foxy

Yesterday evening we turned on the pub scanner. Not the type on an iPhone, but simply one based upon our collective opinions.

Would it be The Duchess, looking towards Battersea Power Station, with the Jimi Hendrix room?

Or the regular Rose and Crown on the way to Sloane Street?

Maybe the bustling Trafalgar in Kings Road?

Or that one by the red phone box near Grosvenor Bridge?

In the end we turned towards Pimlico.

To the tiny frontaged Fox and Hounds, and inside for a glug of Youngs, whilst the light evening turned to night and we talked of the barge people and unwritten adventures of Emily Jenkins.

And sure enough, as we left a real fox slid past us along Passmore Street before taking a short cut towards Holbein Mews.

new lawn mower

I said I'd need to get away from election related posts, so here's a scene from the garden today. Very spring-like as a wild bunny decides to attack the daisies growing through the grass.

This particular bunny hides behind the foliage from the broom bush in the corner of the garden. I assume there are complex tunnels leading to other timezones and continuums. More to the point, the neighbourhood cats haven't discovered them yet.

tree

It's probably time to back away from daily posts about the election now; some of the reporters are moving their cameras out and it's surprisingly easy to move around Whitehall and the various political areas of London.

The area usually has its share of protestors and banner wavers and Wednesday is no exception, with a couple of people in a prominent tree by Downing Street - but you do have to look carefully.

On that note, I suppose we will all need to look carefully over the next few weeks to see what the new leadership intends to do with the country.

Brown resigns as PM and Clegg becomes Deputy PM in new government? *

Some of us will remember that Brownian motion can be used to explain the way tea and milk mix together in a cup without stirring.

It could also be whimsically used to explain the seemingly random movement of politicians suspended in a fluid situation.

There's a mathematical model often called a particle theory but that's probably where the politicians start to diverge, because Brownian motion is based upon the universality of the normal distribution.

I'd say there is anything but a normal distribution in the recent political events we've been witnessing in the UK.

* = OK, I was guessing...

here's one I prepared earlier

Yes, I know its a bad piece of photoshopping.

That the truck is a different scale from the policeman. That I've used the bubble wrap option in filter gallery to smooth over the pixellated edges.

It must all still be fictitious then... as if they'd bring the van around to the front, when the ex-PM has a perfectly good back way out.

Eventually...

unplugged

Enjoyable tapas yesterday evening after watching the Polanski movie about an exiled ex-Prime Minister having his memoirs ghosted. Quite a reasonable plot line actually, with Ewan McGregor filling the gaps after a previous ghost writer fell into the sea, so to speak.

Of course, the UK plotline continued too, with a most entertaining interlude yesterday afternoon when the 'take back Parliament' protestors argued for electoral reform outside Clegg's meeting in Smith Square. There were some peaceful protests with people carrying speech bubbles behind the commentators doing 'to camera' narratives live.

Action then moved to Parliament Square and the Sky team's commentary box, which was heckled following two rather hectoring interviews with some of the polite but not particularly media hardened protestors. A third guy being interviewed smiled as he was overtaken by the sounds from protestors and unusually Sky pulled the plugs and dropped into a screensaver.

Meantime, Mr Brown headed for Fife, so any weekend 'power negotiations' with Clegg would have been by phone, but has then returned perhaps for a face-to-face update plea with Clegg before tomorrow's resignation news breaks?

proportional truth

I can't help wondering how cynical the offers to Clegg of anything related to proportional representation really are? The previous attempt to review this was by Labour in 1998 and is gathering dust.

It wasn't exactly earth shaking in any case, cautiously recommending that 80-85% of the elected reps should still be on the old basis and small amount of correction could then be selectively applied.

You'll struggle to find the recommendations in the report available here, amongst the waffle.

Even before this, the previous offer was ages ago from Ted Heath to Jeremy Thorpe to look at the same issue.

The big parties don't want this to succeed because it dents their own power. I suspect the latest offers are just as manipulative as any episode of 'Yes Minister' or 'The Thick of It' and in the case of Brown there could also be 'the old switcheroo' where he offers something before perhaps Mandelson stealthily presides over the rotation of Brown from leadership. We can speculate on rumours of David Miliband, John Cruddas and Ed Balls as successors but all of whom are all resolutely silent at the moment.

My own theory is that these "reform" offers have a proportionality based upon a desperation for power and an influence half life measured in days, whilst creating a distraction value measured in years.

quackers

My prior calculations were that we'd end with a hung Parliament with a slight Conservative lead (the lead came out a bit larger than my calculation). I'm sure the smart people in the back offices of the various parties had this scenario as a prime outcome, whatever their public face.

Now we may go into a weekend of speculation, somewhat like the long gaps between news nuggets yesterday evening, where pundits tried to extrapolate single data points and were almost relieved to find the second story about the locked out voters.

- So Cameron says he has the most votes (more than 10 million) and should become PM with a minority lead party.
- Clegg (more than 6 million votes) has previously agreed that the biggest vote should get the next chance to straighten things (ie Tory)
- Brown (more than 8 million votes) won't want to give in that easily and may dangle proportional representation in Clegg's direction to try to create an alliance.

It sets the scene for 48 hours of pre-rehearsed deal-making and changes to weekend television schedules.

Its anybody's guess, so maybe there will be pressure for another budget, a lightweight reform of the voting model "Let the people decide in a Referendum?" and the thought that we'll have to go through this all over again in a few months time.

results rumour of second UK election on 25 November 2010?

If the Parliamentary timetable for the Queen's speech is to be believed, then Parliament should reconvene on Tuesday 18th May and the Speech would be on Tuesday 25th May.

I wonder if this will be possible given the current blip in continuity, whilst some post election introspection takes place? What's the shortest time between elections? Someone will know. I'll hazard a guess at six months, so maybe 25th November would be a round six months from the speech making and could see a new Parliament up and running for 2011?

That's enough time for parties to re-organise and perhaps a more balanced set of voting practices to be devised.

All the politicians are pointedly saying they are working for the "National Interest" now, rather than their own agendas, so perhaps anything related to improving the representation of the people could be on their minds, rather than their own self-promotion?

(Approximate votes per seat: Labour = 33k ; Tory 35k; LibDem 120k)

counted in

The previous time I voted I was literally the first person into the polling station. I hadn't planned it, but I was there before they opened and once inside decided to hurry through the voting process to guarantee to be first to put my vote into the ballot box.

Not so this time, as I popped into the polling station between two telephone meetings. I'd just finished talking to someone in Rome and my next call was with Belgium, but I had just enough time in between to cast my votes.

As I arrived at the polling station, all was relatively quiet and I was able to go straight to the desk, pick up the papers and add my crosses. I'd been asked for my voter number on the way in by an agent with a conspicuous rosette. He was the only political agent present at that time.

For one of the votes I only had a choice of two candidates, with no Labour representation in my local Ward.

As I left, a visually impaired woman had found the number gathering agent and was asking him where he stood on 'shared spaces' - the road systems which don't delineate road and pavement and remove signage thus requiring new forms of driver discipline. It was a great question from the woman who had just been guided by another into the voting area. The initial well-intended but content free preamble to a response lasted from my exit until I was out of earshot.

At which point my attention was diverted to the interesting driving technique of a people carrier which had somehow driven across a flower bed and now seemed to be somehow balanced on three wheels. This was quite exciting as there was a solid flow of cars into and out of the polling station car park which were now all part of a miniature grid lock. My mind strayed back to the shared spaces and driver discipline question, which was still continuing in the background of a scene of mechanical mayhem.

Quietly, in an adjacent car, I could see another agent with a smaller and different coloured rosette talking into his cellphone.

Maybe his shift on the number counting was about to start, with all of this activity eventually feeding back into the giant television swingometers we'll all be able to watch later this evening.

not so wordless wednesday

altitude check

Up before dawn so that I could travel to Germany. The BBC World Service was telling of the new smoke from the Icelandic volcano, so as I chipped the frost from my car before heading for the airport I wondered if I'd be stuck somewhere random in Europe by the end of the day.

Taxis, meeting people in lobbies, conference rooms until I was swept back to the airport to return at a similar time to the setting sun.

"There'll be some bumpiness for the first 20 minutes" explained the pilot. We were in one of those smaller planes that is only three seats across. The type where they worry about the load profile to ensure that the plane flies level.

Up through the clouds and I could see the distant sun setting slowly as we travelled towards it at 450mph and below it a notable orange haze. I know there's often something like this, but with the volcano stories I felt compelled to watch and wonder if it was the usual thing or something special created by the ash. There were certainly magical swirls as we approached the UK again.

Amusingly, I did at one point check whether the rather small plane flew at a normal cruising "above ash" altitude or would for some reason be lower. Sure enough, 37,000 feet, it said on the specification.

I'm back in England now and when I looked up, the night sky was clear and I could start to count the stars.