Scottish Parliamentary Elections
Opposition Day — [12th allotted day]
3:29 pm

Gregor Addison
Posted on 24 May 2007 4:02 pm (Report this annotation)

She tried to wriggle off the hook by saying she was referring to the voting system, not individuals; odd, then, that she chose to mention Hitler and then the member for Banff and Buchan, who we all know to be our First Minister, Alex Salmond.

If anyone is any doubt about the implications of what she said, or what she intended to be taken as her meaning, they might want to watch the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA771gLgwEA

Why is it that voting for the SNP means that we have to put up with allusions to Nazis? What is it about Ann Moffat, and people like her, that makes her/them think that comparisons of this sort are either reasonable contribution to our democracy or to parliamentary debate.

These kinds of analogies are so wide of the mark! I often wonder if those who make these comments realise how offensive their comments are. Perhaps they do and they just don't care!

Mark Bestford
Posted on 25 May 2007 1:32 am (Report this annotation)

PR did NOT give rise to Hitler. Hitler gained power as he was able to cleverly manipulate the political situation of the time. He was highly charismatic and enjoyed widespread popular support worldwide when he first gained power. At first he ran for the Presidency of Germany, but failed to gain the majority needed. Germany was in turmoil at this point and Hitler was using the SA (the precursor to the SS) to create chaos on the streets of Berlin. Look at it like the BNP and the NF if you will. In the elections of 1932 the Nazi party succeeded in becoming the largest party in the German government, but not large enough to rule with around 1/3 of the vote. Hitler demanded that as leader of the largest party he should be Chancellor, but the President refused. Eventually however this changed and at the start of 1933 Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor. Understand that even though he was Chancellor, he was not yet a dictator. 3 months later however Hitler persuaded the government to grant him legislative and executive powers that allowed him to bypass the constitution. I say persuaded, basically he held the government to ransom with the threat of throwing the country into anarchy. It was a democratic act that granted Hitler the powers to become a dictator.

If Germany had been a FPTP system it could have been possible that Hitler would have gained his dictatorial powers an entire year earlier as it would have been possible for him to have secured a majority in government. Arguments against PR always fail when they look at this simple fact. And only governments with a vested interest in keeping FPTP (such as Labour who would only have 1/3 of the seats in a PR government and would actually never have had a majority of the seats even in the last 10 years of government) argue against having PR. PR is the only form of government that prevents the kind of electoral abuse that we have seen perpetrated on this country by Labour in the last 10 years. Today's government rules with only 20% of the country having actually voted for them. They have abused their position to effectively steal the very same powers for Labour that Hitler had handed to him. Today Labour actually has more power than the Nazi party had in 1933 with the ability to pass pretty much any law it chooses, and if the House of Lords doesn't like it, then they can simply use the Parliament Act to force the law on the public. The only difference so far is that Labour hasn't outlawed membership of the Conservatives or the Lib Dems. We've even had our invasion of a foreign country, a decision taken solely by the Prime Minister in effect by screaming about how Saddam was going to murder us all with WMD, depite knowing that he was lying the whole time.