I'm so confused !.
This Country must be a laughing stock with the time it's taking to sort.
Why is it that the party who only came 3rd is able to hold us all to ransom and decide who runs the Country ?.
It all seems so stupid and I wish they'd get it sorted.
In my simple little world whoever gets most vots is the winner !.
Silver and bronze for the others !.

Under a PR system this sort of wheeler-dealing would happen after every election, and the extremist parties would prosper. For instance, if this last election had been held under PR, the BNP would have 12 seats (they never came higher than third place in any constituency), and Plaid Cymru would have none (they won three seats). The current first-past-the-post system is better than that.

So PR is a bit like those who want to boot Ch's out of the open class and make it easier for them to win? ;-)

Pretty much - a system that favours losers! ;-)

One thing that seems to have been forgotten in the past week, is the state of the economy and the vast national debt. Talk about self interested harlots.

> One thing that seems to have been forgotten in the past week, is the state of the economy and the vast national debt.

The current government is still in power and it should be business as usual until another party says they can form a government - Parliament is not sitting but there is no great loss there! I'm sure they have not forgotten - the news is just not reporting anything else - there were meetings this week about the Euro crisis and Britain was there ( well Alasdair Darling was!)

The current voting system means that a party that nearly 64% of the UK did not vote for may form the next Government - in Scotland 83% of voters did not vote Conservative. Any new voting system would attempt to address this. Most referenda do not count unless more than 50% of voters vote the same way - if it were the same for the government then we would never have one :-)

>in Scotland 83% of voters did not vote Conservative

That brings up the perennial West Lothian problem, and the fact that Scottish MPs can vote on laws that apply only to England and Wales, whereas English and Welsh MPs can't vote on laws that apply only to Scotland.

Exactly and also the fact that its very hard to get a Scottish Secretary when you only have one Scottish MP. The West Lothian question could be easily addressed if Scots, Welsh and Irish MP's simply did not vote for devolved issues in parliament. Its not just law- Scotland always had a different legal system - its also education, NHS etc Remember English MP's cannot vote on devolved issues in Wales or Ireland either.

> The current voting system means that a party that nearly 64% of the UK did not vote for may form the next Government

But you assume that ALL 64% would be against the government :) Some people just can't be bothered to get off their derriere and walk to the polling station/place :) :) :)

Daisy

> BNP would have 12 seats etc

Really!  I haven't been reading up about this - thanks for that info must go and find out more.  That sounds dreadful.  Anyway if we end up with Lab/Liberal and all sorts of extras, chances are we will have a mess and another election soon after. 

> But you assume that ALL 64% would be against the government

No that was from the figures who did vote daisy.

The Conservatives got 36.1% of the total vote, Labour 29% and Lib Dems 23% This shows the full breakdown of votes. Total turnout was only 65% so as many don't care enough to move off the sofa :-)

PR should be the way to govern if the Lib Dems got over 6,000,000 votes and 52 seats how can it be fair that Labour for 8,000,000 and over  200 seats.
If we had a PR elected government we would be used to this type of fairer governance, and each vote would count equally instaed of a labour and conservative vote worth 4 times as much as a Liberal vote!! we are eons behind every other electoral system in the world.

In NZ they have been using it for years its because we voted for change that we have at last got a change to review our antiquated system. I havent noticed that anything has stopped working I still get my bins emptied all schools and hospitals working so why the rush to get a less than voted for shower in?? More votes were voted against them thats why PR is the correct way forward.

> No that was from the figures who did vote daisy

Sorry - agree :) 35% could have vorted any way - we'll never know :) But you also assume that all votes for parties - especally Lib Dems - were actually from voters not voting tactically :) :) Who knows what the figures would actually be if there were no tactical votes :) :) It may not make much difference, but I would think that there are a lot of people who voted Lib Dem were tactical voters :) (and, of course, some Conservative and Labour).

Personally, I think that Scotland should be independent - masters of their own destiny (and good luck) ;) ;) ;)

Daisy

I certainly hope Scotland is not independent while we have the current glorified Councillors in the Scottish Parliament! Of course if we were then most of the oil revenue would come to us too :-D :-D - wonder if they would give us back pay for the last 30 years?

The BBC are currently reporting that 'large holdalls are being loaded into official cars at the rear of number 10" - Can the news get any more trivial than this? 24 hour news has a lot to answer for :-)

> Of course if we were then most of the oil revenue would come to us too   - wonder if they would give us back pay for the last 30 years?

LOL - minus, of course, the Scottish share of the UK government's spending over the same period :) :) (How much would be left ?? :) )

Daisy

i dont agree with OP......in many other countries they have these coalition type governments (thinking of germany, NL etc) and they take weeks and months to get their decisions made after voting. i think wede be considered stupid for rushing into everything within a few days of voting!!

A lot actually I think, remember we do pay taxes here too :-D . If Scotland had been independent then apparently it would have had a very large tax surplus. There is a lot of really interesting reading about what successive governments did to hide the fact that Scotland would be quite rich if it were independent - it seems the SNP's estimates of revenue were far too low, the governments were so worried they hid the report for 30 years! All water under the bridge but something that people forget when complaining about the Barnett formula (for the record NI gets more per head than Scotland as do those in London :-) ). Never mind - looks like we will end up with a Lib Dem Scottish Secretary now :-)

Don't understand these comments at all or the use of Wink Wink. Maybe I have missed something.

Can someone explain tactical voting to me? People have 1 vote - how can it be tactical?

Tactical voting

For example. You support the Lib Dems ideas but don't think they with get in, you think the Tories are likely to get in through majority of votes and know that their only opposition is Labour.  

Tactical vote would be to vote Labour because you would rather have Labour than the Tories yet you actually support the Lib Dems ideas.

Does that make sense? :-)

Tactical voting is where, if the party you support has no chance of winning, you vote for the party that is most likely to stop the one you don't want winning.

But thats daft cos surely if people voted for lib dems they might have actually got in because the support they had this year seemed huge but the votes didnt tally!?

Baffling!

Because they felt that the Lib Dems had no chance of actually getting all in ie a majority so to keep Labour out most votes Tory. But some felt Lib Dems had a chance well 6,000,000 did.

Which brings me back to if 8,000,000 labour voters get 280 odd seats 6,000,000 Lib Dem votes only got 57 seats. Hence the need for political reform.