I’m pretty sure we’re all aware by now, but [[Elisabeth Sladen]], actor of the famous [[Doctor Who]] companion/assistant [[Sarah Jane Smith]], died yesterday of cancer. She was 63.
The failure and ridicule of TV Tropes
This is something festering in my mind for the past week or two; a blog post that can hardly be considered “hackery”. It’s really a shame that I’ve sidelined myself into blogging solely about British political minutae. I’ve got more things to blog about than just how awesome and cool Nick Clegg is. I’m pretty … Read more
Anthropomorphic climate change and the 1998 myth
As someone who goes through politics news often, the subject of climate change comes up quite often: how bad it is, does the data fit, and so forth. But even on a story about the Liberal Democrats as a whole, some people, often right-wing, will attack the party on its green credentials. This stems from a belief in climate change is a “hoax” of sorts. Like this comment on a Telegraph article:
Yeah, Chris Hunhe off to Cancun, tilting at windmills, saving the planet.
Didn’t you know that we’ve had no warming since about 1998?
The Man-Made global warming idea is just a scam.
And you wonder why the LibDems are held in contempt.
The deficit and all that.
(Note, January 2013: This post was written when I was more naive to economic circumstances. It is best read in a perspective from before the cuts starting. It is kept in the purposes of transparency and does not accurately reflect my current thoughts on the matter.)
Belt up, this is going to be a big one.
So yeah. That march a couple of weeks ago. At a generous estimate, 400,000 marched against the government’s spending cuts. And while I sympathise with them, I also think that it was just a waste of time due to how it ended up.
Boundary Review
The Electoral Commission has outlined rough plans on where the reduction of MPs from 650 to 600. As expected, traditional Labour strongholds will lose seats. But is it “gerrymandering”, as Labour have alleged?
Not exactly. It’s an undeniable fact that the current system, as is, is horribly skewed towards Labour. The 2005 election, for example, gave Labour 90 more seats than the Tories in England, despite losing by 0.3%. Labour also enjoy their concentrated support in inner-city areas, which allows them to win a lot of urban seats (and the reverse for the Conservatives, in business districts and rural areas). This creates a squeeze on smaller parties with even support, such as the Liberal Democrats, but also the Greens and UKIP.
Why does the skew exist? Well, there’s several reasons for this happening:
Added notes on The Arr-Emm-Tee
This is a follow-up on the post “The Rise and Fall of Unionism” at Legal Fiction. The last part goes on about the hubristic attitude of unions as of late; I admit that I did have some input on the creation of the post, including a rant about how some of the planned marches, such as the planned March 26th protests, were run by “wannabe socialists wanting to play Libyan revolutionaries”. I want to cover a few things missed out in the LF post regarding RMT.
AV or not AV: an addendum
There’s a strange logic to No2AV’s arguments; they’re trying to push both the “AV will lead to more coalitions” and “AV will lead to less coalitions” on different pages on their Why Vote No? In a sense, they’re kind of right; if AV was adopted for 1997, then possibly, yes, the Tories would’ve been disadvantaged because there was a huge anti-Tory sentiment. But if it was adopted for 1992, it would’ve led to a hung parliament; Major barely hung on then. In a way, AV makes more decisive elections slightly more decisive, and muddled elections more muddled.
This exposes one of the supposed advantages of FPTP: according to them, only FPTP allows voters to “kick the rascals out”, like in 1997, and implies voting systems such as AV, STV, AMS, do not. Why don’t you ask the Irish?
The AV “debate” in Leeds
…wasn’t really a debate.
There’s been a spat between the Yes and No camps. Basically, the No campaign are hosting “debates” across the country. I say “debates” because they weren’t really. See:
- This is what the No Campaign call a debate. (16 February)
- Setting the record straight on our Sheffield debate. (21 February)
It’s me yuman rites, innit?
I’m taking some cues of my friend over at Legal Fiction by doing a short blog on human rights, the bête noire of all of our so beloved right-wing newspapers. I’m going to not cover the minutae of things such as judicial review, because he’s done it already. And he knows it better than me.
It’s been a disastrous month for the European Court of Human Rights in British opinion. Not only did they have to deal with prisoner voting, but now there’s news about an impending case before the ECHR about prisoners in psychiatric units being given “pocket money” – or, as the Daily Mail put it so eloquently, “Killers and rapists go to European Court of Human Rights to win full state benefits“. It’s a perfect story for the Mail; they can rag on criminals, benefit claimants, the mentally ill, and Europe at the same time! I mean, factually, the headline is correct. But the intention of the article is to equate people who did these horrific acts because they were severely mentally ill (and thus, not responsible for their crimes) with those like, say, Ian Huntley or Harold Shipman. It’s bad for mental health awareness, but it’s absolutely terrible because these newspapers are using this as a way to score cheap political points.
AV or not AV? That is the question.
The answer is “Yes”. And a kick in my shins for such a terrible joke.
Let’s digress for a minute. In truth, I am a supporter of the [[Single Transferrable Vote]]. My ideal voting system is one that is proportional (i.e., a party with 20% of the vote should get 20% of the seats) and representative (each legislator is answerable to a distinct group of people, hopefully a local community). But more on that in a few posts time; this is about AV.
AV is not my desired system, but it’s a good one nonetheless. It’s representative, and does mean that half the voters of a constituency will definitely prefer him over another candidate. True, it’s not proportional, but it makes it easier to change to a proportional system: for STV, by merging five constituencies into one five-MP constituency; for AMS, the top-up system works in tandem. And one of the big reasons I want a change in the system is where parties other than the Tories and Labour became more popular, but lost seats (or didn’t get any). Such a situation should be untenable.
Let’s go through No2AV’s arguments, shall we?