@Jez The more votes that are registered for UKIP, the higher the chance that, someday, people will notice and do something about it.

I for one am happy that the system finally filters out nazis.

@RegDwigнt No, it is very different.

Imagine Hitler getting one seat for 4 million votes.

Problem solved.

Imagine nobody getting any seats, except the King. Problem solved?

@Cerberus it is not very different at all in this particular regard.

Remember Churchill.

@Cerberus you have a king, you tell me. And you're in love with monarchy, so again you tell me.

@RegDwigнt It is completely different: nothing like that could ever happen here.

@RegDwigнt I don't think I need to explain the basic arguments pro democracy to you.

@Cerberus perhaps not quite to that extent, no. But still, the percentages of seats do not match the percentages of votes. And that is by design.

They match them as closely as technically possible.

Run the numbers, then we'll talk.

@Cerberus you don't need to explain anything to me, no. In fact I am not one bit interested in an election I had no say in.

@RegDwigнt Run what numbers? The only way in which seats do not match percentage of voters is because they have to be rounded up or down.

@Cerberus who will notice? who will do something about it?

Then perhaps either you or myself are not familiar with the system.

But even the rounding is to some degree softened by "connected lists".

we're fucked. the ones in charge have a vested interest in NOT reforming the system.

@RegDwigнt Probably you, because it is Dutch.

i just give up. short of forming an army and marching on parliament, we can't get a fairer electoral system.

In which case I'll happily withdraw Dutch from the comparison. But in Germany it quite certainly is the same thing.

To the extent that yes, the majority in the parliament is the opposite of the majority of the actual votes.

@Jez Don't give up hope. At least there was a referendum on it, wasn't there? That is the first time ever. It is a sign of changing times. It just takes a loooong time, but the spirit is there.

@RegDwigнt Oh, sure, Germany is worse.

the referendum was on AV, a non-proportional system

Yes, but it was much better.

A step in the right direction.

actually it wasn't much better

@Jez the ones in charge ALWAYS have a vested interest in not reforming the system. That's the whole point of GETTING in charge in the first place.

and that's probably why it got defeated

@RegDwigнt yeah. so we're fucked.

@RegDwigнt How does it work again in Germany? They don't have districts, do they?

@Jez Why not? I believe it was?

@Cerberus not being proportional still means you have 1 person "representing" everyone in an area. which is of course impossible.

so in practice they only represent a small percentage of the area

everyone else gets ignored

Of course, but if at least votes can be carried over and such, that is an improvement, fewer votes are literally thrown away, right?

and by represent, i mean "vote as their party leaders want which may fall in line with those people's political views sometimes"

@Cerberus it's so complicated I've not have the time or mood. But basically everyone has two votes, one for a candidate and one for a party, and so who gets into the parliament gets decided by two different and completely unrelated approaches running in parallel.

@Cerberus possibly. it's hard to say what kind of a change it would've made, but not a proportional one.

But it was only recenly that party X had 60% of the votes, while party Y got 60% of the seats.

@RegDwigнt sounds a bit like AV+

Or maybe it was 55%, beside the point.

@RegDwigнt unless you don't have constituencies, and the whole thing is proportional

@RegDwigнt Ah OK, that explains why I don't know how it works!

@Jez well the whole German system was put in place by the British and the Um Err I Cans, so little wonder.

That's why they have States now and all that shit.

@Jez A step in the right direction, awareness of the problem, a sign of the times.

@RegDwigнt That's pretty bad. But still not as bad as in England, where 115 UKIP voters are worth as little as 1 voters for a certain Northern Irish party.

yeah. maybe when i'm on my deathbed, they might be considering reform. whoop de doop.

@Jez That is something to look forward to!

@Cerberus and that's only beause we got Douglas Carswell. if things had gone a bit worse for Douglas, we could have 0 MPs.

That would have been even funnier.

finding it hard to laugh this morning.

If I were UKIP and the Greens, I'd rally a million protestors and occupy the heart of London.

i wish they would

I would go if I were English.

Meh.

unless they physically overran parliament it wouldn't make a shred of difference. a million people protested against Blair's Iraq war

Yeah.

It will make a difference.

It will make the news, give them lots of attention.

Wake up the international press.

what i do kind of wish is that people would go and trash parliament. aren't people meant to start revolting when their views aren't represented? isn't that what democacy is meant to fix?

That's the thing with this Internet age. On the plus side, anyone can rally up a million protesters in record time. On the minus side, the powers that be know that, too. So a million protesters ain't mean nothing no more.

it's fucking unrepresentative and a waste of space right now.

A radical revolution is nearly always worse than peaceful demonstrations and slow progress.

i'd go as far as to say that we have the worst democracy in the world

Well, there's still Belorussia.

@Cerberus we're making no progress, not slow progress

@RegDwigнt Mm I have to disagree, a million protesters make a huge difference.

@Cerberus please point me to that huge difference on the Iraq war.

@Jez Slow progress might be made if you all marched on Parliament peacefully.

Should be very easy, so huge as it is.

@Cerberus i don't see how. it would take the Conservatives voting to change the system that put them unfairly into power

i'm really glad i booked today off work. all the political chatter there would drive me crazy

@RegDwigнt I am actually surprised that it didn't stop Blair. There are always exceptions. Even so, the effect may not have been exactly that, it was not immediate. But I am sure it had some effect, made it known that huge numbers of people hated the invasion.

i just wish i had booked monday and tuesday off too

@Cerberus an exception that is the rule is no longer an exception.

It's not a rule.

Well point me to the huge difference on the many other subjects millions are rallying up against.

@Cerberus Blair was a pompous, egotistical piece of shit who was always convinced he was right. But now we have Cameron, who is... oh, right.

We protested with 1500 people against the university, and the president of the board was forced to step down.

@Jez Of course, they both pretty bad.

That is because Blair doesn't give one shit about your university. If he did, you could have protested with 15000000 people and it wouldn't have mattered.

university??

oh

@RegDwigнt I'm not so sure about that...

We're talking big scale global here. I am not talking protesting among friends. Yeah if I go to my boss or friends or Aldi cashier, I could make a difference protesting alone.

@Jez A few weeks ago, in Amsterdam.

But we're talking war here.

Is the LSE still occupied? They were aping us, we had occupied our uni too.

@RegDwigнt Sure, you need much larger numbers. But, even if you can't achieve your goal immediately, it will still make a difference if you march with a million people on London.

When millions of people are sent to their deaths, what does it matter if 1500 say "that's not cool".

Even the media attention is important.

Media attention is only important to the participants. It is not important to the viewers.

I disagree.

The minister was suddenly listening to us too, because of the media attention to the occupation and the 1500 protesters.

If you're on the evening news, you will go "WHOA DUDE LOOK IM ON TEH NEWS". Everyone else won't even notice that it was you.

Or maybe 2000.

Not true, everyone was talking about the protests for a month here.

@Cerberus look, can we please stop riding on that one example? One example does not a rule make.

Many MPs asked questions in parliament. The ministry is preparing reforms, etc.

I can tell you how the Aldi cashier listened to me, too.

@Cerberus when ministers can do something about something that won't negatively affect them, of course they're going to get interested. electoral reform, on the other hand, would mean UK ministers being in a party that doesn't get an overall majority

that, i think, might affect their decision making process

Yeah. In Germany, 1500 protesters occupy some uni like every other month. Get a ton of media attention, too. Ministers don't give a damn, and the general public forgets it the day after.

@Jez Oh, absolutely. I am not saying one demonstration will fix the system. Just that it will put serious pressure on national politics if it is part of a long campaign.

I have to go now.

Adios, amigos!

Students are always protesting. Who cares. Everyone shrugs and moves on. Nobody even shrugs, actually.

CU.

bye

@tchrist That's not cool man. My mom is Carthaginian.

@RegDwigнt It's important to me. How else will I get info on how to explode beached whales? I mean that literally. I have a dead whale on my beach and I need to blow it up. Or should I make steaks?

@Jez Holy crap! How did that happen? Why are UKIP and Green so greatly voted for but didn't get seats (not that I care for either)? is it because all the places that they lost were close? But how come lots of other parties got seats with much fewer votes?

@RegDwigнt considers thinking about shrugging. already too much effort spent

@Mitch There are lots of candidates in a first-past-the-post system.

Whichever candidate in a district has the most votes wins, even if it's nowhere near a majority.

parties that are ideologically similar often split the vote for that category of voters, meaning people who vote that way are underrepresented because neither candidate wins

In Canada there used to be two right wing parties: the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform party. PC was center-right, R was righter than that. But because they split the vote, neither got elected and the center-left party kept winning.

Then those parties merged into a party called CCRAP, and then they realized that was a dumb acronym, so they changed to "Canadian Alliance", and then eventually to "Conservative Party of Canada". Now the right is unified, and they are much farther to the right than they used to be, and their psychopathic leader is in charge.

in "John and Susie are his children", how is called grammatically "are his children"?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 so are you suggesting that UKIP and greens are similar to conservatives and labor respectively but just slightly less popular (voting-wise)? So that they'd lose but with lots of votes? But all the rest fringe parties (very low popularity over the entire population) are wildly popular within a very few districts (like Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru)?

@crl the predicate

'John and Susie' is the subject

@Mitch No. I'm pointing out that in a system where whichever candidate has the most votes wins, anyone voting straightly for the party they like best is potentially allowing the candidate they like least to win.

or the sentence is a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase, and the verb phrase is composed of the verb and the object (a noun phrase)

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 sure. spoilers.

I don't know enough about UK politics to categorize the various parties' ideologies or to know which parties voters overlap with the others.

but here in Canada, now that there is only one "right" party, the left is essentially divided, and so that makes it easier for the right-wing party to win, despite being far more right-wing than they used to be.

What I am interested in is the distribution of Jez's table, that two parties, out of about 15, were top 4 in popularity, but bottom 4 in seats.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 yes. that is 'spoiling' or splitting the vote as you said. I was asking if that is the case in the UK, but with way many more parties. It just seems beyond comprehension that the phenomenon would occur like yesterday, unless there is great overlap conservative/UKIP and labour/green. I would have thought UKIP and green would be too extreme to get that many popular votes.

@Mitch thanks, I thought the predicate was only the verb

@Mitch extremism is on the rise in Europe.

I don't know anything about European green parties. we have a Green party and it's pretty tame.

They're slightly-right of center economically, slightly left socially, and have a heavy focus on environmental issues.

@crl vocabulary.com/dictionary/predicate

@Mitch thanks, it is possible to have 2 predicates in a sentence?

This wine is old which is a sign of quality

"is old" and "is a sign.." are predicates?

Call them verbs.

There is a difference between "This wine is old, which is a sign of quality" and "This wine is old and is ready to drink".

But both are legal.

Complex versus compound.

Of course many sentences are both.

A compound subject or a compound verb is where there are two or more of each, joined by a coordinating conjunction.

I hollered, sang, and danced my way to the victors’ podium, which was not exactly the cleverest thing for a newly elected pope to be caught on video doing.

@tchrist verb phrase, rather?

Sure.

That works.

ok, thanks

These concepts are the same in English as they are in French and Spanish, so I'm wondering what you're really trying to get at. May I help you more?

Romance doesn’t have much of the English concept of notional concord, but I don't think that's your question.

@tchrist I was just trying to correct a comment

I so want to have never seen that.

I cannot whitewash my mind.

I suppose an immediate life-threatening concussion might suffice to stop it from making it out of near-term memory.

looks for sidewalk to dash head against

This sentence no verb.

Verbs this sentence lacks not.

Verbs this sentence not.

Verbs not this sentence.

Snot sentence this verb.

hehe sorry

I'm browsing the cesspit of internet

@crl Sorry, I have to quote directly: "his legs are his testicles are his legs." - no that's not grammatical, but it is funny because it works as word play, two overlapping sentences, where the object of one sentence (inside the predicate) is the subject of the next. So the 'error' was on purpose. To correct it would be uncool.

It's usually understood that an English sentence is NP VP (noun phrase followed by Verb Phrase), and a Verb Phrase is V NP a Verb followed by a Noun Phrase. The funny example is overlapping nesting parentheses in a bizarre manner, therefore, ha ha, funny.

@crl but sure, like @tchrist said, you can make it more complex that way because nothing is overlapping badly.

I haven't been able to follow my schecule either.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 We have a Green Party and it's pretty, well, green.

@Robusto the question was edited, but they didn't fix that one obvious part.

Either way, in the dumper. Flush it!

@Mitch yeah, ((A are B) are A.)

A are A.. just realize it now

Huh?

Does she mean our @Martha?

lol, maybe they think the site is called martha

pahahaha

Dutch is so funny

look at it!

look at it look at it!

it's so funny!

the only way in which I want to get spammed is by the Koninkinikiiinkjiiijjjijjklijk Concertgebaoeuaiouworkest

they will never not make me smile, the Dutch.

@GeorgePompidou That is perfectly normal.

Nor are the words any longer than in German.

And that was two days ago!

I know. but it still makes me smile.

it's the spelling, not the length of the words.

Smile all you like, until someone bites off your single head!

whaaa, why?

J used to be equivalent to I in all languages in the Middle Ages.

IJ is the same as II.

And it is used to signify a long i in Dutch.

this I know as well.

Until it was diphthongised in the Early Modern age, and now it is a different vowel, one that you could not pronounce.

OK.

^.^

I'm just saying that I like the Dutch.

Now it's shower time! Bai.

get off my case.

bub.

Good, good, we like you too.

<disappears>

^.^

purrs

@Cerberus: Some author of historical fiction fancifully suggested that Dominicans were called the "Hounds of God" because: Domini Canis. Clever, but how likely, do you suppose?

@crl It's more like this: (A are [B) are A], where the parens don't nest right.

@Cerberus So are you saying it's longer by now?

@Mitch I have noticed a slight increase in the length of Dutch words since last Wednesday.

See! They use them to counteract the rising of sea level due to global warming, reinforcing the dykes. Smaller words don't work as well.

hahaha, dykes.

huh. 2.1 million people in the United States still use AOL dial up internet.

and they pay $20 a month for it.

which is what makes them complete idiots; there's certainly some kind of entry-level broadband for that price.

@GeorgePompidou "How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?" "THAT'S NOT FUNNY!" mutatis mutandis

moutardis

auf meiner Bratwurst

Calientapollas.

I'm doing my German homework while watching House in German

why is it so hard for me to learn German. the first three languages were just fine.

Because FORTRAN, COBOL, and BASIC don't count.

scuttles down to McDöner

@GeorgePompidou Well, as someone who worked for a company that had AOL as a client, I can tell you that a large proportion of the membership are black.

@Robusto aren't you Canadian?

wait no

@Robusto Heh, I don't know, it is possible as a pun.

Although dominicanis would be the dative/ablative plural: the nominative plural is -i.