When NZ changed its election system there were two major issues with the new system;

1. You could never actually get rid of unpopular politicians as they would be high up on the party list anyway.
2. You'd get generations of MP's with no particular affiliation with any particular seat. They would owe their allegiance to the Party and not the voters.

Now that Im older (the system changed in NZ when I was an impressionable 20 year old) only now do I realise that it actually makes f99k all difference as its clear politicians feel the voters OWE them fealty (instead of the other way around) and its clear that you can never actually get rid of any politician as they are like cancer, they just spread and never go away.

UK election got quite a bit of excited coverage on the ABC over the weekend. Only a brief mention of the French election. Hardly the first time I've noticed the anti-colonialist, anti monarchy ABC having stronger ties to the UK than might have been expected. Perhaps there was some news value in an election matching the polling.

To put a perversely optimistic spin on the result, your expectations are now so low that even Labour is likely to surprise on the upside now and then. That might turn out more satisfactory than the Tories who, having set high expectations, proceeded to make pretty much every bad decision they could.

Remake of Yes Minister would be welcome. While waiting for it you can get an antipodean cousin, Utopia. That's just snippets, last two minutes the best. ABC allows viewing the full shows through iview, but I don't know if that's available from the UK.

tomo,
That Renault side-mirror thing: the everyday nightmare of modern vehilces for mechanics and their customers. My usual talking point for people who think the "diagnostic port" takes all the guesswork out of diagnosis is "what's the error code for: a rat has been eating the wiring loom?" but that mirror is a nice concrete example.

With elections coming and going, I thought this article linked in a Jo Nova comment was fairly interesting. It describes various voting systems and evaluates them on three rather subjective scales. I didn't see the 1950's Rhodesian one among them, where various items of social participation (pay tax, own a property, have finished primary, finished secondary, earned a tertiary qualification, and others which I don't recall) each earn you an extra vote. I think the votes were ultimately counted first past the post. Do you use your extra votes to have a second preference, or just go all-in on your preferred candidate? Probably not very politically correct, but it's an interesting idea.

DaveS,

Paddle to France and then paddle back, claim refugee status, and be given a house and benefits. Major win for you! ;)

The combination of large majority and low proportion of the vote does suggest instability ahead. The only hope I can see is that Labour implode before they get to do too much damage. But quite who will be there to pick up the pieces is anyone's guess. My plan B is to buy a dinghy, paddle across to France and claim asylum - it would be an interesting test to see if the border is as permeable in that direction as it is in this.

And just like that the lefts love of the popular vote comes to an end :)

Tomo,

Labours vote, at 33.9% was nearly 10% LOWER than Tony Blairs percentage in 1997! Kinda tells you just how incredibly badly the Conservatives have f99ked things up these last 5 years! Labour didnt win a popular revolt, they won because the Tories gave Parliament to them when all they had to do was be Tories and do Tory things they had promised to do...and they couldn't even do that! So the Tories deserve their political obscurity for the next few years! Im just not sure the country deserves a Labour Government and a sudden amnesia of what a woman is!

14.3% for Reform and 4 seats while Lib Dems with 12% get 71 seats. Kinda shows how broken first past the post is.

So maybe we need proportional representation and the removal of the House of Lords (imagine how much Co2 that would save!). Proportional representation would go a long way to ensuring an outright majority would never be able to just pass what ever it wanted...probably ;)

Oh and maybe a reduction of MP's while we are at burning the system to the ground. For the size of this country why in Gods name do we need 650 MP's???