My year

For me it's been a relatively good year, which is a welcome change. Every year since 2006 when my business failed up to and including 2010 was unpleasant and negatively stressful in some way. I say "negatively stressful" because there is such thing as "positive stress", which is what I have been thriving on this year. Those previous years brought nothing but stressful losses, whether financial, of personal relationships, of employment and even my home. I can't say that I've regained all of those things because that would be far from the truth, but I do believe to be on my way in a sustainable and realistic manner.

I started 2011 unsure about my current job and I was tempted by a very extraordinary opportunity that came across my path. I wasn't offered the position in the end, I fell at the last hurdle during the recruitment process. I'm glad that happened now because my position at Glide developed and improved dramatically throughout the rest of the year and I am very settled there now. I see myself staying with the company and being involved in its development and future diversification for some time. Although I have been in higher paying positions in the past I can quite honestly say that it is the most rewarding job I have ever had and I really wouldn't swap either it or the people I work with for anything less than something that I'd simply be an idiot to pass up.

With greater happiness in my job came greater acceptance and belief that my move from Manchester to Birmingham was a positive step, because for a while I quite honestly wasn't sure, and this lead me to be able to move in to a place of my own in the middle of the city in November, which has made me immensely happy. Living on my own, on my own terms, in the middle of another fantastic city and with everything in walking distance again is a dream come true and I cherish it every day, whereas when I was living in Manchester I took it for granted. I'd like to thank all those who were so instrumental in helping make it happen for me.

2012

As I mentioned before I've a list of New Year's resolutions and I'm so determined to stick to them that I have designed a spreadsheet that measures my success with each on a month by month basis. By that you can obviously infer that "be less anally retentive" isn't one of them. However, also as mentioned before I'm not sharing them.

I've high hopes for my job and my team as the company I work for grows. We're moving offices at the start of March to the Alpha Tower from our current base in the Jewellery Quarter, which should make things a little easier although I'll actually have a smaller desk and my team will lose the separate room that we greatly enjoy at the moment. My team will expand (probably two-fold) and the company's diversification plans are thoroughly exciting. A pay rise would be nice but Rome wasn't built in a day.

I want to continue to improve and expand my skill set and experience as you might expect. As mentioned before I've learnt more in my current position than in any other position so I don't expect that curve will get any shallower any time soon, nor would I want it to. I want to get into mobile applications if possible as it would be nice to have something that just earns money for me while I sleep, but as with most software development you typically (but not always) need a problem before you can come up with a solution.

There are some demons still haunting me from the collapse of my business that I want to put to rest this year, finally, I think if I carry those over to 2013 I really will be doing something wrong.

The rest is all personal, really. Yes, I'd quite like to meet another fella, before you ask, but this isn't high on my list of priorities, mainly because I'm old and ugly enough to realise that such things will happen to you when you least expect and whether you like it or not, so to seek them out would be a futile waste of precious time. That said, I've not been as "eligible" as I am now for some time now, so who knows.

I wish everyone who's bothered to read this far a fabulous 2012. Let's hope it doesn't all end horribly on 12th December, eh?

Notable despatches

This section is a footnote really in the absence of a full review of news events this year. I would note that I actually read and/or watch the news every day with a keen interest and during my early days of blogging I would blog almost every day with my comment on whatever was going on, however, more recently Facebook and subsequently Twitter have provided more effective means of comment, meaning that rare is now the occasion where I will create a full blog about current affairs.

Banned shopping

Col. Gadaffi, the Libyan despot who ruled for 42 years since taking power in a military coup. An unpleasant relic from the 20th Century, no doubt, but I think many people will secretly miss the entertainment that he used to provide to the rest of the world. Modern world leaders may well be safe, responsible (Gordon Brown notwithstanding) and largely democratically elected but I can't think of a single one who I would describe as "a character", nor will any of them be remembered much beyond their tenures, not that I'm suggesting infamy to be something to aspire to. The circumstances surrounding Gadaffi's death, however, raises worrying questions about Libya's brave new future.

Invented nuclear fusion

Kim Jong-Il, the "Dear Leader" of the bizarre world that is the North Korea, itself also a haunting relic of the 20th Century that the world could well do without. Kim's death was not unexpected, and although he was an abysmal failure as a leader, despite what North Korea state media insist, his passing on is not necessarily a good thing. The pampered idiot he's left in charge is just that and nobody in the rest of the world wants a nasty coup in a rogue, pariah state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and the world's fifth largest army. Orwellian societies were never designed to leave the printed page.

Bins taken out on Bank Holiday

Osama Bin Laden, the criminal mastermind behind the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, who was tracked down to a compound in the middle of an affluent area of Pakistan near to a military academy, which embarrassed the Pakistani authorities immensely and has since strained relations between the two countries. This news was not entirely surprising what with the tenth anniversary of September 11th and Obama's pledge to remove US troops from Iraq looming large. His elimination was a necessary pre-requisite of being able to say the job was done. May America's wounds now heal properly.

Also mad

Steve Jobs, the visionary creator of Apple, now the world's most successful company. I've been an Apple user for coming up to 6 years now and I have never looked back. Jobs initially tempted me away with the iPod and Intel-based Macs, and has continued to deliver ever since. The world needs more people like Steve Jobs. He has no clear heirs-apparent in the computer industry. There are contenders, without a doubt, but only time will tell if they end up making the sort of difference that he did.

The BBC have a slideshow on more notable deaths in 2011.

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Having carefully considered each argument I've come to a decision on how to vote on 5th May and I wil be voting "No". Here are the reasons why I have reached this decision. You may wish to note that none of these reasons are political. I don't care about any of the party positions. I will admit that the party that I'm a card-carrying member of has a consolidated "no" position, but this had no bearing on my decision.

1. The instant-runoff system, whereby you "score" the entire list of candidates in order of preference, is the same system that Nominet and the British Computer Society use for various internal elections, so I am familiar with using it already. Here's the blunt truth about using it in practise: After I've marked my second preference, I really don't give a monkeys about the remaining six candidates and so I assign their numbers arbitrarily, almost randomly. I expect many people will do the same if this system is adopted for parliamentary elections.  Such "votes" that make up the numbers in this way are at best a waste of time and at worst could give a candidate or party more representation than people actually wanted.
2. It makes what is currently a very simple voting system (marking a sheet of paper with a cross, even illiterates can do it as long as they have someone to tell them which candidate is which) with one that is much more complex and arguably inaccessible to a small handful. This will have a detrimental effect on voter turnout if people believe that the system is more complicated and therefore prone to error. Low voter turnout is one of the most crucial problems with elections these days and anything that threatens it further is unacceptable. I've always maintained that voting in parliamentary elections should be mandatory, like it is in Australia. At no point should it ever be possible to apportion the result of an election to any level of voter turnout.
3. It has the potential to allow more extreme political parties to gain disproportionately more representation than they would otherwise gain. I'm actually very surprised that pro-AV groups, who are typically on the left of politics, are advocating a system that could give parties like the British National Party more power and influence.
4. Lastly, given this country's track record with IT projects, I have little to no confidence that the costly and complex vote counting system that will be required will be up to the job. Arguably a minor concern when compared to the others, but still valid.

I'm not saying for a minute that the existing FPTP system is by any means perfect, because it's far from it. Indeed, I've often bemoaned its shortcomings following various general elections after watching in dismay as carefully planned constituency boundaries deliver election victories which they ought not to have and wouldn't have under a "fairer" system. I just don't think that AV is the answer to this.

So there it is, I have imparted my decision and the reasons for it. If you're undecided at this stage I hope that the points I've raised help you to decide appropriately.

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The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on 20th April killing all aboard and eventually sank leaving an uncapped oil well on the sea floor.

I do not for one minute want to imply that this disaster is anything other than epic. It is the world's third most serious oil spill in history and the second most serious spill caused by an industrial accident rather than a war (the most serious spill was during the first Iraq War, and we have some way to go before the amount of oil spilt in the Gulf of Mexico exceeds that spilt in Iraq). I do not however believe that BP are being treated fairly over it, nor that the United States are in any position to lecture BP (and, by extension, Britain) on industrial accidents. Let's have a brief look at their record from the 1980s:

Union Carbide gas disaster

In December 1984 the Union Carbide chemicals plant in Bhopal leaked lethal chemicals into the surrounding environment, exposing over 500,000 people and ultimately killing 15,000. The accident happened as a result of endemic mismanagement and violations of health and safety procedures. Union Carbide eventually paid $470m in compensation 15 years later, equivalent to $940 per exposed victim. The Union Carbide plant in Bhopal now stands derelict and the area is still contaminated. Neither Union Carbide or their new owners Dow Chemical have made any attempt at cleaning it up. It is the world's worst industrial disaster in terms of human deaths*.

Piper Alpha explosion and fire

In July 1988 the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea, operated by US firm Occidental, was destroyed in an explosion and fire which killed 167 workers, leaving only 59 survivors. The enquiry that followed was critical of Piper Alpha's operator, Occidental, which was found guilty of having inadequate maintenance and safety procedures, but no criminal charges were ever brought against it.

Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill

In March 1989 the Exxon oil tanker Exxon Valdez hit the Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound and spilt a minimum of 750,000 barrels of oil into the surrounding waters. The collision happened as a result of a combination of factors, including broken sonar equipment (which Exxon Valdez Shipping considered too expensive to repair and operate) and crew fatigue and workload caused by the company's failure to provide a sufficient crew. They were initially ordered to pay $287m in actual damages and $5b in punitive damages but this was reduced to a total of $507m after a series of appeals from Exxon. Hundreds of thousands of birds and animals were killed and the effects of the spill were felt for years afterwards.

The point of reminding everyone about these incidents is that nobody has a perfect record when it comes to this sort of thing. These things happen, thankfully not all that often, but they do happen and they will continue to happen, although their frequency will no doubt become less and less as technology and regulation improves over time. In this regard I think that it's completely unfair and unnecessary to vilify British Petroleum over the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I have absolutely no doubt that they are doing all they can to contain this disaster and will continue to make amends far into the future. But they cannot do that if they are basically going to be wiped out by an angry and vengeful United States government and frankly hypocritical United States big oil companies.

Insatiable thirst for oil

The only reason why we have deep water drilling projects in the first place is because our insatiable appetite for oil and oil based products has meant that resources that are easier and cheaper to exploit are now running low and so we have to look to more expensive and risky sources. Oil companies from all around the world seem to have no problem in doing whatever is necessary to satisfy this thirst. It just so happens that an accident has happened to BP, but in all reality it could have happened to Exxon, Chevron, Shell or any other oil company, and if what I've learnt in the news about the response plans for such a disaster being identical between all these companies then it really was just a case of luck as to who would have to deal with it first.

Clean Energy

For decades and decades huge oil companies have wielded disproportionate amounts of power in the business and political arenas of the United States. Some recent presidents have been little more than puppets for Big Oil. Thankfully the current president isn't, but he still represents a country that makes a hell of a lot of money out of oil. I applaud his commitment to cleaner energy that he has announced since this disaster happened, but I do rather feel that it's like trying to rub ointment into a gaping wound at this point. For years and years oil companies have been suppressing clean energy technologies and companies that would otherwise threaten their business by quietly buying them up and shutting them down, without fear of any reprisals from government or politicians. This has to stop and oil companies have to appreciate that, like record companies, their business models need updating in this modern world.

Compensation hypocrisy

BP is a key company in most UK pension funds, which means that this disaster is going to severely impact those funds. This is serious news in an economy that is barely out of recession and now has a deficit of extraordinary proportions following a devastating financial downturn, a financial downturn which, not incidentally, was in part caused by the United States in the first place. So if we're going to start talking about massive amounts of compensation from BP to the United States and the people whose livelihoods are being affected by this let's also start talking about compensation to the UK from all the financial institutions in the United States who brought about the banking crisis and the meltdown that followed it two years ago. Until then I'm not interested.

It should also not go un-noted that the Deepwater Horizon rig was leased by BP from an American company and was operated by American employees, to provide a product that would feed the American market. BP really are just the unlucky face of this enterprise. In future I don't expect they'll make the same mistake again and just let American companies make and take the flack for their own mess.

Conclusion

So, rant over. In conclusion, let BP get on with the job and stop hassling them. It's better to let them spend the time doing rather than explaining when something goes wrong, like any techie will tell you. It would be a different story if it was an American company rather than BP, the fact that it wasn't an American company is down to nothing more than shear luck.

I have a lot of respect for Barrack Obama, more than I've ever had for any other United States president in my lifetime. He has utterly transformed the image of the United States in this country and internationally following the disastrous reign of George Bush Jnr. But as the title of this post suggests, he's definitely lost his shine over this and needs to be careful not to undo all his good work by pandering hypocritical outrage at home.

* I personally consider the Chernobyl disaster to be the world's worst industrial accident, even though far fewer people were killed either directly or indirectly.

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After five days of uncertainty following on from the results of Thursday's General Election after which we were left with a hung parliament, we now finally have a new government, a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and a new Prime Minister, David Cameron, who replaced the incumbent Gordon Brown after he resigned in a dramatic series of events on Tuesday evening of this week. It's been a very dramatic few days and they're going to change the face of British politics significantly, I hope for the better.

Before I get started I'd like to remind everyone of my personal rule that I'm not allowed to complain about a government that I voted for. I stand by this. It still allows me to complain about the previous government and the current Labour party (such as it is), however. I also believe that nobody who was eligible and able to vote, but didn't, has the right to complain about the current government either. You had your chance to make your voice heard. This obviously doesn't include people who were turned away from polling stations at 10.00pm on polling day, although one might argue that had they not all turned up at the last minute and gone out and voted earlier instead of watching soap operas it wouldn't have been so much of a problem.

Results Analysis

Here are the full results from the election on Thursday 6th May, excluding the result from the one seat that wasn't elected because one of the candidates died during the campaign. Parties that did not win any seats are not included. For a full table including all parties that stood in the election see the BBC News results page.

As you can see, no one party received an outright majority of at least 326 seats, meaning that at least two parties needed to band together to form a government with at least that majority. Labour could not have formed a coalition with just the Liberal Democrats, they still would have together fallen short of the 326 seats needed, so they would have needed to add minor parties to their coalition. This would have made their government very unstable, even if they did agree on (most of) their policies, which they evidently did not since their coalition talks broke down. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats together have enough seats for a majority and have therefore been able to form a government.

Let's compare the results with the results from the last election using the doughnut chart that I used last time. Here are the results from the 2005 election:

General Election results 2005

As you know already from my previous post, I think it's grossly unfair that it seems to be easier for some parties to win more seats with a disproportionate share of the vote. In the 2005 election Labour won 55% of the seats with just 35% of the vote. In the 201o election this fortune was reversed (almost) for the Conservatives, whereas the story remained virtually the same for the Liberal Democrats and the minor parties. Although I am glad that the Conservatives have achieved power, albeit in a coalition, I still believe that this system is unfair.

However, if you look at the combined results of the parties in the coalition you will see that the coalition government received 56% of the seats with 59% of the vote. Although a coalition government isn't absolutely ideal, this combined results is actually dramatically fairer. The irony.

General Election results 2010

It will be very interesting to see what proposals the new government comes up with regarding electoral reform, which was apparently one of the key parts of the deal struck between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Apparently any change to the current system is likely to put the Conservatives at a disadvantage compared to their current position and do the opposite. Although this obviously won't entirely serve the best interests of the party that I support I also must consider that a reformed system will be fairer, something which I have obviously advocated in this and previous posts. My big concern is that a new system may make it difficult for any party to win an outright majority at general elections and that as a result we will always have to form coalition governments, which whilst sometimes necessary aren't ideal.

The end of the New Labour nightmare

It was a long time coming for Gordon Brown and New Labour, but it didn't come soon enough. It was obvious to me from a very early stage when Brown ascended to the prime ministerial throne in 1997 that he wasn't Prime Minister material and that as a result New Labour is nothing without Tony Blair. It frankly wasn't all that even with Blair given some of the scandalous things that happened when he was in Downing Street. As I said in my last post, Labour have delivered some good things during their thirteen years in power but for the most part this country is in a far worse position, both economically and socially, than when it took power from the Conservatives in 1997.

Gordon Brown should not have become Prime Minister uncontested and because he did he should have called a general election straight away. Since then he became the most unpopular Prime Minister that this country has had since the war and it was this, despite what Keith Vaz insists, that was the ultimate downfall for Labour. Brown has admitted this since his resignation, although some sycophantical Labour figures have already dismissed this as untrue, claiming that it was just Brown being honorable. I believe that Gordon Brown knew that he couldn't fix his mistakes some time ago but couldn't bring himself to resign because of the uncertain position it would have put the party in advance of the election.

Labour are now back on the opposition benches of the House Of Commons where they belong and where they cannot do any more damage to this country. It's going to be a very long and arduous journey to full recovery from their reign, one which will require some very unpopular decisions from the new government, but we have to start somewhere and I do not believe that a different government from the new coalition government would have any easier a time of it.

In short, it's goodbye and good riddance to Labour.

Interesting times.

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The Dear Leader, Gordon Brown, has finally been forced to called a General Election for Thursday 6th May. How fortunate for him that the pesky national rail strike that was to go ahead this week was stopped by the high court at the the last possible minute, that would have been terribly embarrassing for him to have to announce a General Election on a day when nobody could get work wouldn't it?

Regardless, let's get down to business. This general election is the most long awaited election in recent history, although the really delicious irony is that if Gordon Brown had done what he should have done and called a General Election as soon as he became our un-elected Prime Minister, the popularity of both himself and his wretched party at the time would have meant that we would at this point still be waiting for another two years for it. Crisis averted, nonetheless, even if the aversion did come about because of a grotesque disregard for democracy. And please don't give me that crap about "you vote for the party, not the man", everyone knows that's not how it really works.

It should come as no surprise to anybody that I intend to vote for the Conservatives on May 6th. I have never voted Labour nor will I ever vote Labour. Because of this I have never enjoyed life under a government that I have voted for, since the first General Election that I was eligible to vote in was in 1997, when this disaster of a government first came to power. This is why I have complained so vociferously about the government for so many years - I have a personal belief that people should not have the right to complain about a government that they themselves voted in. You made your bed, now you have to lie in it. The same will apply to me should the Conservatives win this election. Remember this at the polling booth if you want me to shut up for the next 4-5 years, that in itself should be incentive enough for anyone to vote Tory :)

There's a number of issues and reasons to discuss as to why I am going to vote Conservative. It's not all to do with class background and upbringing, and even if it was Labour voters are more guilty of habitual voting than any other section of the electorate. All this "me Dad voted Lairbuh, an'is Dad voted Lairbuh, an'is Dad went on't Jarrow March, so ah'll vote Lairbuh an'all" bullshit and the more modern "OMG! The evil Tories!!!1" hysterical nonsense that is so widespread on social networking sites frustrates the living hell out of me and so I won't condone it for any party's supporters. Everybody should by now know that no party is like what it used to be, especially not Labour who were willing to go as far to admit it with their "New" party name in 1997 and their new centre-left position meant that they won. Had they stuck to their irrelevant and outdated "old Labour" values they would still be on the opposition benches where they belong.

Before I move on to specific election issues I would like underline the importance of everyone who is eligible to vote to do so, even if you don't want to vote for any of the available candidates and you spoil your voting card. It should be mandatory to vote (or spoil) with a stiff financial penalty for anyone who doesn't. You don't get to do this very often and so everybody should make the most of it when they do. It is also critically important for voters in marginal seats to make sure that they vote. Remember that under currency constituency boundary arrangements, recently revised or not, it is much much easier for Labour to win seats than it is any other party, so if you don't want another Labour government make sure you get off your arse.

Here is reminder of the 2005 election results from my blog posted after the last General Election, where Labour only had to secure 35% of the vote in order to secure 55% of seats, thereby providing them with the majority they needed for a third term of government. How, exactly, is this fair?

The travesty of democracy that were the 2005 General Election results

I've been told that since the last election constituency boundaries have been revised, but I'll wager anything that they haven't been revised all that much, and certainly not to the extent where it's now a level playing field for all parties. Indeed, constituency boundaries are not the only reasons why the system is stacked in Labour's favour.

Now on to the specific issues, which are both important to me and most of which should be important to everyone else:

Labour's "performance" over the past 13 years

Labour's election pledges, whilst not only being as generic and vague as election pledges could possibly be (in order that their eventual implementation can mean as many things as possible), also read like they're from a party in opposition that's trying to oust a longstanding and hated incumbent government, and not from a party that's already been in power for three terms and thirteen years. Thirteen years is more than enough time for any government to achieve what it promised to achieve since coming to power and despite this Labour still blame the majority of their woes on the previous Conservative government. Are they going to do that forever? I thought they were supposed to fix everything the evil Tories did wrong? Just how long am I being expected to wait?

The fact is that Labour have performed abysmally since coming to power on so many fronts. You'll note that I've not said "all fronts", because that would be untrue and unfair, but it is true and fair to say that their failures vastly outweigh their successes. You'd have to be a real idiot not to realise that. They've had their chance, and for the most part they've fluffed it, in some cases to a degree that we simply couldn't have imagined only a few years ago. I am not prepared to give them five more years in which to continue to cock things up, frankly, and anybody who is willing to grant them this really needs their head examined.

When reading this blog post I expect Labour supporters to be thinking "ah yes, but Labour have said they will do $whatever on this issue, which is better than what the evil Tories are proposing". The fact is that I simply do not believe them because of their recent (and indeed not so recent) record. The Labour election manifesto is nothing more than toilet paper to me, it may as well be blank. Indeed, it would actually be more credible and believable if it was blank.

Economy

This really is the single most important issue that practically everyone is talking about during this campaign, and quite rightly so. If you're not aware that Labour have left us with a £167,000,000,000 national deficit as a result of their fiscal policies, rampant public spending and government waste then you really have been living under a rock for the past few years and need to wake up and smell the coffee. It's going to be one bastard of a hangover to shift. The trouble is that Labour don't seem to want to start the process of shifting it, they just want to continue drinking, thus making the problem worse and worse. Their performance and broken promises on the economy since coming to power have destroyed any credibility they ever had on the subject and we are once again left with a country on the verge of bankruptcy after the biggest boom and the biggest bust since the second world war, something which Labour explicitly said they would prevent from happening in their 1997 manifesto. They simply cannot be trusted to fix something which they were so instrumental in causing in the first place.

The 1980s were better than the 1970s.

The country's financial position coupled with the recent industrial unrest (public sector, British Airways and (cynically blocked) national rail strikes) is horrifically reminiscent of the dying days of the pathetic Labour government in 1979 who were as desperate to cling on to power then as they are now. Labour will always be the same and they will never learn from their mistakes. Labour recently tried to scare everybody by saying that if the Tories won the election they would take Britain back to the 1980s. If this is the case then bring it on, the 1980s were a prosperous decade and a darn sight better than the disaster of the 1970s, which is what Labour have taken us back to.

Public spending, non-jobs and waste

Since coming to power, 66% of new jobs created in the United Kingdom have been public sector jobs, all funded by the taxpayer with an ever increasing tax bill from Labour which has by now doubled the UK's tax burden since 1997. This is absolutely shocking. You cannot improve the economy of a country by expanding its state. Not only is that a rocky road to out and out communism but it is also a fiscal lie. Only wealth-creating private sector jobs can improve the economic performance of a nation. This is pretty basic economics and yet something which our glorious Prime Minister and chancellor of ten years apparently doesn't understand since he is so insistent on increasing the "employment tax" that is employers' National Insurance, presumably to pay for even more public sector jobs that we don't need.

For a concise list of other ways in which this government wantonly squanders hard earned money from tax payers, even ignoring the giant welfare bill (which, incidentally, is greater each year than the total receipts from income tax), I draw your attention to the Department of Government Waste, a parody site set up by the Conservatives but which is based on real facts. The full list is in their downloadable PDF.

The Conservatives, however, have made it very clear that further tax hikes are not the way to go and cutting government waste is a high priority for them. I simply do not understand how anybody can say that this is a bad idea. Indeed it may lead to some public sector job losses, but boo hoo, they can join the real world for a change and put up with the risks of working in the private sector instead of wasting public money in public sector fantasy land, where nobody ever gets sacked no matter how bad they are at their job and everybody gets a nice fat index-linked pension at the end of it. It's that which we can no longer afford, not scrapping the endless tax rises that Labour have relentlessly subjected us to for 13 years despite their early promises not to do so.

Lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) issues

This, I will admit, is a thorny issue with the Conservatives and we as a minority have much to be thankful for to Labour. This is an area in which they have actually significantly delivered on their original manifesto. They have delivered greater equality legislation to everyone with alternative sexualities and they have delivered civil partnerships and adoption rights to homosexual and bi-sexual couples. I'm not for one second going to refuse credit where credit is due on this.

One could argue, however, that such legislation would eventually happen, Labour government or no Labour government. I think it's probably fair to say that it would have taken a bit longer under a Conservative government, but I do believe that we would still have it by now and it would be a case of better late than never. I also do not believe for one minute that a new Tory government would even dream of taking any of it away from us.

However, what I do know for sure is that we now do have what we asked for. The job's done, complete and delivered. But I missed the part of the legislation that means that I as a gay man am obliged to reward Labour for what they have done by only ever voting for them and never for the "evil Tories". Indeed, I'll go as far as to say that I'm under absolutely no obligation to do so whatsoever. Labour have come good in one specific area and done extraordinarily badly in most others. Our wonderful new legislation has quite the price tag attached to it when you consider all the crap that's been associated with the party that brought it to us. Many may question whether it was actually worth it all things considered.

The Conservatives have a questionable history when it comes to gay rights, no doubt, and it would seem that they still do have a few bad apples, with Chris Grayling being the most notorious example at the moment. David Cameron missed a beat this week when he didn't fire him for his comments about bed and breakfast owners and I am disappointed about this (although Grayling has since admitted that he was wrong to say what he did), but it's still not a reason to condemn a whole party to opposition forever. Indeed, anybody who votes for or against a particular party based on one single issue is both selfish and shortsighted.

I'm also quite sick of being asked "but how can you be gay and Tory?". Get a grip, the two aren't by any means mutually exclusive. Think back to when you were asked "but how can you like boys when you yourself are a boy?". It's as annoying, ignorant and insulting as that, so my advice to you is to grow up and get the fuck over it, because I am most certainly not the only "gay Tory" (if I have to accept a label) out there. Indeed a recent poll for Pinknews.co.uk recorded 25% of those asked as supporting the Conservatives, with 25% supporting the Liberal Democrats and 28% supporting Labour. Please don't try and tell me that gay Tory voters are in a tiny minority.

Education

Although I am aware that primary and secondary school education has suffered somewhat under Labour neither will be the focus of this section because I do not know the specific facts. All I do know is that school leavers these days, now having the benefit of an entire education under Labour, seem to be barely literate and for the most part unfit to enter the world of work. Major business leaders have specifically complained about this and I really feel sorry for the poor buggers who've had Labour's dumbed-down education system forced upon them.

Yet despite this more and more of them are entering higher education thanks to Labour's unnecessary and seemingly arbitrary target of sending 50% of school leavers to university. For no reason. The country wasn't short of graduates before or anything, Labour just didn't think it was fair that some people were graduates whilst many weren't. It just wasn't socialism. As a result we have a massive over-supply of mediocre graduates with Mickey Mouse degrees believing that it entitles them to a better job, which of course it doesn't since employers have simply upped their qualification requirements to compensate. What Labour have done isn't fair on anybody, least of all the students themselves.

Now, all this would be slightly less baffling if at the same time Labour hadn't completely ridden roughshod over student and university funding since 1997. The National Union of Students (NUS) campaigned vociferously on behalf of their members (whether their members liked it or not) in 1997 to get Labour elected, and what have Labour done for them since? They've abolished student grants (within mere months of coming to power), increased tuition fees and cut university funding - at the same time as trying to get even more people to become students in the first place. What the bloody hell is that all about then? I hope that the NUS are proud of themselves, frankly.

Crime and punishment

The statistics will show that under Labour crime has fallen and continues to fall, but I do not for one minute believe that it is as clear cut as that. Everybody knows that statistics can be manipulated and that Labour  are the grand masters at doing it. Indeed, Gordon Brown himself was caught out less than three times in March of this year alone for mis-representing statistics, which eventually lead to a telling off from the Office of National Statistics [letter] . There will always be a vast difference between reported and un-reported crime and it's also important to remember that not all types of crime are equal. Some types of crime are more serious than others and affect real people in real ways, such as violent crime and burglary, rather than comparatively more victimless crimes such as insurance fraud and so on.

The police forces are bogged down with a target-driven culture imposed on them by Labour and spend inordinate amounts of time on paperwork even for trivial matters, in contrast to Labour's (since disproven) claims that police officers spend 80% of their time on the beat (where "the beat" is also some contrived new-Labour definition of the beat and not what you or I fondly remember). Labour have introduced Police Community Support Officers which are nice to see around and about on the street but they have no more powers than a traffic warden did back in the day, and we don't have any proper traffic wardens now, just Parking Enforcement Officers with even less powers. It's not all about the number of bums on seats, we need the right bums on the right seats.

We need to move away from the ridiculous culture where criminals have more rights than victims and make sure that anyone acting reasonably to stop a crime or apprehend a criminal is not arrested or prosecuted, as well as or instead of the criminal which seems to happen over and over again since it's easier to hit your Labour-dictated targets but arresting and processing the "soft option" member of the public who thought he was only doing his civil duty rather than the "I know my rights, mate" criminal who'll likely get away with it and thus deny your a target point. If anybody should be defining targets for the police force it should be the public, not politicians.

Immigration

Labour have completely lost control of immigration into this country. The immigration "system" is nothing but a complete farce that is exploited and abused by thousands of people every year. Labour have proven themselves to be unable and/or unwilling to do anything about it (unwilling, perhaps, because immigrants typically end up voting Labour should they eventually bother to obtain the right to vote). The trouble is that anyone who is willing to speak out against immigration is immediately labelled a racist by hysterical politically correct left wingers whose priority is to simper and wring their hands in order to make sure that the needs and demands of immigrants come above the needs of established citizens of this country. This really has to stop and people need to get a fucking grip.

We all know the facts when it comes to migrants who want to come to this country. Few are actually in genuine need of asylum, most are economic migrants. Even those who claim asylum are on shaky ground since if you are in a position where you need to claim asylum you are supposed to claim it in the nearest country that is qualified to afford it to you, which includes all the EU countries that you have to travel through in order to reach the UK. There is only one reason why this otherwise unremarkable nation is singled out in such a way and that is our monstrously generation welfare state. I know it, you know it.

I've a long list of things that I think need to be done about this. I don't think any of them are unreasonable. The Conservatives only really cover two of them - only admitting migrants that will "benefit the economy" and offering English language instruction, and even with the latter I think it should be a requirement rather than something that is merely offered. No party goes far enough to tackle the immigration problems in their manifesto, no party would even dare given the ridiculous hysteria that is whipped up every time this emotive issue is mentioned.

It would do us all a lot of good, and I can't believe that I'm about to say this given my general position on Europe, if rules on immigration and asylum were unified across all European countries. For example, in France new migrants are entitled to no benefits whatsoever; they have to have lived and paid tax in that country for a number of years before becoming entitled to them. In Germany asylum claimants are all kept in holding centres until their claims are processed, at which point they are either allowed into the country or sent directly back to where they came from. You won't find any failed asylum seekers living illegally in Germany. We get it wrong in every way imaginable.

Make no mistake, this isn't about not liking people with brown skin, far from it. There are plenty of hard working people in this country with brown skin, many having been here for generations and multiculturalism is in general a good thing. This is about people with skins of all possible colours abusing a weak and exploitable system and then living off those very same hard working people. It isn't acceptable and we can't afford it. Britain is a soft-touch when it comes to immigration and this is well known in countries from where most of the immigrants come from. Migration to Britain is even packaged up and sold as one-way tours by foreign firms.

I'll stop here with this issue because I really could go on forever and it would probably be racist or something.

Labour lies, sleaze and arrogance

Finally I would like to remind everyone that one of Labour's major election pledges in 1997 was that they were going to be whiter than white, in contrast to the "sleaze-ridden" Tories of the time. I'm sure I don't need to remind everyone of John Prescott's now infamous speech on the subject. Since then Labour have proven themselves time and time again to be more arrogant and sleaze-infested than the Tories could ever have even dreamed of being.

In May 1997, Blair promised his government would be purer than pure as an antidote to the Tories' sleaze. Within months, Formula 1 racing owner Bernie Ecclestone had won an exemption from tobacco advertising after donating £1m to Labour. Every week there seems to be a scandal of sort involving a Labour MP or someone who works for the Labour government, including the recent revelation of high profile Labour MPs pimping themselves out for thousands per day. Whether the Tories will be any better remains to be seen, but they surely can't be any worse than this shower.

Regardless, it's by no means something that Labour can now campaign on and is indeed something they should not have campaigned on in the first place given their record. Instead of the fair and honest party they promised they would be we have an arrogant, desperate incumbent government that will not admit its mistakes, puts itself first and will do anything to cling to power. To hell with everyone else and their interests. These are not the actions of a "party of the people".

That's it for specific issues. There are of course numerous smaller issues, many of which are just as important, but I have to draw the line with this blog post somewhere.

This will in all likelihood be the only major blog about the election that I post before the election itself on Thursday 6th May because I wanted to get all my rants into one blog and out of the way as early as possible into the campaign. I will however be posting a significant election blog in the week or so after the election, whichever way it goes. Until then I will of course be ranting daily about election related matters on Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter I tag election-related posts with the hashtags #ukelection and/or #labourfail when space permits (click on either to search for my tweets that have those hashtags). More or less everything I post to Twitter then gets automatically posted to my Facebook profile, which can only be viewed if you are a friend on Facebook.

All three main parties have published their full manifestos online, but I have provided links to them here:

• Conservative Manifesto 2010
• Labour Manifesto 2010
• Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2010

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The Scottish Justice Minister responsible for the decision faced a terrible dilemma. On one hand he had a reponsibility to uphold Scottish law regarding the release of terminally ill prisoners, regardless of the nature, scale or notoriety of their crimes. On the other hand he was under immense and almost unbearable pressure from the United States and the bereaved families of the victims. The UK government's position on the matter is at this point unknown but it is widely believed that it will condemn the decision when parliament is recalled.

Of course, at the end of the day, while the United States is entitled to express an opinion on the matter, they had no control nor should they have expected to have any control over what happened to al-Megrahi. This was a crime that was committed on UK soil and so from start to finish had to be dealt with using the UK and Scottish justice systems, regardless of the predominant nationality of the victims. One might also argue that the United States has no right to comment on the situation since it was largely the United States' foreign policy which created the motivation for the attack in the first place. Just saying, like.

The reaction of the Libyan government and public on the arrival of al-Megrahi in Tripoli after his release was absolutely abhorrent, however, regardless of whether or not he is truly guilty of the crimes for which he has been convicted. It was made very clear by both the UK and US governments that it would be inappropriate and very bad for diplomatic relations should Libya allow a "hero's welcome" to take place, which it did anyway. It was distasteful and wrong and I believe that Colonel al-Gaddafi should and will suffer for it in some way. Indeed, a royal visit to the country is already being reconsidered.

Assuming for a minute that he is guilty, and I have to have enough faith in the UK justice system to believe that he is, I think it highly unlikely and therefore highly unfair that he was the only person brought to justice over an atrocity which quite clearly required the involvement of more than just one person. The investigation into the incident should have been more wide reaching and should have brought more people to justice. For this reason it is valid to argue that al-Megrahi has been made a "scapegoat" for the attack, with the world's anger and rage focussed solely on him. But this does not mean that somehow the laws of the country in which he was brought to justice and imprisoned did not apply to him. He was entitled to apply for and be granted release from prison on compassionate grounds just like any other prisoner in the UK. If we start making exceptions where do we stop? Where do we draw the line before the rights of prisoners become meaningless?

So I really don't know what to think, it's a difficult one. As a citizen of this country I feel I have to stand behind and have faith in its justice system, but at the same time I can appreciate the outrage and grief suffered by the families of the victims over what was the world's worst terrorist atrocity before 9/11. Certainly, having salt rubbed into their wounds by the rapturous reception he received in Tripoli was both unnecessary and cruel and thoroughly undeserved, regardless of the decision to release him.

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I propose a Swiss style Cantonal, federal Government for the UK.

Britain doesn't have a mountain of cash like Switzerland because we are not neutral and insist on having wars to keep the taxes flowing.

Britain doesn't have a mountain of cash like Switzerland because we pour it into the EU to keep Slovakians and Bulgarians in Mercedes and farming subsidies.

Britain doesn't have a mountain of cash like Switzerland because every politician who ever obtains power instantly spends it on whatever they feel will keep them in power.

Britain doesn't have a mountain of cash like Switzerland because we encourage the feckless to breed, third world beggars to plunder our housing/benefits stock and politicians are in charge of education.

Britain doesn't have a mountain of cash like Switzerland because the British are criminals by nature and anything that ins't nailed down is nicked, sold off cheap and the proceeds invested in Stella Artois or Skunk.

Britain doesn't have a mountain of cash like Switzerland because we make FUCK all. Our education system doesn't support engineering or manufacturing, it supports morons who can tell you Wayne Rooney's star sign and nothing else.

Britain doesn't have a mountain of cash like Switzerland because anyone can become British. Unlike the Swiss where even if you are BORN there, you have no automatic right to Swiss Citizenship and your local community will decide if you have added enough value to the community to become Swiss. No mumbling in Gujurati that you understand what housing benefit is and can you bring all your relatives too please. In the back of a lorry from Kurdistan.

Foreign youth commiting crime in Switzerland is an interesting one. If you cannot control your Kurdish son because he is "out of control", the whole family gets booted back to Shitistan. I LIKE that approach. We cannot even send Africans back to Africa or Terrorists back to Jordon—thanks to the EU.

Swiss jails are not full. Ours are, to overflowing.

The Swiss pay £100 Million a year to get the good bits of the EU. The UK pays £30 BILLION a year to be ruled over by shaved Belgian Baboons.

Rant over. The EU is shit, we've tried it, it is too expensive and I don't like taking orders from people who live abroad and have never voted for.

Bastards.

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Tamsin Dunwoody lead a repulsive campaign against Edward Timpson, claiming that he was a "toff" with a £53m fortune and implied that somehow these things made him unsuitable to be the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, and that somehow an unemployed mother of five would be perfect for the job. Regardless of the fact that it's Dunwoody that appears in Burke's Peerage and not Timpson, Dunwoody was the daughter of the previous Member, Gwynneth Dunwoody, who held the seat for 25 years before she died. I'm sorry, but with contacts like that you're only unemployed if you want to be and if it suits you, and it obviously did in order that she could wage her pathetic class-war against Timpson, whose family built their business from nothing, a business that provides essential services to the public up and down the country, employing local, skilled people in every branch. Why on earth should that be considered by anyone to be a bad thing? It's nothing more than Labour's familiar old sour grapes about anyone who's not happy just being another brick in the wall and has dared to make something of themselves.

New Labour deserved to lose this by-election in every way conceivable, and the Conservatives deserved to win it based on the dirty-tricks campaign alone, although obviously this is not the only reason why they will have won. Good for you, Edward Timpson, and screw you, Tamsin Dunwoody, you sadly typical New Labour hypocrite. You must've though that you were just going to inherit that seat off your mother in some kind of grotesque New Labour ascension, not unlike that of Gordon Brown's last year. How wrong you were.

Of course, Gordon Brown and his sound bite scripted cronies are claiming that the loss of the seat is due to the global economic climate, that people are feeling the pinch and want to send a message to him to steer us through it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he's the worst Prime Minister that this country has had for 40 years and that everyone is sick to the back-teeth of New Labour's endless incompetence, taxation and bullshit. No, perish the fucking thought.

2010 suddenly doesn't seem that far away. There's light at the end of the tunnel, and not before time.

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Prime Minister Gordon Brown has admitted making "mistakes" in abolishing the 10p rate of income tax.

But Mr Brown said he was "listening" and "learning" as prime minister and that problems were "being dealt with".

No, I'm sorry, I don't accept this. Gordon Brown is the Prime Fucking Minister of this country, he is supposed to be an expert on these things, he's supposed to have learnt, not still be learning. Who will take responsibility for his mistakes? There is nobody to supervise him, there is nobody who is supposed to know more than him. When and how is this ongoing, unstoppable incompetence going to end?

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"No one thinks, having seen the result at the polling stations, that President Mugabe has won this election.

"A stolen election would not be an election at all. The credibility of the democratic process depends on there being a legitimate government.

Gordon Brown

I'm sorry, but aren't you an un-elected Prime Minister who ascended to the position without an election or electoral mandate and without any opposition from within your own party? I'm pretty fucking sure that you are. Mugabe is a horrible, horrible man, I'll not dispute that, but you, Great Leader Brown, are the last fucking person on this planet to pass judgement on his election credentials.

You can fuck right off with your holier-than-thou speeches on democracy, frankly. What a load of old horseshit.

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I say that without an ounce of sarcasm. It's perfectly obvious that nuclear power is the only realistic way to generate enough power to satisfy our baseline requirements over the coming decades without further contributing to global warming (sorry, "climate change"). Renewable energy sources have and will continue to have their place, contributing wherever they can to the National Grid, but they cannot hope to generate enough reliable power on their own to cater for our present requirements, let alone future requirements.

There is nothing to fear with nuclear reactors. Everyone who's against the idea shrieks "Chernobyl" at the mere mention of the word, as if they've been programmed to do so by the short-sighted anti-nuclear propaganda that's been pushed around over the past 30 years. But Chernobyl was a bad reactor. It was of a design that has not been used since and will never be used again. It required a team of technicians to work around the clock to prevent it from blowing up, whereas modern reactors require a team of technicians to work around the clock to prevent them from shutting down.

Three Mile Island is another example used by the anti-nuclear lobby as a reason why nuclear power is bad. But using Three Mile Island in that way is a total own goal. The Three Mile Island incident proved how safe reactors are when something goes wrong. All the safety devices kicked in when the problem was detected and the reactor was shut down. Surely that's what we want to see? What would they rather had happened?

It's a brilliant decision, and I don't say that of New Labour lightly.

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On a recent train journey he shared the first class cabin with a young mother with a child in a push-chair, who was boasting to an apparently unrelated fellow passenger about how she had received a free upgrade from the train staff because she had a child in a push-chair. This enraged the author of the letter, because this woman had received a free upgrade to first class due to self-inflicted inconvenience brought about by her decision to have a child, whereas his disability was most certainly not acquired by choice and yet no such preferential treatment was extended to him.

Frankly, he had every right to be enraged. It's rapidly becoming a common perception that parents are somehow "disabled" because of their offspring and are thus being afforded luxuries such as "parent and child" parking spaces outside the entrance to supermarkets, fast-track priority boarding on aircraft (presumably so the child can practice the crying that it intends on doing for the whole flight) and now, apparently, free first class rail ticket upgrades.

Let's make no mistake here, with very very few exceptions, the decision to have a chid is entirely voluntary. It is something that you inflict upon yourself, you're making a rod for your own back, both financially and practically, and your offspring should be nobody else's responsibility but your own. You should not be entitled to special treatment at the expense of others, especially those who've chosen NOT to contribute to the planet's vastly unsustainable population growth. It was your choice and if you're not up to dealing with the consequences of your decision then you perhaps should have not procreated in the first place.

Having to support other peoples' kids through funding child benefit is galling enough, but to be told of by some busybody in a supermarket car park for parking in a parent and child parking space when no other spaces are available is a step over the line, in my opinion. Also, is it really that unreasonable to park in such spaces after 9.00pm when all children of the age that would possibly benefit from the extra space either side of their mothers' Renault Scenics should be in bed? I don't think so.

My mother fared perfectly well when myself and my younger brother were young without parent and child parking spaces or any other concession. This was also in the days before large, out of town supermarkets with giant car parks; my mother had to go to the Sainsbury's in Woking town centre and park in the multi-storey car park, where the lifts rarely worked and when they did they were always jammed full of people. Did she complain? No, because she was thankful that she could do the weekly shop in just one store. To hell with the parking arrangements.

It seems that modern parents these days think that they have it hard, as if they're the first generation of humans that's had to procreate, and that everyone should lend them a hand to help cope with their insurmountable, self-matyring task that they feel has been forced upon them. The truth is, quite like their pampered, ignorant offspring, they don't know they're fucking born. Having children is a lifestyle choice, and just like every lifestyle choice it comes with its costs and disadvantages. I was going to ask if there were special parking spaces for fat people, but since most fat people consider themselves disabled these days one might argue that there actually are, but that's a whole different, yet strikingly similar, argument.

If I had my way then parents would be made to bear the full cost of their children. There would be no child benefit; indeed it would be replaced by a tax on third and subsequent children. The planet's population growth is unsustainable in almost every country and yet governments absolutely depend on it in order for their economies to work, since most welfare states are essentially giant, long-term pyramid schemes, which require ever increasing numbers contributing at the lower levels in order to work. One day that's going to come to a cataclysmic, apocalyptic end, at which point the availability of parent and child parking spaces will be the least of anyone's worries.

So shut the hell up when I park in your sacred car parking spaces, and stop blocking up the aisles of Sainsbury's Local with your fucking 4-wheel-drive push-chair containing what is quite obviously an able-bodied but fucking lazy five year old. Don't take your kids to a restaurant of any standard above McDonalds until they've learnt to behave themselves in public and not sit in their chair and scream through their meal. Stop spending your child benefit on lottery tickets, I worked hard to give you that money that you perceive to be free; and don't let your fucking uncontrollable kids sit on the escalator in front of me, blocking my path while you coo and fawn over them and tell them how cute they look together "like that". I'll wager that you let your kids go out on October 31st and bang on strangers' doors demanding money and sweets too, whilst the rest of the year round engaging in precautions bordering on paranoia concerning their health and safety, most likely causing great inconvenience of some description to everybody else.

Think of the children!? No, that's your job. Deal with it yourself. I make my bed a different way, you don't get to lie in it just because you don't like the way you've made yours. Not my problem. I didn't ask you to have children.

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