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Proportional Representation

Psst, I think you forgot the Rothschilds, the Illuminati, them lizard people, Xenu and the Ovaltinies.

Hey!, what about the gnomes of Zurich?, the wombles and the clangers?. I bet George Soros is the soup dragon, you never see them photographed side by side coincidence? I think not.
 
I'm afraid all this is out of date. The real enemy is Bill Gates, the philanthropic bastard, and Big Pharma.
 
Plus, his post would have benefited from 'Wake up, sheeple, FFS!' at the end.

No! Not that...

wake_up_sheeple.png
 
One of the things the Brit contingent in the EU was valued for was our pragmatism and ability to broker deals all sides could live with. I’m reasonably confident we could achieve workable coalition government, though I’d be more confident if we had a better calibre of politician putting the deals together.

So you think there is some innate "je ne sais quoi" in the British public and politicians that would make a system that works badly elsewhere work much better in the UK? PR would result in lots of little parties, squabbling for power, each able to make or break a coalition, just like everywhere else. And make it very difficult, if not impossible, to apply decisive policies because just one or two small parties, with maybe 3 or 4 percent of the vote, would block whatever does not suit their supporters. You mention British pragmatism; but surely this is what has produced the FPTP system. Which is brutal, decisive, and very pragmatic.
 
Italy, which actually operates under a hybrid PR/FPTP electoral system, has had fewer elections than the UK in the last 20 years.

The Netherlands has one of the world's most proportional electoral systems. As a result, at any time there are about six or seven significant political parties in the Netherlands, and a number of smaller groups. All governments are coalitions, and that country is yet to fall apart...

Coalition is the natural situation for a democratic government: flip flopping from strong left to strong right is not a good way of representing an electorate that's mostly in the middle ground.

The "downside" of better representation overall is more MPs for the nastier parties at the fringes, but that representation also robs these groups of the persecution narratives that they thrive on when excluded from parliament.
 
The "downside" of better representation overall is more MPs for the nastier parties at the fringes, but that representation also robs these groups of the persecution narratives that they thrive on when excluded from parliament.

True, but in almost all scenarios the dickhead extremes (fascist, communist etc) balance themselves out under the noise-floor and none get to impact the centre majority. Politics is a bell-curve and the real strength with PR is ideologues never gain outright control. There has to be a broad consensus for anything to get through. It can make things slow-moving and overly cautious, but that is infinitely preferable to the constant flip-flopping and undoing the mess of the last government we see here.
 
True, but in almost all scenarios the dickhead extremes (fascist, communist etc) balance themselves out under the noise-floor and none get to impact the centre majority. Politics is a bell-curve and the real strength with PR is ideologues never gain outright control. There has to be a broad consensus for anything to get through. It can make things slow-moving and overly cautious, but that is infinitely preferable to the constant flip-flopping and undoing the mess of the last government we see here.
Yes. You might also argue people having a say is less important than ensuring the extremes can’t seize the levers of power. So democracy has two functions: one, to represent the interests of the majority of the population; and two, to ensure checks and balances in the system so the demagogues don’t get to work the system to the advantage of a privileged minority. They are two sides of the same coin, and they are not working for the UK at the moment.
 
Off the top of my head, I think there have been more Italian governments than years since the end of WW2.
That's not the point.
The point is, at the moment our government is crap, theirs not so crap. Their government is not foisting a no deal brexit on a populace which has seen through it and no longer wants it, and they haven't killed 65k plus of their populace through a heady brew of malice, profiteering and incompetence.
So yes, swapsies, I'll take Italian, please.
 
So you think there is some innate "je ne sais quoi" in the British public and politicians that would make a system that works badly elsewhere work much better in the UK? PR would result in lots of little parties, squabbling for power, each able to make or break a coalition, just like everywhere else. And make it very difficult, if not impossible, to apply decisive policies because just one or two small parties, with maybe 3 or 4 percent of the vote, would block whatever does not suit their supporters. You mention British pragmatism; but surely this is what has produced the FPTP system. Which is brutal, decisive, and very pragmatic.
And at the moment, not working for the benefit of the country.
 
True, but in almost all scenarios the dickhead extremes (fascist, communist etc) balance themselves out under the noise-floor and none get to impact the centre majority. Politics is a bell-curve and the real strength with PR is ideologues never gain outright control. There has to be a broad consensus for anything to get through. It can make things slow-moving and overly cautious, but that is infinitely preferable to the constant flip-flopping and undoing the mess of the last government we see here.

I have to disagree. The extremes, the rabble rousers with simple, clear slogans that unfortunately appeal to many, draw many votes away from the moderate parties. They then have a say in what the coalition can and cannot do. In the end there is not a broad consensus, but at best an ineffectual compromise. An example: in Israel 85% of the population hates the religious parties, but since they can make or break a coalition, legislation that 85% of the population wants, but is not wanted by the religious minority, is never passed. Italy has a desperate need for radical reforms. It has the slowest legal system in the world, rampant corruption, a mind-numbingly complex bureacracy and tax system. But despite decades of talk, billions of words, nothing effective has ever been done. And let us not forget that it was PR that brought Hitler and Mussolini to power.
 
There would be no gulags... well except for the far right and there should be such already in this country. It disgusts me that there are non!

A not merely benign but benevolent dictatorship has not been tried that I know of. Some Middle East oil rich countries could be the closest in some regards but of course they have huge issues with religious freedoms. Some have (or had) no taxes, free petrol and even free houses! Having more money that the entire nation could possibly spend helps of course:D

Like Bahrain perhaps or maybe not as it has thousands in jail without trial.

A better example of a benign dictator is Salazar who masterminded the modernisation of Portugal from the 1930s to 1980 or so. He was so clever he even got them accepted as one of the founding states of the EU despite countries needing to be democracies.

Or Ataturk who is still held with great affection by most Turkish people.
 
That's not the point.
The point is, at the moment our government is crap, theirs not so crap. Their government is not foisting a no deal brexit on a populace which has seen through it and no longer wants it, and they haven't killed 65k plus of their populace through a heady brew of malice, profiteering and incompetence.
So yes, swapsies, I'll take Italian, please.

I much prefer their weather, cars, food, ski resorts, Venice to Yarmouth, Conte to Johnson but not their electoral system. According to wiki, they have had 61 governments in the 75 years following WW2.
 


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