flower

[solarbird]

Along the north path again:


In other news, man, Blair certainly got the smackdown, didn't he? Lost 42 seats so far without a single pickup - sure, Labour's stayed in power, but so far, it's looking like what, 30 seats? When they were hoping for 70? The LibDems have done unexpectedly well, too - better than the Tories, by percentage gain.

Just updated. Lost 44 seats and counting, with no pickups. Not a good night for Blair.

In other news, Murksouth's main house is getting closer to ready. Slowly. It's mostly cleaning at this point. I patched the last of the nail holes in the wallpaper today. La.

Miles today: 9.5
Miles out of Hobbiton: 98.4. Hi, Tom. Nice house. Weird tree, tho'.
Miles to Rivendell: 359.6

Your Life in the Magical World of Harry Potter by Drink_A_Cosmo
Enter Name or LJ Name
When you will receive your owl	August 7, 2016
What House you will be sorted into	Ravenclaw
What will be your favorite subject	Arithmancy
Who will be your favorite Professor	Quirrell
Where you will get injured	Charms Classroom
What is your favorite Book	Basic Hexes for the Busy
What you will do after you leave Hogwarts	Professor of Potions
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Comments

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

I like the composition of that shot.

[solarbird]

I wasn't really shooting for composition - I mean I was, but not really - but I did crop for it later. (Since I want to get down to 640 wide for LJ posting regardless.)

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll do that with a picture as well if I don't quite like the way I framed it initially.

I CHEAT!

Nice photo

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

As for British politics, the Lib Dems did about as well as I had expected, and worse than I had hoped. I was hoping for a 20 seat pickup. They appear to have gained about 10 seats. You can tell how much their system is rigged in favor of Labour by realizing that with a truly proportionate election system, the result would have been Labour 235, Tories 213, Lib Dems 142--not counting people who would have switched their votes to the Lib Dems if they could have done so without bringing the Tories to power.

Re: Nice photo

[solarbird]

It's stupidly tempting to get some skanky shot of Tori Spelling and past her in here about six times.

For a broken camera, it takes pretty good pictures. (Stupid garden show asshole...)

Re: Nice photo

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's rigged in favour of Labour specifically so much, as in favour of whichever party holds power. (This may not be a coincidence.) The system's definitely shite though.

Contrary to Dara's post I think the election results were pretty much as expected by most people (I really doubt Labour were surprised by the scale of their losses), although the Tories managed to surprise slightly by getting no more share of the vote than last time (yay). I now have a Tory MP though :(

Because of all the war stuff, I've noticed that some people in other countries [those who don't know as much about the system] tend to assume that Blair is the antichrist and the worst possible outcome would be him winning. Unfortunately, that's not actually true, since the alternative was an actual goddamn vampire. :)

Re: Nice photo

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

It is actually Labour that has an electoral advantage, and not the generic party in power. Labour's strength is still largely in urban, working class areas, and those constituencies tend to have fewer voters. I can't remember the exact numbers, but the figures are something like 26,000 voters per Labour MP and 94,000 per Liberal Democrat MP.

Despite being an American, I do have more knowledge about British politics than you suggest. I watch Commons Questions for fun most weeks, spend time on political blogs that spend a lot of time talking about British politics, and The Guardian is one of my regular news sources.

It's not just the war, though Blair's lies and equivocations on that score are significant. It's top-up fees, and the New Labour policy on civil liberties (or lack thereof), and the failure to lead Britain into greater integration with Europe, and the overall conservative slide under New Labour. Labour was a proud left-wing party with strong ties to working people, and the current leadership has committed one betrayal after another. It's not the war, it's the Clintonite triangulation. Tony stole from Bill just as Reagan stole from Thatcher, and it was clear by the last election that his government was problematic.

Sure, he's done a lot to properly fund public services and improve the economy, and introduce reforms like Scottish and Welsh devolution, and it's always better to have a Labour government in power than a Tory one. But if I were a citizen of the UK, I'd vote Liberal Democrat whenever I could do so without getting rid of a reliable Old Labourite or ending up with a blood-sucking Tory. I wanted to see a big Liberal Democrat showing, without actually seeing a Conservative government. I'd love to see a PR system, because it would mean center-left government for a long time.

Of course, it's not up to me, because I'm a foreigner. But considering how much the political cultures of our two countries influence each other, I do think I have a stake.

Sorry about the Tory MP, by the way. There's nothing like a conservative winning to make one wonder about the sanity of one's neighbors.

Re: Nice photo

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Constituencies are all supposed to be about the same size. (Some of the boundaries were redrawn this election to make that more even; it's a periodic process.) This page explains it:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/westminster.asp

I don't know where the figure you quote comes from, possibly it related to a different issue like the general PR question: there are supposed to be around 70,000 people eligible to vote in each constituency, and populations in inner cities haven't fallen *so* rapidly as to make a difference as huge as that.

When I said 'those who don't know as much about the system' that was intended to imply 'not you', since obviously you had an interest in it. So that wasn't actually an anti-American insult. When I'm doing an anti-American insult, you'll notice. :>

I certainly would have voted Lib Dem if they'd had a chance here. I think very many people would (They control the local council, for instance, so obviously people want to vote for them). But the Lib Dem / Labour choice didn't exist in very many constituencies (where it did, well, LDs won quite a number); most were Labour / Tory. Actually, if we had PR, I'd probably vote Green...

Basically although it would have been nice to see more LD gains, otherwise the result of the election was pretty much the best that could be hoped; Blair wins (which is fantastically better than the alternative) but gets a bit of a bloody nose (which is good because we all hate him).

Re: Nice photo

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

The number of voters/number of MPs ratio includes votes for the Liberal Democrats in constituencies they did not win. In lots of Labour constituencies, there was a 6-7% swing to the Lib Dems but the Labour candidate won anyway. Those votes are essentially "lost," because they don't translate to representation. Constituency population is part of the problem, but the part I forgot to mention is the regional makeup that leads to a lot of votes that don't translate to MPs. Case in point: Newcastle.

I voted for Ralph Nader twice, so I'd definitely look into supporting Greens in a PR voting system. Lacking that, though, it's important to break the traditional two-party lock by helping the Liberal Democrats in first past the post. I envy that you can actually vote on occasion for third party candidates without making things worse.

I agree that many Americans are clueless, even among those who claim to take an interest. While I have a passing knowledge of British politics, I've seen a lot of people on sites like dailykos.com who have a knee-jerk anti-Blair attitude with little basis in fact, simply because they equate him with George W. Bush. Personally, I like watching Blair demolish his counterparts during question time, even when I disagree with him. I also think he has in the past been able to intelligently defend his Iraq decision, even though I disagree. Our country doesn't have an intelligent warmongering leader, just an evil one. Yours may be misguided, but he's not stupid.

Re: Nice photo

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see, so that statistic was just from their overall vote share? Right. That works in favour of both major parties, though (less so, I suppose, since the Tories are less major in recent years). In fact, my vote for Labour was entirely wasted since they didn't win :)

I rather liked the PR suggestion I read somewhere which was basically, the election works exactly the same as now, but once MPs get into parliament they have a voting power equal to the number of votes they got directly PLUS a share (divided between all MPs of that party) of all the votes that were cast for that party in constituencies where they didn't win. When there's a vote on something, the scores of all those who voted are added up to determine which way it goes.

By that system, Labour MPs would average 26,843 points each; Tories 44,530; and LD 96,484 (unless I calculated it wrong, that's the actual number from this election). Obviously you'd need to computerise voting arrangements but it doesn't seem too complicated to me. It means that every single vote counts, you get proportional representation, while still retaining a direct constituency MP. Obviously there are disadvantages too and basically it'll never happen; nice idea though.