Labour don't need to build anything! They just need to stop it being illegal for other people to do it. See also: building anything.

I don't see how waiting for damage to occur and then suing people is the sensible option, unless you're being paid in 6 minute intervals to do it.

I'm not sure "vote for me or I'll kill myself" is going to do wonders for the public perception of his cognitive abilities.

I’d stop trespassing if I was you.

Why? If it's to avoid damage to the party will it seems like the least worst option.

Not sure this makes sense? It's a crack at Nvidia's drivers if anything.

What's the alternative thing to say, though? "I'm not ok with losing and I'd commit sepeku"?

Then Windows will almost certainly use more because you'll actually be able to use the graphics card properly.

I'm not really of the opinion that change is always better than no change. But to me the primary virtue of democracy and elections is not in voting in people you want based on a prospectus - which is full of unknowns, even for those presenting it, let alone voters with limited information - but rather in voting out (or not) those who have been making the laws based on an actual concrete, more objective appraisal of the outcomes. Voters have lots of different views on what might constitute improvement, but deciding if someone has done a good job is easier than deciding if they will.

In this context then, it's less about change always being preferable to no-change but rather that a party be able to implement their change (if they so desire - there are plenty of areas that are settled and about which no one really cares to argue) and then be judged on it. In the short term this leads to more variation and noise but in the longer term I think it separates the wheat from the chaff in a sort of Hegelian dialectical way - the popular, successful ideas remain, the unpopular ones get chucked out, bloodied by experience.

(I should also point out that the ability to chunk out the failed governments is obviously key in this situation, and so candidates that put that at risk aren't, you know, worth a punt.)

It depends what your priorities are, imo. There might be a huge appetite for change but with no consensus on what it should be you end up hugely biased towards the status quo which - if there's a huge appetite for change - might not please anyone. Is that preferable to only pleasing 35%? I'm not convinced really.

It can absolutely lead to sclerosis, though, where nothing bold can be done (regardless of the voter's appetite for boldness) because the only thing that can be agreed is lowest-common-denomimator stuff.

When did Tories + Labour get 90%+? 2017 was a recent high watermark and they got 82%. Blair's mega landslide only saw them get 74% combined. This time they got 57%.

"Corn markets!"

Aaah OK, right, yes, understood.

I think the explanation for that likely stems from the fasct that adult men only universally gained the right to vote after WW1 and women had to wait even longer. Prior to this you had two parties - Tories and Liberals - who could happily ignore the working class, safe in the knowledge they couldn't vote them out. Suffrage for the working class allowed an avowedly, well, Labour party to flourish, but enough support continued to exist for the the Tories and the Liberals that Labour joined them rather than replacing either (though they certainly replaced the Liberals as the major alternative to the Tories).

Prior to this there really were only two meaningful parties, so I suppose it was the introduction of a massive new tranche of voters in one go - combined with our geographically much smaller constituencies - that allowed for the support of a third party without it needing to cannibalise another.

Because the clear implication of...

If we had more than two choices, they might lose their jobs.

... is that they keep their jobs as long as there are only two choices, as though coming second is still somehow a boon.

As for why you'd want a third or fourth party, the UK's election results today explain why perfectly; If you can successfully triangulate the electorate then you can win with barely more than a third of the vote rather than half.

I feel like one of us is very confused here and I'm not sure who. What does any of the above have to do with "the Lib Dems only exist because the US doesn't have a populist left party like Labour"?! I'm assuming you don't literally mean that the Liberal Democrats owe their existence to the absence of a party on the other side of the world, but I can't work out what you do mean instead.

I think they have very carefully crafted a system of gerrymandering, byzantine election laws, and polarized choices so thoroughly that no third party can meaningfully compete. Additionally, they are so vastly wealthy and have such a deeply entrenched system of bribery campaign contributions that no one can compete.

"Beating the other party" is a far more likely incentive encouraging these behaviours, though, since it's winning elections that's the goal (both of the politicians and those that fund them). No benefits are conferred for coming 2nd.

The Lib Dems only exist because the US doesn't have a populist left party like Labour? I'm struggling to get my head around that...

By all means mention it on your CV since you won't have much else on there. But realistically you'll be appraised on your reel and that's it - if the quality that won you the award is visible on your showreel then hopefully those in a hiring position will see the same thing. But the award itself isn't going to change anyone's mind.

The situation you've outlined here is really just describing the last 9 years, and that's because the real split is simply between MPs in the parties forming the government vs the rest. So whilst the Tories were in government your #1 and #2 list holds true, but not other times. E.g. ...

• During the Conservative + Lib Dem coalition of 2010-2015, those two parties voted together vs everyone else.

• During Blair and Brown's 1997-2010 governments, the SNP, PC, Lib Dems and Conservatives would be voting together to oppose Labour's legislation etc.

And so on. Also, Sinn Fein don't take their seats, so they never vote one way or the other.

Well I was confused because most of the elections in the US are also FPTP, aren't they?

This reply is a lot more difficult to parse for those of us who don't know where you live, and thus what "our system" is.

What exactly is it that you think they do to stop a third party from emerging?

True, I was being a bit flippant - my point was simply that FDR correctly anticipated events and his preparations were entirely validated by what came afterwards.

Yeah, but it rather validates his decision to "gear up" for the war, no? Given the alternative to this isn't "peace" but, rather, "being unprepared for that war" it's difficult to see how that's an effective stick to beat FDR with.

But he was gearing up to join the war effort in Europe despite no provocation.

Some might argue that Germany declaring war on the USA was something of a provocation.