UK Election: Let’s Get This Farce Over With!

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 282010
 

One of the tedious things about the UK election system is that we do not know when the election is coming, so before the date of the election is known we have a kind of “phoney election” where the politicians all go head to head being even more critical with each other than they usually are. And of course generating even more hot air than usual.

And then the election gets announced and all the tediousness goes into overdrive.

What for ?

Because of the election system in the UK, there are only a handful of seats (the “marginals”) where the result makes a bit of difference. If like most people you live in a parliamentary seat which is to a greater or lesser degree “safe”, your vote is effectively pointless and all the politicians making noise in your face about how bad the other politicians are, are just wasting of your time.

It seems that there are just 60 seats that are marginal enough to make a difference – 60 out of 646, roughly 9%. So only 9% of the population have a vote that counts! At least if we all vote more or less the way we usually do. Basically the political establishment counts on the majority of us acting like sheep.

The funny thing is that if politicians were honest and actually admitted that the voters in “safe” seats didn’t count, the normally safe seats would be up for grabs. So our electoral system accidentally rewards dishonesty! Kind of puts the expenses scandals into a new light doesn’t it ?

Of course even if you are one of the lucky few living in one of the 60 marginals, the election process takes far too long – who needs many weeks in order to make up their minds ? Most of us already know who we would vote for in the next election, so delaying it just allows the politicians to puff up their feathers.

Just remember we can always ignore the “big three” (Labour, Conservative, ad Liberal) and go for the independents and we might have a chance of getting some proper electoral reform rather than just a bit of tinkering around the edges.

Freebie Holidays for MPs ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 222010
 

The BBC have tonight announced that numerous MPs have been accepting free trips for “research” (funny how the trips are always to fun sunny places though) and not declaring their interest. The MPs will undoubtedly claim that they need to make foreign trips to further their knowledge of far flung corners of the world.

Perhaps.

As someone who works in the public sector, if I were to get a free trip to say Barcelona on a jolly to look at some sort of IT trade fair paid for by an IT supplier, I would be very rightly likely to get sacked when discovered. Why should it be different for MPs ?

Being fair (although I’m not inclined to be fair to MPs at the moment), these MPs may well be genuine in accepting trips to learn more about places such as the Maldives, Cyprus, Gibraltar, and many other places. But it looks bad.

And not declaring the trip, and not declaring an interest when tabling a question has all the smell of rampant corruption.

Given the current climate of distrust in MPs, they should stop accepting these free trips.

Perhaps parliament should establish a yearly budget for research trips and allow MPs to fund trips out of this budget and when it is gone, no more trips to the sun. That at least will be much less likely to smell of corruption.

US Health Care Reform Passes – Good Or Bad News ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 222010
 

So a short while ago the Democrats pushed through their health care reform package through.

Good or bad news ?

Well, it seems that the share prices of health care companies went up at the news. Now this could be a glitch or perhaps the market investors know something we do not. Does this indicate that the reforms are still going to allow companies to make excessive profits – or even that their profits will grow ?

Of course for the uninsured in the US, this will at least mean they get some form of decent health care which is definitely good news.

But if the US does not take any action on the costs of their health care system, they will sooner or later be faced with a bill they cannot pay. The US currently spends twice the amount in terms of GDP per capita that their competitors do. And I doubt that the reform bill is going to make a bit of difference to the cost of health care.

Sexist Jokes

 Humour, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 202010
 

There are five men and a single woman all dangling from a rope, waiting for someone to rescue them. Unfortunately the rope starts to fray and they all decide that someone has to sacrifice themselves to save the others. After some time discussing who should sacrifice themselves, the woman says that as women are used to sacrificing themselves and that men are the better sex, she will sacrifice herself. The men all applaud her, and an hour later the woman is rescued.

Mildly humorous ?

Now try it the other way around :-

There are five women and a single man all dangling from a rope, waiting for someone to rescue them. Unfortunately the rope starts to fray and they all decide that someone has to sacrifice themselves to save the others. After some time discussing who should sacrifice themselves, the man says that as men are used to sacrificing themselves and that women are the better sex, he will sacrifice herself. The women all applaud her, and an hour later the man is rescued.

Still funny ?

It sometimes seems that it is far more acceptable for men to be portrayed as stupid in jokes than women. Is this fair ? If it is wrong to portray women as stupid in jokes, it is wrong to portray men as stupid too; similarly if it is funny to read about stupid men, then it is funny to read about stupid women.

Mephedrone Deaths ??

 Media, Politics  11 Responses »
Mar 162010
 

The media (I’ve picked the BBC but they are not the only ones) have come up with a news story about two teenagers who died after apparently taking mephedrone (apparently a legal recreational drug). The story is horribly slanted towards the point of view of those who want to make mephedrone illegal. That is not to say that the drug is in any way safe, but if you look beyond the headlines, it gets a little more interesting.

The BBC (see the above) reported that the two teenagers had been drinking until the early hours before taking mephedrone, before (in a TV news report) also taking methadone. And then died. According to the report “post-mortems are being carried out”, but despite the fact that the cause of death is unknown (otherwise why bother with a post-mortem ?), the headlines imply that the cause of death was mephedrone.

Why? It is perfectly possible to die from an overdose of alcohol alone, and when you combine it with another two recreational drugs, well who is to say which one is responsible ? Taking one recreational drug increases the risk of something nasty happening; taking three does not just increase the risk additionally – there may be poor interactions between the drugs to dramatically increase the risk.

It may be that mephedrone killed these two teenagers. It may be that alcohol killed these two teenagers. It may even be that methadone killed these two teenagers.

Or it could be the combination of two or even all three drugs was particularly dangerous and killed these two teenagers.

Whilst mephedrone itself may be harmful and there may well be a case for making it a controlled substance, inaccurate reporting such as this does not help anyone make an informed decision about the risks of this “legal high”.

This post originally referred to the drug in question as “methadrone” – a common mistake amongst those who have heard the drug’s name rather than seen it written; the correct spelling is “mephedrone”.

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