# Should be entertaining...



## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

Nigel Farage is on BBC1 Question Time tonight. Who said multi channel TV has brought an end to shared common cultural experiences?










Dimbleby as dimbledoes ... and it should be entertaining with what's been on the news recenty, regardless of your political opinion.










So will it be a Farrago of twisted facts or a vote for the common man? Let's compare notes tomorrow


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## SalsredTT (Jan 8, 2011)

I watch QT anyhow, but this will be interesting!

Actually rather like Farage - he has a certain something.


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## brian1978 (Jul 10, 2013)

why does this political nobody get so much air time>?


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

The reaction from the audience was telling with one woman saying if she had genuine reasons to resign from her job her boss wouldn't be able to stop her going. The reversal of his decision appears insincere and has lost him credibility, leaving his party to be seen as little more than a personality cult. His answer was basically that he was persuaded because they needed him.

I notice that their one MP has suggested that he should take a rest - despite Farrage appearing to take sides with him by agreeing with his refusal to accept the public funding he is entitled to - he also criticised him for his aids comments during the election campaign.

There seems to be much trouble behind the scenes.

Well we didn't get a stand up row shouting match or anyone storming off, so perhaps it wasn't as entertaining as it could have been and was actually quite polite in the end.


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## FiveDirty (Apr 12, 2015)

brian1978 said:


> why does this political nobody get so much air time>?


Cause more of the electorate voted for them than the Lib Dems and SNP added together ?


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## Roller Skate (May 18, 2015)

If he wanted to resign, there's nothing stopping him apart from his ego.

What wasn't surprising was the amount of applause his replies got, he does "speak" to the common man on a a lot of levels, but let's face it, if he ever got into power that would be the end of this country.

As for the reason he get's so much air time, UKIP did get over 4 million votes, I know that didn't equate to seats, but it's still quite an achievement. So, on that point, why shouldn't he get the airtime he's earned?


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## Toshiba (Jul 8, 2004)

brian1978 said:


> why does this political nobody get so much air time>?


He got more than twice as many votes as the SNP.. another nobody?
So the real question is why should the fish nobody get any airtime at all..

To give you perspective - the GREEN PARTY, yes, the GREEN PARTY, got nearly the same number of votes as the SNP, but the idiots within the SNP have seats at the table.

And the comment above about UKIP getting "over 4M votes" is incorrect, they didn't.. 
Why not just say thing's as they are, or make up numbers? Yes, they got much more than the SNP, but if you are guessing put an @ or around in front?


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

I think the biggest problem with Farage's not-a-resignation wasn't that he went back on his word - it's that he originally said (quite rightly I think) that he wouldn't have any credibility as a leader of a party if he didn't have a seat in Parliament. Hence his desperation to stand in the first available by-election. Well, the first one he thinks he can win, I guess. He'll have to chose carefully because another loss might be the end of him.

Despite the support they've managed to get recently I just can't see them achieving much more. Every success just seems to highlight how piss-poor the rest of the party really is. They get a seat in Parliament, and rather than making the party seem credible, Carswell just makes the rest of them look like amateur hour - not to mention the fact that he never really acts like he's part of the same party as Farage.


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

I don't really get this dislike of the SNP. There seems to be a mentality that England are somehow the leaders of the UK, with the other countries taking a lower rank. Because of this, some people seem to resent it when the other countries have their own political parties.

Would these people also complain if there was an 'ENP' party that got a load of seats here, and promised to go to parliament and ensure England got treated fairly? I doubt it.


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## paulw12 (Mar 31, 2015)

UKIP came 2nd in 118 seats and got 3.8M votes, not bad for a party with one MP :? 
This was also the first election most people had the chance to vote for them, so it was always a case of building the core vote for the next general election. 
Farage needed to go, after failure to win seat, although I heard police are looking into voting irregularities after the count was delayed.
Carswell is a good MP for Clacton, and that's why I voted for him, plus its put Clacton on the map , who's coming down this summer to see our new £13M beaches??


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## Toshiba (Jul 8, 2004)

Spandex said:


> I don't really get this dislike of the SNP. There seems to be a mentality that England are somehow the leaders of the UK, with the other countries taking a lower rank. Because of this, some people seem to resent it when the other countries have their own political parties.
> 
> Would these people also complain if there was an 'ENP' party that got a load of seats here, and promised to go to parliament and ensure England got treated fairly? I doubt it.


I'd disagree, it's more of a scottish issue - The anti english sentiment has been their a long time, be it sport or people.
The one and only time i went to glasgow i got crap for being english, i refuse to go to scotland now and will never go back. Is that representative of all people from scotland? Maybe not, but in the same way if an english persons mentions scotland in a negative way is that representative? scotland just complains all the time about england, frankly most are bored of it.

But in answer to your question, or waffle.. the point being made is only 1.4M people voted for the SNP and lets be clear their policies are bonkers and yet they have 56 seats. That means the will of those people is disproportionality represented - nothing to do with "where" they live - thats a scottish issue with anything to do with westminster.

So, no reason why a person shouldn't appear on TV, if you don't like what he has to say - turn over or don't watch it.


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

Toshiba said:


> I'd disagree, it's more of a scottish issue - The anti english sentiment has been their a long time, be it sport or people.
> The one and only time i went to glasgow i got crap for being english, i refuse to go to scotland now and will never go back. Is that representative of all people from scotland? Maybe not, but in the same way if an english persons mentions scotland in a negative way is that representative? scotland just complains all the time about england, frankly most are bored of it.
> 
> But in answer to your question, or waffle.. the point being made is only 1.4M people voted for the SNP and lets be clear their policies are bonkers and yet they have 56 seats. That means the will of those people is disproportionality represented - nothing to do with "where" they live - thats a scottish issue with anything to do with westminster.
> ...


Disproportional representation is a 'feature' of our voting system. But what I'm questioning is why you're singling out the SNP, rather than complaining that the Conservatives shouldn't have a majority, or moaning that the Lib Dems are under-represented, or that the Greens should have more seats.

If you don't believe the anti-English feeling you experienced is representative of all of Scotland, why mention it? You got unlucky with a few idiots - as you say, there are idiots down here who do the same thing.


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## FiveDirty (Apr 12, 2015)

Roller Skate said:


> And the comment above about UKIP getting "over 4M votes" is incorrect, they didn't..
> Why not just say thing's as they are, or make up numbers? Yes, they got much more than the SNP, but if you are guessing put an @ or around in front?


To avoid any confusion or arguments about votes, percentages, etc. See totals below.

UKIP 3,881,099
Liberal Democrat 2,415,862 
Scottish National Party 1,454,436
Green Party 1,157,613

REF: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

1 - UKIP did manage _almost _4 million votes
2 - They did _almost _match LIB + SNP total vote
3 - They are the UKs 3rd party by _vote _totals
4 - UKIP total is app 43% of Labours total

I'd suggest that is a serious and significant result.


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## Toshiba (Jul 8, 2004)

Whichever measure you use, the conservatives got more seats and more votes than any other party, so I'm unclear how you believe they shouldn't have a majority.. they should and do.

I made my point 1.4M people get 56 seats, 1.3M people get a single seat... it makes no different the colour of the party.
The issue, or comment is scotland continually says it doesn't get representation at westminster, but its over represented as demonstrated above.

The other point was i see no reason UKIP shouldn't have a voice on a BBC program they got 3.8M votes, but to be clear, it doesnt mean i agree with their policies anymore than i do with the SNPs.. I have more issues with the left wing BBC than i do with UKIP in truth, The BBC should be told to become commercial and the licence fee scrapped.


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

Toshiba said:


> Whichever measure you use, the conservatives got more seats and more votes than any other party, so I'm unclear how you believe they shouldn't have a majority.. they should and do.


A majority in the UK parliament means 326 seats or more. Using proportional representation the Tories would have got around 75 seats less than they did, meaning they couldn't form a majority government and would have had to form a coalition.


Toshiba said:


> I made my point 1.4M people get 56 seats, 1.3M people get a single seat... it makes no different the colour of the party.
> The issue, or comment is scotland continually says it doesn't get representation at westminster, but its over represented as demonstrated above.


I don't think I've ever heard a Scottish person complaining that they don't get representation in Westminster from a 'number of seats' point of view. What they complain about is that, as a country, they never vote Tory but often get a Tory government. This is a very different thing.


Toshiba said:


> The other point was i see no reason UKIP shouldn't have a voice on a BBC program they got 3.8M votes, but to be clear, it doesnt mean i agree with their policies anymore than i do with the SNPs.. I have more issues with the left wing BBC than i do with UKIP in truth, The BBC should be told to become commercial and the licence fee scrapped.


Well, you can take that up with Brian - I made no comment about whether Farage should be on QT. As for making the BBC into a commercial broadcaster, I think that would be a massive shame. I think they're the only channel that really makes an effort to educate and inform, so even if I don't want to watch a huge amount of their content, I believe I'm doing the right thing by contributing to their funding. I understand the concept of paying for something that benefits others rather than yourself might be hard to stomach for the more right-wing among us though :wink: .


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## Toshiba (Jul 8, 2004)

You are mixing two systems. You wouldn't need 326 seats under promotional representation.
The difference would still be over +40seats to the blue vs labour. Yes Libs would be up at around 52, SNP down to 31 and the big winner UKIP at 83.

Number of seats = whatever the government is. Been as many labour ones as blue ones.
it just every time we get the labour ones we end up in a mess.


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

Toshiba said:


> You are mixing two systems. You wouldn't need 326 seats under promotional representation.
> The difference would still be over +40seats to the blue vs labour. Yes Libs would be up at around 52, SNP down to 31 and the big winner UKIP at 83.
> 
> Number of seats = whatever the government is. Been as many labour ones as blue ones.
> it just every time we get the labour ones we end up in a mess.


Why wouldn't you need 326 seats under PR (assuming the number of MPs remains unchanged at 650)? You still need to form a credible government. It's not a question of having more MPs than any individual party, you need more than all the others *put together* otherwise how do you guarantee you can pass bills?

PR is just a voting system, it doesn't change the structure of the parliament once the seats are allocated.


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## Toshiba (Jul 8, 2004)

So you're saying with PR you "still" have the same number of MPs/seats.

OK think about that for a minute - you realised how daft that is yet?
lets take it a step further then shall we, so if we use SNP again, which 29 seats do we take and give to UKIP then?
And what do you say to the local region who have to hand over the seats? Hmmm i can see why the people of scotland would bitch about that one!! :lol:


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## jamman (May 6, 2002)

Poor Spandex no understand :?


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

jamman said:


> Poor Spandex no understand :?


A bold statement from the man who hasn't a clue what either of us is on about.. :wink:



Toshiba said:


> So you're saying with PR you "still" have the same number of MPs/seats.
> 
> OK think about that for a minute - you realised how daft that is yet?
> lets take it a step further then shall we, so if we use SNP again, which 29 seats do we take and give to UKIP then?
> And what do you say to the local region who have to hand over the seats? Hmmm i can see why the people of scotland would bitch about that one!! :lol:


No, I didn't say with PR you'd still have the same number of seats - I said you'd need 326 seats to govern *if* the number of seats stayed at 650. If the number of seats changed, the number you'd need to maintain a majority in any vote would change correspondingly (to (n/2)+1, where n is the total number of seats). The allocation of seats can be done in various ways (and my post didn't suggest any of them), but in the end parliament will still be made up of a load of MPs and these MPs will be voting on bills. In order to govern the country you will need enough MPs on your side to have a majority in any vote. Just as with FPtP, you'll achieve this by either having more MPs than all the other parties put together, or by creating a coalition. Given the Tories slim margin, and given that any form of PR would have reduced the proportion of Tory MPs, it's safe to say they would not have a majority government were it not for FPtP. There would have to be a coalition - in fact this would become the norm with PR.

Perhaps you should explain how *you* think a PR government will work, rather than just saying my way isn't how it'll work.


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## jamman (May 6, 2002)

Spandex said:


> jamman said:
> 
> 
> > Poor Spandex no understand :?
> ...


Truth hurts Spandex :wink:


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## John-H (Jul 13, 2005)

Toshiba said:


> ... I have more issues with the left wing BBC than i do with UKIP in truth, The BBC should be told to become commercial and the licence fee scrapped.


So the BBC which strives to be impartial without political bias and is a trusted news source worldwide is accused of being left wing by an openly admitted right wing party. Who do I believe? Ooh it's a tough one - I'll have to think about that :lol: :wink:

Direct funding is cheaper than the inefficiency of layers of advertising middlemen taking their cut. Funding programme making through advertising is more costly to the public - it's just not so obvious. A lack of commercial bias is also something the BBC try to maintain.


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

jamman said:


> Truth hurts Spandex :wink:


Excellent. You've managed to find your old copy of "The Idiots Guide to Witty Comebacks (GCSE Edition)". I look forward to more playground 'classics'...


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

Toshiba said:


> So you're saying with PR you "still" have the same number of MPs/seats.
> 
> OK think about that for a minute - you realised how daft that is yet?
> lets take it a step further then shall we, so if we use SNP again, which 29 seats do we take and give to UKIP then?
> And what do you say to the local region who have to hand over the seats? Hmmm i can see why the people of scotland would bitch about that one!! :lol:


I've been thinking about why you believe having the same number of seats would be an issue, and the only thing I can come up with is that you think these seats would still have a 1 to 1 relationship to the current constituencies. That's not the case. In order to use PR, you'd need to create larger regional 'multi-member' constituencies that would correspond to a number of seats in parliament. The multiple MPs for each large constituency would be chosen according to the proportion of votes for them (or for their parties in a closed list system) and they would all represent that large region in Parliament. There's no reason why this system couldn't maintain the 650 Parliamentary seats, but equally that number could be changed. That depends on the structure of the regions and how you allocate the multiple MPs to each one.

So, no Scottish seats would go to UKIP, as no one in Scotland voted for them. But some of the English regions would potentially have one or more UKIP MPs.

But, as I said, this is a separate issue from the requirement for the new government to have a voting majority in order to govern effectively.


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## Toshiba (Jul 8, 2004)

Ok trying not to drag this down, so pls don't read this that way.

Currently, the SNP have 56 seats, under PR the vote share would be 29, what happens to the difference? And which of the 56 seats do the SNP give up?

Under PR you wouldn't be able to have 'regional' based seats, it couldn't work, you would have to have seats based on the voting share. If you are doing that why would you need to keep the same number of seats - PR would be the chance to reform the whole Westminster system.


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

Picture it like this. Let's say you take the current constituencies and group them together 5 at a time. That would give you 130 'regional constituencies', each with 5 MPs. Now, you take the votes from each group and assign the 5 MPs based on the proportions (using a system like the D'Hondt method to round up to integer values). This gives you exactly the same number of seats in parliament (130 x 5 =650) and each region gets the proportion of parties that they voted for - so if a region doesn't vote for UKIP, none of the 5 MPs will be UKIP.

Now, in reality this is over simplified and wouldn't be genuinely proportional, because just grouping 5 at a time might not lead to an equal number of voters per region. So, you'd probably want to either adjust the boundaries to even it up, or vary the number of MPs per region.


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## Spandex (Feb 20, 2009)

But, as I said before, none of this changes the need for a majority (an absolute one, not a relative one) in order to form a government. If PR was applied to the results, no matter what form of PR was used, we would now have a coalition.


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