pedg

and that it appears for certain people is the rub. They think that the party they support will be less able to win that 50% so rather than see a more balanced voting system they attempt to convince themselves that FPTP is better, it may be 'better' for them if it was kept but this does not make it a better system for everyone not just them.

You can consider each stage at which someone is removed and their votes redistributed as a round of voting. In each round the person you vote for either stays the same if they missed the cut or is changed if your vote was for the person who was removed for having the least number of votes. In each round everyone votes. The resultant winner will be the person who best reflects the consensus opinion of the voters.

So your relatives are certain that a completely untried solution, opposed by the vast majority of health professionals, will work? Such confidence.

Cameron

I think there may be some confusion between general efficiency savings and Landleys 'big idea' that only GP's are qualified to determine how the NHS budget is spent. It is the latter that people like the Royal college of nurses are mainly protesting about and we have no way at all to know if it will actually work.

Why don't you ask the tory party why they use exactly that system to elect their leader?

It is but it is still better than first past the post. So how bad does that make first past the post?

Also image a constituency where someone voted green in the previous election and would vote for them again but in the one they are about to vote in there is no green candidate. Should their vote somehow count less because the person they eventually voted for was not their preferred candidate?

The way to think about AV is to think of it as being similar to the approach used to elect Cameron to be leader of the conservatives. In their election the MPs got to vote in one round with 4 MP's. Then the one with the less votes was eliminated and they voted again on the remaining 3 to get 2 candidates so that when the rest of their party voted there was sure to be one candidate with more than 50% of the vote. If they had gone straight to their members with all 4 candidates then who knows who would have won. David Davies got most votes in the first MP round so possibly him? So was Cameron's election undemocratic? Now obviously when you only have a few hundred people its easy to manage a number of distinct rounds of voting but for a general election that's not feasible but assuming that everyone ranks their preferences the same as the order in which they would vote for people in the separate rounds then the result will be the same.

Its democratic because to get elected you have to have more than the support of just your core party voters which is what the current system is. I see nothing wrong with the person who was initially third winning in the end as once the votes have been distributed he obviously had more support at that point than the person who was initially in front.

My point is that the current set of U turns have got little if nothing to do with the Lib Dems being in the coalition and are down to the dogmatic 'lets sell off everything including the forests, the sky and air' attitude of the tory's who now find themselves as ministers and appear to be giddy with the power after so long without any.

Both the last majority governments have had their fair share of U turns and as I said above the U turns the coalition government have made so far have all been down to dogmatic decisions by Tory ministers which cameron has realized are not going down well.

ditto anyone voting no because AV is not STV.

All the flip flopping at the moment appears to be tories ministers getting it wrong and I don't think that they are in a coalition has much to do with it.

...

Music stopped. Time to pass the parcel again...

Go on then how large would this landslide have been....

Nice of them to help the muggers know where to go and wait.

Could you not afford a ball?

Surely not. He's a Glass half full person after all: http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/18012011/63/pompey-bare-bones.html Hate to tell you Steve but your glass, like pompey coffers, is now empty.

Yep Are they financially safe to appear in the championship again is another question all together...

I think they still do have a mathematical possibility as remember its only Leeds that are so close to pompeys maximum points limit.

Rapidly approaching the point of mathmatical certainty that they will not make the playoffs. They have 55 points and four games to go giving them a maximum of 67 points. Only side in the playoff places they could overtake is Leeds on 65 points who have +16 better goal difference compared to pompey.

Having had Lansley as my local MP for 19 odd years I would like to personally thank the boundary commission for moving me out of his constituency! But to be fair at least he is not Gove!

Or possibly no match first day because pompey unable to provide proof they can survive the season?