On abbreviations alone we have a clear winner

I've not yet seen last night's Dr Who so I'll talk about the other burning issue on everyone's mind.

I haven't decided how I'll vote in the referendum on how to vote. Both sides make some good cases. Both also make bad ones. Nothing winds me up more than people I agree with using bad logic to support their argument; because if you can't find good logic to support it, what exactly does that say about your case?

Sad fact about FPTP: it does not guarantee the winner is the guy with the majority vote, whatever nice Mr Cameron might say. Not if they got 40% and their two opponents got 30% each. Do the sums. You can probably do that even if you are a Tory. You will get a guaranteed majority winner only if there are two candidates - and, nationally, if all constituencies are approximately equal. Which they are not.

Sad fact about AV: the most popular candidate is not the guaranteed winner - it may well be everyone's second or third choice who gets in. But (and it's a big but) the policies that candidate represents are most likely the policies of interest to the majority of voters. There's a subtle difference but it's an important one. Suddenly no seat is a safe seat; no candidate can just cruise in because they're representing a constituency that has voted the same way since 1066 and the opposition needn't bother turning up.

A strong argument against FPTP is that twice in my lifetime now it has delivered prime ministers with such a landslide majority, and the personal conviction to back it up, that they can and did do pretty well what they wanted, unopposed; and yet they did not represent anything like the majority of the country. If I knew AV would never deliver another Thatcher or Blair, that would count very heavily in its favour

A strong argument for FPTP is that contrary to popular belief, it can even cope when you get a logjam in the political process and no one wins. Like, a year ago. Given that it still works in that regard, why change it? What is beyond dispute to me that FPTP has always, always delivered the government that was needed on election day. I will say that for Thatcher and I will say it for Blair, because in both cases the opposition was so untenable. And I say election day. It may well be that within a few years, months or even weeks it is no longer the government we need; but on election day, it always has been.

Meanwhile, there are more burning issues to tackle which will go a long way to making our parliamentary system fairer. Boundary reform so that every MP represents approximately the same proportion of the population. Sorting out once and for all the present cludge that gives some citizens of the UK two parliaments and some only one. Things like that. I have a sneaking suspicion AV is just paint on the cracks. FPTP is unfair. So's life.

So, how will I vote on Thursday? Haven't decided. AV has the better publicity but it will take more than clever cat videos to win me over completely and they have four days in which to do it.

Day 16: a picture of someone who inspires you

Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias, a.k.a. King Juan Carlos of Spain. He inspires me greatly.

Spain today is a surprisingly stable constitutional monarchy and a Parliamentary democracy. For forty years, overlapping well into my lifetime, it was a fascist dictatorship. However throughout that time it was officially a monarchy, the king having been overthrown in the 1930s, and Franco carefully groomed the heir to the throne as his personal heir. When Franco died, Juan Carlos took over with all the powers of the former dictator.

Which he then proceeded to give away. Within two years, elections to a new parliament; within seven years, a socialist government, and an attempted coup en route which failed largely because the king publicly announced support for the legitimate powers that be.

It can be argued that even if he had tried to keep the dictatorship, he would have failed; the time for those things had passed in Europe. Spain now would probably be a republic, eventually democratic after a lot more blood and tears. But that happened peacefully and without tears, except for maybe a few on the far right sobbing into their sangria, but who cares.

What a guy.

Political pensées

I'm currently feeling quite well disposed towards our elected representatives in Westminster so I thought I'd mention it while it lasts.

• I recently signed the petition against HMG's plan to sell off the forests which also led to emailing my MP, Miss Nicola Blackwood. A nice letter received yesterday assured me that while she thinks her lot are more on the right track than the last lot (no surprises there), she does have reservations about the plans that she wants clarified before she votes on anything. And she wasn't able to attend the entire debate on the matter because she needed to be in her constituency at a meeting in support of local libraries. Okay. Go girl.
• Over 50 MPs signed a motion asking the Immigration Minister to intervene in the case of a Ugandan woman about to be deported back to Uganda and almost certain persecution, quite possibly death. The case is to be reviewed.
• They have quite decisively told the European Court of Human Rights where to get off. Not always a good thing but in this case I have no objections.
• David Cameron let David Hasselhoff put his arm round his shoulders and call him "buddy".
• The Speaker has a sense of humour. "Opposition members' hearing is playing tricks with them. They didn't hear what they thought they heard."

There are of course drawbacks as well. Things like the expenses scandal are just background noise by now: no, current reservations centre around the Hoff's new buddy.

• Guess what - he's making the rich richer. He is not an evil man and he's not doing it for the sheer thrill of putting money into his friends' pockets. Thatcher was motivated by spite and ideology in equal part; with Dave it's just ideology, sadly misplaced. He is sincere in his belief that everyone benefits by making the rich richer, just as his predecessor but one was sincere in his belief that you can create paradise on earth with a web of ever more restricting legislation on every aspect of human affairs that will be perfect if everyone only obeys it in exactly the spirit they're meant to. And they're both equally wrong.
• The Big Society: see above. Lovely idea and fine in a world where everyone is as Dave would like them to be. Which they're not, as brilliantly put by Philip Pullman in a speech mostly about libraries but covering other bases too.

At the moment that's still more plus points than minuses, which is a nice feeling.

Wrong Card plays Tony Blair

Orson Scott Card has written some of the best science fiction and fantasy I've ever read. He also wrote the Homecoming Saga.

The column he writes for his local paper usually touches on a number of bases in no particular order. SF&F: always worth reading even if you disagree with him. Commentary on other artforms (audiobooks, TV series, plays etc.): often worth a look even if you're not familiar with the works in question. Local trivia: only really for anyone who happens to live in Greensboro, North Carolina - which is not unreasonable for a local paper.

And politics: strictly for broad-minded individuals looking for a bit of entertainment.

Card is regrettably one of those people who seem to believe that there is an organised body known as the Extreme Left which is out to destroy America - nay, western civilisation - and it begins just west of David Cameron. It's a belief that colours far too much of his worldview. For example, of Jeffrey Archer he once wrote:

"as a conservative, there's almost no chance of his being favorably reviewed by London's critical establishment, since the British intelligentsia are, if anything, even more leftist than the American."

No, Scott, Jeffrey Archer has almost no chance of his being favorably reviewed by London's critical establishment because the man is such a repellent individual. Granted that an adverse review based on the author's character is just as lax as an adverse review based on the author's politics, but at least get your facts right.

In Card's latest column, he describes his joy at discovering New Who (which is rather touching) and we learn he has read Tony Blair's autobiography. Ha-hum ...

"The way he stood firmly with President Bush when it was time to take a stand against terrorist states like Afghanistan and Iraq reminded me of the days of transatlantic solidarity during World War II -- though Blair was actually more loyal and reliable as an ally to Bush than Roosevelt ever was to Churchill. "

That's because while Roosevelt and Churchill may have made realistic assessments of the strengths of their respective positions, and acted accordingly, they regarded themselves as moral equals. Blair made the policy decision that he would be Bush's poodle. And bitch. (Not necessarily the same as a female poodle. You know what I mean.) More precisely, Blair decided he would be the poodle/bitch of whoever happened to be President of the United States. Before being best buddies with Bush, whom Card admires, he was best buddies with Clinton, whom Card despises. Such a thing should not be physically possible, yet it happened. Card is silent on this paradox.

Blair "was eventually turned out of office the way Churchill was", and Card finishes on a note of pure fantasy:

"Still, he was and is a good man who kept his word when he came to power, and he did a pretty good job of governing, which puts him way, way above average. I recommend the book, if only to see how a rare bird like that was ever able to get off the ground and fly!"

Ha-hum again, and again I say, ha-hum.

One book I'm guessing Card won't be reading is Robert Harris's The Ghost. I read this last year and saw the movie at the weekend. Even if you find the movie contaminated by association (it was the one Roman Polanski was working on when he was arrested), read the book. Robert Harris sticks it in with all the anger and bile of a disillusioned convert. An unnamed ghostwriter is sent to the US to ghostwrite the memoirs of ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair Adam Lang - Pierce Brosnan in the movie. The previous ghostwriter died in mysterious circumstances, which is just the start of the fun. Then the UK government announces that it is cooperating with the International Criminal Court with a possible view to prosecuting Blair Lang for war crimes. There is a wonderful scene where Blair Lang is told that no, he can't go home at the moment but he can travel anywhere that doesn't recognise the ICC. Um - Iraq, North Korea, Israel ...

It's not Harris's best book, because the sound of the axe grinding in the background does get in the way of the enjoyment. It was also written in apparently ignorance of social networking. What do you do nowadays with a good conspiracy theory? Stick it on Facebook, watch it go viral and then let the CIA try to silence it, ha ha. (What they do to you is another matter, of course.) But it is enjoyable and thought-provoking. Y'see, a key question that arises - and the answer is beautifully unexpected, so I'm not spoiling anything here - is whether or not Blair Lang was recruited by the CIA at Oxford Cambridge. I wouldn't dream of saying yay or nay, though I will say the book ends more convincingly than the movie did. But one character asks a question that really gets the wheels of the mind spinning: "In ten years as Prime Minister, can you name a single decision that wasn't in the interests of the United States?"

I still incline towards the poodle/bitch interpretation myself: the simplest explanation is usually the right one. But still ...

This is where I would like to come up with a nifty, pithy one-liner that ties these various strands together, but I can't and it's the end of my lunchbreak and the black helicopter full of CIA Mormon SF fans outside the window is being really distracting so I'll stop now.

I could just write this tomorrow and save the speculation

... but it's lunchtime on a cold, grey day and I have an hour to fill.

So, Ben's prediction for the election: whoever wins tomorrow, the losers will indulge in months if not years of navel-gazing trying to analyse their defeat, and produce a new winning strategy for the next election almost indistinguishable from the strategy that lost them this one. An interesting article by Ben Goldacre explains why. Studies show that people can be comprehensively owned by clear and incontrovertible evidence that is contrary to their beliefs, and not only continue to believe but actually have those beliefs confirmed (in their own minds) by the contradiction. It's now a scientifically observed phenomenon. (Scientific? Yes: it's a theory that offers an explanation for observed data and is independently testable and verifiable. Scientific.)

This also explains current behaviour as well as future. It explains why Labour continues to believe that the affairs of man can be micro-managed by legislation, despite an ever more lamentable catalogue of badly written laws: look after the letter of the law and the spirit takes care of itself. On second thoughts, just dispense with the spirit and make do with the ever-more badly written bit.

It explains why even if the Conservatives aren't quite the party of Norman "on your bike" Tebbit any more (and Cameron, I think, is genuinely trying to distance his party from that era), the spirit still lurks not far beneath the surface. "Phwah phwah phwah what you don't have a comfortable financial cushion to fall back on at any time phwah phwah how can you not be absolute master of your own destiny it's all your own fault you know phwah phwah phwah." And it explains how they can still be the party that can adopt a candidate who 'founded a church that tried to "cure" homosexuals by driving out their "demons" through prayer', and believe that a prospective MP with that on her CV is still in with a chance. If Sutton and Cheam is Conservative tomorrow morning it really can only be that the other candidates just didn't try hard enough.

(It would be fun to be a fly on the wall at one of her exorcisms.

Priest: "Be gone, demons of gayness!"
Demon 1: "Not in these shoes, girlfriend."
Demon 2: "Ooh, get you!"
Demon 3: "Nice frock ..."

In keeping with Goldacre's article, of course, failure to produce any demons at all will not dissuade people from trying.)

And it explains why a Lib-Dem government, or even a Lib-Dem-controlled balance of power, just wouldn't work, because they would consistently expect everyone to be sensible and rational and grown-up and they're not.

And all of this explains why I don't particularly want any of that lot to win, but am resigned to the fact that one of them will and I do hope it's not Labour.

The sun brings them out

Languishing at home today with an upset stomach but at least I get to enjoy the election media of the also-rans.

The UKIP leaflet is a tad simplistic in bright, primary colours and looks like nothing so much as a supermarket flyer, especially with that pound symbol that tops and tails it. I expect the small print beneath "Vote UKIP" to add "and we'll give you a box of washing up powder."

So, about what you'd expect. This one from the Animal Protection Party is much more fun.

Doctor Death is none other than our very own local MP Dr Evan Harris. He is a vocal supporter of Oxford Uni's secret animal research programmes - so secret they have vocal supporters. He is apparently pro-fluoride, "a waste product of the aluminium industry" and "of no benfit (sic) to teeth". He is an "aggressive secularist" (seemed quite a mild one when I met him) who attacks "anyone (particularly Christians) who allow their faith to challenge his views"; and most devastating of all, on page 2 (which I didn't have the heart to photo) he "uses his position to attack herbal remedies, vitamins and homeopathy". The swine, the swine, the utter swine.

The implied conclusion I draw from this is that, um, Christians do believe in herbal remedies, vitamins and homeopathy, are against a secular society, and don't use fluoridised toothpaste? Oh dear. Where do I hand my faith in?

I have no beef at all with Dr Harris. I like the fact that when I hear of him in the public media he's generally doing something sensible and pro-science. A colleague at work, who is a school governor, tells me he's not that hot as a constituency MP: missed appointments, unanswered letters and so on, in lamentable contrast to his predecessor, who may have been all for teaching more hellfire in RE to combat youth delinquency but at least answered his letters. I can only say that of all the MPs I've had representing me, he is the only one who has ever actually turned up on my doorstep - and that wasn't even in an election year. I forget what he was canvassing about but I was impressed.

I also know what he looks like, which is more than I can say for our Animal Protection Party candidate unless the latter bears a strange resemblance to a tortured monkey; and, possibly uniquely for a Lib Dem, he has managed to upset someone. Bonzer!

Unsure of how to vote?

Let Vote Match take the strain. You answer a series of policy questions and it matches your responses against the stated policies of the national parties. I wasn't that surprised to find that I agree with:

• Conservatives 42%
• Lib Dem 40%
• Greens 39%
• Labour 33%
• UKIP 28%

You can choose which parties you would and would not like to be associated with and I asked for BNP to be excluded from the final reckoning. Then, out of morbid curiosity, I asked for them to be included. This gives a rather worrying:

• Conservatives 42%
• Greens 39%
• Lib Dem 38%
• BNP 36%
• Labour 32%
• UKIP 27%

Hmm. Where did that 36% come from? I always thought the only difference between BNP and UKIP was the rapid [EDIT: or even rabid] xenophobia. I didn't think I was remotely xenophobic, even though you will have to pluck my right to make jokes about the French, Germans and Americans out of my cold dead hands. Is it because my answers suggest I would have no problem with the idea of repatriating an immigrant who breaks the law? That of course would refer to a persistent recidivist, not someone who, say, gets caught doing 32mph in a 30mph zone. This is not entirely facetious: I recently read of a Mexican woman in the US, who has lived and worked legally there for 40 years, and whose children and grandchildren are US citizens, who has had her green card revoked because she walked across a neighbour's lawn and got sued for trespass. That is silly (or to give it its fuller name, mindless petty spite). However, at the other end of the scale, someone who enters the country as an immigrant, gets the right to reside and sets themselves up as a crime lord running a drugs and prostitution ring should lose the right to residence. Is that a problem?

Therein lies the problem with any site like this: you can give general answers to general questions of policy, but that always assumes the legislation would emerge from the Parliamentary process framed and phrased in a reasonable way. Nothing I've seen in the last 13 years, and very little in the last 31, convinces me this would be the case.

I will now save this post, if I can get my right hand down from its 45 degree angle to move the mouse.

None so blind as those who will not see

Interesting how things can come together ...

For instance, I was delighted to read last week that "The boss of a British company that has sold million of dollars worth of "bomb detectors" to Iraq's security forces has been arrested on suspicion of fraud." The "bomb detectors" in question are hi-tech looking gadgets based on water dowsing principles and are, if I may slip into complex scientific terminology for a moment, a scam – a very lucrative scam, retailing at $8000 per unit. Unfortunately they are also a scam that actively costs lives due to their total inability to detect explosives. Not only do they not work, they cannot work, anymore than you could make a car engine with a couple of unrelated pipes and bits of metal and a can of petrol.

And they still have their supporters, not that they would have a vested interest in not looking stupid or anything.

I first heard about these things when Ben Goldacre mentioned them on badscience.net back in November. It takes until now to arrest the creep on the direct orders of the Chief Constable of Somerset & Avon, the Serious Fraud Office having apparently been using a similar sort of detector to smell rats until now.

How was it possible for someone to get away so long with selling this extra virgin snake oil? It can't all have been vested interests and too many people making too much money to rock the boat. Was it because the "detectors" look exciting hi-tech? Or that they have a convincingly scientific-sounding name, the ADE-651? Or was it the sheer Goebbels-like level of bullshit, no one quite daring to question that maybe they don't actually work because, well, they're based on water dowsing principles and that works, doesn't it, I mean, there must be something in it?

Hold that thought.

Meanwhile, Radio 4's Sunday morning Point of View was from Lisa Jardine, eloquently advocating a decent scientific education for all: not to turn everyone into scientists, note, but to make everyone capable of understanding science. A handy spin-off of a good scientific education would be the ability to spot bullshit generally. Well, I'm all for that. She would like to start at the very top: she laments the fact that "fewer than one in five sitting MPs has a higher education qualification in science or medicine."

It would be lovely, so lovely to think that everyone (especially politicians) was able to detect fake science, pseudo theories, unsupported dogma and general BS at fifty paces. The ADE-651, the front page of the Daily Mail, the theological insights of Abu Hamza could all be consigned to the dustbin of history by sheer common sense and humanity. And there's certainly no reason why it couldn't start in Parliament.

But here I would sound a cautionary note and draw attention to my current reading, Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. I'm currently on the chapter where he gleefully skewers post-structuralism, which got a stranglehold on intellectual thought in the 70s and 80s and meant that people could criticise the E=MC2 equation for being sexist and still be taken seriously. Earlier he has laid into Thatcher and Reagan's cheerfully fact-free fantasies about making the rich even richer so that their wealth can trickle down to the rest of us (hence the plethora of Fred Goodwin Memorial Hospitals everywhere) and letting the market solve everything (hence our thriving, dynamic railway system, the envy of the world).

The relevance of this to Lisa Jardine? Well, unfortunately Wheen does make the point that the first British Prime Minister to hold a science degree was M.H. Thatcher, BSc(Oxon). The lady, indeed, whose coat of arms includes an image of Sir Isaac Newton. No slave to blind dogma she, eh? Right. True, she went all the way to Oxford to get that degree and all around the world as PM, but she never really travelled much further than the borders of 1930s Grantham. I have the horrible feeling that, to her, the viability or otherwise of the electronic bomb dowsers would be of secondary importance. What would matter would be if there was a market for that sort of thing.

Granted this is a sample of one, but we may sadly have to conclude that a good scientific education isn't necessarily going to solve everything.

But it couldn't hurt.

Ben solves the second homes allowance row

Most will agree that our MPs need a second home. They need a base in London within easy striking distance of Westminster. It's not enough to suggest that they check in at a hotel or a B&B. To do a job like that you need a home where you can just turn up. Most MPs do not use the second home as a pad to put their mistress up in. Non-London based MPs only really need a small flat.

It's also reasonable that certain expenses could be claimed for the second home. They're paid more money than I'll ever make but it's peanuts compared to some London salaries.

The problem arises when they start to juggle the numbers, declaring their "second home" as the one that will benefit them financially the most.

So, whoever is in charge of these things should simply declare that for purposes of Parliamentary expenses, the second home is a wholly-owned property (no more renting bedrooms from siblings) that of all the MP's properties is the one nearest Westminster. Peasy.

You're welcome.

Laptop dancing

This is a bonding exercise with my stepson. We're sitting about five feet apart in the living room tapping away on our laptops. And I'm doing it wirelessly.

His is/was a pretty decent nearish state of the art 16th birthday present. Mine is a retired company laptop with a small crack in the lid bound together by brown parcel tape (which I removed to see exactly that it was meant to be holding together). This is mostly an exercise to acquaint myself with the keyboard and layout. It's pretty good for writing on. Better than the desktop ornament, anyway. I'm pretty certain Best Beloved is on the main machine in our room as I write this. We have finally achieved the goal of all twenty first century families, each of us being on his or her own separate computer and not talking to anyone else.

When the firm announced one of its periodic purges of no longer maintained equipment, I put myself down for a laptop on the offchance. I thought I could do with a typewriter to replace my 10-year-old, much loved but essentially defunct IBM Thinkpad (which I bought with money received for His Majesty's Starship. A true writer's laptop.). This came with hard disk wiped and a copy of Windows XP - nothing else. Then Bonusbarn pointed out we have some wireless adapters knocking around and I thought why not?

And so, apropos of nothing, I thought I would share my thoughts on the saga of our Home Secretary and her avant garde art movie loving husband. First off, it's pretty clear what happened. She gets phone, TV and everything as a package from a single firm, as do we. She gets a monthly bill stating everything, as do we. It runs to several pages but that's just the way it's laid out. The bill includes movies watched. So far the biggest surprise we've had is that Bonusbarn watched Pulp Fiction at 2 in the morning over halfterm (we've since tightened up the parental controls). Ms Smith must wish she shared the experience. Anyway, she's a busy women. She can't remember the last time she manually went through the phone bill. She Has People Who Do That. She threw the pile of paper at a People and said "that's the bill, deal with it." And sadly they did.

What absolutely no one seems to be obsessing on is that somewhere in the House of Commons is a mole leaking paperwork like this to the papers. That is a disgrace and this person must be hunted down and destroyed. Though it's probably not a priority in the House of Speaker Martin, where the historic privileges of our elected representatives that were literally won in blood are secondary to who gets to wear the nice robes.

Also worrying is that the national domestic budget is in the hands of a woman who can't check her phone bill. Not even to weed out the business calls. I'm sure she racks up a hefty phone bill in the course of her duties, and naturally it should be claimed as an expense, but I can't believe every single call was work-related. Or maybe she just makes domestic calls from her sister's flat.

I would have liked to call this post "the porn ultimatum" but sadly the Sun got there first. I don't often say this to the Sun, but, nice one.

Please deselect this man now

"A Labour MP has claimed dyslexia is a myth invented by education chiefs to cover up poor teaching methods.

Backbencher Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley, describes the condition as a "cruel fiction" that should be consigned to the "dustbin of history". (The full Beeb report)"

Never mind that the condition was first identified over 100 years ago. Never mind all the verifiable scientific research that has been done since. Never mind that it pops up all over the globe. Why let facts spoil a good dose of prejudice?

And the amazing thing is - this guy isn't even a Conservative.

Prat.

American presidents

The last movie watched in 2008 was The American President, which I first saw about 10 years ago and wanted to see again because it was a kind of dry run for The West Wing and now that I'm familiar with the latter I wanted to see how it held up. Same warm heart, same creator, a lot of the same cast, same attitude, a lot of the same lines and unashamedly Democrat.

And it does hold up, because like TWW its two greatest strengths are: (1) it actually uses real-world issues to drive its drama, and the result isn't always a happy one, and good people are forced to do bad things because not doing them would be even worse; and (2) it loves the presidency. Not for what it's become but for what it should be. It should attract people of the highest calibre. It should be such a power for good. To be addressed as "Mr President" should be the greatest honour a country can bestow, and it should only be bestowed on people who are utterly worthy of it. Presidents Shepherd in The American President and Bartlet in The West Wing - and indeed the future President Santos in the same - are such people. You can't help respecting and liking them. Why can't we get them in real life?

Also over the holiday period we reached the end of series 6 of The West Wing - one more to go, even if I do know roughly how it ends. Series 6 ended with the battle lines being drawn up - the end of the presidency in sight, the two new presidential candidates confirmed. And true to form and its own internal guidelines, it doesn't make the Republican guy a cipher who will easily be beaten. He's just as good and honest a man as Bartlet, who is well aware his own party can only produce slimeballs and second-raters and is actively worried that they can't find someone to stand against him. Until the underdog Congressman Santos enters the fray, of course, but some conventions of drama have to stand.

It got me wondering: when was the last time a Democrat president handed over to another Democrat? (Not counting Clinton who should have handed over to Gore, but that's history ...) A quick check isn't encouraging for the future. The last two Democrat successions both came about by the incumbent dying - Kennedy and Johnson, and before that Roosevelt and Truman. In both cases the former VP then won a single term in his own right but was followed by a Republican. The last time a living, breathing and compos mentis Democrat president was followed by another Democrat was Franklin Pierce in 1857, who was pro-slavery and had been disowned by his own party after a single term. The last two-term Democrat to hand over to another Democrat (though Clinton had two terms ...) was Andrew Jackson in 1837.

So, fingers crossed for Mr Obama in 2016, eh? He's already broken a couple of records; another one or two shouldn't be a problem.

Beenip and Sergeant

My responses to two items of recent news:

1. Clearly John Sergeant should be the next Doctor Who. Saturday evenings reclaimed – problem solved.

2. The BNP membership list ... oh dear. One of the weaknesses of the McCain/Palin ticket was that it could potentially put the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal into the hands of a woman who couldn't protect her Yahoo email account. Similar thoughts come to mind here. They didn't even have the decency to leave it on a bus, like Labour do with their sensitive information.

Without going into detail I'll admit I have seen a copy (hint: don't use Google, try p2p). What makes it art isn't so much the names as the margin notes. "Owns 13th & 14th century suit of armour. Can do jousting at rallies." "Lives mostly in Spain so opts for overseas membership rate" (yay, clinging to your principles FTW!) And apparently someone was suspended for having "an inappropriate tattoo". Black Power? Luv U Mum? The mind boggles.

A distressing number – i.e. any number greater than 0 – live in Abingdon, including one in Alexander Close, which I had always thought was the heartland of moral middleclass respectability, not to mention a Christian ghetto. (Of the right kind of Christian, not like the Revd Robert West of the Apostolic Church in Holbeach, Lincolnshire.) So, if you live in Alexander Close and your skin is of anything less than snow white perfection, be sure to greet your neighbours with an enormous hug. If you can ham up a fake Jamaican or Indian accent, that would be even better.

The Register kindly provides a link to a nationalist blog where you can entertain yourself reading the howls of BNP outrage. (And doubtless there are plenty more like it.) The image that comes to mind is of cockroaches scurrying for cover when the light goes on.

Disproving the old adage that my enemy's enemy is my friend, Christian Voice also attacks the BNP for being, amongst other things, racist, white supremacist, paganist, volkist, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and ... um ... evolutionist. All quite clearly agendas with equal space on Satan's to-do list. The very next sentence on their site reads "Angry, chippy and defensive are words which characterise a website lacking in Christian humanity"; they probably mean the BNP but you can't be certain.

People of America!

You have done good.

I will now hand over to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

He had a dream

The day after a black guy gets confirmed as the Democrat of choice to become President of the United States of America, it's the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. The text of which is at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3170387.stm.

I'd never read it all before. I was surprised by how far down the famous bit comes.

XLII days

Finished reading Imperium by Robert Harris at the weekend. This is a novelised account of the career of Marcus Tullius Cicero up until his election as Consul of Rome and it's pushed my knowledge of Roman history back by a further generation. I knew that a series of civil wars between Pompey and Caesar were won by Caesar, who became dictator of Rome. The old Republic effectively died then, though it lived on in name. Caesar's death brought about more civil wars, which resulted in victory for Augustus, the first Emperor, and gave us 400 years of Empire.

Imperium has taught me how the Republic went bad to start with. It wasn't the defining moment by any means but it gave an already tottering structure a further push.

The Roman Republic had already lasted 400 years. It was a pretty forward thinking system (for a male-led society that had slaves and gladiators) that shared power among the noble families, laying on a sense of noblesse oblige that kept public buildings maintained, the public utilities functioning and the people fed. Thus it kept the people happy too, and they got a direct say in the running of the government via the tribunes, elected by and for the tribes of Rome. It was ideal for running a small city state, but sadly the city state ran away on its own success and acquired an empire that the Republic really wasn't equipped to handle.

For instance, it didn’t know what to do with Pompey the Great when he returned home from a highly successful military campaign. Generals were given short-term appointments to meet a specific need, and once that need was over, they returned to civilian life. That didn't suit Pompey at all and he soon grew bored and fidgety, which in a successful general who commands massive loyalty is a very bad thing.

Then pirates attacked Ostia, the port of Rome, burning several ships, and Rome was gripped by a 9/11 type panic. The pirates are coming! It's the end of the world as we know it! Save us! Someone! Anyone! Though actually the "anyone" they looked to was the man of the moment, Pompey.

Pompey's military assessment was that the pirate menace was too distributed to be handled by the traditional Roman power sharing system. It needed one man to be given supreme command of the Mediterranean area, able to call upon vast military powers on demand, plus authority over all coastal areas up to 50 miles inland. He also had a modest proposal for who that one man might be. The notion was put to the vote by Aulus Gabinius, a pro-Pompey tribune.

This completely flew in the face of the Roman way of doing things and it was vehemently opposed by the aristocrats. Any one of the tribunes had the power to veto any proposal and one of them did so, which meant very bravely standing up on the rostrum in the Forum and saying so in front of a baying mob of citizens who all wanted Pompey as their new Director of Homeland Security.

(A linguistic aside. A rostra is the battering ram mounted in the bow of a traditional armed galley. The platform from which the tribunes addressed the people was decorated with the rostra of several captured vessels. Hence it was called the rostrum, from which we get the word.)

And so, Gabinius stood up in front of the people, pointed at his opponent, and shouted, "he's vetoing the bill! Does he represent you?" "No!" they cried. "We want Pompey and we want him, now! Give us a P, give us an O ..." "Yes, yes, yes," said Gabinius, forestalling any chance of their spelling out Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and possibly losing the momentum of the moment. "But meanwhile, in that case, let's unelect him!" "Yay! Go representative democracy!" the people cried, and they proceeded to do just that, there and then, on the spot, tribe by tribe. 18 tribes were needed for a majority. When 17 had declared their intention, the man was asked if he wanted to reconsider his veto. He withdrew it and the law was passed. Pompey got his power and another seam split in the side of the Republic.

Thus popular fear and panic was combined with shrewd manipulation of the constitutional democratic process to trample age-old traditional freedoms, and liberty died a little more.

Thank goodness that nowadays we've moved beyond that kind of thing.

When grandstanding goes wrong

I admit it - back when the Conservatives were electing a new leader, I was hoping David Davis would get the job. He's older than me - I still can't really take seriously a politician who isn't - and less, well, rah-rah-rah than the bloke who got the job. Not that I especially wanted either of them as Prime Minister, I should add - I just wanted a decent Opposition party headed by a decent leader. There's a parallel world where William Hague stuck to his guns after the 2001 election and it's a lot nicer than this one.

Now I'm not so sure. Mr Davis, of course, recently resigned so as to force a by-election to be fought on the issue of Gordon's continued erosion of our liberties. A fine stance to take - but the sad fact is the Commons voted for it and that's where to fight it. Parliamentary democracy isn't perfect; you take the good with the bad, the smooth with the rough, and if everyone started resigning just because a vote (albeit a very important vote) has gone against them, the system would break down. It comes across a little - just a little - as a hissy fit. I'm very glad that Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is not led by a man who throws hissy fits.

But there is a light side, as shown in a story in today's Times. Mr Davis seems to be the only one taking his election seriously. He wants a debate but no one worth debating with is standing against him: no Labour, no Lib Dems, not even the BNP or UKIP. The best he can do is lock intellectual horns with the Miss Great Britain Party. Candidate: Gemma Garrett, a.k.a. Miss Great Britain. Manifesto: compulsory health and beauty education.

The Times reminds us: "Mr Davis lies in the bed he made." I smile.

Which brings me onto this week's Henley by-election. No surprise, in the seat that gave us first Heseltine and then Boris, the Conservative guy won. The Labour guy lost. In fact the Labour guy came behind the BNP but ahead of UKIP. I stop smiling.

Henley is one of the most English places in England and the BNP and UKIP are both vehemently patriotic. Yet if the voters of Henley just wanted vehement patriotism then it would have been a split vote. We can only conclude the voters were swayed by the BNP's distinguishing feature, which is rabid xenophobia. For all Labour's faults, a protest vote that puts them behind the BNP is ... worrying.

How crime proceeds

Back in 2002 one day the front page of the Daily Mail fulminated about drug criminals profiting from their illegally gained fortune. Whichever vindictive bastard we then had as a Home Secretary (I know, doesn’t narrow it down, does it?) read his Daily Mail over his breakfast, choked, and hurriedly scribbled down an Act on his napkin that would remedy the situation. He was able to courier it to the House, fast track it through the committee stage and it was law by elevenses.

Or something like that. I may have glossed over some of the details. The point is, we now have the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, a.k.a. POCA, which says that offenders convicted of a drugs-related offence can have their assets seized. And why not? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this could. The Times reports that a man with a drugs record was suspected – only suspected – of having gained his £4m fortune illegally, and so his assets were frozen. Obviously it went to court and he needed a defence, but because his assets were frozen, he couldn’t afford a decent barrister skilled in drugs law and no such barrister was prepared to work for the legal aid rate. So when it came to court, on the one hand we had the full might and majesty of the Crown Prosecution Service and on the other a financially embarrassed millionaire with no qualified representation. And so the judge halted the proceedings as an abuse of process – there was no chance of the guy getting a fair trial under English law. Whether he was guilty or not we will never know.

Yeah, go POCA!

Alternatively, chalk up one more victim to New Labour’s smugly self-righteous delusion that the affairs of man can be micro-managed by legislation, and if only everyone would apply the law exactly as it was meant to be applied when it was rushed through Parliament then everyone would be better off. I’m sorry, examine the legislation? Think ahead, try to predict and head off the unintended consequences? How could there possibly be unintended consequences? Look, we’re fighting the bad guys here. What is your problem?

Even Thatcher was never so smugly self-righteous as the current shower. Self-righteous, yes, but as far as she was concerned, if you didn’t agree with her then go screw yourselves because she was going to do it anyway. Which ultimately was her downfall. Thatcher, strange to think, had a certain minimal faith in human nature - that people could at least think for themselves (which they did, hence why she got chucked out). But Labour now has no faith in you, me, or itself, and certainly not the courts, which is why it has to fiddle and fine tune the law at every step. We’re all morons, needing legislation to guide us through every moment of our lives. There is no spirit of the law. Just the letter.

If Labour was an author, it would write a fairly decent and digestible 80,000 word novel, then gradually crank it up to about 500,000 words with endless explanatory paragraphs, adjectives and changing points of view so that at no stage was the reader’s imagination challenged, or indeed, exercised.

If Labour was a band, it would start as a bunch of mates in a garage with guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. It would then spend the next ten years over-producing an album in which every instrument (having gradually worked their up to a full orchestra, multi-ethnic choir and musique concrète) was balanced at exactly the right output for optimal listening on one particular highly specialised make of speaker, but rubbish for more popular brands that people actually use.

If Labour was a web designer it would start with a few simple lines of HTML and then Flash and Shockwave it out of existence.

Sadly Labour is none of the above. It’s our government.

Ottawa: more fun than Westminster

Parliamentary privilege means MPs can discuss things openly and frankly without fear of being sued or arrested. Some things, though, MPs can't say as it is officially unparliamentary language. Most of it is things they can't call another person; some of it is words they just can't use.

I always knew calling someone a liar was one of them. (Churchill's "terminological inexactitude" is much more fun anyway.) According to Wikipedia, our MPs may also not say blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, ignoramus, rat, swine, stoolpigeon or traitor.

(I'm reasonably certain that Freddie Uncle Charlie Katie should be included here, (a) because I can't picture any MP actually being allowed to say it in the House and (b) because I'm sure I remember circumstances forcing a slightly surprised George Thomas to add it to the list. It's hard to be certain because the papers were all so coy in reporting it at the time. I gathered an MP had actually used the offending word X, in describing a telephone prostitution racket as "phone them and X them". So alliteration and a sense of rhythm suggests what the word was, but I can't be sure.)

But compare that to the list of things Canadian MPs aren't allowed to say: parliamentary pugilist; a bag of wind; inspired by forty-rod whiskey; coming into the world by accident; blatherskite; the political sewer pipe from Carleton County; lacking in intelligence; a dim-witted saboteur; liar; a trained seal; evil genius; Canadian Mussolini; pompous ass; fuddle duddle; pig; jerk; sleaze bag; racist; scuzzball and weathervane.

Just the fact that all these terms at one point or another must have been used suggests Canadian politics may be much more interesting than our own.

HMRC: much explained

Everyone has been asking questions about HM Revenue & Customs' entertaining little faux pas, and how it could have happened. Especially as it all seems to be officially dumped on one of the younger members of staff, who are probably a lot more with the technology thang than the Sir Humphreys above them.

There may be a clue in the exchange of emails and correspondence shown here.

The damning evidence is on pages 6 and 7. Hidden among all the censor's black ink, you will notice that someone at HMRC uses Comic Sans MS as their font of choice.

I think we have our culprit, and if we don't, we should.