Lighthouse

Four touches in our box, from four players, completely unchallenged.

What a f**king hopeless calamity all around, from the initial ball Bertrand was daydreaming over up until the penalty shout.

Them thighs though...

F**k me, this is like the first ten minutes against Leicester. Get a grip lads.

West Brom will be in the Premier League next season, I doubt Austin will play much football for them, even if he is still there.

Austin in some decent form for West Brom, just scored a cracker.

Well at least we can agree on something. I don't pay too much attention to twitter but reading some of the post-election tweets, it was difficult to find many that weren't entitled, deluded and hysterical. #scousenotenglish was the top trending # in the UK for a period yesterday. That's right, Scousers who were so, "disgusted to be English," that they had basically renounced their nationality and were proud to be Scouse for 'sticking to their principles'; Those principles apparently being voting for Labour regardless of logic or reason. They seem to be genuinely shocked and appalled that their 40 year old grudges against Thatcher weren't the top election priority for the rest of the country. Maybe I'm generalising too much here but I have to question the attitudes of today's youth/student voters. There seems to be an overwhelming impression of 'I can't possibly be wrong'. Everyone gets a prize for taking part at sports day. If I'm failing my studies, it must be because the teachers aren't up to standard. If I don't get the job, there aren't better candidates, I'm being discriminated against. I'm non binary and if someone disagrees with me, they must be homophobic because I'm non binary. I'm definitely not wrong and did I mention I'm non binary. Anyone who voted Tory is being deceived by the media, anyone who voted leave MUST have believed what they read on the side of a bus. We should cancel Brexit because they clearly didn't understand what they were voting for. The votes are fixed, the system is fixed, etc.

Okay, so we are halving the number of constituencies then. That's all you had to say, Jesus wept (as you'd put it).

Well obviously both, so if it's that straight forward then please do explain how it would work for us. To make PR work for the percentages in this election, without removing any elected MPs you would need 1231 seats (48 SNP seats divided by 3.9% of the total vote). So you would (roughly) half the number of constituencies in future to keep it down 'around 600'?

Okay, so based on the assumption that we wouldn't be taking away any MPs from the constituencies where they've been elected but you want to keep the ratio proportional to the percentage of the electorate... In this election: Tories - 364 - Elected MPs using FPTP Labour - 269 - 209 elected and 60 'top ups' (364 multiplied by the PR ratio of 283:209 gives Labour 269 total) Liberal - 96 - 11 and 85 top ups (364 multiplied by the PR ratio of 283:75 gives Liberals 96 total) Then you run into a problem... SNP - 33 Seats (364 multiplied by the PR ratio of 283:25 gives SNP 33 total) BUT with FPTP they have 48 seats So that leaves a choice of either shafting the SNP (wouldn't upset me personally but that would cause huge problems) or do the maths again to keep the ratio the same. So to keep seats proportional to the vote: Tories - 543 - (48 multiplied by PR ratio of 25:283) Labour - 401 etc... My point is to have top ups without removing any elected seats, you would need probably around 1,200 total MPs in total to make sure everyone gets a fair representation of their vote.

Because they wouldn't reflect the vote. Put everyone in their strongholds with the biggest margin, okay fine. Then what? Using this election as an example, tell me where you'd put the 64 extra Liberal MPs who nobody wanted? You could only put them in the marginals. Imagine Meon Valley being told "sorry, we've used up the quota of Tories, we need to 'allocate' you a Labour MP." You would have a very polite, middle class riot. Every election would end up with liberal MPs pigeonholed into constituencies where the vote might be Con - 23,000, Lab - 21,000, Lib - 6,000. It'd be an absolute farce.

Do you believe having a permanent coalition government would be a good way to run the country?

So what you're basically saying is you'd rather have a hung parliament at every election?

I wouldn’t doubt any of that but it isn’t what you said. You’ve lumped together completely different parties in a GE, based purely on what you regard as the default positions of each party on Brexit, and used that to criticise FPTP. The Tories have the second biggest vote percentage since 1979 I believe, only 1% behind Labour’s landslide in ‘97. If that doesn’t give them the right to govern I don’t know what does.

That’s based on the assumption that EVERYONE who voted, did so in accordance with Brexit and nothing else. I’ll bet there were plenty of Labour votes in northern areas, from people who are predominantly leave voting. People for whom a Corbyn government and winning a second ref. Seemed like the best option.

I don’t get your point. It was an election, not an EU ref.

These are all strong Labour seats where Brexit AND Tory candidates have been standing. It’s more significant that Labour are down 12%.

In true Saints Web style; I can’t see them hanging on to this 2-1 lead.

Looked like he’d just wandered into the building after 3 or 4 post match pints.

Wow, Torys take Blyth Valley.

They stayed with her.

I know a Jehovah’s Witness who voted Green. Hope this helps.

Wow!

I'll go with a Tory majority of 22.

Anyone else got a cynical, 'mysterious injury just before the transfer window' feeling about this?