Cut or Tax?

So, HM Govt is faced with the biggie. Cut or tax?

Every year of my life I have watched wasters getting away with it.

Every second of the Labour Government I watched special interest groups and uber-Quangos soaking up my money. I watched an economy become dependant upon taxes.

Cut, Dave; CUT!

Becoming Old and Confused

Things beginning with i- are starting to puzzle me. I was happy enough with my i-Pod although the advantages it holds over the old minidisk system are, in my view, vastly overrated. I can scrape by with the i-Player, especially when linked to Auntie through my Wii. How cool is that?

Now, i-Phone. Don't have one. Probably never will. Daughter number 1 has such kit and loves it. Presumably she bought the "Make me love this phone" app (or is it ap?).

Now we have the i-Pad.

No.

I think not.

A piece of hardware looking for a niche, I think.

What next? Let's use up those vowels...

i-Pod, i-Pad, i-Ped, i-Pid, i-Pud

We have the first two. The i-Ped, I'm guessing, would be something to do with walking. A small device to send electric current down one's legs (a la Galvani and the frog) to help one walk. The i-Pid (pronounced eye-peed) would be good for my generation as our sphincters fail. Keep those urges to urinate under control with an i-Pid.

The i-Pud?

Apple crumble.

Stable Government

So. Here we are on Tuesday. We had the election last...when was it now...Thursday. So that's Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon without any discernable government whatsoever. Hang on! I thought we needed a stable government. I'm looking around my beloved UK and I'm not seeing troops tear-gassing rioters in the streets. A latter day Kristallnacht has not happened. The FTSE had a good day yesterday, I believe. I need to look harder to find the terror and panic.

Found it!

Etched into the faces of every self-serving stuffed-shirt MP are the same lines of anguish. They are all mouthing the same mantra of "strong stable government" and they are all terrified that we find out the "thing" that must not - ever - be revealed.

We don't actually need them.

The Election

As a lifelong Liberal (the Democrat bit was added later and I've never been that fussed) I confess to being cheered and saddened by the election. Cheered by the Parliament being hung; saddened that the Lib Dems didn't make bigger inroads into the Commons.

The only really obvious thing to come out of the election is that some sort of proportional representation is long overdue. The number of voters it takes to secure a seat is quite illuminating.

The DUP come out best. Although we had the fun of watching Robinson lose his seat (...and here's to you Mrs Robinson) they do best of all. Every seat "cost" only 21027 voters. The Labour Party come in second. Every one of their 258 MPs cost 33350 voters. Compare this to the 34989 voters it took to elect each Conservative MP and you can see why Cameron was so cheesed off. If he had had to pay (in voters) what Labour paid for their seats he would have has 321 - very close to the magical 326.

Plaid Cymru and the SNP deserve a mention here. Each Plaid seat cost 55131 voters; each SNP seat 81898. Using Labour as a "voters per seat" benchmark, Plaid should have had 5 seats, the SNP a whopping 15.

Then we come to the Lib Dems. My favourite bridesmaids. Every Lib Dem seat cost 119788 voters. If they had been Labour voters they could have expected 204 seats with that many voters.

A lot of voters don't vote Lib Dem because they don't like wasting their vote. You can see why.

I also feel really sorry for the Greens. They would have had 9 seats under the same "voters per seat" as Labour.

If we went for simple proportional representation, with every vote contributing to a big "pot" from where MPs would be drawn we would have ended up with a parliament that looked like this:

Con 252
Lab 203
Lib 161
Oth 34

The supposed massive downside that sticks to this type of vote is that it ignores "local interest". Not so, as it turns out. The parties from norn'ir'n would stull have approximately the same nomber of seats (do you like my Ulster accent?). Similarly, Plaid and the SNP do pretty well out of this method.

MPs then get assigned to constituencies. That would be fun - to see who we would get. Of course, what we would always get is a hung parliament. Good. Let's see a bit of concensus and compromise rather than the antagonistic, hostile way that things are done now.

Dream on.

Birthdays

I turned 55 today. So I'm closer to 60 than 50. Bugger. There is so much I want to do.

That said, the "so much I want to do" is more suited to who I am now than who (if ever) I was.

I want to finish my novel. I want to work out the vibrational force fields of metal dinitrogen species. I want to see a lot more of the world.

I now have a fedora.

I can do stuff in a fedora.

Defence from Air Attack

The recent events in Iceland have me thinking. I regularly feel sorry for the poor sods huddled out in the rain having a fag (in the British sense). Society hates them. I'm sure they hate each other. And themselves. Now, we can put all that hatred into defending our airports from the dreaded (and largely mythical) Al Qaeda. I noted - with mounting excitement - that the RAF was suspending its flights around the UK with its much-vaunted Typhoon fighter until the volcanic ash has settled. Ash. Ash? Ash! The penny dropped.

At each airport in the country I would build strategically located smoking areas atop huge fans. The ashtrays would never be emptied in these areas, allowing for a good build-up of ash and butts (in the British sense) within days. At the merest whiff of Nasty Al attacking we would turn the fans on. Ash et al as far as the ionosphere! Admittedly my "Strategic Ash Initiative" would paralyse air transport across the globe but - hey - the smokers would feel good about themselves and everyone would smell like they do.

General Elections

Are you enjoying it so far? I am. I just love watching people lie through their teeth in the name of democracy. Watching Brown smile, watching Cameron try to appear cool, watching Clegg trying to make himself visible; it is all great fun.

My greatest joy will be election night. I will lie in bed with some uber-strong coffee on tap and watch the results come in. The anguish, the triumph, the predictions, the explanations for why the predictions were so bad; I love it. I love it all!

My darling wife, who has far more sense than me will be asleep.