News Archives: May 2010

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Twitching Again

We'd just sat down to watch telly, when I noticed...

Claire quickly grabbed a camera, and the sparrowhawk posed nicely for us, until Tara wandered over to see what the fuss was about. Giant dogs were a bit much, obviously, and the hawk shot off. This follows on from yesterday's sighting of a red kite flying over Edinburgh.

Posted by graham @ 09:31 pm

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The Morning After

A few predictions :

The Economy Is Shafted. The Tory priorities of cutting (already pretty modest) borrowing and cutting taxes (for the top 1% of earners) means cutting services and investment. Both of which mean job losses and therefore lower private spending. We'll be formally back in recession by Christmas, and this time we'll see double the business failures, double the house re-possessions, and half a million extra unemployed. Maybe worse.

The Cause of Electoral Reform will be set back by a Referendum on AV. Alternate Vote is not PR. It's enforced tactical voting. There'll be the odd constituency in which it makes a difference, but in most it's irrelevant. In some cases, it will even entrench the sitting MP. Where I live, Labour has 49.8% of the vote - not much to pick up on second votes for an overall majority. On the other hand, under 3 member STV we'd get two Labour, one SNP. Make it 5 member and the Liberals may well get one as well.

AV is a distraction - we need STV. But a referendum, won or lost, will make it harder to get that reform. Either we'll have just changed the system, or we'll have just tried to change the system and failed. Either way, real reform takes a step backwards.

The Lib-Dem Vote Will Collapse. I don't know about the rest of the country, but in Scotland, Lib-Dem supporters are angry. Never mind that Clegg is doing exactly what he said before the election, the reality of a Tory PM propped up by the Lib-Dems was not what Scottish supporters wanted. Many of the 11 Scottish Lib-Dem MPs will be out at the next election. Labour may make some gains, but I suspect the SNP will pick up most of those seats. Unlike in '79, the SNP have been pleasingly anti-Tory and progressive in their negotiations over the last week.

Another Election in 2012. There are pretty much zero policies in common between the Lib-Dems and the Tories, but they're committed for now. The earliest crisis point is the budget next March, the latest the following budget. I think the latter one more likely, so I think a vote of no confidence over the budget in March 2012, with a general election following from that.

Posted by graham @ 08:58 am

[Archive Index]