UK Election 2010 – The Banana Republic

 Politics  No Responses »
May 062010
 

So the election is over bar the counting.

What is clear so far, is that this election has been a complete farce. So far reports have come in from a number of constituencies alleging :-

  • Large queues of people wanting to vote locked out at 22:00 (which might be legal).
  • Large numbers of people turned away because the polling station lists were out of date.
  • People allowed to vote after 22:00 if they happened to be inside the polling station at 22:00 (which might be illegal).
  • Inadequate resources at some polling stations leading to some of the conditions above.

This election has been interesting in one respect – the amount of discussion on the inadequacies of our current voting system in that it allows governments to be formed with a total share of the vote as low as about 35%. What we now see is that the actual mechanics of organising an election need to be thoroughly reviewed.

One of the most obvious changes to make is to move the polling day from Thursday to a Saturday or Sunday. Whilst people do work at the weekend, the majority do not which allows for a more even level of traffic unlike the current position where those who work are effectively forced to vote before they go to work, after they finish work, or in rare circumstances vote at lunchtime.

I have commented before (before I started blogging but well after I started ranting) about how there is no real reason for voting on a Thursday except for the suspicion that it is convenient for the politicians, and that it is a historical legacy of a time when sneakily trying to stop the working people from voting may have been popular.

Going back to those who have been denied their right to vote; the obvious solution is for those MPs who have been elected in the relevant constituencies to resign their seats in a month or so, and to have another election. Even where the numbers denied their vote would not make a difference to the current result.

The Nazi Holocaust: The Other Victims

 History, Politics  No Responses »
May 032010
 

Most of us know that Hitler’s Nazi’s exterminated approximately 6 million Jews in what became known as the Holocaust (or sometimes preferred amongst the Jews, Shoah). However the total killed by the Nazis in methods and reasons similar to the Jews total around 11-17 million. Let us take that lower figure of 11 million. If you remove the total of Jews from it, you are still left with a total of 5 million men, women, and children which enough to deserve the word “holocaust” no matter who the victims are.

Some argue that the Jews are special because they were the only ethnic group to be targeted by the Nazis. I am not sure why being part of a particular ethnic group makes state murder any worse than being murdered for some other reason, but it’s also wrong. In addition to the Jews, the Nazis also targeted the Romani population, and Slavs. Nazis finally decided that the Romani be placed “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.”.

The Nazi attitude towards the Slavic population of the countries they invaded was more or less “we’ll deal with them later” although many hundred of thousands were killed.

Although we are concentrating on the genocide where the Nazi’s attempted the complete “ethnic cleansing” of populations, the other victims need remembering – the mentally ill, the disabled, the homosexuals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Left. Plus of course any others the Nazi regime might find “inconvenient”.

The Porajmos (the Romani “shoah”) killed somewhere between 200,000 and 700,000. Doesn’t sounds so many in comparison does it ? Perhaps not, but a single victim of government killing is one too many. And when you start to look at the effect on the ethnic population as a whole something different begins to emerge.

Country Jewish Casualties (%) Romani Casualties (%)
Poland 90 26
Croatia – 98
Germany & Austria 90 75 (Germany), 58 (Austria)
Estonia – 100
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania 90 100
Luxembourg 20 100

It is perhaps easy to get carried away by statistics – especially when talking about genocide. The numbers are incomprehensible, and the percentages just as incomprehensible. It is worth noting that despite the enthusiasm with which Nazi’s undertook the “Final Solution”, nowhere did they fully succeed in exterminating Jews; whereas they accomplished a “successful” genocide of the Romani in 5 separate countries.

As to why we hear so much about the Jewish Shoah – and quite rightly as this blog entry is not about attacking those commemorating the Jewish victims of the holocaust – and so little about the other victims, I really do not know. In the case of the Romani, part of the reason is that in the countries where they survived, they were still subject to official repression including forced sterilisation.

And of course there is a secrecy tradition amongst the Romani that stops them from telling their story made worse by many of the things that happened to them being taboo. But is that any reason for us to forget them ?

Perhaps it is simply film that is the answer. I have seen numerous films and documentaries covering the Holocaust and most simply ignore the “other” victims or at best mention them almost as an aside. We need to redress this balance and cover all of the victims of the holocaust.

Gordon Brown and the “Bigoted Woman”

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Apr 282010
 

So this lunchtime, Gordon Brown was being interrogated by an ordinary voter. Fair enough. But later after getting into his car without checking his microphone was off, was heard calling her a “bigoted woman”. He has already apologised, but the damage has allegedly been done.

It is certainly the kind of mistake no politician would like to make – an easy boost to all the others.

It has been seized on as an example of how Gordon Brown has no sympathy with the interests of common people. Possibly.

But it could also be his way of dealing with stress – to insult someone in “private” (and he thought it was in private) is a way of letting off stream. Anyone who has worked in IT will undoubtedly be familiar with the strategy. And a politician meeting with a member of the public who is asking aggressive and unscripted questions is likely to get a little stressed.

And who is to say he is unique in this ? Gordon Brown has been caught out by making two mistakes – expressing his feelings out loud, and not making sure he was really in private. Other politicians have so far in this election have not been caught out, but who is to say that they do not do exactly the same ?

Looking back a day later, and what now ? I would say that nobody is really interested in Brown’s “disastrous” mistake – despite all the fuss in the media. Is his mistake more an opportunity for the media to make a fuss ? The subject hasn’t come up in conversation and nobody has encountered this page through a search. Perhaps to the ordinary voters out there, there are other factors far more interesting than whether Gordon Brown sometimes is a little less than diplomatic in private (or what he thought was private) ?

Are Vegetarians Allowed To Eat Meat ?

 Politics  1 Response »
Apr 262010
 

Goo … sorry I meant searching for some information on the mythical vegetarian saveloy, I came across a mildly interesting discussion revolving around whether vegetarians were allowed to eat meat-based sausages (and saveloys). The suggestion was that of course vegetarians are allowed to eat meat products because it is a personal choice.

Rubbish.

First of all, the choice of becoming a vegetarian may be made for religious or health reasons. The relevant discussion ignored the possibility of being vegetarian for such reasons and specifically mentioned Muslims not being allowed to eat non-Halal meat. Of course becoming a Muslim or one of the “must not eat meat” religions (such as Buddhism) is a matter of choice, but once made you are not allowed by religious “law” to eat what is prohibited.

But it goes further than that. The word “allow” implies an external authority which dictates what is and what is not allowed. Indeed there are such authorities, such as your neighbourhood government’s laws. But this ignores that you can be your own authority – I can allow myself to write blog entries in the evening and prohibit writing them at work. It does not matter that nobody enforces these restrictions other than myself.

Indeed, whatever the authorities may say, almost all restrictions they impose are in the end “enforced” by the individual – it does not matter who says that killing people is wrong, it is my decision whether I kill somebody or not.

Nobody has told me that I cannot eat meat; it is a decision that I have come to – that I am not allowed to eat meat.

Trivialising vegetarianism by saying that vegetarians are allowed to eat meat is extremely insulting to those vegetarians who are very devoted to the cause. If people say that vegetarians are allowed to eat meat, it implies that vegetarians are just being awkward in refusing to eat meat (we’re not) and that (for example) it’s perfectly ok to feed vegetarians meat as a joke.

Not the sort of joke any vegetarian would find funny.

Hill Conquered

Tactical Voting Is Smart Voting

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 262010
 

Under our current voting system, voting for the candidate who represents the party you wan in government is not necessarily a smart way to vote. In some cases, choosing the party you want in government is throwing you vote away on a party that is very unlikely to win in your constituency. For instance in the constituency that I live in – Portsmouth South – anyone who votes Labour is pretty much throwing their vote away. The effective choices are between Liberal, or Conservative candidates.

With a transferable vote system (which of course we do not have), a Labour supporter (which isn’t me!) may well vote Labour as their first choice, and Liberal as their second choice to reduce the possibility that the Conservative candidate would win. Similarly, a Tory supporter in Scotland may choose Liberal as their second choice to reduce the chance of a Labour candidate winning.

Under our current system, it is probably better to choose between the two (or rarely three) leading candidates, picking the one that you least dislike the least. Whilst it may go against the grain to vote for somebody other than your preferred candidate, it does mean that your vote against the candidate you dislike the least is more effective.

Smart tactical voting is more complex than this of course – it involves checking the details of your constituency (you may also want to check the Voting Power details for your constituency, and the relevant Wikipedia article), and working out from the previous election results which two (or three if the third is within about 5% of the second placed candidate) and working out which one you would least dislike.

The Tories are warning that a vote for the Liberal party is voting to keep Gordon Brown in power – which is effectively saying that smart voting can accomplish something, but obviously slanted towards favouring voting Tory wherever you are. Whilst no party will encourage tactical voting, it can be for the benefit of whatever party you would prefer.

Vote tactically – it’s the smart thing to do!

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