IT WOULD appear that there is an organised campaign by a group of local voters to replace our splendid ‘First past the post’ (FPTP) electoral system with proportional representation (PR).

On the letters page of the SNJ June 24, there were three long letters on the subject.

What these writers fail to acknowledge is that no electoral system is perfect and that the British public are overwhelmingly happy with FPTP, as the AV Referendum of 2011 clearly showed.

We Brits love a local MP rather than an anonymous figurehead chosen in-house by political parties.

For instance, hardly anybody knows their MEP, who is chosen on PR.

In his overlong letter, Dr Richard House of the Green Party immediately lost the plot by comparing the winning Tory electoral campaign to that of Goebbels’s propaganda machine.

I’m sure the Tories have not uttered any intentional lies, but do have different agendas to other parties – but that is not a telling lie.

The rest of Dr House’s whingeing letter is full of ‘what ifs’ and hunches, and thus not helping his PR campaign.

John Marjoram quotes numbers required to elect an MP.

Superficially it seems unfair, but remember that the Greens and Ukip absorbed all of the dustbin votes of the ‘none of the above’ votes traditionally enjoyed by the Lib Dems until they became part of government.

Under PR, these smaller parties would undoubtedly lose most of these floating voters.

If the Greens and others want representation in Parliament, then they should follow the example of the SNP and work harder within the present system on all their potential winning constituencies.

Tom Newman

Stroud