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

UKIP could potentially weaken the Tories, opening the door for a left-wing Government. Maybe not overly likely, but it could happen...

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Not only that Liberal democrats aren't to the left they are a centre party

my last post as to Maria about the libdems being a centre party

'Nevertheless, of those that tactically voted for the libdems, I think the majority did so to do as you say to keep the Conservatives out, so betrayed those votes in the intention in which they were cast'

The Lib Dems didn't betray people who voted to keep the Tories out at all. They never promised to do so. Many of us (tactical voters or not) made the assumption that the Lib Dems would ally themselves with the Labour party, their natural bed-fellows. We were wrong and for the reason that Peanut mentions above. It was the democratic thing to do.

We laid a bet and lost.

I've been a life-long Liberal (Democrat) - old enough to have been a 'proper' Liberal. I completely understood why the party (I can no longer say 'we') got into coalition with the Tories. I understand, but it still leaves a bitter taste. I don't know if I can risk voting Lib Dem ever again.

PP.

I think England needs its own parliament (not Westminster lite) with its own powers, MPs, electoral system and parties. My guess is that, if Australian parallels can be reasonably drawn, the devolved parliaments will be socially softer and the federal/Westminster parliament more hard line.

In any case, every government gets past its sell buy date and "the other lot" will get in. Labour don't have to worry about "never getting a majority again" because people will make sure they do to ensure change.

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I'm presuming this would be because a majority of English people voted for them. Are you suggesting majority voting is a bad thing? ---

Not really, I'm saying it would be a bad thing for the Northern parts of England that share voting patterns with Scotland (i.e. they tend to be Labour).

It would be interesting to see if the political sea changed if Tory England became a 1 party state - would it stay that way...

As my dad put it (and he's voted in 12 General Elections so far) - Labour get in and start spending money on services that were cut back by the Tories. They raise taxes and borrow until the country is skint and people's pockets are empty. So we vote the Tories in and they cut spending to services and sort the economy. After a while people have money in their pockets and think "Yes, let's spend more money on services", so we vote Labour ..... and the whole thing goes round and round.

Interesting that Cam-moron was happy to let the scots a vote on constitutional change, is happy to let us vote on constitutional change in the EU, but wants to steam roller through constitutional change in England that suits his aims without giving us time to debate and consider or a referendum.

And on the subject of democracy, whilst the seats / percentage of votes as listed above is so messed up, the only way to ensure proper democracy is PR. (See? I SAID I was a proper old-school Liberal!)

Otherwise, England would end up being a right wing dictatorship forever.

PP.

Yep, pity that one is dead in water, not inclined to be forgiving for squandering that opportunity either, not that this present situation was foreseeable but losing it then was, but would have been an ideal time to raise precisely that issue

PP, I wasn't meaning that to be negative post towards you, I just think it was poorly played hand by the lib dems who were making the decisions at the time

Notes on American English usages, in American politics the term 'majority' indicates more than half the vote.

Smaller bodies of the vote are called 'pluralities' and procedurally, except where law of convention requires a larger vote, the largest plurality wins.

The political commentators usually specify in such a case that its a decision in favor of a minority of the total populace.

In American Electoral College politics, historically, wins in the presidential race have often gone to Presidents who've gotten a minority of the popular vote, in order assure adequate regional representation.

'of', in the 2nd paragraph, should have been 'or.'

I am Cornish and I would be delighted if England left the U.K. then we Celtic nations could form our own political bloc!

All interesting stuff....

If Scottish MPs can't vote on 'English' matters, where does that leave the Welsh and Northern Irish MPs? As I understand things, England and Wales have more in common than with Scotland in terms of law and various other systems, and the Welsh Assembly has fewer powers than the Scottish Parliament. So presumably MPs representing Welsh constituencies will get a vote on some things and not others. Similar with constituencies in Northern Ireland. Anyone else remember the Ulster Unionists propping up John Major's sorry government?

It's very hard to know whether there should be a single 'English' assembly, or regional assemblies within England. I'm tempted to think that England naturally divides up into smaller units in a way that Scotland doesn't, but Edinburgh and Glasgow are very different, and I think I'm right in saying that there's something of a division between the highlands and islands and the lowlands. In England we've got a few areas with really strong regional identities (Cornwall, Yorkshire), but it other areas it's harder to say - are the East Midlands different to the West Midlands? And how many layers of politics and politicians do we really want?

I can't help but think that 'England' is the wrong unit of politics, given the differences between London and the South East and the rest of England, politically, socially and economically. Certainly it's one that suits a narrow Tory self interest, and doesn't suit a narrow Labour one.

Whatever happens, it's surely time for some (non-AV) system of proportional representation. The fact that every vote counted seems to be feature in the high turnout in Scotland, and given that our political landscape is more fractured than ever before (UKIP, Tories, Labour, LibDem, Green), a first past the post system becomes more and more obviously unfit for purpose. Whatever else may be said about the ConDems, their one success has been to show that the UK can do stable coalition government.

So, the question of 'should England leave the UK', is really; do we want more power to smaller, regional/local levels of 'government', to which, I think the answer, for me, at least has to be no... The smaller the level of 'governence', (and I@m thinking local and city councils etc), are invariably utter useless, corupt, and even less brain-capible than those currently in the bigger level of governence that sits in London... More and more money would just be spent, on the 'method of governence', rather than on 'doing' whatever it is, that the electerate might want the governing institutions to actually do, at a local, regiional or national level Unless devolution to smaller, regional lunits of governence somehow managed, at the same time, to increase the brain capicity of individuals involved at each of many, smaller units, it'd not necessarily achieve much... IMO...

In terms of regional differnces, as the reason for wanting smaller units of governence, the real asnwer to that, is redistribution of employment, and thenceby wealth, to areas outside those where the majority of both currently resides... IMO But no one who goes into politics wants that, so it'll never happen, I guess

The main problem has always been that the Isle of Wight – an area with traditionally among the country's highest unemployment as well as the nation's highest proportion of employees working in seasonal rather than full year employment – is always classed as part of the South East, England's wealthiest region. The Isle of Wight is quite clearly physically separated from the rest of the South East by a stretch of water that will cost you £50-£110 per day if you want to take a car over. No major company will open offices on the Isle of Wight, because why would they want to pay £50-£110 per day for each car journey there? In the past there were shipbuilding and aircraft jobs, where working on an island was not an issue, but manufacturing in Britain has declined to almost non-existence. Employment remains dominated by agriculture and tourism, low paid and seasonal.

The Isle of Wight is also the least represented constituency in Parliament, with 1 MP for 135,000 people (111,000 voters). It is the only constituency with over 90,000 voters while the smallest constituency has only 20,000. Most constituencies contain 50,000-80,000 voters. We didn't even have any representation in Parliament or an MP before 1584.

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I think you're probably right, 2legs. I did have some thoughts about the right "unit" being something like city states, but that's not working as we have too many councils where one party or another has a more or less permanent majority, and where national issues and individual scandal are the only things likely to make a difference. There's little scrutiny, little interest.

So I wonder if a combination of:
(a) a rebalancing of considerations of interest and opportunity so that everything's not so biased in favour of London and the South East, and the 1%; and
(b) an electoral system of proportional representation to ensure that votes outside of the swing seats actually count, and that results express the will of the electorate

Would be the way to redress the disconnect and the democratic deficit.

There's been a recent example of things going in the other direction. All of Scotland's police forces were merged into one to save money. What effectively happened was Strathclyde Police took over every other force which meant policing that had been developed to suit Glasgow was applied to the whole country.

Two areas where this had an effect:

1) Armed Police. Each local police force had a different policy to suit their local needs. Some forces had weapons kept at police stations and trained officers collected them from there during an incident. Others kept them in designated patrol cars with securely locked compartments. Glasgow had specialist teams who carried weapons openly at all times, but these officers were kept in reserve in case of incidents. When the forces merged, the Glasgow policy became the policy for all the forces but as the more rural constabularies couldn't afford to have armed officers sitting around waiting for an incident, we have the bizarre sight of tooled-up cops going into MacDonalds in Elgin and putting their machine guns on the table next to their Big Macs in front of children.

2) Prostitution - Glasgow has a zero tolerance approach to prostitutes working from premises. (It also has the highest incidence of prostitutes being raped and assaulted). Edinburgh had developed a more laissez faire approach whereby there were a number of effectively licenced brothels in the city. Within days of the forces merging a number of raids took place at the brothels and saunas. Prostitutes and clients were taken into the street in various stages of undress and interviewed in public. No arrests were made but apparently there has been a rise in prostitutes working the streets and from home with the resultant rise in assaults.

My point is there are local conditions that require different approaches from the authorities even in neighbouring police districts. IMO, governance of essentially local issues should take place at the lowest level possible. Westminster should be streamlined, limiting it to one MP per council area (so Scotland would go down to 32 MPs from the current 52). Westminster would be responsible for defence, foreign policy, the EU etc with budgets for other areas devolved to local councils. Probably a vast over-simplification but it's a start

"The Isle of Wight is also the least represented constituency in Parliament... We didn't even have any representation in Parliament or an MP before 1584." [Bluebottle]

Isn't that water under the bridge - er, ferry?

But seriously, I've noticed that any places with valuable deposits of fossil fuels or industrially desirable minerals will start to seem very important. Governments start to sit up and take notice, even to the extent of putting down their bottles

" It is reported that initial work suggests that areas in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, the Wessex basin, Isle of Wight and Dorset as well as areas of Scotland and the Midlands all have shale gas potential."

If the Isle of Wight starts to become a lucrative spot for exploration, its government will surely try harder to keep the Wightians [Wightese? Wighters? Wightsmen?] happy