I tuned in to a BBC discussion on the election outcome, and heard a lot of talk about PR. My brain, tainted by US-speak, translated that as Public Relations, and I was wondering whether even the BBC has enough stupidity to imagine that Michael Howard could have done better if he'd had effective PR. Getting him to win this election was the equivalent of the original miracle of creation ex nihilo since the man has all the public presence of a 3-day-old prawn. Watching him talk on TV, the most fascinating thing about him (including what he is saying) is the gap between his two front teeth. Not even the most rabid masochist can endure more than a few seconds of him before crying "stop!".
But it turned out that they were talking about PR as in "Proportional Representation". They are bewailing the fact the the system in the UK allows Labour to win a 66 seat majority with barely 36% of the total vote, and only 3% more than the Tories. Bring in PR, they say, and we'll get responsible government.
No. No! NO!!!! We've got PR here, and it SUCKS. At least in the UK, you have a representative in Parliament. You may be unlucky enough to get George Galloway, but if that's as bad as I think it is, you can move. In Israel, you can't escape. You're stuck with a whole Knesset stuffed full of Galloways, or people that make him look morally and intellectually superior. The only way you can get away from them is to die.
So to my Pommy friends (all two of you) I say, you'll miss your current system 2 days after you choose the first UK governement by PR. What you've got, to paraphrase Churchill, is a terrible system, but its way ahead of whatever comes second.
