(no subject)

[chess]

For those commenters on my other post who are worried about the BNP getting in under PR, I recommend the fifth section of this thoughtful blog post:

http://www.quirksmode.org/politics/blog/archives/2010/05/thoughts_on_the.html

(In general it's quite an interesting comparison of the UK system to an established PR system...)

Comments

[evilwillow.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that, very insightful.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks. That was really interesting!

[jaq.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting discussion, thanks.

I tend to agree with his assessment of the BNP. There is another reason they are unlikely to get much traction though. While the Netherlands and Israel use PR systems which treat the whole country as one constituency, that is quite unusual and is unlikely to happen in the UK (if we ever get reform. Hmm.) We would more likely have regional constituencies, which has a natural effect of raising the threshold small parties have to meet to get members in.

[sath.livejournal.com]

Worried? I thought the point of democracy was that everyone gets a say? Why should we be worried if one party other than the main three actually manages to get a seat or 2? Wouldn't that be actually... FAIR.?

[chess]

Quite. I was responding to a couple of commenters on my first post on the subject, who were saying they were worried about PR because it would mean the BNP would get seats.

[sath.livejournal.com]

Sorry for assuming it was your view, I've just been totally annoyed by peoples attitude towards them for ages. It's as if freedom of speech and democracy is only for certain people and everyone else has to be quiet. But yeah sorry it just gets to me.

[chess]

Yes - I hope the edit to my post has made it a bit clearer?

[sath.livejournal.com]

Yes thanks ;)