tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6272719693497133128.post7030000020601559648..comments2011-05-10T12:57:34.945+01:00Tom Parnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15585203595319919384noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6272719693497133128.post-10700866650393222632011-05-10T12:57:34.945+01:002011-05-10T12:57:34.945+01:00I seem to agree with everything you've said. The basic explanation for this is simple: I despise political parties. This is one reason I was actually rather pleased and encouraged by the recent FPTP-AV voting referendum: the folks I talked to about it seemed to be genuinely thinking about the issue rather than having inherited the correct answer along with their political affiliation, self-identified class, etc. I read it as a case of the issue not being obviously (or at least inherently) connected to the political parties or the left-right dichotomy. Still... I'm sure that if my fantasy were realised and political parties were outlawed tomorrow, on the day after tomorrow people people would invent and immediately adopt some other way of dividing themselves into rabid, diametrically opposed teams in order to reduce all complex questions to facile binaries. Policy can no more reduce people's intellectual cowardice and impulse to oversimplify issues than post-modernists can make people stop saying "he" and "she".Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04317149982607724264noreply@blogger.com