On the British elections

If there's one thing which this week's British elections have highlighted, it's the complete inadequacy of Britain's electoral system.

Just take a look at the results below: the Scottish National Party, with a million and a half votes, has got 56 MPs, while UKIP and the Greens, with almost four million and over one million votes respectively, have only got one MP each (not that I'm unhappy about UKIP getting a bad deal). Meanwhile Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party has got 8 MPs, with less than 200.000 votes.

The "first past the post" system makes sense when there are just two parties competing for power. Any more then that, and it becomes completely unfair. It makes it almost impossible for smaller parties with a nationwide appeal to get into parliament, while unduly favouring regional parties whose votes are concentrated in a single area.

Yes, it is nice for every constituency to have its own MP to represent it, but this cannot justify the system's basic unfairness. The truth is that in this and other areas, Britain would benefit from reforming the antiquated system which it has developed over the centuries, and becoming more like a normal European country.

Apart from all that, the one good thing to have come out of this election is that divisive provocateur George Galloway losing his seat in Bradford West. After his nasty campaign against Naz Shah, he really deserved it.

							2015 UK elections results Party Seats Gain Loss Net Votes Vote share (%) Change (points) Conservative 331 38 10 28 11,334,726 36.9% 0.5 Labour 232 23 48 -25 9,347,324 30.4% 1.5 Scottish National Party 56 50 0 50 1,454,436 4.7% 3.1 Liberal Democrat 8 0 49 -49 2,415,862 7.9% -15.2 Democratic Unionist Party 8 1 1 0 184,260 0.6% 0.0 Sinn Fein 4 0 1 -1 176,232 0.6% -0.0 Plaid Cymru 3 0 0 0 181,704 0.6% 0.0 Social Democratic and Labour Party 3 0 0 0 99,809 0.3% -0.1 Ulster Unionist Party 2 2 0 2 114,935 0.4% N/A UK Independence Party 1 0 1 -1 3,881,099 12.6% 9.6 Green 1 0 0 0 1,156,149 3.8% 2.8 Independent 1 0 2 -2 98,711 0.3% -0.2

What do George Galloway and a Beijing restaurant manager have in common?

The idiot restaurant owner in Beijing who stuck the racist sign in the photo below outside his restaurant has now taken it down again, it transpires. The sign is bilingual, and the English (or rather the Chinglish) reads "This shop does not receive The Japanese The Phillippines The Vietnamese and dog."

The sign announces that people from the three countries currently involved in territorial disputes with China over uninhabited islands, and also dogs, will not be served. The reference is to the famous sign which supposedly once existed in Shanghai when it was occupied by foreign powers, forbidding "Chinese and dogs" from entering the premises.

The restaurant in question is located in Houhai, a touristy area of central Beijing which straddles a lake. The restaurant owner claims he has no regrets, but he was just getting too many phone calls about it. I'm glad to know somebody still cares. I hope there were many Chinese calling too.

Last week, British member of Parliament George Galloway walked out of a debate in Oxford University when he found out that the student he was debating against was Israeli. The motion of the debate was "Israel should withdraw from the West Bank immediately". After realizing that the other debater, who had an Israeli name, was indeed Israeli, Galloway got up and said "I don't recognize Israel and I don't debate with Israelis" as he walked out of the door. If not recognizing Israel can be considered legitimate, not debating with people because they were born in a certain country is just as bad as not serving them in your restaurant. 

Let's hope the principle that you should never discriminate against people on the basis of the country they were born in spreads wider and wider in the future, to include all Beijing restaurant owners and all British Members of Parliament.