Tomorrow there is a General Election in the UK. In my area will have the chance to vote for both my member of Parliament and local council. I shall be voting in both of these, but shall be voting differently.

It’s worth stating some background to my voting choices. Firstly be born in 1975 meant that as I soon as I could understand anything about government my first Prime Minster became Margaret Thatcher.  So the reality that a another political party could really form a government didn’t become real until 1997 – a few years later.

Also it’s worth noting that I am an ardent ‘fan’ of the series ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ therefore I suspect a certain cynicism is present in my views.

So to my voting choices.  I was hoping that I would get to meet a Conservative Candidate and be able to assure them that I was “voting for a change” (the Conservative motto this election).  Voter apathy is often highlighted, especially amongst the young. This is to me the most concerning feature politics. My Grandmother would always say that people had died for my right to vote.  She would be horrified that people would consider no voting; although I suspect that she would be most horrified that the political parties had yet the voters get to the point where they saw no reason to.

This is one of the central reasons I have always, and will do this time vote for the Member of Parliament who is a member of the Liberal Democrats. They are not one of the two parties that have held government for many, many years. Therefore in order to get change of any sort we need a different government and therefore voting LibDem I believe is the best way of achieving that.

A Warning to the Liberal Democrats – you are a political party the same as Conservative or Labour, therefore I would expect you to have the same motivations. Should after several years of government you have not produced the change in thinking and belief then many people will be disappointed.

Note the phrasing in the paragraph above “vote for the Member of Parliament who is a member of the Liberal Democrats”. Any candidate who asks if they I would vote for them; would get the reply “sorry no I can’t”.  What the current system requires me to do the is vote for a party. In a general election it is interests of the country as a whole I am interested in. Those interests are therefore served by the government, and that under the current electoral system is governed by what party I vote for.

This leads on to why I’m not going to vote Lib Dem in the local election. In this I am voting for a person to represent and look after local issues at a local level. Here, I feel that party politics has less to offer me.  It is true that the same system works for electing the local council as for a government; but I feel that choosing the correct person is more important to represent local issues.

Therefore locally I always vote independent; the local independent candidates have done very well over many years. I see no reason to alter this.

These are my thoughts today; there are some holes in the thinking possibly. I would willing entering into any discussion of policies and principles of the system.


It's been some time since this blog was last updated. Well quite a lot of time actually - nearly two years. Well at lot as happened in those two years. When I say a lot I am referring to the 15mth old little one upstairs asleep (currently).

So I apologise for any inconvenience whilst I've not been blogging.  So why what write this now?  Well in the interim I've actually started using Twitter and been 'micro-blogging' for some time. I saw the title of this post on a vending machine. My thought process was - 'oh I'll tweet about that when I get back to my desk; but 140 characters can't sum up my dislike for it'. So I'm here!

Scenario is: at work we have cashless-vending. i.e. we need to 'charge-up' a card with money. Stick in your card, cash, and you can now use vending machines/buy lunch at the canteen etc. There aren't many of these charging machines, and when one was out of order, the nearest is the other side of the site. Ten minutes walk - ok not a big problem but it gets a "grrrr" when all you want is quick coffee before the next meeting.

So what's my problem? It's the any in the phrase. It has always implied to me that the author is saying.  "This machine being out of order could possibly in some rare circumstance have caused you inconvenience. Should this unlikely circumstance have arisen then I'm sorry".

It's the fact that the any suggests for the most of time you won't have a problem - but if you do hey, we're sorry. My argument is that they when this phrase gets the probability is that you have (or will) be inconvenienced. Therefore this phrase just adds "insult to the injury".

Rarely you do see "Sorry for the inconvenience caused" - which always gives me a better feeling. It's also a case of writing a phrase that is so often used the author is not actually thinking about what they have said.

Anyway - that feels better now, rant off.  So when will the next post be? 2011? I certainly hope not, but if it does I apologise for the inconvenience I will have caused you.

I went down to Little Woodham this afternoon - the "1642 Living History Village". James is a long standing member and encouraged me to come down; some pictures where required as well.

The weather was wonderful, and the site is in amazing small piece of oak woodland. Absolutely English!! Together with the wittle and daube buildings it is a very impressive place. After a while you really start to forget that it's 2007. The civil war siege of Portsmouth was occurring this week in 1642; one thing that struck home is that 1642 what we now think of as being close wasn't then. Scale was very different.

Wonderful people with great stories to tell of life and living. Narrowly missed being signed up to be a Pikeman.. best job for a gentleman apparently. Attention to detail is amazing - sausages in the chimney to smoke and kill the maggots.

My knowledge of 1642 is a bit rusty - better brush up for next time as well. Sadly some of my photo knowledge left me as well and the VR lens didn't perform as well as I had hoped it would do.

In the words of Bill Bryson "Go; go now".... (though I'd like to keep my car if you don't mind... plus it didn't exist in 1642 anyway)

Wheelwright, originally uploaded by Calanais.

Often in news reports you hear stastics quoted, such as 1 in 5 people eat fish once a week, or 20% of people got A grades in this exam.  Fine, it tries to give an idea of scale. There are many ways of quoting for example

• 1 in 4
• 25%
• A quarter
• 2 out of  8

Now they all quote the same proportion; my assertion is that whilst these are the same amount, that saying "a quarter of people" gives a different 'feel' from "1 in 4 people".

Assuming this assertion holds, the problem that I have is when 2 statistics are mixed together. For example (and this is the real example I heard today).

A quarter of students achieved grade A in A-level exams, compared with 1 in 10 a few years ago.

By using the x in y approach for figure a few years ago and using "a quarter" now I think exaggerates the difference between the amounts. Say we recast the sentance,

 25percent of students achieved grade A in A-level exams, compared with 10percent a few years ago.

Does that change the perceived difference? I think it does - please contradict me!!