Tom Clark pontificating on the outcome of the AV referendum:
No one ever claimed that Guardian readers were representative of the wider population, but compare the referendum result with the views you expressed in our own survey a couple of years ago, and you could be forgiven for thinking that planet Guardian exists in an entirely different universe.
There’s no answer to that.
On the referendum itself – that looks like a resounding “no” – the Guardianista are once again revealing their deep rooted misanthropy. The poor foolish electorate were bamboozled by a nasty “no” campaign and are incapable of making up their own minds because the poor dears “don’t understand”. This, despite AV being very easy to understand. Perhaps all those people simply didn’t want this “miserable little compromise” after all?
That’s pretty much how I understood it. FPTP is a terrible system but AV isn’t really any better. To add to that, you have an electorate that doesn’t like any change whatsoever (meaningful change having been taken utterly out of their hands) so when they do get a choice in something, they vote for what they know.
There really wasn’t much of a choice at all in this race. I spoilt my ballot paper and wrote anti-EU/pro-democracy statements on it.
I wish I was intelligent enough to read the Guardian. I tried it once but did not agree with anything in it and according to them I must be thick if I don’t agree with them. Patronising twats.
Is that an “inadvertant” spelling mistake, or an “inadvertent” one?
Fixed.
Just don’t complain when people don’t bother to vote because there is no point in doing so.