@Jez Still, it seems very stupid for people to voluntarily make their government less representative.
@Mitch "UK" is wrong: the proper name of the country is Britain, or Great Britain, or the United Kingdom. But the last is not preferred, since it is less descriptive.
Anywhere but in the most formal of contexts, just England will do.
@Cerberus Oh. That's what you meant? I disagree. Abbreviations, if mostly unique, are great. Except ones with 'w', it's like adding extra syllables. the worst.
@Cerberus My point exactly. Even China makes up its history before 2000BC, and it wasn't all of chine just some small bits around the yellow river. Or was it the yangtze?
Except that the senate is graded: we elect provincial electors, and they elect senators. But at least the provincial electors are elected proportionally within each province, not winner-take-all.
i think democracy in general is pretty crap. i've been seriously disillusioned with it all because the people are stupid. best i can think of is selective suffrage, with people over a certain IQ being allowed to vote.
it wouldn't be perfect but would probably result in more competent government
@Jez I was about to say people are stupid and don't think about things when they vote. Nobody votes for things that are actually important. Like Nutella subsidies. I still have time to get on the ballot right? When do pools close?
@Jez The Queen (now parliament itself, I believe) appoints a formator, who tries to form a coalition support by a majority. Then the coalition picks the PM and the other ministers. Normally, the PM will be from the largest party within the coalition. It may not be the party leader, though. The coalition decides all.
@Jez Mmm the previous minister of Justice tried that, but the overall trend is still towards more liberalization. It's what all the mayors want.
@Jez Parliament decides. If there are two blocks that would work, then there has to be at least one party that would be in both blocks, so that party has to choose which block it wants to be in, assuming all other parties in the block want that coalition.
It is a process of dialogue and polylogue, it can take a long time.
@Jez I think Sweden has PR, but what is wrong with it? It seems to be working well enough?
@Cerberus yeah. one thing that pisses me off about the defence of out FPTP system is that "the electors get what they voted for" whereas they don't with PR. this is obvious crap, because if there is an overall majority, most people get what they voted against.
@Cerberus 1. I was saying they're less stable 2. extreme... on principle should be allowed but somehow circularly they are not desirable (that's why they're called extreme). All I'm saying is just out of curiosity, I'd like to see more proportional voting here in the US. (argh, but then single issue parties!)
@Cerberus it's a disaster. Sweden's politics allows unlimited mass immigration which is destroying Swedish society, and rampant militant feminism. why it's gone so bad I don't know exactly.
@Jez I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but, with PR, more people get what they want than with winner-take-all. In other words, far fewer votes are "thrown away" (if you supported the losing candidate in your constituency, your vote is worth nothing, you might as well not have voted).
@Jez 1) they don't have that many immigrants and also, they (like most European countries) need more people coming in because they're not having enough babies on their own. 2) what's wrong with 'feminism' (parity among sexes)?
@Mitch I don't think I can disagree with any of that. 1. Our coalitions are not always stable, but there is a natural mechanism that stabilises them: ruling parties usually lose the next elections, so they don't like to kill their coalition prematurely. 2. Indeed, they should be allowed on principle, I agree. But it is still a disadvantage. The only thing I can say is that they also fade away more quickly if they have been allowed to get seats more quickly.
@Cerberus voting theory: everybody really has a ranking of the candidates (not just the top one out of all of them) and so if there are more than 2 candidates, mathematically, when combining the individual rankings, there's always the possibility of the vote coming out not really what it's obvious that people actually want.
@Jez Well, Sweden is still one of the best countries in the world, better than my and your countries, I believe. Immigration is not so extreme, that's just what the populists say. And, besides, immigration laws are as they are because most Swedes want them so. Lastly, I believe anti-immigration parties have been on the rise of late—at least they have a chance, unlike UKIP in England, which is punished by winner take all.
The best example of that is 3 candidates, where the third candidate is a spoiler, takes votes away from one candidate, who would win if there were only two candidates.
@Jez That problem is central to democracy and cannot be solved by election systems. But it's still not so bad: our countries are doing better than ever in most respects, e.g. crime, healthcare, wealth, education, etc. It is as Churchill said: other systems have proven worse.
@Jez argh. that's ... not fair. are saying because men have been entitled forever, that feminism is trying to turn that around? and so then it'd be unfair to men?
and the worst thing is, the Conservatives have managed to hoodwink the people into thinking the very thing that is the problem - the constituency system - is really valuable, and we need to keep it.
they think their MP represents them.... even when most people didn't even vote for their MP. how are people so stoopid?
@Jez there's always that. But there's no guarantee that a select group of smart people (whoever decided who's smart?) would do things right. I think if you voted for rulers directly it's a psychological trick to convince you it's your own fault for chosing them, instead of rioting.
@Jez It is all true, just look at the actual stats. Don't believe propaganda, be it from established parties or populists. The media like to blow up salient criminal cases and such, but in reality...
@Jez It is interesting, but there are problems. Are IQ tests really the right testing tool? Won't that create an underclass of angy, disinfranchised rebels? Who will make sure their interests are taken care of? How about fraud? Who will make and judge the IQ tests? Etc.
@Cerberus Oh. Right. Yes, preferential voting must be what you call it. There are mathematical problems with it (wiki Arrow's theorem) which actually can turn into practical problems (but those problems are inherent in just single-choice voting).
@Cerberus nowadays, we have computers that could potentially generate new IQ tests each election on some predetermined formula. they wouldn't be biased.
@Mitch Governing is executing laws and policies; legislative is making laws. Corrective is telling the executive power that they are not executing the laws properly. Your parliament is just as legislative as ours, and also quite corrective of the executive.
@Jez Oh. I don't know enough actual facts to say anything. What's wrong with more than 50% female gov representatives? What are other things that men are discriminated against a lot in Sweden?
@Jez Smart people, ethical people, people who represent the population properly, or at least people can be punished by the population if they don't do well, also by the lower classes.
@Mitch That is one of their tasks. Obama and his ministers are your executive, your government proper. Of course colloquially, we call parliament and city councils and mayors and presidents and ministers and judges and policemen etc. "the government", also known as "the state" in the general sense (as opposed to "the state of New York"). So that is the broader sense; the narrow sense is "the executive".
> Won't that create an underclass of angy, disinfranchised rebels? Who will make sure their interests are taken care of?
@Cerberus spoiler candidates (in single (not preferential) voting) is the simplest problem. It is equivalent to the vote tallying algorithm of 'take the candidate with the most topmost of all preferences' but this is contrary to the algorithm (which most would think is fairer) of 'take the candidate who is ranked higher than all others (count the pairs in which A is over B, so it could be C > A > B for one voter, but collecting all A>B pairs is more than C>B pairs).
@GeorgePompidou she's already turned you in to the authorities for poor choice of food. Really, you should eat better. If only to stay out of jail. It's not her, it's the rules. Actually the food in jail is probably pretty good. Wait, that's in Sweden, where the women run the place.
@Mitch the funny thing is that defenders of FPTP say it's the "simplest" and therefore easiest to understand system. this is bullshit. because of the spoiler candidates, people are always worried about doing tactical voting. with preferential voting, it would be much simpler for people to just rank candidates with no tactical consideration.
@Cerberus yeah, this topic has been done to death. it's pretty obvious what the best proportional systems are for fairly representing people's votes. the problem is convincing the knuckle-dragging morons.
@Jez pretty much everywhere they are. men are jerks. the prison population of men is way larger than that for women. Oh no! Women are oppressing men there too!
@GeorgePompidou I'll do that when you and @tchrist get me a keyboard where it's easy to do all them accents and stuff and I don't have to remember codes.
@GeorgePompidou Wait? Did I claim something like that? A doner will kill you. They're outrageously big. It's germany's way of catching up with the US in obesity rates.
@Mitch right. that was my understanding. but i just had the opposite definition given to me by my doctor's surgery. they call "every 28 days" a "calendar month".
@Jez better than I expect. high expectation. Oh, I know why now! They should come with tartar sauce for me to really think they're great. goes good with chips too
damn this is really annoying. today, our old office blinds were replaced with these new "canvas" pulldown blinds that don't properly shut out the sun. so i still have the sunlight annoying me, shining through.
any the hell do people go for these worthless blinds? and we had perfectly good ones before.
That is indeed a ligature and so called in palaeography. It is completely normal in many Mediaeval and Early-Modern scripts. The ligature æ is of the same type. From the Wikipedia article on ligature:
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are join...
That is indeed a ligature and so called in palaeography. It is completely normal in many Mediaeval and Early-Modern scripts. The ligature æ is of the same type. From the Wikipedia article on ligature:
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are join...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…