I think you can forget about all the political/policy arguments for calling an early election and perhaps focus on the practicalities.
1. The Labour Party simply DO NOT have enough money to have two election rounds this year (at least not by choice), so funding a General Election and then a Council election a month or so later is near to impossible
2. The printing of election freeposts (the leaflets you get), the correx boards, the posters, the voter ID work... it's 600+ constituencies, 600+ candidates, millions upon millions of leaflets, party political broadcasts to produce, adoption meetings, insurance cover, phone banks... that doesn't just happen in a week. It's been planned for May, the print deadlines are May, the delivery dates are May, the Royal Mail arrangements to get them delivered are for May...
This isn't the 70s, 80s, or even the 90s where you feasibly could call a snap election because all organisation was done from a local perspective. Generals are nationally organised these days, from Party HQ, and then percolated down to constituency level.
I think STV is an improvement on pure PR or FPTP. My problem with STV is two-fold. Firstly people who lose at constituency level can get it in through the back door on the party-list can't they: AIUI for STV in the Welsh Assembly, half the seats are consituency ones, the other half are party-list ones-- so party-lists do exist in STV?]
I know this isnt the place, but in Scotland its more 2/3 are Constituency seats ( 73 seats ) and 1/3 are the PR seats ( 56 seats). it is STILL possible to win out right 65 with just constituency seats alone,
With AMS, fair enough, you have the Constituency and the Party MP's but you don't have more than one to go upto that knows your local problems, and is assigned to that. That's why I love STV.
Fair points about STV, interesting to hear how it works in Ireland. With MMP, in comparison with AMS, the party list is national (with just the names of the parties mentioned), and you just have one consistuency MP per consistuency.
In other words your party list vote in New Zealand is PR (to maintain proportionality and to eliminate the problem 'wasted votes' for a party) and your constituency vote is FPTP, to select a representative for your town (who may be not be party-affiliated).
I can appreciate why you like STV though, it certainly has its advantages A discussion for Metropol though I think...
Well, there you go. The Budget will be on March 24th, so most commentators think this pretty much secures May 6th as Election Day. The budget would be debated before the Easter weekend, and the campaigning would begin with Gordon going to the palace and announcing the election date on Tuesday April 6th, after the long weekend.
Expect the following timetable for the election following the announcement of the Budget date.....
Budget Date - 24-MAR-2010
Debate 25-MAR-2010 - 30-MAR-2010
Easter Recess 31-MAR-2010 - 05-APR-2010
Announcement of Election Date - 06-APR-2010
Final PMQs of this Parliament - 07-APR-2010
Parliament Prorogued - 08-APR-2010
Parliament Dissolved - 12-APR-2010
ELECTION DATE - 06-MAY-2010
New Parliament Assembled - 12-MAY-2010
Queen's Speech - 18-MAY-2010
First PMQs of New Parliament - 19-MAY-2010.
Not sure if this has been posted, but the BBC Press Red blog has a cap of the election logo, and also announce an election multiscreen will be running throughout the election campaign.
Was speaking with someone from Dod's Monitoring the other day, who confirmed they will be supplying ''all'' General Election data for the BBC and ITV's election night coverage.
If you're not familiar with Dod's, they're the biggest company monitoring Parliament, the EU, Welsh Assembly, etc. and they own epolitix.com, which is a sort of crappy front end for their paid-for service (which is also pretty crappy, if detailed).
They said their policy will be to have one person at every count and to check two times, in person, with the returning officer for each count before feeding a result to the BBC.
Surprised me, because I always thought PA did this. No idea who Sky will be using - the Dod's man said not them - so presumably they're sticking with PA again.
Was speaking with someone from Dod's Monitoring the other day, who confirmed they will be supplying ''all'' General Election data for the BBC and ITV's election night coverage.
Are you sure about this?
For many, many elections now, ITV has called most results earlier than BBC and Sky, the latter two waiting until the official declaration, and using PA where they haven't got reporters, ITV relying on a lot of stringers, who get a bonus for calling a result early.
It will be a major change for ITV if they use the same source of results as the BBC.
Let's face it though - ITV could announce the end of the world and even though everything has collapsed around them, many people wouldn't believe it until the BBC confirm it for them.
I'm not sure who Sky use officially, but around January time all post-graduate Broadcast Journalism students were offered the opportunity to work for Sky on election night.
They offered money (which is unusual for these sort of things) and also a bonus if you could report the result first, before other broadcasters. Essentially, they were hoping to use underpaid journalist hopefuls to fill gaps where there aren't any professional reporters, I expect.
A discussion for Metropol though I think...