The question is who will do the oeath of disclosure for the bankruptcy of the US ?
Obongo or Geithner ?

Thank you for coming back to the original topic. See, I told everyone the FPTP is bad - it effectively only works for strict two party systems, in all other cases it's undemocratic and when it works it gives you very much limited choice (pest or cholera). The alternative government ideas proposed in this thread also somehow did not get enthusiastic responses.

About the UK economy - I think it will be okay again in a few years. I doubt that it's all labour's fault, after all they are not responsible for the world wide crisis and Ireland which has been governed by a more conservative party is even hit much harder.

Cutting everything more or less equally and increasing admission fees for students so drastically - might be a bit bad for the future of the country. You want to keep investing in the future. Also savings in the military area can have a large effect. E.g. german Bundeswehr has zero air carriers.

What UK needs is factory workers and industry nothing else. Not students.....

The reason AV didn't pass was the sheer amount of FUD going around.. 1 Billion to be spent on voting machines?? More like 30 extra seconds work for the counters and a new tally sheet!

"It's not 1 man 1 vote it's 1 man 5 votes!" In which reality? Only in one where all 5 votes are counted in the first round -.-

Or my personal favourite "It would mean that the person with the least votes could win over the person with the most!" How? seriously how? All it means is that the person who wins has 50%+1 of the population that votes supporting him at some level. What it stops is people getting in who have less than 30% of the area supporting them but the other 70% of the votes are split.

The Conservatives are terrified of AV(even though they use it themselves Cameron would not be PM without AV) because it means they might lose their "secure" seats (many of which they have less than 40% of the vote in)

Exactly. Unions aren't evil (though there are some counterproductive ones). You don't need that many people to manufacture anymore, that's the reason we don't have manufacturing jobs, not because they all moved overseas (though big business would love you to believe that).

You can also export entertainment or software or knowledge or ....

In a way musicians, movie stars, programmers, professors ... are manufacturers too.

We live in a world where many countries are very specialized in what they can do really good and what not. It seems to be very difficult to balance the whole thing and to fight crises, but on the whole there must be a benefit from that spezialization.

£1 Billion? Where'd you get that from? Worst estimate I saw was around a quarter of that!
Not to mention that there was a question of "conflicting interest" in getting a "yes" vote passed on AV - the Electoral Reform Society, which gave ~£1.1m to the pro-AV campaign, faces a conflict of interest because its commercial wing makes electronic voting machines that could be used if AV is passed. Potentially earning them 10s of millions. If not hundreds.
Yes, machines probably wouldn't be needed, but still....when has politics EVER been clean?
In any country!!

AV system voting can deliver weird results where someone who wins clearly in the first round gets nudged aside once second preferences are counted. Or third round. Or fourth.
That'd be like Seychelles winning the World Cup Cricket, even after losing EVERY match against Pakistan, England, Australia and Windies. How on earth can that be a better system than most votes win??

Excellent analogy, only not rightly written.

Worldcup is like AV:

First round Italy wins against UK, Germany wins against Russia, Spain wins agains Portugal with the most goals
FTPT -> Spain is champion
AV -> must make next round

I prefer a proportional system anyway and would therefore say, that the referendum had the wrong choices.

1 of the 15! no leaflets I got spammed with through the mail.. My wife won on that she got 25.. We got none at all from the yes people for some reason.

Also how can someone winning on 30% (if you ignore the 50%+ winners this is the average win) be a clear winner? 70% of the population didn't vote for them!

Oh please god where do people get these sports analogies that are flat out wrong Lets break this down for you. You lose the first round and get the lowest YOUR GONE, you are no longer counted in the vote not at all you can't win anymore! Votes for you are no longer tallied! You are not going to win! Go home!
The votes for you are then examined and the people they chose as second get your votes added to theres one by one vote by vote.
Second round still no 50%+1? Take the person with the least votes SEND THEM HOME look at peoples choices if the person next on their list is already gone? look down their list to the next one.
If you lose any round you DON'T get to win so how the hell can a team lose all their matches and still win in this case?

What it does do is allow
1)Protest votes, people can vote against you in the first round on A party who's policy they prefer etc and send the big parties a message.
2)Smaller parties a chance to get votes, People consider a vote not for the big 3 wasted so they vote for the big 3, In AV they can vote for the party they'd like to win but also get a chance to choose which of the big 3 make it through.

And the 70% didn't vote for just one other party, either. that's a specious argument at best. Misleading or outright lies at worst. If the, say 30% for argument's sake, is the party with more votes than any other single party, they win.
Simples.
End of.
No further action required.
Next time, get more than 35-45% of the voters off their arses and into the polling stations. Maybe it'll turn out the way you voted for. Maybe it won't.
How much less than 30% voted for another 5 years of Labour? Assuming they could actually keep the country solvent for more than a year?

Needlessly complicating a simple process in favour of adding more "rounds" to the point that some 4th-rate party without a decent manifesto, only some cobbled together abortion, could potentially gain a few more seats, or become "King Maker" for a more mainstream party in more-probable coalitions makes sense....how? Change for change's sake? O_o

*Lab-atives are criminals, incompetents and whatever else...but effective. Arguably.
*Lib-Dems are pathetically no-hopers, cobbled together from a failure of BOTH the Liberals and Social Democrats in the 1980s. They're still potential "King-Makers" though - depending how pissed off the voters are with the other 2.
*UKIP are borderline racist.
*BNP are definitely racist.
*Greens are laughable.
*OMRLP, while somewhat mis-named, never really had a chance, despite the 3 main parties stealing half their manifesto since the 1960s. And more or less died with their leader.

*Science Party, Trust Party, Popular Alliance, Independents, Jury Team, Pirate Party, Libertarians, Cannabis Parties, Third Way, National Front, Communist parties, Christian Parties, Muslims4UKDeath! party ..... are at best fringe parties that aren't serious about their own prospects, let alone actually capable of running in government - mainly existing to highlight their cause du jour, at which they do with varying degrees of success.

There's at least another 150+ parties registered in various parts of the UK - and I've not even mentioned the Scotland/Wales/NI-specific ones, like Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru....

So, who out of ALL those minor parties would YOU trust with helping mismanage the country? Or the Gods forbid actually winning enough seats to overthrow the Lab-Dem-atives? O_o

AV was never an option for anyone in government - ever. FPTP, or even full PR might work, but AV? Only the delusional and the naïve ever thought it would pass, let alone work.

The British people overwhelmingly rejected a lousy electoral system, preferring the bad to the worse! But this is to a large extent the fault of those supporters of PR who, opportunistically or stupidly, decided to throw in their lot with the pro-AV campaign even though they did not want AV.

Why didn't they add PR to the ballot?

Except it didn't the actual vote share was closer to 50-50 than the results showed because the vote was tallied by district then it was declared a Yes or No area. If you took it to a straight vote and the counts were made it would have been much closer.

As for why no PR? Blame the tories it's pretty obvious the AV referendum was agreed upon as a compromise down from PR.

Who should run the country? right now i'm reminded of the old saw of "If a person wants to rule the country they shouldn't be allowed to"

Many of the parties you list are protest parties others are lobying parties and guess what they will still exist and still not win but at least people who support their idea's can actually show that without fear of wasted votes!

Sure make voting mandatory you can either hand your postal vote in at a post office and get your confirmation or vote in a booth and get it. I have no problem with that people still won't know what you voted for, what I have a problem with is the fact many people don't vote because they feel their vote won't be counted if they don't want to vote for the big 3!

On another note OMRLP should honestly change their name and give up the gimmick though their manifesto is one of the best in politics but they just aren't taken seriously enough.

::edit to add::
The 70% thing is real though the 30% may be the most hated guy on the list but the vote is shared for the other 70% how the hell do you think the BNP ever gets seats? They have few voters but they vote for the BNP no matter what while the rest of the votes in the area are shared among more popular groups. FPTP is an AWFUL system but it's been around so long it'll never get changed.

No, actually, they weren't close. By the time the majority was reached, at which point the "Yes" campaign couldn't win if every remaining vote was "yes", the "No" campaign had over 10,000,000 votes total, the "Yes" campaign barely reached 4,500,000.

That's a LONG way from 50-50. 2-1 ... maybe.

And that's the point all the media stopped reporting the tallies mainstream. Yes, there were a few minor updates, more or less corresponding with the way the votes had gone.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, except on AV being the way forward - it's not. Never was, never will be :P

Yes, definitely never let anyone running for public office anywhere near public office - I've said that here, in the past, and was pretty much ridiculed for my suggestion of how to potentially replace how government works now. Not that anyone else had a better idea. Or any idea, come to mention it. :D
That idea, or better for my prejudices - return us to a TRUE monarchy, and get rid of the politicians. Not like they really do anything anyway - it's the Civil Service that actually runs the country - under politicians or a monarch makes no difference. ;)

yeah, OMRLP had good ideas - and like I said, all 3 main parties stole from their manifestos over the years. I actually voted for them in the early 90s, before Sutch and the party died. Didn't get anywhere though, my area was a DEEP Labour area. Still is. Not that Labour have ever done anything good for the area, too. :|
Same in the area I'm in now. Still shitting all over the people because they're in a seat so safe they can nuke it and the idiots would STILL vote for them over anyone else....

FPTP may get changed - but Lib-Dems pushed for the worst system to do that. And the people let them know it was the wrong system. It might be another 30years, but the chance will come again, and next time....someone might make the right choice.

Edit : Typo. Cote, in first paragraph == vote.

But the best joke is the democracy in UK or USA. Why ?
No matter what is your choice. JFK was the true partiot and was killed by whom ?
I know who killed JFK but i will not tell in GoG ^^.

Depends by WHOM the history book was written or ^^

Turn on FOX, CNN and all the other brainwash channels and be happy ^^