What ant said basically, but it depends on people using their vote fullly.

 

It removes the idea that voting for (x) is a wasted vote, and in theory you could see some crazy changes.in.voting behaviour. But people are boring and will pobably still vote the same as before.

Thanks, you've both made me depressed now. :(

Is there any point in going to vote at all? :'S

Now you understand (hugleft)

Depends where you live.

 

I live in a safe Labour seat. At the last election it was a new Labour candidate and she increased Labour's majority by a thousand, to 7,000-odd.

 

This is why I didn't vote. What is the fucking point.

I meant on the AV bit.

Although it's a similar position - Conservatives have more than Labour and LibDems combined for both the last elections, and there's only two others - UKIP ( :& ) and Green.

Unless enough Tories were upset by the forest sell-off to all vote green, there's no hope of anything changing here.

But if it might make things better elsewhere I'd still pop over and vote. Currently sems like that'd be wasted effort though. :(

I think I'm going to vote yes on account of it being 'least bad' and the No campaign was/is pretty goddamn abhorrent. I'm not especially happy about it but I'm not convinced by this not-voting tactic either.

Are we supposed to get ballot papers or something for this? I only ask because I haven't. I didn't get Census forms until I asked for them, either.

It makes me wonder whether it'd be best if people had to vote on policies without being allowed to know which party was proposing that policy. Maybe then people would vote for the best policy, rather than for the party they've always voted for out of some sense of 'tradition'.

It's a nice idea except that policies often make a coherent whole. Your way, we'd end up with low taxes, high public spending and the country would be bankrupt in about a month.

You should have received a Poll card, but you don't need it to vote - just turn up at the polling station with suitable ID.

Of course, it's the poll card that tells you where your polling station is, so if you don't know where it is you'll need to ask someone.

Isn't the country already bankrupt? :S

Anyway, there shouldn't be a "tax policy", that would be a by-product of how many things people vote to spend money on - so high public spending results in higher taxes.

Still not sure it would work, but it'd be interesting if it could be experimented with somehow.

True, plus most people don't have a clue and would just vote for what seems to offer the most short-term gain.

 

In my ideal world there would be a benevolent dictator who truly had the best interests of the nation/world at heart, and people would know and accept this :C

 

Then I wake up :(

No.

And no (hug)

To expand on that a bit, people would still vote for lots of public services.

I mean, "would you like well-maintained roads or shitty ones?", "would you like a good health system or a shit one?", "would you like good schools or shit ones?".

And tax isn't just a pot to dip into to pay for what we spend. I mean, there are different taxes and they hit people differently. Sales taxes hit the poor hardest, road tax hits... those who own cars (or run them as part of a business), income tax hits everyone (above a certain threshold) but there are different bands - how do you decide where they go?

So, ok, you could offer package - pairings of tax policies with spending plans, that could work.

But then... would you really want the public to vote on foreign policy? We'd have to make intelligence information available to everyone voting (but no one else, obviously). Would you trust the public to make good decisions? And, probably more important, coherent ones?

Even if it worked, it would be more extremely mob rule-ish than the current system.

No, but I don't trust power-hungry politicians either.

Idiocy and ineptitude both result in bad choices, but (in theory) you can educate idiots - I'm less sure you can fix politicians.

I'm not so sure you can educate idiots - they're idiots by virtue of being unable or unwilling to learn, aren't they?

They're idiots because (on the whole) the education system in this country is absolutely awful, and doesn't teach people how to learn.

Well yeah - they're unwilling/unable because The System (which includes more than just the education system) has let them down.

Teaching kids how to learn isn't enough - they need to want to learn, and that's a problem that runs far deeper than the education system alone.

I dunno, I think I agree with Pete. Kids inherently want to learn. I mean they're fucking genetically programmed to want to learn. Though I agree with you that the problem is broader than just education (though that is a big problem), it's cultural.

Inherently yeah, they probably do want to learn, but in some places (basing this on my own experience in school, which I fully realise is purely anecdotal) peer pressure can override that - learning isn't "cool" (christ I feel like an old man writing it in quotes like that :( ), which where, as you say, the cultural issues arise.