Interesting Links for 28-06-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Scotland's census reveals LGBT numbers for first time

(tags:LGBT Scotland census )

2. In case you were still hoping for any meaningful voting reform from Labour

(tags:reform voting Labour OhForFucksSake )

3. We've here is Keir Starmer defending electoral reform. That was before he was elected, of course

(tags:Labour elections voting reform OhForFucksSake )

4. But how many countries are there really?

(tags:maps countries video )

Comments

[cmcmck]

1. Although the figures may well actually be higher as some of us (myself included) don't answer such questions.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely.

[calimac]

And sometimes the questions are inept. I've seen surveys where there were three options: Male, Female, Trans. oh dear

[cmcmck]

To be fair, the census has got a bit better than that but my answer is still F and I don't get involved with the complexities of gender and birth sex as it's none of their damn business.

[mellowtigger]

I don't know the local politics. Is there some reason that people would feel safer answering these questions truthfully in Scotland versus other UK locations?

[calimac]

2-3) Reminds me a bit of Blair, who talked a good electoral reform game before he was elected, then fizzled and didn't do anything to implement it. The kindest explanation is that he was in favor of it, but knew he couldn't get it past the other powers in the party, and he didn't want to bring that conflict out in the open, so he fudged it. Which is typical of Blair's handling of any contentious problem.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's not going to come up again until Labour's numbers have come down to the point where they're worried about losing again.

[calimac]

I've read it stated often enough that no party capable of winning enough votes to form a government would handicap itself by proposing PR, that I wondered: how did PR get enacted in other countries? And the answer turns out to be, a sufficiently strong third party that the leading parties were afraid they wouldn't be able to get enough votes to win by FPTP.