Another "Gentlemens' Agreement": The constituency link

Well, despite nursing a rather nasty summer cold (the real McCoy: sore throat, catarrh, aching limbs, flushes -not 'manflu' as my daughter tried to suggest!), I'm back to the blog, having just taught a summer school on Spirituality and Culture in the midst of overseeing the contextual theology programme.

Any way, enough of my context recently. I was reading a huge backlog of feed posts and came across this rather nice exposure of a bit of double think by UK MP's. Now, recall, I'm in favour of proportional representation because, since the age of 15 I have felt that the first-past-the-post constituency system (probably a system like that for the Scottish Parliament would be better). So have a look at this and marvel at the double think. It's fromMake My Vote Count: Another "Gentlemens' Agreement": The constituency link:
"angry ministers yesterday alleged that GPs have been circumventing moves towards greater competition by reaching informal 'gentlemens' agreements' not to take on new patients, effectively blocking our ability to shop around. This, it is argued, is a self-interested bid to protect their out-dated status as monopoly service providers, frustrate modernisation and enjoy comfortable salaries and privileges free having to offer improvements in service. Sound familiar? Aren't MPs up to the same kind of trick with their consensus that we musn't break up the 'constituency link'? Why should we allow them to hold onto their own 'like-it-or-lump-it' monopolies of parliamentary representation which give voters no choice over who gets to represent them between elections? Why is it that the monopoly service providers in all other areas of the public sector are derided as 'dinosaurs' resistant to modernisation, when the MPs themselves insist on having a monopoly of representation in their constituency?"
Part of the point is that the Scottish experience seems to indicate that having multi-member constituencies helps to raise the politicians' game. Go read.