Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Differences in the questions and the interpretations of the answers on websites seems to be increasingly common lately.

At the top of the annoyances list is the bank which, as part of their security set up, asks what is your mother’s first name yet when asking you to confirm your security details asks what was your mother’s maiden name which, of course, is a completely different question and with a different answer.

Even more insidious is Facebook as I’ve just found out. I generally get around to looking at it once every couple of months so just got around to setting up a bit more of my profile on a whim a few weeks ago. One thing I noticed was that you can now say you’re in a relationship with somebody that’s on Facebook. The options under that are extremely limited for the complicated lives that people lead these days and basically look like they’ve been written back in the 1950s. Anyway, the only one that seemed to match up me and Wendy was “in a relationship”. Snag is that at the other end it asked Wendy to confirm that she was my girlfriend which doesn’t really equate to “in a relationship” to me and doesn’t really come close to describing said relationship seeing as James is now 8 and we’ve been together for getting on for 10 years.

Can’t people sort out these two-place questions?

Despite the last minute wobbles, I suspect that this could prove to be one of the most stable of partnerships.

Why? Well, because for the first time in a very long time it will give the Liberals experience in government. One of the problems that they have had in recent times has been in convincing people that they had the strength to take part in government. It’s all very well standing on the sidelines in opposition and putting forward all kinds of ideas when you know that you will never have to take responsibility for implementing them. Taking an idea from the original concept through to implementation is something quite different and it’ll be interesting how the coalition takes to that.

So, at least in the medium term, there’ll be quite an incentive from the Liberals to make this work. On the other side of the fence, the Conservatives will have the advantage of having intimate access to the Liberal party’s ideas machine which has had the advantage of not having to worry about implementing their ideas and therefore has often came up with good ideas that would have been rejected at early stages by the other two main parties. Not all of those ideas will be workable but many of them may well be.

What will be a problem is the time about three years from now when the lights of the oncoming election will be seen. That pre-election period is going to be “interesting” for both parties and the working of the government generally.

It was a little wobbly this morning but at last Labour did the right thing and abandoned any thoughts of attempting to prolong their lame duck government. Most surprising was last night when John Reid came out and said directly that it simply wouldn’t be right for the Labour party to even think of some cobbled together coalition. It was into this morning though before the various spin doctors admitted that withdrawal was the only democratic thing to do.

This evening the new Conservative led government is in place or at least the Prime Minister is as he has yet to appoint his Ministers. That has the effect that he’s in full charge of the country this evening, albeit will a full complement of civil servants to keep a handle on it all. Changes in government are the only time when the UK is effectively run presidential style and it’s generally for a very brief period.

One final issue not yet resolved is the approval of the coalition by the Liberal Democrats which should happen later this evening all being well. Should all not be well and they reject it, we still have a government but a minority one.

At the changeover there were all the usual thank you gestures from both Brown and David Cameron. Not that anyone really believes them, of course.

Somehow I feel that this is nearing the end game.

Yesterday it became clear that Clegg doesn’t have enough from the Conservatives to suit him. The turning point on that seems to be a Liberal requirement to have proportional representation used in UK elections. On offer from the Conservatives was a referendum on the issue which does seem to be the correct approach. At the same time Labour came up with a guarantee to implement the change. Bearing in mind that this change is supposedly going to result in continual coalitions it’s clear that the current Labour government are only offering this as a last ditch way of staying in power.

Will David Cameron take the chance of ditching the Liberals and running with a minority government today? Probably not though I’d say he and his team are thinking of doing it very soon.

The Liberals revealed their true colours today. It was never so much what was in the national interest as what was in the Liberal party interest.

Thus, whilst clearly the economic issues should have been the most important, there was always the demand for PR which, the Liberals think, will best suit them. If PR did pan out in the way that the Liberals think it will, coalitions will be the order of the day and the power of the Liberal party will rise as dramatically as it has done in the last week. Do they deserve such power. Clearly not, if the negotiations this week are anything to go by.

But, what should David Cameron do now? If I were him, I’d be calling Buckingham Palace tomorrow morning with a proposal. First, Brown would be out: he clearly doesn’t have the support of either the Commons or the country. Next, I would propose myself as the Prime Minister on the understanding that what I would do, within the shortest period administratively feasible, would be to dissolve Parliament and hold another election. Whilst this would ordinarily be a high risk option for him, both Labour and the Liberals are showing how bad they are more and more as the days go by and so the chances of a landslide Conservative victory are rising as each day passes.

Will he do it though? If Labour and the Liberals get together I’d say yes for sure, if not it’s increasingly likely.