May 23, 2013 · 2:01 pm

Local paper reports “Suspicious incident involving men in black robes and small hats”

This is a deliciously obscure story from my local paper, Gloucester’s The Citizen:

Suspicious incident involving men in black robes and small hats

A suspicious incident involving four men in black robes and small hats has prompted a police warning in Wotton-under-Edge.

The incident happened outside Katharine Lady Berkeley’s School on Wotton Road at around 5pm on Sunday May 19.

The victim, a 17-year-old from Kingswood was walking towards Wotton when a small dark car, thought to be a maroon Ford Ka drove up and down Wotton Road.

The victim then quickly turned along an alley way and jumped over a hedge. As he looked back he saw four men in the car.

The men in the Ford are described as black, wearing black robes and possibly small hats on their heads. One of the men is described as very tall, thought to be over 6ft tall.

Anyone with any information about the incident is asked to contact Gloucestershire Police on 101, quoting incident number 335 of May 19.

You can also give information anonymously by contacting the charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111

So far the only explanation that has been offered are:

If you have a more plausible explanation I would love to hear it…

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May 20, 2013 · 10:45 am

Losing count

Speaking to no-one in particular, he says she’s spoken for,
but wanting something more her young heart breaks in two,
inside himself, to no-one else, he tells her that she’s the one,
but it’s been too long since he has spoken these three words.

Back home, she opens her mouth, and his anger and fists begin to rise,
she closes her eyes, and tries to hide, to put all of this out of her mind,
she pictures in her mind’s eye the softer touches of other calmer nights,
as she reaches out, with pleading in her eyes,  he reacts back, and

That was that. .

The morning after, her cheeks are bruised and smudged with mascara,
she goes to work and thinks of nothing but him and her cracking heart,
she knows her mind is crumbling and it’s not just her bodies that suffering,
there and then, she says, enough is enough, I won’t take this no more.

He stops in his tracks, he’s been walking the streets running from himself,
his mind is dwelling on the job he doesn’t have, and his fists are swollen,
He stops and stares, but does not dare, to dwell on his aching heart,
that is overflowing with the shame. Who is this man that he has become?

With his body numb, and this thought dwelling on his mind, tears starts roll,
down go his defences and down goes the possibility of carrying on as if nothing,
is going down. His hands tremble and his legs give way. Sitting there slumped,
he knows he can’t get much lower, and so he too decides to lift himself up.

Staring at her own front door she resolves that she’s worth something more,
turning on her heel she takes hold of herself and her trembling hands,
she strides with small steps away from her house and her home, all alone,
she walks and turns the corner of her street and her life and resolves that,

never again will he cause her mascara to streak….

Turning his keys, he realises his hands are shaking and his stomach is turning,
with flowers in hand, bought with an empty wallet he wipes away his tears,
stepping over the doormat, he resolved this would be the fresh start they need,
he drops his car keys onto an empty hallway table where her car keys should be.

The silence engulfs him. Finally, whispering to no-one, he says those three words,

she’s the one, and there and then, his heart starts to break in two.

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May 17, 2013 · 2:19 pm

Is the Daily Mail making shit up again?

Hard to believe I know, but it appears that the Daily Mail is, once again, making shit up*.

Anyone not taking the advice shouldireadthedailymail.com might have today thought that their energy bills were to go up by £600 because of ‘Green energy’.

Daily FailLuckily, our friends at Greenpeace are at hand to pick out what they call “economic twaddle”.

Who needs to check figures though when you have a reliable source like the anti-windfarm group “Renewable Energy Foundation” (REF) as a source. The very same group that has its chairman…wait for it, Noel Edmonds.

You can’t make this up.

But this isn’t the first time the Daily Fail has bent the truth for a good story.

A couple of months ago Liberal Conspiracy picked up Littlejohn for the not a not so little mistake in one of his notorious anti-EU rants. On this occasion he sourced some twaddle with…again, wait for it…a Daily Fail article from the previous year that included the same lie.

 

*For clarity, the Mail is reporting in a way that misleads people into thinking a report, which is making shit up, might actually be true. Hat tip to Russell in the comments.

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May 15, 2013 · 2:33 pm

On Loïc Rémy and how some football fans contribute to the UK’s rape culture

My heart sank today when I read that the QPR striker, Loïc Rémy has been arrested on suspicion of rape.

It sank because once again we were reminded of the rape endemic that is found in the UK. This story centers around three guys and one girl, but reminds me of the 85,000 women who are raped in the UK every year.

My heart sank because somewhere a girl has gone to the police to report a rape but we know from experience, she will face an uphill battle to bring about a prosecution. We know that even though 85,000 (or higher) women are raped each year in the UK. Only just over a 1000 men are convicted of rape – even though 90% of rape victims know the identity of their attacker.

My heart sank though because I knew people would also forget the word ‘accused’ and assume that Rémy was guilty. Although it is, statistically speaking, a small issue compared to rape, false accusations of rape have the potential to ruin a man’s life. With the 24/7 premiership media spotlight shining on Rémy, this potential is only amplified.

My heart sunk though, because I knew any subtlety in this story would fly from the window as soon as people graced their keyboards with the presence of their fingers.

Sure enough, ‘Jack Miller 1993’ decided to impart his wisdom on the matter saying:

And he was not alone in gracing social media with such enlightened thoughts. This next selection of tweets were pulled at random from a torrent of rancid inappropriate comments that have been tweeted this afternoon.

Thousands of tweets later, all we know is that another rape has been reported in Britain and that many football fans on twitter are incapable of associating it with their own behavior.

Laura Baites writing in the Independent described the term ‘rape culture’ saying:

“I am not referring to isolated incidents, but to a widespread trend towards articles, websites and events that sexualise, objectify and dehumanise female students and women in general. I am talking about entire websites where across hundreds of articles about women not a single female name appears; they are replaced with “wenches”, “hoes”, “clunge”, “skank”, “sloppy seconds”, “pussy”, “tramp”, “chick”, “bird”, “milf”, “slut” and “gash”. They are part of a growing culture in which the sexual targeting of female students as “prey” is actively encouraged, even when it verges on rape and sexual assault. It is an atmosphere in which victims are silenced and perpetrators encouraged to see crimes as merely ‘banter’ – just part of ‘being a lad’.”

Whether or not Jack Miller realizes it, he is, by tweeting such bile with such rancid sentiment and terminology as ‘slag’, only further contributing to the rape culture in the UK.

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· 10:50 am

Austerity? Not for Conservative and Labour donors!

The Electoral Commission has today released figures on donations to political parties in the UK for the first 3 months of 2013. The figures show that a total of £9 million was donated to political parties  in this period – that is over £3 million a month! Austerity?

Not for those playing politics.

Inevitably the Labour Party and the Conservatives raked in the biggest amounts of donations collecting over £7 million. The Liberal Democrats by their own standards also took a decent amount collecting just over £800,000.

The party press office proudly tweeted:

The full break down of party donations look likes this:

Party Cash Non-cash Other Total
Amount (£) No. Amount (£) No. Amount (£) No. Amount (£) No.
British National Party 32,000 1 0 0 0 0 32,000 1
Conservative and Unionist Party 3,447,300 106 179,877 26 35,847 4 3,663,024 136
Co-operative Party 411,723 4 1,250 1 0 0 412,973 5
Democracy 2015 8,055 1 0 0 0 0 8,055 1
Green Party 23,110 6 0 0 0 0 23,110 8
Labour Party 1,836,105 96 1,845,382 25 0 0 3,681,486 121
Liberal Democrats 792,454 64 50,256 13 0 0 842,710 77
Plaid Cymru – The Party of Wales  18,511.34 1 0  0  0  0  18,511  1
Scottish National Party (SNP) 10,000 1 0 0 0 0 10,000 1
The Socialist Party of Great Britain 295,775 1 0 0 0 0 295,775 0
UK Independence Party (UK I P) 47,650 9 26,500 4 0 0 74,150 13
Total 6,922,683 290 2,103,264 69 35,847 4 9,061,794 363


So who has this sort of money to splash around in times of austerity? 

Labour received both the largest individual donation from Mr John Mills (who is interestingly also the Chair of Labour campaign group calling for a referendum on EU membership). Labour also received a neat £1.3 million from Trade Unions, of which over £750,000 came from UNITE.

Money well spent for the union members?

The Tories however seem to rely more on people who can afford big donations of £500,000 each.

The top ten donors to all parties though were:

Donor name Total amount (£) Recipient
1 Mr John Mills 1,647,500 Labour Party
2 Unite the Union 766,963 Labour Party
3 Mr Michael Davis 500,000 Conservative and Unionist Party
4 Ms May Makhzoumi 500,000 Conservative and Unionist Party
5 The Co-operative Group (CWS) Ltd 412,973 Co-operative Party
6 Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers 314,388 Labour Party
7 Mr Stanley Robert Parker 295,775 The Socialist Party of Great Britain
8 Mr James R Lupton 255,000 Conservative and Unionist Party
9 Mr Michael S Farmer 254,334 Conservative and Unionist Party
10 Mr Graham R Hunnable 200,000 Liberal Democrats


On the other end of the scale, The Green Party took over £23,000 from individual donations. Pretty small you think? Well, not in comparison to £10,000 that the SNP received.

Austerity…certainly not for Conservative and Labour donors!

Full information about party funding can be found here.

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May 8, 2013 · 2:18 pm

Photo essay – palliative care workers from francophone Africa

I am not a photographer, and would never claim to be. But these are photographs that I took of a few of the participants of the palliative care training course for francophone Africa that is currently being held at Hospice Africa Uganda. Some of these photos are published on the African edition of ehospice.

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· 10:39 am

Peter Lawrence argues ‘Every Vote Counts’

This is a guest post by Peter Lawrence. Peter has over 20 years of experience in local government and is a passionate advocate for electoral reform.

The UK’s First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system is a ‘winner takes all’ process. Any political party with a sizeable support base spread evenly across the country will find it impossible to make proportionate gains in Westminster.

As a result we see constant bickering about constituency boundaries while all the three main political parties focus on marginal constituencies and ‘parachute-in’ their preferred candidates come election time. History tells us that some constituencies would elect a seaside donkey if the beast was the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) for a locally dominant political party.

Despite all this, the UK rejected electoral reform in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum by a margin of 2:1. There are many reasons for this rejection but I suspect the British people had no appetite for any electoral system where the least despised (as opposed to the most popular) candidate gets elected.

Also the many flavours of Proportional Representation (PR) on offer (see Plurality Voting System) are more likely to confuse rather than enthuse voters. Indeed, there is a widespread view that PR results in ineffective governance with minor parties holding the casting vote.

Scrapping constituencies altogether and instead having a national tally of votes with seats allocated to parties on their portion of that total at first seems the fairest approach. However, this favours large ‘lowest common denominator’ national parties, discourages new parties and robs the electorate of any ‘local voice’ e.g. voting against a hospital closure.

The Additional Member System (AMS) used in Scotland and Wales offers a hybrid solution by running FPTP locally and PR for new regional constituencies. However this both fails to address the shortcomings of FPTP and PR, and introduces the nebulous concept of regional constituencies.

So what’s my suggestion? Every Vote Counts (EVC).

EVC is a low-cost, minimal change solution that favours no political party. As now voters cast one vote for the candidate of their choice with no change to existing constituencies or their boundaries.

EVC addresses the shortcomings of FPTP by injecting an element of ‘localism’ into the process, while at the same time allocating the total vote such that every national party gets something like the number of MPs justified by its share of the vote.

Put simply EVC changes how the votes cast are accounted for.

Under EVC, PPCs must register as either:

1)    Local Candidate (LC) or

2)  National Candidate (NC)

… a free choice, whether or not the candidate belongs to any political party.

Political parties must register as a National Party (NP) in order to receive their portion of the national tally of votes.

Local Candidates have votes cast in their favour recognised only at constituency level. If they obtain the most votes they become MP for that constituency, and if not they are thereafter discounted.

National Candidates have votes cast in their favour recorded as part of their party’s national tally. If they obtain the most votes in a constituency their party can propose that the candidate becomes MP for that constituency. However the final outcome will be decided by the Allocation of Parliamentary Seats for National Parties process explained below.

Allocation of Parliamentary Seats for National Parties

Seats for National Parties will be allocated using the following incremental process: -

  1. Round 1 – National Parties will be allocated as many seats as their share of the national total justifies. In most cases constituencies will gain the National Candidate who won locally. However a low national tally could result in a National Party failing to be awarded all the seats that under FPTP they would have secured by having the greatest number of votes cast locally.
  2. Round 2 – Seats that remain vacant after Round 1 will be allocated to the parties whose share of the national tally justifies that allocation. Inevitably this will result in some seats being allocated to a party who did not poll the most votes locally in certain constituencies. In this way EVC compensates for demographic inconsistencies where the number of seats a party gains is disproportionate to their share of total votes cast.

The above is a thumbnail sketch. EVC is not a panacea and has a somewhat perverse element i.e. Round 2, where a particular constituency may be allocated an MP who did not gain the most votes locally but whose party gained a larger share of the national vote.

These are my thoughts and I would welcome yours. I hope though that this article will spark some life back into the electoral reform debate.

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