We are J Random Minority Party in the 2015 General Election, and here is a message from our sponsors

[Richard Heathfield]

Dear Electorate

General elections are the only chance you get to make your views known.
If you employ "tactical voting", you are saying you're voting for a
lizard you don't want in Parliament because it may help to stop another
lizard getting in whom you want even less in Parliament. This is a
sure-fire way to ensure that the lizard you /do/ want in Parliament
won't get in. So please, please vote for the lizard you actually want,
and make it clear to it that if, by some miracle, it /does/ get in, it
will have a better chance of having some friendly lizards join it in
Parliament if it campaigns tirelessly for Proportional Representation.

So: PLEASE VOTE FOR THE LIZARD YOU REALLY WANT.

In return, we, the <insert name here> Party, will not ally with Labour.
We will not ally with the Conservatives. We will not ally, in fact, with
/anybody/.

Instead, when the Division bell rings, we will vote our manifesto.

If that happens to be the way the Tories are voting, so be it. If it
happens to be the way the Labour Party is voting, so be it. It doesn't
matter. If one or other of them happens to agree with us and if there
are enough of us, we'll get what we (and therefore you who voted for our
manifesto) want. If neither of them agree with us, that particular
policy is going to be toast (at least for the term of this Parliament),
but then it would have been toast anyway even if we /did/ enter into a
coalition agreement.

If we (again, insert your own "we" here) form a coalition, we will get
almost none of our policies through. If we don't, we still won't get
very much of what we want, but we'll get more than if we'd formed a
coalition. And by not forming a coalition, we remain able to stick to
the principles on which we stood for election, as a result of which we
may be able to keep more of our support the next time around.

So we are proud to announce that WE, THE <insert name here> PARTY, WILL
VOTE JUST LIKE IT SAYS ON OUR TIN. And if it comes to a vote of
confidence, we'll allow our MPs to decide for themselves whether they
have confidence in the Government. That is an MP's *job*, and we expect
our MPs to do their jobs properly. We don't expect to have to tell them
what to do. We expect them to vote according to their view of what is
best for the country. That's how a representative democracy is supposed
to work.

Except, of course, that it won't happen. Common sense rarely does, in
politics.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

[Richard Bos]

ab...@leftmind.net (AdB) wrote:

> Richard Heathfield posted thus:

> >Dear Electorate
> >
> >General elections are the only chance you get to make your views known.
> >If you employ "tactical voting", you are saying you're voting for a
> >lizard you don't want in Parliament because it may help to stop another
> >lizard getting in whom you want even less in Parliament. This is a
> >sure-fire way to ensure that the lizard you /do/ want in Parliament
> >won't get in. So please, please vote for the lizard you actually want,
> >and make it clear to it that if, by some miracle, it /does/ get in, it
> >will have a better chance of having some friendly lizards join it in
> >Parliament if it campaigns tirelessly for Proportional Representation.
>

> And it looks like the orange lizards are walking away with it and will
> form a majority. Blame it on the outgoing premier for calling the vote
> for a day when all the Dutch-Canadians were wearing orange in memory of
> the Liberation. Or at least that's my theory which is mine.

Hey!

At least the Canadians _do_ deserve the gratefulness they get every 5th
of May here in the Netherlands, unlike both the Lizards and the country
which shouts the loudest about having Single-Handedly Won The War.

So don't blame the Dutch for your non-democratic system, and take the
thanks you are owed.

Richard

[Richard Bos]

Roger Bell_West <roger+a...@nospam.firedrake.org> wrote:

> On 2015-05-06, Dave Ewart wrote:
> >We should be so lucky as to have mere *lizards* to choose between.
>
> You know where you are with a lizard. If it's hungry, it tries to eat
> you.

Unlike a Tory, which will eat you[1] whether it's hungry or not, _and_
pretend that it's for your own good.

Richard

[1] Unless you're disgustingly rich