Foreign Perspectives

As I write this it looks like the Conservatives will finish up with around 309 seats ie around 16 or 17 short of an overall majority.

As always in times like this, the Liberal Democrats are likely to be courted by Labour (less likely with the Conservatives) although even that would only bring them up to around 315, more than the Conservatives but not a majority government. To get that critical majority they’d need to bring on board at least one other party.

The last Lib/Lab coalition doesn’t bode well for another one this time around. Just as with the last time the UK finances aren’t in good shape and that coalition managed to run the country into the ground, finishing up with power cuts, widespread strikes and bankruptcy of the country. Still, at least it was followed by a massive victory for the Conservatives who tidied the mess up, but do we really need that painful period yet again?

Barring an unexpected swing in the remaining results it seems likely that we’re in for a week or more of horse trading before Brown admits defeat and leaves. Or, at least that’s what should happen: in reality he’ll probably try to hang on regardless and do whatever it takes to allow him to do that which doesn’t bode well for the UK.

The big problem with exit polls is that it’s just not possible for them to take a view on how likely it is for the respondents to be telling the truth.

Thus, as it stands right now the exit polls are predicting a 5% or so swing whereas the actual results are looking more like a 10% swing. Will that descrepancy be maintained throughout the night? Chances are that it will as there’s still a tendency to consider voting Labour to be trendy albeit probably not quite so significant as it was a few years back when there was quite a dramatic different in the predictions from the reality.

I suspect that, once again, the exit polls will be seen as being wildly out of whack with reality.

Although the polling stations are open from 7am to 10pm in reality most people vote after work so it’s only the four hours from 6pm that really matter which, as it turns out this time, can be a problem if there’s a particularly high turnout. And, of course, if one party hits the panic button after hearing the earliest predictions and starts knocking on doors and generally drumming up voters.

The question is which of these two alternatives is closer to the truth this time around. The “early results panic” seemed to be the problem an election or two ago and made those early predictions depart radically from reality. Whilst it might not seem good for democracy to have people unable to vote, if this turns out to be the reason it’s better that they don’t as it would merely serve to distort the “real” result were they to be able to cast their votes.

On t’other hand, if there’s been a particularly high turnout in some areas it’s a sign that the polling stations are closing rather early than suits people these days. That also seems to be quite likely in some areas. For example, in an area predominantly made up of commuters it could be likely that people wouldn’t get home ’til relatively late thus making that notional four hour window more like two hours which seems rather a short period of time unless there are a LOT of easily accessible polling stations.

So what is the real cause? Probably a bit of a mixture of both in reality and something that will definitely require some research by the electoral officers once the dust settles on this election.

One of the things that has become increasingly clear as the leader debates have been going on is that Labour have been going all-out to manipulate how they and their ideas are presented.

At a simple level is the body language. Almost always when David Cameron is speaking about some policy, Brown is shaking his head. You don’t see that so often on the TV but it’s aimed primarily at manipulating the audience in the studio. Simple, but quite effective. Notably, the other two leaders don’t stoop to this level in response.

As I write this, the big push is on tax credits during the latest Brown interview (this time with wife in tow to emphasise the family friendly aspect). First off, they aren’t “tax credits”: they are a benefit payment. That status is a problem for a number of reasons including the administrative difficulty of implementing benefit payments compared to true tax credit systems, then there’s the whole business of having such a large proportion of the population on benefits which in turn means a sizeable number of civil servants required to handle the administration. However, the main issue that Brown raises is that he wants everyone to get these regardless of circumstances: that’s how some people have ended up getting over £40,000 (yes, forty thousand) pounds a year on benefits. The Conservative “elimination” of this benefit would only kick in for those getting more than £50,000 or so income.

It’s amazing at how much Brown confuses the difference between the government and the wider economy. He reckons that taxes can’t be cut because he needs all the money to fund all kinds of government assistance. In fact, the greatest government assistance we could have is none. Nobody will run with that level but less is definitely better: why shouldn’t we spend more of our own money rather than have the government make all those spending decisions for us? What he forgets most of all is that the government doesn’t have any money as such: all the money that it takes, it gets from us.

Laughably, he “had” to support the banks. Just a few years ago, he was encouraging them to get on and do just the things that got them all into trouble. Moreover, since he managed to borrow so much money over his time as chancellor and prime minister, the country was in a much weaker state to deal with any problems than it might have been had we had a sensible government over that time.

Since he was on a breakfast time programme he didn’t have any of the hard questions thrown at him which is, of course, why he appeared on it. Thus he wasn’t pulled up on his job creation schemes which it turns out have merely created jobs for the immigrants that his policies have pulled into the country. Hence, our relatively new IKEA is almost entirely staffed by Polish rather than creating employment for the locals. So far, nobody has really ran with the link between unemployment and 90% of new jobs going to immigrants.

I wonder how well Labours spin doctoring will work when they’re in the opposition? Somehow, I suspect that it’ll be several years before the realisation sinks in that they need a better way to go. At the moment, they seem to be as much taken in by the spin as they would wish the electorate to be.

Last year in a fit of enthusiasm I managed to sign up for both my first ever biology course and its sort-of associated residential.

As expected, the human biology course was both heavy going parts and thoroughly interesting right through. Having said that, it’s with some trepidation that I approach the revision for the upcoming exam in June: there’s a LOT of revision to be done in what seems to be an awfully short amount of time.

However, it’s now into the initial stages of the sort-of associated residential. I say sort-of because it’s associated with three separate courses (S204, SK277 and SD226) of which I’ve only done one so far and had intended to be in the midst of another one as I write this though I’ll not be doing it for another year or perhaps two on the current plans. The net effect of that is that I need to go over more of the background material than is ideal but, so far, that seems remarkably doable as has all of the biology so far.

Slightly unusually, the website is open before the paper versions of the documents have arrived which has let me get an initial look at them. There’s not really that much: the usual course-team letter, the introductory booklet and a course guide which also contains the background science required of the course. That last one is so comprehensive that I’d say it would be possible to come to this course without having done any of the three related biology courses though obviously you’d need to work that much harder if you did that.

Assessment-wise, it seems easy enough from this vantage point with the usual attendance requirement, marks on two mid-week presentations and a short (1000 word) write-up after the course which collectively seem very doable at this point. Total time required is supposed to be 10 hours going over the preparatory information, the week itself and about 10 hours doing the write-up following the course.

Because of the mix of associated courses, there’s a corresponding mix of experiments to be done over the week. They’re split into three separate themes: regulation and control (aimed at the human biology people), energy (aimed more generally at animals I think but I’ve not read that yet) and plants and carbon dioxide (obviously aimed at plants). All look to be very interesting at this point and that’s a view that seems to be reflected in all the course comments from previous students.

The only problem is that this course plus the human biology one are too darned interesting! That’s created a real dilemma for me in that I was originally intending to be doing a physics degree and, so far, I’m finding the biology both fascinating (much more so than the physics at this point) and a whole lot more doable than I had ever imagined it would be. That fascinating+doable combo has me thinking that perhaps I should jump ship and do the biology degree now. Snag is that with the withdrawal of the named science degrees by the OU, a choice to do that at this point basically rules out the possibility of doing a physics degree later on (though the courses would potentially remain available).