Loz

That's obvious thinking. The Daily Mail is Conservative thinking.

Alex K Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Last year on Abbotswood Road council workers came > by and whitewalled every hedge along every walk, > cutting the vegetation back flush to the > perpendicular from the edge of the paving. Front > garden after front garden had the startled > expression of someone whose eyebrows have been > shaved off. No idea what prompted the > intervention: My tenth year here and the first > such event. Oooh - don't complain. Saved me a job as the (shared) hedge was starting to take over the pavement. The council has my thanks for that little effort.

Moos Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I too hope that electoral reform will return to > the political stage, perhaps in a couple of > elections' time. There would seem to be enough > groundswell that it just doesn't feel likely that > it will go away for "a generation", as people have > said. I consider a generation as 20-25 years. I reckon that will be about right. > > Huguenot, when I was at university we elected > people using what we called STV, but from wha I > remember seemed very much like AV. Could you very > kindly explain the difference? Hmmm. Not just me then. I always thought AV was also called STV, but it seems that STV is now considered PR with preferences. That is, you number your candidates like AV, but seats are doled out on a PR basis. The count system is based on achieving a quota of votes, but of course the distribution of preferences is a lot more complex. If people found AV too complex, frankly ATV or PR will just hurt people's brains.

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My love has no boundary today for the wonderful > people of ED. > > I'm so glad that my heart for the UK sits in East > Dulwich. > > From the temperance of Loz to the enthusiasm of > Killer Queen what a truly beautiful demonstration > of the care and consideration that we have for our > society. Ha - I think you are underestimating the silverfox effect. I reckon that fellow pushed more people towards Yes than you, DJKQ and me put together. :))

Tarot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The condems are planning to turf out single > tenants who have one more room than they need,and > if they dont move will lose up to fifteen % of > their housing benifit from April 2013. Excellent. Benefits should help you through a bad patch. Why should one person be able to bounce around a 4 bed house on their own when some poor family is shoved in B&B accommodation?

Pearson Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Am i alone in thinking Tandoori Night (whilst very > very good) was also very very expensive? > > I went there recently with some friends, shared > all but ended up costing over ?40 a head for a > very simple menu. > I had 1 beer, simple starter and a main? Eh? Shome mistake, methinks. It's not cheap, but 40 quid a head?

Marmora Man Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > YES - the right result I know. A big shame it didn't happen!

Michael Palaeologus Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The experience of the Curry Club is that there is > little difference between any of the ED curry > houses. Are you including Tandoori Nights in that? It's always seemed a notch (or two) above the rest for me.

James Barber Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The AV count starts at 3pm today. It felt really > positive for a YES result in ED yesterday but the > news channels are suggesting a very clear NO > result. That's because Southwark returned a Yes. The rest of the country, however...

The Tories and the SNP are the only winners from yesterday. Slight increase for the Tories in council seats (against all expectations) and a win in the referendum. LibDems suffered the election from hell. Plaid Cymru went backwards. Labour failed to capitalise in England and had a disaster in Scotland, though almost pulled it off in Wales. Cameron, much as I hate to admit, has played a blinder.

The thing is that the electorate has now pretty much ensured that the coalition will run the full course, unless the Tories try their hand at an early election. The LibDems would need to be suicidal to pull out and force an election at this stage. My guess is that Clegg will go at about year 3 and then a new leader will be installed to try and give the party a new face for 2015.

You're right Ms B. And every can of Heinz Baked Beans should have a carbon tax slapped on it, too. Methane is one of the worst greenhouse gases.

A humongous YES from me.

westdulwich Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Loz Wrote: > > Did it deliver the fairest outcome? Compared to > > FPTP (i.e. naming Party A the winner) then, yes, > > absolutely. > > > > Reflected the preference of the voters? Again, > > compared to FPTP, then yes, of course, as FPTP > > ignores any preferences of the voter except > their > > first choice. > > Thank you. Could you answer without the caveat? > Did the outcome reflect the preferences of the > voters? Yes, I believe it did. As with any set of statistics you can bend and twist them whatever way you want to reach different conclusions, but I think that AV result produced the fairest outcome that represented the voters intentions. If you start looking at preferences below live preferences you run the risk of getting the winner that no one wanted, rather than trying to reflect a majority wish. Take it to extremes - four candidates, three of them got 33.33% of first preferences each and the fourth got none. Likewise, the second preferences were distributed amongst candidates 1, 2 and 3. But the fourth did get everyone's third preference. There is no way you could argue that person 4 should be the winner. I think AV is the best way of selecting a single winner of a vote (as opposed to PR, which assigns a number of 'winners' according to the percentage of the vote). As I've said, I've seen AV in use in Australia and I can't think of any example of anyone complaining the wrong 'winner' was selected.

Use Dulwich Hamlets, just up near Sainburys. No pool, but the gym is more than adequate (all the equipment you'd expect), not crowded and very cheap. And Skip is really good.

And as for David Sole - he should talk. I mean, that car in Starsky and Hutch must have been an environmental disaster area.

I have a rather inefficient car, but I only drive about once a fortnight or so. That makes it, in my mind, much more easy on the environment than a more efficient car that is driven every day. So surely if you have an inefficient car, the council should be *encouraging* you to park it? Why is a parked inefficient car doing more damage than a parked efficient one? There is no encouragement to drive less here - quite the opposite, once you've paid your ?x a year it doesn't matter how much or how little you drive it. Sounds like another wheeze thought up by people that are bored.

As I said, most human rights legislation has absolutely nowt to do with the EU. We're not too different. After all, the ECHR said to the last Labour government that DNA retention times breached human rights and Gordon said, basically, 'sod off'.

mockney piers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > long gone are the > days of local privileges I'm afraid (unless it's > being allowed to roll a cheese down a hill once a > year). That's not allowed now.

What aspects of Europe would you like to be part of, Ridgley? Other things to ponder: What would be the cost of being on the outside, looking in? Of not having the right to freedom of movement of goods, since Europe is our biggest trading partner? How much of what we pay in European bureaucracy would just be spent on UK bureaucracy anyway? Loss of freedom of travel? Expect a massive return of very unhappy retirees from Spain and the south of France! (With a lots of Spanish and French there to wave goodbye at the airport and to make sure they didn't miss their plane...) Most of the ways 'we are told to govern our country' involves incorporating the standards necessary to trade with Europe, so we're sort of stuck with that (since they would be bigger than us, we'd still be dancing to their tune). A lot of human rights stuff blamed on the EU have nothing to do with it at all, but a different and separate accord with the European Court of Human Rights.

Marmora Man Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I am not prepared to vote for a defective > electoral system in order to, theoretically, keep > the topic of electoral reform alive. That is > frankly a very weak argument for voting yes to > AV. > > As I said I can see that a rational case can be > made for electoral reform - it is up to those that > want such reform to continue to press for it - not > to accept the "miserable little compromise" that > is AV, as a possible step on the way. I suppose that is where we will have to agree to disagree. I've seen Australia's AV in use and can see that it works very well indeed. It's had 100 years of testing down under. It's is in no way defective. It works. Here's a potted history of electoral reform in Australia - as you'll see there is no push for change like there is in the UK. Because AV works and the electorate down under is very happy with it. Also, Clegg never called AV a miserable little compromise, anyway. The text from the Guardian says: > I could argue very persuasively that if we get to > AV electoral reform will stall there and go no > further. You may be right - it is a possibility, as I said - but if FPTP wins on Thursday it will be the end of electoral reform. I've no doubt about that.

Do you mean can a person with one first preference win the election? Nope. As his/her only vote would be the first vote redistributed. (Unless, of course there is only one voter, in which case that is the winning vote under any system). Is this the start of the 'theoretical minimum number of votes needed to win under AV'? Because the answer there is completely dependent on the number of voters. But it is worth noting that in Australia, since 1949 there have been 3,354 House of Representatives electorates contests, and in only seven has a candidate placed third after the first round managed to win. No one placed below that has ever managed to win an election (and Australia generally have about 8 to 12 candidates per ballot). Also, that is under Compulsory Preferential - it is expected that under AV this would be an even rarer event.

No, impossible. Even if more than one candidate finished on zero votes, then there would be no votes to redistribute so a candidate with zero first prefs would always be eliminated. Good question! You had me thinking about various permutations and possibilities until the obvious logical answer came to me. - edit to say... dammit! MM beat me by two mins!

granadaland Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > NO to AV for me. > It's the beginning of the middle of the road. We have negligible policy differences between the three main parties at the moment under FPTP. You think we can get any more middle of the road? It's like the other day on TV someone said 'AV would lead to bland politicians', but was a bit lost when asked how politicians could actually get *more* bland that they are now.

Alan Dale Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9rEZqvSu8&feature=player_embedded Nice try Alan, but the voting system that they used was not AV, so your point is, well, pointless. Had they used AV, then the 'unwanted' yellow would have gone out on the first round. Score one for AV. :)-D