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The problem is: Conservatives: South, land owners Labour: North, working class Libdem: Students all over the country spread thinly Maybe libdem should c

by axod 16y ago

The problem is: Conservatives: South, land owners Labour: North, working class Libdem: Students all over the country spread thinly Maybe libdem should claim wales as their own and relocate all the libdem supporters there. For all the noise made about libdem in the run up to this election it was surprising just how badly they did. Even their share of the vote was only up 1%.

chunkyslink 16y ago
I would say 22.9% of the votes wasnt too bad. Its the system that makes it look bad.
- axod 16y ago
  Regardless, the winner however you cut it, is the Conservatives. IMHO they should be allowed to form a government. Also, lib dems lost 13 seats they formerly held. If Lib Dem support really was solid, you'd expect them to at least hold on to their seats. They didn't.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    I can think of many ways to cut it that result in either the Conservates not being the winner, or the winner being unknown with the data we have. The obvious one given the recent excitement around the 3rd party is the question "How many people wanted to vote Lib-Dem but thought that would be a wasted vote or worse would only help a party they really didn't want to win (note this works whether the hated party is Labour or Conservative).
arethuza 16y ago
Labour presumably also has strong support from people employed by the state - most of whom I would not describe as "working class". I suspect that this explains why the Labour share of the vote seems to have grown strongly in Scotland.
- zeemonkee 16y ago
  That's very true. Almost every one of my friends and family in Scotland work in some part of the public sector - NHS, education, local government etc. I'm unusual in being self-employed/private sector. Scotland has become a socialist country almost by stealth - a combination of government investment/bribery (Labour wanting to ensure a healthy majority north of the border, to keep the nationalist vote down) and death of traditional industries. In Edinburgh you might see more jobs in the financial, media and other sectors, but that is not the case for much of Scotland.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    A lot of those finance jobs are in RBS - and who owns that now? :-|
- axod 16y ago
  Perhaps Conservatives should push for independence for Scotland - get rid of those non-Conservative voters ;)
  - arethuza 16y ago
    I'm sure that has already occurred to them :-(
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  The shift to Labour in Scotland is due to tactical voting against a Conservative majority. If Labour was expected to win easily overall then Lib-Dems and the Scottish Nationalist Party would have done much better. Basically you can't look at votes which were cast with some understanding of how the system works, and pretend they were cast without that knowledge.
henrikschroder 16y ago
...or scrap the current First-past-the-post system and do it like the rest of the EU countries do with either of these systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_method
- gaius 16y ago
  The way it works in the UK is that you vote for the person you want to represent you - your MP - and the party with the majority of MPs forms the government. Your MP represents your constituency - your local area. PR is a bad system because it decouples the government from local representatives. Instead you get a list of people none of whom may have any knowledge of or interest in issues that affect your local area.
  - axod 16y ago
    Also there are issues such as BNP would have got 6 seats under Proportional Representation - extremist parties get representation in government.
    - mantas 16y ago
      And..? BNP are not extremists. They're not blowing up Brussel to get UK out of EU. It's democracy and free speech after all.
  - GFischer 16y ago
    In my country (Uruguay) we have proportional representation by region - each region has a number of allotted representatives, and they are assigned with proportional representation. So they have knowledge of issues in the (broad) area.
    - gaius 16y ago
      OK, but how big is a "region"? My constituency is the town I live in. The point of the UK system is that a local level you are voting for the individual person you want to represent you. Sure they are usually a member of a party, but they don't necessarily have to have a history of toeing the party line. This does create some dilemmas (e.g. if you like your local Labour candidate but hate Gordon Brown, which seems to be a common theme). But on the whole, the local link is important. The candidate from any local area is likely to be just like the citizens who live there. That's how to get true representation.

by axod 16y ago

chunkyslink 16y ago

I would say 22.9% of the votes wasnt too bad. Its the system that makes it look bad.

axod 16y ago
Regardless, the winner however you cut it, is the Conservatives. IMHO they should be allowed to form a government. Also, lib dems lost 13 seats they formerly held. If Lib Dem support really was solid, you'd expect them to at least hold on to their seats. They didn't.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  I can think of many ways to cut it that result in either the Conservates not being the winner, or the winner being unknown with the data we have. The obvious one given the recent excitement around the 3rd party is the question "How many people wanted to vote Lib-Dem but thought that would be a wasted vote or worse would only help a party they really didn't want to win (note this works whether the hated party is Labour or Conservative).

arethuza 16y ago

Labour presumably also has strong support from people employed by the state - most of whom I would not describe as "working class". I suspect that this explains why the Labour share of the vote seems to have grown strongly in Scotland.

zeemonkee 16y ago
That's very true. Almost every one of my friends and family in Scotland work in some part of the public sector - NHS, education, local government etc. I'm unusual in being self-employed/private sector. Scotland has become a socialist country almost by stealth - a combination of government investment/bribery (Labour wanting to ensure a healthy majority north of the border, to keep the nationalist vote down) and death of traditional industries. In Edinburgh you might see more jobs in the financial, media and other sectors, but that is not the case for much of Scotland.
- arethuza 16y ago
  A lot of those finance jobs are in RBS - and who owns that now? :-|
axod 16y ago
Perhaps Conservatives should push for independence for Scotland - get rid of those non-Conservative voters ;)
- arethuza 16y ago
  I'm sure that has already occurred to them :-(
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
The shift to Labour in Scotland is due to tactical voting against a Conservative majority. If Labour was expected to win easily overall then Lib-Dems and the Scottish Nationalist Party would have done much better. Basically you can't look at votes which were cast with some understanding of how the system works, and pretend they were cast without that knowledge.

henrikschroder 16y ago

...or scrap the current First-past-the-post system and do it like the rest of the EU countries do with either of these systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_method

gaius 16y ago
The way it works in the UK is that you vote for the person you want to represent you - your MP - and the party with the majority of MPs forms the government. Your MP represents your constituency - your local area. PR is a bad system because it decouples the government from local representatives. Instead you get a list of people none of whom may have any knowledge of or interest in issues that affect your local area.
- axod 16y ago
  Also there are issues such as BNP would have got 6 seats under Proportional Representation - extremist parties get representation in government.
  - mantas 16y ago
    And..? BNP are not extremists. They're not blowing up Brussel to get UK out of EU. It's democracy and free speech after all.
- GFischer 16y ago
  In my country (Uruguay) we have proportional representation by region - each region has a number of allotted representatives, and they are assigned with proportional representation. So they have knowledge of issues in the (broad) area.
  - gaius 16y ago
    OK, but how big is a "region"? My constituency is the town I live in. The point of the UK system is that a local level you are voting for the individual person you want to represent you. Sure they are usually a member of a party, but they don't necessarily have to have a history of toeing the party line. This does create some dilemmas (e.g. if you like your local Labour candidate but hate Gordon Brown, which seems to be a common theme). But on the whole, the local link is important. The candidate from any local area is likely to be just like the citizens who live there. That's how to get true representation.