"Stimpy" wrote in message
...

Unfortunately, Community Charge was replaced several years ago :-(

Was trying to think of the word Council tax!

Robin May wrote
[...]
You are wrong. It's incredibly rare for a Government in the UK to
have
been voted for by the majority of the population. I'm not actually
sure
if it's ever happened. The current labour government has the support
of
about 40% of those who voted, which means less than 40% of those
eligible to vote.

Comparing the votes with the whole population rather than the voting
age population is unreasonable, since the 22 % of the population that
is below voting age are unable to express their support or non-support.

But yes, in 1979 the figures were : a population of 56.2 million of
whom 44 million were of voting age and 41 million registered.
Total votes cast 31 million Tory 13.7 million (note that there were no
Tory or Labour votes from Northern Ireland).

There are also cases where a government can
have a
smaller percentage of the vote than the opposition, but because of
the
way the first past the post system works they still have more MPs. I
know that this has happened, and I think even to the extreme of the
opposition having a majority of votes cast (although I'd have to
check). And of course there's the very well known case of America,
where Bush got fewer votes than Gore and still won.

fewer votes counted rather than fewer votes cast.

It is common practice in the US not to bother to count postal votes if
they can't make any difference to the result (normal votes by voting
machine, postal votes have to be expensively counted by hand) and the
Presidential electoral college is designed to ignore the size of the
majority in each US state so the horrors of a nationwide recount are
avoided.

--
Mike D

In message , Steve Naïve
writes
Protestors connected to an event at ExCel apparently attached
themselves to a DLR train

No doubt they had to wait 6 hours for the "Protester remover" contractor
to turn up.
--
CJG

On 12 Sep 2003 21:27:53 GMT Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
}
} It is common practice in the US not to bother to count postal votes if
} they can't make any difference to the result (normal votes by voting
} machine, postal votes have to be expensively counted by hand) and the
} Presidential electoral college is designed to ignore the size of the
} majority in each US state so the horrors of a nationwide recount are
} avoided.

Each state can determine how it allocates it's electroal college votes.
In the past various states have done so in proprotion tot he popular
vote cast within the state. In most it is now mandated and in the rest
customary for the whole college delegation to vote in accord with the
state elecorate's majority.

This is because both parties see the advantage of only having to swing
the electorate by a few percentage points in order to benefit from the
whole state's college vote.

Whether an individual state carries out a re-count would be the decision
of that state's Attorney General. The only way a national re-count
could come about would be if the Supreme Court determined that there had
been mis-counting in all fifty states, each one considered uindividually

Matthew
--
Záhid sharáb píné dé, masjid mein baith kar
ya woh jagah batá dé jahán Khudá na ho.
http://www.calmeilles.co.uk/

(Mait001) wrote in message ...
Robin, there is a difference between voting for no-hope candidates (like the
Greens)

Or the Tory's

for the record, these people were tresspassing and causing criminal
damage. They're even worse then the exhibiters!

Please, protest, its oone of your basic rights. Another basic right is
freedom of movement without fear of intimidation, something these
protesters were denying the thousands of workers in the area (most of
whom probably agreed with the principles of the protest).

which remind me, the people that man the permement anti-war (and bolt
on a load of unrelated issues) protest outside parliment - what do
they do for a living and how come they get so much time off?

In message , Paul
Weaver writes
for the record, these people were tresspassing and causing criminal
damage. They're even worse then the exhibiters!

Mmmm yes. Trespassing on LU property which is done most nights to
decorate the trains being a worse crime than selling poor countries
weapons they can't afford to kill their own people.
I can see that point
--
CJG

CJG wrote:
In message
, Paul
Weaver writes
for the record, these people were tresspassing and causing
criminal damage. They're even worse then the exhibiters!

Mmmm yes. Trespassing on LU property which is done most
nights to decorate the trains being a worse crime than
selling poor countries weapons they can't afford to kill
their own people.
I can see that point

Trespass isn't the issue in this instance as far as I can see. Disrupting
the lives of people who have no part in the activity about which the protest
is being made is. (Hope that makes sense)

(Paul Weaver) wrote in message . com...
which remind me, the people that man the permement anti-war (and bolt
on a load of unrelated issues) protest outside parliment - what do
they do for a living and how come they get so much time off?

Students on **** easy time wasting courses (if you're doing engineering or
something that requires brains you don't have time to **** around doing
this sort of thing) and the unemployed.

B2003

CJG wrote in message ...
Mmmm yes. Trespassing on LU property which is done most nights to
decorate the trains being a worse crime than selling poor countries
weapons they can't afford to kill their own people.

They'd kill each other anyway whether we sold them the weapons or not.
The massacres in the Rwanda for example weren't done using F16s or Smart bombs,
they were done with kalashnikovs and machetes. Its not the weapon thats the
killer , its the man pulling the trigger. Until you drag certain cultures out
of the stone age it'll never end.

B2003

which remind me, the people that man the permement anti-war (and bolt
on a load of unrelated issues) protest outside parliment - what do
they do for a living and how come they get so much time off?



Actually, from what I have read, it is "protestor" (singular noun) and
Parliament is about to pass an Act of Parliament to get rid of him (why they
just don't sweep it all away when he is absent - which seems to be most of the
time) I do not understand.

To answer your subsidiary questions: he is undoubtedly unemployed /
unemployable and people like me, law-abiding taxpayers, are funding his
indolent and useless lifestyle.

Marc.