The Cheerful Insanity of Me

There's been a lot in the news today about Brown's plans to discuss reforming our voting system, and if the result of this is that we end up with something more along the lines of proportional representation then this has to be a good thing in my opinion.

However, as far as I can tell, most forms of PR that might be implemented would focus on making the number of MPs in government proportional to the vote, which to me is a step in the right direction, but this wouldn't make the actual power proportional to the vote, as we have a system where all the positions of power are generally held by the ruling party.

At the moment it seems unclear what the purpose of an individual vote is. Are you voting for the MP who will represent your views in parlament, the party you want to govern the country or the person you want as prime minister? I would say that the system is setup for the former, but most people use it for the latter. You just have to look at the arguments about whether Brown has been democratically elected to the position of PM to see the level of confusion here, and, yes although he has gained the position fairly under the current system, it seems somewhat undemocratic that a PM should be replaced only by a vote from the ruling party.

<wishful thinking>

I would personally, like to see this changed so that not only were government elected by some form of PR, but that also the leader of the party with the most votes didn't automatically gain the position of prime minister and the power to give all the other positions of power to his/her mates.

Personally, I would prefer to see these positions elected by the whole government from within their numbers, so for example, when Blair stood down rather than having just the labour party vote for the next prime minister, it would have been the whole government and would have excluded any members of the labour party who didn't have a seat.

If the make up of government represented the views of the people, then so would the make up of the cabinet, because they would have been elected by our representatives. It would also help even out the power distribution between the ruling and opposing parties and help clarify that the purpose of the elections is to appoint your representative(s) in government rather than the cabinet.

</wishful thinking>

So, judging by the results of my not exactly unbiased opinion poll and overly simplifing the electoral system to be entirely based on proportional representation, the UK representation of on the EU parlement should look something like this on Sunday:

Party	Votes	Proportion	Seats
Liberal Democrats	30	40.00%	28
Green Party	15	20.00%	14
Conservative	8	10.67%	8
UK Independence Party	7	9.33%	7
Plaid Cymru	2	2.67%	2
The Roman Party	2	2.67%	2
Yes2Europe	2	2.67%	2
English Democrats	1	1.33%	1
Fair Play Fair Trade Party	1	1.33%	1
Jury Team	1	1.33%	1
Liberatus	1	1.33%	1
Scottish National Party	1	1.33%	1
Socialist Democratic & Labour Party	1	1.33%	1
Socialist Party of Great Britain	1	1.33%	1
Ulster Conservatives & Unionists: New Force	1	1.33%	1
Independent	1	1.33%	1
Total	75	100%	72

A bit of a swing to the left there...

I somewhat expect it won't quite turn out that way, but it would be nice if it did.

As I missed an option in the previous poll

[Poll #1410862]

So when America elected a moron as president I was hoping something similar would never happen over here. Unfortunately it seems to have happened in the London Mayoral elections.

To add insult to injury, not only do we have Boris as Mayor, we now have a BNP representative in the GLA.

Nice to know the voters of London are sensible people (or it would be if they were).

So, I finding it a scary thought that someone might actually want to vote for Boris Johnson tomorrow. A man who, let's face it, actively goes out of his way to appear a complete idiot.

However, an email from the Guardian today has found an even scarier thought, with this quote from Joan Ryan, MP for Enfield North:

"All the way though we've been warning people 'Boris isn't wearing any clothes' and only now are voters coming to us and saying, 'oh my goddddd, he's not wearing any clothes... and it's disgussssting'".

So, thanks to the Joan Ryan and the Guardian, I've now got an image of Boris Johnson naked in my head. I don't want it, so I thought I'd share it. Isn't it a lovely thought?

...What do you mean "no"?

Given the choice of voting for him or seeing him naked, I would like to say I'd martyr myself for the sake of the population of London, but I'm not sure I could face seeing it.

Luckily I don't have to, so tomorrow I can enjoy both not voting for him and not seeing him naked.