SubJeff on 23/4/2010 at 19:51
Do Oxbridge graduates still get 2 votes each? If not, there's an electoral reform I can get behind.
And decided to vote LibDem, just to oust Labour.
Matthew on 23/4/2010 at 22:19
Quote Posted by dethtoll
That said, 646 constituencies in an area as small as the UK seems rather ridiculous to me.
Even worse, I'm pretty sure it's 650 as of this election due to boundary changes.
What's even more bizarre is that Northern Ireland alone gets EIGHTEEN constituencies for about 1.5 million people.
Zygoptera on 23/4/2010 at 23:20
We have 120 MPs. If the UK had the same number of MPs by population you would have around 1800 MPs. Worse, our PM is paid more than Barack Obama as, iirc, are the leader of the opposition and the entire front bench cabinet.
*Zaccheus* on 25/4/2010 at 10:19
Yeah our First-Past-The-Post voting system is crazy. I'm glad to see the Lib Dems on 30% but looking at how few seats they'd then get makes me a sad panda.
Mathmatically, if each constituency had 4 candidates, and each candidate got around 25% of the votes, then one party could win over 50% of the seats by getting just over 12.5% of the votes.
Mind you I'm not convinced the Single Transferable Vote is going to help smaller parties to win many seats. I'd rather have a system which guarantees that, say, 8% of the votes = 8% of the seats.
Aerothorn on 26/4/2010 at 17:15
Incidentally, I was reading the (
http://freedom.libdems.org.uk/the-freedom-bill/full-text-of-the-freedom-bill/) Freedom Bill and was surprised that it made no concessions to freedom of speech. I know from my time in Britain that freedom of expression is less of a political and popular concern there than it is here, but is the left actively against it or are all the parties on the same page?
SD on 26/4/2010 at 17:53
???
I wish I knew what you meant. Do we have a problem with freedom of speech here that we don't know about?
Brian The Dog on 26/4/2010 at 20:29
Freedom of speech isn't really an issue here, it's not enshrined in a written constitution so people don't really worry about it. There's been a few examples (protestors on Parliament Square for instance), but we're more worried about fairness than freedom of speech - which would explain why most of the parties emphasised "Fairness for all" in their televised debates.
I actually voted today - I have a postal vote since I can't be bothered to cross the road on polling day and vote normally. Unbeknown to me, it's also a local council election as well, so I voted in that as well. Not that either will make much difference either way, my MP has a majority of 10,000.
casalor on 28/4/2010 at 13:57
Gordon Brown auditions for 'The Thick of it' in this (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8649042.stm) bbc news video.
It may be that in time this will be the moment that Labour lost a lot of votes in this election regardless of the rights or wrongs of his actions. His body language in the Jeremy Vine radio programme shows that he knew he'd dropped a major bollock.
D'Juhn Keep on 28/4/2010 at 21:03
I for one can't wait for this to be disected, analysed and run into the ground in every single paper for the next week
