Your net is no longer neutral buddy!

[Rum]

Britain is nowhere by any stretch of the imagination a democracy. I dont know where you cherry picked those results as all the tables I find the usual six are top: the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The UK is roughly in the bottom half of the top 20.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking

But as you say there is plenty of (biased) data to choose from. The Economist is a prime example.

The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the UK-based company the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) that intends to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 165 are UN member states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

This is the one your using is it not. The UK is a "FULL" democracy!!!! Nice bit of tweaking. With countries like Belgium and France as flawed democracies.

Please.

Hoisted by your own petard Scotty boy. You are the one who went looking for stats to support your argument. I just took a cursory look.

Your views are however also tainted because of confirmation bias. You hate your abandoned homeland so much you seek with almost every post you make here to drag it down and look for 'evidence' to prove that it is as shit as you want it to be and that the country that you chose to settle in is the best thing ever. It has become a joke. I think I can be a little more objective about the UK frankly as I see both the good and the bad without undue loyalty, patriotism or prejudice influencing me.

[Scot Dutchy]

All true, but we have had governments that were VERY left leaning. Post WW2 of course when the welfare state was set up. Harold Wilson's government contained members who had not long been communist party members, so did Callaghan. Even Blair had the left wing to contend with - which he admittedly 'saw off'.

And Scot - don't post blatant lies. The UK is of course a democracy. It may not be one you like - and of course far inferior to the system you have in the Netherlands - but it is a democracy.

Does all votes in the UK have the same weight? No. Therefore no democracy.

Who says? Where's your definition that backs this up?

Does the government represent the majority of the electorate? No.

Neither does the Netherlands, unless you know what the roughly 20% of people who don't vote would have voted for. Not to mention that your government is a coalition usually, so it's almost never what the majority voted for.

Once again lack of knowledge is showing. Our government always represents the majority of the electorate.
Our society is not adversarial. We know when we vote there will be coalition so therefore you vote for the party you want in order to give more room at the negotiation table. I know that is hard for the Anglo-Saxon mind set but not everything every where is them and us.

[Scot Dutchy]

Your views are however also tainted because of confirmation bias. You hate your abandoned homeland so much you seek with almost every post you make here to drag it down and look for 'evidence' to prove that it is as shit as you want it to be and that the country that you chose to settle in is the best thing ever. It has become a joke.

I dont have to. It does it quite well by itself. The joke is on the electorate of the UK who think they live in a democracy which is far from the truth.

[pErvinalia]

All true, but we have had governments that were VERY left leaning. Post WW2 of course when the welfare state was set up. Harold Wilson's government contained members who had not long been communist party members, so did Callaghan. Even Blair had the left wing to contend with - which he admittedly 'saw off'.

And Scot - don't post blatant lies. The UK is of course a democracy. It may not be one you like - and of course far inferior to the system you have in the Netherlands - but it is a democracy.

Does all votes in the UK have the same weight? No. Therefore no democracy.

Who says? Where's your definition that backs this up?

Does the government represent the majority of the electorate? No.

Neither does the Netherlands, unless you know what the roughly 20% of people who don't vote would have voted for. Not to mention that your government is a coalition usually, so it's almost never what the majority voted for.

Once again lack of knowledge is showing. Our government always represents the majority of the electorate.

How? If 20% don't vote, then you don't know who they would prefer. And if you have say 3 parties in coalition then you can only have at most 49% (and obviously much lower) of the population getting who they voted for.

Our society is not adversarial. We know when we vote there will be coalition so therefore you vote for the party you want in order to give more room at the negotiation table. I know that is hard for the Anglo-Saxon mind set but not everything every where is them and us.

God you are like a broken record. You're wrong, again. And as usual you reach for the retarded "Anglo-Saxon mindset" as if that is anything at all, and even if it was, still wouldn't be a rebuttal.

[pErvinalia]

Your views are however also tainted because of confirmation bias. You hate your abandoned homeland so much you seek with almost every post you make here to drag it down and look for 'evidence' to prove that it is as shit as you want it to be and that the country that you chose to settle in is the best thing ever. It has become a joke.

I dont have to. It does it quite well by itself. The joke is on the electorate of the UK who think they live in a democracy which is far from the truth.

You keep asserting this without providing any authoritative evidence to back it up. And as I pointed out, the Netherlands isn't a democracy by your own standards. As Rum said, hoisted on your own petard.

[Hermit]

When the opposition leader is openly a socialist, then I think it's fairly safe to call the UK left leaning.

When the opposition leader is occupying the role of the loyal opposition while the conservatives are in government, cutting social services, instituting austerity budgets and selling the assets of the government owned hospitals and getting away with it, the UK is definitely not left leaning.

Well in a plurality, that's what you get. The same here. It's not like half the country is left and the other half right. Most people are in the centre and swing around depending on what handout they get at a particular election, or how scared they are of brown people. But when you survey the voting public outside of elections, they usually support policies that people like Corbyn, Sanders and The Greens here in Australia have. So I think most people are more left than what they end up being scared/bribed into voting for.

It is who the majority or the plurality of the people votes into government that determines whether a country is left, right or somewhere in between. Everything else is irrelevant.

[Rum]

All from Page one of a search.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/economist ... ay-98710-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

https://www.angloinfo.com/blogs/global/ ... ive-there/

https://www.pouted.com/top-25-democrati ... ies-world/

[pErvinalia]

When the opposition leader is openly a socialist, then I think it's fairly safe to call the UK left leaning.

When the opposition leader is occupying the role of the loyal opposition while the conservatives are in government, cutting social services, instituting austerity budgets and selling the assets of the government owned hospitals and getting away with it, the UK is definitely not left leaning.

Well in a plurality, that's what you get. The same here. It's not like half the country is left and the other half right. Most people are in the centre and swing around depending on what handout they get at a particular election, or how scared they are of brown people. But when you survey the voting public outside of elections, they usually support policies that people like Corbyn, Sanders and The Greens here in Australia have. So I think most people are more left than what they end up being scared/bribed into voting for.

It is who the majority or the plurality of the people votes into government that determines whether a country is left, right or somewhere in between. Everything else is irrelevant.

It determines whether the government is left or right. It would be ridiculous to claim that a country was left, then 4 years later was right, then 4 years later was left, etc etc. The views of people and the population don't swing that much. In a two party system there are only two parties to vote for. One is left, the other is right. There is no choice for left and left, or right and right. By definition.

[Scot Dutchy]

Your views are however also tainted because of confirmation bias. You hate your abandoned homeland so much you seek with almost every post you make here to drag it down and look for 'evidence' to prove that it is as shit as you want it to be and that the country that you chose to settle in is the best thing ever. It has become a joke.

I dont have to. It does it quite well by itself. The joke is on the electorate of the UK who think they live in a democracy which is far from the truth.

You keep asserting this without providing any authoritative evidence to back it up. And as I pointed out, the Netherlands isn't a democracy by your own standards. As Rum said, hoisted on your own petard.

I have produced more than enough. You sound like a cracked record. Because of your Anglo-Saxon mind set you cannot conceive a consensus government. Our system is a pure PR one. Do I really have to explain this again? Seats in our Second Chamber are directly proportional. There 150 members so any coalition with more than 76 seats can form a government. So the government represents the majority of the votes cast.

[Scot Dutchy]

All from Page one of a search.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/economist ... ay-98710-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

https://www.angloinfo.com/blogs/global/ ... ive-there/

https://www.pouted.com/top-25-democrati ... ies-world/

Yep all based on the Economist data. Nice one

[pErvinalia]

Your views are however also tainted because of confirmation bias. You hate your abandoned homeland so much you seek with almost every post you make here to drag it down and look for 'evidence' to prove that it is as shit as you want it to be and that the country that you chose to settle in is the best thing ever. It has become a joke.

I dont have to. It does it quite well by itself. The joke is on the electorate of the UK who think they live in a democracy which is far from the truth.

You keep asserting this without providing any authoritative evidence to back it up. And as I pointed out, the Netherlands isn't a democracy by your own standards. As Rum said, hoisted on your own petard.

I have produced more than enough.

No you haven't. You said UK wasn't a democracy because not every vote is worth the same. This is your opinion. You haven't provided any authoritative evidence to back this up. If you have (which you haven't) please link to it.

You sound like a cracked record. Because of your Anglo-Saxon mindset

*sproing!* There goes another irony meter. If anyone is a cracked record, it's you with your "Anglo-Saxon mindset" rubbish and your "I hate everything" tourettes.

set you cannot conceive a consensus government.

I can conceive a consensus government perfectly fine. You, with your "Netherlands is the best at everything" mindset can't conceive of how to back up your claims, and apparently can't conceive of how a consensus government has nothing to do with your unevidenced opinions about democracy.

Our system is a pure PR one. Do I really have to explain this again? Seats in our Second Chamber are directly proportional. There 150 members so any coalition with more than 76 seats can form a government. So the government represents the majority of the votes cast.

Do I have to explain again how a coalition isn't what people vote for. They vote for a SINGLE candidate/party, not a group.

[laklak]

You're right, rEv, what I meant but put rather poorly is download speeds will be their weapon. Squashes competition and rapes the consumer at the same time, a win-win for them.

[Scot Dutchy]

Do I have to explain again how a coalition isn't what people vote for. They vote for a SINGLE candidate/party, not a group.

Once again your Anglo-Saxon mind cant comprehend. We vote for a party knowing full well that there will be coalition talks. They know which parties their party will talk with. Please just stop trying to shoe horn the consensus Dutch mind into the Anglo-Saxon adversarial mind set. It does not fit.

You can easily see that all votes in a constituency system are not equal; just look at the number of voters in each constituency. They are never even closely equal. The urban constituencies have far more than country ones which always favours the tories.

Here is a small example:



Are they all the same? No. Therefore no democracy.

[Rum]

You are arguing the PR is the only 'true' democracy, whereas clearly it isn't. If democracy is about the will of the people being implemented PR is no more assured of doing that than representative democracy. Here we know what a party stands for and in the majority of elections one party comes out on top and the policies they pushed during the campaign come into force - very quickly in some cases. With PR you often have long (very long!) periods of wrangling and compromise and the policies that a new government end up with are watered down, negotiated into nothingness and/or end up with no teeth.

Both systems have advantages and disadvantages. Your Netherland/Anglo Saxon hybrid mindset seems incapable of appreciating that and instead of reaching a consensus with myself and pErv your mindset is hell bent on being adversarial about it. LOL!

[Scot Dutchy]

What a load of bollocks and you know it. If you had two constituencies one with a 1000 voters and one with 10. Do you think that is democracy? So you dont like democracy never mind majorities just get one mob into power even though it has only 30% backing from the electorate? Go ahead. Enjoy Brexit.