Election period

[Beef Oven!]

It's spot on i'm afraid
the soiled bed IS UKIP

You don't even understand your own analogy!

You are rolling around in poo!

Leave the hotel with the UKIP, or go back upstairs and poo in your bed, and lie in it with Clegg & Cameron!!!!!!!

[MrGongGong]

You don't even understand your own analogy!

You are rolling around in poo!

Leave the hotel with the UKIP, or go back upstairs and poo in your bed, and lie in it with Clegg & Cameron!!!!!!!

It's a quote
and leave your false dichotomies elsewhere

[Beef Oven!]

It's a quote

Blaming others? Typical ;-)

[french frank]

Yes, but as MEPs - which I thought was the focus of the discussion, the European election being nearly upon us - they could argue that they were working for their constituents by opposing legislation which appeared to assert or increase EU power.

I don't think that would quite be a full-time job!

And the concept of a constituency surely differs in the European elections as any elector is likely to have a number of MEPs from different parties due to the size of the regions. So anyone in Somerset interested in obtaining flood relief money, for instance, could write to the MEP he thought most likely to work towards obtaining that - not necessarily the MEP of a party for which he had voted.

It is different - but the logic of that is that some MEPs don't have to do much/anything on the grounds that there are other MEPs for the same constituency to do the work ...

And as far as MPs are concerned, I supposed it's similar (if the opposite way round) to Sinn Féin refusing to debate/vote in the HoC, though they may well be what is known as 'good constituency MPs'.

[aeolium]

I don't think that would quite be a full-time job!
It is different - but the logic of that is that some MEPs don't have to do much/anything on the grounds that there are other MEPs for the same constituency to do the work ...

And as far as MPs are concerned, I supposed it's similar (if the opposite way round) to Sinn Féin refusing to debate/vote in the HoC, though they may well be what is known as 'good constituency MPs'.

Maybe, but I don't think anyone voting for UKIP will be under any illusion that they will be voting for a diligent constituency MEP. It is a protest vote, pure and simple.

It's not, of course, simply UKIP which constitutes the sole anti-EU party in these elections:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/brussels-braced-influx-eurosceptics-parties-european-union-polls

[french frank]

Maybe, but I don't think anyone voting for UKIP will be under any illusion that they will be voting for a diligent constituency MEP. It is a protest vote, pure and simple.[/URL]

Er, Strongly Agree :-) Though, of course, if they could demonstrate what they have done in their region to bring investment and new jobs, disaster relief, coordinated crime-fighting, environmental measures &c it might make people want to protest less (which they don't want, hence the exaggeration of EU-imposed 'laws' and the financial drain of economic migrants, skewed stories about ludicrous directives and the various myths which have been a constant headache for Brussels).

[Beef Oven!]

Er, Strongly Agree :-) Though, of course, if they could demonstrate what they have done in their region to bring investment and new jobs, disaster relief, coordinated crime-fighting, environmental measures &c it might make people want to protest less (which they don't want, hence the exaggeration of EU-imposed 'laws' and the financial drain of economic migrants, skewed stories about ludicrous directives and the various myths which have been a constant headache for Brussels).

This is not your usual standard.

[Beef Oven!]

Maybe, but I don't think anyone voting for UKIP will be under any illusion that they will be voting for a diligent constituency MEP. It is a protest vote, pure and simple.

It's not, of course, simply UKIP which constitutes the sole anti-EU party in these elections:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...an-union-polls

Good Heavens, what an eye-opening article from those even-handed journalists at the Gwerdian! Reading between the lines, and at a stretch, voting against the EU means one is a xenophobe, racist or even a Nazi. I don't want to be thought of like that. No way. If that's what it all means then I ................

[aeolium]

Good Heavens, what an eye-opening article from those even-handed journalists at the Gwerdian! Reading between the lines, and at a stretch, voting against the EU means one is a xenophobe, racist or even a Nazi. I don't want to be thought of like that. No way. If that's what it all means then I ................

I think you've been reading too much between the lines rather than the actual lines themselves. Very few of those anti-EU parties are described as xenophobe or racist (ast least, unless you believe opposition to immigration equates to xenophobia and racism). There are one or two very unpleasant ones, like Golden Dawn which certainly is xenophobic and racist (and imitates Nazi salutes and insignia) and Hungary's Jobbik, but mostly these are nationalist and conservative parties (with a couple of socialist ones).

[MrGongGong]

I think you've been reading too much between the lines rather than the actual lines themselves.

Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story (or misunderstanding?)

[Dave2002]

Don't forget that the voting is by proportional representation. There is only one reasonable way to vote. Decide which party will best represent your views in Europe and vote for it. There is a quota to elect each member, parties that reach that quota get one MEP - the person who is No 1 on the party lists; then the surplus votes (above the quota) are counted to see if/which candidates at No2 also get elected, and so on (if I remember correctly). It's complicated but not for the voter. You just vote for the party you support.

Please jump in, anyone, if I've remembered this wrongly. I don't think people should faff around with 'tactical' voting because this only works with FPTP. As far as I can see, you can't keep a party out by tactical voting; but you might stop your own party from 'winning'.

I'm not quite sure about your analysis. What happens to the left over votes towards the end of the process?

I found this article which tries to explain it better (but fails) - http://www.theguardian.com/news/data...u-need-to-know

However this gives us another clue, that the method used is a "variant of the famous D'Hondt method"!!!

This article does better - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Hondt_method and gives an example, in which one can clearly see that there can be problems. In the example it is arguable that the small party should have 1 elected candidate, thought the consequence of that would be that one of the other parties would have to lose one of theirs. If that happened perhaps the "fairest" would be that the party with the largest overall proportion would have one of the candidates taken away, but that would then leave it in an effective tie with the party with the second largest number of votes - which would also be unfair.

The D'Hondt method attempts to process what might be called residue votes, after sufficient votes have been allocated for each winning candidate to win.

Knowing this gives us slightly more insight, and some form of tactical voting might still be helpful for some voters. It would clearly help to know what the voting patterns were in previous elections. Just suppose, for example, in a strongly Conservative area, that last time round the Greens failed to get a candidate elected, but Labour did. A particular voter might have a preference for Green over Labour, but would want to know whether casting a vote for the Greens would be effective, or would be a "wasted" vote. If the voter thought that there was a reasonable chance he or she might vote that way in the hope of tipping the balance this time round. If the voter did not want to support any of the other parties he or she would otherwise cast the vote for Labour. The way the vote between Labour and Greens would go in this example would depend on how closely voters with that particular choice view felt that there was a chance that the Greens could win this time.

This is only an example, and and not intended to show favouritism to any party. It could have been given using parties X,Y,Z, W but many would find that hard to comprehend.

It's probably too late for most of us to be able to make use of this knowledge, but knowing it might still reduce the likelihood that one's vote is "wasted".
In order to be useful, one would have to have knowledge of previous voting patterns in the constituency, and I'm not sure that such information is readily/easily available.

[Dave2002]

Following the above argument, here is some information re the previous elections for some of the regions:

South West: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_W...onstituency%29
South East: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_E..._constituency)
East Midlands: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/h...kregion_31.stm

As I wrote earlier, it's going to be hard to get all of the useful relevant information for all the regions in time to make a choice in the case of marginal preferences if one feels that one's vote might otherwise be wasted.

I'll leave it for others to investigate, though the previous figures for SE and SW might be informative.

[Dave2002]

Apparently QR codes are on the SE ballot paper - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-27385280

The Daily Wail has this - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...arliament.html - but still doesn't show what an actual ballot paper looks like.

Could be very confusing in some areas.

[Dave2002]

Apparently the elections this time are the first to be done under the Lisbon Treaty Rules - which hardly any of us here in the UK know about.

This article suggests some of the effects this might have - http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/e...%99S-DIFFERENT

[MrGongGong]

Times up kids
All we have to do is wait and see if we have an act of mass delusion in the style of Jim Jones as is predicted
OR will people do something else ?