Voting Systems Part One

Started at 15:00 hrs GMT on Tuesday 11 May 2010. I have noted those exact details because,
as I write, some four plus days after the General Election, I do not know which party, or combination of parties will form the new Government of the UK. However I do know that if the information from the "ears and eyes of flies on the walls" or "insights" into the minds of all the politicians and spin doctors involved could be communicated into my fingers, they should be able to type a best selling book exposing some of the shortcomings of politics in general and Party Politics in particular, in my opinion there are plenty of those.

To be fair I would surmise that several rays of unmitigated brilliance "for the good of the country"may well have penetrated the foggy curtains surrounding the horse trading rings.
I must confess though that since the election results confirmed the expectation of a Hung Parliament I have winced many times over the reference, by MPs trying to form a Government, to "working in the National Interest". Surely MPs should always be working in the National Interest, that is absolute par for the course.

Freely admitting that there are millions of people, with a much greater depth of knowledge than I in regard to UK politics, I wonder if the following observation could be clarified. Since WW Two there have been at least two occasions when the party in control had an overwhelming majority. How come they failed to retain the support of the voters who put them into such power? Could it be that the party in power, bolstered by that power, were showing signs of moving too far to the left or right? Are the "Floating/Swinging" voters who helped them into power so easily displeased or swayed by the promises in a rival party's manifesto, or did the party in power not live up to theirs? It could be argued that the floating/swinging voters made,
if not a mockery of democracy they certainly encouraged the growth of a search for something that could be judged better than "first past the post".
This blog will be continued in Voting Systems Part Two. Thank you.

Frederick W Gilling. Tuesday 18 May 2010 Sorry originally incorrectly dated as 17th