News thread

To his credit, Clarkson has asked for people to get off the producer's back as "none of this is his fault". Of course, his debit is so large that it hardly makes a difference.

The Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to a girl!

Time to crack out the "Only royal baby we care about" tagline again!

I can see the headline now: "Rich people spawn female."

Voting Day in the UK! Jo asked me to vote tonight, so we could go together. I'm changing my vote from last time... is it me, or has this election campaign been especially dull?

I've found it to be comprised of far too many attacks on Milliband for not being able to eating a sandwich properly and very little issue tackling from the Tories.

This is my first vote, so I'll be trecking down to the station after work this evening.

I'm going down before work, I will be voting different this time but they all seem like a bunch of idiots hence why I'm going for the local MP which seems to want do things for me in the area.

Voted! My constituency is a safe one, so my vote was cast with the aim of convincing parties who could actually get in to see how the populace voted, and act accordingly. What I wouldn't give for a system that isn't FPtP.

I've voted too - pottered down to my very quiet community centre this morning and fired off my vote. My constituency is one of the few in Scotland actually projected to vote Labour instead of SNP, so it'll be interesting to see the result.

I have also voted - Anyone else get that paranoid feeling just as you pop the piece of paper into the ballot box that you may have accidentally marked the wrong box?

Nah, but I had the feeling that the person in front of me had.

@Jas - yes! It's like going to school for own clothes day... :affraid:

Was a much quieter affair than I was expecting. Was in a hut in some back alley with a collection of rather bored looking ladies watching over it. My results are expected at about 5-6 am so I'll be waiting for the results when I wake up.

The_Jaster wrote:

I have also voted - Anyone else get that paranoid feeling just as you pop the piece of paper into the ballot box that you may have accidentally marked the wrong box?

I've had that feeling on more than one occasion! I hope it'll be a decent result tonight and not the landslide it's projected to be in Scotland. I really can't see that outcome being of any real benefit to anyone bar Salmond et al.

I voted, but I can't say I'm absolutely proud to have done service for my country. Methinks we need proportional representation - I think people would vote more honestly rather than strategically.

Absolutely. The fact I considered voting tactically as opposed to voting who I really want in power in my constituency is a sign of FPTP isn't working.

The problem with the last referendum on electoral reform was that the alternative was some horrendous halfway house that was too complicated for the layperson and not different enough for the reformer. I still voted yes, but I reckon that if the alternative was PR (or some variant), a lot of other people would vote yes too.

I live in the heart of Somerset where the choice is literally between the Tories and the lib Dems, which is barely a choice ay all now, so I through tactics to the wind and voted Green just to add myself to the statistic next time reform comes up. In PR, I'd vote green every day.

Two narratives emerge: SNP roast Labour in Scotland, and threat of UKIP mobilises Conservative supporters. I may well be reading that wrongly, of course. We'll just have to see where it leads.

Balladeer wrote:

The problem with the last referendum on electoral reform was that the alternative was some horrendous halfway house that was too complicated for the layperson and not different enough for the reformer.  I still voted yes, but I reckon that if the alternative was PR (or some variant), a lot of other people would vote yes too.

It is probably because I am Australian, but I think your voting system is terrible, because it isn't truly representative. The winner hardly ever has the majority of the vote, just the most. We have preferential voting, which even though some Australians don't care for it when their candidate gets the most first preference votes, gives a fairer outcome. It simply means that if I vote for the Greens, I give my second preference to Labor (sic) and then down the line until all my preferences are given (last is always a religious party). If no one gets an absolute majority, then the party with the least votes is eliminated and their second preferences distributed. If there is no no majority still, then the next party with the least votes is eliminated and preferences distributed. No majority again, it goes on until there is.

In doing this, if my preferred party doesn't get in, at least my vote still counts, as it ill still have an effect on the result. The party with the most votes doesn't always represent the electorate, just part of it.

Even better, within the state I live in, we have Single Transferrable Vote System, a complex (too complex to explain, but it is called the Hare-Clark System here), a system also known as Proportional Representation, used similarly in our Senates, both State and Federal. Specific to our state, we have less, but larger regions and you get 5 people representing each of them. Whilst it is theoretically possible to get one party winning all of them, it is extremely rare. What we end up with in many cases is 2 Labor (sic), 2 Liberal (Tory) and one Green. At least then I have a chance of a representative who actually represents me. It also means that an election isn't a simple Labor (sic) or Liberal (Tory), which means they actually have to work for it. Sure, it means some times a nutjob party wins some power, mainly in Upper Houses (Senate), but who cares, politics isn't a toy two parties get to share. The winner might have to negotiate with others to get things passed and I don't see that as a bad thing.

Don't think it's anything to do with you being Australian, pretty sure we all think it's shite too.

Had a discussion with my Aussie and Kiwi colleagues about this yesterday. Both of their/your systems are better than ours.

Fuck everything.

Drunka's got it right.

When will we find out what percentage of voters turned out? That's the only thing left that interests me... though there will now have to be a load of leadership contests.

I thought it had already been confirmed as 66%, or did I just make that up?