The rout?

Now, this time last year, I was toying with placing a bet on the next election. My bet was - Tories as biggest party in a hung parliament.

I'm begining to be glad I didn't squander the £50, now.

My reasoning was, although the Tories were climbing in the polls, they needed a disproportionately large swing even to be the largest party, about 8% - their vote is very clumpy, and in their south eastern heartlands, they need about 20,000 per seat to get elected, whereas Labour takes northern seats with about 10,000 votes (some less, terrible turnouts up there).

We are heading for Tory government now, cheifly, the thing I've noticed over the last few ballots, is the Fib-Dems are starting to spiral down again, Yellow Tories are now voting Blue Tory because of Cameron's "progressive coalition" - played for and got,he's pulled some Fib-Dem voters to him.

What can Labour do? Their gradual slide down in the polls has become a rout: a give away budget hasn't stemmed the tide; Brown lacks charm, charisma or the famous vision he promised us - just more and more dull technocratic nonsense that's been blown away with the loss of his competence talisman. A lurch to the left seems unlikely. All they have left is events, dear boy, events.

Burma 'guilty of inhuman action'

That's what big Gordy says.

Money shot:

Mr Brown told the BBC that a natural disaster had been turned into a "man-made catastrophe" because of the negligence of the ruling generals.

That would be scanned.

The self interest and self preservation of the ruling elite of Burma/Myanmar[*] is causing unecessary pain, suffering and death to hundreds of thousands of people - a crime of enormous size.

But, wait:

Ten years later, the number of undernourished people in the world remains stubbornly high. In 2001–03, FAO estimates there were still 854 million undernourished people worldwide: 820 million in the developing countries, 25 million in the transition countries and 9 million in the industrialized countries.

Sayeth the Food and Agriculture Organisation. EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOUR **MILLION** undernourished folk in the world. Further:

• Over half a million women still die each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The odds that a woman will die from these causes in sub- Saharan Africa are 1 in 16 over the course of her lifetime, compared to 1 in 3,800 in the developed world.
• If current trends continue, the target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in
Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
• The number of people dying from AIDS worldwide increased to 2.9 million in 2006, and prevention measures are failing to keep pace with the growth of the epidemic. In
2005, more than 15 million children had lost one or both parents to AIDS.
• Half the population of the developing world lack basic sanitation. In order to meet the MDG target, an additional 1.6 billion people will need access to improved sanitation over the period 2005-2015. If trends since 1990 continue, the world is likely to miss the target by almost 600 million people.

According to the Millenium Development Report 2007.Finally, a quote found on Wikipedia

According to Jean Ziegler (the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for 2000 to March 2008), mortality due to malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality in 2006: "In the world, approximately 62 millions people, all causes of death combined, die each year. In 2006, more than 36 millions died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients"[9]."

All of which is to say, that there is a preventable catastrophe going on daily - a slow background grind, and that the reason we are not mobilising now to end it entirely, is because of the need to preserve the interests of ruling elites, who are prepared to countenance such inhumanity so liong as they're allright Jack.

[*]note: since 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; this decision was not approved by any sitting legislature in Burma, and the US Government did not adopt the name, which is a derivative of the Burmese short-form name Myanma Naingngandaw (CIA World Fact Book).

BNP fools

So, I was at the count listening to the BNP counting agent recounting why he thought he "mixed race" grandson he was raising should be entitled to join the BNP, because he is culturally British - though, he said, he understood it is important to protect the species.

I really didn't want to kick off, it was a count, and I was surrounded by them, so I let it go.

Their election agent later explained the election strategy to me - they weren't standing any constituency candidates, because if Labour and Conservatives got more of those, they';d be entitled to fewer list seats.

Clearly, they don't understand the additional member system and the d'Hondt rules.

In the GLA there are 25 seats. 14 are elected in single member constituencies under First Past the Post. 11 come from the list. As you can see, there are more FPTP seats than list, so the first thing to note is that a party can win more direct seats than their proportion of votes would allow. This is especially the case considering that plurality elections allow the biggest minority to win, so, say, a vote of 26-35% could be enough to take each seat.

Labour and Tories did split the 14 seats between them, 8 and 6 with 37% & 28% respectively. (that is 32% and 24% of the seats - a subproportional tally).

The way the d'Hondt works, is you take the total number of votes cast for the list, and divide it by one plus the number of seats gained.

Party	Con	Lab	Lib	Gre	BNP
# Votes	835,535	665,443	252,556	203,465	130,714
% Votes	34.05%	27.12%	11.22%	8.29%	5.3%
# Seats	11	8	3	2	1
% Seats	44%	32%	12%	8%	4%

As can be seen from this table, the parties who only received their d'Hondt votes basically got close to their proportional vote in representation (actually, the BNP are under represented, but, then, the whole problem here is one of rounding, and the rounding is only 1% in this instance.

Here's how the seats would have looked if the election had only been a d'Hondt list based one:

Party	Con	Lab	Lib	Gre	BNP
# Votes	835,535	665,443	252,556	203,465	130,714
% Votes	34.05%	27.12%	11.22%	8.29%	5.3%
# Seats	11	8	3	2	1
% Seats	44%	32%	12%	8%	4%

Look familiar? d'Hondt actually favours larger parties anyway. If we exclude the 15% of votes for parties that failed to get representation (i.e. only take our percentages from effective votes) we get the following table:

Party	Con	Lab	Lib	Gre	BNP
# Votes	835,535	665,443	252,556	203,465	130,714
% Votes	40.02%	31.87%	12.10%	9.75%	6.26%
# Seats	11	8	3	2	1
% Seats	44%	32%	12%	8%	4%

Which is, in effect, the percentages if these had been the only parties standing and voted for.

Now, you can manipulate the additional member system, if you stand as two parties, or, if you have a sister party standing in the FPTP seats you can swing a few constituencies to. But the BNP thinking was bunkum, they neither gained nor lost from not standing in any FPTP seats.

Just proof of stupidity.

DAF lives

Right, the campaign is over, so I'm back to writing here. I have a couple of ideas, but first, Fritzl.

It is just such an horrific story - perfectly Sadean in its construction of an underground Kingdom in which the unfettered desires of its creator could be given free reign, and which would not exist without him. Indeed, had fritzen died at some point over the last 24 years, all his children in the basement would have been condemned to lingering deaths. Maybe he liked that thought.

Here he was, not just the father, but the sole possesor of his children, and their provider. Without him, they would perish.

Its hard to find a word for such egomaniacal behaviour other than wicked. In its pure form, there was no necessity for it, no grounds of poverty, just the pure exiercise and abuse of power fit for 121 Days of Sodom.

Now amount of punishment could constitute retribution for his crime. No amount of deterrent could have stopped him. he found the perfect way to comit hundreds and hundreds of rapes - and threw in torture beyond imagining - all with no way of being caught.

I wouldn't pretend for a moment that such people would not exist under socialism. I would hope that a change in family relations would erase this sadean patriarchal drive, but doubtless such manifestations of personal egocentricity on such a grand scale would occur. Obviously, with the near eradication of property related crime, such cases would be so few and far between that not only would we be deeply shocked by them (as we are by this) but would have machinery on hand to deal with them effectively.

Finally. I nearly cried when I heard a passing comment on the radio. The children, it seems, stood and gaped open mouthed the first time they saw the moon.

They gaped open mouthed the first time they saw the moon.

Bastard.

London Skolars v. Hunslet Hawks

Where the Hell is Hunslet? Well, apparently, it's near Leeds - dirty, dirty, dirty, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds - as David Peace would have it (I don't see a novel about the Hawks being forthcoming).

Their fans were a disgrace, non-stop abuse of the ref (including end of game chants accusing him of being a cheating bastard - now, I ask, at barely professional level, what possible incentive is there for any ref. to be crooked? Further, as some fo their fans acknowledge on their forum, they shouldn't have been in the position where a few referee decisions could even decide the match. As it was, as far as I could see, although he was a botehrsome and busy ref, be blew up for both sides, and both sides had tries disallowed. So, eitehr he's really cunning, or just a ref. trying to make split second decisions in what was a frantic and busy game.

Hunslet and London are the bottom two of the Second Dvision (Skolars were below hawks before Saturday). Their play seemed matched, and their deserve their relative (and probably also their absolute) positions in the table.

Skolars have certainly picked up their game, their passing was crisper, but they didn't lay off enough in attack - but they certainly showed guts in attack and defense.

They ran over some early tries, which the Hawks more or less had clawed back to lead at half time. the second half was a close affair, with the first try not coming until the end of the first quarter. Skolars squeaked a narrow lead, which last almost until the very end. A bit of nouse in this situation was lacking, they passed up a penalty that could have given them two points, and in the end ended up having a drop goal charged down.

The last try was something of a distraction, a clean break when the game was almost over anyway. the real score should have been a win by one point, that would have been justice. As it was, London Skolars 31 Hunslet Hawks 24,

The cap fits?

I didn't watch any matches over the weekend, you can find your own results.

Anyway, what I was going to talk about was this: the Super League Table.

Note how the bulk of teams just over half of games are victories, and even the run away leaders are only a couple of games ahead of their next rivals (though look at the astounding points difference, Leeds have scored 326 while only conceding 116 - thats about giving away only 10 points a game).

Part of the closeness of the Super League is the Salary Cap (PDF):

There are 2 principal purposes of The Super League Salary Cap. The first is to restrict clubs’ main item of expenditure, players’ costs, to try and ensure, as far as possible, the long-term financial survival of rugby league clubs.

The second purpose is to improve the competitiveness of the League by restricting to a finite level of how much one club can spend on its playing staff.

Now, obviously, the former is anti-competetive since it has the stated aim of controlling players salaries, but note, the £1.6 million cap does not restrict the actual individual salary, but only the total. In doing so, it means that clubs faxce a choice between building a broad side, or paying for a very expensive star.

The effect is to impose a rough equality on the entrants to the game, much in the same way as if a formula 1 team were to be given the same mopdel car as their rivals - you can tweak it, and the game becomes who can tweak the car the best.

Obviously, Rugby is and remains a business, but at least this element of the sport keeps the focus on the sport, and by dint of mitigating against massive investments in a few clubs is tendentially anti-capitalist (although decidedly not pro-socialist) in as much as it moves rewards in the game away from the capacity to invest capital. the soccer premiership, by way of contradistinction, is all about which club can most effectively deploy the most capital into the market, and allocates rewards accordingly.

Of course, the owners of the clubs, like all business folk who enjoy protectionist measures, might one day find such protections a hinderence to their profitability, but for now, we can enjoy a league in which the action is determined by events on the field, and in which skill with a bloody ball is what matters most.

Harlequins RL v. Hull Kingston Rovers

Sorry for lack of political blogging of late, I've been busy on the campaign blog though (we've just released our election address).

Anyway, for the time being, Rugby!

Saturday was a doozy. I got to the stoop to find the East Stand had been turned into a beechhead for the invading Hull Army. I wondered whether I should just stay quiet for the match, but it turned out there were still some Quins supporters in the stand, and so the game had plenty of noise throughout.

Rovers dominated the first quarters, but around 20 minutes in, Quins ran a penetrating attack over the line, and from thereon in the Humberside team barely managed to finish even one set outside their own half. The London team continued to play their fluent passing game, as against the Yorkshire squad, who relied, for the first half on their two massive players Vella and Cooke (the later had a hell of a boot on him, and he kicked one conversion clear of the south Stand), but they were met by three men tackling squads every time they ran the ball.

I should add that throughout Quins' tackling was tight and effective, a strong part of their play.

The second half Rovers started to pass the ball out to the wing, and they succesfully managed to run through a couople of tries, and made the play tight. It wasn't enough, however, and in the final quarter, Quins ran through two more tries (one in injury time) to put a seal on the game.

A dazzling display of football all round.

Harlequins RL 35 - 16 Hull KR