Thing is, for everyone that thinks a hung parliament is a bad thing, changing to a PR system greatly increases the probability of no party having an outright majority in a multi-party system like ours.

Also, look at europe where many countries operate quite successfully with coalition governments, it's not really a bad thing. The way I look at it is that whilst it might take longer for changes to come through, hopefully they will have been debated with a bit of objectivism and are reflective of what the country really needs not just serving the interests of a single party.

I am all for PR except one thing I heard yesterday, the BNP would have got as least one seat in the result.

Although with a bit of luck we could make it the toilet seat.

PR also falls a bit short on local issues seeing as it takes the votes from the entire country rather than a constituency so "writing to your local MP" hits a bit of a snag.

One solution for that is volunteer councils or to give existing councils more power. Still, this isnt something that can happen overnight, overhauling the electoral system is going to take a long time and a lot of work.

What a horrifying thought!

There are plenty of tried and tested forms of PR, plenty still retain a constituency link.
Examples

my problem with the way that this is now is that it gives the Lib Dems, a party which did not receive a majority in any way whatsoever the power to pretty much choose who the next Prime Minister is...Not the electorate, the Lib Dems - If they want to make a deal with the tories then David Cameron becomes Prime Minister - if they want to make a deal with labour then Gordon Brown stays in (possibly).

The Lib Dems got no majority at all so why do they get the power to decide who gets in, which is what is happening at the moment. This seems very wrong to me. The policies of the Lib Dems are also going to be promoted above those of parties who got more votes than them due to the deal making - also wrong IMO.

It just seems a bit broken to have a vote and then when there is no conclusive result to have all sorts of private deal making. I believe that in this sort of case all the negotiations should be made public. This is technically part of the election process, so why should we not be fully informed?

I've got no problem with the Lib Dem's getting to decide who and how the country is run, this happens in other countries often enough as mentioned before and is probably what the country needs.

If (big if) we do have a Lib-Lab govt, expect Brown to leave as part of the deal with either Alan Johnson or David Miliband as PM, and a heavy split in the Cabinet between the two parties.

And the argument for PR is that the Lib Dem's got 23% of the total votes and ended up with 8.8% of the seats. Based on PR, a Lib-Lab govt would hold 52% of the seats, compared to 48.5% now, which means you'd have to count the SNP and a few others to get a majority.

Me = Govt geek sadly... Comes with the job, literally...

Government geek and stats whore. How sad...

2 and the same

Way I see it is you either believe in a free democratic society or dont. You have to take the good with the bad. Vilifying people for voting for who they want makes you just as bad as they are. Thats not to say people can't be informed why their ideas might be bad.

Sounds like I'm having a go at you, but I dont mean it like that.