Proposed Conservative Trade Union Legislation

[Bevan Price]

I have no problem with a minimum turnout requirement but after that it should be straight majority rather than requiring a certain percentage in favour. Similarly I don't object to the 14 day notification period but allowing agency staff to cover is also wrong in my view. If an organisation can try and mitigate by using it's own staff then that's fair enough but bringing in temporary outside workers is wrong in my book. I'm also not opposed to changing to having to 'opt-in' rather than 'opt-out' of the political levy.

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I tend to agree with both points, but we also need an improved electoral system for parliament & local government. But not the complicated transferable vote system, rather something simpler - e.g. half the MPs elected as now, for the other half, each party gets allocated a number of MPs proportional to the percentage of votes received in defined "regions" (Scotland, Wales, Ulster, England North / Midlands / South, for example.)

Also, to balance party finances, companies should be prevented from making donations to political parties - if individual directors want to make donations from their personal fortunes, they would be entitled to do so.

 

[Busaholic]

I've no problem with important elections having to have a 50% turnout or being declared null and void. This to include all parliamentary elections, strike ballots and all referenda, especially those to change a system like introduction of all-powerful mayors or Crime Commissioners. Any parliamentary seat that can't produce a 50% turnout should be told they can't have a representative at Westminster until they do i.e. given a second chance three months later, in order to focus minds. This would also provide a chance for perhaps a better range of candidates to be assembled.

 

[Greenback]

It should be a level playing field. Once you start saying that some votes need a particular turn out and/or a particular percentage share, then it should apply across the board.

 

[12CSVT]

A re-election. If we're to operate a democracy surely it should be based on the views of the majority. The Australian approach of mandating full participation may be the only way to do it. I'm not advocating it, but maybe.....

Not until 'none of the above' appears on ballot papers.
Even then, there is absolutely no way that I would want to see the Australian system (ie, criminalised for abstaining) imposed on the British electorate.

 

[Busaholic]

Not until 'none of the above' appears on ballot papers.
Even then, there is absolutely no way that I would want to see the Australian system (ie, criminalised for abstaining) imposed on the British electorate.

Totally agree - the USSR had 99.9% turn-outs and if the other 0.1% weren't already dead then they soon would be. The right to vote for whom you wish has to be balanced against the equal right not to vote, for a named individual, a party or at all.

 

[AM9]

Totally agree - the USSR had 99.9% turn-outs and if the other 0.1% weren't already dead then they soon would be. The right to vote for whom you wish has to be balanced against the equal right not to vote, for a named individual, a party or at all.

That's fine but there should be an obligation to register your responsibility to vote by going to the polling station (or sending a postal vote in) and signing to that effect. I have always felt that not voting is more an expression of disinterest and laziness than a rational protest about the way that the ballot process works.
The perennial problem is that politicians don't want to know the result of a poll under such a rule.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I've no problem with important elections having to have a 50% turnout or being declared null and void. This to include all parliamentary elections, strike ballots and all referenda, especially those to change a system like introduction of all-powerful mayors or Crime Commissioners. Any parliamentary seat that can't produce a 50% turnout should be told they can't have a representative at Westminster until they do i.e. given a second chance three months later, in order to focus minds. This would also provide a chance for perhaps a better range of candidates to be assembled.

Do you ever get the feeling that in certain constituencies, candidates of the highest calibre and integrity could stand and still the seemingly lazy collective electorate there in these would be utterly overwhelming in their total apathy,