Lord Duckhunter

I bet the French weren't jealous. They can have pride and patriotism in their Country without the need to be subjects.

Great point well made. Monarchists seem to want to choose our head of state on the basis of who brings in the most money. I found yesterday embarressing to a modern nation.The number of chumps who commented "This is what Britain does best",made me cringe. I tried by and large to ignore the whole thing, but some of the people I did see interviewed in the nights leading up to it, were definitely stalker material.If that's what Britain does best, then god help us. In 200 years people will look back on our social history and wonder how we ever allowed ourselves to get like this.Us Replublican are like Charles Darwin, banging our heads against a brick wall of "tradition", but like him our views will become the norm as time goes on. I refuse to sing God save the Queen at any event or occasion and will continue to do so. They need to go and go now.

I find it very strange that we invade Iraq and Bomb Libya, in the name of Democracy and yet our version of it, has a family ruling us on the basis of their forefathers being Saddam Hussein like, hundreds of years ago. Perhaps we should have let Saddam become King of Iraq and then in a few hundred years, his loyal subjects will be cheering and fawning over his relatives. I love England but can not believe in 2011 that we still let ourselves be subjects and are considered commoners. I dont hate the Royals, but I hate all they stand for and the sooner we become a Republic and every one is born equal, the better.

The Greens fielded only 28 less candidates than the BNP and got approx half the BNP's vote. People always seem to think that the Greens and "good" parties will get proper representation under PR, but in fact the BNP are far more popular. Based on the last election and the European election results UKIP & The BNP are under represented compared to the strength of their vote.

Correct, the lie that the yes people are clinging to was that Davies would have won the leadership. He would not of. Party rules are that the membership decide the leader after they are presented the MP's 2 favourite candidates. Which ever way the 2 candidates were given to them, the result would have been the same. Under FPTP it would have been Davies, Cameron. Under the system that they used it was Cameron, Davies. The membership decide who is leader not the MP's.

Under PR (which most supporters of AV want in the end) the BNP would have the 5th most seats in a uk Parliament, behind UKIP and the big 3.

I understand what you’re saying now. If you reduce the electorate to 198 and discount 198,000 of the votes and then run it as FPTP then Davies would have won. If you did the same with the Labour Party then David Milliband would have won. One of the reasons I am against AV is, if you reduced the vote in Barking to 198 white racists and then ran the election on an AV basis, Nick Griffin would have won the seat.

I still cant understand how you can fail to grasp the facts. Cameron won the only members vote by over 60,000 and only lost the first MP's votes by 33, how on earth would Davies have won one big FPTP election?

There were 198 MP's who voted. There were 198,844 members who voted Cameron won 134,446 of the members votes. How would Davies have won if there was just one big FPTP election, bearing in mind that Davies won just 33 more votes in the first round. Unless you think that MP's alone should elect leaders. In that case Ed should stand aside for David. Let's hope the rest of the voters aren't taken in with these lies as easily as you seem to be.

What on earth are you on about? Please explain how Davies would have won. "replace all the rounds including the membership bit", what does that mean?

Why are people taken in by this lie? Under FPTP both Cameron and Davies would have gone forward to the membership. The membership voted 62% for Cameron.

As a democrat I assume you will accept the outcome of the vote.It will be the opinion of the British people, where it matters, in the ballot box .

Elliot Morley would have won his seat under AV, he won with 53% of the vote.So how on earth is AV going to clean up politics? Why do people on here keep reapting the Yes to AV lie that David Davies would have won the Tory leadership under FPTP? It is not true, Davies and Cameron came first and second and therefore went to the membership. If the Yes to AV people want to clean up politics they should start by not telling lies themselves.

For the last time, the Tory Party does not use AV to elect it’s leader. The Leader is elected by one member one vote from the party members after the MP’s have put forward 2 candidates. The 2 candidates are not elected by the process being proposed now. The reason for the preliminary system they use (which is different from any election system proposed by any party), is because of damaging splits in the past. The party decided to use a complicated system to whittle down candidates to 2, which involves multiple votes by the MP’s. It is because the leader will need the broad support of all MP’s to run the party in Parliament, without that their would be terrible splits and briefing against the leader.The final vote is a run off, one member one vote.

He should go private, he can afford it. The money spent on his op could then be used by the NHS. Bloody annoys me that rich politicans from both parties use the NHS because they feel it's politically right to do so . The more people that go private, the more NHS money for the rest of us.

But Labour dont use AV, PR, FPTP or any sort of vote to decide which candidates go through to their members votes. You just need X amount of nominations. In a parliamentry election the preliminary process is ten parliamentary electors of the constituency put you forward. The preliminary process for the Tory party is decided amongst MP's. The full vote is One member one vote. You can complain about the Tories not using FPTP for their preliminary, but if you do that must surley complain that Labour dont use their favourite voting system during their preliminary process, or indeed their full election (they allow certain members 3 votes,but dont believe that's right in a general election). You have been taken in by the Yes people's lies. Under a preliminary process of FPTP David Davies and David Cameron would have still been the two to go through. David Cameron would still have won,In the One member, one vote election that followed.

Personally I think a Yes vote will harm the chances of full PR even more than a no vote. The big two parties do not want any form of PR. If we get AV, they can turn round and say "you've had your change, we cant keep changing the system every few years".You'll be in the same boat as I feel about the EU. Every time a call for a vote on membership we get "The British people voted for it in the 70's", when in fact the British people voted to stay in something completely different than it has become. The scrap the Tories have thrown the Lib/Dems is all they'll get for generations. Whereas a no vote will mean that percieved injustices will fester and need looking at again. Labour and Tories will not concede any more ground, the message will be the same "you wanted AV, you've got it, we can not keep having votes on it". Now you and me know that AV is about as far from PR as FPTP is, but most of the public are not really interested.All they'll think is we have a fairer system, thats it.

It was exactly that,One member one vote, davies or cameron. There was a process to decide which 2 candidates went through to the full vote by the party members. The candidate with the most votes from the party members, then won the leadership.The yes to AV people are just telling lies when they say that David Davies would have won under FPTP, whichever system they used Cameron and Davies would have gone through to the vote. The membership then had one member one vote(unlike Labours 1 union/party member/MP 3 votes system) and the one with the highest number won.This turned out to be Cameron, are the Yes to AV people seriously saying that the membership would have voted differently had davies and Cameron been presented to them under a different process?

Does Cotterill not realise that they had a policy of quality over quantity, they made the choice to spend the money they had on a few high wage earners, rather than fill the squad.To come on and complain about numbers yet again is a bit rich.

Monday is a must win now, Hudders will be feeling down tonight, lets not give them a lift Monday. They need to go to Brighton not really believing it's going to happen.

The guy on Solent just said that he saw Poyet shake Adkins hand.

Nothing to lose now, lets hope we go flying at them second half.

Harman,Alexander, Hain and Denham all voted in favour of the electrol system used, it is not down to just 3 people, however much you try to pretend it is.

Harriet Harman,Ed Balls, Douglas Alexander, John Denham, Peter Hain, and Hilary Benn. All support AV and we're all advisors to Govt or MP's that voted in favour of the above voting system.Ed Milliband was an advisor to Gordon Brown, these people have been at the heart of Labour for years, the only reason you dont see Brown and Blair spouting their views, is it would damage the yes vote too much.

It's not hypocrisy at all, it is not AV. Is it hypocrisy that a Labour member can get 3 votes in a leadership election, whilst only letting me have one in a general election? Is it hypocrisy that the leadership are campaigning for AV,when they set up the London Mayoral elections, Scottish & Welsh Parliaments under a differant voting system?