pap

Yes, but at that point, they have exactly two candidates to pick from. FPTP works brilliantly with two candidates, not so great with more. Constituency elections have more.

It's not comparable with the FPTP election you have in a constituency seat, though. By the time the FPTP element of the vote kicks in, the field has already been whittled down to two candidates, and the winner is guaranteed a mandate. Mandate-wise, FPTP is knackered the moment you have more than two candidates. Technically, everything you've said is correct; but the FPTP vote in the final vote of the Conservative leader is moulded by run-off voting, and the winner is guaranteed to have at least 50% of the final vote. It is completely different from FPTP voting as seen in a general election.

When Reform Cat gets in, things will be different around here

Vote meow.

Point by point dismantling of No To AV's campaign leaflet.

Anyone know where I can find a good Turkish-to-English translator? Failing that, Muppet-To-English would be acceptable.

I've read their posts. I've read your posts. I feel sorrier for you. Is there some way I can donate?

My heart bleeds for you, sir. Will someone please call a Waaahmbulance for Turkish? He has a severe case of hurt feelings.

Yeah. Definitely not bringing it up again.

Yet you're bringing it up again and again. I don't give a flying f*ck if this makes me appear judgmental in your eyes, but you knew what you were doing from day one with your choice of avatar. If you're really that much of a fan of the League of Gentlemen, there are plenty of characters you could have picked to show your love for the series. Papa Lazarou doesn't even have that much screen time, ffs. You picked the avatar because you knew full well it had other connotations. You knowingly let people proceed from a false assumption, hoping that they would look more idiotic with each post that referenced it. Even now, after the provenance of the avatar has been established, you continue to make pathetic bleats of innocence and wear your faux-victim status as a badge of honour. Taken overall, the whole episode makes you look like a bit of a tube that derives his pleasure from trying to make others look small. Others may have made assumptions, but you're still crying about it days later. If that makes me judgmental, give me a wig and call me Your Honour.

You could have nipped it in the bud immediately. You didn't. Why?

To be fair, you could have put your hand up at any time and let people know that your avatar was from the League of Gentlemen, and not the Black and White Minstrel show. However, you let people carry on with that assumption, alternately tee-hee-ing, referencing a favourite comedy show and playing the victim of others judgmental tendencies. Now, unless someone happened to watch S2 of the League of Gentlemen during that thread, there is no way they'd pick up on the reference. And you continue to whine about it now. Consequently, my sympathy level for your predicament is zero.

Baroness Warsi eviscerated by Adam Boulton, and a few AV myths punctured too.

How easy your life must be, dune. Putting people into boxes. I'd consider myself pretty liberal on some issues, but think membership of the EU is a bad deal for the UK. Do you think there is any chance of your beloved Tories letting us have a say on that one?

And this is pertinent to the debate, how?

I'm easy. For me, any of the clubs fighting to get into the EPL have more right to be there than Wigan, who barely knew that balls came in spherical form before the last decade.

We'll see. I suspect you are right, but I have an outside hope that the referendum will come down to "who gives a f*ck". The student vote will be interesting. Comes down to whether the consensus rail against Clegg for his broken promises on tuition fees or not.

You buy cheap, you buy three times

I agree. Let's have true PR. Unfortunately, that is not on the table, was never on the table - and in defence of Nick Clegg, he probably wasn't the man that stopped it from being on the table. In the meantime, a vote for AV would represent a step toward PR and a message from the people that we do care about how we elect our representatives.

Simplicity. It's your top answer and a pre-requisite of two of your other answers. You're concerned about the simplicity of a poll that takes place once every five years. Sorry, that's not going to cut it. Voting in a general election is a big deal. It allows us to assert our views and choose the person that will look after our affairs for the next five years. We don't do it every day, and going from FPTP to AV is not the returning officer's equivalent of the twelve Labours of Hercules. The argument that we should sacrifice a genuine mandate from the constituents for the sake of an easy life is insulting. We don't care about "simple" in other public offices. Government departments are notorious for process and red tape, while thousands of bean counters make their living navigating the murky waters of our tax tribuataries. If every other part of life is labyrinthine, I think we can put up with a bit more complexity in our voting system if it leads to more representation. I know you've made a couple of arguments like "because it's simple, it's cheap" or "because it's simple, it's easy to count and less likely to be defrauded". Ultimately, it all comes down to cost. We'll need to pay people to count for longer and we'll need to train people on spotting voting irregularities under the new system. Having the right to representation is a precious, not cheap. If we have to pay a bit more every five years to get the benefits of AV, so be it. I'd cover the rest, but I've just pressed F5 and seen joensuu's excellent post.

Playstation Network, the means by which Playstation owners get online has been down for a week. This means that worldwide, Playstation gamers haven't been able to do anything online (play, download content, watch movies, etc) for seven days, including a time when people would traditionally have a lot of time to laze on ye olde Playstation. Initially, the hacking group Anonymous was suspected of involvement. They have been vocal about Sony's prosecution of George 'Geohotz' Hotz, the guy who worked out how to jailbreak a PS3. They've made threats to Sony's business. The main arm of the group has denied attacking PSN. However, there are theories that a hardline splinter group might have broken off and orchestrated an attack independently. Today, a new theory emerged claiming that Sony may have intentionally pulled PSN to plug massive holes in its own security. Specifically, it is alleged that they are worried about a firmware update called REBUG. This essentially enables the dev features on a PS3. You might not think this much of an issue on a Playstation that has already been cracked, but one of the dev features it enables is access to a private developer network. This is a copy of PSN intended for developer use with slightly relaxed security ( features like credit card validation disabled ). The theory is that people have been using REBUG to log into this private network and download a ton of PSN content for free. So, a huge PR disaster for Sony. One way or another, they're incompetent, and their customers have been down for a week. As a software developer myself, I can definitely attest to the fact that companies feature parallel environments for test and production, so the last theory has a hint of plausibility. Also, having a 50 user system down for half a day is bad enough. A week is a massive outage. Been affected? Thoughts? Would it affect your future hardware decisions?

All this is garnish. List the merits of FPTP over AV.

When it comes down to it, any politician campaigning for FPTP is doing it out of self-interest. That, I can kinda live with. It's what they do. I simply cannot comprehend why a member of the public would want to retain it, though.

It would be interesting from a point of viewing of seeing a specific slice of society, but otherwise, a bit redundant. Unlike most of the other polls in this site, we'll actually get to decide for real on May 5th However, I second a poll out of curiosity alone.