Voting for policies

The British elections are upon us again and as usual there is a handy guide to voting based on matching your preferences to policies and advising you which party to vote for, rather than relying on shallow gimmicks like TV debates.
My result was rather predictable: massively Green Party with a hint of Liberal Democrat (well, Nick Clegg was the best looking one, if you permit me my moment of shallowness).

5 years ago, I was advised to vote Scottish National Party, not an option in the above survey.
So let's do that survey again (unfortunately it's the general UK one);

Take the Who Should You Vote For? England quiz

Green				63
Liberal Democrat				39
Labour				11
UK Independence	-30
Conservative	-59

You expected: GRN

Your recommendation: Green

UPDATE: I re-did the quiz because it has been split up in regions and a question about Trident added. No significant change in result though.

New Great British coins

The Royal Mint has released the final designs for the new range of coins to be released during this year. And don't they look stunning and striking!
Does it mean Britain will not soon join the euro area as it invests in this redesign? It'll be easier soon when the euro hits parity with the Pound!

Metro MP

From soap star to almoist anointed (and certainly moisturised) Conservative Member of Parliament, Adam Rickitt, of six-pack fame and an unwillingness to put out for one of the better looking (and first gay) characters on Corrie Street, gets the satirical makeover by YouTube contributors and a swooning treatment from Metrodaddy as he makes over the British Tory Party (for free!).
I don't think I'd vote for him - blondes don't do it for me.

Sex in the news

A freshly elected local councillor for the British National Party (think English bulldogs and "straight" skinheads), Mr Richard Barnbrook, has an interesting past. An English newspaper reports that as part of his education he was involved in making a film called "HMS Discovery: A Love Story". What with all the houha about our military finest getting up each other, you'd think a release of this cinematic piece would be in order to fill party coffers.
But no, Mr Barnbrook has distanced himself from his past art work which, according to the Evening Standard, includes

long scenes of men undressing and fondling each other, full-frontal nudity and a naked man apparently performing a sex act on another. There are also repeated scenes of flagellation in which a group of semi-naked men apparently whip a fourth semi-naked man senseless to the ground.

Sounds like a great piece of film art to me. Mr Barnbrook commented:

It was an art film - end of story. It was not a bloody porn film.

I believe him. Porn is in the eye of the beholder, art is in his brain.

Britain joins civilisation

British pubs and clubs will be able from today to get 24 hour licences to stay open and serve the thirsty public.
About time.
Apart from the restrictions on the hours you can go for a drink in Britain - in Belgium it has long been normal for pubs to be open in the morning and they hardly ever shut until the last punter has gone - I find it odd there is a need to have a licence to sell alcohol. One doesn't need a licence to sell packets of cigarettes and that drug is far deadlier than your average pint of your favourite tipple, so why the double standards?

British election

Soon we'll have an election too here in New Zealand, but this is what one of those quizzes tells me I should vote for if I was in Britain:

	Labour 4
Conservative -39
	Liberal Democrat 44
UK Independence Party -34
	Green 2

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Maybe a rather predictable outcome, but I lean more to the Scottish Socialist and Scottish National Parties (more small countries, please) but they were not an option in the survey.
Luckily, in New Zealand, we can split our vote, which makes he electoral dynamic rather different than under a first past the post system.

Will mumsy come to the rescue again?

Mark Thatcher (Sir, if you must, he inherited the baronetcy title from Mum) was arrested in Cape Town on charges of helping the mercenaries and coup plotters against the dictator in Equatorial Guinea and who got arrested in Zimbabwe en route to their destination.
Sir Mark has a long involvement in shady dealings, no doubt very much helped by trading on his name and relationships back in Blighty and around the world.
Remember when Mummy had to despatch a search party to help find him when he was lost in the desert? Looks like she has to get him out of trouble again, but will she be able to? Last time I saw her at her old mate Reagan's funeral she looked like she was ready to join Ronny real soon.
And the time when she keeled over her notes while giving a speech in Chile (of all places!) in favour of her old mate Pinochet, she looked like a robot that had run out of batteries. That was classic television news.
Anyway looks like sonny boy was trying to emulate mommy by trying to grab power in an oil-rich country, suck it try, flog off the national assets to his mates and the locals gullible enough to pay for something they already owned.
Hey, they claimed it worked for Britain, so why not for Africa?

The Mess in Mesopotamia

British sailors caught in Iranian waters.
I just know they will look good while hooded, naked, in a pile or on a leash.
UPDATE: Iran released them without charge - or even without taking their clothes off. They wouldn't get away so easily were they to visit my dungeon.

The Man Who Wanted To Be Chairman Of The BBC

David Dimbleby applied for the job but didn't get it. But he has written a very insightful close up look at his experience how the British establishment works (or doesn't).

[The BBC's] future depends on its finding a way of being true to those origins in the expanding world of communications. Since it is funded by the public, it must try to reach as much of that public as it can with programming which is informative and entertaining.

We can but dream here in New Zealand of getting anything approaching a national public television service worthy of that name.
The job, incidentally, went to Michael Grade, who was CE of Channel 4 TV (The only job in the world I used to covet).

Congratulations, Ken!

Ken Livingstone was re-elected as Mayor of London for a second term. I am old enough to remember the 20p tube fares, an early attempt to get people moving, now of course morphed into the Congestion Charge. I hope Auckland will have the balls to elect a Mayor with enough guts to have a proper transport policy - and I don't mean billion dollar urban motorway projects.

Draw a line on paper instead of the sand

Political cartooning that makes a point and makes you laugh isn't particularly easy to find. But Steve Bell of The Guardian is an exception. His cartoons make you just want to wash your hands if you ever had the misfortune to shake hands with politicians. (I had to, one time, with John Banks, Mayor of Auckland, I still have bad dreams)
Here's a particularly good one, if you remember Mrs Thatcher as PM (as opposed to icon for the Cold War outcome).
And here's one that got the Duchess of Dupont all upset.