Comments on: The next UK election

By: wufnik

wufnik — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:20:09 +0000

my god, you’re right, I really did call him James, didn’t I? Must be because I just saw Avatar. My bad, profuse apologies!

By: chris y

chris y — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:38:16 +0000

James Cameron? That would be this guy? Or, except that he's dead, this one? The current arch-tory is David Cameron. We await with baited breath the biography of the man by a mediaeval Italian pornographer (Bocaccio's D.Cameron), which should be a good read.

By: wufnik

wufnik — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:26:42 +0000

Well, I go back and forth on that. On the one hand, it’s great to see the party leaders yelling at each other during Question time in Parliament–it’s impossible to imagine Bush being able to do that–the guy could barely string together enough words to make a sentence And it means that the majority party can usually pass pretty much whatever legislation it wants, because the minority doesn’t have available all the stalling tactics here that are built into the US Senate, for example. The downsides are several, though. For one thing, the minority party isn’t able to introduce legislation on its own. And, of course, you don’t really vote for the Prime Minister–you just get to vote for your own MP. The leader of whichever party wins becomes prime minister (assuming a majority). So if you like your MP, but hate the Prime Minister (a not uncommon occurrence under both Blair and Brown), you’re sort of stuck. Finally, the ministers are all drawn from Parliament–Chancellor, Minister of Defense, etc. Which means you get them shifting around from one department to another, and also you may get people who haven’t a real clue–as opposed to the US, where the heads of Treasury, Interior etc come from outside the elected government, and therefore (presumably) have some relevant experience, in order to be appointed to run whatever it is they’re being appointed to. So it’s a mix, frankly.

By: Dr. Slammy

Dr. Slammy — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:09:17 +0000

Sounds interesting and maddening all at once. Still, I think I wish that the US had a parliamentary system. It may not be the ultimate, but it HAS to be better than our two-party lockdown, right?