I've been considering a hybrid system. As politicians don't represent their constituents but rather do what they are told the discussion about the need for constituencies is over blown. However having an MP you can directly contact is useful.
My suggestion would be to double the current constituency size and elect them first past the post. And then have a number of 'floating' MP's divided out to make the house of commons make up reflect the overall position of the parties in the election. So, in the last election, we would add sufficient Tory MP's to cause the HoC numbers to closely match the Labour MP numbers, and enough LibDem to reflect their poll of the votes. We would probably also need to add a ukip, and maybe one or two other minor parties that polled sufficient % of the vote.
Yes, the government of the day would have to work harder to convince sufficient people of it's policy, but that is superior to having 20% of the uk population forcing id cards on the rest of us :-0

I agree - How Lord Falconer can unblushingly come out with this stuff is atonishing. At the centre of the matter is the unequivocal commitment to a referendum in the 1997 manifesto to which Lord Falconer was presumably party: a commitment on which the Labour hierarchy ratted and now never even mentions. All we ask is that he and his colleagues concede that it is the people of the country to decide how they want to elect their representatives not those who have an interest in maintaining the system under which the party they represent was "elected" (and of course Lord Falconer himself was elected by no-one!)

Do I understand aright?

The, totally unelected by any system, lord Falconer has the cheek to tell us that a fairer system of elections is not important and may be counter-productive, because the government might have to take notice of what other members of a coalition think.!

That seems to sum up what's wrong with the present system pretty accurately. That the government feels itself empowered to ride roughshod over any public opinion that does not agree with them.

These politicians need a serious jolt. How about getting a few Million disenfranchised electors to sign up to never vote using the present first past the post system again. If there were enough it could wake them up.
I am just so angry at Lord Falconer's pathetic comments today.

I just feel there's a real danger here of assuming that the groundswell we're hearing of is in reality a short-lived grunt of vague disapproval for how the recent election went. My (personal) suspicion is (and will be what both the tories and labour want) that a few weeks from now people will have moved on and forgotten this topic. So the challenge isn't preaching to the converted on this forum, but, rather, reaching out to otherwise disinterested citizens. How you do that without serious money.... I don't know.

The email address given for Charlie above seems to bounce. I was X enough to email him, so at elast he knwe what one member of the public thought. Not sure how he knows about the others...

The government and country are concerned at the low turnout in general elections. Since voter turnout goes up in marginal constituencies you could increase turnout by making more constituencies marginal. This can be done by preferential voting in multimenber constituencies (STV). Hewre all parties will be vying to get the "last seat", everyones vote will count, and no longer will the phrases "tactical voting", "key marginals" etc be heard.

Ralph Averbuch

"reaching out to otherwise disinterested citizens".

How agree with you !
It is all very well preaching to the converted - the people that matter are those who normally never even think about the electoral system much less about whether there might be a better system.

You may have read what the ICPR said in their report: here is the relevant para:-

"Focus groups convened to test people’s reaction to different systems suggested that many citizens were unaware of any defects in first-past-the-post until they were pointed out. The attitude of surveyed respondents tended to change dramatically when they found out more about the operation of first-past the-post. MOST WERE CONVERTED TO SOME FORM OF PR"

So it is necessary to find some means of constantly keeping the absurdity of FPTP in people's minds and as you say this needs money. Fortunately the Independent - spurred by the result of the election where we now have a government that has the declared support of a mere one in five of the electorate - seems to have taken up the cause enthusiastically. If the Mirror for instance followed suit and if in particular the BBC, in regard to the way we elect our "representatives", observed more conscientiously its remit to inform and educate it seems probable that there would be so much public pressure that the government would just have to listen. But otherwise I fear they'll stonewall indefinitely

I believe I can read the minds of Lord Falconer and many other supporters of FPTP. As an electoral system, it's the ideal apparatus for keeping power in the hands of unrepresentative minorities, while keeping the figleaf of democracy in place.

In yesterday's Independent, it was most revealing that South Africa under the Apartheid regime used FPTP (duly enhanced by Jerrymandering to favour a rural vote). For Ulster under the Unionists in 1929 - 1973, ditto. For Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, double ditto.

What encapsulates the shabby secret of Britain's quasi democracy now is a quotation from Walther Ulbricht, East Germany's strong man after 1945:
"...everything must appear to be democratic - but we must have everything in hand". But we all remember where democracy finally asserted itself in the end, don't we - on the streets of Leipzig.

So Lord Falconer isn't so much '...living on another planet', as being determined to keep power on this one.

During the Gen. Election campaign I sent a copy of the ERS questionnaire to my MP (Conservative) asking for her views on PR. In her short reply she informed me her party were against PR on the grounds that it would weaken the relationship between MP and constituent. The lady concerned has been tipped as a future PM. Not by me I might add or even by Private Eye. The 'relationship' she refers to was first described by the arch reactionary Edmund Burke. He was speaking at a time (late C18th) when the average constituency boasted less than 100 wealthy electors and two, Old Sarum had only three electors and another, Dunwich had long since disappeared under the North Sea. It is a pity this MP could not produce an argument against PR which is more relevant to the C21st.

During the Gen. Election campaign I sent a copy of the ERS questionnaire to my MP (Conservative) asking for her views on PR. In her short reply she informed me her party were against PR on the grounds that it would weaken the relationship between MP and constituent. The lady concerned has been tipped as a future PM. Not by me I might add or even by Private Eye. The 'relationship' she refers to was first described by the arch reactionary Edmund Burke. He was speaking at a time (late C18th) when the average constituency boasted less than 100 wealthy electors and two, Old Sarum had only three electors and another, Dunwich had long since disappeared under the North Sea. It is a pity this MP could not produce an argument against PR which is more relevant to the C21st.

I'm absolutely outraged by this! The press and politicans repeated ignore and deny any reasonable, rational protests yet any impulsive, incendary action would no doubt result in us being written off as radicals! I have written to both the today programme and the Lord Chancellor to express my strong disgust with these comments!

Wee update - the Independent have hit over 4500 people on their petition within 24 hours....not bad for no "ground swell"!

FPTP is undoubtedly a 'fig-leave.' It is a way of providing a resemblance of democracy while ensuring the maintainance of political control in the hands of an historic 'establishment'; a small core-elete that can allow itself the luxury of a limited swing between Left and Right, which at the same time keeps us, the electorate, satisfied - until one day, we realise that the system we place so much faith in, is fundamentally flawed, and a 'con.' Not surprising if Lord Falconer and others in a similar position, want to keep this system going.

As a Labour supporter I recently wrote to the PM on the matter of Electoral Reform, pointing out that if our top priority was 'naked party-political power' rather than democracy, surely that made our ambitions little different from those of a soviet or fascist State?.