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Europe IV: The Final Hour

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    Conservative Party donations fall by £3.8m

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      While things look bleak now i cant wait to read all about how crazy things have been in the white house with this lunatic in charge, i bet there willbe some fantastic story's coming out when his term ends.

      History is not going to be kind to him as he makes George Bush look like a frickin genius, his wall will be abandoned well before its finished. The reason for it are unclear and the costs are just far too high. His tariffs will be abandoned the moment he steps out of office too. I'm surprised more of his own party don't want him out too as he's doing massive amounts of damage to there credibility as a party, not to mention the tanking he's doing to the American economy.

      Do the majority of the American public not notice this. Has someone worked out some sort of media formula that makes people believe any old stupid ****. I know most of the UK believe any old **** fed to them as the papers all seem to be owned by massively tax dodging Tory contributors who want to keep the status quo.

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        Originally posted by Lebowski View Post
        Has someone worked out some sort of media formula that makes people believe any old stupid ****.
        Put simply, yes.

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          Worth a watch: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/...mand/68769-001

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            Now would actually be a really good time to push for electoral reform.

            The point of the first-past-the-post system is to mediate politics; it prevents extremist and reactionary elements from entering mainstream politics, and favours centrism; this is because those parties will rarely gain enough votes in order to wield a majority.

            Great idea in theory, but in the information age, this has proven to be a double-edged sword. In the country, we have centrists, leftists, rightists... Even a small number of genuine fringe nutcases, and first-past-the-post keeps them disenfranchised from political discourse.

            That is a big part of what has led to things like Brexit; people feel ignored. Now, those of us who are more moderate, who laugh at those fringe viewpoints, might sit there, happy that we have a system which favours the way things should be, but this whole situation is proving that this is dangerous. It's a powder keg. You can't just slap a gag over people's mouths and expect them to shrug and get on with their day.

            I'm not saying we should tolerate the real fringes of extremism; facism and the like. However, take Brexit. There are a reasonable number of people who dislike the EU and feel we should leave; I'm talking about the segment of people who aren't racist, aren't xenophobes, aren't simply ignorant; the people who had genuine concerns (that came from a good place, even if we disagree with them) and wanted to see them addressed. Those people were not being listened to. This is the same as how we had a segment of the population during the wars of the last decade who favoured a non-interventionist policy, or those who supported pushes for renewable energy or in the 90s. Those people were not being listened to.

            People who are frustrated lash out, and stuff like Brexit is the result.

            It could be said that proportional representation is dangerous, because it gives those people a voice; I think we've seen that it's more dangerous to try and silence them. You end up in the present situation, where people will vote for anyone who seems capable of throwing a proverbial brick through Westminster's window.

            I'm not certain electoral reform will fix everything, but to quote The West Wing - "I'm not saying we're going to lose this war. What I'm saying is that if you send out your army every day, and 50,000 men come back in body-bags, pretty soon you seriously consider changing your tactics."

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              Farage defends Widdecombe over her Gay Cure comments



              -Trump requests a one on one meeting with Gove
              -James Cleverly has dropped out of the Tory Leadership race reducing the field to 12 contenders.
              -At least half of the members of Change UK are said to be preparing to leave the party after it failed to gain ground in the European Elections

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                Originally posted by Asura View Post
                The point of the first-past-the-post system is to mediate politics; it prevents extremist and reactionary elements from entering mainstream politics, and favours centrism; this is because those parties will rarely gain enough votes in order to wield a majority.
                Much of what you write in this post doesn’t seem right to me, coming from someone in a country with a variation on proportional representation but there is a good chance that it’s not seeming right only because we haven’t had the first past the post system pitched to us. Can you explain this idea further? That the point of it is to mediate politics? If votes are split among 9 centrist parties and 1 extremist party, just to throw out an example, the 1 extremist party stands a good chance at getting in, doesn’t it? Even though it represents a small percentage of the views. Or am I completely misunderstanding that?

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                  Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                  Much of what you write in this post doesn’t seem right to me, coming from someone in a country with a variation on proportional representation but there is a good chance that it’s not seeming right only because we haven’t had the first past the post system pitched to us. Can you explain this idea further? That the point of it is to mediate politics? If votes are split among 9 centrist parties and 1 extremist party, just to throw out an example, the 1 extremist party stands a good chance at getting in, doesn’t it? Even though it represents a small percentage of the views. Or am I completely misunderstanding that?
                  Under the current system you get massive amounts of votes disregarded, take the last election if you looked at this map https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2017/results you would think that the majority of the UK voted for conservatories. The actual vote share was 13,636,684 to conservative and 12,877,918 to Labour, you would think that party representation would be similar in the houses of parliament with a vote split between 40% and 42% but with current boundaries it translates as 56 extra seats for the Tory's.

                  The boundary system is open to abuse too and boundary's are often reclassified to give the current in power party a better chance of holding onto areas, you also get disenfranchised voters who feel there vote is a waste of time if there in a safe seat area.
                  Last edited by Lebowski; 04-06-2019, 12:52.

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                    Thank you! Yeah we have similar boundary problems here. How do they work out the majority needed for a win?

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                      Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                      Thank you! Yeah we have similar boundary problems here. How do they work out the majority needed for a win?
                      To clarify, I'm not an expert on electoral reform. I just know the high level stuff; I'm not certain how some of the nitty-gritty aspects are resolved.

                      Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                      Much of what you write in this post doesn’t seem right to me, coming from someone in a country with a variation on proportional representation but there is a good chance that it’s not seeming right only because we haven’t had the first past the post system pitched to us. Can you explain this idea further? That the point of it is to mediate politics? If votes are split among 9 centrist parties and 1 extremist party, just to throw out an example, the 1 extremist party stands a good chance at getting in, doesn’t it? Even though it represents a small percentage of the views. Or am I completely misunderstanding that?
                      By "mediate", I mean that first-past-the-post is designed favour clear majorities. MPs need a majority in their constituencies, then their party needs a majority that is over a certain specified number of seats in the house (effectively 50%).

                      Let's say I start a party - a one-issue party. And for the sake of argument, let's say this issue is to protect net neutrality. We go to an election, and let's pretend I get many votes; I can fall at two hurdles.

                      Firstly, say I got 40% of the overall vote, but I didn't get the majority in any constituency. That means that 40% of the voting public voted for me, but we didn't get any MPs and have basically achieved nothing.

                      Secondly, say I got 40% of the overall vote, but didn't get enough MPs to get past the post, and the party which did get the majority have said that net neutrality isn't an important issue for them. 40% of the public voted for me, but we didn't win, so ultimately that 40% is meaningless.

                      This means that to be voted in, parties are kinda "filtered" by this process. It ensures that they need a majority of votes in a certain pattern in order to succeed. Besides the fact that this can be manipulated by Gerrymandering, it also favours centrism, because the party which passes the post is sort-of "the one which pisses off the least people". Putting forward simple, straightforward, don't-rock-the-boat manifestos is likely to do well under this system for that reason.

                      However, this means UK parties such as the Green Party are unlikely to ever wield any real power, despite the fact that they get a not-insignificant number of votes, nationally. A system of proportional representation would at least give the impression that these smaller parties have some say, and that helps reduce the chance of voters banding together behind the likes of Farage to vote for "protest parties".

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                        Originally posted by Asura View Post
                        Secondly, say I got 40% of the overall vote, but didn't get enough MPs to get past the post, and the party which did get the majority have said that net neutrality isn't an important issue for them. 40% of the public voted for me, but we didn't win, so ultimately that 40% is meaningless.
                        Thanks! Okay so how does this work if there are more than just one other party? Because if you got 40% and the 60% are split among several other parties, you come out a clear winner. How do they work out who gets past the post?

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                          Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                          Thanks! Okay so how does this work if there are more than just one other party? Because if you got 40% and the 60% are split among several other parties, you come out a clear winner. How do they work out who gets past the post?
                          Ah, OK In the UK, you have to get more than 50% of the seats in Parliament. That's what "passing the post" means. It doesn't matter if you get 45% and 11 other parties get 5% each; you still don't have "a majority", because anything you try to do, those 11 parties could band together and stop you.

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                            Originally posted by Asura View Post
                            Ah, OK In the UK, you have to get more than 50% of the seats in Parliament. That's what "passing the post" means. It doesn't matter if you get 45% and 11 other parties get 5% each; you still don't have "a majority", because anything you try to do, those 11 parties could band together and stop you.
                            So then in that case, they have to form a coalition? And then that stops the extremists (kind of, thinking of DUP here...) because the more like-minded parties are more likely to band together? Is that the case? If so, even without proportional representation, it's not all that different to here.

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                              Pretty much, it's why the SNP's refusal to ever have a coalition with Labour is self defeating as it allows Tory dominance to continue

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                                Okay, I get it now. Thanks for the patience, guys. Because we're on different systems, I don't always know the details. That said, I don't always know the details about how it works here either...

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