The seductive Pythagorean madness of Proportional Representation
So, the seductive whispering of Fair Votes (I want to write Fair Votessssss) is upon the heavy summer air once more. What is Fair Votes? It's the disingenuous phrase developed by those in favour of replacing First Past The Post (FPTP; another stupid name) elections with those conducted under one of the myriad forms of proportional representation (PR). When the proponents of an argument make up a name for it, such that the name carries a sense of goodness in its English meaning, you have to be worried. Cf Human Rights Act. What sort of monster could be against rights for human beings? Or, indeed, votes which are fair? Grrrr [that's me being a monster]. One of the least-remarked upon streaks of intellectual dishonesty, taking place just now, is that the Fair Vote Advocators are taking advantage of anger with MPs to push their historically unpopular little agenda. If we are not careful we will find ourselves in a cultural position whereby opposition to PR is 'felt' - without the requirement to be spelled out, in black and white - to be a subliminal support for the current unethical system of expenses.
Of course there's the irony, which would be delicious were its likely outcome not so horrendous, that the key advocators of PR are among the set of people who are now living in fear that the BNP will gain representation in the Euro Parliament, an outcome which, should it happen, would occur almost entirely as a result of the system of PR being used in those elections, a system which was inflicted on us by those same key advocators of PR. This is an unpleasant irony, though in and of itself is obviously not a reason to be for or against PR.
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