Woodstock Jag

Spot on! Does that make AV+ erm... FPTP++?

People need to be weary of conflating "reproduction" with "sexual activity". I've already acknowledged earlier on that in-breeding can lead to negative biological side-effects. What I'm challenging is this fundamental idea that just because a particular branch of sexual inclination leads to the most biologically favourable outcome, does not mean that other lines are any less "normal" or that they are "wrong". What about homosexuality? Is that wrong because it leads to zero reproduction? What about people with severe disabilities: should they not be allowed to engage in sexual activity in case they pass on their conditions to their children? I see, in terms of morality, in terms of any other measure, no ostensible difference between sexual intercourse between consenting siblings and any other consensual sexual activity.

But people still only get one vote! First Past the Post creates a ridiculous situation where, for example, the majority could be centre-left liberals, but because that vote gets split three ways by 3 parties adopting similar policies, a right-wing authoritarian candidate could instead end up in power simply because they've managed to mobilise a core vote, even though the vast majority of constituents find their politics repugnant. How is that representative or democratic? AV changes that.

Are you looking at this rationally or just confirming society's bias, though? I personally would not shag my sister (or indeed my mother, aunts or grandmothers for that matter ). That doesn't mean that it is somehow morally wrong or morally repulsive for others to do so if they are two consenting adults who understand the potential consequences of their behaviour and take necessary steps not to cause unnecessary harm either to each other or to other people. Sexual activity is just that: sexual activity. It takes place between persons. The only moral issue I can see is of consent. Why should something as incidental as biological commonality make sexual relations outside the realm of normality or acceptability. "It's just wrong" isn't a proper reason; it's not a reason at all. It's just stating it to be wrong without any actual evidence or reason to support it.

So you think that it's more important to punish Clegg than to try to reform our electoral system? That's spectacularly narrow-minded of you. The UK Parliament is completely different from the Scottish Parliament. First of all it has far greater budgetary responsibilities (the Scottish Parliament essentially gets given a hand-out and told they can't have any more or any less; whilst the UK parliament can set our taxes all over the place); it lacks the Parliamentary threshold devices (only a simple majority is needed to dissolve a Parliament unlike 2/3 supermajority in the Scottish Parliament); and also it is more adversarial, so without a relatively strong government it quickly collapses into a rabble. The cut and thrust is that not getting a coalition together would have ultimately led to the Budget not getting through and another election. I'm sure people would have just loved the Lib Dems for doing that. I saw in a recent BBC report that actually 75% of the Lib Dem Manifesto has made its way into the Coalition agreement, whereas only 60% has made it from the Tory manifesto. Hardly "selling out" for a party with 1/5 of the vote, 1/13 of the seats and 1/6 of the government's notional voting power, eh! What part of the concept do you disagree with, exactly?

A cross between Harry Potter and Simon Bird.

The problem is the No2AV campaigning has spread so many lies about AV that the Yes2AV's very simple efforts at explaining the system have been lost in amongst crap about "person who comes third could 'win" and lies about electronic voting machines being necessary and it playing into the hands of the BNP and other extremists. What could people, who understand AV, possibly think is "bad" about it? Every criticism you can level about AV as a system you can level at First Past the Post. The only difference is that under First Past the Post, voting for the candidate you most support increases the risk of a candidate you hate winning the election. It ends voter spoilage. Nothing more; nothing less. Broadly agree with all of that. If people think AV is so complicated or a bad system and that's the reason they're voting no, might I suggest you take a look at these two videos:

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?