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ORIGINAL: Terminus

Mine didn't arrive quickly enough.

ORIGINAL: USS America

ORIGINAL: Dixie

I have a question for the Threadsters whose nations are taking part in the World Cup (or have taken part), is there as much media attention on your nations as there seems to be on the England team? Despite the fact that as a nation we are just a quarter final quality team at best there always seems to be an expectation of great things at every tournament.

Does the Danish/French/US/Croatian/Australian/Swedish press get so overexcited about the chances of their team? Admitidly the French national team are probably better than England in recent years, and the US team probably doesn't get much coverage over there.

Not much coverage of the US team over here, Martin. I'm seeing more commercials for the TV coverage on ESPN than anything else. [:D]

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

Question for our British thread brothers...

Where can I find good explanation of how UK general election works (i.e. how percentage of general vote is not connected with actual parliament seat winning)?


Leo "Apollo11"

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Question for our British thread brothers...

Where can I find good explanation of how UK general election works (i.e. how percentage of general vote is not connected with actual parliament seat winning)?

Warspite1

Apollo11, it's a really very simple "first past the post" system. There are 650 constituencies in total across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The size of each consituency is not always equal in terms of area or inhabitants, and I have no idea how the boundary commission decides what the boundaries of each constituancy are. But its a real pain because it heavily favours one main party over the other.

Anyway, each eligible voter in a constituency votes for one candidate. The candidate with the most votes becomes the Member of Parliament for that consituency and takes his/her seat in the House of Commons.

The leader of the party with the most seats is asked by the Queen to form a Government.

The main problem with this is that you can get some major anomolies e.g. the Conservative party have just failed to get an outright majority (over all other parties) and yet got a higher percentage of the votes than the last Labour Government managed in 2005 (and that had a majority of 60 I think it was).

It's great TV though - and not for the first time I stayed up through the night to watch the drama unfold; even though I had to go to work today.......

The third main party - the Liberal Democrats have been banging on about proportional representation for years now and it looks like the hung parliament that has just arisen, has got all three parties recognising there is a need for electoral reform. What that means in practice we will have to see.

Don't worry, Leo.  Discussing how a particular government system works, or is supposed to work by the book, is much safer than discussing what we think the government should do.  

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