Democracy??

I'm sure Churchill said something about democracy being a pretty poor system of government - until you considered the alternatives. It's true enough that any form of government has its faults, and as far as our system is concerned, we are seeing one of them in all its naked glory at the moment. Governments are elected to govern on behalf of the whole country, and yet, despite the clearest indications that the country as a whole don't like this Government, and would prefer to see them out, party political interests have taken over. A Labour spokesman on television the other day sort of gave the game away with a Freudian slip when he said "...what our people want us to do is sort out the economy, clear up the expenses mess etc...". I'm afraid I gave in to my baser instincts and shouted at the TV "Never mind your people, what about the people!" Let's be clear, what we have at the moment is not a case of the Government clinging to power - it is the Labour Party clinging to power. And just to put the record straight, this is not a partisan rant - had this blog been running then, I would have been making a similar point about the Major government in its final months.

Formula 1

So what are we to make of the current F1 season? Things have been really turned upside down haven't they? I would imagine Honda are scratching their heads and wondering why with all their resources they couldn't do what Ross Brawn has done on a shoestring by comparison. And I would think that David Coulthard must be feeling pretty miffed that after several seasons flogging his way round in an underperforming Red Bull car, he has no sooner retired than the car has taken on a new lease of life, and is now up there at the front of the grid. What this season demonstrates - if indeed it needed demonstrating - is that it is the car rather than the driver which matters. Last season's big names are all struggling and a new set of faces are making the headlines. Does the apparent stranglehold of Brawn/Button make the whole thing boring? Not for me it doesn't although I can understand why it might do for other people. Can't imagine that Ferrari and McLaren will not pull something out of the hat before the season is over. No, for me, this is exciting.

Take a good look

I don't know whether our mainstream politicians are being duplicitous or merely disingenuous, but this idea that they're putting forward that those who have voted for the BNP don't really believe in what they stand for is hogwash. Come with me and I will introduce you to plenty of people who not only agree solidly with the BNP's ideals, but who have thought that way for years - long before the BNP, in its current incarnation, came into being. You can label these people as extremists, and loathe their views, but to simply ignore them or treat them as non-thinking followers of a fad dangerously underestimates what's actually going on.

P.R. (2)

The basic idea behind proportional representation is simple enough - the number of MPs a party has should reflect the number of votes they got. At the last election (2005) Labour got 36% of the votes cast, the Conservatives 33% and the LibDems 22%. Under ideal PR conditions then Labour should have got 36% of the MPs, Conservatives 33% and LibDems 22% - in reality Labour ended up with 55%, Conservatives with 30% and LibDems with 10%. You can see why the LibDems are so in favour of PR! We've looked at how ATV works, and seen that this is not really PR, just an arguably fairer method of First Past the Post (FPTP). Indeed PR cannot really work with any system which produces just one MP per constituency - what we need to have is bigger constituencies returning several MPs, and then we can consider (gulp!) STV - the Single Transferable Vote - which is far from easy to explain, but I'll try next time.

D Day...

...6th June, right? Everybody knows that. Well, maybe, maybe not. D Day was the code name for the day scheduled for Operation Overlord (the landings in France) to start, and this was meant to be June 5th 1944. This was the date everybody was working towards. In the event, bad weather meant the landings had to be postponed for 24 hours. So the actual invasion started on June 6th, but it can be argued that D Day was always June 5th. Fascinating Fact No. 547...

Doh!

I have to admit I was a bit taken aback by the size of the ballot paper when I went to vote in the European Parliament election yesterday. Apparently UKIP, who appear last on the ballot paper - it's done in alphabetical order - have complained that some people who wished to vote for them have been unable to find where to put their cross because the polling station staff fold the form before they give it to you (so that when you have finished and refold it, it will fit into the slot in the ballot box) and it would seem some voters don't realise they have to fully unfold it to see all the candidate parties. I'm not sure what this says about the intelligence of some would-be UKIP voters...

Ha ha

Another one from my retirement magazine -

A passenger in a taxi tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him something. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus. drove up over the curb and stopped just inches short of a large plate-glass shop window. For a few moments, everything was silent in the cab, and then the driver said "Please don't ever do that again - you scared the living daylights out of me!". The passenger, who was also frightened, apologised and said that he didn't realise that a tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much. The driver replied "I'm sorry, it's really not your fault at all. Today is my first day driving a cab. For the last 25 years, I've been driving a hearse".

Should we care?

Apparently the cuckoo is becoming a rarer sight or sound in these islands. Various reasons have been put forward for this - global warming (obviously!) and pesticides and other changes in farming practices heading the list. This may be a matter of concern to the RSPB and bird watchers generally, but should the rest of us be concerned? It is not, after all, a native bird - it migrates here from Africa for the summer and then returns, and as is well known, it has some rather nasty social habits. If you could ask the opinion of other birds, I imagine their reaction would be "good riddance!"

R.I.P.

Danny La Rue - what a trooper!

Couldn't make it up!

We haven't had one of these for some time, but here's a worthy addition. Workmen were painting new double yellow lines on a street in London. There was a (legally) parked car in the way. No, they didn't paint round it - they carefully moved it (it was a little car), painted their lines and then replaced it. A little time later, along comes a traffic warden and arranges for the car (now of course on double yellows) to be towed away! This would be bad enough, but then it apparently took the owner of the car several weeks and the intervention of the local MP to persuade the council that they had done anything wrong, and to write off the fine and return the car. A classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing - or even that the left hand exists! One would like to think that lessons have been learned - but I doubt it.