I now seen the new Hitchhiker’s film, and thought I’d give vent to my opinions on it, not all of which are good.
Warning: contains lots and lots of spoilers if you haven’t seen the film/read the books/seen the tv shows/heard the radio plays/etc.
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Fuck off with your shitty, tedious adverts. No, really: your food is crap, your staff (at least in the local branch [I don’t make a habit of going there, just very occasionally when asked to by the missus]) are simpletons and your adverts are simpleminded drivel. Just fuck off.
Well, that’s it. Labour have been voted in again, although I’ve taken an especial interest in this election, mainly due to having taken the opportunity to actually vote this time.
I’ve learned a lot in the last 24 hours, about how the voting system works, or (more accurately) doesn’t.
Part of this new–found knowledge involves how the current method of voting is rife with unfairness. The system we use here in Britain is that of first past the post; it’s inherently biased toward any party that has even a vague majority in constituencies. How it works is this:
Say that there are 10 constituencies, each with 3 major political parties. I’ll call them The Nice Party, The Stupid Party and The Evil Party (I thought about colour coding these, but decided that would give the game away…) each comprising 1000 voters. For added realism, I’m going to assume that 40% of these voters don’t vote at all - a fair reflection on the voting habits of Britons today.
Remember that this is a contrived example, purely for demonstration purposes.
So here we go:
In six of the constituences (for a “majority”) the voting goes as follows (a majority in this case means more than half of the seats i.e. 6/10 is a majority in this [very contrived] example):
In the other 4 constituencies, the voting is as follows:
So, the final results are as follows:
This results in The Evil Party winning the general election, and the Nice Party taking the place of the opposition. The Stupid Party doesn’t get any votes. Ah, well…
Sounds fair? It’s not, and I’ll highlight why. Let’s look at the total voting numbers (percentages are rounded):
The Evil Party:
6 × 201 votes + 4 × 1 vote = 1210 votes (20.2%)
The Nice Party:
6 × 200 votes + 4 × 598 votes = 3592 votes (59.8%)
The Stupid Party:
6 × 199 votes + 4 × 1 vote = 1198 votes (20.0%)
As can be clearly seen, The Evil Party has just over 20% of the vote, yet is the controlling party. The Nice Party, on the other hand, has almost 60% of the vote, yet doesn’t have power.
It’s clear to see that this is completely unfair to those didn’t vote for The Evil Party, which in reality means about 63% of the voting population, or more than 75% of those eligible to vote. Something like proportional representation (PR) is a fairer and more democratic system — yet we’re not allowed to have it in this country: it would interfere with the current ruling party’s power plays. Actually, there have been several attempts to have PR introduced, but it’s always been blocked somehow. I wonder how that happened.
I appreciate that yesterday’s election results saw The Labour Party take the largest share (36.3% at last count) of the vote, but it’s patently unfair that they have the controlling power in Parliament that far outweighs the support shown.
That fucking sucks.
It’s just occured to me, but was it just us, or were soft pencils (instead of something a little more permanent — like a pen) the standard provision for marking ballot papers?
Right, I’ve voted, and used the power allowed me by society to try to change it for the better.
Here’s fucking hoping.
Right, I’ve voted, and used the power allowed me by society to try to change it for the better.
Here’s fucking hoping. Yeah, right.
Today TheWife(tm) gifted to me a new book, Don’t Panic by Neil Gaiman, about Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’m so looking forward to reading this, but still a little apprehensive about the film version.
I now have 2 clients that seem to be alumni of the “Rev Ian Paisley School of Management Training and People Relations”.
Joy.