Bog Roll :: stuff/politics

The referendum didn't go the way I wanted. I'm not surprised. While the reason to vote yes was strong, our current system is dreadful and any system, including AV is better, it was very poorly argued for.

There is virtually no reason to support the status quo, but the no forces were very loud, well funded by big business and used every dirty trick in the book.

• It's hardly surprising that most MPs were against the change - some of them would have to get off their fat arses and work for a change.
• Big media didn't want it as it would make it harder to put and keep politicians in their pockets.
• The tories were against it because demographically it would make it harder for them.
• Clegg is very unpopular personally, so because he was for AV makes it easy to vote No for a lot of people. This is an utterly stupid reason but I think it did make a difference.

It's possible for the rest of my life we'll be stuck with one of the most unfair voting systems in the democratic world. The only plus side to the election is that my local LibDem councillor was re-elected, though people voting labour out of spite nearly let the Tory candidate in - did I mention "First past the post" is a crap system?

posted 16:33 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

This May the UK will holds it's second ever national referendum. The issue is to change the current first-past-the-post "FPTP" voting system for parliament for an alternative-vote "AV" system. I am in favour of voting reform and while AV is not the best system I do believe it is better than the current FPTP system. As a consequence I am supporting the national Yes To AV campaign. Two weeks ago I distributed "Yes To AV" leaflets in my neighbourhood.

Today the "No to Fair Votes" people sent their very glossy leaflet via the Royal Mail. Either they can afford to pay to post their message or they don't have any volunteers to rely on.

posted 21:43 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

Soon the UK will go through the non-sense of the census. Last time in 2001 there was a big fuss because more people put Jedi, more than the number of identifying Sikhs, and more than Jews and Buddhists combined.

This time round the British Humanist Association are encouraging people to tick the "no religion" box if they aren't really religious. Many people who don't partake in organised religion any more and don't even think of themselves as religious, give strength to the religious fringe trying to manipulate British politics if they tick a religion box on the census.

If you are religious then go ahead and tick the box, but unless you a practising member of a religion please don't.

posted 21:03 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

Poor old Nick Clegg, he has three dreadful options to pick from:

1. Join with Tories - big differences there, so possibly short term stable, but long term it must explode.
2. Join with Labour et al. - probably unstable and Labour have offered concessions in the past and failed to deliver.
3. Join with no one and face another general election, probably doing worse that the current one.

Which ever way you look at it, it's unpalatable. Although popular with their own supporters more than 60% of the population really hate the Tories. Labour clearly lost the election and even with Gordon out of the way, they are not the most popular people in the UK this week.

To add insult to injury, whatever the colour of government it's not going to be popular, with massive spending cuts and tax rises required to balance the books and head of Greek style bailout....

posted 12:29 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

For the past few weeks the nasty right wing British press has been running scare story headlines to persuade people that if they vote Liberal Democrat they may end up with a Labour government by the back door: "Vote Clegg, Get Brown"...

What irony, it now looks like if you voted Liberal Democrat you may end up with a Tory government, but tempered and propped up with Liberal Democrat MPs...

What is annoying is all the stupid Labour voters who voted Labour in safe Tory seats, if they had voted Liberal Democrat they may have given the Liberal Democrats more seats but denied the Tories their lead over Labour in Parliament.

The British electoral system is in an utter mess, the constituencies are all different sizes and with our silly first past the post system millions of votes are ignored. I do favour proportional representation, even though I accept it would give a voice to the nutters on the far right and left of the political spectrum...

posted 20:15 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

The lack-lustre general election is over. I didn't get the result I wanted: a Liberal Democrat Government but then I hardly expected that. Most people are easily fooled by the other parties and they vote for 5 more years of lies....

I did get two wishes though, Brown lost in a pretty major way, and Cameron hasn't won. A balanced parliament with LibDems as King makers is an acceptable outcome. The (mostly Tory) press is in apoplexy, warning that somehow it would be better if 30% of the people were able to gain a majority in parliament and "lord it" over the real majority for the next five years. In truth most European governments seem to work quite well, many noticeably better than the UK's and they are mostly coalitions. Indeed the two Tory parties in the UK, "The Conservatives" and "New Labour" are coalitions themselves of groups of people who don't really agree on lots of issues.

The next few days will be interesting. With luck the LibDems will moderate the nuttier wings of either of the other two parties and a coalition will be able to tackle the mess the country is in.

posted 18:24 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

This year's general election in the UK is very strange, it's as if it's not really happening. The media is all a buzz with Twitter and the TV debates but in the real world nothing is happening. Even on the Internet and the TV nothing is happening.

We have had three TV debates and while better than watching parliament where our MPs behave like spoilt children, there were no major surprises. Ignoring politics, Gordon isn't a people person and did very badly in all three, Cameron did surprisingly badly in the first debate but did improve later on, and Clegg did very well in all three.

On the Internet the media consensus is the the LibDems are in the technical lead with Labour and the Tories trailing very badly.

In the real world not that many people actually watched the TV debates, and of those that did, you get the impressions that the policies are broadly the same, but the only difference comes down to personality, in which case Brown did terribly - but then even Labour supporters must know Brown isn't the sort of person to be popular - he is after-all a dour Scotsman with bad presentation skills.

Though the media get excited about the Internet and Twitter, as an Internet user I've not noticed anything going on at all, and I follow politically active people and politicians. What is noticeable on the Internet is a strong feeling of disgust of the unfair UK voting system and a strong bipartisan urge to monitor what they are getting up to with our money and future.

At a personal level what does annoy me, other than the voting system it's self, is the fact that many people vote for someone or a party without thinking if that person or party actually does what they want. Yahoo! have a party matcher widget and I bet an awful lot of people would find though they vote X and always have done, party X doesn't actually represent their views and they should vote party Y if they actually want what they think is important done.

• Party Matcher (while active)

posted 11:10 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

At long last our blundering Prime Minister has called the day and we now have to sit through the political parties lies and counter-lies in the run up the UK's General Election this May.

While I favour one party more than the others, I do think of myself as a free thinker and so here is my manifesto... Items in no particular order.

• We don't need submarines full of nuclear warheads anymore, it's not as if we have ever or could have ever used our Polaris or Trident in anger without permission from the US. We may as well decommission them when they come to the end of their life and use the money somewhere else.
• Our banks need regulating. Without regulation reckless lending will happen again and we will dig ourselves into a very big hole again. Banks should be restricted by law into how much they can lend, who they can lend too, and where the borrow the money from to lend to us. At the same time private individuals should be legally restricted in how much they can borrow and it should be one mortgage per person only. No more "Buy-To-Let" nonsense.
• The government should scrap or at least scale back many silly and grandiose IT schemes. The ID Card project should be cancelled at once. All government departments should more towards all open and public standard document formats, so no more Word and Excel proprietary waste. Where possible all system should move away from proprietary solution such as Microsoft Windows and legacy Unix systems towards open standard based system such as Linux.
• On transport policy the car is doomed, we can't keep pretending we can make it work. It should be short and long term government policy to move away from the private motor car towards less travelling and where travel is required by greener and public systems.
• All British homes MUST be fully insulated. By law all landlords, private and public must provide decent standards of loft and wall insulation (where appropriate), before a property can be let. By law when a house is sold the vendor can only sell the property if the loft and walls are adequately insulated - the buyer can elect to chose the insulation material if none is in place.
• Stamp duty on house purchased to be scrapped. All houses where stamp duty has not been paid would instead be subject to capital gains tax. People who have paid stamp duty in the last 2 years able to claim it back if they accept to pay capital gains instead.
• The UK to adopt the Euro currency to replace Pound Sterling as soon as it is possible. The UK to also more widely adopt EU standards and processes. Arcane measurements to be phased out totally, including pints, miles and miles per hour. Full metrication will take place this time - I'm getting to old to fart about with medieval units anymore...

More to follow when I think of things...

posted 15:05 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

The green shoots are just the dandelions growing out of the ruins of the British economy and not the first signs of a recovery... For too long we didn't do anything useful but simply borrowed money and spent it like there was no tomorrow. Well tomorrow is here and it wants it's money back.

Maurice Saatchi has an interesting article in The Times: Blame this crisis on the myth of inflation. It is well worth reading, the Thatcherite lie of concentrating on a narrow and artificial measure of inflation is shown bare and Labour's "sound fundamentals" are just the same old tosh as the previous governments tosh.

posted 13:37 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

The current British government is trying to convince the population that we are in the grips of deflation and that the solution to our debt problems is to borrow and spend our way out of them. Because we face deflation rather than the more typical inflation we are safe to borrow and spend - which would otherwise be dangerous - indeed borrowing and spending helps to combat deflation - they say.

It is true that deflation, or a shrinking of the money supply, which normally means that things get cheaper is not a good thing. However I don't see the same deflation that the government sees, all the things I buy such as basic food ingredients are going through the roof in price, and imported goods and foods are rising even faster.

It's all a feeble attempt to prop up the housing bubble by mortgaging the nation's future to pay for the greed and ineptitude of the current ruling classes. I'm not anti-Labour or anti-Tory but I am stridently opposed the the pocket lining politicians running the place.

Come the Liberal revolution, I know who I'd have lined up against the wall...

posted 23:48 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^

Flash Gordon, former British Chancellor and now Prime Minister has stolen my pension! Because of his blundering incompetence over the years, my pension has lost 30% of it's value in the past year.

I don't normally discuss real world politics on my blog, but I had it with the clueless twits in Parliament. New Labour has ignored all the warning signs of excess debt and as a result allowed a few greedy idiots to bankrupt the country. It's not as if the the now very smug Tories can say anything about it, as Brown has been essentially following Thatcherite policies for the past decade and they have been mostly accusing him of stealing their policies...

Thankfully by the time I retire at seventy, my pension will probably have recovered - unfortunately that's not something people close to or retired now can take any comfort from.

posted 20:27 :: /stuff/politics :: permalink :: ^