How could direct democracy work?

[Thomas]

...and yet because I don't think your arguments stack up at this time you continue to put me down as if I demand different treatment.

Im not putting you down in the slightest toots. We are debating , we are disagreeing , and i was replying to your earlier point where you implied i was somehow treating you different because you are female , so i hope i have corrected that and you accept what i have said.

Really Thomas! I am continuing to turn the other cheek as I am taught so will let you have the last word for the moment on that subject.

Toots it isnt about being a martyr or playing last wordism.

There is a clear and logical argument , long in the making , for reforming the westminster two party system. You dont agree , and have said why , and vice versa with me.

Its quite clear and a general consensus that the FPTP two party westminster system you support is an outdated anomaly that many people want reformed.

I refute the argument that there is majority for change.

in this yougov polling tracker over the last two years , polls consistently show only a minority (30% at last poll shown ) support the continuation of FPTP against PR.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/should-we-change-our-current-british-voting-system

and in this article from last year redfield and wilton report that..

In a poll last week, we at Redfield & Wilton Strategies found that a majority (54%) of the UK public would largely support replacing the current First Past the Post voting system with a Proportional Representation system.

So it seems to me you are merely in denial im afraid.

As well as being in a minority.

I guess you hate to be on the losing side ever.

well i dont think anyone likes losing toots , but it happens to us all.

The fact is though in this case i belive you are wrong , and have said why and supplied evidence.

You in turn merely supply blind faith in a system that by all the evidence is disliked by the majority.

I do agree that the state of politics is pretty dire at present but it has more to do with recent history and and the dismay of an electorate who watched in disbelief as too many in Westminster tried to deny the democratic vote and cheat to achieve it.

Eh?

People have been clambering for change for decades if not more. Nothing to do with recent history or brexit , it goes way deeper.

The 1979 scottish devolution referendum fiasco , the simmering resentment for twenty years til labour had to support and implement devolution in the late nineties , the election in 2007 of the first SNP government in scotland , the demands for electoral change across the uk in 2011 and the miserable compromise as it was called over the AV referendum , all predating the antics of westmisnter and the brexit referendum aftermath.

That before we even talk about the irish troubles , ireland leaving the uk in the early twentieth century and so on.

You seem willfully blind to much that has happened , and seem to be implying some sort of voting utopia prior to 2016 where there was none , and hadnt been for decades before.

Take off the rose tinted glasses please toots , and wake up and smell the coffee. The discontent has been years in the making.

[T00ts]

https://pol-tics.com/covid-19/21/reason-to-take-vaccine/2735/msg60636;topicseen#msg60636
https://pol-tics.com/general-chat/4/so-much-of-tv-is-crap/381/msg8836;topicseen#msg8836
https://pol-tics.com/political-correctness/14/blasphemy/290/msg7760;topicseen#msg7760
https://pol-tics.com/covid-19/21/more-dodgy-numbers/3119/msg60423;topicseen#msg60423
https://pol-tics.com/covid-19/21/latest-chinese-export-coronavirus-covid-19/572/msg18423;topicseen#msg18423
Apparently YES!
I even called myself silly:
https://pol-tics.com/religion-spirituality-and-ethics/10/the-bible-and-women/537/msg13007;topicseen#msg13007

Fair enough - we are all allowed to be a bit silly at times. 

[Barry]

Barry would you call a man's opinion silly?

https://pol-tics.com/covid-19/21/reason-to-take-vaccine/2735/msg60636;topicseen#msg60636
https://pol-tics.com/general-chat/4/so-much-of-tv-is-crap/381/msg8836;topicseen#msg8836
https://pol-tics.com/political-correctness/14/blasphemy/290/msg7760;topicseen#msg7760
https://pol-tics.com/covid-19/21/more-dodgy-numbers/3119/msg60423;topicseen#msg60423
https://pol-tics.com/covid-19/21/latest-chinese-export-coronavirus-covid-19/572/msg18423;topicseen#msg18423
Apparently YES!
I even called myself silly:
https://pol-tics.com/religion-spirituality-and-ethics/10/the-bible-and-women/537/msg13007;topicseen#msg13007

[T00ts]

I wouldnt expect you to change your opinions toots , but man or woman has nothing to do with anything said on here. I debate all equally.

What you can't do is expect equal treatment on the board as a member irrelevant of gender then question my arguemnt based on my alleged perception of your gender and imply that im somehow demeaning you based on you being female.

Im not , and im making that clear.

Im pointing out your arguments dont stack up , merely sound to me like fear of change  , whereas i and others have pointed out the universal discontent with the westmister system and put forth some solutions that you dismiss out of hand while demanding impossible utopias of perfection in place of what currently exists which you know cannot be met.

I believe you are in a minority in support of the two party status quo , hence why i think change will happen.

Im voting for change every election , and not only reject your two party system but your very parliament. You have to stop change every election , both in my country and yours , and those who want change for whatever reason only have to win once.

...and yet because I don't think your arguments stack up at this time you continue to put me down as if I demand different treatment. Really Thomas! I am continuing to turn the other cheek as I am taught so will let you have the last word for the moment on that subject.


I refute the argument that there is majority for change. this is just a comfortable way of saying the the argument has large support since it backs up your position. I don't believe it. I guess you hate to be on the losing side ever.  The last test of this matter saw it thrown out decisively. I do agree that the state of politics is pretty dire at present but it has more to do with recent history and and the dismay of an electorate who watched in disbelief as too many in Westminster tried to deny the democratic vote and cheat to achieve it. Show me other parties who have credible policies with enough sense to benefit from the support of the electorate and no doubt they would get the votes they need. As I said earlier there is nothing out there. Until there is seats are wasted on them.

[Thomas]

I don't hide behind anything Thomas and will retain my opinions until I find something worthy of changing them.

I wouldnt expect you to change your opinions toots , but man or woman has nothing to do with anything said on here. I debate all equally.

What you cant do is expect equal treatment on the board as a member irrelevant of gender then question my arguemnt based on my alleged perception of your gender and imply that im somehow demeaning you based on you being female.

Im not , and im making that clear.

Im pointing out your arguments dont stack up , merely sound to me like fear of change  , whereas i and others have pointed out the universal discontent with the westmister system and put forth some solutions that you dismiss out of hand while demanding impossible utopias of perfection in place of what currently exists which you know cannot be met.

I believe you are in a minority in support of the two party status quo , hence why i think change will happen.

Im voting for change every election , and not only reject your two party system but your very parliament. You have to stop change every election , both in my country and yours , and those who want change for whatever reason only have to win once.

[T00ts]

Come now toots , lets not hide behind gender in this discussion , and alleged slights where none were intended.

Your arguments simply dont stand up to scrutiny.

Your argument for opposing change for fear of change sake isnt won either. Everywhere except england and america seem to be moving on to the pr multi party governance and parliaments , yet allwe here is a crises of demcoracy in those two countries and their outdated methods of what passes for democracy.
Its not pie in the sky. The factual evidence is half the nations of the world operate a pr system , and have good governance. No one apart from you is talking about "utopias" of governance , people are simply asking the question wether westmisnter outdated and morally bankrupt system is relevant in the modern world while you throw every obstacle you can think of in the road to change.

personally i thought the lib.tory westminster government the best uk government of my lifetime. I didnt agree with or vote either party , but thought they did a far better job in power than any before or since that i can think of.

i dont need to dream on , i already have a pr parliament in my country toots.

The dream for me is taking your cesspit of a foreign parliament and all its appendages we in scotland dont vote for out of my country.

On top of that , i sympathise with the majority of english people who want change and are held back by those with little vision. England will get democracy one day , despite the "old guard" and their diminishing worldview of a time long gone. Thats my belief. ( and its not a personal comment addressed at anyone on this forum for the record)

I don't hide behind anything Thomas and will retain my opinions until I find something worthy of changing them. Oh and for the record you may have noticed I don't necessarily follow the crowd.

[Thomas]

Dear @Thomas if you thought I was a man would you have commented on me having an emotional response about anything? @Barry would you call a man's opinion silly?

Come now toots , lets not hide behind gender in this discussion , and alleged slights where none were intended.

Your arguments simply dont stand up to scrutiny.

The argument is still not won.

Your argument for opposing change for fear of change sake isnt won either. Everywhere except england and america seem to be moving on to the pr multi party governance and parliaments , yet allwe here is a crises of demcoracy in those two countries and their outdated methods of what passes for democracy.

Pie in the sky.

Its not pie in the sky. The factual evidence is half the nations of the world operate a pr system , and have good governance. No one apart from you is talking about "utopias" of governance , people are simply asking the question wether westmisnter outdated and morally bankrupt system is relevant in the modern world while you throw every obstacle you can think of in the road to change.

I personally would hate to see another situation like the Con/lib fiasco

personally i thought the lib.tory westminster government the best uk government of my lifetime. I didnt agree with or vote either party , but thought they did a far better job in power than any before or since that i can think of.

Dream on guys but I have decided after some time out that the argument is keeping the king very cold.

i dont need to dream on , i already have a pr parliament in my country toots.

The dream for me is taking your cesspit of a foreign parliament and all its appendages we in scotland dont vote for out of my country.

On top of that , i sympathise with the majority of english people who want change and are held back by those with little vision. England will get democracy one day , despite the "old guard" and their diminishing worldview of a time long gone. Thats my belief. ( and its not a personal comment addressed at anyone on this forum for the record)

[T00ts]

Dear @Thomas if you thought I was a man would you have commented on me having an emotional response about anything? @Barry would you call a man's opinion silly?

The argument is still not won. What you are hoping for is a new kind of Utopia where every minority is represented in the House and that they will negotiate and compromise. Pie in the sky. You see it 'working' abroad and the grass is greener than ever. I don't believe it would work any better than what we have. I personally would hate to see another situation like the Con/lib fiasco where we fell between two stools for no other reason that neither really compromised. The result then was a disaffected electorate who could see it for what it really was.

Dream on guys but I have decided after some time out that the argument is keeping the king very cold.

[Thomas]

Currently Ms Sturgeon is broadening her bottom by getting into bed with the Greens and promoting a dream of brawny shanked LBGTQs ploughing up the Highlands and powering Scotland with organic fart power. If the voters don't like that she will probably invade Carlisle or some such.

Not really borkie. Most of sturgeons vote support comes from the indy movement ,with i would say much of her policies coming second or third to that. In her mind she is a wonderfull politician for whom the electorate love her policies , but i would say the reality is based on independence and not much more. Once we get indy , hopefully we will become just another european pr democracy and vote according to whaty i said above.

Apart from that , though  , the media make such a big fuss about the snp green coalition when as i pointed out , not only is this the norm since the start of the scot parliament , with various parties like libs lab , green snp , or minority government , but the scot parliament was specifically desgined that way so no party had overall control.

We are talking voting reform though , in your nations parliament , and i was simply pointing out whetever the politics of sturgeon and the snp , she got a more proportional share of the vote compared to what lab tory get in your parliament in terms of votes to seat ratio.

Even here though there is an element of voting one party , or two , to keep others parties out.

Despite the pitfalls of the scot parliament , i still wager its a better system that people are happier with than in your country with that shambles of a parliament , and i cant see how anyone would rather the status quo for simple fear of change.

When you are at rock bottom democratically , how could things get any worse .?

[Borchester]

If there was a more proportional system , with other parties in with a fair chance of getting seats , then there is no way on this earth the tories or labour would have got anything like those numbers of seats.

Much of the lab tory vote as we know from over the years from discussion isnt based on party support , its based on keeping the party out that you hate.

pappysmurf epitomises that argument , who constantly states he doesnt have a party preference , merely hates the tories.

Taking that argument away is part of resolving the problem in current politics. Imagine we all voted for parties that we supported in terms of a large part of their policies rather than trying to keep one party out in a two horse race.?

Quite.

The left is hammering out plans for a better, fairer world and all the Tories have is a photo of Boris Johnson. They should expect all to fall before them..

And then Pappy opens his big gob and the electorate thinks, you know what, the 25 hour day and open sewers in the front room aren't really such a bad idea.

The sounds in the background are from Steve's honest heart breaking.

When Boris Johnson was a boy he said that he wanted to be king of the world, but he didn't outline any particular policies. Nor do most politicians. By and large successful governments move towards the centre, which is why the Tories have spent two thirds of the annual tax revenues of the UK on an outbreak of the flu. It makes no economic sense whatever, but it was a vote winner (or at least, they hoped it was), so that is what they did.

Currently Ms Sturgeon is broadening her bottom by getting into bed with the Greens and promoting a dream of brawny shanked LBGTQs ploughing up the Highlands and powering Scotland with organic fart power. If the voters don't like that she will probably invade Carlisle or some such.

All politics is about gaining power and since most folk don't like a lot of change the result is usually a government based somewhere in the centre, regardless of the system employed. 

[Thomas]

This was the result of the last election:
Conservative   43.6%
Labour   32.2%
Liberal Democrat   11.5%
Scottish National Party   3.9%
Green   2.7%
The Brexit Party   2.0%

Which would give the following result, ignoring Others.
CONS 283
LAB    209
LD     75
SNP   25
Green 17
BXP    13

For a majority of 326 the Conservatives would need to hook up to get 43 more seats.
A far fairer result and likely to result in fairer, moderate open government, in my opinion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results

If there was a more proportional system , with other parties in with a fair chance of getting seats , then there is no way on this earth the tories or labour would have got anything like those numbers of seats.

Much of the lab tory vote as we know from over the years from discussion isnt based on party support , its based on keeping the party out that you hate.

pappysmurf epitomises that argument , who constantly states he doesnt have a party preference , merely hates the tories.

Taking that argument away is part of resolving the problem in current politics. Imagine we all voted for parties that we supported in terms of a large part of their policies rather than trying to keep one party out in a two horse race.?

[Barry]

This was the result of the last election:
Conservative   43.6%
Labour   32.2%
Liberal Democrat   11.5%
Scottish National Party   3.9%
Green   2.7%
The Brexit Party   2.0%

Which would give the following result, ignoring Others.
CONS 283
LAB    209
LD     75
SNP   25
Green 17
BXP    13

For a majority of 326 the Conservatives would need to hook up to get 43 more seats.
A far fairer result and likely to result in fairer, moderate open government, in my opinion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results

[Thomas]

.Currently Israel have had a compromise with opposing parties coming together to share leadership for half a term each.
Spain has pure PR and I admit it has caused them some problems. Currently they have a functioning government.

Most successfull stable nations have pr according to what i have read , with half the countries of the world using PR.

I think toots is putting the cart before the horse so to speak , by demanding a guarentee of better governance before she agrees to change , whereas to get better governance , you need to put change in place to have a chance.

The idea pr countries are in a shambles of non functioning government who cannot agree just isnt a reflection of reality , and to me signifies a closed mind.

[Thomas]

Oh Thomas I do hate to disagree with you but Sturgeon isn't strong enough on her own and looked around for an ally.

Again you miss the point and judge scottish politics and our parliament by your low standard in westminster. Forget party politics and personalities for the moment , the point is holyrood is a parliament designed deliberately by the labour party under blair so no one got a majority.

Its a proportional parliament.

Sturgeon got a far bigger percentage of the scottish vote than johnson did in the uk vote , but johnson got a disproportionate amount of seats to sturgeons more proportionate.

Tell me toots , how often has labour or tory received 48 % of the vote in uk history? Yet you say sturgeons isnt strong enough electorally? thats nonsense.

You are letting personal feelings cloud your judgement. The point is scotland has a more proportional government than england in terms of voting support , the politics dont matter in this debate , or your personal distaste for sturgeon and scottish indy.

[Barry]

It all seems so easy - we don't like what is currently happening in Westminster so let's all throw it up in the air. I might be a bit of a cynic but aren't we simply saying we don't like government? So we get to play a greater part in the decision process but the crew we have in Parliament will be a mix match of all sorts of ideas and ideology.

Spoken as the staunch Tory supporter you are, and I once was.

How will they vote in Parliament? Will they vote as per their constituency vote or with their ideology?

How about according to their own conscience and free will. Scrap the whips.

Will they naturally create alliances that will find them trading to get their way?

If there is no clear leading party, coalitions may be needed, but not necessarily in a free parliament. What is wrong with choosing ministers from different parties?

Who would be the equivalent of PM?

Someone from the party with the biggest majority

What trading would have to do to hold his position? I can see all sorts of unsavoury dealings being exacerbated.

Do you think there are no unsavoury dealings now?

To get a proper set of numbers will voting need to be compulsory? How will it operate as Cromwell said when there is a crisis? Would troops be on standby for 6 months while we all vote whether to send them out?

We live in a digital world, taking a vote could be done very quickly with the political will and IT set up. There was no problem with people doing their census online.

What if like the debacle in HofC over Brexit they simply cannot get any agreement? Do we throw them out? By the time we've messed about trying to get an operational government we would have been invaded, dead from the plague or whatever.

You are sounding a bit silly now.  We threw them out last time, if you remember, so yes.

The grass always looks greener until you get there. Where do we have a country with PR that we would consider that they have a good role model of PR government worth copying?

Currently Israel have had a compromise with opposing parties coming together to share leadership for half a term each.
Spain has pure PR and I admit it has caused them some problems. Currently they have a functioning government.