Thursday 11 February 2010

PR

Firstly, I think its worth noting that the Alternative Vote system proposed by Brown isn't really PR at all. It basically boils down to the winner being he or she who is disliked the least. This may help Labour, but not by much if at all. I think the real reason - and given recent poll data showing the Tory lead falling into single digits, its not too much of a stretch - is to court the Lib Dems in the event of a Hung parliament (where no one party has a majority - but, perhaps, Labour + Lib Dem is greater than the Tory numbers).
The lib dems don't really want this system either. No one does, because it encourages mediocrity and unknowns. In a political landscape dominated by tribalism, I don't think its much of a stretch to assume that most would rank either Labour or Tory top, and the other at the bottom. This means its entirely possible that the Lib Dems pick up a number of seats where no one actually wants them, they just dislike them less than the rest.
The floodgates may have been opened, though. Once we flirt with electoral reform (especially if we change to one as bad as AV), it'll be a lot easier for the Lib Dems to get support behind another system they actually want - some form of PR.
I won't go into the theoretical pros and cons of such a system. I will instead point just to Lebanon - a beautiful example of the destructive power of power sharing. I'm fact, its not dissimilar to Northern Ireland. In Lebanon its Power Sharing rather than specifically the result of PR, but the result is the same. You have the liberal (said in the context of the middle east) West-leaning government forced to share power with Hezbollah. This way, no one really gets what they want. Hezbollah can't openly attack Israel nor enact the kind of medieval legal reforms (read: regressions) that they want to, and the western PM, Saad Hariri, can't perform any useful reforms because he's got his hands tied by the Hezbollah elements of the government. That's the link it has to AV - no ones happy, because no one can actually govern.
P. S. Since I mentioned Israel, I'll say this. Everytime I hear someone say Israel is enacting a genocide against, or wants to kill, or hates Arabs and Muslims, I have to punch myself to make sure I'm still awake. Quite aside from the fact that if they wanted to destroy Palestine, they could do so in about three weeks without ever firing a bullet, there's also the much more significant fact that Arabs in Israel enjoy far, far greater rights and quality of life than they do in just about every Arab country in the world. And they do it all whilst surrounded by countries that hate them in the only corner of the Middle East with no oil! If you want to be angry at the treatment of Arabs in the middle east, try looking at the Arab countries first.
P. P. S. Apologies for any typos or random full stops. This has been written on an unusually bumpy train.

3 comments:

  1. Hear hear dan! The total shit spouted from Osama Bin laden (and other sympathisers) about the treatment of palestinians infuriates me every time i hear it. Not a single arab nation in the middle east gives basic human rights to palestinian refugees. Guess which country does? Yep, Israel. If Osama is really concerned with palestinian rights, why not lobby his billionaire family, who have great connections with the saudis (and the bush administration), to extend basic rights to palestinian refugees?? People don't realise that the palestinians are the gypsies of the middle east. Arabs muslims promoting their cause is like the BNP promoting the cause of pakistani immigrants. A total fucking joke.

    I'm always surprised that so called liberals support hamas above Israel. Hamas promote wahhabi islam, which in turn promotes the degradation of women to second class citizens, the racial purity of Islam to arabs, the extermination of unbelievers and the editing of korans. In contrast, Israel is a liberal democracy- they have open and fair elections- several times, palestinian parties have stood for election in israel- i wonder if that'll ever happen in palestine??? They allow the dome on the rock to remain a muslim site, despite being one of the holiest jewish sites in the world- can't see hamas doing anything similar any time soon.


    On electoral reform- I think the STV system might be the best alternative, altough, as shown in france, the end result is the same- two parties with majority share of power.

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  2. I think the Arab world turning its back on the Palestinian refugees is entirely intentional. They use them as a political football to hate on Israel. That's why, after the 6 day war, when Israel offered to give Gaza back to Egypt, the West Bank back to Jordan and the Golan Heights back to Syria, they all said no, and they've kept saying no ever since. Palestine is an expensive mess for Israel. It literally benefits no one, except those who use it as a weapon to attack Israel.

    But I'm preaching to the choir here!

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  3. I wrote a similar blog on my blog about the problem of PR. I totally agree with what you have to say on it.

    http://truebluetoryboy.blogspot.com/2010/02/problem-with-pr.html

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