On procedure and politics

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined

The unnecessary senate?

Canada’s New Democratic Party moved an opposition day motion that proposed two main points: that the Senate be abolished, and that proportional representation be adopted. More specifically, the motion called for the House to recognize the “undemocratic nature of the current form of representation in the Parliament of Canada, specifically the unnecessary Senate and a [...]

Do looks matter at the ballot box?

A recent study conducted by Swedish and Finnish economists found that political candidates on the right-wing side of the spectrum were considered more physically attractive, and people were more likely to vote for them at the ballot box. The study compared election results from parliamentary and municipal elections held in Finland in 2003 and 2004 [...]

Nicked

I was debating if there was any point in blogging about this incredibly bad anti-AV column by Janet Daley when I came across a story buried on the BBC’s UK politics page that struck me as far more amusing to write about. There’s going to be a hip hop musical about Nick Clegg’s “struggle to [...]

It’s going to be a long 10 weeks

It is not my intention to write about every idiotic anti-AV column that appears during the next ten weeks leading up to the referendum vote in May. For the most part, I’ve addressed the main arguments put forward against AV in previous posts. That said, when something particularly mind-boggling appears, I do feel a duty [...]

Super-majorities and minimum turnouts

After a protracted battle between the House of Commons and the Lords, the AV-Constituencies bill finally received Royal Assent yesterday, meeting the deadline to ensure that the referendum on AV will take place as scheduled on May 5. The last sticking point was the Lords’ insistence on requiring a minimum turnout of at least 40% [...]

Flip-flops and u-turns

The Coalition government has been accused of repeated u-turns on various policies. This blog post summarises some of the more notable ones. For the non-Brits reading this, u-turns are what we call flip-flops in North America – in other words, a government reversing course on a previously announced policy direction or position on a given [...]

PoliTwitter

A quick post to bring to the attention of my few readers an interesting Canadian politics site that I discovered only yesterday. PoliTwitter is not a new site – it’s been around since 2009. It’s the creation of Trevor May, a self-described “super patriotic Canadian”. What poliTwitter does is aggregate the Twitter, Facebook, blog and [...]

If FPTP is so great…

The referendum campaign on the Alternative Vote is in full swing in the UK. A recent poll showed the yes side with a 10 point lead (40% for, 30% against), but a large number of undecideds (30%) could easily nullify that. While anyone who favours true electoral reform is bound to be less than enthusiastic [...]

The primacy of Parliament – follow-up

Back in May, I blogged about the issue of ministerial statements made outside of the House of Commons. I ended that post with “unfortunately, press coverage often means more to a sitting government than does showing respect and courtesy to the House.” Last week, the House of Commons Procedure Committee released a detailed report on [...]

Don’t trust any government

“You should not trust government – full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.” The above is not an uncommonly held view; many people share that view and those who don’t tend to only trust governments led by [...]

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