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

In any case the very idea that millions of essentially conservatively minded Britons would have suddenly taken the risk to switch from FPTP to PR is beyond ridiculous.

The hatchet job would have been equally ruthless but probably fairly unnecessary for such an extreme change

But yeah blame it on the boogie (man)

I'm hoping the Coalition lasts. Clegg is growing on me, and seems pretty much a grown-up..dunno about the rest of his party though..but I reckon at least they will have awoken from the silly dream of the possibility of electoral reform for awhile.

http://www.nextleft.org/2011/05/where-it-all-went-wrong-five-key.html

A funny thing I noticed from the brief soundbites I caught..was they kept saying the 'No' campaign, and the 'Yes' campaign, with no mention of the question. I was confused for sometime about which was which. Why the hell couldn't they have said, 'Yes to AV', 'No to AV'...considering the brevity of the actual reports themselves you'd think they might have said that.

I'm sure lots of people just glazed over when they 'No' and 'Yes' and didn't have a clue what that referred to.

Small points admittedly, but when you're getting a message across to millions of people of varying intelligence these things count for a lot.

An advertiser putting out adverts to make money wouldn't have been so dumb.

I must say I was dissapointed by the coverage by the BBC. I listened to an interview with Nick Clegg on the 'Today' program and all the interviewer wanted to bang on about was divisions in the coalition. I though Clegg handled the interview well and kept his cool.
The NO campaign was unpleasant too.
Still voted NO mind.

I always thought the Luddites got a raw deal.

I've been called worse.

Hi, I wasn't referring to you Todaymueller. I was just musing out loud about language - a group of people resist change and are called Luddites and another group of people resist change and they are called "democracy". The actual Luddites were more concerned with fears of being neglected and exploited rather than technology.

> a group of people resist change and are called Luddites and another group of people resist change and they are called "democracy"<

Yes, under Thatcherism they were called Luddites; under Cameronism they're called conservatives.

I voted No because changing the voting system would not change the politics, just make the system more complicated. One man one vote is a simple concept you put an X next to who you want to represent you.

Exactly. One man, one vote *is* a simple concept. And AV wasn't going to change that principle.

To be frank, AV is not complicated. Anyone who thinks it is complicated just hasn't taken the fifteen minutes necessary to understand it. Pure laziness. And, dare I say it, completely irresponsible behaviour for anyone living in a democratic country.

But what the hell, the new series of Britain's Got Talent probably starts soon, and you've got to get your priorities right.

>>just make the system more complicated.<<

So maybe dictatorship does have its advantages ...

Actually, the Luddites *did* get a raw deal. And they had a damned good point.

They werent against technology per se. But their home-based small businesses were being undercut by the new technology which required start-up investment from the wealthy. All they were after was access to the means of production and a share in its profits. They were starving.

Clive Jenkins of the ASTMS used to preach that wed all have a lot of leisure time, what with all our work being done by these new fangled computers. Was he right?

>> Clive Jenkins of the ASTMS used to preach that wed all have a lot of leisure time, what with all our work being done by these new fangled computers. Was he right?

Never .. you can't get rid of the problem of money in this life
People envy each other, and aren't often satisfied .. a person who struggles to pay their fuel bills will not be finding their life 'leisurable'

I voted no to AV and not because I didn't understand AV
or that I thought we didn't need change
but because I believed AV wasn't the change we needed,

I voted yes for AV, because I understood it, I thought we needed change. AV was a change in the right direction.

It's not my preferred system and these are not the circumstances under which I would have chosen to be asked.

It was a chance to vote for a change, or a register a vote that supported change so I voted for the hand that I was given

I think Ive already posted this elsewhere, but one of the Yes campaign leaders said:

We were offering a solution to a problem that nobody realised they had.

> AV was a change in the right direction. <

I voted 'yes' for similar reasons. I don't think there was a hope in hell that there would have been some kind of revolutionary switch from FPTP to PR in the UK. I thought it would have been good to try a bit of change out first. But for various reasons people were scared off AV.

Im not convinced people were scared off. The Yes campaign just has to accept that they didnt make their case.

The No campaign had some heavyweight muscle and money behind it and, OK, their lies may have scared off some. But the Yes campaign was...meh. Partly this was because they were craftily manoeuvred into referendum date such that their potential activists would be far more concerned with saving council/parliamentary/assembly seats. This wasnt such an issue for the Nos - they were riding high at the default position all along.

Its telling that the LibDems/Yess didnt cotton to the fact that they were legally allowed to combine Yes and LibDem on their posters at the same time (The Tories/Nos did). And Labour...they were lukewarm and divided anyway.

But mainly...for a a change like that, people were going to have to be persuaded. There was a hill to climb and nobody climbed it. Persuasion required more than abstract discussions of fairness. The Yes campaign did not even begin to tell people how voting Yes would improve their lives.


I mean...surely we knew it was never going to happen, from the day Clegg got it made part of the coalition agreement and everyone thought ~Wh...wh...WHY?!!!~ So now there are the LibDems promising that theyre going to get something big out of the Tories. Sorry, chums...this *was* your big thing. Its what you asked Santa for. You blew it.

>Im not convinced people were scared off.<

I think a lot were scared off because of the utter dearth of information about how AV worked..so whenever you'd get some remark about it being complicated put out, people would agree as they didn't properly understand the damn thing.

THere should have been proper debates on the media about it, like we get for General Elections to look at all the possible implications which would also worry people.

I learnt more from this thread about it than from the BBC. The BBC has a duty to Licence fee payers.

IMO I think the Clegg/Lib Dem factor could have become much more minor if people understood it better because of lots of info put out..they would have taken a long term view as it was for the benefit of the electorate ultimately, not the Lib Dems as was suggested. Yes they might benefit to a degree..but I think people could have overcome that prejudice.

The No campaign might still have won but I didn't think there was a level playing field...*New* things require a lot of explanation..people fear change...but heck they had the Royal Wedding to comfort them about continuity.

I thought AV was an acceptable "solution" (solution to what?).

It kept the constituency link and is more democratic and fairer
(representative democracy) than FPTP - with the elected
Representative (MP) having to be positively supported by more than
50% of the voters.