First Past The Post
Posted in Linguistic Annoyances, Politics at 22:49 on 26 May 2009
No, it bloody isn’t. Not in a UK parliamentary election, anyway.
Most of the time it’s nearest the post or, more often, quite-a-long-way-from-the-post-actually.
I happened to catch last week’s Question Time on the TV and some punter in the audience was banging on about how it gave us strong government.
Oh, yeah? Like the Major administration, or our present incumbents?
And strong government isn’t necessarily a good thing. A dictatorship is strong government after all. Don’t forget strong government gave us the depredations of Thatcherism.
I wish all politicians, punters, pundits, psephologists and the like would stop using this lazy, misleading description.
Or, better still, the former should give us some form of PR.
Any form of PR would likely be better than the present farrago where MPs and Governments regularly get elected on less than a quarter of the vote, never mind of the total electorate.
Tags: Linguistic Annoyances, Politics
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