Fair Votes (16)

I've not actually paid any attention to the new voting system malarkey. I'll find out which one the Liberals want, and then I'll fight tooth and nail for the other option, and that's all there is to it. The Tories are evil and inept, but at least they pretty much wear their evil and ineptitude on their rosettes as a badge of honour. The Lib Dems have carried out a proper bit of deception to get into power and that I find more offensive than just the run of the mill Tory evil.

The kicker for me is the students. I mean for a government stacked with Lib Dems to fuck over the students, that's just sociopathic. It's biting the hand that feeds them taken to an almost insane degree. The cynicism of that move just makes me sick. Because the students, bless 'em, never saw it coming. They were just innocent youths who voted for a party that made them a promise. And then that party fucked them, then cut the Police loose on them. Lib Dems were in power and children got clubbed by the Met in the streets of London because Clegg broke a promise.

So yeah, whatever the Lib Dems want, fuck them.

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

Edited 5 Mar 11, 10:59 PM by Doghouse_Reilly

I am also no longer interested in party politics and only go to the polling station to spoil my vote, as a protest.

Something along the lines of, "Whoever you vote for the Government always get in".

However, never was that so evident as with the recent rise of Nick Clegg, which will equal the recent demise of the Liberal Democrat Party.

I thought my days of standing on polling stations were over. But if Nick Clegg is still standing in Sheffield, one thing I guarantee, I'll be in Sheffield come election day, standing on a polling station and working for whichever party is closest behind him.

I used to be a Liberal Democrat councillor, imagine how shite I feel. It's like finding out your child is the bully in the school.

I've come to like Sheffield as well, since attending the South Yorkshire Munch, still... they... like the rest of us... deserve better.

Az me shloft mit hint, shtayt men oyf mit flay : or, Quien con perros se acuesta, con pulgas se levanta.
Meaning ~ If you lie down with the dogs, you get up with the fleas.

Edited 6 Mar 11, 1:20 AM by Black0rchid

I feel a bit sorry for em tbh. At the time the electorate was screaming about the injustice of a 20% party having too much influence. Six months later, the Clegotronics are slated for not sticking up a fight against the student fees - something threat 80% of the electorate voted for. Talk about rocks and hard places. The nation voted Tory, and now we are whining because we got, er, Tory, but transferencing all of our anger into the party centre.

I'll vote for anything that makes the system less party political.

And all men kill the thing they love, By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

Edited 6 Mar 11, 2:27 AM by Attitude_Adjuster

Thats just it, 'the nation' didn't vote Tory. In fact so few people voted Tory there was no overall majority. So failing to deliver a majority government under the first past the post system they asked the Lib Dems to join them and prop up the electoral system it had never believed in or supported. The Lib Dems should have told them to feck off. They should have said, "For years we've complained about this system when it was unfair to us, and you didn't give a shite... now its unfair to you you want us to prop you up - and guess what, we're going to do it".

Az me shloft mit hint, shtayt men oyf mit flay : or, Quien con perros se acuesta, con pulgas se levanta.
Meaning ~ If you lie down with the dogs, you get up with the fleas.

Hmmm. I've always felt that voting was the one weak link in democracy

• On the one hand, there was a marvellous article in Scientific American way back in the 1970's, which took every voting system then proposed and showed how quite simple examples could be constructed which ranked two or more candidates out of a larger pool in the opposite order to which the majority of the electorate actually chose them.
• On the other, you have Martin Rosenbaum at the BBC constructing an example referendum in which, depending on which system you use to count the votes, that system wins.

On the whole, it seems that democracy works best in this country when we do it the same way the Athenians did it - reaching decisions is a duty and not something you delegate to a stranger, the decision makers are chosen at random, and elaborate steps are taken to randomise the choice so that no parties or voting cliques form. Where does that happen, you ask? In the jury system in the courts.

Regarding the specifics of AV vs. "first past the post", I can see a few reasons to vote "No" in the referendum:

• It will lead to an inevitable increase in negative campaigning. For each candidate, the biggest imperative will be to ensure that their closest rival comes bottom on as many ballot papers as possible.
• Each MP will have been elected by a larger number of people who don't care so much for his policies. Each individual constituent's power to lobby him on non-partisan policies will likely be reduced. (Yeah, I know it's already practically zero, but one can live in hope.)
• It has been said that AV will lead to more coalition governments, and that this is A Good Thing. That may or may not be true, but not for as long as our politicians, during an election campaign, refuse point blank to answer press and voter questions about what they would do in the event of a coalition, as all major and most minor party leaders did in 2010.
• The closing argument in Mr Clegg's press conference to launch the "Yes" campaign was that "research" (actually, speculation, since the data, by definition, isn't available because it was never collected) showed that in every general election since 1992 (I think it was 1992), AV would have produced the same government as we actually got. To which the only conceivable response is "so why are we bothering?"

Indeed, but there was no *other* clear mandate, and a perception (rightly or wrongly), that the nation was in a mess and we didn't have time to faff around having a 2nd election, nor any evidence that doing so would have provided a clear mandate. IMO the only thing that would have caused a significant shift was brown resigning - but that would have been best part of a year.

Again - what is it that the LD's actually did, that wasn't proposed by either a Lab+Con majority or a a Lib+Con majority (ie if you had an open vote, what would have been different)?

My ire is directed to labour, and the former blairites/brownites who tried to cling to power despite their obvious unpopularity in the polls.

And all men kill the thing they love, By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

I think the unmitigated catastrophe of Tory rule is testament to just how underrated Brown was. We would have been okay if was in charge now. He would have borrowed more, maintained public services, the economy would have been growing now rather than shrinking, and we'd have been able to worry about debts another time. National debt is a funny thing, it's not like personal debt, the IMF won't send a bunch of bailiffs round. So fuck it, take the debt, keep the economy running. The Tory plan to annihilate public services is taking what's left of the economy with it. Couple that to a deliberate and spiteful attack on our higher education system and it looks like Britain is gearing up for the future by having an uneducated population of serfs on benefits. Brilliant.

So yeah, whatever the Lib Dems want, deny them. Then destroy them at any ballot box that gives the chance. Tories too, naturally, but it's the Lib Dems who really need to burn for so profoundly and knowingly misrepresenting their intentions.

The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

I so wish I could argue against that, but I can't.

Nick Clegg is taking the whole party down with him and all those jumble sales I helped run in the 80s are now, for nothing.

Az me shloft mit hint, shtayt men oyf mit flay : or, Quien con perros se acuesta, con pulgas se levanta.
Meaning ~ If you lie down with the dogs, you get up with the fleas.

hehe that is such a lib dem way of rasing money it made me smile... til i rembembered my party are working with the sith now.

Nick clegg will always be Jar Jar Binx in my mind now.

commitment is like ham and eggs. the chicken makes a contribution, the pig makes a commitment.

" Yeah . Well I love my cigar but I take it out once in a while " Groucho Marx