Moggyzilla's guide to Modi's visit

(Click to balloon the deficit)


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#piggate - a taxi driver reminisces:

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Cameron's Freudian slip?

"I'll always have to take my parliament with me..."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33584548


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Salami-slicing the franchise

One of David Cameron's ideas is to reduce the number of our representatives in Parliament. I don't want fewer MPs, just better - ones who understand their role. In 26 years of living at the same address, I've never been approached in person by my present MP or his constituency workers to ask for my vote, let alone my opinion on anything.

If anything, I'd like more MPs - look at the ratio of MPs to qualified electors in the nineteenth century. I'm not proposing to go back to the 1831 ratio, but we have drifted from having 1 vote in 858 to 1 in 74,000 - our voices are very small indeed, now.

A brief discussion from the blog of Chris Whiteside, Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Whiteside, Cumbria:

At today's Conservative conference David Cameron promised real action in six key areas to help get Britain back on its feet

[...]

6: Change politics
Reduce the number of MPs, cut Whitehall and quangos by a third, and let taxpayers see where their money is being spent.
_________________________________________________
Comments to the above:

At 8:32 AM, Sackerson said...
6. Isn't reducing the number of MPs another step in the de-democritization of the UK?

At 1:53 AM, Chris Whiteside said...
Sackerson: a 10% reduction in the number of MPs won't have that effect, no.

At 8:38 AM, Rolf said...
Chris: thanks for your courtesy in responding. I have to disagree: a 10% reduction in MPs is an 11% increase in constituency voter numbers and so a corresponding decrease in the value of my individual vote. And where will it end?

KING LEAR
Ourself, by monthly course,
With reservation of an hundred knights, by you to be sustain'd,
Shall our abode make with you by due turns.

GONERIL (Murmurs to Regan) He may enguard his dotage with their powers,
And hold our lives in mercy.
(To King Lear) It is not well! Dismissing half your train, come then to me.

KING LEAR (To Goneril) What, fifty of my followers at a clap!

REGAN I entreat you to bring but five and twenty:
To no more will I give place or notice.

KING LEAR What, must I come to you with five and twenty, Regan? Said you so?

REGAN Speak't again, my lord; no more with me.

KING LEAR (To Goneril) I'll go with thee:
Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, and thou art twice her love.

GONERIL What need you five and twenty

REGAN or ten!

GONERIL or five!

REGAN What need one?

(For those who attended school after the educational reforms of the 1980s, Shakespeare was an English writer and used to be regarded as an essential element of our cultural heritage. Yes, a bit like Carol Ann Duffy, as you say, Blenkinsop Minor; but only a bit.)

No deal

On democracy in Britain

Following the Czech ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, there's excitement over the widened split in the Conservative Party and the possibility of forming a new party or coalition to wrest power from the professional political elite and restore democracy to the people.

I believe this is completely mistaken.

You will find:

(a) the tremendous power of apathy (look how Karl Denninger has gone from making a personal fortune in equities to crying uselessly on the blogwaves about politics);
(b) when (if) you have split a log, it can be split further, until there is nothing but kindling and splinters.

We do not have democracy in this country, as the ancient Athenians understood the term. We have "representative" democracy, which ultimately reduces the population to two classes:

(i) practitioners
(ii) petitioners

The most we can hope for is to influence one of the two great power factions that take turns to rule us. As David Cameron and co. now feel their vulnerability, our maximum influence lies in the threat to his potential vote. By looking as though we may indeed shatter his support into a hundred pieces and so end with a hung Parliament or even another Labour government, we can make him listen, instead of pretending to listen.

But it has to be a simple, single demand, with the promise that the fragments will gather around it. I would suggest simply, a referendum on EU membership per se, "in or out", and purely on the issue of democratic legitimisation.

The arguments pro and con can come later; in fact, must come later: if you hear bletherskites like Ken Clarke (he so reminds me of ex-Bishop David Jenkins), they're always trying to confuse the referendum with the benefits of EU membership, so as to prevent you from asking for the vote.

Going for the split now uses the weapon without uttering the threat, and will be uselessly destructive.

Lone wolves and the herd instinct

When Tony Butler worked as a football radio presenter for BRMB, I heard him comment on the news media: "They hunt in packs." (His Black Country accent, part of his charm - there's a beautiful, musical suite of accents in the Dudley/Wolverhampton area - sounded the word as "hoont".)

It's true even now. British PM Gordon Brown is down, heir-presumptive David Cameron is up. We shall see what Balloon Head makes of the economy when he gets in.

The problem with Brown is that he is, in my (educationally experienced) opinion, mildly autistic. He's the kind that academically dumber, normal kids pick on and wonder why he doesn't fight back. He hasn't helped himself by aiming obsessively at a job which requires quite different skills, which the flashy Blair has in spades; but self-knowledge comes hard for ASD types. Star Trek fans will understand that Scotty could never take Captain Kirk's seat in the Starship Enterprise; but maybe he harboured ambition, all the same. Had Kirk made Scotty his deputy, it could have lit the touchpaper.

The autistic child senses his vulnerability, and will make compromises to be part of the flock. Desperate for acceptance and respect, Brown has paltered with the truth throughout his political career, as commentators on his time as Chancellor have often noted. The brawling pit of the House of Commons has never been the place to nurture an inner-directed, analytical man's integrity.

But the pack is blind, too. Unrestrained, the instinct to group-bully the outsiders, the different ones, would send the human race well back into the Stone Age. And then look at the ones they instinctively, collectively follow. How many years was it before the Press revealed what they must have known all along, that the overjoyed crowd that greeted Blair in Downing Street after the 1997 General Election, was a handpicked mob of Party members? I shall believe in journalistic independence when a new incumbent is promptly probed and criticised.

And what is the pack now saying about Afghanistan? Are they correct? Would it solve our problems to withdraw and concentrate on more achievable aspects of domestic security (some British Army regiments stationed by our ports, airfields and the Channel Tunnel might not go amiss); or would it be a sign of weakness, the crumbling that in ancient times not only ceded the provinces formerly under the Pax Romana, but at last saw Alaric's Visigoths rampage through Rome itself?

David Cameron: a flaw?

There was a moment - a minor incident - and I can't track it down. It was either Matthew Parris or Quentin Letts, watching Tony Blair perform in Parliament some years ago. The PM reacted scornfully to something he appeared to have heard from the Opposition benches, yet when the journalist asked his colleagues in the Press Gallery, nobody had heard that something. It seemed that Blair was simply indulging in brazen invention. A tiny incident, but revealing a character trait that has cost the country dearly.

In this week's Spectator, Charles Moore publishes an SMS text from a businesswoman friend, giving her immediate impressions of meeting David Cameron, and although she is clearly struck by the man's looks and personality, one little sentence jumped out at me: "Doesn't really listen." I think I know what she means, because it gels with how I read his body language every time I see him on the news: he is tightly focused on maintaining his grip on the Protean figure of Success, and will not be distracted. That has its dangers.