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Strictly speaking we don't even have party discipline. And indeed very often the coalitions are hammered out by people who personally have recieved the votes of huge chunks of the electorate. Not just the plurality in a district.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
Oh, I'm coming from a "winner takes all" is the natural way of things perspective, am I? Is that why I said "there actually are a few more complex systems which can make that true some of the time, but they're not the standard model"? Or perhaps it's why I said "With certain longstanding partners, or possibly in some ranked-priority voting examples, maybe it can be considered the case that the voting for a party included the predicted coalition partners and their interests but I wouldn't be willing to make assert that as a general principle of parliamentary coalitions," even earlier, hmm?Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
If you want to assume all the complexities and modifications to the the system, not a single one of which is followed by the the majority of parliamentary implementations, than you should perhaps specify ahead of time that you're including all of them rather than just saying "parliament" and taking both our capability to mind-read for granted, but also that naturally any system under discussion will inevitably follow your presumptions on the basis of precisely no given evidence or reason.
I made it very clear what I was discussing Minx. You, OTOH, are apparently aping GGT. Why?
Regarding gin and tonic, that is what FPTP creates. You may have the gin party, or the tonic party, or the pee party and have to come up with some mix therein. You get no say which parties will end up in coalition and have to hope its one you like.
Whereas when you have FPTP the two parties end up being a rather broad church with a big tent to win the election. The Conservatives might say we are the party of gin and tonic while Labour might go out with vodka and coke and you get to decide in advance which you prefer. Unless you get to pick multiple parties I don't see how you vote for both the gin party and the tonic party to ensure they end up together, whereas here you'll see both parties mixture up front.
UKIP seem increasingly determined to tear themselves apart. Perhaps Farage should split off now and create a new party called Nigel's Alliance for Zero Immigration, if he can think of a suitable acronym :D
Interesting article on "Inside the Milibunker" about the delusions of the Labour leadership and what went wrong.
In the category shooting in your own foot; by refusing to take 2000 refugees under a revised Dublin agreement, the UK may find itself stuck with illegal immigrants it can deport under the same said agreement (13.000 last year).Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
The UK has an opt-out from asylum policies and if we took refugees now under EU instructions that's something that could swing the country to Out regrettably. I'd personally be OK with us taking more refugees.
But do you have any source for the claim we'd be stuck with 13k refugees? Or that we'd only be asked to take 2k?
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...plan-criticismQuote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
The last paragraph of that article is about the right to send people back to the first EU country they arrived in. I don't know where I got the number from any longer, but appearantly the UK sent back 13.000 people last year.
No actual negotiations necessary but does Twitter count:Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
Twitter Link
I think you've misread this article then if you think its about 2k people vs 13k.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
This article says that Britain would be taking an immediate 2,309 from 20k known refugees. We would then be taking a share of the on-going "flood of migrants". Our share of this isn't known but it's safe to assume it'd be at least a similar proportion - and it would be on-going. There would also be a long-term shift for redistribution going forwards too. So this 2k is just the tip of the iceberg.
Worth noting too the criteria used to decide where migrants would be allocated too. "Based on population size, national wealth, number of asylum seekers already present and unemployment levels". Hmm can you think of a wealthy nation with a large population, with relatively few asylum seekers currently with low and falling unemployment levels?
Now such criteria make sense on a holistic approach to Europe. Our government is interested in the UK though - and Britain, Ireland and Denmark have an opt out to this. If this was a great deal for Britain, then nobody would care about us opting out. Germany wants this as it would halve their share from what they currently have, now which wealthy low-unemployment nations would be taking that load off Germany?
Clearly it's become unfashionable to say you're conservative to strangers. :oQuote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
Winning. :up:Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
As a reference point of both how far the Lib Dems have fallen - and how completely messed up the BBC can be at times - it has come out that the BBC has registered 200 journalists to attend this years Lib Dem party conference, which translates into 25 BBC journalists per MP. In comparison ITV have registered the names of five journalists.
One interesting side-effect of the strange death of the Lib Dems is that we seem to be officially a two party country again. On BBC's Question Time program (not to be confused with Prime Ministers Questions) the panel was always made up with one representative of the three main parties (Tory, Labour, Lib Dem) and two others (either journalists, activists or minor parties). It took a couple of weeks for reality to sink in but the Lib Dems have lost their permanent seat at the top table and been relegated to the others now. Last night's show had a Tory and Labour MP and three journalists. What's interesting, is that despite a direct reversal in number of MPs the SNP have not gained the Lib Dems lost permanent seat on panels.
We're only a two party country through the distorting effect of FPTP, rather than previously because they were literally only two parties people wanted to vote for. It will be interesting to see whether people continue to vote for third parties at the next election, or give up having realized that it is futile under FPTP.
No we are a two party system as in 98.5% of seats the most popular party was one of the two main parties. That other parties scraped some votes but not the most doesn't make our voting system flawed.
Incidentally our voting system is I believe the one used by more people than any other. Electing the most popular local representative is normal democracy foe billions worldwide.
Did you miss the part where the Tories and Labour got virtually nothing in N. Ireland and Scotland? :noob:
No I missed the part of why I should care ;)
And Tory allies won some in NI.
So it's a 2-party system in England. I suppose it's a 2-party system in Scotland, too, but not the same two parties. :noob:
Could have been. Scotland has become a one party system currently though. Although due to the distorting effect of the voting system in Holyrood they have a four party system there. Whether the Lib Dems manage to survive next year is questionable though.