Pathetic?

My post about Labour winning the majority of English seats in the General Election has attracted some attention. Note to readers, I'm using majority in it's real definition

1. The greater number or part; a number more than half of the total.

I think the phrase you were looking for Gareth was plurality of votes.

I'd always thought I lived in a representative democracy, every so often, we go to our polling stations or post a ballot and the 70 or 80 thousand of us living locally elect one person to be our member of parliament. I voted Labour in the certain understanding that it didn't matter, voting Labour was a waste of time in Yeovil constituency. There may have been over 5,000 of us, but our ballots might as well have been thrown in the bin. Likewise the 17,000 people who voted Tory and the nearly 2,000 who voted UKIP didn't count, most people wanted David Laws to be our member of parliament. That's the democratic system that we have.

Throughout the UK, there were 645 such contests, the 646th will be held sometime later. Out of those seats in England, Labour won a majority, more than half the seats. We won the election. The likes of Gareth and Eric wish that wasn't the case, but whining about it isn't going to change a thing.

It's like complaining your team lost a game of football despite having more shots on target. You have to have shots on target to score a goal, like you need votes in order to win seats, but the winner of the game is the team that scores the most goals. It's pointless whinging coming from Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger, it's no more edifying coming from Gareth and Eric.