Woodstock Jag

Sing it to the rooftops, brother

I think it's funny how those who don't understand AV seem to be the ones who are going to vote against it.

Madeline McCann new undisputed world hide and seek champion.

Nah, you've missed his point. The point is there should be no publicly funded assistance for the medical consequences of any action. STDs are only such a problem with prostitution because it is an underground industry and people are forced into it. As soon as you legalise it, you can regulate brothels so that basic standards on contraception and STD protection is taken, and go a long way to fighting the coercive element. See how other countries have dealt with this. Sick and disgusting according to whom? As long as there are two fully consenting adults and the appropriate measures are taken to eliminate the risk of pregnancy, is it really substantially different to "normal" sexual activity?

The case for it not being "acceptable" is only credible in so far as incest is linked to birth defects or in so far as (as with any other sexual activity) there is coercion or exploitation. Read that as "causing harm to others". I am a libertarian. I have no qualms about that. Oddly enough, I sometimes wonder if the dividing line in politics are drawn not by how people define liberty, but by how they define harm and its causes.

Then you'll know that he did not say that "climbing mountains in winter" "isn't okay"

Not what he actually said. Read it again.

Less than 26% of first preferences. The whole point is that someone who gets 25% of first preferences isn't necessarily less popular than someone who gets 26% of first preferences. It could be that there are two candidates with very similar views, who a lot of people like, and one candidate who is, for want of a better analogy, Marmite and has completely different views from the vast majority of the constituency. Under First Past the Post, people are left with the option either to vote for a candidate who they genuinely support, increasing the risk of a candidate they really don't want from getting into power, or else vote tactically for a candidate they think is okay, but not their favourite. AV allows them to express support for their favourite without increasing the risk of letting someone they really don't like in by the back door. This is sort of the point that AV tries to make. Politics shouldn't be so utterly tribal. Support for one candidate doesn't mean you disagree with everything every other candidate says. Your vote should be more "intelligent" than simply becoming a statistic under a red, blue or yellow flag. It should be a comprehensive expression of which individuals you feel most and least content to be represented by.

I don't think the drugs one is controversial.

In fairness, save perhaps incest, those positions aren't in the slightest bit controversial.

The point of AV is to produce candidates which are more acceptable to (if you like, more "representative" of) the views of their constituents. The ironic thing about First Past the Post is that there is no "post" at all. AV creates a post, and finds a fairer way of redistributing votes of the less successful candidates to find out who would have reached that post had they not ran.

The principle applies to any number of candidates. If, in an election, there is one candidate that you would have voted for if your preferred candidate could not win, then your vote moves to that candidate if they have a better chance of winning. That's how AV works! If there isn't another candidate you would have voted for then you wouldn't have *had* any vote to "count" in the first place.

i.e. you wouldn't be voting anyway. So why would it concern you?

No, that's factually inaccurate. If the one and only party you vote for doesn't come last, it carries forward to the next round. That happens irrespective of how many or how few preferences you use. If you vote for a party and they do come last, then your vote just isn't recycled into the run-off among the other parties. If you'd come last under FPTP you'd have had no say in the outcome between the other parties anyway, so AV makes no difference.

Weak government? You really think this is a weak government? It's pushing through some of the most radical reform we've seen in years. If the Tories are "happy" with some of those Lib Dem policies, they should have included them in their manifesto. Some of them they did. Indeed part of those figures will reflect both having got the pupil premium into the Coalition Agreement. In the round, though, for a party with 1/5 of the popular vote, 1/13 of the Parliamentary seats and 1/6 of the Coalition's seats in Parliament to have got 3/4 of their manifesto turned into government policy, they must be doing something right!

I KNOW you were talking about the second preference. The circumstances in which your vote is "worthless" under AV is exactly the same situation where it would have been "worthless" under FPTP. If there were four parties in an election, say Tories, Labour, Lib Dem and SNP. You would vote Tory, both under FPTP and AV, right? So your vote would "count" in the first round, and any subsequent rounds where they hadn't already been knocked out (as they would have under FPTP too). If there were only three parties in an election, say Labour, Lib Dem and SNP, however, let's analyse that situation. You say you didn't have a second preference in the previous one, right? That means you wouldn't vote for any of these three parties. Therefore you wouldn't vote anyway and your vote would have exactly the same bearing on the outcome of the result. Zero.

A recent study reported on by the BBC suggested that actually the Lib Dems got 75% of their manifesto into the Coalition agreement, whilst the Tories only got 60%. Very "irrelevant", eh?

No, it's still only one vote you get to use. People whose favourite candidate in the first "round" are still standing get their first preference counted again. It's not "another vote". Because it's simulating a situation where your preferred party didn't stand. If your party were not participating and you have no preference among the others, you wouldn't have voted anyway so your vote wouldn't have counted under FPTP either! Then don't. AV doesn't force you to use your preferences. Now you're just being ridiculous. You don't have to. Small parties who will never get in? Labour in 1900. The Liberals since the Wars. That's more than a little presumptuous of you, is it not? AV does not change the situation of one vote one person. That vote just moves if they can't have their first preference. I'll link you an explanation why AV is fairer, but still works on the premise of one person one vote, one value. Clicky Clearly the majority want to go to a pub and to drink beer. But because they're all split on where to go to get beer, they end up not getting beer at all under FPTP, but Coffee, because the lentil munchers all gang up. Under AV the majority, who are split only on which specific pub to go to, still get to have a swally.

You don't "vote tactically" and you don't "have three chances". This idea that some people's votes "count for more" is simply rubbish. The people who back the candidates who are not eliminated have their vote counted again as well! You aren't "voting tactically" if your candidate loses. You are backing a candidate which you find least objectionable who has a chance of winning. Take, for example, a constituency where there are four big parties. One is the Tories, who get 26% (mopping up almost all of the voters who are right of centre). Then you have Labour on 25% (mopping up the authoritarian left), the SNP on 25% (mopping up the independence and centre/centre-left vote) and the Lib Dems on 24% (picking up the liberal centre/centre-left vote). Clearly if the Tory candidate wins, they do so with a mandate which comes from a minority of voters. If the Lib Dem candidate had never stood, most of the people who voted for them would have either voted SNP or Labour, because they are centre/centre-left. Then the Tories would almost certainly not have won. Which is the better situation: the one where the winning candidate represents either a majority or close to a majority of the actual constituency's political views; or the one that is able to mobilise the biggest core vote, no matter how repugnant or disagreeable the vast majority of people find their politics? Under the current system, people who support smaller parties are forced to vote tactically, especially in marginal seats, because otherwise the vote splits and someone with as little as 26% of the vote can realistically end up in power. AV allows people to vote first and foremost with their conscience, but also express a preference between the candidates most likely to be in the running. If a Lib Dem candidate didn't stand in my constituency, it doesn't mean I wouldn't express a preference from among the other candidates from other parties. What AV does is simulate what would have happened if the smaller parties' candidates in a constituency had never ran. It's not "giving me a second chance"; it's asking for a more detailed expression of preference.

AV is not PR. It's a slight variant on First Past the Post which removes voter spoilage. AV gets rid of considerable amounts of tactical voting that exists in FPTP. Proper PR is just about the least "tactical" system you'll ever come across. Sorry Jaggybunnet but you're talking rubbish. Some estimates I've seen suggest that the SNP would either stand still or lose one seat under AV c.f. using the same boundaries under FPTP. I hardly think you can accuse them of playing this for electoral advantage. Even if it did end up giving the Lib Dems more seats, that's frankly appropriate. The current system gives smaller parties a proportion of seats typically around half of their actual proportion of the popular vote. I really must urge people not to go down this road of "No2AV, Yes2PR". The political reality is that irrespective of the referendum result we're not going to see further change to the system for at least 40 years. A win for No2AV will just be seen as an endorsement of the old, discredited system of elections and will shut off debate almost completely as the issue being described as the pet subject of constitutional reform wonks. Backing AV will at least bring about some change (and it is a slightly better system) and should create a snowball effect to push for reform elsewhere such as in House of Lords reform. Anyway, in answer to the original poster, I will be voting Lib Dem on the constituency and list ballots and Yes to AV.

Anyone think he looks like a cross between Paddy Boyle and Shaun Maloney?

Any idea when these are going to be raffled off?

It's a low-scoring season (Doolan's only on 14 in the league) but I always rated him. Didn't really understand why we sent him to Clyde (at the time could understand Boyle and Kinniburgh). Always thought Doolan's more of an all-round player than Buchanan and I feel he's proved that.

Could Doolan be a challenger for the Ginger Boot this season? If the BBC are correct, that's him up to 14 league goals after today. Only Stewart at Falkirk is ahead of him, and by a solitary goal...

Not so. Balatoni lives in Edinburgh and Cairney in the Livingston area so they'd lose as much time getting to Glasgow.