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IanB146

Listed below are comments made by IanB146 between Thursday, 6th November 2008 and Thursday, 18th June 2009.

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What's fairest for a voting referendum? 12:46pm on 18 Jun 2009 Little of Justin's comment makes sense to me

> Under FPTP voters vote "for" something..most PR/AV systems encourage tactical voting

In reality the UK experience is that FPTP produces widespread tactical voting, because so many votes are otherwise wasted

> FPTP produces...govts that are usually reasonably easy to kick out

but sadly a lot of MPs who are more or less safe whatever they do (or don't do)

> PR based systems tend to produce...either totally unstable govt or incredibly stable govts

which suggests that it isn't the PR that's doing the "producing", but the politics and culture of the various countries concerned...
Extraordinary 11:27am on 07 Nov 2008 The result is only extraordinary because commentators seem to have decided weeks ago how it would turn out, and didn't review their opinion in the light of significant and fast-changing events.

It doesn't seem that difficult to understand to me. Everyone knew it would be a Labour v SNP contest, hence the other parties' votes were squeezed. And the central argument and hence much of the essential appeal of the SNP has taken a catastrophic hit from the way the banking crisis is hitting smaller countries such as Iceland. Gordon Brown's local connections and higher global profile will have also contributed but I'd see these as secondary factors.

If I'm right then the read-across into English politics won't be nearly as significant....
A history day? 10:44am on 06 Nov 2008 Yes is was a 'history day' - one of those rare, amazing, proud days when it felt great to be alive and part, if at a distance, of something big. If Obama can deliver on even a proportion of the hope his election has generated then the world will be a better place.

A salutory thought, for those of us in the UK at least, is that it feels somewhat similar to 1997 when Blair got in, and sadly a lot of that hope was squandered. Yes the new government delivered on many of its more mundane if important commitments but there's hardly been a change in political culture and in many ways things are now worse than before - certainly people are no less alienated from politics.

But in 2008 we're seeing both political change and a very symbolic cultural change, and we just have to hope that the huge impact of the latter around the world proves longer-lasting than the change in personality and party label alone.

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