| London elections |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|08:08 pm] |
Tomorrow (1st May) is the elections for the London Mayor and Assembly. These happen every four years, and always on a Thursday.
Wikipedia is good enough that I don't need to write a great piece on how they work, but I do need more than 140 characters so I'm writing this here rather than twitter.
London mayoral election, 2008 is elected by the supplementary vote system. You have two votes - a first choice and a second preference.
In most elections it seems to be between two candidates. You may really like the candidate from a smaller party, but you are aware that it is going to be between the Labour and Conservative candidates. If it is close your vote for the Greens could give it to the Tories! With this voting system you can vote Green 1, Labour 2. You are not saying you particularly like Livingstone, but you can still say you prefer him to Johnson, and you don't have to worry that a vote for the Greens could mean that Johnson gets it.
The London Assembly election is more complicated! The assembly is elected by the Additional Member System which is designed to be more proportional. This means that you again don't have to be forced into voting for the major parties, minority parties *can* get elected as it tries to reflect the percentage of the vote across the entire capital, whilst still giving you a local representative. 14 members represent local areas and 11 are cross London to make it closer to how everyone voted, percentage wise.
I like these sort of elections as they mean that you can have a more finegrained vote than in a normal first past the post contest. You could vote to give the government a bloody nose, and still take account of the fact that you see the official opposition are worse! |
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| London vote match |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|07:38 pm] |
London Votematch
The number of people thinking of voting for Boris on the grounds that they think he's 'cool' or something scares me.. |
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| Interesting.. |
[Feb. 21st, 2008|05:15 am] |
How Labour used the law to keep criticism of Israel secret
This is interesting. Handwritten notes on their propaganda dossier were stopped from being released.
Along with unfavourable references to the US and Japan, the reference to Israel was written in the margin by someone commenting on the opening paragraph of the Williams draft. It was written against the claim that "no other country [apart from Iraq] has flouted the United Nations' authority so brazenly in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction".
In statement to the tribunal, Neil Wigan, head of the FO's Arab, Israel and North Africa Group, said he did not know who had referred to Israel in the margin. He went on: "I interpret this note to indicate that the person who wrote it believes that Israel has flouted the United Nations' authority in a manner similar to that of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein."
The FO had no objections to references to other countries in the margin of the Williams document. Alongside the claim that no other country apart from Iraq had twice launched wars of aggression against neighbours, the unknown FO official writes: "Germany?" and " US: Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico". Against a reference to the use of chemical weapons, the official has written: "Japan in China?" |
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| Ron Paul weenies stickering in London |
[Feb. 14th, 2008|04:19 am] |
Spotted outside Tottenham Court Road underground station in central London.
Lousy photo taken by camera phone in the dark.. |
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| (Yet) more reasons not to vote Lib Dem |
[Oct. 16th, 2007|12:41 am] |
The Independent says that the candidates to succeed Ming Campbell are Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne.
They both appear to be young ambitious right wingers from privileged backgrounds. They both contributed to the neo-liberal Orange Book.
Nick Clegg's article reads like he wrote bits of it, and I'm sure Chris Huhne's fan base edit wikipedia too.
My conclusion is that neither of them are social liberals, and I can't vote for rightists. I guess that the centre-right of the political spectrum is going to become even more crowded! Who are we supposed to vote for, again? |
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[Oct. 15th, 2007|08:06 pm] |
Via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) the_elyan
Ming the Merciless has resigned. The ambitious young turks have been after him for a while, I wonder which nonentity they'll replace him with? Let's hope it's not one of the Orange Book neoliberal freaks. |
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| *whinge* |
[Jul. 30th, 2007|01:30 am] |
This is breathtakingly awful. The sucking up is unspeakable - they have fucked up everything they have touched recently and we have to ram our heads up their arse. I don't know whether the US is a psychotic bully with control issues(*), or whether the Labour Party just worships the powerful. I suspect it's a bit of both.
The Guardian says that the agenda is Iran and star wars shite**. Any problems Britain actually has (eg with Russia) are of no interest apparently! It looks like "This is what we are doing and you are expected to do X". Be a good little boy and you'll get a job like Tony! Put yourselves first and we'll go elsewhere, we are in charge, we don't compromise. Don't you love us anymore??
I'm a long way from being a British nationalist but the Labour Party's relationship with these people is completely offensive. (I'm well aware that the Tories would be no different fwiw)
* I mean, if they were a person would you want a relationship with them? I think I'd be more concerned about their partner as I'd expect they'd be a classic abused spouse. They'd certainly be a person I would do my best to avoid.
**They are pretending that star wars is against muslim states that may potentially get nukes, even though it is clear from the location that it's actually Russia. With star wars the bully can lash out at the slightly larger children and guarantee never to get it back. |
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| linux fanboys can be embarrasing sometimes |
[Jul. 4th, 2007|08:04 pm] |
British Political Parties Move Away from Windows is probably a bit hopeful, but is being dugg currently.
It doesn't give any sources but says:
"There's been a suggestion of a shift towards open source in the houses of government in the UK recently, with the Conservative Party promising to promote open source if elected and the incumbent Labour Party releasing the code behind its new carbon footprint calculator under the General Public License. [...] PlaidCymru.org Apache on Linux (moved from Windows today) [...] SDLP.ie Apache on FreeBSD (moved from Windows today)"
The ellipses are in the original. I imagine hosting is done on cost not OS - I doubt the political parties know which OS their stuff runs on. However the Labour Party must have chosen to use the GPL - is the GPL cool now?
UPDATE: I've found the actual source which doesn't say that at all. The program was written for DEFRA (not the Labour Party) and was released under the GPl by its developers. The only government contribution is non-free as it is Crown Copyright data.
( Full list of party web sites and OSes ) |
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| whinge #3 |
[Jul. 2nd, 2007|08:24 pm] |
Media on Tessa Jowell: Sycophantic Blairite
Our other local MPs are Harriet Harman and Simon Hughes' bunch of authoritarian NuLibDems. God we have it bad here.
I'm actually going to do something useful rather than spending the evening whinging on LJ (whilst I still have a friendslist!)
Why is is *still* raining? It's July now ffs. |
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| second whinge of the day |
[Jul. 2nd, 2007|08:02 pm] |
This could be interesting - a muslim woman in the shadow cabinet - the first ever. The DailyMail Party's take on the terrorist attacks has been to blame the communities - Jack Straw attacking women for wearing veils, Trevor Phillips their GLA member (now running the Commission for Racial Equality) blaming multiculturalism.. The Labour Party have basically responded by trying to playing triangulation with the BNP.. This really isn't appropriate for a country where Mohammed is one of the top names for boys.
A break with the tyranny of the majority view of community cohesion would be lovely - what do we reckon the chances are? |
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| a ramble on regen |
[Jul. 2nd, 2007|07:06 pm] |
No more pubs in Camberwell - or just those for poor and/or black people?
This will probably go through as the sort of people who attend meetings and write to the council are the unrepresentative Daily Mail reading whinger brigade.. They've already banned drinking on the street, and are giving us the "Big Brother on Crack" talking CCTV cameras - and these are Liberal Democrats!! (in theory).
The guy from the Sun & Doves sounds like a real wanker - the fact that he'd welcome an Oddbins for regeneration reasons. Presumably "uninformed" people might implement the policy fairly and ban gentrified shops too! OH NOES! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BAN THE POOR SCARY BLACK PEOPLE! DON'T YOU READ THE NEWSPAPERS?? How does having a shop that sells expensive alcohol regenerate the area? We have plenty of rich residents - they just don't shop locally. We never see our owner-occupier neighbours! Replacing poor people shops with rich people shops doesn't make the poor people go away, it just means that they may have to travel further for their goods.
I should write a ramble on the local economy and attempts by the council to stymie it under the cover of regeneration. The economy of Walworth isn't that bad - many locally owned small BME businesses. Providing services people want and keeping the money in the area. Terribly downmarket and shabby for Mr Sun & Doves though. They want to cash in on the cheap land prices and hope we turn into Clapham or something.. Regeneration is supposed to be for the benefit of the borough - ie the people who live here - not for the land prices.. |
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| war news |
[Jun. 30th, 2007|06:24 pm] |
Thanks to purplecthulu for flagging this up - Car on flames crashes into Glasgow airport. So far all the details are unconfirmed but it looks like an attempt to retry yesterday's car bomb. Thankfully they still don't know what they are doing wrong..
One question will be whether they are the same people. I suspect they are just inspired by, and that there are a certainly percentage of young asian males who are so alienated that they will sacrifice themselves to blow up Glasgow airport..
I've just found this which I don't think we are allowed to read here. Just FYI. |
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| Thursday |
[Jun. 28th, 2007|04:12 pm] |
Went to bed ~ midnight and woke up at 3pm. However I managed to make all my important meetings of the last two days - so I can get up when I need to..
I suppose I should have an opinion on the new cabinet. My general take is "meet the new boss, same as the old boss", but I look forward to being proved wrong ;)
Poor old Harriet Harman! I'm sure there was stuff at the beginning of the deputy leader campaign saying that you'd end up Deputy Prime Minister. Leader of the House of Commons is a bit of a non-job. No department for you!
There does seem to be an element of them all being related - two brothers and a married couple. "The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform"? I'd like to reform that title into something people will remember - ta. I guess it will become BERR.
Bye bye John Reid - no-one will miss you. I wonder who out of the new lot will be the scary fascist one? |
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| In other news |
[Jun. 27th, 2007|05:47 pm] |
Washington gets its patsy a new job. This is the guy who supported Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and who met his dodgy fundraiser at the Israeli embassy. Totally non-neutral and a lousy candidate. If the job was allocated on ability rather than realpolitik he would never have got it.
Polish breast shocker. Every nationalist thinks its country is the greatest thing ever, the Polish ones are no different. The religious nationalist, anti-semitic bastards are as unpleasant as you'd imagine. |
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| Dear Labour Party.. |
[Jun. 27th, 2007|03:01 pm] |
The problem with leaking everything that happens in advance to the media is that when it actually happens it's no longer news.
We expect Tony will get his Save-the-world middle east job later, a job he is breathtakingly unsuitable for. |
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| link spam |
[Jun. 20th, 2007|12:57 pm] |
The Register has a go at the very soft target that is Conservapedia. As a US conservative site it is strongly religious, and apparently creationist. It is obviously impossible to have a international nationalist project - is it impossible to have an international conservative one? Conservapedia says it will ban people for writing in British English and it has a strong US national slant - not only in its articles but also in what it considers to be conservative. I doubt that a British Conservapaedia would be creationist, for example. It's certainly not very David Cameron..
Does Wikipedia have a liberal bias? Well it certainly has a libertarian one, of sorts. It is in favour of freedom of speech in a way that may be shocking to some. We publish the Mohammed cartoons for example, and our articles on sexual topics are illustrated. Zealots from all sides should see us as biased as we don't favour one side or the other (in theory).
Employers must spot signs of depression says The Register. It'll be interesting if it happens. My experience is that they'll send you to occupational health, ignore the results when they come back positive and then not renew your contract when your doctor signs you off.
Just as crucially GPs need to work more closely with employers to identify opportunities for phased return-to-work for individuals with mental health problems in less demanding or reduced hours' roles as part of their rehabilitation. Otherwise more employees with mental health problems will fall out of employment altogether and add to the incapacity benefit claimants.
Well that would be lovely. I'd love *not* to be an Incapacity Benefit claimant, and any rehabilitation is left for me to organise. The NHS doesn't help and the benefits people just want to get you off benefits. It feels like the country has no idea how to deal with stress and depression. It really is about time it worked it out..
Oldest MP dies. The by election will be in Ealing Southall. Southall obviously has a large asian population but are they muslims or hindus? If they are muslims there is a chance Lab could lose it in the continuing fallout from Iraq. |
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| And today's piece of government evil.. |
[Jun. 5th, 2007|03:29 pm] |
Rules to make migrants integrate.
"A points system for citizenship would allow credits to be deducted for anti-social behaviour, fly-tipping or more serious criminal behaviour."
"A "life in Britain good neighbour contract" would be provided to all migrants from inside and outside the EU, including those that stay temporarily. The contract would be introduced alongside identity cards. The ministers also suggest councils might spend less on translation services, and more on English language teaching. "Support cannot become dependency," they write."
"In addition, they argue that government has to acknowledge and respond to the growing mood of English nationalism."
"..by 2011, only 20% of Britain's workforce will be white, abled-bodied men under 45."
Yawn yawn yawn.
I don't think they can give compulsory "contracts" and id cards to people in the EU without giving it to us too. I love the idea that you could be entitled to a passport (if you manage to jump through all the hurdles) but then lose it through fly tipping.. |
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