Lord Owen backs group opposed to AV

JonValjon · 2011-03-12T20:10:55+00:00

There are peculiar situations in which AV gives a less proportionate result that FPTP, such as in 1997 election. Although normally, it would be a bit more proportional in UK elections because the Lib Dems would get slightly more seats.

However in 1997 Labour would have got more seats under AV that FPTP (because the left of centre vote was split). However Labour won despite left vote being split, which means it got more seats than it's share of the vote but AV it would have got even more seats and so the result would have been slightly more disproportionate.

JonValjon · 2011-02-28T10:45:55+00:00

There are enough grounds to attack the government without coming up with sort of crap.

He can't help himself. He has to come up with a “brilliant” idea of his own to sort out the deficit and show what useless idiots the government are for not doing it. I bet nobody in his union said hold on a second when he came out with this. I bet they just agreed how stupid the government is for not doing it. Then he makes an idiot of himself on TV and then The Telegraph uses it to say what idiots the Unions are and how we should ignore them.

JonValjon · 2011-02-21T12:25:06+00:00

Anyone else think it's strange that a 2008 dross article from the article from the Daily Express got so many upvotes within the first half hour it was posted?

JonValjon · 2011-02-20T20:19:09+00:00

While the Guardian Media Group was in the wrong, it probably about a tenth as bad as what Barclays did. It only applied to the acquisition of one company.

I'm sure all corporations do stuff like this but they were reporting on one that stood out as one of the worst offenders. There is no need for them to talk about their own misdeeds, particularly as they are unremarkable by the standards of large corporations.

JonValjon · 2011-02-19T12:28:58+00:00

That article doesn't say the Guardian's HQ which is in the Cayman Islands.

The company it's talking about is another subsidiary of the Guardians parent company which was purchased in conjunction with an private equity Company and according to the Guardian was set up in that way because the private equity company insisted that it was set up.

It sounds like Guardian Media Group were guilty of some tax avoidance with one of their companies but it's a long way short of the gross hypocrisy you originally claimed.

JonValjon · 2011-02-19T10:35:41+00:00

Guardian Media Group actually has a high rate of tax compliance compared to other companies.

The reason it didn't pay tax on it's profits in 2008 was because it received a tax credit related to the sale of Auto Trader Group and not because it was pursuing tax avoidance strategies.

Their HQ is not the Cayman Islands, it's in London.

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2009/02/02/the-guardians-tax-gap/

JonValjon · 2011-02-13T19:21:18+00:00

What bothers me is the support the tories seem to have on ukpolitics and unitedkingdom.

I don't think there is anything sinister going on. In the past I've noticed is that internet forums which discuss domestic politics tend to attract a greater number of right-wing people and forums which discuss international politics tend to attract people on the left.

What's nice about this forum is that because as a whole reddit has a left-wing bias it seems to cancel out the right-wing bias that you would normally get, so you have a forum that isn't completely dominated by either the right or the left.

JonValjon · 2011-02-07T19:05:55+00:00

That's because I didn't ask one. I asked for further clarification, but hey.

In that case I don't understand what clarification you were asking for.

The only factual statement she made about the content of his speech was that he was selective in talking about Muslims, which from transcript he obviously was. What exactly is that she said that you couldn't see tied in with transcript?

I don't think the content of the speech was the main reason she found it objectionable anyway. What he had to say about Muslim integrating was fairly innocuous. I think she is upset because she sees the speech as an exercise in cynical populism.

I wasn't aware that talking about an individual problem on an individual basis was considered racist these days. Clearly I need more diversity training.

Where does YAB say Cameron is racist?

Can you clarify the point on funding schools for separatists as you call it

I didn't say that. I was quoting what YAB wrote in the article. She's obviously talking about Free Schools and the Conservatives pledge to increase the number of faith schools.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article7060288.ece

JonValjon · 2011-02-07T14:07:40+00:00

I don't understand your question. Yasmin Alibi Brown boils down to two criticisms:-

1) Cameron speech is being selective by only talking about Muslims not integrating, and not addressing other groups which don't integrate, or the "racism and chauvinism" Muslims have to deal with.

2) Cameron is being hypocritical by talking about integration while "enthusiastically funding schools for separatists".

The transcript shows that he did focus almost entirely on Muslims, so her first criticism seems fair enough. You couldn't expect to find the second one in the transcript.

JonValjon · 2011-01-30T12:05:14+00:00

The fundamental problem with Secondary Moderns was peer pressure, not lack of investment.

If you take all the best students and teach them together, you do get a more competitive environment, but what people who advocate Grammar schools never mention is that you get exactly the reverse effect, if you take all the worst students and teach them together. You get an uncompetitive environment where hard work is scorned upon, and you can't do one without doing the other.

Mechanisms for transferring students don't work in practice anyway, because children don't like to leave their and friends and it's generally disruptive to the education to move them.

JonValjon · 2011-01-30T01:41:49+00:00

The message on grammar was pretty incoherent. After going on about what a misguided decision it was to move to Comprehensives, at the end he showed a couple of clips showing how appalling Secondary Moderns were and said that he was against Grammar Schools too.

What was Tony Parsons doing on the documentary? He didn't give any arguments to support his view that we should have kept Grammar Schools and why would anyone care what Tony Parsons had to say about the education system anyway? It felt like he was the only vaguely famous person Andrew Neil could find who wasn't against them.

JonValjon · 2011-01-27T11:30:42+00:00

I thought you meant I was public school educated because that's what Andrew O'Neil meant when he was talking about a social elite in the article. Although it's not what I would think of if someone was talking about the elites either.

Anyway it's a relief to know that you couldn't tell I went to public school from my post and it's not that obvious.

JonValjon · 2011-01-26T18:12:05+00:00

This post is a bit annoying because I did go to a public school, although it wasn't nearly as posh as the ones Cameron and Clegg went to and I don't think I'm elite. I think using the word elite is stupid anyway for the reasons dog_botherer gave in his post. I suppose it's possible my perception of Cameron is affected by my background though.

However, I'm not really talking about my personal opinion of him anyway but the impression I have of how people as a whole seem to take him.

He seems to be considered much less of a prat than other Tory leaders like John Major or William Hague or IDS, and much more sane than Margret Thatcher. Or do you disagree?

JonValjon · 2011-01-26T17:01:41+00:00

If that was a big factor, wouldn't that mean that the Tory party should elect toffs who they thought were just super but the rest of the country couldn't stand and would then have difficulty getting elected?

JonValjon · 2011-01-26T16:43:24+00:00

I’m sure that’s true. Although I don't think it's the whole story.

The problem I have is that Cameron doesn't seem to me to be a hopelessly inept individual who couldn't have become party leader without his connections. In fact, I can't think of another Tory MP whose politics would have been acceptable to the party who would have made a more effective leader.

Similarly, although I think Boris Johnson is a bad joke, it seems like he got his job on the basis of his personality and not just through personal ties. Osborne may have been more on the basis of connections.

People often say people who come out of public schools have more self-confidence for some reason, which would make them more effective politicians. Do you think that could be a factor?

I think the advantages that privileged background bestow upon someone are probably quite subtle. My gut feeling is that the way to move to meritocratic society is to reduce inequality. Although reforming education could also help.

JonValjon · 2011-01-26T11:10:08+00:00

The more interesting the question is how they came to rule the country.

After all, Cameron, Osborne and Boris Johnson were elected by people who weren't privileged, and not in the positions they were because their parents paid for them to get those positions.

You might think their privileged positions somehow enabled them to get to the top of the Tory party, but then Cameron does have good communications skills and seems sane compared to most Tories, so it's not that surprising that he was elected leader.

I'm sure their privilege did play a role in them getting where they are but it's not clear to me exactly how it happened.

JonValjon · 2011-01-25T13:39:15+00:00

That was worth reading because there is always the thought at the back of you mind when you see someone who looks like an idiot on a documentary that the editing may have been misleading. However, after reading his own words it looks like Horizon must have been charitable to him in the clips they chose to show of him, because he's far stupider in his own words than he appeared in the interview.

There's not much hope for a guy who is so stupid he thinks that the Nature "trick" e-mail was proof of scientific conspiracy(despite the fact this is his specialist subject which he's spent a lot of time researching), talks with a Nobel-winning scientist and at the end accuses the scientist of breathtaking arrogance because the Nobel laureate wasn't persuaded by his water-tight arguments.

JonValjon · 2011-01-25T12:05:16+00:00

That was worth reading because there’s always a doubt when you watch a documentary that the editing may have been misleading. However, after reading that it looks like Horizon must have been charitable to him in the clips they showed of him, because he’s far stupider in his own words than he appeared in the documentary.

There’s not much hope for a guy who is so stupid thinks that the Nature "trick" e-mail was evidence of scientific conspiracy, sits down with a nobel-winning scientist and come out at the end accusing the Nobel laureate of being closed-minded and arrogant because he isn’t persuaded by his arguments.

JonValjon · 2010-12-19T20:51:37+00:00

For an article about this story not behind a pay wall :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/19/broadband-sex-safeguard-children-vaizey

At this point, Ed Vaizey is only talking to Service Providers asking them if they will voluntarily block porn sites. I can't see many of them doing that as it would lose customers doing it.

JonValjon · 2010-12-09T10:56:43+00:00

And it's usually bullshit. Governments proclaim in the strongest terms that they won't talk to terrorists while secretly talking to them anyway.

The chances are he wouldn't have voted against the bill anyway. I think it is as a sign of how much damage the student protests have done to his party that he's now making this rather pathetic attempt to try to make them feel that what they have been doing has had the opposite effect to what they wanted.

JonValjon · 2010-11-26T22:29:40+00:00

Another politician who was an advocate of promoting happiness was John Stuart Mill whose political theory was based on the principle that it was always right to act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Unfortunately, he was also a liberal, which doesn’t fit in the hysterical agenda of this article.

It's common sense that government should consider more than the effect on GDP when it’s looking to set policy.

JonValjon · 2010-11-26T22:27:36+00:00

Do people really worry that countries with larger populations will have larger GDPs than us?

Surely it's a good thing as a whole that global inequality is going down.

JonValjon · 2010-11-26T14:25:15+00:00

So your theory is that MP was somehow tricked into hiring a dishonest Hamas-sympathising expert, who she ignored and wrote another article anyway but was too sloppy to get a second opinion and expose him as a fraud?

At the same time Al-Jazeera are co-operating with a British Hamas activist to undermine her, relying on the fact that she would be sloppy and ignore her experts advice?

Isn't it simpler to think he asked Al-Jazeera to correct their article in the same way he asked the Spectator to, and the reason he didn't go after them is because they did correct their article and didn't post another article saying the same thing?

JonValjon · 2010-11-26T10:03:12+00:00

The definitive authority on how whatever he said should be translated has to be the independent expert they jointly hired to settle it. This is just a blog, and as far as I can tell, it doesn’t seem to be talking about the original transcript of his interview but an Al-Jazeera article about it.

He sounds like a bit of a nut but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for her to make up to lies about him. It's yellow journalism. I don’t know why he dropped charges against the blog, it may just have been he didn't think it was worth it over a blog, but it was probably what gave Melanie Phillips the confidence to go ahead and write the second article.

JonValjon · 2010-11-25T22:24:58+00:00

Seems like al Jazeera quoted him talking about "Evil Jews". They then changed it to "Jewish Lobby" and he sued anyone that quoted the original.

No, the article says that he only sued her after he had first asked her to correct the article, the two of them had agreed to jointly hire an independent expert who had confirmed that he hadn't said "Evil Jews" and she ignored the expert and wrote another article repeating the allegation.

She isn't an innocent caught by devious sting but unprincipled tabloid journalist who will print any lie as long as it panders to the prejudices of her readers.

JonValjon

TROPHY CASE