There are lots of crucial difference between what happened in Greece and the situation it found itself in and the upcoming UK election, one of which have outlined.

Conservatives v Marxists.

The Greeks had stark and completely divergent choices - we do not. We have two centrist parties who hardly have a fag papers worth of difference between them.

Completely going off topic but its arguable that there is such a thing as 'democracy' but that's for another day

Edited by The Sash (01 Apr 2015 8.41am)

UKIP's 'rise' has seen a massive lunge to the right from Labour and Conservatives - if the Greens and SNP were to have a similar rise or even greater, Labour would have to move further left to get those voters back.

While it isn't on the same scale as Greece, there are obviously differences the fringe parties can make.

This. Obviously. To say democracy changes nothing is moronic, look what's happened in Greece, a swing from centre right conservatives to 'f*ck-ze-Germans' Marxists, and blow me they may actually not be completely bent over and f*cked up the arse any more. I'm a conservative by nature and even I'd have voted for the Marxist if I was Greek. The X you put in the box is your decision about how you wish the country to be run. How can that not matter?!

Edited by We are goin up! (31 Mar 2015 11.16pm)

What has happened in Greece isn't a 'product of democracy' it a product of economic disaster, which traditionally has always led to extremist parties capitalising (usually far right and far left). Arguably the real affect of democracy in the Greek situation is that it acts as a 'pressure valve'.

Of course Greece also actually has a democratic system based on proportional representation, rather than a our 'constitunency based first past the post' system that is effectively rigged to leave large parts of the population irrelivent to the democratic process.

Democracy is a good idea, that largely is then co-opted and designed to perpetuate a status quo of the privillaged class groups (ie the wealthy and the middle classes), typically white middle class men (who are massively represented in parliment compared to their demographic).

Typically its introduced as a means of 'acceptable degrees of change', ie those which preserve the power balance of the country.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

No argument from me other than a slight deviation - we are typically (perhaps more so these days) represented by a career political 'class' who may be a white male majority but have little in common or shared experience with the majority of other white men....a lot gets made of that, when you might as well say Diane *spit* Abbott is wholly representative of the experience and outlook of black women.

'Democracy' in whatever definition you care to choose, like most political systems is a wonderful idea in theory - being left in the hands of human beings to nurture it is where it tends to f*ck up