Is Brown stuck in 1992?
Daniel Finkelstein has again written a really interesting article.
This time he’s come up with this brilliant theory:
I want to advance my 1992 theory of Gordon Brown and the Brownites.Here it is. The central ideas that make up Gordon Brown’s policy, political strategy and day-to-day tactics were all developed between 1992 and 1994. He hasn’t had an important idea since. Nor has he discarded an important idea since then, remaining doggedly faithful to every last one. And these notions, the bedrock of everything he does, were developed as a response to the two big political events of 1992 – the victory of Bill Clinton and, more centrally, the defeat of Neil Kinnock by John Major. There you have it – my 1992 theory.
It might be a little unfair to Brown, but I think this theory has a lot going for it. Labour were just so traumatised in the 1990s that it will have been really difficult to move away from mentally.
The best MP is somebody who never set out to become one
I’ve always believed that in a democracy, people should as a rule choose people like themselves to represent them.
As a consequence, I don’t think being a politician should be a job for life.
People should set out to be something else, then get involved, become politicians for perhaps ten years, and then return to normal life.
Because of this, I urge you to read this article by Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph.
He claims that some of the reforms being proposed at the moment will make it even less attractive for outsiders to become MPs:
Mr Brown has fatally undermined that notion in recent weeks with two changes – one voted through last month, the other threatened – that will transform the House of Commons from a collection of individuals representing the varied interests of the nation, to a cosy home for professional politicians subsidised exclusively and generously by the taxpayer.
I don’t know whether it’s true that these reforms will have this consequence, and I definitely don’t think the status quo is ideal, either.
When I moved to Scotland, I was shocked by the way the media talked about the political class as if it was a separate part of society, rather than a part of us all, so change is sorely needed, but possibly in the opposite direction of what is being pushed through at the moment.
Genetic engineering of fruits
Am I the only one who loves the taste of pineapples and mangos but finds them a pain?
Pineapples are far too complicated to get into, and mangos have this horrible big stone in the middle.
All fruit should either be very easy to peel, like bananas, or have edible skin, like apples, and they shouldn’t contain any stones or seeds.
Why are the genetic engineers wasting their time on making wheat resistant to herbicides and other boring projects, when they should be developing pinanas (pineapples with banana skin) and pangos (mangos built like a pear, without a stone and with edible skin)?
The technology surely is there, so bring it on!
Borgerlig-liberal Centrumalliance
To radikale og en konservativ bryder ud og starter et nyt parti.
Den konservative skrider.
En tredie radikal bryder ud og starter også sit eget parti.
En af de to første radikale skrider også og bliver konservativ.
To eks-radikale partiejere slår pjalterne sammen.
Hvad bliver det næste? Fusionerer Liberal Alliance snart med Det radikale Venstre igen? Eller bliver de begge snart konservative?
Jeg ville have mere respekt for dem, hvis jeg kunne finde ud af, hvad deres parti egentlig står for.
Som jeg ser det, vil Anders Samuelsen bare have frie tøjler til at føre sin egen skattepolitik, og Simon Emil vil køre sit eget værdipolitiske løb.
Da de to områder ikke overlapper synderligt, kan det holdes inden for ét parti, men hvor er ideologien blevet af?
Which voting system should you use for choosing a voting system?
If you’re a voting system nerd, there’s a highly amusing article by Martin Rosenbaum on BBC’s site.
He’s asking which voting system should be used for choosing a new voting system, and shows that under certain circumstances, each voting system will declare itself the winner.
How not to make trial versions
A few months ago, I wanted to try out Adobe Dreamweaver
However, it failed to install, and when I tried to get help from Adobe, they told me I had to purchase the full version to get any form of support apart from using the web forum.
Given that the installer didn’t get very far, I concluded that it was probably incompatible with Vista in some way, and I obviously didn’t buy the full version.
Recently I needed temporary access to Adobe InDesign
This time it actually installed correctly, but when I tried to run it, it came up with a license key error.
I searched for the error message on Adobe’s support forum, and it said that the error was caused by some wrong values in the license key registry (typically caused by another Adobe program being installed wrongly), and that the only solution was to have Adobe’s tech support guide me through changing some values manually – reinstalling it wouldn’t make any difference.
But again, Adobe’s tech support is not available to me, as I’ve only downloaded the trial version, so I can’t try out InDesign on my machine.
Adobe wrote to another user on their forum that if he’d just purchase the program, they were certain they’d be able to get it to work on his computer, but that kind of defeats the whole idea behind trial versions, doesn’t it?
Why don’t Adobe understand that they’re losing lots of potential sales by not providing installation support for trials?
Electoral systems and systems of measurements: A very British mess
It’s impossible to tell which electoral system that is used in the UK, because almost every single election uses its own system: First-past-the-post for Westminster, AMS for the Scottish Parliament, STV for Scottish council elections, and d’Hondt for the elections for the European Parliament.
I think the intention originally was to test out different systems and then to introduce the best one everywhere, but at the moment there seems to be no urgency to do so.
Similarly, the metric system was introduced in schools and in many other contexts decades ago, but the imperial system is still found in lots of places, for instance for buying beer and milk, and for measuring heights and weights.
So the situation is that kids actually only learn to use the metric system, but they still use stones, inches, pints and so on all the time without actually knowing how to use them.
It’s ridiculous, but again the UK seem to pause halfway through the introduction of a new system, instead of biting the bullet and going all the way (or reverting to the original situation).
Why is that? What is this national obsession with never finishing anything?
I guess it’s good the UK never decided to switch to driving on the right, or we would have been stuck with a situation where motorways and roundabouts and half the cars were for driving on the right, and the rest were still for driving on the left!
(PS: Do click on the photo to read its description. It’s the pub that saved the pound, kind of.)
Another reason to dislike first-past-the-post
One thing I really dislike about the first-past-the-post voting system is that some parties are inherently favoured.
This is due to some parties having their votes concentrated in really few constituencies, while other parties are scattered loosely across the country.
Have a look at the graph on the left.
Using Electoral Calculus’s user-defined poll, I tried to hold the Tories steady at 40% of the vote and then try to put in decreasing values of Labour support going from 26% to 14%, and increasing values of LibDem support from 14% to 26%, so that the two parties all the time add up to 40%. The two parties’ share of the vote is shown as the small boxes at the bottom.
The lines show the number of MPs that the two parties would get.
When both parties are getting the same number of votes, Labour get 156 MPs compared to the LibDems’ 56.
And it’s not till the LibDems reach 25% of the vote and Labour are down at 15% that the former actually get more MPs.
This is basically because the LibDems and Labour compete in very few constituencies.
When Labour lose their votes, the seats are picked up by the Tories, the SNP or other parties, but not very often by the LibDems.
And when the LibDems get more votes, they start winning seats from the Tories, typically rural seats in England, but because I kept Tory support fixed in this example, that was hard.
I know this is a simulation, and it might not reflect real life. If the LibDems were to overhaul Labour, it would probably be partly because of urban voters switching.
Nevertheless, I find the whole system very undemocratic. Surely if one party gets more votes than another party, it’s only fair that it would also get more MPs!
Exit polls
Det ser ud til, at Tronfølgeafstemningen ville have fejlet, hvis de danske medier ikke havde offentliggjort exit polls i løbet af dagen.
Jeg er helt enig med Socialdemokraternes Lene Hansen på dette punkt: Det burde forbydes!
Generelt vil folk skynde sig ud at stemme, hvis det ser ud til, at resultatet er snævert, men at deres foretrukne parti/udfald er ved at tabe. Tilsvarende vil de blive hjemme, hvis det ikke ser ud til, at deres stemme er nødvendig for at opnå det af dem ønskede resultat.
Det betyder, at der åbnes op for valgsvindel. Hvis jeg fx ønskede at hjælpe Det radikale Venstre, kunne jeg have offentliggjort en exit poll, der sagde, at partiet var 0.1% fra et mandat, og at det mandat ellers ville gå til Dansk Folkeparti.
Om omvendt, hvis jeg ville hjælpe DF.
Den enkleste måde at forhindre dette på er simpelthen at forbyde offentliggørelse af prognoser og exit polls på valgdagen.
Det går ikke uden en kändis
Så DrV klarede ikke denne gang at få nogen valgt til Europaparlamentet.
Jeg har godt set, at Johannes Lebech tror, han kunne have gjort det bedre, men det giver jeg ikke meget for.
Selvom Johannes nok er en smule mere kendt end Sofie, er han altså ikke partiets bedste blikfang.
Men dermed ikke være sagt, at Sofie var det rigtige valg til at være spidskandidat.
DrV plejede ikke at få noget valgt til Europaparlamentet i gamle dage (ved valgene i 1979, 1984 og 1989) – også selvom Danmark havde flere pladser dengang.
Men så i 1994 stille Lone Dybkjær ind, og hun blev – naturligvis – valgt (og genvalg i 1999).
I 2004 klarede Anders Samuelsen så at blive valgt, også selvom han var noget mindre kendt end Lone, men de år var også gode for DrV generelt.
Men nu er partiet gået tilbage til 1980-niveauet, så man kan altså ikke antage, at man vil få nogen valgt ind, uanset hvem de er.
Så hvis der skal vælges en radikal til Europaparlamentet i 2014, skal der altså helt andre boller på suppen!