Posts by simon g
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
If anyone's interested, here's what they came up with 12 years ago in the UK: courtesy of the late Roy Jenkins.
A new committee could spend five minutes retrieving it from the vault and blowing off the dust. Or a couple of years going nowhere.
-
I think Labour's position is AV (not PR), while the Lib Dems want AV plus (= PR).
It's a crucial difference, but (if in opposition) the Tories will invoke Nero and violins.
-
Like all good and wise PA/Guardianistas, I hoped for a Lab/Lib-Dem deal, leading to PR. But it ain't gonna happen.
A leaked memo:
"So here's the plan. First we're going to patch up a deal that reinforces every John Bull prejudice about how coalitions work for those shifty continentals who use PR. We're going to appoint a new PM, either by a palace coup, or by spending weeks on an internal Labour party leadership contest. We're going to buy off a few Celts, with a bridge to nowhere or whatever we can rustle up from the pork farm. We're going to hope and pray that we can keep this show on the road for at least a couple of years, while we get the new PR system organised and prepare for the referendum. We're going to whip every last FPP-supporting dinosaur into voting for that referendum, with No MP Left Behind. Labour Ministers who have decades of on-the-record speeches about their undying love for FPP, will have to hope nobody noticed.
And then, on Referendum Day, the public are going to vote for PR.
What could possibly go wrong?" [/memo]
In New Zealand, we voted for MMP because people were pissed off with what successive "strong" single party governments had done, without a mandate. In Britain, by the time people get to vote, the opposite will apply. That's if the anti-Tory government has survived at all.
It's desperately sad for the Lib Dems and all who support electoral reform, but the numbers aren't there, and wishing won't make it so.
They'll take what they can from the Tories, plummet in the polls, have all kinds of internal ructions, and just have to hope that Labour in opposition commit to PR (not just a deathbed conversion) and the battle is won another day.
-
It's from the Torygraph, so I feel dirty, but this cartoon made me chuckle.
-
Bloody hell. I tune into the BBC World Service for an update, and guess who's being interviewed, telling the Brits what to do in a hung parliament?
Winston Peters.
I only caught the end of it, so I don't know if he told them to go fishing.
-
Pah. I sneer at your Survivor. I scoff at your Flatmates. They are mere upstarts.
1981 is when it all began, on the BBC: Now Get Out Of That!
Reality TV is 29 years old, and counting: any advances on that?
-
This is now a meme: Any new announcement regarding the Rugby World Cup… We hate it.
An iron law of all Big Sports Events now. Being New Zealand, we get to grizzle about a song; in proper countries, with Really Big Sports Events, they protest about thousands made homeless to build stadia, or trillion dollar overruns. We're just not competing (yet ...).
But the most important thing to mock, as all students of Big Sports Events fans will know, is the Official Mascot. It is an unchanging ritual: the mascot will be unveiled, and it will be embarrassing (the name will be worse).
So where's ours?
-
Isn't the pointless 3rd/4th place play-off one of the games shown on all channels?
That will set a new record for non-viewers, especially if the All Blacks aren't in it. Networks fighting for their share of the sister-kissing: good luck with that.
-
Looks like I'll need to say it again.
Muriel Newman. ACT Deputy Leader. MP. Number three on list.
Not some fringe internet nutjob. A Ministerial nutjob we very nearly got.
-
It doesn't take much for the fringe to move to the front.
As Russell points out, Muriel Newman was Deputy Leader of ACT.
In 2005, the ACT party list ranked Newman at number 3, below Heather Roy. So when Rodney Hide won Epsom, Roy survived, but Newman missed out.
So Don Brash did one good thing in politics. He attracted enough voters away from ACT (who, it's generally forgotten now, got over 5% in their three previous elections) to reduce ACT to only two MPs.
Otherwise Muriel Newman, Deputy Leader of ACT, would now be a Minister in John Key's government.
Thanks, Don!