^ possibly, but the big problem with FPTP, even if you do what you say, is that if you can win a ton of constituencies by a small margin, even if you get completely wiped in others, you win. Even if you don't have the most votes. That doesn't sit too well with me.
My enemy's enemy is my friend and I want Brown and THE LABOUR PARTY out.
i disagree with that logic when everything you (rightly) blamed brown for would be as bad, most likely worse, under the tories.
Do you honestly think that any UK government of any flavour could have prevented the current economic situation?
No.
We're a small country with a relatively loud voice, in an economic maelstrom dictated by China and the US.
Every developed economy is worse off. Brown didn't cause that.
And a LibDem vote isn't a wasted vote, particularly if the resulting coalition puts forward a decent version of proportional representation, like most grown up economies have...
Ready, set, GO!
;)
not completely, considering the UK banks' exposure to the US housing market, but a decent/on the ball government (rather than one partying on deripaska's yacht) would have separated out merchant banking from retail banking. A decent gov would also not have allowed the banks to get so big that they couldn't be allowed to fail, nor to have such an imbalance in assets to liabilities. Nor to have a business plan based entirely on the glorified ponzi scheme that is the housing market. Even with what has happened, I still hear most politicians saying that we need to get house prices back up. WRONG! That was the problem in the first place. People couldn't afford them, but credit was too cheap and available, pushing the prices higher and higher, and people were willing to pay crazy prices for houses because "oh, in two years it'll be worth £50k more than I paid, so who cares?". It's crazy. Someone will doubtless say that I'm way too harsh and what about all the people who have houses and who are in fear of negative equity, but to that I would answer, "What about all the people who can't afford a house at all?"
could a UK gov have completely avoided this? doubtful (but as i said, australia did).
could it have avoided having to bail out the banks? yes.
I agree about the lib dems. If you vote for someone you don't like that's also a wasted vote.
andy: bigot might sound worse, yeah, i guess you could argue that the noun is being used to define the person, whereas as an adjective it could be one of many traits. my point is just that they mean the same thing.
i agree that the press is ridiculously biased. But it's even more biased against the lib dems, even still a lot of the press is trying to pretend that the lib dems are some strange fringe loony party. heck, they're older than labour!
fwiw, i'd rather see gordy get back in than cameron. no question. But i'd be willing to risk voting for the lib dems (if i lived in an area where I could).
gordy can't smile, no arguments there.
the iraq war was a complete stitch up, and both the tories and labour were in favour. it also vastly increased our exposure to terrorism.
clegg is probably a completely slimy politician too, but he seems less bad than the other two, and actually seems to argue based on policies rather than "if you vote for him you risk getting him!". "We're not as bad as the other guys" is hardly a vote-winner.
antag: belgium is a bit of a red herring there, I fear. It's split based on language etc., it's not really the PR system to blame.
and i don't think we had much choice in being friends with stalin, hitler invaded russia. he'd have invaded russia whether or not we were friends with him. In fact, he invaded russia when we weren't.
pretty much agreed with nfe (apart from the bit about the lib dems not having a chance... i'm still hoping :lol: ).
and yeah, the gold sell-off was daft.
