Election mess

Electoral Calculus is currently predicting a 40-seat majority for Labour in the 2015 General Election:

Layout slightly modified; page accessed 04 August 2014

You'll see from the above that despite polling nearly twice as many voting intentions as either the LibDems or "minority" parties, and nearly five times that of the "nationalists", UKIP stands to get no seat whatever. But if votes translated into seats in an exactly proportional way, then on this showing UKIP would be on course for 88 Parliamentary seats out of the total of 650.

Instead, the boundary system and unevenness of political support result in a heavy bias towards the two major parties and against all others. This is how the above prediction looks in terms of votes to seats gained:

 

EC's analysis of UKIP's chances suggest that the party needs to poll 16% of the national vote to get a single seat, and wouldn't get a fair ratio of votes to seats until it got somewhere around 30%.

Even then, because of the first-past-the-post arrangement, if UKIP gained votes solely at the expense of the Conservatives, the net effect (up to about a 24% vote for UKIP) would be to increase Labour's majority:

http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/Analysis_UKIP.html

This certainly looks like an incentive for Cameron's Chameleons to talk to UKIP, or at least temporarily take on some of the latter's coloration in the hope that you can fool enough people for long enough.

In any case, DC can look forward to a wealth-multiplying post-Parliamentary life of directorships, consultancies and highly-paid dinner talks, just like his hero Blair, for whom he led the Opposition applause* in Parliament when the latter abandoned his constituents to do something more lucrative (and above all, attention-getting):



So really, why should Cameron care anyway? And as the saying goes, he who cares least has all the power.

Where does this power come from? Last week's Spectator leader drew a really thought-provoking contrast between the UN and the EC:

"There is a subtle but enormous difference between the European Convention on Human Rights, on which the Strasbourg court bases its decisions, and on the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states:

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.

 The former states only that:

The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature. 

In other words, the European Convention respects the right to free and fair elections but does not demand that those elected respect the wishes of those who elected them, nor that a country’s legislature should be in ultimate charge."

How will you vote in the General Opinion Poll of 2015?

But maybe, even after the debacle of the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, electoral reform is still possible, particularly in the event that Scotland decides to vote this autumn for secession from the Union. Already the Scottish Parliament has a much fairer system; perhaps the Scots will once again show us the way.

_________________

* I should like to know the names of those few who sat on their hands - they would be part of my first Cabinet if I were "in power".


READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

A dumb question

 

 



And what will happen next?

READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Ayn Rand quote of the day

(Pic source)

 

"A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures."

- http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/trader_principle.html

Discuss, with reference to the banking system.


READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Iceland - top country

The Global Peace Index for 2014 ranks Iceland first (htp: Tony Blair Faith Foundation). Here are the top ten:

Source

 

Iceland's come a long way since the time of the Sagas:

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

But then, so has everyone else.

 

The UK is 47th, overall. You can look at our country in detail according to various indices for 2012, here - and the US is here (Vermont looks good).

 

READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

The challenge of contentment

The good life in ancient China was to be free from work, sit quietly in a house in the mountains, drink wine and contemplate the moon, in the company of your friends and concubine.

Pic source

Thanks to cable TV, there is no need to go elsewhere. Whether on holiday or even unemployed, we can stay at home and have drink, pals, sex and watch nature programmes.

The trick is to become the kind of person that can simply enjoy it.


READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Children's games

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Games_(Bruegel)#

In Philip K Dick's "Minority Report" anthology there is a short story called "War Game" (1959). A foreign power is subverting capitalist culture with a Monopoly-type board game in which the objective is not to get rich but actually to get rid of money and property. In the story, the children love it.

We were given similar messages in the Sixties, ironically by people who were or became millionaires - think of Pink Floyd's song "Money", the film "The Magic Christian" and so on. And as late as 1979, Pink Floyd were telling us "we don't need no education", though all its members were at technical colleges when they met each other. It is as though the long march through the institutions, having installed many bright grammar-school-educated Boomers in key positions, was to end with the systematic discouragement of similar competition from the next generation.

Last week, Julie Burchill wrote an excellent piece for The Spectator ("Meet the new faces of nepotism") on how the ladders of opportunity for the aspirant working-class have rattled up the walls. What matters now (again) is having the right parents:

"Yes, you chirpy Cockneys and you stoic Northerners, not only have the jobs your parents did — making things — disappeared, but the cushy jobs that a blessed few of you once might have escaped the surly bonds of the proletariat by nabbing — modelling, acting, writing for newspapers — have now been colonised by the children of the rich/famous/well-connected, too."

Now, the - well, now they are the underclass, thanks to GATT and Schengen, listen to hard-nosed rappers and play GTA5 with their primary age kids. I do wonder what this diet of violent games is doing to their imaginations and mental model of what society is really like. Perhaps the next revolution won't be students having self-righteous fun.


READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Overpopulation and the New World Order

(Pic source)

If the above graph was of the stock market, where would you expect the line to go?

Meanwhile, as the world's population increases and we are crushed closer together, our social and political arrangements move towards tighter control, says JimQ on Washington's Blog, developing the ideas of Aldous Huxley, who "foretold all the indicators of a world descending into totalitarianism due to overpopulation, propaganda, brainwashing, consumerism, and dumbing down of a distracted populace in his 1958 reassessment of his 1931 novel Brave New World."

In the animal world, a population "correction" can be devastating:

(Source)

But that is because animals lack foresight and management. In the event of global social breakdown - civil war or anarchy - such a disaster might happen to us.

The UN offers a range of projections:

(Source)

 

Assuming instead that we have governments that aren't cruel, mad or seriously incompetent, then we have to agree to being managed with a view to the long term. But the twentieth century shows us that we cannot take that assumption for granted.

And a heavily interconnected world is more vulnerable, in all sorts of ways. Rulers seem to think that centralisation is the answer, whereas diversification and dispersion may offer the best chance for species survival.


READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.