[voting systems] which is the fairest

Just been glancing at the election results for Bennelong, in Australia:

Raw results

PETERS, Lindsay [The Greens 4,811 5.53]
HOWARD, John Winston [Liberal 39,551 45.49]
McKEW, Maxine [Labor 39,408 45.33]

Two party preferred

HOWARD, John Winston [Liberal 42,252 48.60]
McKEW, Maxine [Labor 44,684. 51.40]

Interesting what the results would have been under a few common voting systems:

Single Transferable Proportional Representation

Of course the vote was set up head to head so comparisons cannot really be made but assuming there were maybe seven Liberals and seven Labor on the card, along with a dozen others and assuming Bennelong was to return 9 members, with a quota of 10%, then Liberal and Labour would get their 4 each on the second ballot and the Greens would return one member.

First Past the Post

John Howard would be returned.

Preferential Voting

Maxine McKew has actually been returned.

In this blogger's view, FPTP is the least fair system and STPR the fairest. However, STPR needs a single constituency element in it to make members accountable locally and this complicates the issue.

[country quiz] five curlier ones

Can't attribute this Wiki photo because it is one of the countries in the quiz.

1. It is long and thin and near the coast. It actually elected a communist leader years ago and is next door to a country whose sporting colours are light blue and white. It might sound cold but in fact it crosses many climactic regions from warm to cool.

2. This country exports water and electricity, it can get down to minus 7, Celsius, during winter, is in the British Commonwealth, it is 2/5 Catholic and the currency is the loti.

3. This country is long and sprawls across many islands, as well as half of another big island it disputes with its large southern neighbour. Bombings there have tarnished its image of exotic South East Asia. The wife of its former corrupt President was known for her thousands of pairs of shoes.

4. This country is hot and has an aging leader whom half the world accepts and the other half thinks is a madman who sponsors terrorists. It was the scene of huge battles in the Second World War, mainly between the Australians and Germans. From its desert you could sail across the large sea to Europe.

5. This country also has an aging leader and is famous for its cigars and lovely beaches. It is a very poor country under its system of government and it was nearly place for the start of World War 3 in 1962.

Don't peep now!

Answers in reverse order: abuc, aybil, senippilihp, ohtosel, elihc

[blogfocus saturday] tales of day to day life

Day to day events in people's lives can often be eminently readable:

Firstly, Ubermouth, yes she of the four letter words, gives us a gentler picture of life here on her farm [above]:

This is in the entrance of the woods, where I often walk when I am stressed out. It is nice to be able to have ample room to walk about , knowing that you will never bump into another soul.

One day I tripped over a tree root and sprained my ankle. Mum had to fetch the wheelbarrow ( which I sat in) and cart me home that way. LOL

On the farm we have a variety of natural growing berries, chestnuts, holly as well as bluebells, honeysuckle bushes, hedgerows, snow drops etc.

Trees surround the property on all sides so, as you can see, I am totally cut off from civilization ( which I prefer). I can, and sometimes do , walk about in my knickers. I often blare my music and dance at midnight and have complete control of my privacy and surroundings.

Not that I am anti- social. :)

2. Shani tells the story of the blown fuse:

I very quietly and calmly started working back through the events... and then I asked him to check the fuse box.. which he declaimed angrily was of no use... but he would anyway....

Low and behold - it all started working again (except the blown light bulb!).

The lamp had blown first, everything else being a coincidence...

So we rang the book club and yelled at them, a combined effort - because obviously it was all their fault.. ended up with the books at a heavy discount and on cessation of the conversation ----- fell about laughing...

3. Oestrebunny tells the history of her schooldays as they really were:

Secondary school things get easier. They usually do. When all my friends were getting braces to fix their teeth I didn't need too. I filled out a bit and looked more like a person, less like a lanky baby deer. I made new friends and was put into the groups that best suited my intellect. I suppose I'm actually quite intelligent when I apply myself.

I didn't really have many problems in secondary school. One insult from a boy who had particularly large ears, particularly stands out. He called me 'thunder thighs', charming. Way to blow a teenage girls self esteem and imply that she is anything but stick thin.

Which coming from him was a bit rich really. Given the right wind conditions I have no doubt that if he'd flapped those enormous ears of his, he'd have soon taken off.

4. Betamum explains blogging epithets:

Ben was standing over my shoulder the other day, watching me as I caught up with all the postings from fellow bloggers.

He asked why I would want to have anything to do with someone called Potty Mummy, potties being a part of his long-forgotten past, and not a word which can mean two things. No-one says “potty” to mean slightly crazed, not around here anyhow.

So I explained that people use nick-names or made up names when they blog on the internet.
And in the course of explaining this, I mentioned my own blogging handle.

He was silent for a moment, in a deeply confused way.

And then he said,

“I thought you were called Better Mum!”

4. Finally, Sean Jeating is caught in one of those meme things:

fact 4: books. There are about 3,000 in the shelves around me, and - I did even read them. :)
Being asked which one I'd take "to the island", I could not decide and would therefore prefer lots of papers and pens, so that I could write the stories I want to read, myself. :)

Another day in the life ...

[scrooge] bah, it's all humbug

Selfishness

Matrimony has one thing going for it, apart from the joy of family - it keeps a man from indulging himself.

Though he might kick against it and grab his chances when he can, his kids keep drawing him back and he gets used to living with a bunch of other people in the house - he knows the word "compromise" and what it truly means, even down to bathroom availability.

That seems to me to be good ongoing training. It most certainly builds character and keeps him on the straight and narrow. It also has health benefits. Seems to me that, once having broken the matrimonial harness, we begin a downwards spiral towards self-centredness and self-gratification.

Pity the young hedonist who sees a woman and beds her, sees another and beds her and then tries to justify his position. Because what he's doing is killing part of himself as a person and slowly becoming more sociopathic and less tolerant of any but his own needs and desires, though he'll convince himself he's simply being altruistic to more people.

It's an illusion. He is on the way to becoming a satyr. After all, who was it said:

The body of a hedonist is the coffin of a dead soul.

Pity the old hedonist too who has broken free of wife and family and now can never get back into it.

He meets a lovely lady and they seem tailor made for each other. All her quirks seem unimportant at this point and he falls in love with her, the way she seems to have fallen for him.

Compromise

They enter the era of compromise but this can't go on forever. As ardour cools and little habits start to become annoying, thereafter it becomes a question of luck for the two of them.

Example - there was a girl sitting next to me yesterday [and as you know, I like a cooler room with some flow-through ventilation at all times]. I asked her if she wasn't cold and she said she liked it that way.

Uh-huh, just like me. She and I could do business.

Now, a different girl in the room whom I would give anything to marry, she was so lovely; however, she took the opposite point of view. She's a "seal all the doors and windows and seal in the coughing, spluttering sickness with it" type and she was feeling sick too.

Unfortunately, though she would have been my first choice, the other would have been a better bet.

I haven't explained myself well. All right, here's another example.

Basically, there are some things which can't be compromised on and the air we breathe is one of them. I have a lady client and it's a constant battle with her. We like each other immensely but she sits opposite me and asks me to close the door but I have to have it partially open because the room becomes so stuffy and the eyes start to water after ten minutes.

So I close it.

Ten minutes later, she starts coughing and her eyes start watering. I point this out, open the door - give her a towel to put over her feet, she wraps herself up against the cold but the sickness does disappear. The rest of the session is spent like this, trying to find a compromise position between her needs and mine.

Next girl is a different proposition. She likes the air as I do and the session goes smoothly.

So imagine this was a marriage situation. For example - she likes seafood and has a habit of leaving prawn shells everywhere. The fridge smells of it and it's awful. Or what about a girl who's crazy for cats and kisses them, then expects me to kiss her? No wonder I was always sick.

You can speak about compromise until you're blue in the face but what can one do here? Now I expect a married person reading this would think I was so self-centred and it's true - that's what escaping matrimony does to you, I'm sure.

When the two go in opposite directions

There was once a woman I was involved with who'd been married years earlier to my accountant. He'd remained the same, year in, year out. He had his circle and his cycle, he liked skiing [she didn't] and so on. She got into astrology, joined a group whom she began to bring into the family home for conferences and it sent the hubby round the bend.

What to do in that situation? Naturally, they divorced.

I do accept Dale O'Leary's view:

The "family" in all ages and in all corners of the globe can be defined as a man and a woman bonded together through a socially approved covenant of marriage to regulate sexuality, to bear, raise, and protect children, to provide mutual care and protection, to create a small home economy, and to maintain continuity between the generations, those going before and those coming after.

It is out of the reciprocal, naturally recreated relations of the family that the broader communities—such as tribes, villages, peoples, and nations—grow.

Yes, I really believe it's the only sustainable way to live [let's just agree to disagree here] but the barriers to making it work are awesome.

Christmas and New Year

I can't stand the commercialism of this season and am doing everything humanly possible to stop people buying me anything. But it's impossible.

For example, the Vice-Deans and Dean, I just know they're quietly expecting something and I know certain clients are going to feel duty bound to offer me something. I'd prefer just to have a coffee with them. Seriously.

Selfish? Maybe it is but I look at Sally in Norfolk's comment about being stressed out by the Christmas pressure and I ask:

"For what to do this each year?"

[grub street] fat cats at it again

The Grubby People are at it again:

Sainsbury's and Asda have admitted fixing the price of milk and cheese following an inquiry by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

The supermarkets, along with a number of dairy firms, have agreed to pay fines totalling at least £116m. Cases against Tesco and Morrisons will continue after no deal was struck.

The OFT said that its evidence found that while dairy product prices went up after the collusion, the price received by farmers did not increase.

Don't you just love that - the watchdog makes a deal with the firms who are being fined for making a deal. So who are the Grub Family here?

This is the downside of capitalism - cabals, trusts and price-fixing. Not a lot can be done really. At what point can a government step in and prevent mergers?

Their answer, of course - when it threatens to restrain free trade but what is free trade anyway other than cutting your rivals out of the market? The strongest survives and then it's irrelevant if the monopoly is state or private - the fat cat still pocket the dosh.

[regions] only within the national whole

We're going to keep blogging on this thing. It's as simple as this - there are democratically elected governments, yea, even the traitor Brown ... and then there are the euphemistically named qangos and NGOs. Behind them is the money.

Only a madman would speak out against this real power. Call me mad. Here is the latest, from the CEP:

So it would appear that Peter Davidson (who sits on the governing body of Unlock Democracy) sees the destruction of England as a nation - or indeed Britain - a desirable outcome.

I suspect that this is his website, on which he explains:

I would also endorse the proposal that the Committee of the Regions should be elevated in stature from the toothless body it currently represents to become the second legislative chamber of Europe.

Toque quotes author Frederick Forsyth:

[He] was once approached by the East Midlands Regional Assembly to become an ambassador for the region. His reply was a joy to read:

Regionalism, behind its mask of local democracy, enhanced prosperity for all, but in truth standing for millions more unaccountable gravy-slurping jobsworths, has got to fool enough of the people enough of the time…

But you run into a group of people far more numerous than yourself, just as committed to the retention of England as you are to its disappearance, just as smart and just as moneyed. Before the fight is over you and yours will have learned the hard way that this old country of ours is not yet prepared to be led into the knacker’s yard.

In the spirit of Frederick Forsyth I respond to the regionalists over at Our Kingdom:

Phil Davis in the Guardian signed off his Guardian article by informing us that he ‘chairs the Campaign for the English Regions’. [I was] shocked because I thought we’d buried that particular organisation when we were victorious in the North East referendum, so I emailed Phil who told me:

Nationalism is not an ideology, but a disease (of the soul)…Hope you recover...

[S]uch a statement shows contempt not just for the Scots and Welsh - who have recently voted for national government of their own - but also for the majority of the world’s population who elect their government along national lines.

Toque refers to the North-East in particular and here's an interesting thing. I myself have been extolling the virtues of Northumbria but there is one distinct difference. My Northumbria is under English control, it's part of a greater England, of which it is an earldom. Even that stout yeoman, Englisc Fyrd, remembers the true regionalism with affection.

The neo-regionalists, on the other hand, are under the control of the EU monster, an alien seed seeking to insinuate itself into someone else's country..

That distinction makes all the difference in the world. If you look at the flag above, which requires the Northumbrian colours somewhere in it, it is quartered with the English flag, not the EU's.

And yet the EU seeks to hijack this vague nationalism and somehow twist it into a version of itself. We need to be on our guard about quislings within our borders twisting the structure to suit themselves, an analogy yesterday being the cult leader who tries to redefine something which requires no redefinition, the ulterior motive being personal power and control.

He does it by appealing to vague innate feelings within each person, harnessing them, redirecting them and then carrying the person away on a tide of emotion. Pure 1930s all over again.

Interesting that I'm integrally involved in "the region as part of the nation" over here where I live and the notion of the region as part of and a major contributing factor to the national whole is a process which has very nearly been reachieved. We were discussing this only yesterday in the light of the different post-election political map.

In every nation, let it be the same but let artificial constructs like the CFR controlled SPPNA [which Bush, Martin and the Mexican allowed into being in March, 2005] and the EU monster go the way of all things.