Comments on: Politics – Wish List – Electoral Reform

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:56:07 +0000

I think you are right, I can’t see any reason in principle why that should not be done, wherever possible, but under the present Government, with power being increasingly centralised to a sycophantic clique around the Prime Minister, all they will ever devolve is blame.

By: Parent2

Parent2 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:54:03 +0000

How about devolving much more authority to local councils – with central government dealing with very litte.

By: Deb

Deb — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:22:02 +0000

As the mother of a will-be-15-on-Tuesday, I’m in agreement with you about the need for recognition of rights and responsibilities earlier, and in a more standardised way. A gradual building of trust and responsibility works within a family, but not in the civic setting – the current system is confusing and incoherent and leads, I think, to young people feeling that they aren’t acknowledged.

Re choosing parties vs people – over here we’re sidelined anyway. Our choice of candidates rarely includes one from any of the major UK parties (and when one does pop up, he has no chance of winning), and so we essentially have no say in which political party forms a UK government.

BTW, the d’Hondt method is used for the NI, Scottish and Welsh legislatures, isn’t it? Perhaps the English could learn to cope

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:57:56 +0000

Alison, for starters, how long do you think it would take you to explain the operation of the D’Hondt method to a random sample of voters?

I like Dennis Skinner, I would vote for him, but doing so means that I would also very likely be voting for some NuLab tosspot too.

As to local representation, I think that a constituency stretching from (East) South West Bedfordshire to North East Norfolk is not going to provide meaningful local MPs, not in the sense I understand local anyway. I very much doubt that the inhabitants of the Isle Of Wight would agree that Oxford is local to them.

This system means that you are voting for parties not people to represent you – one man, one vote – in this case the one man being Webcameron, Farago or Stalin.

By: Jax

Jax — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:24:49 +0000

See, I think we need some form of PR, it seems utterly wrong to me that a candidate (whether strongly linked to the area *or* parachuted in) can be returned with a minority of votes, leaving the majority unrepresented. And at the moment we may technically vote for individuals, but as we've been told before, they toe the party line, so having a named individual representative makes very little difference. .-= Jax´s last blog ..Politics – Wish List – Electoral Reform =-.

By: Alison

Alison — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:20:13 +0000

Why can't we have the sort of PR as practised by the European elections, but based on smaller constituencies, rather than large regions? I don't see why that would make the successful candidates more divorced from their area? .-= Alison´s last blog ..Short week =-.