h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh, Senora, I am busy, I must make flamenco in the plaza...

Well the USAsians have one more party than communism. Is that the difference I wonder?

here in Canada we have two communist parties. (as well as all those other ones)

http://www.communist-party.ca/

http://www.cpcml.ca

we have one too and one call the socalist worker's party. I see them in a beat up ols station wagon from the 80s.

I wonder, if a democracy elected a communist party majority. Would that country be communist for 3 years? be a communist democracy?

We have proportional government. What if they reached the 5% threshhold of party votes or won an electorate seat, there by getting some MPs into parliament? huh?

Question one (elected communist majority): the four horse men would ride through the streets, cats would sleep with dogs, the rivers would climb to the mountaintops. Or more likely there'd just be a continuation of parliamentary democracy.

Qustion two (if they crossed the threshhold): see the first part of the above answer. Or, more likely it would be just like all those European democracies that have had communist elected representatives for years.

It's only in America that communists have three heads and want to eat your children and carry your women-folk off to the hills.

"Or, more likely it would be just like all those European democracies that have had communist elected representatives for years."

I didn't know about these.

The reason I wondered is because communism is a different structure of government alltogeather and was curoius as to how it would work.

"It's only in America that communists have three heads and want to eat your children and carry your women-folk off to the hills." - personally I think that is due to a *deep breath* corperatly-owned-media-instilled-government-lobbied fear of socalism and a confusion of the two. But that's a whole 'nuther argument

Communists in legislatures and even in a government would be hampered by the same inertia that hampers other governments. This inertia is of different strength in different countries. If an elected communist government could get the necessary constitutional ammendments passed, then a one party state could come to be. After all, at the other end of the spectrum, Hitler was democratically elected.

is "Starlin" suppossed to be "Stalin"

"Starlin"? I don't know what you're on about.

Since the election structure change, politics have been very dynamic. By next election a coalition partner can dissapear entirely and another party can spring to life.

why am I having two conversations with the same person?


Now, this is where I have to go tend to the piggy-eyed kids in the chicken barn.

canadians are odd. What ever that means, it sounds important.

jump to it

we don't have proportional representation (although there is some squawking for it) but we manage to have quite the variety in parliament. We have two old-guard parties, the Progressive Conservatives who are somewhat to the left of the American Democrats, and the Liberals, who are a tiny bit to the left (in theory) of the Conservatives. As well, there's the established hoary old socialist party, the New Democratic Party which in practice is less socialist than its many supporters would like and too socialist to get enough seats to form the Official Opposition. Another two parties have each formed the Official Opposition recently: One is the Canadian Alliance, which is largely based in the West and is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun; and the Bloc Quebecois whose entire reason for existence is to remove the Province of Quebec from the country. You think communists could disrupt a country, we've had an official opposition whose only goal is the break-up of the country. and look, we laugh about it. Plus there are all the little parties that never get a seat. Plus there are the Provincial Legislatures that each have their own unique mix of parties. For example, the Liberals are the Federal government and the Conservatives are virtually shut out of parliament at the federal level, but in my province, the Conservatives have been the government for decades and the liberals almost don't exist. And my riding votes Canadian Alliance (think Brown Shirts) federally, but our provincial representative is the leader of the socialist New Democrats. Figure that one out.

In a way, all this choice just seems to smell like Freedom! (where's my kilt and woad?)

Your post is as complicated as the canadian entry

I like the oxy-moron by the way "progressive conservatives"

our's is easy
http://www.elections.org.nz/elections/esyst/govt_elect.html

I agree that the Conservatives have a silly name. But . . . do you really have a Brocolli Party?


Actually, we had a Rhinoceros Party for a while. I don't know if they're still around.

Oh, look at that, they are: http://www.carleton.ca/~dpottier/j-res/Canadian%20Government/FedParties.htm

rhino

During the 90s a group of students tried to put a small black cat up for election. The idea was that it could handle running education better than the government of the time

I may have mentioned this idea elsewhere and someday I'll transfer our 'manifesto' into a guide entry, but a friend and I once drafted a reasonably detailed proposal to establish municipal governments based on random　selection of a citizen's council (think about how juries are selected) Any resident citizen of voting age would be eligible to be drafted and would have to show good cause why they could not serve on the council. 100 people would be randomly chosen and vetted by a panel of judges and members of the previous council down to a managable group of less than 20 who would run the local government for three years. Another alternative was to replace a third to a half of the council every other year, sort of like they do with the U.S. senate.
The premise of course is that anyone could do a better job than the bonehead that ran our little town at the time and had done so for more than 30 years.

When the Rhinos actually fielded a number of candidates, they were asked what they would do if they actually got elected and they responded in what was a surprisingly responsible way. They said that they would probably vote with the government. This might be a hint at what would happen in New Zealand if some of the small parties got a seat or two; they'd probably line up behind one of the bigger parties on most issues.

too bad the natural law party's web page is down.

hey, paperboy, post the time article on this thread. Give our kiwi friends something to have nightmares about.

he means this one...

I thought the Americans were supposed to be the new Romans, not the new Vandals?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/a...le/0,9171,1101030714-463062,00.html

I'll have a look at the article, thanks.

Anhaga, the smaller parties are in parliament. That's the whole idea of MMP. It's an interesting time when the votes are counted because negoiations start between parties. Our parliament has 160 seats and you need 60 or 61 seats to form government. But even then coalition partners will dissagree on things. In short there are no sure-thing votes in the house when trying to pass something.

Eg there was a conscience vote on decriminalisation of prostitution. It passed 60 to 59 with one abstaining.

error page not found - Time

try this:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030714-463062,00.html