Huguenot

Sorry Sue, I was trying to intone light-hearted mock exasperation. What with big councils, little councils, lamposts, newspapers, public, private and popular websites I wasn't sure what else a community team could do to engage with their demanding public other than a barber shop quartet? Or a car club streaker. A few times.... Just in case anyone missed it ;-)

Bites lip.

I think it's a bit simplistic an argument of Jenkins to assume that armies are there to fight wars. The largest armies globally are those created to mitigate the opportunity to pick a war, to make it less rather than more likely. I also agree with Mockney that I've heard no evidence that a demand for toys and budgets meant that the armed forces were warmongering in the middle east. The armed forces are largely a political tool, a big stick, to use in political negotiations. If the recent exercise in Iraq has taught us anything, it's that armies are at their most effective when you don't embarrass yourself by attempting to use them.

I guess that'll depend on the views of the electorate. If cuts haven't been so dramatic that the schools are yet leaking, schoolchildren weeping, and the waiting list for a hip replacement exceeds life expectancy then I'm guessing they'd be looking to elect a tax cutting government.

curlykaren, it's nothing to panic about - it's not a secret! If you want the full detail, then see here (use all the zoomy facilities to dive in and browse around!): Public Spending 2009/10 by UK government department

You should give some thought to what you want your website to do, and how you want to build it before selecting a host. For my own sites I use DotNetNuke, a highly flexible and modular content management system. However, it needs a particular hosting environment using .NET and SQL. DNN generates pages at the point that they're accessed, meaning that it's processor hungry. For this reason I steer clear of the kind of bulk hosting suppliers that drive costs down by cramming as many websites as possible onto each server. If you want to retail online then you need to give some thought to server security, and the demands of payment gateways and so on. If you want to use DNN to generate a fantastic website at very little effort, then you might want to use a specialist supplier like powerdnn.

I guess what Brendan is highlighting is that some of the cuts are driven by economic necessity and others by ideological fervour. To claim that all the cuts are driven by necessity is disingenuous.

Google is your friend... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/UKExpenditure.svg/596px-UKExpenditure.svg.png

Very pseudish. Certainty or uncertainty aren't mental constructs. Events like radioactive decay would be uncertain whether humans were here or not. I've got no idea where you're going with 'universal law'. Have you levitated recently?

Wooo 'foreigners', woooo 'torture', woooo 'end of empire', woooo 'end of democracy'... You don't have an honest bone in your body do you? Mainly you're wooo 'trying to get an advantage before "I end my days"'?

I think you know that, it's why you're feigning daftness. Come on silverfox you're a snake aren't you?

What do you mean by 'a less popular person has won'? The only way a 'less popular person' can win is by FPTP.

I remember a recent debate where it transpired rubbish collectors were part of the 'consultants to be overthrown'. It transpired the guys in question were both cheaper and better than the previous council lot. I wanted better service for my money, so the union based protest was disingenuous at best. Protest is good, when it's appropriate. The OP implied they didn't care about the details, so it doesn't seem bright.

The principle is that in this situation Carnell with everyone's second vote would be in a better situation to govern than silverfox saying "60% (most) of you can go to hell, I'm in charge". Heaven forbid that should ever happen...

The manipulation of FPTP laid bare no less.

I can't believe your response deserves anything but ridicule. AV doesn't say "I don't want" it says "If I can 't have A, I'll have B". In this example the voters said "I will choose my primary candidate, but failing that I'd prefer Carnell". They are allowed that choice. In this example, apart from your core voters silverfox is bottom of the heap. You would take away that choice in order to foist upon them your control regardless of the fact that Carnell was the preferred candidate. The majority candidate. The representative candidate. You know this too... I can't believe that you really don't understand this. You want to be a snake?

Why are you trying to make this argument about proportionality? At no point have I suggested that the goal is to 'make our voting system more proportional'. I'm on record a few posts earlier as saying that I don't believe in PR. AV (in the title of this thread) stands for Alternative Vote, not for Proportional Representation. There is no PR proposition on the table here - so why are you trying to muddy the waters? I'd like the voter to choose the compromise, not a bunch of whoopy poopy self-important apparatchiks strutting smugly between committee rooms with a bunch of conditional earmarks.

There's nothing confusing about the system at all. It's blindingly straightforward. Unless you're suggesting that Australians have some sort of genetic or evolutionary intellectual advantage, then if they can grasp it, so can Brits. What I have no doubt we will see is a whole brigade of dishonest manipulative snakes attempting to make it complicated or confusing simply in order to serve themselves well at the expense of the electorate. It'll almost certainly be the same depsicable buggers who tried to make climate change 'confusing' or 'uncertain'.

It most certainly is broken, or else you've conveniently forgotten modern British history. 'Strong governments' flip-flopping between selling off school playing fields and driving public services into the ground, whilst the other team try to pick up the pieces and introduce excessively bureaucratic spending inefficiencies is childish and counter-productive. It damages the economic, social and future wealth of the UK. The idea that AV threatens liberty and religion in return for torture and corruption is such complete rubbish it beggars belief. There's no such thing as 'one possible majority'. A majority, by definition is over 50%. Your comments on best of a 'bad bunch' and not genuine votes are most accurately applied to FPTP. The Conservatives currently rule with only 36% of the vote, meaning twice as many people voted against them as for them. If you cannot see the absolute fraud in this situation you must be clinically insane. Besides, AV simply allows the electorate to state their compromise ("If I can't have A, I'll have B"), rather than Cameron, Clegg and Brown making dodgy undemocratic decisions in back rooms - that's in fact 'corruption'. Your comments on AV and our continental neighbors is baffling, as they don't have AV. Either you don't know this, and should be ashamed for being so opinionated on a subject you know so little about, or you do know it and you're deliberately lying. If so, I would like to know your motivation. To summarize, our current government system is destructive, non-democratic, non-representative and corrupt. It only meets the requirements of the current political elite. It most definitely is broken, and needs fixing.

*giggles*

Oh well, no meanness intended, just a bit of exasperation.

Sorry RosieH I have no intention to wind you up, I hope you'll forgive me for the argument that I'm about to follow. The police are nothing but an administrative arm of the state, and the state is partly if not totally administrated by the people in a democracy. If the people choose to administrate local investigations according to the letter of the agreed national law, they are totally within their rights, morally, socially, and pragmatically to do so. This is not to say that they can administer local justice, which is largely ridiculed mainly due to emotional engagement, but they are entirely entitled to explore and commit miscreants to trial. You may call this a kangaroo trial, but it's the essence of our society. It's also legal. In this particular 'shoplifter' debate, no crime has been committed by any party until the miscreants have been brought to a jury of their peers. Whilst this seems scary, the reality is that most of the time most people are sensible enough to agree that. There is no way of legislating otherwise. Instead of fearing this, we should commit time and energy to educating our peers about both rights and responsibilities.

At last, I cross swords with Carnell. Hurrah! :) I don't think AV is proportional representation. I don't agree with proportional representation. I don't even think that proportional representation is healthy. I'd like to see representational democracy migrate to a centre ground that reflects a compromise in the views of the electorate. I don't want ideology, I want commonsense. I'd like to see this delivered by a politician who got everyone's second vote, not 30% of the bad attitude kids. Swinging like a tyre on a tree, between individualist ideology and socialist agitprop is neither healthy nor productive. Gimme the middle ground every time!

I understand the Bluewater thing. Only twice. Plenty of other times to whatever irrelevance. As many fule on this forum kno, I work in advertising. As such I'm aware of what small communication tweaks are necessary to deliver massive social change. I'm also aware that the committee driven structure precludes such activity. The COI budget is quite enough. Sadness.

I don't think a bit os social humiliation is unreasonable with criminals. Whilst the stocks may be a little unusual I can't see why we shouldn't have local websites to identify miscreants alongside the nature of their crimes. If that could extend to banning them from shops and pubs so much the better. For justice to be effective it must both be seen to be done, and have appropriate consequences.