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Dingdongalistic

Listed below are comments made by Dingdongalistic between Thursday, 31st July 2008 and Tuesday, 21st July 2009.

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Surreal politics 10:58am on 21 Jul 2009 "extremesense" -- the exact same criticisms, barring the West Lothian Question, could be applied to 1992. The Head of State has no political powers that require democratic election. The House of Lords has been a better scrutinising body and more likely to send bills back to the Commons for improvement since its reform in 1999 by the Blair government. Select committees have had no teeth for donkeys' years.

And "maketh" does not maketh a commend sound more intelligent.
What's fairest for a voting referendum? 01:24am on 14 Jun 2009 Grrrr! I thought at least when Nick Robinson corrected himself, the misunderstanding regarding AV was over with the BBC. Evidently not.

Martin - AV is not, I repeat NOT, the same system as Supplementary Vote. It is not used for the London Mayoral elections. Wikipedia is your friend. AV is, for all intents and purposes, the same as STV for single-winner elections is.

The reason AV is distinguished from STV is simply one of clarity - STV tends to be associated with the multi-member constituency system.

In short, Supplementary Vote is a distinct, separate system from AV.
A call for debate 2:15pm on 10 Jun 2009 "The alternative vote system sounds like a waste of time if it won't be anymore representative." -- whydoi

In fact, it would be a lot more representative - on a direct representation level for each constituency. Constituencies would be represented by members who commanded the support of a majority of their constituents. FPTP allows MPs to win on a minority of votes from their constituents.

If you mean party support would be more proportional, that assumes that people would be voting more for parties than individuals to begin with.
Royal Mail and HMG's creative accounting 11:41pm on 11 May 2009 "Maths certainly isn't your strong point then Bob!"

Actually, it's perfectly possible - if you round down, say from 20.4bn to 20bn, and round up from say 29.5 bn to 30 bn (which is perfectly mathematically acceptable), then the difference between the two would be 9.1 bn, which rounds down to 9 bn.
Royal Mail and HMG's creative accounting 11:39pm on 11 May 2009 "Then the state of public finances is far worse than we have been lead to believe."

Unbelievable.

No wait. Very believable.
"We blame the parents" 4:56pm on 03 Feb 2009 "The problems are simply the result of a naive welfare system that rewards people for breeding without responsibility. "

Thank you for patronising us, but there is nothing "simple" about these problems.

"Instead of throwing yet more money at the issue like this useless excuse for a government have been doing, making everything far worse, instead we should:

- Stop all child benefits after the first/second child."

Considering the report was into children's unhappiness, do you not see the irony in condemning many children into a life of poverty? Because I do.

"- Offer a national sterilisation incentive for people aged 18-40, offering them ?3000 each to do so - the first people in the queue will be those who shouldn't be breeding in the first place (heroin addicts etc) "

Or any people in poverty in need of a financial boost.

Really, though I love your caricaturing, the only thing thorughly "naive" is your "solution" here. It would cause far more problems than it would solve.

"and in the long run this will save us billions.

- Remove the automatic right to council housing for mothers under the age of 23."

Again, solving childrens' unhappiness by condemning many of them to even harsher conditions, now making them homeless!

"This won't solve the problem overnight "

You don't say.

"and there will be a "lost generation" caused by Labour's unwillingness to face up to the issues. But until you change the fact that breeding is an alternative lifestyle choice to working there will always be people who do it, regardless of the consequences, and regardless of what happens to the children involved."

And if you take away the right to balance work with childraising, there will be more damaged children, there will be more broken families, and there will be an even bigger "lost generation".

Please, have a little thought as to what your ideas might actually cause.
Turnout turnaround? 12:22pm on 10 Nov 2008 "I can bet also that, that number will consist of some of Bush's supporters. Mcain let the liberal media unwittingly set the tone of his campaign and sadly he paid the ultimate price for it."

The "liberal media"? You guys had a "liberal media"? Of so, what is ours? Communist?
Turnout turnaround? 12:20pm on 10 Nov 2008 "And Justin, if you're going to become American, do drop the word 'got' from your vocabulary, its use in that sentence is superfluous. If you wanted to emphasise your point, you could have used 'must'. British writers and politicians are the worst offenders; don't be one of them."

Ha!

Though the error is truely an error, it seems a little rich for the British to be accused of superfluous use of vocabulary in comparison to America.
End of 'age of irresponsibility'? 5:13pm on 26 Sep 2008 "Politicians find themselves in a terrible bind. Either they have to ask their hard-pressed voters to pay for the rich bankers' errors or, they're told, the banks will go under leaving those same voters without their savings, homes and jobs. Who says it's easy being a politician?"

Why not bail the people out, not the reckless bankers?
Context is everything 02:18am on 31 Jul 2008 "I doubt Miliband will get to be leader.
He dithered the last time about running for the leadership, in the end bottling it (just like GB did over the election)."

Miliband would have been insane to the extreme to stand against Brown. It would have killed his government career, and ultimately his chances at securing the party leadership and possibly premiership - stone dead. Not just politically suicidal, but pointless to boot.

It's hardly comparable to a leader throwing away probably his best chance at securing an election victory and 5-year mandate, as Brown did with the election that never was.

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