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Comment on 'America is not happy': ABC under fire for pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Well right now the barometer is running about 85 percent glad of our Westminster-style democracy, 10 percent secondhand embarrassment and alarm about the state of the US, and then of course there’s the omnipresent 5 percent who think that everything the US has done l and is currently doing should be slavishly copied here.

That last 5 percent can generally defined as the opinions of the proportion of the population that, kindly speaking, have a few kangaroos loose in the ol’ top paddock.

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princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
On election day, I saw a man on a mobility scooter with Trump flags waving behind him. I’d say he had more than a few kangaroos loose…

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- DiaDeLosMuertos@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  At the last election day here there was a Muppet fully dressed like trump.
  
  I live on an island in Redland Bay.
  
  Population about 6 or 7000.
  
  Sad fifteen minutes of fame.
  
  And sadly I know lots of people that think that trump is great. One mate ( I rarely see him anymore ) said a few years ago that he should rule the whole world. This is a 66 year old builder. Sad indeed.
  
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  - echodot@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    People who say that sort of thing tend to be the sort of people who have the political awareness of a sloth. When you spend 15 seconds talking to them it becomes very apparent that they haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about.
    
    I’ve never met anyone (non-American) who seriously expresses support for Trump who isn’t like that.
    
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echodot@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The problem with the Westminster system is it does rather assume that all the parties are equally competent. When you have one party that’s utterly useless, it doesn’t really work as it just gives a free pass to the other party to do whatever.

UK Labour are currently swinging all over the place and it’s impossible to work out where they stand on anything. The issue been the Tories are so completely incapable of holding them to account. They have apparently decided that they are not keen on Trump, so at least they finally work that out.

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- Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  No government system works well under FPTP, that’s the problem the UK has. If parties like the Lib Dems and Greens had been getting the seats they deserve over the last 15 years, the UK would be in a very different place, politically.
  
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- shirro@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The US should be a lesson to all of us about what happens when electoral systems are left to wither and die.
  
  We all need electoral reform. UK and Canada probably need more democratic upper houses with proportional representation and preferential voting for their lower house and powers more like Australias. Once they are democratic they might as well be allowed to introduce legislation as well as review it.
  
  I think Australia should do something about parties that consistently get far less seats in the lower house than their proportion of votes by introducting extra seats for them. Perhaps mixed member proportional or similar. So the two party system gets a shakeup and new parties can emerge when one is doing poorly.
  
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  - seasiders2@aus.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    @shirro @echodot we have an inequity built into the system in that each vote over, I think, 4% attracts around $4 for the party win or loss. This means a nest egg is created for the party. That same party does not have to declare where the big money came from until 12 months after the election whereas the newby must notify in near real time.
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