Archive for July, 2009
July 20th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Not 36 votes, it seems.
It remains to be seen whether or not the Lib Dem by-election machine – in it’s current form – has well and truly had it’s day. Either way, this is Chris Rennard’s last campaign, and fingers crossed this means that the party will start thinking about ways of willing by-elections that don’t depend on physical quantity of leaflets put through letterboxes.
According to the Gospel of Rennard, that’s how you win. You literally put more leaflets through doors than anyone else. Meanwhile the Tories are up to 12 leaflets, while the Lib Dems are slightly pipping them to the post at 13.
I, for one, will cheer the end of Brute Force campaigning and the death of our leafleting ringmasters. Truth is that the most attractive candidate to the electorate nearly always wins irrespective of resources, and being able to spend more money (or, at least, have the most volunteers) changes the results of elections by little more than 1%, according to those renegades at Freakonomics. Lib Dem candidates – once fresh faced “normal people” battling hard on local issues without letting boring old politics get in the way – now seem more like any other wannabe politician.
We continue to struggle for relevance and identity, and there’s no sign that this is about to change.
Still, another question hovering over Norwich is the fate of LPUK’s first ever election test. What is almost certain is that LPUK won’t be returning an MP this time – sorry guys. In By-Elections there are nearly always tiny fringe parties that ‘no-one’s ever heard of,’ and it seems there’s a sort of voter blindness when it comes to any party they’ve never heard of.
So the question is whether or not LPUK’s online presence translates into a slightly better than average result for a fringe party? I suspect that they’re going to be disappointed, although no doubt they’ll be thrilled to have broken their electoral virginity.
Of course people will point to their result as evidence of the lack of interest in libertarianism in general. It’s not something that’s going to convince me. Lib Dems know from bitter experience that their policies are usually unpopular until they’re adopted by one of the other parties, and that’s down to our image and to our reputation.
The point is that the vehicle, in modern democratic politics, matters more than the actual policies. It’s one of those horrible realities, a divergence of what ought to be and what is.
Research done at the last general election pointed to high approval of Tory policies – until people found out the source of the policies. What this says to me is that image is still everything in politics – and that it’s going to take a lot more than blogs to break the monopoly of Social Democracy on British Politics. That goes double for me.
Update: Okay, so, funny how what I think are the most innocuous posts seem to cause the most trouble for me. First I didn’t credit Nich Starling for the leaflet count. Second I didn’t link the to source of the 1% statistic, which is here. A couple of people in the comments dispute this figure (which is fair enough, it’s based on research into US elections after all).
I’d argue the point about what really makes the difference – is it local sympathy to the party motivating activists to do a ‘Full Rennard’ or is it the ‘Full Rennard’ generating local sympathy? In hindsight it’s probably best not to talk about this sort of subject during an actual full bloodied campaign.
As it happens I don’t have the foggiest idea what the polling is for Norwich. I don’t even know who the favourites are. I don’t live in Norwich so as far as I’m concerned this is none of my business – I was more mulling about By-Elections in general rather than this specific one. Whether or not the Lib Dems have a chance of winning I will leave to people on the ground there – again I point you towards Nich Starling.
I apologise to fellow Lib Dems for my appalling lack of tribalism. Don’t be angry, my brain’s just not wired up that way. To make up for it, I’m willing to go leafleting for day next week. I need the exercise anyway.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Vote Labour or the Fox Gets It
Welcome to the Norwich By-Election, where Labour appears to be taking lessons from Peta on how to layer on the old emotional blackmail. Words failed Iain (hat tip, btw).
The part of me that just wants to do exactly the opposite of whatever Labour wants or says almost tells me to start campaigning to bring back Fox hunting after this sort of thing.
I mean, look at the cute little Fox pup. Awww. Who’d want to kill that fox? Well, apparently Labour will if they lose. I mean, one could assume that they’re implying that if any candidate other than the Labour tool wins then the hunting ban will be revoked instantly and EVERY FOX DEATH WILL BE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS! But that’s implausible and ridiculous. The only way the ban’s being lifted is if Labour lift the ban themselves, cos they’ve got the majority, and can do what the feck they want.
And that, it seems, is what they’re threatening. They’ll lift the fox hunting ban if they lose. That or they’ve got that Fox pup held hostage and right now, as we speak, an enthusiastic intern is on standby with a baseball bat.
Of course, they’ll say, “look we just want to have a debate about values” and, you know, play the class war card in the least subtle way imaginable. It’s slightly better than putting out a leaflet that says this:
No, I take it back. It wouldn’t.
UPDATE: Just to be absolutely clear, the ‘let’s see some gratitude’ is *my* handiwork, a ‘what the poster really says’ piece of satire. It is not the reverse of the leaflet or anything like that!
July 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
"Here's 10 things you'll disagree with" says Andrew. I accidently make his life interesting.
Time for a bit of the old Fisking. Now, I’ve met Andrew Hickey and think he’s a nice guy, but his ‘ten things you’re going to disagree with‘ definitely hit the mark in terms of accurately labelled. I thought he was joking – turns out he’s not.
1) Much (but by no means all, or even most) so-called ‘alternative medicine’ is actually effective. Conversely much (but by no means all, or even most) conventional medicine is pseudoscientific quackery.
… which is a really dangerous point of view, creating equivalence between medicine and bullshit. Bullshit medicine cures bullshit illness and little else.
2) Government intervention in the economy can often be a good thing.
Sorry Andrew, you’re wrong. Everything the Government does has knock on consequences that it cannot predict, and it’s constantly chasing it’s tail trying to correct the imbalances their actions create – they cannot do it – it’s an infinite cycle of breaking the economy while trying to fix it.
3) Art should be measured primarily by how novel the ideas it communicates are, secondarily by its moral tone, and lastly by the technical skill with which it communicates them. By this measure the works of Jane Austen, for example, are of considerably less merit than even most potboiling bestsellers.
Which, I think proves that you need to go back and rethink how you evaluate the merit of art.
5) The scientific method is the single most important thing children could possibly be taught, and should take priority over everything else.
That’s what I’d teach my children, sure – it would be nice if all children were taught it too. Whether or not we have the right to dictate to everyone else what their priority should be? And how do you reconcile point 5 and point 1?
6) That said, spelling and grammar *matter*. The written word is a means of information transfer, and bad spelling and grammar add noise to the signal. Linguistic rules are arbitrary, but that doesn’t matter – what matters is that everyone abides by the same conventions.
Depends what you mean by conventions, doesn’t it? Language is organic – it’s not something you can set in stone forever.
The term ‘free will’ is literally meaningless, and the hoops physicists jump through in order to reconcile it with experimental and theoretical results are ridiculous.
Are you saying you believe in destiny? That the future’s already set? Cos, you know, I’m going to really disagree with that one.
9) The ‘new atheism’ of Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. is dangerous. It is entirely possible to hold religious beliefs and be a rational person (though probably not to be a dogmatic follower of any major religion while doing so). The battle they should be fighting is not religion vs atheism, but dogmatism vs secularism – a battle on which many religious people of goodwill would be on their side.
No, it’s not possible to hold religious belief and be a rational person. Any belief that depends on faith rather than evidence is the abandonment of reason. There’s nothing rational – at all – about accepting that one of Earth’s religions has more basis in reality than any of the others. They’re all garbage. You can be a nice person. You can be an intelligent person. You cannot, however, be a rational person without stretching the meaning of the word ‘rational’ so that it includes things that aren’t. Like religious belief, for example.
10) The lending of money at interest is immoral.
Right. So, I’m assuming you’ll accept that without being able to make a profit from lending money, no-one’s going to lend money, right? Is that what you hope to achieve?
My friend wants to borrow some money off me. For me to lend them money, I will have to go without it. I will also have to risk never seeing it again. While they have the money, inflation will mean that even if I got it all back I’d still have lost money.
Why should I give money I have to someone else? The obvious and only answer is that I’d do it because I could make a profit. What’s immoral about it? I get something I want, they get something they want – everyone’s happy, right?
In fact, say you managed to ban interest because it’s ‘immoral’ then you’re effectively signing the complete total collapse of the economy. The Government, any and all businesses and any and all individuals would suddenly find themselves unable to buy money for money – they’d have to buy money for favours or for goods or for something else. Loans would go underground, into the hands of the loan sharks – who, because they’re now engaging in criminal activity would charge astronomical rates of interest. Imagine the credit crunch except permanent and forever, with every business slowly crashing, and no-one other than those with inherited wealth or enormous salaries able to get the capital together to start their own business.
Interest is immoral? You’ve got to be joking, right? Right?
July 18th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Off-Topic Saturday Post - Superman is Humanity's Bitch
So, in hindsight not my best idea. The housemate and I here in Gore Towers decided to watch Superman II. I was full of regret and remorse before the thing finished.
Even his name, “Superman”, has my cringe gland working overtime, flooding my brain with cringesterone and cringealine. And that outfit he wears… how could you have a romantic candlelit dinner with someone wearing that outfit and not spend the whole evening being distracted by the cape and shiny red underpants?
So it offered excellent heckle opportunities, of course – I observed the main villian “General Zod” and his obsession with having everyone kneel before him. “Kneel Before Zod!” he said, I think, roughly 300 times during the film.
“You know,” I said. “I think General Zod is a bit of a mental. That kneeling thing? That’s quite the pathology.” Such is the problem of looking at the behaviour of characters in children’s films and trying to apply a real world interpretation of their behaviour and personality.
But what really made me angry, though, was that scene where Superman talks Marlon Brando. I realised, there and then, that Marlon’s done a real number on his son’s head.
See, Superman’s been told that he must use his absurdly over the top powers to serve the humans.
There’s no reward. Very little in the way of thanks. He must, in effect, fly from disaster to disaster saving people and must do that until he dies of old age. And, if he’s not going to do that then his ‘only choice’ is to become a normal human.
We call him Superman, but really he’s humanity’s biyatch. He’s our slave.
The alternative presented – demonstrated in the form of General Zod – is that he uses his powers for ‘evil’ and dominates the world. So, there using powers to indulge a fetish for having people kneeling before you, or sacrificing your own life with no reward.
Sheesh… some choice that is. In hindsight, the choice to go to an Alien planet and have super powers and live your life as the servant of the planet’s inhabitants or stay on your own planet and have a bit of free will? I know which one I’d choose.
See, the Libertarian Superman would, I suspect, use his powers to help save Nasa a good $500,000 off the cost of putting satellites in orbit, and his strength could be invaluable for doing away with the need for cranes in certain construction projects. In fact, in all walks of life there would be a use for a man with his powers – sure, it’d be expensive because there’s only one of him, but Superman, if he really believed in Truth, Justice and the American Way should be able to make quite a comfortable living doing lots of interesting things.
Of course, Libertarian Superman wouldn’t really be as exciting for the young nippers watching the film – Hey Kids, look! It’s the Super Invoice!
But why did this make me angry? Well, it’s when Superman’s Dad, having explained Superman’s shite life to him, says something like, “you reward is a hidden inner happiness. You can’t deny that you feel it.” and Super replies, “Yes, yes I feel it.”
Bollocks he feels it! That’s the Big Lie, you see – the idea that if you completely subjugate yourself to others that it somehow brings a ‘deeper’ fulfilment and happiness, that if you’re not feeling it then you’re not doing it enough – or worse, that you’re just a profoundly immoral person and it’s you that’s the problem. Thing is, doing something for absolutely nothing – no thanks, no gratitude, no respect, no hope of cash or future favours in return? You might do something like that because *you* want or need something done, but what if it’s something you don’t care about, have no interest in, has no impact on your life whatsoever? What if the impact is that it hurts you? What possible, possible inner happiness can anyone gain from that?
Poor Superman, I say.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Iain Dale begins Blog Deathmatch 2009
Welcome, sadists, to Blog Deathmatch 2009. Political Blog owners are now, as we speak, debasing themselves across the internet soliciting votes in this year’s, “Oo’s got the best blog?’ competition. It’s cruel. It’s unusual. And yet, bloggers, being shamelessly egotistical creatures, are powerless to resist.
This year it’s not being hosted directly by Aunty Dale. As a special treat, it’s being run by his ambitious organ, “Total Politics” with the full backing of Labour Barf, and Lib Dem Voice. This makes it not just a battle between bloggers – it’s a battle between parties, too. Be still my beating (and cold, black) heart.
See, last year and all previous years it was run by Iain himself. Cynical Non-Tories said, “this is just a cheesy way to get a million links from everyone, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” The result? Tory blogs dominated. They’d have dominated anyway, but still: Bias! screamed the internet. Much stalking and bitter acrimony ensued as recriminations and accusations of a ‘fix’ were thrown around.
So being held in neutral territory means no excuses. This is a warm-up for the General Election. The outcome of this contest is the portent of what’s to come! Yes, it’s really that important!
The questions, which fall to you, are very simple:
1. Do you know of, or read, 10 or more political blogs? (that excludes, I reckon, about 80% of blog readers)
2. Can you be arsed sending an email for which there’s no reward, no benefits other than, potentially, making some big headed, egotistical twat of a blogger feel ‘a bit chuffed’ for a couple of minutes in about two months time? (that brings us down to about 2% of blog readers left)
3. Can you follow basic instructions? (there’s about 3 people left now)
4. Do you honestly, honestly have nothing better to do? (ah, you’ve all gone home)
So, look, assuming you’ve survived the cull and passed this test you’re no doubt full of the glow of being special.. really really special… and because I just can’t talk you out of it, I suggest you point your browser at the Total Politics Page Of Solicitation, where you shall receive further instruction and cake. Okay maybe not cake. Or maybe cake.
I for one will be voting for whoever does the best job of humiliating and debasing themselves in the pursuit of my vote. Stuart Sharpe’s winning by a mile so far. Don’t believe the rumours I’ve already voted – believe me: your grovelling will not be wasted.
For the curious, I came a very satisfying 46th out of the Top 50 Lib Dem blogs last time. I’d like to not appear at all, and that way I can pretend the establishment is out to get me, therefore moulding my blog into a beacon of self pitying bitter hatred for everyone else for the next year. Can’t wait!
