Liberal Democrats Swing Both Ways

It is a tough choice for Nick Clegg. He does not want to be the leader that failed to take that “once in a generation” chance to deliver a fairer voting system. So who is he going to choose as the father of his PR baby?

Firstly, there is the younger, stronger and more legitimate choice, the favourite of his family in the country. But David C is a reluctant father being unconvinced that a PR baby is affordable at this time. The future with David looks to be full of arguments and broken promises. Not a basis for a stable relationship.

And then there is older, more experienced and reliable but unloved Gordon, disliked by friends and family, but a much more willing father and someone with whom he shares commons ideas and values but no respect. And no spark of romance there.

So Nick goes out on separate dates with both David and Gordon. Neither takes his fancy. This is hard going. But Nick’s biological clock is ticking, and he must decide by Friday as that is market(s) day. If only there was a younger version of Gordon that his family and friends liked…

Gordon Makes Way For A Younger Man (or Woman)

Gordon does not want David to have the PR baby with Nick. He has recognized his lack of legitimacy so he has decided to step aside for good of his family. He has some younger siblings who can fulfil this marriage of convenience. There is Ed B, David M, Ed M, Alan J, Jon C and Harriet H. Surely one of these can woo Nick and those in the country.

Gordon wants to play the role of best man and make sure the wedding arrangements and the first trimester of the maternity proceed smoothly.

Now Nick has a way forward, he feels a tingle and he hopes it is not the MMPs but a STV

It’s A CONDEM Party as Cameron Gets a Clegg Over

In an admirable demonstration of democracy at work the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties put together a coalition agreement in around 5 days that allowed a successful transfer of power from the old regime to the new. The chemistry between the leaders and indeed the leadership teams with plenty of pragmatism has meant that there was enough goodwill to stitch together an broad agreement that allows the coalition government a practical working majority with the price (sic prize) being a referendum of Proportional Representation (in the weak form the Alternative Vote) in 12 months time.

You are Crazy Not To Vote Tactically

I want to spell this out. With the ‘first past the post’ voting system, if you don’t vote for the winning candidate, you may as well have not voted at all.

Think about it. A vote for losing candidate results in no representation whatsoever. Nothing. Nada. Nada di Nada. Zilch.

If your preferred candidate does not win, you may as well have stayed at home.

I will just say that again as I only really realised this in the past few days.

If you don’t vote for the winning candidate, you may as well not have voted at all!

How democratic is that?

Put another way, UK democracy is a post code lottery: your vote only counts in certain post code areas.

In a PR system your vote would count for something but not in the UK election 2010.

That’s why we need real change. (I think I might copyright that phrase.. Mmm oops too late)

Making Your Vote Count

So the only rational approach is to either:

1. vote for the party that is most likely to win in your constituency but only if you really want them to win; or
2. vote for the party that has a reasonable chance of winning in your constituency but if you really really want them to win; or
3. vote for the least offensive party that has a reasonable chance of beating the party that you most don’t want to win in your constituency

Making The Best Choice

Here in Central Devon, it is a two horse race between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

Applying the rules above, I want my vote to have some chance of counting, i.e. not being a wasted vote, so I must choose between these two parties.

The Conservatives lack competence on the economy, and may take the UK into a double dip recession, and hence are too big a risk to consider, so I will vote for the Liberal Democrats. Also Nick Clegg seemed the most honest of the three main parties’ leaders, and with Vince Cable as a competent Chancellor I am comfortable with my decision.

The other advantage of voting Liberal Democrat is that if they have significant leverage they may be able to change the constitution so we will have a PR system in the next election.

Then everyone will be able to vote for the party that best represents their views. And have that vote count. That would be no bad thing.

Okay, I thought Nick Griffin would perform well on Question Time, under the normal round of day to day politics. But no, he tanked. The questions were all race-related and he obviously squirmed painfully under scrutiny of David Dimbleby, the chariman, the other guests and the audience.

One almost felt sorry for him, there was Nick, trying to make the British Nationalist Party (BNP) sound reasonable, having dragged it back from its Nazi past. But nobody on the panel or the audience was buying the idea that the BNP are no longer a racist party.

Step one in that direction is changing their constitution to allow non white members.

On Question Time tonight I would like Nick Griffin to comment on proposals in the BNP Policy Statement on Multi-culturism.

It reads:

Different groups can live side-by-side and at peace for generations. They can even enjoy each other’s cultures, but they must stick to their own, or ‘diversity’ will be but a short-lived stepping stone to nothingness.

…we also intend to develop a model of ‘multiculturalism’ which combines peaceful co-existence with the maintenance of cultural and biological separation. In parts of the world where mass immigration is irreversible, the only thing that can prevent human diversity vanishing into an antheap of rootless coffee-coloured consumerism is the celebration of difference.

Seems like the BNP want to end mixed race relationships. And there was me thinking that love making was a great way to celebrate difference.

Don’t they realize is that all humans are an end product of 200,000 years of evolution and it is 70,000 years since the black-later-to-become-white lot left East Africa and headed north to Europe and east to Asia.

What is so special about the gene pool that emerged out of caves in the South of France after the last Ice Age that makes it worth preserving?

This evening, Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, will appear on TV on Question Time. This will be a further step in his increasingly successful attempts to improve the electability of his party. Mr Griffin has been trying to rebrand the party – from a racist one to an ethnic one. Instead of the goal of creating a whites only UK it is now all about the preservation of an ethnic group and culture that arrived in the United Kingdom after the last Ice Age.

Is the BNP Still A Racist Party?

The BNP have had abhorrent views and practices in the past. Mr Griffin, once convicted of race hate crimes in 1998, says that he and the party have changed. Certainly, their press statements, and their propaganda on the more accessible pages on the website take a different tone – it is no longer talk of ‘blood in the streets’ but instead of immigration controls and voluntary repatriation.

Out With Swastika, In With The Spitfire

Also the imagery and symbols have changed, gone is the swastika, the admiration of Adolf Hitler and it replaced by Winston Churchill and the Spitfire, much to the recent chagrin of a group of British generals, Major-General Sir Patrick Cordingley, former Chief of Defence Staff Lord Guthrie, General Sir Mike Jackson and General Sir Richard Dannatt.

Why a Political Paedophile, not a Political Leper?

Racism is more akin to paedophilia than leprosy. While all these groups tend to cling to their own, preferring isolation, conformity and a mono-culture, the motives of racists are more similar to those of paedophiles than lepers: the lack of compassion or consideration for those they hurt, the absence of morality, and an illogical self-justification of their behaviour. Also racism and paedophilia involve free will and are both more of life-style choices while leprosy clearly isn’t.

Unfair Press Treatment

Are Nick Griffin and the BNP members being treated by the press and the other political parties like paedophiles? Is electing Nick Griffin as your Member Of Parliament like appointing a convicted paedophile as your local school’s headmaster? The press clearly believe that the BNP have not changed and cannot be trusted. Once a sinner, always a sinner.

Freedom Of Speech Should Prevail

We are in a free country that believes in free speech. Everyone has the right to express their views providing there is no incitement or encouragement to commit a crime. So providing no law is broken then he has the right to speak. And the BBC have been kind enough to give him a platform to speak from.

A Polished Performance on Question Time

Mr Griffin has polished his skills and knows exactly where the line is drawn. He will no doubt give a strong performance airing mostly sensible policies on local government, defence, education, health, finance, social services and industry. On immigration he will have a strong policy. He will come across a fairly normal, right of centre, politician, that gets a bad press. The likely outcome is that support for him and his Party will increase.

Questions for Nick Griffin That You Won’t Hear On Question Time

Like an ex-paedophile in an interview for the headmaster role he won’t say why he really wants the job. Nick Griffin is not going to be completely honest about what motivates him and what he would do if he was elected. He will not answer questions on the strategic points of BNP policy which are all about strengthening white/Ice Age descendant ethnicity:

1. How would you reduce the percentage of the civically British non whites (a.k.a. non descendants of the peoples that populated the UK after the last Ice Age) from the current 7% to the target of 2%?
2. Why would do you want to remove the right to political representation from the civically British non whites?
3. How would you remove the property rights of non whites? What impact do you think this would have on international relations and and inward investment?
4. How would you test people to find out if they fall into your preferred ethnic group? How would you establish what the gene pool of the Ice Age ethnic group was? What percentage match with the target gene pool would suffice? 50%? 60%? 70%? 80%? 90%?
5. How would you deal with the children of mixed ethnic group marriages? Potentially a 70% white male marries an only 10% white female and has 40% white children, would the children lose rights of inheritance and potentially be deported? Where would you deported them to? Or would mixed ethnic marriages be made illegal?
6. How do your goals to control the United Kingdom’s ethnic make-up differ from those of Nazi Germany in the 1930′s and 1940s?
7. How far are you willing to go to achieve those goals?

I think the above questions would give Mr Griffin the opportunity to show the public what motivates him, what his vision for the UK is, and how he would achieve it.

Tories put shareholders interest before the public’s

Kenneth Clarke scored an own goal by criticising the government in allowing the Lloyds bank takeover of HBOS. What he is forgetting is that with Friday’s declared losses the takeover has saved the taxpayer almost £11 billion (at least in the short term) at the expense of Lloyds shareholders. So what the Tories seem to be doing again is putting shareholders interests ahead of those of general taxpayers.

What’s more he would have complained bitterly if the Government had blocked the deal on the principle of “too much state intervention” and also as it would have meant that HBOS would have been nationalised.

Lloyds shareholders jumped at the opportunity to takeover HBOS

Lloyds’s management went into this deal with there eyes wide open, with the goal of acquiring a large market share of British Banking with the focus mainly of what is a reasonable sound Halifax mortgage portfolio. They must take full responsibility for the lack of due diligence in failing to assess the amount of toxic debt in the corporate division, £7 billion of which was written off on Friday.

Lloyds TSB shareholders voted 95.98% in favour of the takeover. They paid £4.3 billion for the bank in November, having negotiated down for original agreed price of £12.2 billion in September so they thought they were getting a good deal. So did Sir Peter Burt and Sir George Mathewson – the former chief executives of Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland respectively, who tried to scupper Lloyds’s takeover of HBOS takeover.

Fear of Lloyds becoming a superbank have retreated

The concern back in November was more about the government allowing a ‘superbank’ to be created that would be too strong for the competition. The government were complicit in the takeover because they did not want another Northern Rock, for financial, political and operational reasons. Bending the competition rules was a small price to pay.

Lloyds HBOS do have a commanding share market of the UK banking sector so the Competition Commission will have to take a look at the situation once the recession is over. No rush then.

In his inauguration speech yesterday, President Barack Obama reaffirmed the United States’ government’s vow to uphold its constitution and live up to the lofty ideals that support its claim as the world’s greatest nation.

And what exactly are those ideals which were first proposed by Norfolk’s most influential son, Thomas Paine?

American Ideals

The American Declaration of Independence states the every person is born equal and has inalienable (irrevocable) rights to

• life
• liberty
• the pursuit of happiness

American Loss of Authority under Bush

The USA lost much of its moral authority in the Bush years

• re the right to life: consider the killing on 100,000 Iraqi civilians in the pursuit of a ‘regime change’ that is illegal from the standpoint of international law
• re the right to liberty: consider the imprisonment of up to 625 detainees at Guantanamo Bay without trial or any recourse to justice
• re the pusuit of happiness: this is very tangential but consider the Bush regime’s failure to acknowledge global warming as a threat and the refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement: air pollution (I am a little athsmatic) and the disappearance of the Maldives as the oceans rise are certainly inhibitors to my pursuit of happiness

Remaking America

Obama’s message to the world is the adherence to those American ideals:

• On foreign policy, the expediency of the invasion of Iraq is recognized:
  

  “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

  We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort — even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.”

• One of Obama’s first actions was to address the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the executive order states the closure :
  

  “would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice”

  “..the detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order”

• On climate change:
  

  “With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.”

One day on the job and the dream is still alive

So, with some amazement, I find London has elected Boris Johnson as its mayor.  I had taken him for a bumbling idiot but maybe I should suspend judgment. His first steps look promising. He appoints Ray Lewis, ex prison governor, to target youth crime. Maybe, with a good team around him, Boris can be successful. He is making a good start, but then so did Gordon Brown.

The Labour Party now must look at itself and its leader and make change. Gordon Brown, who started well last year as PM, seems overwhelmed  by the role. His inability to delegate leaves him tired, overworked, and prone to errors of judgment. Now, Sarkozy has withdrawn his support from Tony Blair maybe Gordon should give his old mate, Tony a bell and ask him if he wants his old job back. A few muttered apologies about Iraq, and the Labour Party would have him back as leader with open arms. An election contest of Blair versus Blair-lite(blue) would be winnable for Labour. However, I can’t see Tony making that apology so Milliband is Labour’s best hope.

The Democratic Party should be luxuriating in its choice of candidate. Both excellent, minimal differences in policy, both capable of leading the world’s (current) greatest nation.

So how to choose between them? The one most likely to beat McCain? Charisma? Or on policy?

Here is how the policies differences break down:

Foreign Policy
Iran: Obama negotiates, Clinton sanctions.
Iraq: Obama advisors anti-war; Clinton advisers pro-war.
Cuba : Obama to talk without preconditions, Clinton imposes pre-conditions.

Economic Policy
Sub-prime mortgage crisis – Clinton more interventionist, Obama more towards consumer protection.

Immigration – No meaningful differences.

Social Policy

Medicare – Obama support universal provision; Clinton supports universe mandate

Civil Rights, Abortion, Gun Control, Stem Cell Research, Death Penalty, Gay Rights – no real differences

Summary
Obama will engage with the outside world more, spend less of defence as USA will less antagnostic to its enemies.
Clinton is more of a interventionist than Obama, as indicated by the individual mandate on Universal Health Care Scheme and her response to the sub-prime crisis

Overall Obama has broader appeal within the Democratic Party and within the USA as a whole so is best placed to beat McCain.