Mid Beds betting – CON and LD up while LAB down – politicalbetting.com

Jim_Miller said:

Here's an interesting detail:
"The four Republicans who voted for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Tuesday but not today — Reps. Vern Buchanan (Fla.), Drew Ferguson (Ga.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa) and Pete Stauber (Minn.) — don’t fall into the categories that many of the previous Jordan holdouts do.

None of them are on the House Appropriations Committee or the House Armed Services Committee. Nor are they members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is home to many moderate Republicans. And they don’t represent especially competitive districts.

But they have one thing in common: All four voted to certify President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/18/house-speaker-vote/#link-MZY2U7N3ZJF7NBANJ3AENFSCTM

That is interesting. Buck's vocal comments recently about needing to acknowledge Biden won have been very interesting, since we know doing so drives Trump crazy, and dare anyone who could win the support of a majority of their GOP colleagues admit that? And have admitted it with their actions in voting to certify?

viewcode said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

Option 1
Increase the number of MPs to 900 (average 75,000, can still get them in Westminster Hall)

Option 2
Increase the number of MPs to 2,267. Rationale is as follows

1851

• UK popn in 1851 = 27368800
  
• Halve that because only men had the vote
  
• UK Potential voter popn in 1851 = 13,684,400
  
• UK number of MPs in 1852 = 654 seats
  
• Voter/seat ratio = 20,924. Call it 30,000
  

2023

• UK popn in 2023 = 68million (probably)
  
• Ideal number of seats = 68million/30,000 = 2,267.
  

So we should have 2,267 MPs, each holding an average of 30,000 people.

Representation goes up, party loyalty goes down, MP workload goes down

Though you've failed to handle productivity growth since 1851. Since 1851 there have been wonders in things like telecommunications, the phone, the internet, email, as well as transport, cars, mass transit and much, much more.

If in 1852 the typical MP could represent 21k electors, shouldn't the typical MP now be able to comparatively represent an order of magnitude more due to productivity growth?

boulay said:

MattW said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is starting to accept that prison doesn’t work
As the Justice Secretary has recognised, short sentences are not effective in reducing reoffending.
By David Gauke"

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/10/the-uk-is-starting-to-accept-that-prison-doesnt-work

I watched the statement and questions the other day,

It was depressingly filled with partisan posturing by the Minister, who said nothing about why he had not worked towards increasing Court capacity several years ago - and did not come up (like all his predecessors since 2011) to a solution once and for all to the continuing Indeterminate Sentencing scandal.

Since we are in a Twilight of the Political Pygmies phase, how likely do you think it is that anything will happen?

If the minister was Alex Chalk then I imagine he hadn’t worked towards increasing court capacity several years ago because he has only been Justice Sec since April.

Unfortunately his brief doesn’t include Minister for Time Machines. Sadly he is probably one of the few MPs who would be able to work towards sensible plans with time however he’s likely going to lose his seat so we will never know.

He’s had enough, hasn’t he, and giving up at the next election?.

One for @Leon:

https://soranews24.com/2023/10/17/japanese-tea-commercial-actress-created-by-ai-has-some-wondering-if-its-the-scandal-free-future/

kyf_100 said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is starting to accept that prison doesn’t work
As the Justice Secretary has recognised, short sentences are not effective in reducing reoffending.
By David Gauke"

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/10/the-uk-is-starting-to-accept-that-prison-doesnt-work

Have they considered longer sentences?

Look at Bukele's popularity rating in El Salavador... Two inconvenient truths: being tough on crime both reduces crime, and makes you very very popular...

Longer sentences work for generally dangerous offenders in keeping them off the streets.

For those sentenced to less than 12 months, especially first time offenders, it just means they lose their jobs, find it difficult to get jobs on release and hence turn to crime again

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

Let me give you an example. I think homeopathy is complete bunk. I would actively vote against someone who stood on a platform of using government funds to promote it (David Tredinnick for example). I could therefore put every other Conservative above him, and even put candidates from the LibDems, Labour, Reclaim, and the Greens ahead of him too. In this way, I could register a very strong vote against homeopothy.

In the old world, I couldn't do that.

rcs1000 said:

kyf_100 said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is starting to accept that prison doesn’t work
As the Justice Secretary has recognised, short sentences are not effective in reducing reoffending.
By David Gauke"

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/10/the-uk-is-starting-to-accept-that-prison-doesnt-work

Have they considered longer sentences?

Look at Bukele's popularity rating in El Salavador... Two inconvenient truths: being tough on crime both reduces crime, and makes you very very popular...

The US - sadly - is a bit of a counter-example. There's no evidence of any correlation between harshness of sentences and crime rates. (Indeed, the - admittedly weak - correlation is actually the other way around.)

The trick to stopping offending is not principally the harshness of the sentences for those convicted. It is about catching and convicting the right people. A twenty year sentence for shoplifting is not a deterrent if you don't think it'll ever get to court.

A fair point. We have more or less reached the point round my way where you cannot buy either a steak or a large jar of instant coffee off the shelf, along with several other goods in the £5 to 10 range. You have to go up to the checkout and ask for it over the counter.

If small acts of crime like this continue to be unpunished, I really think we're heading to a much darker, dystopian place. You can imagine having to swipe your bloody "membership card" to get through the door at Tesco (I refuse to have one of the data capturing things). And anybody who doesn't carry one is excluded from the shop. And woe betide you if you have a face that looks like someone who's been caught shoplifting, because facial camera recognition software will have you excluded from ever buying anything again. That's the dystopia we're heading towards.

I know it's just broken window theory, but I think we're at an inflection point in society now, where if we don't take action to deter the little things, society heads to a much darker place, be that omniprescent and oppressive corporate security, or lawless streets (muggings seem to be picking up again too, judging from the number of people I know who've had phones nicked in recent weeks).

OldKingCole said:

boulay said:

MattW said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is starting to accept that prison doesn’t work
As the Justice Secretary has recognised, short sentences are not effective in reducing reoffending.
By David Gauke"

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/10/the-uk-is-starting-to-accept-that-prison-doesnt-work

I watched the statement and questions the other day,

It was depressingly filled with partisan posturing by the Minister, who said nothing about why he had not worked towards increasing Court capacity several years ago - and did not come up (like all his predecessors since 2011) to a solution once and for all to the continuing Indeterminate Sentencing scandal.

Since we are in a Twilight of the Political Pygmies phase, how likely do you think it is that anything will happen?

If the minister was Alex Chalk then I imagine he hadn’t worked towards increasing court capacity several years ago because he has only been Justice Sec since April.

Unfortunately his brief doesn’t include Minister for Time Machines. Sadly he is probably one of the few MPs who would be able to work towards sensible plans with time however he’s likely going to lose his seat so we will never know.

He’s had enough, hasn’t he, and giving up at the next election?.

Add - or his predecessors.

It was just macho posturing and PR waffle.

The Opposition reply was fairly devastating.

nico679 said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

now 20 votes NOT for Jordan from Republicans, same as yesterday . . . and still in the Ss in the roll call . . .

ADDENDUM - make that 21

You’d think some might think twice about ever giving the GOP a house majority again after this shambles . The GOP are lucky the election is next year as surely the Dems would hammer them for being unable to govern because of their internal psychodrama .

Thanks to gerrymandering on a scale we can scarcely credit (of both sides), we're lucky there's any House seats which even change hands.

Even more incredible some gerrymandering is so bad even the American courts have to toss the maps out.

kyf_100 said:

rcs1000 said:

kyf_100 said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is starting to accept that prison doesn’t work
As the Justice Secretary has recognised, short sentences are not effective in reducing reoffending.
By David Gauke"

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/10/the-uk-is-starting-to-accept-that-prison-doesnt-work

Have they considered longer sentences?

Look at Bukele's popularity rating in El Salavador... Two inconvenient truths: being tough on crime both reduces crime, and makes you very very popular...

The US - sadly - is a bit of a counter-example. There's no evidence of any correlation between harshness of sentences and crime rates. (Indeed, the - admittedly weak - correlation is actually the other way around.)

The trick to stopping offending is not principally the harshness of the sentences for those convicted. It is about catching and convicting the right people. A twenty year sentence for shoplifting is not a deterrent if you don't think it'll ever get to court.

A fair point. We have more or less reached the point round my way where you cannot buy either a steak or a large jar of instant coffee off the shelf, along with several other goods in the £5 to 10 range. You have to go up to the checkout and ask for it over the counter.

If small acts of crime like this continue to be unpunished, I really think we're heading to a much darker, dystopian place. You can imagine having to swipe your bloody "membership card" to get through the door at Tesco (I refuse to have one of the data capturing things). And anybody who doesn't carry one is excluded from the shop. And woe betide you if you have a face that looks like someone who's been caught shoplifting, because facial camera recognition software will have you excluded from ever buying anything again. That's the dystopia we're heading towards.

I know it's just broken window theory, but I think we're at an inflection point in society now, where if we don't take action to deter the little things, society heads to a much darker place, be that omniprescent and oppressive corporate security, or lawless streets (muggings seem to be picking up again too, judging from the number of people I know who've had phones nicked in recent weeks).

The problem, though, is not about the harshness of the punishments. It's about:

(a) We have significantly fewer police now than in 2010, and we've shut a lot of police stations too. This means that the chance of a policeman being nearby when and if a crime is committed is close to zero.

(b) We've underfunded the criminal justice system, so that trials take years to happen and by the time they do, witnesses cannot be found or have often forgotten essential information. The fact that we have a staggering 15,000 people on remand in the UK is a reminder of how poorly the justice system is working.

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

Geographically speaking, what happens in Ireland - with over a century of experience voting via STV - is that constituencies generally get divvied up, as practical matter, among candidates of same party. With each "assigned" a different patch of turf, almost always their home base.

Voting for a homie ain't the only thing . . . but it is most definitely a thing.

Urge any PBers with even quasi-serious interest in Single Transferable Vote, to spend a bit of time studying how it actually operates in Ireland.

Im voting for the Healy-Rae party

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Healy-Rae

Roger said:

Andy_JS said:

Strong words from Hodges.

"(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
The reality is the BBC can no longer be viewed as a credible, impartial source on the Gaza conflict. It reported Hamas claims uncritically. Forget the handbags over “terrorists”. That is a terrible place for the organisation to be. There needs to be a serious investigation.
8:48 AM · Oct 18, 2023"

https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1714548973401153766

What a shame Hodges and the Mail haven't been held to those standards. We might have been spared their entire professional existence

He's right here though for once. What makes the BBC valuable is that they are held to a high standard and are supposedly impartial. The Mail or Mail on Sunday have never pretended to be the latter, and we're all free to not buy it and ignore it when it prints garbage. The BBC as our national broadcaster, and in theory, an international gold standard, can't screw up like this without doing lots of damage to its reputation.

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

It rather trashes the constituency link.

To take a semi-random example, take the constituency of Newcastle Under Lyme. If we went from single member constituencies, to 4 member constituencies, we'd almost certainly go from having one member dedicated to Newcastle Under Lyme . . . to seeing 4 members dedicated effectively to Stoke.

Newcastle under Lyme would be completely aborbed within and a minor player to the interests of Stoke.

Alanbrooke said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

Geographically speaking, what happens in Ireland - with over a century of experience voting via STV - is that constituencies generally get divvied up, as practical matter, among candidates of same party. With each "assigned" a different patch of turf, almost always their home base.

Voting for a homie ain't the only thing . . . but it is most definitely a thing.

Urge any PBers with even quasi-serious interest in Single Transferable Vote, to spend a bit of time studying how it actually operates in Ireland.

Im voting for the Healy-Rae party

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Healy-Rae

You must have larceny in your heart! Certainly you've got working funny bone.

nico679 said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

now 20 votes NOT for Jordan from Republicans, same as yesterday . . . and still in the Ss in the roll call . . .

ADDENDUM - make that 21

You’d think some might think twice about ever giving the GOP a house majority again after this shambles . The GOP are lucky the election is next year as surely the Dems would hammer them for being unable to govern because of their internal psychodrama .

Where does this recent obsession with not compromising come from? Seems GOP are completely afflicted with it.

Democracy cannot function without compromising over issues.

It occurs to me that the first attack scuppered the Israel/Saudi peace deal, and the second strike moves us a bit closer to thermonuclear war as everyone picks sides.

Have we definitely eliminated the possibility of SPECTRE or THRUSH? We should investigate.

kyf_100 said:

rcs1000 said:

kyf_100 said:

rcs1000 said:

kyf_100 said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is starting to accept that prison doesn’t work
As the Justice Secretary has recognised, short sentences are not effective in reducing reoffending.
By David Gauke"

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/10/the-uk-is-starting-to-accept-that-prison-doesnt-work

Have they considered longer sentences?

Look at Bukele's popularity rating in El Salavador... Two inconvenient truths: being tough on crime both reduces crime, and makes you very very popular...

The US - sadly - is a bit of a counter-example. There's no evidence of any correlation between harshness of sentences and crime rates. (Indeed, the - admittedly weak - correlation is actually the other way around.)

The trick to stopping offending is not principally the harshness of the sentences for those convicted. It is about catching and convicting the right people. A twenty year sentence for shoplifting is not a deterrent if you don't think it'll ever get to court.

A fair point. We have more or less reached the point round my way where you cannot buy either a steak or a large jar of instant coffee off the shelf, along with several other goods in the £5 to 10 range. You have to go up to the checkout and ask for it over the counter.

If small acts of crime like this continue to be unpunished, I really think we're heading to a much darker, dystopian place. You can imagine having to swipe your bloody "membership card" to get through the door at Tesco (I refuse to have one of the data capturing things). And anybody who doesn't carry one is excluded from the shop. And woe betide you if you have a face that looks like someone who's been caught shoplifting, because facial camera recognition software will have you excluded from ever buying anything again. That's the dystopia we're heading towards.

I know it's just broken window theory, but I think we're at an inflection point in society now, where if we don't take action to deter the little things, society heads to a much darker place, be that omniprescent and oppressive corporate security, or lawless streets (muggings seem to be picking up again too, judging from the number of people I know who've had phones nicked in recent weeks).

The problem, though, is not about the harshness of the punishments. It's about:

(a) We have significantly fewer police now than in 2010, and we've shut a lot of police stations too. This means that the chance of a policeman being nearby when and if a crime is committed is close to zero.

(b) We've underfunded the criminal justice system, so that trials take years to happen and by the time they do, witnesses cannot be found or have often forgotten essential information. The fact that we have a staggering 15,000 people on remand in the UK is a reminder of how poorly the justice system is working.

Then those are the things we need to fix. But going back to the original article, which suggests that "prison doesn't work" and we shouldn't have custodial sentences below 12 months (i.e. no prison for "minor" offences) is not likely to be popular during a time when the shops and streets seem to be descending into lawlessness.

Blair was popular in part because of "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".

Whereas "We're now letting anyone off with a slap on the wrist who commits a crime that used to get you six months behind bars" strikes me as a policy that won't win many votes.

In that case the government needs to build and staff more prisons, courts etc.

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

It rather trashes the constituency link.

To take a semi-random example, take the constituency of Newcastle Under Lyme. If we went from single member constituencies, to 4 member constituencies, we'd almost certainly go from having one member dedicated to Newcastle Under Lyme . . . to seeing 4 members dedicated effectively to Stoke.

Newcastle under Lyme would be completely aborbed within and a minor player to the interests of Stoke.

You need to write out your work on the blackboard for that equation.

Within the area local to that, there are currently 4 constituencies:
Newcastle under Lyme
Stoke on Trent Central
Stoke on Trent North
Stoke on Trent South

Can you spot the odd one out?

If we had a 4 member constituency, then we'd have a solitary Stoke on Trent constituency which would incorporate Newcastle under Lyme to make up the numbers.

Stoke on Trent making up the overwhelming majority of the electorate would dwarf the concerns of Newcastle under Lyme.

You'd go from have a member for Newcastle, to having instead a Tory member for Stoke, a Labour member for Stoke and however else it breaks down too ... for Stoke.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Good afternoon everyone.

Have @Leon @Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?

Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.

Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.

So it seems we have the answer.

Leon has integrity.

Roger does not.

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

It rather trashes the constituency link.

To take a semi-random example, take the constituency of Newcastle Under Lyme. If we went from single member constituencies, to 4 member constituencies, we'd almost certainly go from having one member dedicated to Newcastle Under Lyme . . . to seeing 4 members dedicated effectively to Stoke.

Newcastle under Lyme would be completely aborbed within and a minor player to the interests of Stoke.

You need to write out your work on the blackboard for that equation.

Within the area local to that, there are currently 4 constituencies:
Newcastle under Lyme
Stoke on Trent Central
Stoke on Trent North
Stoke on Trent South

Can you spot the odd one out?

If we had a 4 member constituency, then we'd have a solitary Stoke on Trent constituency which would incorporate Newcastle under Lyme to make up the numbers.

Stoke on Trent making up the overwhelming majority of the electorate would dwarf the concerns of Newcastle under Lyme.

You'd go from have a member for Newcastle, to having instead a Tory member for Stoke, a Labour member for Stoke and however else it breaks down too ... for Stoke.

Like I said before, you should study on actual operation of STV in actual Irish constituencies.

Where in a typical four-seater, a similar area with significant local identity, most likely would get one of its own duly elected.

Note that Irish voters frequently - even usually - jiggle their preferences based on both party AND locality.

You can't have it both ways, both locale and proportionality, as the whole reason of large constituencies is deliberately to abolish the locale vote to get proportionality. Can't have both.

Under your theory, who represents Newcastle? Rather than having a Tory for Stoke, Labour for Stoke and however else it breaks down too for Stoke?

rcs1000 said:

kyf_100 said:

rcs1000 said:

kyf_100 said:

rcs1000 said:

kyf_100 said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is starting to accept that prison doesn’t work
As the Justice Secretary has recognised, short sentences are not effective in reducing reoffending.
By David Gauke"

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/10/the-uk-is-starting-to-accept-that-prison-doesnt-work

Have they considered longer sentences?

Look at Bukele's popularity rating in El Salavador... Two inconvenient truths: being tough on crime both reduces crime, and makes you very very popular...

The US - sadly - is a bit of a counter-example. There's no evidence of any correlation between harshness of sentences and crime rates. (Indeed, the - admittedly weak - correlation is actually the other way around.)

The trick to stopping offending is not principally the harshness of the sentences for those convicted. It is about catching and convicting the right people. A twenty year sentence for shoplifting is not a deterrent if you don't think it'll ever get to court.

A fair point. We have more or less reached the point round my way where you cannot buy either a steak or a large jar of instant coffee off the shelf, along with several other goods in the £5 to 10 range. You have to go up to the checkout and ask for it over the counter.

If small acts of crime like this continue to be unpunished, I really think we're heading to a much darker, dystopian place. You can imagine having to swipe your bloody "membership card" to get through the door at Tesco (I refuse to have one of the data capturing things). And anybody who doesn't carry one is excluded from the shop. And woe betide you if you have a face that looks like someone who's been caught shoplifting, because facial camera recognition software will have you excluded from ever buying anything again. That's the dystopia we're heading towards.

I know it's just broken window theory, but I think we're at an inflection point in society now, where if we don't take action to deter the little things, society heads to a much darker place, be that omniprescent and oppressive corporate security, or lawless streets (muggings seem to be picking up again too, judging from the number of people I know who've had phones nicked in recent weeks).

The problem, though, is not about the harshness of the punishments. It's about:

(a) We have significantly fewer police now than in 2010, and we've shut a lot of police stations too. This means that the chance of a policeman being nearby when and if a crime is committed is close to zero.

(b) We've underfunded the criminal justice system, so that trials take years to happen and by the time they do, witnesses cannot be found or have often forgotten essential information. The fact that we have a staggering 15,000 people on remand in the UK is a reminder of how poorly the justice system is working.

Then those are the things we need to fix. But going back to the original article, which suggests that "prison doesn't work" and we shouldn't have custodial sentences below 12 months (i.e. no prison for "minor" offences) is not likely to be popular during a time when the shops and streets seem to be descending into lawlessness.

Blair was popular in part because of "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime".

Whereas "We're now letting anyone off with a slap on the wrist who commits a crime that used to get you six months behind bars" strikes me as a policy that won't win many votes.

The problem is that the prisons are full.

Not full with prisoners, mind. But full with people on remand.

The way to solve the problem is to get the courts moving again. And that means staffing them properly. And it means raising legal aid rates. In London, it is increasingly the case that courts are unable to try defendants because the £120 of legal aid paid to a barrister to go down to Uxbridge Magistrate's Court is not sufficient to get anyone to want to do the work.

Legal aid is an easy target, but what's been done to it just contributes to a breakdown of the whole system, so it is a completely false economy.

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

It rather trashes the constituency link.

To take a semi-random example, take the constituency of Newcastle Under Lyme. If we went from single member constituencies, to 4 member constituencies, we'd almost certainly go from having one member dedicated to Newcastle Under Lyme . . . to seeing 4 members dedicated effectively to Stoke.

Newcastle under Lyme would be completely aborbed within and a minor player to the interests of Stoke.

You need to write out your work on the blackboard for that equation.

Within the area local to that, there are currently 4 constituencies:
Newcastle under Lyme
Stoke on Trent Central
Stoke on Trent North
Stoke on Trent South

Can you spot the odd one out?

If we had a 4 member constituency, then we'd have a solitary Stoke on Trent constituency which would incorporate Newcastle under Lyme to make up the numbers.

Stoke on Trent making up the overwhelming majority of the electorate would dwarf the concerns of Newcastle under Lyme.

You'd go from have a member for Newcastle, to having instead a Tory member for Stoke, a Labour member for Stoke and however else it breaks down too ... for Stoke.

Isn't the Irish experience rather different? Basically because of the single vote bit.

If the geography (or anything else!) matters to voters, the votes from Stoke are enough to elect three members but not a fourth, because the votes get "used up". So if the voters of NuL coalesce on local candidates, there's a decent chance that will add up to as much representation as it merits.

Better than a single member system with predetermined boundaries. If you're a minority on the wrong side of a constituency boundary (a Conservative in most of London, for example), that's that.

kle4 said:

rottenborough said:

nico679 said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

now 20 votes NOT for Jordan from Republicans, same as yesterday . . . and still in the Ss in the roll call . . .

ADDENDUM - make that 21

You’d think some might think twice about ever giving the GOP a house majority again after this shambles . The GOP are lucky the election is next year as surely the Dems would hammer them for being unable to govern because of their internal psychodrama .

Where does this recent obsession with not compromising come from? Seems GOP are completely afflicted with it.

Democracy cannot function without compromising over issues.

I'd guess that since more than half the GOP no longer trust the democratic process and reject the outcome of the last Presidential election, that wrecks any inclination to compromise - if you think the other side are stealing elections, why would you ever compromise with them, or even those on your own side you disagree with?

Yes.

And it's the terrible consequence of a number of factors:

(1) Increasingly, we only know and hang out with people who share our political beliefs. If you don't know anyone who voted for Biden, how could he possibly have won the election?

(2) Social media, that constantly reinforces things you are already primed to believe.

(3) Donald Trump

kyf_100 said:

rcs1000 said:

kyf_100 said:

Andy_JS said:

"The UK is starting to accept that prison doesn’t work
As the Justice Secretary has recognised, short sentences are not effective in reducing reoffending.
By David Gauke"

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/10/the-uk-is-starting-to-accept-that-prison-doesnt-work

Have they considered longer sentences?

Look at Bukele's popularity rating in El Salavador... Two inconvenient truths: being tough on crime both reduces crime, and makes you very very popular...

The US - sadly - is a bit of a counter-example. There's no evidence of any correlation between harshness of sentences and crime rates. (Indeed, the - admittedly weak - correlation is actually the other way around.)

The trick to stopping offending is not principally the harshness of the sentences for those convicted. It is about catching and convicting the right people. A twenty year sentence for shoplifting is not a deterrent if you don't think it'll ever get to court.

A fair point. We have more or less reached the point round my way where you cannot buy either a steak or a large jar of instant coffee off the shelf, along with several other goods in the £5 to 10 range. You have to go up to the checkout and ask for it over the counter.

If small acts of crime like this continue to be unpunished, I really think we're heading to a much darker, dystopian place. You can imagine having to swipe your bloody "membership card" to get through the door at Tesco (I refuse to have one of the data capturing things). And anybody who doesn't carry one is excluded from the shop. And woe betide you if you have a face that looks like someone who's been caught shoplifting, because facial camera recognition software will have you excluded from ever buying anything again. That's the dystopia we're heading towards.

I know it's just broken window theory, but I think we're at an inflection point in society now, where if we don't take action to deter the little things, society heads to a much darker place, be that omniprescent and oppressive corporate security, or lawless streets (muggings seem to be picking up again too, judging from the number of people I know who've had phones nicked in recent weeks).

Yes, that is exactly where we are going. Plus this…

When the police started publishing the locations of crimes, some areas stood out. Next to nothing there. Reported that is.

Tend to be ethnically homogenous areas. Either the shops are not being robbed. Or….

Evening all

A horrible evening weather wise in east London - the first real sign of autumn. I'm left wondering if they'll have to switch the round course races at Ascot on Saturday to what they euphenistically call "the inner flat track" - hurdles course.

I must confess I mentioned the "enormous loss of life" last evening. We do know the hospitals in Gaza are horribly overcrowded and even a superficial hit on an outbuilding could cause deaths but 500? As always, truth is the first casualty of war and the ever-elsuive independent verification of events awaits.

One of the "benefits" of modern communication is the ability to report events quickly - instant reporting begets instant commentary. It is one of the wonders of the Internet anyone can have an opinion on anything within an instant of it happening. The tweet or newspaper column is still warm when it is being dissected.

Speaking of analysis (which I wasn't), what of tomorrow's by-elections? I haven't a clue. In a way, the two constituencies rival Gaza for misinformation and disinformation. I wouldn't want to play the markets - I presume the individual campaigns have a better idea.

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

It rather trashes the constituency link.

To take a semi-random example, take the constituency of Newcastle Under Lyme. If we went from single member constituencies, to 4 member constituencies, we'd almost certainly go from having one member dedicated to Newcastle Under Lyme . . . to seeing 4 members dedicated effectively to Stoke.

Newcastle under Lyme would be completely aborbed within and a minor player to the interests of Stoke.

You need to write out your work on the blackboard for that equation.

Within the area local to that, there are currently 4 constituencies:
Newcastle under Lyme
Stoke on Trent Central
Stoke on Trent North
Stoke on Trent South

Can you spot the odd one out?

If we had a 4 member constituency, then we'd have a solitary Stoke on Trent constituency which would incorporate Newcastle under Lyme to make up the numbers.

Stoke on Trent making up the overwhelming majority of the electorate would dwarf the concerns of Newcastle under Lyme.

You'd go from have a member for Newcastle, to having instead a Tory member for Stoke, a Labour member for Stoke and however else it breaks down too ... for Stoke.

Like I said before, you should study on actual operation of STV in actual Irish constituencies.

Where in a typical four-seater, a similar area with significant local identity, most likely would get one of its own duly elected.

Note that Irish voters frequently - even usually - jiggle their preferences based on both party AND locality.

You can't have it both ways, both locale and proportionality, as the whole reason of large constituencies is deliberately to abolish the locale vote to get proportionality. Can't have both.

Under your theory, who represents Newcastle? Rather than having a Tory for Stoke, Labour for Stoke and however else it breaks down too for Stoke?

Ain't theory, rather actuality.

Check out the facts re: how STV plays out in Ireland, before theorizing how it might turn out in England.

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

It rather trashes the constituency link.

To take a semi-random example, take the constituency of Newcastle Under Lyme. If we went from single member constituencies, to 4 member constituencies, we'd almost certainly go from having one member dedicated to Newcastle Under Lyme . . . to seeing 4 members dedicated effectively to Stoke.

Newcastle under Lyme would be completely aborbed within and a minor player to the interests of Stoke.

You need to write out your work on the blackboard for that equation.

Within the area local to that, there are currently 4 constituencies:
Newcastle under Lyme
Stoke on Trent Central
Stoke on Trent North
Stoke on Trent South

Can you spot the odd one out?

If we had a 4 member constituency, then we'd have a solitary Stoke on Trent constituency which would incorporate Newcastle under Lyme to make up the numbers.

Stoke on Trent making up the overwhelming majority of the electorate would dwarf the concerns of Newcastle under Lyme.

You'd go from have a member for Newcastle, to having instead a Tory member for Stoke, a Labour member for Stoke and however else it breaks down too ... for Stoke.

Like I said before, you should study on actual operation of STV in actual Irish constituencies.

Where in a typical four-seater, a similar area with significant local identity, most likely would get one of its own duly elected.

Note that Irish voters frequently - even usually - jiggle their preferences based on both party AND locality.

You can't have it both ways, both locale and proportionality, as the whole reason of large constituencies is deliberately to abolish the locale vote to get proportionality. Can't have both.

Under your theory, who represents Newcastle? Rather than having a Tory for Stoke, Labour for Stoke and however else it breaks down too for Stoke?

Ain't theory, rather actuality.

Check out the facts re: how STV plays out in Ireland, before theorizing how it might turn out in England.

Also in Northern Ireland at Local and Assembly level.

Heathener said:

Labour suddenly look very attractive to me in Mid-Beds.

I've just bet at 13/5

I agree and have joined you.

"Gaza Strip to shrink after war, says Israeli foreign minister"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/18/israel-palestine-latest-news-biden-hamas-gaza-day-12-live/

MikeL said:

"Gaza Strip to shrink after war, says Israeli foreign minister"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/18/israel-palestine-latest-news-biden-hamas-gaza-day-12-live/

So 2 million packed into the south as Israel annexes the north . Although the north is close to uninhabitable anyway given the level of destruction. But for the foreign minister to even mention this now seems like pouring fuel onto the fire .

"The Israeli War Cabinet reportedly told U.S. President Biden today during a Meeting that they have now completed their preparations for an Invasion of the Gaza Strip and that a Ground Operation is now “Imminent.”"

https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1714713872920104964?s=20

I think this calls for a.....

BRACE

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Roger said:

Channel 4 are really giving the Israeli Ambassador a hard time. They don't accept the premise that a statement is more reliable because it's from the Israelis than the Palestinians. Israel has a history of lying which they have helpfully show. She is poor though not as bad as Mark Regev. My sense is that the PR is running out of Israels control

Leaving this hospital incident aside, the mutterings I've heard locally over the last couple of days suggest public sympathy is moving away from Israel to the ordinary Palestinian victims (not Hamas!). People were rightly horrified and outraged by Hamas's murderous assault including women and babies, but days of seeing homes reduced to rubble and reports of siege conditions has changed that. Whether it matters to Israel in the short term, or to Netanyahu at all, is in doubt.

Israel will be popular, so long as it does not resist.

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

It rather trashes the constituency link.

To take a semi-random example, take the constituency of Newcastle Under Lyme. If we went from single member constituencies, to 4 member constituencies, we'd almost certainly go from having one member dedicated to Newcastle Under Lyme . . . to seeing 4 members dedicated effectively to Stoke.

Newcastle under Lyme would be completely aborbed within and a minor player to the interests of Stoke.

You need to write out your work on the blackboard for that equation.

Actually, if anything, it would be the other way around. MPs have to live, or at least have a house in their constituencies. But MPs are also quite well paid. This means they tend to live in the nicer areas of the constituency. For the example of 3Stoke+Newcastle, it's highly likely that Newcastle (as the nicest part of that constituency) would end up with several or perhaps all of the MPs living there.

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Roger said:

Channel 4 are really giving the Israeli Ambassador a hard time. They don't accept the premise that a statement is more reliable because it's from the Israelis than the Palestinians. Israel has a history of lying which they have helpfully show. She is poor though not as bad as Mark Regev. My sense is that the PR is running out of Israels control

Leaving this hospital incident aside, the mutterings I've heard locally over the last couple of days suggest public sympathy is moving away from Israel to the ordinary Palestinian victims (not Hamas!). People were rightly horrified and outraged by Hamas's murderous assault including women and babies, but days of seeing homes reduced to rubble and reports of siege conditions has changed that. Whether it matters to Israel in the short term, or to Netanyahu at all, is in doubt.

Very much so. No one wants to watch the 4th most powerful army in the world go on a turkey shoot against a relatively defenceless population. It looks obscene and as you say the sympathy seems to have shifted quite markedly. Apart from on here Israel doesn't seem to be very popular.

Gentlemen, take to your small violins...


Matt Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ
·
3h
One of the more amusing aspects of last night's debate w
@DAaronovitch & @arusbridger is they all went for dinner afterwards and didn't even bother to invite me, despite me giving up my time for free to help make Prospect Magazine money! Classic New Elite
@prospect_uk

Dumbosaurus said:

Heathener said:

Labour suddenly look very attractive to me in Mid-Beds.

I've just bet at 13/5

I agree and have joined you.

Can I repeat my tip from earlier of Con 25%-30% at 5/2? I think this is excellent value. Even if Cons win it's not likely to be at much more than 30%, possibly less.

Roger said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Roger said:

Channel 4 are really giving the Israeli Ambassador a hard time. They don't accept the premise that a statement is more reliable because it's from the Israelis than the Palestinians. Israel has a history of lying which they have helpfully show. She is poor though not as bad as Mark Regev. My sense is that the PR is running out of Israels control

Leaving this hospital incident aside, the mutterings I've heard locally over the last couple of days suggest public sympathy is moving away from Israel to the ordinary Palestinian victims (not Hamas!). People were rightly horrified and outraged by Hamas's murderous assault including women and babies, but days of seeing homes reduced to rubble and reports of siege conditions has changed that. Whether it matters to Israel in the short term, or to Netanyahu at all, is in doubt.

Very much so. No one wants to watch the 4th most powerful army in the world go on a turkey shoot against a relatively defenceless population. It looks obscene and as you say the sympathy seems to have shifted quite markedly. Apart from on here Israel doesn't seem to be very popular.

And yet nobody wants the Gazans.

Leon said:

"The Israeli War Cabinet reportedly told U.S. President Biden today during a Meeting that they have now completed their preparations for an Invasion of the Gaza Strip and that a Ground Operation is now “Imminent.”"

https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1714713872920104964?s=20

I think this calls for a.....

BRACE

They will regret it.

Bogged down in months of house to house slaughter.

Having ground out a "win" they get to rule Northern Gaza.

And then what?

It is a trap.

rottenborough said:

Roger said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Roger said:

Channel 4 are really giving the Israeli Ambassador a hard time. They don't accept the premise that a statement is more reliable because it's from the Israelis than the Palestinians. Israel has a history of lying which they have helpfully show. She is poor though not as bad as Mark Regev. My sense is that the PR is running out of Israels control

Leaving this hospital incident aside, the mutterings I've heard locally over the last couple of days suggest public sympathy is moving away from Israel to the ordinary Palestinian victims (not Hamas!). People were rightly horrified and outraged by Hamas's murderous assault including women and babies, but days of seeing homes reduced to rubble and reports of siege conditions has changed that. Whether it matters to Israel in the short term, or to Netanyahu at all, is in doubt.

Very much so. No one wants to watch the 4th most powerful army in the world go on a turkey shoot against a relatively defenceless population. It looks obscene and as you say the sympathy seems to have shifted quite markedly. Apart from on here Israel doesn't seem to be very popular.

So far the people I have discussed this with are despairing about both sides and the never ending nature of this cycle of violence, lull, more violence with no end in sight.

They do agree that Israel cutting water off is terrible.

But in my experience most take my view - we’d rather not pick sides, and despair for all, but if we must pick sides we pick Israel.

Carnyx said:

MJW said:

Roger said:

Andy_JS said:

Strong words from Hodges.

"(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
The reality is the BBC can no longer be viewed as a credible, impartial source on the Gaza conflict. It reported Hamas claims uncritically. Forget the handbags over “terrorists”. That is a terrible place for the organisation to be. There needs to be a serious investigation.
8:48 AM · Oct 18, 2023"

https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1714548973401153766

What a shame Hodges and the Mail haven't been held to those standards. We might have been spared their entire professional existence

He's right here though for once. What makes the BBC valuable is that they are held to a high standard and are supposedly impartial. The Mail or Mail on Sunday have never pretended to be the latter, and we're all free to not buy it and ignore it when it prints garbage. The BBC as our national broadcaster, and in theory, an international gold standard, can't screw up like this without doing lots of damage to its reputation.

The BBC does what the Government says, but the Mail ...?

No no no.

1.) The Government does what the Mail says
2.) The BBC does what the government says

Ipso facto Dan Hodges runs the BBC.

Although the gall of a shit carrier like Hodges to criticise anyone's journalism. You can't make a living as a stenographer and then expect anyone to take you seriously.

biggles said:

rottenborough said:

Roger said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Roger said:

Channel 4 are really giving the Israeli Ambassador a hard time. They don't accept the premise that a statement is more reliable because it's from the Israelis than the Palestinians. Israel has a history of lying which they have helpfully show. She is poor though not as bad as Mark Regev. My sense is that the PR is running out of Israels control

Leaving this hospital incident aside, the mutterings I've heard locally over the last couple of days suggest public sympathy is moving away from Israel to the ordinary Palestinian victims (not Hamas!). People were rightly horrified and outraged by Hamas's murderous assault including women and babies, but days of seeing homes reduced to rubble and reports of siege conditions has changed that. Whether it matters to Israel in the short term, or to Netanyahu at all, is in doubt.

Very much so. No one wants to watch the 4th most powerful army in the world go on a turkey shoot against a relatively defenceless population. It looks obscene and as you say the sympathy seems to have shifted quite markedly. Apart from on here Israel doesn't seem to be very popular.

So far the people I have discussed this with are despairing about both sides and the never ending nature of this cycle of violence, lull, more violence with no end in sight.

They do agree that Israel cutting water off is terrible.

But in my experience most take my view - we’d rather not pick sides, and despair for all, but if we must pick sides we pick Israel.

I’ve seen, over the shoulders of youngsters on a plane a few days ago and in my own son’s feed, what TikTok has to say. It’s uniformly, wall to wall, anti-Israeli. Video after video. Proper agit-prop. No dissenting voice.

There’s a generation out there now for whom the holocaust is ancient history and what happened last weekend is not a pogrom, just the oppressed rising up. I think it’s an increasingly unsettling time to be a Jew.

TimS said:

biggles said:

rottenborough said:

Roger said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Roger said:

Channel 4 are really giving the Israeli Ambassador a hard time. They don't accept the premise that a statement is more reliable because it's from the Israelis than the Palestinians. Israel has a history of lying which they have helpfully show. She is poor though not as bad as Mark Regev. My sense is that the PR is running out of Israels control

Leaving this hospital incident aside, the mutterings I've heard locally over the last couple of days suggest public sympathy is moving away from Israel to the ordinary Palestinian victims (not Hamas!). People were rightly horrified and outraged by Hamas's murderous assault including women and babies, but days of seeing homes reduced to rubble and reports of siege conditions has changed that. Whether it matters to Israel in the short term, or to Netanyahu at all, is in doubt.

Very much so. No one wants to watch the 4th most powerful army in the world go on a turkey shoot against a relatively defenceless population. It looks obscene and as you say the sympathy seems to have shifted quite markedly. Apart from on here Israel doesn't seem to be very popular.

So far the people I have discussed this with are despairing about both sides and the never ending nature of this cycle of violence, lull, more violence with no end in sight.

They do agree that Israel cutting water off is terrible.

But in my experience most take my view - we’d rather not pick sides, and despair for all, but if we must pick sides we pick Israel.

I’ve seen, over the shoulders of youngsters on a plane a few days ago and in my own son’s feed, what TikTok has to say. It’s uniformly, wall to wall, anti-Israeli. Video after video. Proper agit-prop. No dissenting voice.

There’s a generation out there now for whom the holocaust is ancient history and what happened last weekend is not a pogrom, just the oppressed rising up. I think it’s an increasingly unsettling time to be a Jew.

Yuck. Fortunately those young folk surrender if the rest of us are “mean” so we can ignore them and educate their kids to actually think critically.

TimS said:

biggles said:

rottenborough said:

Roger said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Roger said:

Channel 4 are really giving the Israeli Ambassador a hard time. They don't accept the premise that a statement is more reliable because it's from the Israelis than the Palestinians. Israel has a history of lying which they have helpfully show. She is poor though not as bad as Mark Regev. My sense is that the PR is running out of Israels control

Leaving this hospital incident aside, the mutterings I've heard locally over the last couple of days suggest public sympathy is moving away from Israel to the ordinary Palestinian victims (not Hamas!). People were rightly horrified and outraged by Hamas's murderous assault including women and babies, but days of seeing homes reduced to rubble and reports of siege conditions has changed that. Whether it matters to Israel in the short term, or to Netanyahu at all, is in doubt.

Very much so. No one wants to watch the 4th most powerful army in the world go on a turkey shoot against a relatively defenceless population. It looks obscene and as you say the sympathy seems to have shifted quite markedly. Apart from on here Israel doesn't seem to be very popular.

So far the people I have discussed this with are despairing about both sides and the never ending nature of this cycle of violence, lull, more violence with no end in sight.

They do agree that Israel cutting water off is terrible.

But in my experience most take my view - we’d rather not pick sides, and despair for all, but if we must pick sides we pick Israel.

I’ve seen, over the shoulders of youngsters on a plane a few days ago and in my own son’s feed, what TikTok has to say. It’s uniformly, wall to wall, anti-Israeli. Video after video. Proper agit-prop. No dissenting voice.

There’s a generation out there now for whom the holocaust is ancient history and what happened last weekend is not a pogrom, just the oppressed rising up. I think it’s an increasingly unsettling time to be a Jew.

Which reflects their historical ignorance, sadly.

TimS said:

stodge said:

rottenborough said:

Leon said:

"The Israeli War Cabinet reportedly told U.S. President Biden today during a Meeting that they have now completed their preparations for an Invasion of the Gaza Strip and that a Ground Operation is now “Imminent.”"

https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1714713872920104964?s=20

I think this calls for a.....

BRACE

They will regret it.

Bogged down in months of house to house slaughter.

Having ground out a "win" they get to rule Northern Gaza.

And then what?

It is a trap.

Meanwhile, a new generation of radicalised young people is created, the next generation of prospective martyrs and the cycle of violence begins anew.

I'm sure Israel is well aware of this - how could it not be? Yet the atrocity is so heinous some form of punishment or response has to be meted out otherwise it shows weakness and would invite an internal upheaval leading to an even harsher response.

This is Jewish history. Century after century.

It’s always the fault of the Jews, when bad things happen to them.

TimS said:

biggles said:

rottenborough said:

Roger said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Roger said:

Channel 4 are really giving the Israeli Ambassador a hard time. They don't accept the premise that a statement is more reliable because it's from the Israelis than the Palestinians. Israel has a history of lying which they have helpfully show. She is poor though not as bad as Mark Regev. My sense is that the PR is running out of Israels control

Leaving this hospital incident aside, the mutterings I've heard locally over the last couple of days suggest public sympathy is moving away from Israel to the ordinary Palestinian victims (not Hamas!). People were rightly horrified and outraged by Hamas's murderous assault including women and babies, but days of seeing homes reduced to rubble and reports of siege conditions has changed that. Whether it matters to Israel in the short term, or to Netanyahu at all, is in doubt.

Very much so. No one wants to watch the 4th most powerful army in the world go on a turkey shoot against a relatively defenceless population. It looks obscene and as you say the sympathy seems to have shifted quite markedly. Apart from on here Israel doesn't seem to be very popular.

So far the people I have discussed this with are despairing about both sides and the never ending nature of this cycle of violence, lull, more violence with no end in sight.

They do agree that Israel cutting water off is terrible.

But in my experience most take my view - we’d rather not pick sides, and despair for all, but if we must pick sides we pick Israel.

I’ve seen, over the shoulders of youngsters on a plane a few days ago and in my own son’s feed, what TikTok has to say. It’s uniformly, wall to wall, anti-Israeli. Video after video. Proper agit-prop. No dissenting voice.

There’s a generation out there now for whom the holocaust is ancient history and what happened last weekend is not a pogrom, just the oppressed rising up. I think it’s an increasingly unsettling time to be a Jew.

This tweet from 2019 might be quite prophetic:

@EinatWilf
Why do I have the eerie feeling that the rising three-way global struggle between white supremacism, jihadi islamism, and left wing radicalism, does not bode well for the Jews?

https://twitter.com/EinatWilf/status/1107352744157986820

viewcode said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

viewcode said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

Option 1
Increase the number of MPs to 900 (average 75,000, can still get them in Westminster Hall)

Option 2
Increase the number of MPs to 2,267. Rationale is as follows

1851

• UK popn in 1851 = 27368800
  
• Halve that because only men had the vote
  
• UK Potential voter popn in 1851 = 13,684,400
  
• UK number of MPs in 1852 = 654 seats
  
• Voter/seat ratio = 20,924. Call it 30,000
  

2023

• UK popn in 2023 = 68million (probably)
  
• Ideal number of seats = 68million/30,000 = 2,267.
  

So we should have 2,267 MPs, each holding an average of 30,000 people.

Representation goes up, party loyalty goes down, MP workload goes down

Though you've failed to handle productivity growth since 1851. Since 1851 there have been wonders in things like telecommunications, the phone, the internet, email, as well as transport, cars, mass transit and much, much more.

If in 1852 the typical MP could represent 21k electors, shouldn't the typical MP now be able to comparatively represent an order of magnitude more due to productivity growth?

Maximum number of hours a MP can work in a day in 1851 = 24
Maximum number of hours a MP can work in a day in 2023 = 24

😀

(A more serious answer is that communications advances don't increase productivity: better contact does not increase throughput and may in fact reduce it)

I think you've failed to comprehend what productivity means, productivity is not working more hours in the day.

Productivity means getting more achieved in the same (or even fewer) hours worked.

And communication advances most definitely have increased productivity since 1850, its preposterous and fallacious to argue otherwise. Not all telecommunications are better, but MPs have the tools to be far more productive with their time than an MP in 1850 could be.

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

ClippP said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Barnesian said:

Mortimer said:

Barnesian said:

..

Fishing said:

Andy_JS said:

nico679 said:

Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October

Lab 42
Con 30
Lib Dem 12
Reform 7
Green 6
SNP 3

I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .

The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.

This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).

Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.

(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).

There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.

What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.

I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.

UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....

Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.

I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.

I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.

I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.

I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.

I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.

AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.

You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.

But each elector would have only one vote. So the candidates from each party group are also competing against one another.

Imagine you had a constituency where the Conservative candidates were Rory Stewart, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dominic Cummings and Suella Braverman. You have to rank them. Which one would get your vote first?

There is always the risk that a voter, appalled by the attitude and competence of a Conservative candidate, might prefer to vote for a Socialist or Lib Dem candidate ahead o fthe appalling Conservative. So The Party would need to have a good range of candidates to stop its voters rushing off into the arms of Farage,or whatever.

Rigid party control wth identikit candidates leads only to a loss of support.

Good innit?

But that wasn't my point. It was Barnesian who is arguing for STV with multiple MPs and using the reason that it prevents parties deciding who the candidates are. I was poiting out that they can decide that just as easily with 4 candidates from each party as they can with one so it does not reduce the power of the parties at all.

It reduces the power of the party slightly.

The Conservatives put up four candidates, and you want to vote for a Conservative: well you at least get to choose which one you make top of your list. If Euroscepticism is important to you, you can choose the one who has made the right noises there. Etc. Yes, all four candidates are vetted by the party: but - unlike in the current system - it is not the party who decides exactly which one is elected in a given seat.

But as has already been pointed out, what actually usually happens under STV is the Conservatives put up the same number of candidates as there are seats available. Not least because they don't want to risk diluting their vote. So you still don't get much more of a choice than under AV as long as you want to vote Conservative.

Whilst the big downside is you weaken or lose the constituency link.

I agree that you weaken the constituency link, because there are now three or four MPs for a - larger - area than under FPTP. I don't think it's completely eliminated - someone is still MP for a geographical area, it's just a larger one.

But I would still argue that you're putting more control in peoples' hands over which members from a political party's slate gets elected.

Whether that's worth the trade off depends on your point of view.

It rather trashes the constituency link.

To take a semi-random example, take the constituency of Newcastle Under Lyme. If we went from single member constituencies, to 4 member constituencies, we'd almost certainly go from having one member dedicated to Newcastle Under Lyme . . . to seeing 4 members dedicated effectively to Stoke.

Newcastle under Lyme would be completely aborbed within and a minor player to the interests of Stoke.

You need to write out your work on the blackboard for that equation.

Within the area local to that, there are currently 4 constituencies:
Newcastle under Lyme
Stoke on Trent Central
Stoke on Trent North
Stoke on Trent South

Can you spot the odd one out?

If we had a 4 member constituency, then we'd have a solitary Stoke on Trent constituency which would incorporate Newcastle under Lyme to make up the numbers.

Stoke on Trent making up the overwhelming majority of the electorate would dwarf the concerns of Newcastle under Lyme.

You'd go from have a member for Newcastle, to having instead a Tory member for Stoke, a Labour member for Stoke and however else it breaks down too ... for Stoke.

Like I said before, you should study on actual operation of STV in actual Irish constituencies.

Where in a typical four-seater, a similar area with significant local identity, most likely would get one of its own duly elected.

Note that Irish voters frequently - even usually - jiggle their preferences based on both party AND locality.

You can't have it both ways, both locale and proportionality, as the whole reason of large constituencies is deliberately to abolish the locale vote to get proportionality. Can't have both.

Under your theory, who represents Newcastle? Rather than having a Tory for Stoke, Labour for Stoke and however else it breaks down too for Stoke?

Ain't theory, rather actuality.

Check out the facts re: how STV plays out in Ireland, before theorizing how it might turn out in England.

Please provide any evidence that's how it works in Ireland, because the facts seem to me to show the polar opposite.

Closest Irish analogy I can think of is the Waterford constituency. It has four TDs, one each for Sinn Fein, Greens, Fianna Fail and an Independent.

All 4 of them hail from Waterford.

Waterford the Constituency covers Waterford but also covers Dungarvan and Tramore, but I can't find a single TD from or specifically representing either Dungarvan or Tramore, as they've simply been absorbed by Waterford.

Who in the Dail is representing the interests of Dungarvan, before Waterford?
Who in the Dail is representing the interests of Tramore, before Waterford?

Actual facts, not random unsubstantiated theorising.

The Green in the Dail from Waterford constituency, Marc Ó Cathasaigh TD, is from Tramore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Ó_Cathasaigh