Updated on 4th. February 2010
New on our website today............
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION....................................John Swinburne
Gordon Brown announced this week that in the next term of a Labour Government there would be a referendum on proportional representation. Now where have we heard similar promises being made to the electorate? Oh yes, the same Gordon stated in 1993 that the Labour Party would abolish Means-Testing in its first term in office and of course they also promised in their manifesto before the last general election that they would hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Obviously neither promise has been fulfilled .... Now he is proposing to do away with the 'First Past the Post' system.
Real proportional representation is very fair and also very simple to understand.If any party for example receives 20% of all votes cast across the country then automatically this shoud be reflected by the fact that they should receive 20% of the seats in parliament..... simple and easy to understand. However the good Gordon is actually talking about STV or the Single Transferable Vote whereby voters are asked to list their preference of candidates by a simple 1,2,3,etc.This WAS used at the last local elections in 2007 for the Councils in Scotland and while it delivered a fairer distribution of the available seats and in the process removed the stranglehold which the Labour Party had held over many councils for decades it fell far short of true proportional representation and did not benefit the smaller parties.
The existing D'honte system of PR used in our Holyrood elections does go a long way towards providing smaller parties and indeed independent candidates with the opportunity to stand and have a reasonable chance of gaining seats in the Scottish Parliament. The 2003 election for Holyrood underlined this because there were 18 MSPs elected outwith the four main parties.This number actually swelled to 20 with ithe expulsion of an SNP and a Conservative MSP from their respective parties.After the 2007 election this plummetted to a mere three (Margo and two Greens) but we all now know how that came about!
So there you are - take this latest ploy from the Mandelson camp with a large pinch of salt because:-
Just cast your mind back to the selfish, grasping, greedy EXPENSES SCANDAL and put your X on the ballot paper for someone you can trust!!!
John Swinburne
Real proportional representation is very fair and also very simple to understand.If any party for example receives 20% of all votes cast across the country then automatically this shoud be reflected by the fact that they should receive 20% of the seats in parliament..... simple and easy to understand. However the good Gordon is actually talking about STV or the Single Transferable Vote whereby voters are asked to list their preference of candidates by a simple 1,2,3,etc.This WAS used at the last local elections in 2007 for the Councils in Scotland and while it delivered a fairer distribution of the available seats and in the process removed the stranglehold which the Labour Party had held over many councils for decades it fell far short of true proportional representation and did not benefit the smaller parties.
The existing D'honte system of PR used in our Holyrood elections does go a long way towards providing smaller parties and indeed independent candidates with the opportunity to stand and have a reasonable chance of gaining seats in the Scottish Parliament. The 2003 election for Holyrood underlined this because there were 18 MSPs elected outwith the four main parties.This number actually swelled to 20 with ithe expulsion of an SNP and a Conservative MSP from their respective parties.After the 2007 election this plummetted to a mere three (Margo and two Greens) but we all now know how that came about!
So there you are - take this latest ploy from the Mandelson camp with a large pinch of salt because:-
A-They don't keep their promises and
B-Look out for dirty work at the crossroads because this next General Election will be the dirtiest campaign for many a long year.
B-Look out for dirty work at the crossroads because this next General Election will be the dirtiest campaign for many a long year.
Just cast your mind back to the selfish, grasping, greedy EXPENSES SCANDAL and put your X on the ballot paper for someone you can trust!!!
John Swinburne