I’m putting the finishing touches to questions for the quiz on Wednesday night (fundraising for Horsham Labour – sold out but could maybe squeeze another body or two in). I had a couple of brilliant ideas, which I am not going to incorporate in case they caused major civil unrest and/or ideological splits.The first idea was jokers. OK, a few quizzes use and have used the idea of jokers so you can choose to double your score on a round of your choice – but I thought how about making teams pay for the joker?  Think about it: if ten teams all buy a joker for a tenner that is another hundred quid raised by the event. Not only that but it is a satire on the inequality of the education system, whereby you can buy your way to greater success.  Even better if you didn’t limit the number of jokers to one round but could buy as many as you like!
An even more controversial idea was to redefine the criteria for winning the quiz. Instead of the winner being the team with the most points, it could be the team that won the most individual rounds. This would prove hugely unpopular, but I would love to be able to say to all the traditionalists in the party “OK. If you don’t like my first-past-the-post idea we will go back to the old-fashioned proportional method of deciding the winner if you think that’s more fair.”
I think I’ve worked out why I am not put in charge of things more often…
Now then, back to the questions. We have a round on lyrics to Yes songs, a round on Sherlock Holmes, a round on George A. Romero’s zombie films and a round on the seven layer OSI model for networking. Should cover all the bases I think, except sport. Just time to dredge up 10 facts about US college football.  I do hope I’m joking.
Hah, brilliant idea about FPTP. Totally going to pull that next time I do a quiz.
The analogy falls down when someone points out that a proportional way of deciding the football league would be to make the champions whichever team had the best goal difference, regardless of games won.
It isn’t a case of whether one of PR or FPTP is better or more fair because either can be better in the right circumstances, it is which is most appropriate for a specific situation. I just happen to think PR is more fair for a general election.
Mind you, it may be that FPTP fans wouldn’t argue with that, but just don’t see fairness as the main criterion for choosing a method, which is a point of view.
Great idea about PR! We enjoyed that. Of course at a Labour party evening you would probably end up debating which was the right process all evening and not get round to the actual quiz…….