Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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He's right. Worse than bestiality porn.
And yet you linked to it.
It's nice to know that linking to bestiality pornography is above the minimum standard for PAS. No. Wait. That's not nice to know at all.
I know people here aren't likely to be fans of David Cameron, and there's definitely a place for partisanship, but describing a picture of him as not just pornographic, but "worse than bestiality porn" is way out there. It's beyond just about anything the most strident tea party birther has said about Obama. Ian Wishart has never gone that far.* WhaleOil wouldn't go that far.
A new low. And given the political climate in democracies I've followed over recent years, that's saying something.
*EDIT: maybe he has, didn't he run a Howard Broad bestiality piece? Oh well, you're still worse than WhaleOil =)
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This is the same behaviour as people who hawk unsavoury products on the Internet and may well be illegal under the anti spam law passed a few years ago.
Nope.
Our anti-spam law only covers commercial electronic messages. Political speech (and all other non-commercial speech) is exempt.
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You pass that law and ... nothing happens. Until enough other states have passed the same law. Then suddenly, boom, the electoral college is irrelevant and it all comes down to the popular vote.
[not sure where I heard this idea ... maybe it's already happening in some states?]
I wrote a post about it on Legal Beagle.
It's called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and has been agreed to by 5 states, representing 23% of the number of electoral college votes required to get a majority.
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Well, funny how the Electoral College wasn't so evil when the right guy won. :)
I've never claimed the Electoral College was evil. Indeed, I've been known to speak in favour of it. Particularly in a federal system, there are other concerns than simple majority rules.
The idea that California would be able to tell Wyoming, the District of Columbia, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Idaho, Nebraska, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Iowa who the President of the United States should be, doesn't seem quite right.
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And I really do have to wonder about the methodology of translating popular vote shares into seats -- do they assume a uniform swing, weigh it in some way? Any insight there?
I believe so, generally, yes.
One thing that would be hilarious if we changed our electoral system to first-past-the-post (or preferential vote or supplmentary member of STV for that matter) would be seeing political journalists try to explain poll results in terms of seats in Parliament.
They think MMP is complicated...
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Sure it does, Russell. So does the Electoral College in the US, come to that -- I'm glad Obama won, but his share of the electoral college was seriously disproportionate to his share of the popular vote.
Not to mention his share of the Presidency!
I mean, shouldn't John McCain get 46% of it?
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That's partly down to one of the quirks of the British system -- TV and radio advertising are banned during the campaign.
During the campaign? You mean permanently.
And not just election broadcasts, any political broadcasts. The ban was determined by the House of Lords to appropriately prohibit advertising by a group hoping to raise awareness of the plight of great apes. The ban is in the following terms:
... an advertisement contravenes the prohibition on political advertising if it is–
(a) an advertisement which is inserted by or on behalf of a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature;
(b) an advertisement which is directed towards a political end; or
(c) an advertisement which has a connection with an industrial dispute.
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she appears to have a googly globally unique name - lucky her
Me too.
I also have a monopoly on Graeme Edgler, and Graham Edgler, but there appears to be a Graham Edgeler with a single google-able reference in the UK =)
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Bet they want their money back now.
So money doesn't influence politics?
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Shirtcliffe's press release praised the Scottish system, which I had always understood to be of the same general class as MMP
Yes, Scotland uses the additional member system, which is how MMP is known in Britain. A party's overall strength is proportional to its party vote.