Mike Meredith

The Death of The Tory Party

Jun 302024

… is excessively exaggerated.

Sure, it looks likely that the Tories will lose the election and quite possibly at a scale even worse than the 1906 election. Much as I like the idea, the likelihood of them being forced into third place is perhaps rather remote.

The key to the Tories’ failure is their Brexit-induced lurch to the right – both in terms of economic policy and in terms of “cultural” policy. They’re not only lurched to the right, but looking at their lack of popularity have doubled-down and gone further right.

The problem (without regard to the stupid viciousness of right-wing policies) is that not every Tory voter is happy with the far right lurch. The Tory supporters always used to be a collection of folk varying from those just right of centre all the way through to goose-stepping full on fascists. The ones closer to the centre than fitting in with the crew with the smart uniform fetish, are currently homeless.

This can best be seen amongst the young where support amongst the 18-24 aged folk is as low as 1%.

The funny thing is that the worse their defeat, the more likely they are to start fixing things. They actually need to be forced into third place. Anything less and they will likely carry on the same path they’re currently on. Which in the end may very well result in them being placed third at the next election; or worse (especially if proportional representation is brought in).

And even if the result is bad enough to spend a long time reconsidering and rebuilding, if they let the extreme right-wingers (of whatever kind) and corrupt spivs retain control, then they won’t get anywhere near power ever again.

No, they need to return to the centre. Rebuild support amongst traditional conservatives who amongst other things respect honesty and probity. Those conservatives (lower case “c”) will go somewhere – either a reconstituted Tory party or a new party.

But death? Well it is possible, but there have been previous incidents of parties being reduced to what the Tories will likely be reduced to – the Liberal party for example. Whilst the modern Liberal Democrats isn’t the same party as the old Liberals, the later did last into the modern era (well, the 1980s).

So if anything being beaten into third place next week, may actually be the best outcome for the Tory party. At least if they mend their ways.

Man v. Bear

General No Responses »

Jun 112024

Given the amount of noise and flames that have arisen over this debate, it seems kind of unnecessary to describe the debate, but might as well. If you were a woman, what would you rather encounter whilst lost in the woods? A man or a bear?

If you ignore all the emotions involved and think about it logically with statistics, you may well come down on the side of picking a man.

There’s a study “out there” which shows that for every 1,000 women, “only” 4.7 will be attacked (and it’s 9.5 for men) – see https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vvcs9310.pdf. There is plenty of evidence that women are far more likely to be attacked by a man they know rather than a stranger – See :-

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/statistics-sexual-violence/. 1 in 7 rapes against women are carried out by a stranger (it’s stated as 6 in 7 rapes are carried out by someone a woman knows).
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023. Of murdered women, just 6% were murdered by strangers (as opposed to nearly 20% for male victims).

We are very poor at judging risk – we (women and older men – which I’m rapidly becoming) tend to stay in at night not because we’re likely to be attacked but because we fear being attacked. And fear doesn’t respect logic.

So women widely choosing the bear shows :-

On average women are no better at judging risk than men. Well that’s a no-brainer – people are still people.
Women fear strange men. It’s irrelevant if statistically they’re safer walking around late at night than sat in their own home, they still fear men.
To a greater or lesser extent (and perhaps unintentionally), they may be picking the bear to make the point about men doing something about violence against women.

It’s a great way of making that last point; perhaps even better for being statistically the wrong choice. We should be doing more to stop violence against women.

But I would go on to say we shouldn’t stop there; we should be doing more to stop violence against all people. And indeed any sentient creatures.

Ubuntu Server: The Interactive Installer Sucks Big

Computing, Linux No Responses »

Jun 092024

So on Friday my workstation blew up … which goes some way to explaining why this server has been down for much of the weekend (it’s a container on my workstation). The operating system boot drive magically went read-only – which as some of us know is a clear indication that an SSD is on its last legs. Or a few steps beyond.

So I re-installed on a new drive, and for various reasons I chose Ubuntu Server again. An upgrade which made things a bit more interesting.

Now whilst I know that most servers are installed in ways other than interactively, but the interactive experience is bloody awful.

For a start, if the text console is a ridiculous large size – perhaps $COLUMNS is greater than 160, then change the bloody console font. It may be a rare case that someone is installing Ubuntu server on a screen where the resolution is so high, but it can (and in my case does) make the text far too small to read.

And secondly, do something about the logical volume manager creation; I wanted to create a logical volume with a name other than “ubuntu-vg” (the old drive was still readable and creating two VGs with the same name struck me as a dumb idea). The default method didn’t seem to offer a way to rename the VG; the custom method kept giving me an installation error.

The later could possibly be my mistake – I was reduced to using a magnifying glass.

And yes everything is working now.

But sort out that installer!

The Tory Austerity Fetish

Politics No Responses »

May 262024

Way back when the Tories got into power (2010), they had a bit of a cheer-a-thon when austerity measures were announced. I said at the time that even if austerity was necessary (and it probably wasn’t), it wasn’t the sort of thing to cheer about.

We’ve since seen the effect of their austerity fetish taking effect on our public services – NHS waiting lists grown out of all proportion, trouble filling public-sector vacancies, pot-holes in the roads, libraries closed left, right, and centre.

Even if it were necessary, the initial cheering tells us everything we need to know about Tories. They don’t give a damn about most of us – they would rather cut taxes for their rich pals.

So remember when you vote – the Tories aren’t on your side.

A long road to the gatehouse — Dover Castle Gateway

Why Bother Voting?

Politics No Responses »

May 252024

Voting doesn’t change much of anything, so why bother? Particularly with our present voting system (FPTP) which tends to favour establishment parties. Which is particularly off-putting to those voters who want to see real change. Which probably consists of mostly young voters plus a few weird old farts (like me).

And we need real change :-

We need to reform the voting system away from a system that effectively disenfranchises the majority who don’t vote for the incumbent MP in a constituency. If you look past the “sexy news” in an election where seats change from Tory to Labour or Labour to Tory, a massive number of seats stay passively with the incumbent. That’s not good. Particularly when the majority of voters went for someone other than the winner – if you look at Wycombe, in 2019 the Tory winner had 45% of the vote; the others added together came to 55% of the vote.
Taxation needs to be reformed to be fairer and less evenly distributed (i.e. the rich should pay more – and I’m one of the “rich” relatively speaking as I’m a higher rate tax payer). Close loopholes that allow the rich and companies to avoid paying their fair share of tax.
…

Are any of the mainstream parties likely to do these reforms (although I’ve only listed 2, I could go on for so long that both of us would fall asleep)? Of course not. Labour might tinker with tax a bit and they might have a look at voting reform.

But which one is the worse?

Vote against the one that’ll probably be the worse. Is that negative? Sure it is, but with the present system it’s the best we can manage.

And voting only takes 30m. So vote!

Tactical Voting

If you are currently in a constituency represented by a bloated Tory, who do you vote for to get them out?

You could just pick the party that you prefer, but if you vote Labour and all the pissed off Tory voters all vote LibDem, you may well find that the Tories win by default. A tactical vote may be of more use.

Visit https://stopthetories.vote in a week or two to see where your vote would most usefully be dropped to get the Tories out. Be very, very wary of other sites; not all will be using the best analytics to come up with a prediction. Some may even be stealth Tory “tactical voting” sites intended to sabotage tactical voting.

Don’t feel good about tactical voting rather than voting for your preferred party? Well, don’t. Just bear in mind that you could end up with a Tory as a result.

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