lot. On the one occasion I had the need to contact mine for a legitimate reason he was fucking useless. 

I think there is probally more compromise involved but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, as it can temper excess. 

Away from voting I think the whole parliament circus is an utter charade.

All that braying and heckling, it's like a bunch of kids and utterly embarrassing.

As for not being able to call out somebody for lying...its utterly antiquated. 

As for the royals there has certainly.been a pr push with..I don't even know their names,the ones who have just been to Jamaica and they seem quite popular with the doffers.

[dockers_strike]

5 hours ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

I can't help thinking that the people who are now - and those have been for years - campaigning for PR aren't motivated primarily by a love of real democracy, but by a desire to get more bums on seats from their party.

Undoubtedly. The smaller parties from the Lib Dems down have little chance under first past the post of having more MPs elected. It normally takes strong tactical voting for the Lib Dems to get an MP elected which is really people voting against what the want.