[LINK] live election results...

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of 
> Marghanita da Cruz
> Sent: Wednesday, 1 September 2010 10:38 AM
> To: Stilgherrian
> Cc: Link list
> Subject: Re: [LINK] live election results...
> 
> 
> Stilgherrian wrote:
> <snip>
> >. Only the number of actual goals scored does that. 
> Everything else is 
> >wankery for the armchair pundits.
> > 
> > At this stage, what will decide who forms government is how the 
> > alliances will be formed between the MPs not members of the 
> two major 
> > blocks. And all of them have said, repeatedly, that things like the 
> > nation 2PP figure will not be part of their calculus.
> > 
> <snip>
> 
> Ofcourse what is really powerful is the data for individual 
> seats and the virtual elimination of the 2parties believing 
> they will get a majority if they go to the polls again.
> 
> eg..
> > House of Representatives  	Updated: 1/09/2010 9:45:41 AM
> > INCUMBENT PARTY TRAILING
> <http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseIncumbentTrailing-15508.htm>
> 
> ...
> >  1 September 2010
> > 
> > The Australian Greens and the Labor Party have signed an 
> agreement to 
> > ensure stability for Labor in Government. The Greens will 
> ensure supply and oppose any motion of no confidence in the 
> Government from other parties or MPs.
> <http://greens.org.au/content/australian-greens-labor-commit-a
greement-stable-government>
<snip>

Still has made the point that the two party preferred system has nothing
to do with who will rule.

The other day, Jim Birch opined:

> This proposal suffers from the classic unsubstantiated conceit of 
> democracy, that things will be great if we could only make choices 
> about them.  The primary problem with this proposal is voter 
> stupidity;

To which David Boxhall replied:

>Who was it who said that the best argument against democracy is a five 
>minute conversation with the average voter?

(I believe it was Winston Churchill)

The numbers from the AEC Tally Room are now moving back towards Labor
again.
It's been fairly evident since election night that the Independents will
hold the power on the floor and as I mooted earlier, the power
vacillation will create some interesting pork barrelling which I think
will pretty much kill the rest of the countries belief in democracy.

The traditional political party system appears to be a dead duck.

Brought about by freedom of information (not the FOI act) of the
Internet, a much better informed populace, no longer dependent on
editorial political spins appears to be ready to dismantle our
traditional forms of government.

This would appear to be confirmed by the number of new parties poking
their heads up from apparently nowhere.

The Pirate Party,
The Sex Party,
The Technocratic Party.

Say What ???

This election has demonstrated the power of the Internet over
traditional forms.
It also would appear to have confirmed my observations on my blog site,
which actually caused me to stop blogging in early June.

76% of my readers were using mobile phone based browsers to access my
content and spending an average of 51 minutes reading the stuff.
That placed my readership in the under 40 year old demographic.

I stopped blogging because I decided that I wasn't qualified [IMHO] to
teach our next generation what was right or wrong. Especially without a
full time editor on payroll, which as an amateur blog I couldn't
justify.

The Internet is full of persons like TPK who Blog because they think
what they have to say is important.

There may be something to the concept of bloggers/tweeters needing
journalistic editorial skills before being permitted to blog. 

Yet it is the freewheeling blogsphere and the twitteratti that appear to
have taken over our political motivating editorial spin machines.

The next election will no doubt arrive with hundreds of supportive blog
sites and robot tweeters for each political party.

I am not looking forward to the noise factor.

Tom