Sunday 6 May 2007

PR - The death of Government

The Scottish elections have really underlined for me why Proportional Representation is so bad.

Not only is the voting system so totally incomprehendable, but there is a fundamental disconnection between votes and candidates.

People don't vote for Parties, they vote for people. A Party dictated regional list is contemptuous of the voter. These people do not take personal responsibility for their electoral platform, they are secondary campaigners and yet, based on nothing more than a proportion of the vote, they get to sit in power and make decisions with no individual and answerable public mandate.

PR is often represented as being"fair and equal" but it is nothing of the sort. It is a collection of robots controlled by an Orwellian Party dictatorship and I will do everything possible to prevent it spreading any further.

Scotland, poor sods, are condemned to a lifetime of powerless, coalition government managing social and economic terminal decline.

2 comments:

James Gilmour said...

Scotland used two VERY different systems of "Proportional Representation" on 3 May. While you comments MAY have some relevance to the AMS PR voting system used to elect the Scottish Parliament, they have absolutely no relevance to the STV PR voting system used to elect the 32 councils.

STV-PR is a PR system centred on the voters and the candidates as individuals.

So when you throw bricks at "PR" you have be far more careful to define your target.

Richard Bailey said...

One senses that Edinburgh believes he/she has lent clarity to the situation.
Rather makes my point, don't you think!

"..more careful to define your target."
Indeed. Tell that to the 100,000 unable to define their targets.