mazuz
Conservative
Posts: 155 
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Post by mazuz on Feb 5, 2017 22:12:31 GMT
I have to say (reluctantly) that the Netherlands is not a good advert for PR. Why? As for the poll, I'll be voting PVV on March 15. |
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Post by AdminSTB on Feb 5, 2017 22:38:47 GMT
I have to say (reluctantly) that the Netherlands is not a good advert for PR. Why not? I think it's brilliant. The only thing missing is proper Independents, but they'd need a different system for that. I can't speak for John Chanin, but the party system in the Netherlands is so fragmented that it feeds the argument - unfairly or not - that PR leads to weak and unstable government. |
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Post by mrpastelito on Feb 5, 2017 22:48:57 GMT
Why not? I think it's brilliant. The only thing missing is proper Independents, but they'd need a different system for that. I can't speak for John Chanin, but the party system in the Netherlands is so fragmented that it feeds the argument - unfairly or not - that PR leads to weak and unstable government. Even if it does: what's wrong with weak and unstable government? I'd be happy for consecutive minority governments having to find new parliamentary majorities on every single issue. I think that's a wonderful way to keep big government in check. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2017 22:51:21 GMT
Why not? I think it's brilliant. The only thing missing is proper Independents, but they'd need a different system for that. I can't speak for John Chanin, but the party system in the Netherlands is so fragmented that it feeds the argument - unfairly or not - that PR leads to weak and unstable government. History tells us otherwise. Anyway I much prefer our system to the "winner take all" system, that gives absolute power to parties that get the support of 36% of the voters and could mean that as a Corbyn supporter I might have to vote for Hilary Benn or as a staunch Tory leaver for Ken Clarke. Most strands of British politics are represented in ours, just in separate parties, not bunched together in the unholy alliance of a single party. |
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 16,036
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Post by Sibboleth on Feb 5, 2017 23:15:04 GMT
The converse, of course, is a situation like the last election when two parties ran really hard against each other, reaped the electoral benefit and promptly went into government together. Which o/c is why this election is going to be such an absurdist clusterfyck.
Should not, mind, that I support some form of PR. But undemocratic (and even antidemocratic) outcomes can occur from any system.
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 16,036
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Post by Sibboleth on Feb 5, 2017 23:16:43 GMT
Of course you could never have a 'simple' party system in the Netherlands because as a society it is (always has been) too fragmented for that. So if you had FPTP it would basically look like India.
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,781
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Post by J.G.Harston on Feb 5, 2017 23:32:29 GMT
I have to say (reluctantly) that the Netherlands is not a good advert for PR. I have to agree there. I was at a local party meeting last month and while discussing the /council/ elections one of the members who grew up in the Netherlands decades ago forcibly said: "we need the same system as the Netherlands, where every party gets exactly the number of seats in proportion to the whole total vote". What, the whole council? "Yes". When I got home I investigated this and yes, he's right, it's close to the Israeli system where the whole council area is one electoral division, and parties' candidates are elected strickly according to how many votes they get across that single electoral division. I don't know about the political culture in the Netherlands, but I want to be one of the two borough councillors for East Whitby competing against, say, six other candidates, not one of the 50 borough councillors for Scarborough competing against 200 other candidates. How am I going to be able to get all the way down to Filey to get people there to vote for me? Another oddity I discovered is that the municipal mayor - a sort of combined council leader/chief executive - is appointed by the central government. |
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Post by greenhert on Feb 5, 2017 23:41:03 GMT
Looking forward to 50Plus overtaking PvdA. In some recent Dutch opinion polls PvdA were behind 50Plus-which would mean that PvdA would drop from a close second to a terrible eighth place if those polls rang true in next month's election.
PvdA's decline is in line with social democratic parties worldwide, however, even though (as in Ireland) their poor opinion polling is mostly coming from their collusion with the VVD (set to suffer quite a serious blow in line with Fine Gael's decline in last year's Irish general election).
On my side, I am hoping GroenLinks will achieve third position (as some polls are also predicting); they have never polled so well before 
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Feb 5, 2017 23:46:55 GMT
Of course you could never have a 'simple' party system in the Netherlands because as a society it is (always has been) too fragmented for that. So if you had FPTP it would basically look like India. That contains what I think is a basic truth about electoral systems. In a stable society such as Germany or Sweden, PR produces stable governments. In a fragmented society, it produces fragmented legislatures. PR does not produce fragmentation, it reflects it, if present. FPTP in a relatively stable and homogeneous country such as the UK can work, but we are not stable and homogeneous because of FPTP, but because of the way our society has developed. Put in place another electoral system and the government may wokr better or worse, but ti will not in itself cause fragmentation. Conversely, if you impose FPTP on a fragmented society I do not believe you will get unity automatically, though ti is possible tha you might give the political space for a government to create unity through social change. |
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Foggy
Non-Aligned
Yn Ennill Yma
Posts: 6,137
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Post by Foggy on Feb 6, 2017 1:51:19 GMT
When I got home I investigated this and yes, he's right, it's close to the Israeli system where the whole council area is one electoral division, and parties' candidates are elected strictly according to how many votes they get across that single electoral division. I don't know about the political culture in the Netherlands, but I want to be one of the two borough councillors for East Whitby competing against, say, six other candidates, not one of the 50 borough councillors for Scarborough competing against 200 other candidates. How am I going to be able to get all the way down to Filey to get people there to vote for me? Another oddity I discovered is that the municipal mayor - a sort of combined council leader/chief executive - is appointed by the central government. Israel is the only country that comes to mind with a similar system, but even the Knesset has had an ever-increasing statutory threshold for entry in recent years, whereas in The Netherlands there is still only a very low effective threshold for representation in the Tweede Kamer. There's no reason you can't have the best of both worlds. You could be the sole borough councillor for Whitby East and the council could have overall proportionality without getting any bigger. Similarly, there could be MPs for Amsterdam Central, Maastricht South and Utrecht West without diminishing the nature of the Dutch lower house much at all. It would be a bit of a shock to the political culture there, mind. Yes, the system of appointing mayors is peculiar and indefensible, but that discussion's best left for the next Dutch municipal elections. EDIT: Oh, and I've provisionally ticked PvdD in the poll, but could switch that to a somewhat more useful vote for D66 between now and election day. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Feb 6, 2017 7:36:51 GMT
I can't speak for John Chanin, but the party system in the Netherlands is so fragmented that it feeds the argument - unfairly or not - that PR leads to weak and unstable government. Even if it does: what's wrong with weak and unstable government? I'd be happy for consecutive minority governments having to find new parliamentary majorities on every single issue. I think that's a wonderful way to keep big government in check. Belgium has weak, fragmented politics and multiple tiers of big government! |
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Post by mrpastelito on Feb 6, 2017 9:26:34 GMT
Even if it does: what's wrong with weak and unstable government? I'd be happy for consecutive minority governments having to find new parliamentary majorities on every single issue. I think that's a wonderful way to keep big government in check. Belgium has weak, fragmented politics and multiple tiers of big government! They somehow always manage to form stable governments though, even if it takes them years. |
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mazuz
Conservative
Posts: 155
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Post by mazuz on Feb 6, 2017 12:21:33 GMT
Votematch 2017 was launched at noon. Since it doesn't appear to be available in English, I translated the statements. 1. We should implement a binding referendum with which voters can take down laws that have been passed by parliament. 2. There ought to be a "civil draft" for youth, who then have to serve in the army, with the police or in the healthcare sector. 3. In order to prevent name-based discrimination, job applications with the government and public bodies should take place anonymously. 4. Group insult on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation should no longer be punishable. 5. Cultivation and sale of marijuana should become legal [cultivation is illegal, sale is currently decriminalized but technically not legal, Mazuz.] 6. Early conditional release of prisoners should be ended. Prisoners should carry out their full sentence. 7. The corporate profit tax should be lowered. 8. The highest earners should be paying more taxes. 9. The period of time in which one can conclude multiple temporary contracts on the job market should become more than two years. [Currently, employers either have to give you a non-temporary job or fire you after two years. This measure would lead to increasing labor market flexibility.] 10. The pension age should become 65 again [it is now gradually going up to 67]. 11. All freelancers/independent contractors should have to insure themselves for becoming unfit for work and for healthcare costs. 12. The student loan system should be abolished; student grants/subsidies should return [they were abolished some two years ago, meaning that students now have to take loans unless their parents pay for their expenses]. 13. More money should be allocated to arts and culture. 14. The Netherlands should close its borders for Muslim immigrants. 15. Asylum seekers' children who were raised in the Netherlands should have the right to stay here [even if their parents cannot]. 16. The government should ban municipalities from giving shelter to illegal immigrants. 17. The mortgage interest tax deduction should not be encroached on even more. 18. Housing corporations should build more cheap social rental housing. Therefore, the tax they pay over rental housing should be scrapped. 19. Schiphol Airport should be allowed to grow. 20. The government should not tax owning a car, but rather tax the number of kilometers car owners drive. 21. More money should be allocated to building new roads. 22. All coal power plants should be allowed to stay open for the time being. 23. Meat should be subject to the high VAT tax of 21% [rather than the low one of 6%]. 24. Elderly people who think their life has completed should be allowed to get help by ending their lives. 25. Copayments in the healthcare sector should be abolished, even if this means health insurance premiums will go up. 26. A national healthcare fund [similar to the NHS in the UK] should be implemented, so we can do away with the system of private insurance companies. 27. Defense expenses should go sharply up in the coming years in order to comply with NATO's 2% rule. 28. A European army should be created. 29. The Netherlands should increase spending on development aid for poor countries. 30. The Netherlands should leave the European Union. Enjoy! tweedekamer2017.stemwijzer.nl/#intro |
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Post by Arthur Figgis on Feb 6, 2017 12:42:32 GMT
VVD 79%
Ondenemers Partij 71%
D66 64%
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Post by mrpastelito on Feb 6, 2017 14:31:25 GMT
Unsurprisingly, 64% Libertarian Party. Serious Parties: 55% D66.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Feb 6, 2017 17:00:31 GMT
I got VVD followed by SGP and ChristenUnie. Which surprised me.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Feb 6, 2017 17:34:26 GMT
71% Forum for Democracy, 65% PVV, 62% VVD
I had already voted PVV in the poll above and assume I would do so in real life if I had a vote
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Feb 6, 2017 17:48:06 GMT
I got VVD followed by SGP and ChristenUnie. Which surprised me. I would have had you down as a potential CDA supporter. Me too. Although I suspect agreeing with euthanasia rights might have skewed it. |
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mazuz
Conservative
Posts: 155
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Post by mazuz on Feb 6, 2017 18:05:11 GMT
I would have had you down as a potential CDA supporter. Me too. Although I suspect agreeing with euthanasia rights might have skewed it. The question is not about euthanasia but about assisted suicide for those who don't qualify for euthanasia because they are not ill. It's about people who just don't want to live anymore. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Feb 6, 2017 18:30:00 GMT
D66 67%, ChristenUnie 63, GroenLinks 63%. In another poll I got GroenLinks 70%, and SGP in second place.
Since Pechtold is one of three politicians (with D66 MEP In 't Veld and prime minister Rutte) who make my stomach turn, I really can't bring myself to vote for his party.
Since I'm not a true believer of the bible belt variety either, SGP and CU are not alternatives either.
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