{"id":5824,"date":"2005-09-19T10:27:02","date_gmt":"2005-09-19T09:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/?p=5824"},"modified":"2005-09-19T10:27:02","modified_gmt":"2005-09-19T09:27:02","slug":"why-i-think-that-pr-is-not-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/2005\/09\/19\/why-i-think-that-pr-is-not-a-good-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I think that PR is not a good idea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/4259052.stm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"BBC News\">Germany faced with days or weeks of political uncertainty after CDU wins election by only three seats<\/a>.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, half-way around the world, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/asia-pacific\/4258350.stm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"BBC News\">New Zealand faced with days or weeks of political uncertainty after Labour Party wins election by only one seat<\/a>.<br \/>\nIn both cases, we see either a situation where a minor party representing a tiny minority of voters holds the balance of power (with the result that their policies become the policy of government) or two major but diametrically opposed parties attempt to create a government together (resulting in impasse and conflict).<br \/>\nIn a society reliant on personality and soundbite, consensus politics seem unlikely ever to be successful. Whilst first-past-the-post is seriously flawed, I think it offers a better option than the forms of PR employed in the above two nations which are leaving them with weak government or power disproportionately offered to the smallest minorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Germany faced with days or weeks of political uncertainty after CDU wins election by only three seats. Meanwhile, half-way around the world, New Zealand faced with days or weeks of political uncertainty after Labour Party wins election by only one seat. In both cases, we see either a situation where a minor party representing a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}