AV poll coming up on the 5th...

[PotGuy]

What do you all think?

I got a rather vitriolic letter through against AV, saying that it was going to cost £250m, the equivalent cost of 5000000 nurses, teachers, 3000000000 baby incubators and the usual rubbish.

As far as I am concerned, it is the closest to PR we are going to get for another 40 years and it should be taken with both hands. Once things go back to Labour/Tory normality it will be an impossibility.

I recall the 1997 Labour PR pledge too

 

[floppybootstomp]

Uh-oh, politics, we be on dodgy ground

I had that same leaflet as well, plus enough literature on the subject to keep a paper mill going for a week.

This is purely my POV but all PR will do is allow fringe nutter parties like the BNP a chance to get their tainted foot in the door.

I'll be voting no.

As for elections I either don't vote anymore or vote for one of the fringe nutter parties just to try and shake up the main contenders a little.

Labour have been voted in here in Greenwich since the Romans ruled so it doesn't make any odds anyway.

Why don't I vote?

Warning - political POV forthcoming....

Labour died the day Tony Blair walked into 10 Downing Street.

The Lib-Dems are two faced and mould their policies to suit whichever way public opinion is flowing.

I hate the Greens with a vengenance cos they want me to go without a set of wheels and they don't have any clear cut policies other than to hug trees.

All BNP members should be placed in sacks laden with bricks and thrown into the nearest river.

And I won't vote Tory in principle, me dad would turn in his grave if I ever done that.

Told ya this could get messy...

 

[darkangel]

U

Labour have been voted in here in Greenwich since the Romans ruled so it doesn't make any odds anyway.

The exact reason why I have voted Yes

 

[Urmas]

Victor D'Hondt
1841-1901

 

[Anon_F]

vote for one of the fringe nutter parties

The Offical Monster Raving Loonies.
Sadly we dont have them standing at the local or the general election.
I live in a Tory safe-seat, i wonder should i stand next time!

 

[floppybootstomp]

The way I see it - and I may be wrong - is how can you get much fairer, much simpler, than the candidate with the most votes wins?

Simple and fair, in my POV.

The PR method of voting has been pioneered mostly by the Lib Dems as they've been so cheesed off at getting a fair percentage of the whole nation's votes that they want to bend the rules in the hope of gaining a few more seats.

And the method proposed is messy and could give some very unpredictable results, an election within a constituency could become very much like spinning a wheel of fortune.

Lemme see, a candidate needs 50% of prime votes to win outright. Any percentage below that and all the second votes are added up etc etc until, after a long and to my mind messy procedure, a winner is declared. Who that winner will be will be dependent on the extra votes you give after your first vote.

Nah, to my mind it's just sour grapes on the Lib-Dems part and they're trying to bend the rules to their favour.

One voter, one vote, first past the post wins - simple.

I will acknowledge the fact that the current system of voting isn't perfect, particularly when the Tories under Thatcher decided to shift a fair few of the constituency boundaries in their own favour.

I also note that the situation atm is mostly a two horse race and that's probably not ideal but that's the way it is. At least we have more choice of parties than they do in The States.

And on a personal comment, I thought Blair was bad, cruel and unjust but the Cameron Clegg Glimmer Twins partnership makes him look like a sweet hearted Teddy Bear. Such is life

 

[nivrip]

I read an article by a bloke involved in counting votes after elections. He was staggered by the number of people who found it difficult to put one cross in one box to register their vote.

He was terrified to think of the mayhem that will ensue if people have to put more than one cross in more than one box and reckons that the number of spoilt voting papers will skyrocket.

For reasons other than the above I will be voting "No" to AV.

 

[nivrip]

Victor D'Hondt
1841-1901

For those of you who, like me, have no idea who Victor D'Hont is/was see THIS LINK

Thanks Urmas.

 

[Me__2001]

All i'll say is, its a first past the post system to decide whether we should change it or not

 

[muckshifter]

What do you all think?

I got a rather vitriolic letter through against AV, saying that it was going to cost £250m, the equivalent cost of 5000000 nurses, teachers, 3000000000 baby incubators and the usual rubbish.

As far as I am concerned, it is the closest to PR we are going to get for another 40 years and it should be taken with both hands. Once things go back to Labour/Tory normality it will be an impossibility.

I recall the 1997 Labour PR pledge too

what the heck are you on about ... AV, thought it was something to do with anti-virus

If it's politic, I'll close the thread now.

 

[Ian]

I postal voted yes this time, although I couldn't give much of a monkeys which system we use to be honest.

Until very recently I was firmly in the "no" camp, however a couple of things changed my mind - firstly, it would be in a candidates interest to try and get as wide an appeal as possible (which may not be the case at the moment). For example, an area I used to live at University had a roughly even split between labour and lib dems (but it will be the same in other areas with differing parties). The Labour candidate would almost exclusively target the local working class families, the lib-dems targetted the student vote - hoping to win enough of one demographic to get voted in. Ideally, they'd be forced to try and gain more of the overall vote if things changed to AV.

I'm not fussed whichever way the vote goes (and I strongly suspect it will be a "no" vote) - but thought this may be slightly better. I doubt it would make much of a difference except in a few marginal seats - people will just change tactics to get the result they are after.

BTW, I know this is a politics thread - which can often get heated, but as it's not about party politics I can't see the harm .

 

[historian]

For those of you who, like me, have no idea who Victor D'Hont is/was see THIS LINK

Thanks Urmas.

So apart of Mayonnaise on chips and Hercule Poirot,we now have Victor D`Hont.
Looks like Belgium is becoming famous.I could be wrong now.
historian

 

[floppybootstomp]

I had my first ever beer in Belgium at Ostende when I was 14 years old

Belgium?

Um - Bruges is nice and they made a film named 'Bruges', Clogs, believe it or not and..... chocolate

And that's about it, I think.

 

[nivrip]

So apart of Mayonnaise on chips and Hercule Poirot,we now have Victor D`Hont.
Looks like Belgium is becoming famous.I could be wrong now.

Two other famous Belgians are Audrey Hepburn ( yes, I was surprised too ) and Adolph Sax, the inventor of the saxophone.

And Belgium now holds the record for the country with the longest spell of not having a government. Ahhhh...... back to politics.

 

[floppybootstomp]

I had my first ever beer in Belgium at Ostende when I was 14 years old

Actually, thinking about it, I was 13 years old

In a little bar in a cobbled back street this old fella praised the Brits for their WW2 involvment and bought us all (6 of us) a bottle of Pils or something similar each.

I have a photo of it somewhere.

That old fella made me an alcoholic, I've told my social worker this but all she ever says is 'That's not true, would you like a prescription for some methylated spirits?'

Funny old world.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Politics:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-13213642

Woohoo! I'm off to Margate

 

[bootneck02]

I am hoping that with VR at least it may make politicians actually fight for your vote because in safe seats they do not bother because they know that they will win even if they get less than 50% of the vote. Now with AV it will be up to the voters to carry on as they do now and only vote for one candidate or put preferences 1, 2 3 or4. so the decision of who is elected will be wholly in the hands of the voters which will put them on their toes. I was brought up as a Tory voter became a Liberal voter and after the debacle at the last election will never vote for them again. From now on I think I will be a floating voter. Yes I will be voting at the coming local election election but who for is at the moment a mystery because at the moment I have had not had any information from any party.

 

[PotGuy]

The good thing about politics threads is that everyone has an opinion.

Good to see some varied opinion here. Here is my opinion (!)

Personally, I think it is a disgrace we do not use absolute PR. FPTP is only democratic if you have two parties, because with more than two parties the winning party will never, ever have an absolute majority vote, yet will receive all the power! It is a two-party system, and when both major parties have lost their distinct ideologies and floated into the centre, it becomes pointless having a vote at all.

AV is a complete cop out and will make very little difference to anything, but perhaps it will move us just a step closer to proper PR. Most countries in Europe use proper PR, and while there are usually marginal increases in the votes for the extreme right it is nothing to get worked up about. Plus, is that not a fair reflection of the vote?

All we can choose from at the moment are two major parties, with no political leanings, who simply say what they need to say to get in power and then try and float by the next four years without getting into too much trouble so they can get re-elected. I doubt most of them could tell you the price of a loaf of bread, that's for sure.

AV at least gives some sort of power to the smaller parties. British politics is pretty much an oligarchy in my mind, and the sooner it is opened up the sooner that we will see a fairer reflection of democracy, rather than a reflection of a protective electoral system.

Bit long, but my two cents on the matter, for what its worth. Politics isn't half long winded.


Edit: Had to laugh this morning as an anti-AV guy started banging on about how fair and democratic FPTP is. On the worldwide democracy rankings, we only just scrape above the 75% needed to be counted as a democracy, rather than a semi-democracy like Italy. The majority of votes outside of a few choice marginal seats don't count for anything at all! Might as well not bother turning up.

 

[itsme]

All politicians are like bananas.

They grow up being green, then change to yellow, and not a straight one in sight.



NO.

 

[bootneck02]

They all talk with forked tongue