EU don’t get a vote
March 9th, 2008 at 02:08

Parliament had a vote last week to decide whether or not there will be a referendum on whether we ratify the thrilling new European Reform Treaty. The parties all had their positions cler – Labour didn’t want a referendum, the Tories did, and the LibDems got the wrong end of the stick entirely, and thought they were discussing whether to actually be in the EU or not. Idiots.

Nick Clegg really has baffled me with his party’s ridiculous stance: “forget the treaty, lets have a referendum on whether to stay in the EU or not”… which is mental. Its like the LibDems have seen the polls and have thought “the public want to vote on something… so lets give them a poll on any old question, just not the important one”. It’s a bit odd to say the least, as no one (apart from some crackpots on the lunatic fringe) have actually said that being in the EU in general is a bad idea… its like two people arguing over whether they prefer Adam Hart Davis’s science programmes or his history programmes, only for a third person to suggest that rather than pick science or history, everyone decide whether they like Adam Hart-Davis in the first place or not… which is stupid, because that’s not up for discussion, as it goes without saying that everyone thinks he’s great.

I’m quite pleased with the result though – I don’t think there should be a referendum. I hate to agree with Ken Clarke because agreeing with a Tory is like intellectual self-harm, but having actually watched a bit of the debate-on-whether-to-have-a-referendum on BBC Parliament (because I was trying to do literally the most boring thing I could have been doing at that time), he said that people elect politicians to make the important decisions for them*, because lets face it… why should we listen to the man on the street? What does the Sun reading white-van driver know about the finer points and technicalities of managing European integration? If the man on the street was in charge, we’d have bought back the death penalty and would have constructed a giant wall around Britain with robotic lasers that automatically target immigrants. The general public are idiots.

I can, however, sympathise, with the crackpots who think more highly of the general public than I do, and think that the ignorant masses should get a say, as that’s what democracy is all about, isn’t it? If I was deciding whether we should have a referendum or not then, I’d have a caveat that the public should be informed. And if they want the public to be informed, then the general public must be engaged and interested. Which is more difficult than it sounds.

European-level politics are supremely tedious to all but the most enthusiastic technocrats. What do the public care about? The Common Agricultural Policy? Nah. Trade tariffs? Nah. Representation and democratic deficits? Not even that. There’s literally nothing in the new treaty that is even slightly interesting. Being partially colour-blind and only able to see beige and being partially deaf and only being able to hear Heart FM are the only things analogous to the contents of the treaty.

Hell, I’m a politics student and I haven’t read the new treaty, nor really know what it contains, because its so supremely dull, and I imagine I’m in the tiny minority who might stand a chance of being interested in this sort of thing.

I think if they want a referendum, they need to change the treaty to engage the people and reflect things they’re actually interested in. Which is why I think if there is going to be a referendum, the treaty needs to have provisions for reforming the Eurovision voting system**. Fuck qualified majority voting thresholds, that’s what the general public really care about.

Lets face it – the only European political issue that can really get people worked up is the annual outrage over the political voting during the Eurovision Song Contest – when Cyprus always give Greece 12 points, and the ethnic mish-mash of former-Yugoslavia all voting for their respective mother countries, and the Balkan bloc-vote, and so on. This is obviously in greater need of reform than the European Parliament, because how can it be fair that Malta, population approximately 4, have the same voting weight as Germany, population 82 million? Especially on an issue as important as who has the best song.

If the government wanted a referendum on the treaty that they’d be guaranteed to win, all they have to do is get into the treaty a clause weighting each country’s voting weight to be relative to their populations make up 75% of the points, and then satisfy the small countries by making the final 25% of the points awarded come from an equal number from each individual state – pretty much the same system as you have in the US government, with the House of Representatives having congressmen from each state relative to their respective populations and then the Senate having two senators from each state.

This could be a revolution in European politics as what goes on Brussels will become relevant to the people of Europe – come May 2009 they’ll be a tangible event that people can associate with an EU decision. So who’s with me?

(* Chomsky, in the introduction to Media Control, also gives barring the public from managing their own affairs as a definition of the concept of democracy… which makes me feel a bit better about things)

(** I know Eurovision has nothing to do with the EU, but the EU should take it on board as a core competency)

Comments(3)

The Tories are a bit racist after all.
November 4th, 2007 at 19:43

There’s no better way to start your Sunday morning than to wake up to find the Tories being beaten up by the press. I mean, short of waking up to find the creationists have admitted defeat and have all signed up to a document promising not to spout their bullshit any longer.

I wonder what possessed Nigel Hastilow, a Conservative candidate and judging by his photo on the BBC news website, possibly the smuggest man alive, to claim that “Enoch Powell was right”.

Maybe it is because I easily confuse Powell and Oswald Mosley, maybe its because he’s come out in support of a man who was considered a horrendous, evil racist forty years ago, when racism was generally considered to be excellent, but I’m shocked and surprised that someone would be willing to say they agree with Powell.

I’m not terribly shocked that Tories think like this, mind, as they’ve always been at least a bit racist.

My favourite bit of this whole controversy though is reading what the various important Tories have been saying. They have to strike a careful balance between distancing themselves from the remarks of a crackpot, and not isolating themselves from the, er, crackpot grass-roots of the Tory party.

One of his constituency party people tried to defend him by saying “He’s basically just raising issues that have been raised with him when he has been canvassing the area”. Unfortunately though, Hastilow did use the phrase “He was right” – which I guess is like if I wanted to highlight how some people think the holocaust didn’t happen by posting in the first person “I am a holocaust denier”. (I also vigorously deny allegations of using shock-analogies to make a facetious point.)

David Davies, a man so boring that his parents didn’t want to have to remember two different names, apparently said the comments were “very unwise” and that candidates have to exercise “great caution in the language they use about immigration” (maybe immigrants could be “evacuated”, eh?), and Caroline Spelman, whoever she is, has apparently said that he must “explain himself”.

In other words “you can racist if you like, that’s cool – just don’t tell anyone until we’re in power, okay?”

Comments(0)

I’ve always said Conservatives are nutters.
October 15th, 2007 at 14:20

I was delighted to read this morning that the Tories have lost eight million quid. This isn’t the best bit, though. The money, that Branislav Kostic, a dead man, had left to the Tories in his will, is going back to the family after a judge decided that Kostic was mentally ill when he made the will.

Well, you’d have to be if you were giving money to the Tories. Apparently, and you can check this with the BBC news link above, he exhibited the following signs of mental illness:

1. Paranoia
2. Delusion
3. Admired Thatcher
4. Wanted to donate his money to the Conservatives

The weird thing is though, that the BBC report reads like it is describing a typical Conservative voter. His son said Kostic was “deluded and insane”, and his support for the Tories was “in part the product of the state of his mind”.

No doubt his paranoia came from the worry that the existence of poor people might undermine the success of the free market at distributing wealth and his delusion stemmed from his belief that we need nuclear weapons.

“He was tormented by delusions that [his son] and other members of my family were part of a worldwide conspiracy of terrorists and criminals who were trying to kill him.” – yeah, that sounds pretty much Conservative thinking.

“The court heard that Mr Kostic had made the will after saying Margaret Thatcher was ‘the greatest leader of the free world in history’ and that she would save the world from the ’satanic monsters and freaks’.” Speaks for itself.

I think they ought to ban donations to the Conservative Party, or at least take it to be the first sign of mental illness.

Comments(0)

Political Metrics
July 22nd, 2007 at 01:20

Politicians have always had a problem attracting young people. If you’re a boring old fart who’s idea of an exciting evening is discussing the finer points of the Private Finance Initiative or the latest movements in the Hungarian interest rate, then young people are going to think that you’re the most irritatingly tedious person alive. Its why politicians go out of their way to explain why they love the Arctic Monkeys.

But how can we judge a politician’s popularity with the ‘yoof’ of today? I think my friend Michael and I have stumbled upon an exciting new way to take metrics on just how popular politicians are: Facebook groups.

(Readers! If you have a Facebook account, it will massively enhance the rest of this post – it’s like having digital telly and press red. You’re able to pointlessly switch over from Tim Henman losing at Wimbledon to a couple of nobodies on Court 4 battling it out.)

On Facebook, you have the ability to create and join groups where you can discuss common interests or state your allegiance with a cause. Whilst this is invariably sickeningly studenty topics like “Fun House Appreciation Society” or “Bring back the Crystal Maze” (if that were a manifesto commitment the party would be practically guaranteed victory), there are some political groups too. And I think the groups say a lot about politicians. Here are some examples:

Lets start with someone obvious: the Boris Johnson appreciation society has over 12,000 members.

‘Stop David Cameron… his lies make baby Jesus cry‘ has 1200 members. Meanwhile, he has 62 members in his ‘appreciation society‘, although to be fair, there are a number of pro-Cameron groups so the membership is probably fairly fragmented.

One of the more bewildering groups is the (brace yourself for this) David Davis Appreciation Society. W..W…What? David Davis. Really. It has 40 members.

Tessa Jowell has exactly seven fans. Charles Clarke has an incredible ten.

The group “Iain Duncan Smith, I love you“, generously calls IDS “only slightly inept”. The man who thinks that tax cuts will heal deep personal problems and cause less marriages to fall apart has only three fans. This is pretty pathetic when you consider that Alistair Darling’s eyebrows alone have exactly 24 times as many supporters.

‘Michael Meacher‘ for PM. Two members. One of them is… Michael Meacher.

‘Hazel Blears depreciation society‘… 151 members. ‘Hazel Blears – what a fox‘… 20 members. Telling.

There are 3,500 nutcases who ‘appreciate’ Margaret Thatcher. The Anti-Thatcher league only has 640 members. Damn.
‘Ruth Kelly is shit and should resign‘ – 16 members. ‘Sack Ruth Kelly‘ – 21 members. ‘I support Ruth Kelly‘ – er, 2 members.

George Osbourne has 102 fans and 94 anti-fans. Which shows that there is something slightly wrong with the world.

So what does this prove? Some people like politicians and other people don’t. What a revelation.

Comments(1)

Politics Update!
July 21st, 2007 at 18:28

The last few days has seen some major political developments. By “the last few days” I really mean “Thursday night”, but I was too lazy to blog about it at the time, so I’m going to call it “the last few days” so I don’t sound behind the times.

Politics comment #1!

Apparently no one is being charged over the Cash for Peerages thing. This is ridiculous. Selling access to the legislature to the highest bidder is one thing – but letting in rich businessmen for free is insane. Of course they should be charged – think about how much money they could raise!

Politics comment #2!

The Tories were thrashed in two by-elections. I was going to blog about this earlier, making a hilarious play on the phrase “by-election” by speculating who was the best bisexual: Simon Hughes or Captain Jack from Doctor Who/Torchwood. These two were the only two famous bisexuals I can think of, which is why this blog entry never materialised.

I was pleased with the election result though – UKIP were once again proved to be a political insignificance, being beaten by the BNP in Sedgefield. Yeah, that BNP. I guess its because people prefer an honest racist to a closet racist. In Ealing Southall, they were beaten by the Greens and Respect. Ace.

Politics comment #3!

Eight cabinet ministers have admitted to having smoked cannabis. This annoys me, as it implies that politicians are much cooler than I am. I’ve never smoked cannabis (Coke is a different story), and yet whilst I’m sitting here unemployed being a poor student, the naughty kids who took drugs are now running the country. There’s no justice.

I reckon this was all a clever political move though. Nobody cares whether these politicians smoked cannabis at university – what people do care about though is whether David Cameron has. I dare-say the Tory grass-roots would be too thrilled if their leader had taken drugs, what with them being more, er, conservative, than your average voter. Are they trying to provoke some discontent amongst the Tories? I hope so. Its a very clever plan.

Politics comment #4!

Boris is definitely running for London Mayor and is on the Tory shortlist. I wrote about this only a week ago. I don’t know how anyone can think that electing a man who was complicit in an attempt to assault a journalist is a good person to run London.

More politics: soon!

Comments(4)

Boris for Mayor?
July 13th, 2007 at 20:39

Apparently Boris Johnson is going to run for Mayor of London. I guess the Tories strategy on this is to provide the joke candidate in much the same vein as how quiz questions always have the obligatory two plausible answers and something ridiculous as the third.

I’m guessing that the campaign slogan will be something like “Boris: not as incompetent as he looks”. I always got the impression that the Tories have put him in a safe seat (Henley) because he brings some much needed attention to the party. Give him an inoffensive role, like Universities spokesman (students bloody love Boris anyway), and let him appear on telly bumbling around, everyone will love the Tories, right?

The thought of Boris actually being in charge of anything is terrifying. Especially when the thing he’s in charge of is the biggest city in Europe and one of the most important cities in the world.

If I were more facetious, I’d perhaps go and list some stupid policy ideas and imply that Boris would implement them (declaring war on Liverpool, forcing everyone to ‘bumble’, scrapping the congestion charge, etc), but that would imply that he’s capable of doing Mayoral things.

Comments(1)