The disenfranchisement of voters
December 14th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
On my web site, I describe the political systems of some 11 nations. Sometimes i am asked which country has the most democratic system. This is not a question that one can really answer, but one day I intend to write an essay for my web site setting out the criteria one would adopt in assessing how democratic a particular country’s system is in practice.
I would start with questions about voting: what proportion of the population is eligible to vote? what proportion of those eligible to vote is actually registered to vote? what proportion of those registered to vote actually vote?
This week, we learned some new information about the second question for Britain. Astonishly we find that some six million people eligible to vote are not actually registered to vote – that’s around 15%. Amazingly around half of those not registered to vote think that they are.
Among the groups most likely to be disenfranchised in this way are young people and ethnic minority people – both sections of the electorate more likely to vote Labour than Conservative.
This would be bad news at any time, but it is especially disturbing when all the constituency boundaries are being redrawn because the Coalition Government wants to reduce the number of seats in the House of Commons from 650 to 600.
More in formation here.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
A new twist on cow-based economics
December 14th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.
BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND (VENTURE) CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.
SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and market it worldwide.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.
AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the crap out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least you are now a Democracy.
AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (3)
Have we found the Higgs boson particle? (2)
December 13th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
A few days ago, I did a posting explaining that today there would be some sort of announcement about the current state of the search for the elusive Higgs boson particle which is predicted to exist in the Standard Model exposition of how sub-atomic particles interact with one another. So what did the scientists have to say?
“The excess is most compatible with a Standard Model Higgs in the vicinity of 124 GeV and below, but the statistical significance is not large enough to say anything conclusive. As of today, what we see is consistent either with a background fluctuation or with the presence of the boson.”
Some more information here.
I am indebted to my friend Nick Hobson for the following joke:
A Higgs boson walks into a church, and the priest says, “Get out! We don’t want your sort in here!”
So the Higgs boson replies, “But without me, how can you have Mass?”
And, in a similar vein, another friend Andy Rickford contributes this joke:
The barman says “We don’t serve your sort in here” and a neutrino walks into the bar.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
How did I get into computing?
December 13th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
The short answer is: slowly. I’ve just up-dated the longer answer which you can read here.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
What’s going to disappear next?
December 12th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
I remember when the Post Office announced the end of the telegram. There were outraged protests: suppose grandma dropped dead and the relatives did not have a telephone, how could one advise them of the funeral? Somehow we managed.
Today the “Daily Express” has a whimsical piece about other things that the advance of technology is making redundant. Personally, I haven’t used directory inquiries or a telephone box for at least a decade. And I was delighted to see the end of the video cassette recorder whose controls I never quite managed.
What are you glad to see the back of?
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
Just how bad are things economically?
December 12th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
“A year ago, it was assumed 2011 would see life return to normal. Europe would sort out its little local difficulties, China and India would power along, and Barack Obama would use a resurgent US economy as the springboard for his re-election campaign. …
Instead, 2011 ends with the euro fighting for its life, Britain weighing up what life might be like outside the EU, China fending off a hard landing, America in political gridlock and unemployment globally above 200 million and rising. Apart from that, everything’s going swimmingly.”
This is quote from an opinion column by Larry Elliott in today’s “Guardian” newspaper. I’ll wish you a Merry Christmas but it would probably be a forlorn hope to wish you a Prosperous New Year. But, heh, money can’t buy happiness.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Family reunion in Leicester
December 11th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Today Vee and I drove up to Leicester for a pre-Christmas family reunion. There were 23 of us in total, including four children (two of whom were not born last Christmas).
The older I become, the more I value and appreciate these family gatherings and my sister Silvia – in whose home we met – does a wonderful job in making sure that we come together on a regular basis.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
The famous Darlington Christmas letter
December 11th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Each year at this time, like most families, we send out Christmas cards to our friends at home and abroad. In many cases – especially those in other countries – we have not seen them in the course of 2011 and would like to share our experiences of the last 12 months. So we enclose with many of the cards our traditional Christmas letter.
You can read the 2011 edition here.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Have we found the Higgs boson particle? (1)
December 10th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
Almost four years ago now, I did a posting speculating that the discovery of the Higgs boson particle might be imminent. Well, it wasn’t. It has proved even more elusive that scientists thought. But, this Tuesday, there will be a statement on the latest information arising from the search for the particle at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.
Mathematics – originally from Peter Higgs in 1964 – predicts the existence of the particle which is the last remaining piece of what is called the Standard Model that explains the interaction of all the sub-atomic particles currently known to us.
Never mind, Father Christmas. I want the existence of the Higgs boson particle to be proved. But I suspect that the results announced on Tuesday will not be conclusive.
More information here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (1)
And now we have the CHUKS
December 10th, 2011 by Roger Darlington
In an earlier posting, I explained which nations made up the BRICs, the PIGS, and the CIVETS.
From this week, we have a new acronym for a group of countries. It is CHUKS which means: Czech Republic, Hungary, United Kingdom and Sweden.
And what do they have in common? They are the four members of the 27-member European Union who have not immediately endorsed the agreement designed to save the Euro. More information here.
Posted in British current affairs, World current affairs | Comments (0)