Way of the Rodent

Yeah, only the official no campaign will be flinging all the shit at Clegg :) .

Yeah.

Yeah, thanks for only taking a minute break down my naive hope Dio ;)

You're welcome. I really seem to have my cynical head on today. Can't quite see why, everything seems to be going fairly well generally.

I think this is the only reason Clegg is working with the Torys. Once they get AV through the coalition will probably start to fracture. Hence Cameron will do as much as possible to stop it and Milliband will do much to support it.

I get the feeling that the Tories will have been doing everything they can to torpedo the idea from the start so they can force a re-election. Since everyone is blaming Clegg (bizarrely) for all the stuff they've been up to, the Tories will walk an election now.

I'd really love to see PR happen tho. Compromise is what politics should be about.

RexxFiend said:

I get the feeling that the Tories will have been doing everything they can to torpedo the idea from the start so they can force a re-election. Since everyone is blaming Clegg (bizarrely) for all the stuff they've been up to, the Tories will walk an election now.

I'd really love to see PR happen tho. Compromise is what politics should be about.

Probably because I voted LibDem but anyway... I reckon Clegg would be in a strong position in a new election. Real chance to rise up and say 'You know what, stop fucking whinging: if you'd have voted us in back then, you would have got the things we promised but you didn't. So lets sort that this time, yeah?'

I'm still hugely buzzing from the emergence of genuine government-level three party politics in Britain. I'd hate to lose that.

That is so horrendously closed-minded. Never vote a particular way again? Not in twenty years? Or after a change in leadership? Daft.

I'm just wary of anybody who rules stuff out forever because of one thing/person/circumstance they are unhappy with. It's like the Catholics in NI saying that they can't talk to the British because to do so is to forget 1466 (actually heard that in a debate on the radio - the Minister at the time replied, very bravely I thought, 'Then you are part of the problem, madam'.)

I'm sure there are Protestant equivalents to that too. In fact I know there are.

Also - all dates should be assumed to be wrong :)

I can't blame the Lib Dems at all for "going back on their word". They lost. Quite badly. They wouldn't have been able to implement their policies in opposition, either.

But that's the point, they aren't going to get any form of PR (since AV is not in any way PR and they're going to lose the referendum anyway not least because they've made themselves so astoundingly unpopular for the aforementioned reasons).

As you say, I could perhaps have supported their recent behaviour had they achieved a major step forward by actually moving us on to a much more proportional voting system, then resigning en masse to force an election and introducing proper hung parliament politics. But they haven't.

I think the number of people who really care about these things are measured in a few % of the electorate. The rest will follow Rupert's orders as usual.

Jesus, I really am on a cynicism overload today. Sorry. I'm not feeling 100%.

On the face of it, and following the points made on the 10 O'Clock Show last night for example, it seems that AV would make very little difference in general, and certainly would have barely altered the outcome of the previous election. So I guess in the back of my mind is... why bother changing the process to AV if it makes little difference, and will require more work on the part of the electorate to... you know... think, as opposed to blindly vote for a party all their lives like many people do?

Actually that last part is hopeful aspiration but I doubt it will come to much... too many people already don't know much about the ONE person they vote for, let alone all the candidates to accurately list them in some sort of order.

I don't think it's a case of being thick or crass, and I wasn't suggesting that. Most that too few people in my opinion actually take an active role in caring about the democratic process, and many that do turn up to vote merely stick an X against the candidate for "their" party. Whether that is a malaise due to the inherent way the process currently operates and they would vote differently if there was a genuine chance that a party they do properly support could get representation, or because of an attitude of "I'll never vote for party Y", is open to discussion.

Aren't the people who don't care enough the ones who don't vote?

Mayhem said:

I don't think it's a case of being thick or crass, and I wasn't suggesting that. Most that too few people in my opinion actually take an active role in caring about the democratic process, and many that do turn up to vote merely stick an X against the candidate for "their" party. Whether that is a malaise due to the inherent way the process currently operates and they would vote differently if there was a genuine chance that a party they do properly support could get representation, or because of an attitude of "I'll never vote for party Y", is open to discussion.

So just to get this clear: you reckon that when you go to vote, you make your choice after a reasoned and intellectual process. But when lots of other people do it, they're blindly marking a bit of paper because its a vote for 'their' party?

Patent nonsense Matty-boy. In my lifetime alone we've had Conservative governments, Labour governments and a coalition government. We've had wild, HUUUUUUGE, swings in popularity for one party or another. Local councils change hands like a rent boy round at Jims when he's got the Sunday League team over. Somebody is changing their mind from time to time.

Maybe there are a few habitual voters but I would lay down good money that it's far, far, far fewer than you seem to believe. Most people have far more ability to reason and choose than you're giving them credit for.

I think mandatory voting would be an excellent thing: you want stuff off the state? The minimum requirement is that you take part in the democratic processes of that state.

And, yeah going back to your point: you may have heard people say they'd die if the saw the other party get in locally/nationally etc. And maybe some of those people are saying such things without having come to that conclusion through a rational process. Tiny, tiny number though - the simple process of swing proves that. But above all, you're suggesting that there are a lot of people voting without thought and I find that pretty narrow-minded.

I don't think people are thick..but they are easily manipulated and they like to support their 'team'. People do regular things, buy the same paper, listen to the same radio station, watch the same program all through their lives.

[ Aside: That's very slick -- select some text on the page and click the "Quote" popup. Anyway... ]

Koworld said: But above all, you're suggesting that there are a lot of people voting without thought and I find that pretty narrow-minded.

I'm prepared to believe it though. At the risk of coming across as incredibly middle-class, I was in a taxi for about 70 minutes on Tuesday. For most of the duration the driver had it tuned to the LBC James Whale show.

Now, granted, he's there to provoke. But I'm listening along as he spouts the most ludicrous, inconsistent, populist claptrap, while contradicting himself every few minutes ("We shouldn't be paying 2.5M to shut down the ID cards scheme ... The ID scheme would never have worked ... We should have kept it running ... We've already paid for it so far ... I don't mind paying for that") and the taxi driver's making various approving comments at different points. I despair.

I'm not arguing that there should be a test before voting, or anything like that, and I know that this is but one data point. But I have no problem believing that a significant minority, perhaps even the majority of voters, are ill-informed and/or thoughtless about the issues they're voting for.

But then perhaps that isn't too surprising, given the soundbite nature of politics these days. Where is there any widely-watched programme or read magazine where these informed conversations might be happening, or at least be seeded?

Note, incidentally, that I'm writing this from a country which has a much more direct form of democracy through regular referenda (I encourage you to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland) which is not necessarily a panacea. For example, women only got to vote at the Federal level 40 years ago, and recently voted to ban the construction of minarets by 57.5% of the voters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_controversy_in_Switzerland).

The latter.

nik said:

At the risk of coming across as incredibly middle-class, I was in a taxi for about 70 minutes.

I think you're safe. On balance, most middle class types facing a 70 minute journey, would be in the Zaffira.

That's the dynamic Celtic Tiger roaring in him, right there :(

I forgot. Great to see Michael Heseltine on Question Time last night. My favourite Tory. Everybody seemed a bit stunned when he suggested Thatcher's biggest U-Turn was going to war in the Falklands.

Cor you're all a bunch of depressing cynics :)

It should be the responsibility of politicians (and probably is) to 'improve' culture and society that on average people become more perceptive.

PR, well I think overall I'd still rather have it over the UK system - but it does tend to lead to lots of coalitions like the one you find yourselves with at the minute, and independents holding governments to ransom over the state of the roads in their region.