UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Хahar 🤔]

I’m very boring and always just liked AV where you got a 1st and 2nd.

This seems like a substantially worse system than FPTP, seeing as that whether you get a second vote depends on whether you accurately guess who will finish in the top two. It's good that it's gone now.

[Хahar 🤔]

I’m very boring and always just liked AV where you got a 1st and 2nd.

This seems like a substantially worse system than FPTP, seeing as that whether you get a second vote depends on whether you accurately guess who will finish in the top two. It's good that it's gone now.

I don't understand this cirticism towards AV, you don't get a second vote. It's just that you vote counts even if your top choice is eliminated.

I'm referring to, as CrabCake says, the system formerly used in England for mayoral and police elections. Whether voters were counted in the second round depended on whether they correctly guessed which candidates would make it to the second round.

[Хahar 🤔]

This seems like a substantially worse system than FPTP, seeing as that whether you get a second vote depends on whether you accurately guess who will finish in the top two. It's good that it's gone now.

It’s true that it is not ideal; my suspicion is it was introduced because there was a worry voters in a country not accustomed to ranked voting would have found full STV too confusing. That said, I think it’s clearly preferable to FPTP, coming much closer to reflecting the ‘true’ preferences of the electorate. For instance, the Tories would have won the most recent Cambridgeshire ‘mayoral’ election under FPTP, but Labour actually ended up winning off the back of Lib Dem preferences. The system’s replacement by FPTP is in my opinion highly regrettable, and little more than a nakedly partisan Tory power grab.

That was a three-candidate election, in which case SV is exactly the same as AV. No voter in that election had to guess which candidates would make the top two, because by ranking their top two choices they were guaranteed to have their preference considered in the second round. I am not arguing against AV.

In the Wiltshire police by-election two years ago, 36% of votes were cast for a candidate who did not make the top two. Out of those votes, only 45% transferred to either candidate in the second round: this excludes, for instance, anyone who voted for the Labour candidate first and the Liberal Democrat second or vice versa. In total, fully 20% of votes were not counted at all in the second round for basically arbitrary reasons. Given that what votes did transfer flowed heavily to the independent and given that the Conservative candidate won by four percentage points, the result certainly would have been different if each voter had been able to express an opinion between the Conservative and the independent.

With FPTP, at least the perceived need to vote tactically would be obvious and voters who wished to vote tactically would have an obvious incentive to unite behind one candidate to do so. More to the point, with FPTP every vote counts equally. Under this system, any voter who casts their ballot for an invalid candidate has their vote in the second round excluded, and there is no way to know ahead of time which candidates will be valid. A system that requires voters to make a guess and then disenfranchises any that guess wrong is exceptionally defective.

[Хahar 🤔]

Is 30 the standard speed limit in residential areas? That surprises me a little; in this country it's 25.

[Хahar 🤔]

Yes--a great number of online Americans delight in such performative displays, usually motivated more by reacting against their youthful television-based Anglophilia or emulating those who are than anything else, which in this latest instance has turned out to be finding any way to pick at the murder dog ban. It is pathetic.

This isn't meant to refer directly to you or anyone else on this site, but something I've noticed having seen many online posts from Britons is that they consistently fail to understand to what extent Britain is the villain in our national myth or how important that is to all Americans. There is essentially no class of Americans, online or not, for whom this is not the case.

In this case, I'm not sure how you can accuse the quoted post of looking to "pick at the murder dog ban" when its author makes it very clear in the post itself that he neither knows nor cares about this British dog issue, which has no impact on us Americans. It's just a way to make fun of Britain, which every American loves to do. It doesn't really matter if people on X are making jokes about Britain; it'll be fine.

[Хahar 🤔]

Her approach seems to be a combination of American talking points and a French attitude to the appropriate use of state power.

[Хahar 🤔]

The writers have brought back a character from an earlier season whose storyline always felt underdeveloped and cut a bit short. This is where they get the whole cast together to do the final chorus (Dave's tenor part a special highlight) and give the series a feel-good send off. All that's needed now is the announcement that the new Chancellor is Frank Lampard.

The obvious choice for this government would be Sam Allardyce, surely.