sungate.co.uk

Well, gosh. It’s the ‘Nick and David Show’.

I was planning a really long post about the post-election negotiations, but directhex got there first, nicely summing up pretty much everything I was planning to say.

Specific points of note:

• LibDems are in government! This means that some LibDem policies, including voting reform, are on the agenda. This is good;
• Sensible, intelligent people like Vince Cable are in the cabinet. This is good;
• Those worried that the LibDems are “propping up the Tories” are, in my opinion, misguided. Yes, the Conservatives are the largest party and the majority of the cabinet is comprised of Conservative MPs; but – and it’s a very big ‘but’ – the pre-Coalition negotiations have removed from agenda some of the more extreme Conservative policies. Also, as time goes on, this moderating influence of the LibDems on the Conservative far right will hopefully continue. Also, a number of LibDem policies have been adopted;
• None of the above would have happened under a Conservative minority government and particularly not under a Conservative majority government which seemed certain to be on the cards just a few months ago;
• The voting reform agreed by the Coalition for putting to a referendum, the Alternative Vote, is not a proportional representation system, but it does have some advantages. It makes tactical voting less effective and unnecessary, it also ensures an MP has reasonable support from those for who that MP was not a voters first choice; and it opens the door for further, better voting reform in future, too
• It is in the interests of both parties in the coalition to show that coalitions can work. The credibility of both will be damaged if this is not the case. If the coalition continues and is largely successful, this will let people see that coalitions are not the evil chaotic beast that many (especially the Conservatives, actually) claimed. This may help in future with a move towards a more proportional voting system which makes coalitions more likely: people will worry less about a coalition;
• ID cards and the National Identity Register are to be scrapped! This was an easy one for them to agree since both Conservatives and LibDems were against this from the start; also it’s a nice big money saver.

I’ve cautiously optimistic about how this might all turn out. At least now we have a government which can start getting on with … well, erm … governing, or whatever it is that governments actually do.

Just a few random thoughts about the election, to get it off my chest… Check out my Twitter feed for other random rants I’ve made during today.

Here we go:

• BAD: Very disappointed to see our (now former) MP Evan Harris unseated, especially by such a narrow margin (fewer than 200 seats). In my opinion he has been one of the more clueful, intelligent and hard-working MPs, with a sensible approach to science and technology. He will be missed;
• BAD: Disappointed to see that the pre-election polls indicating a very strong Liberal Democrat showing were not borne out in the election itself, meaning a small loss of seats overall. Either something systematically skewed nearly all those polls, or an incredibly large number of people bottled out of voting LibDem literally at the last minute. I’d be interested to hear more about this one, because this came as a surprise to almost everyone;
• GOOD: One of my least favourite people Jacqui Smith lost her seat;
• GOOD: We have a hung parliament, thus requiring parties to work together. This can only be a good thing. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. As I write this, the Conservatives have offered the LibDems something which – it seems to me – they are unlikely to agree to. Something involving a guarantee of voting reform would be nice;

And I can give my now-familiar rant about the unfairness of the relationship between share of the vote and number of seats: share Con 36% Lab 29% LibDem 23%, seats: Con 47% Lab 40% LibDem 9%…

I suppose one should take comfort from the fact that almost 1,000,000 more people voted LibDem at this election than the one in 2005.

Another interesting demonstration of the broken voting system is that in Oxford as a whole (combining Oxford West and Oxford East), LibDems polled more votes than anyone else, by quite some margin; however, Oxford West was won by the Conservatives and Oxford East by Labour.

As indicated above, the fact that negotiations with the LibDems (and other minor parties) is happening means that voting reform is on the agenda much more than ever before, which must be a good thing.

More thoughts on the Election, especially given the way that public opinion appears to have changed since my last post on the subject, which was before the first Leaders’ TV Debate.

Some say that the increase in backing for the Lib Dems following the Debate reflects a real change in public opinion, others that it’s just a short-term surge as a result of a particularly popular performance by Nick Clegg – and poor performances by David Cameron and Gordon Brown – last week. Whichever is the case, the Lib Dems have certainly earned the right to be heard.

I think we now have a genuine “three-horse-race”. As a consequence, I can see that the vote share will get considerable scrutiny, just as much as the seat results. If, as seems likely, the election returns a result that doesn’t fairly represent voters, it will add weight to calls for electoral reform. If a hung parliament results with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power, such electoral reform will be one of their primary conditions for coalition.

I really hope this happens.

The alternative is yet another election where a ‘winning’ party can ignore the will of the majority of voters and force unpopular legislation through Parliament. Just like every General Election in the past century.

This is important. I’ve checked some figures: in every General Election since 1945, the so-called ‘winning’ party has formed a government with less than 50% of the votes. That is, more people voted for someone else. Read that again. Often the party forming a government gained less than 40% of the vote. Voting reform is vital. Even famous, historical election wins of the past – the well-known ‘landslide’ victories – are not really anything of the kind. The post-Falklands War election in 1983, for example: Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives polled only 42% (the reason the number of seats gained was so high was because the opposition vote was split very evenly between Labour and SDP/Liberal Alliance). A full 58% of voters voted against the Conservatives. The same applies to Labour’s ‘landslide’ win in 1997: only 43% of the vote; 57% of voters voted against Labour.

We should not put up with two political parties, with extreme and opposite viewpoints, taking turns at running the country with a minority of support and thus alienating the majority of the electorate. This year, things really could be different. If a hung parliament results, it could be the trigger for a historic change to the voting system, making it fairer for all in future. Everyone’s vote would count.

Even if you don’t want to vote for the Lib Dems, consider doing so so that we can get a hung parliament; the Lib Dems will pursue electoral reforms in this situation.

Then next time you can vote for who you really want and see real representation as a result.

This is just a quick one: please register to vote, if you haven’t already. Go to About My Vote and you’ll get a link to the right place to register for your local area.

I’ll be honest and say that I’m encouraging people to vote for the following reasons:

• Many young people have never registered to vote. Voter turnout is also lowest in this group;
• That same demographic generally find my chosen party, the Liberal Democrats, is most closely aligned with their own views.

Go on: go register! At the time of writing, there’s about one week left to do so.

(For those not used to this style of ‘bug report’, the following is written in the style of a technical problem report that might be submitted to an open issue-tracking system, typically used by software developers.)

Summary: Britain’s parliamentary electoral system is broken

Systems affected: British Democracy

Severity: High

Detail: In 2005, the Labour Party gained 35% of the electoral vote and yet gained 55% of the seats thus enabling them to form a majority government; in contrast, 32% of the vote for the Conservatives gave them a mere 30% of the seats. The Liberal Democrats gained 22% of the vote, giving a paltry 9% of the seats. Many small parties gained no seats, despite gaining 2% of the vote (UKIP received 600,000 votes, the size of a large British city). This disparity between numbers of votes and numbers of seats in Parliament (and thus representation of the voting population) is deeply unfair.

Comment: There are a large number of ‘safe seats’ in the country. Many voters of other parties in those areas feel that their vote is meaningless. Under the current electoral system, they are correct. The electoral system must change to become fairer and more representative.

I’m sure that large numbers of people “don’t care about politics” because their experience with it is bad, because of the failure of the voting system. Some try to solve this with tactical voting (“I really want to vote for PARTY1, but I don’t want PARTY2 to get in, so I’m going to vote for PARTY3″), but that really shouldn’t be necessary. People should be able to vote for their chosen candidate or party and have that reflected in Parliament. If a small party receives 1% of the votes, then they should receive the same proportion of MPs, i.e. about 6.

In 2005, we got these seats: Labour 356, Conservative 198, LibDem 62, no UKIP, no Green, no BNP etc. If ideal proportional representation was employed, we would have got this result, based on the same percentages of votes: Labour 226, Conservative 193, LibDem 142, UKIP 14, Green 6, BNP 4. (As an aside, some would hate to see BNP gain MPs. But 200,000 people voted BNP in 2005: are they not entitled to proper representation, in a democracy?)

Proposed Fix: Change the voting system to a form of proportional representation. The best way to achieve this, at present, is to vote Liberal Democrat.

Opinion: As the largest party which suffers from the injustice of the existing electoral system, the Liberal Democrats are keen to bring about electoral reform. Labour, on the other hand, have no incentive to change the electoral system – whatever they might actually say about the issue – because they gain most from it. The Conservatives (and Labour) retain their strongest position by attempting to keep the “two party system”. A strong showing from the Liberal Democrats in the forthcoming election may well lead to no party gaining an overall majority: a hung parliament. I think this would actually be a very refreshing and healthy outcome: co-operation between parties would be required.

Final Comment: Make sure that you are registered to vote. And then Vote Liberal Democrat on 6 May 2010.

Last week after reading about the Digital Economy Bill and that it might be passed through Parliament without any further debate (in the so-called “wash-up” prior the forthcoming General Election), I wrote to my MP:

What I’m Asking:

Please help prevent the rushing through of the Digital Economy Bill!

Background

There are many things wrong with this bill (see below), but my main concern is that it should receive a proper debate in Parliament. It is my hope that such debate will result in the bill not being passed in anything like its current form.

My Concern

There is a danger of the bill being rushed through _without_ proper debate in the run-up to the General Election.

Why This Matters

There are many draconian aspects to this bill, for example in the powers that it proposes be granted to First Secretary Of State, Peter Mandelson: this is Section 17 of the bill, where legislation can be amended without parliamentary scrutiny: this is wholly inappropriate.

The draconian aspects of this law are opposed by almost everyone, with the exception of the media companies. We should not require draconian new laws to help prop up the outdated business models of companies that cannot compete in the Digital Age.

Summary

It is my great hope that the Digital Economy Bill is not passed in its current form, that would be a tragedy. It would be a greater tragedy, however, if it were passed without any debate whatsoever. That would be truly undemocratic.

Please help ensure this bill is NOT passed without debate.

Yours sincerely,

I got the following reply this morning (apologies for erratically-formatted text, that’s my fault not his):

Thank you for your recent email about the Digital Economy Bill. Lack of effective scrutiny for legislation is something that I
+have a particular concern about – and on which I have been very active in Parliament – and I therefore wanted to take some
+time to craft a personal response to this campaign. I would like to respond firstly to the substantial concerns that remain
+about the Bill itself and secondly to the process by which this Bill is being rushed through

1. DIGITAL ECONOMY BILL – concerns

At our Conference last weekend, the Liberal Democrats overwhelmingly voted for a motion condemning the Digital Economy Bill’s
+website-blocking and disconnection provisions. I worked with its sponsor, Julian Huppert (our candidate for Cambridge), to
+promote the motion. Unlike the other two parties the Liberal Democrats are a democratic party and this motion is therefore
+now part of our party’s policy. The motion is too long to quote here in its entirety (although I recommend you look at it on
+the website http://bit.ly/LD-DEBill ) but the most significant parts are:

Conference condemns:

i) Website-blocking and disconnecting internet connections as a response to copyright infringement.
ii) The threat to the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals and businesses from the monitoring of their
+internet activity, the potential blocking of their websites and the potential termination of their internet connections,
+which could lead to the closure of internet hotspots
iii) The Digital Economy Bill for focusing on illegal file-sharing rather than on nurturing creativity

Conference supports:

a) The principle of net neutrality, through which all content, sites and platforms are treated equally by user access
+networks participating in the Internet.
b) The rights of creators and performers to be rewarded for their work in a way that is fair, proportionate and
+appropriate to the medium.

Conference therefore opposes excessive regulatory attempts to monitor, control and limit internet access or internet
+publication, whether at local, national, European or global level.

Within Parliament Lib Dems have been working to improve this bad legislation.

We already managed to remove the provisions to allow Lord Mandelson to change copyright law at a stroke. We attempted, with
+our Amendment 120A in the House of Lords which would have changed the Government’s Clause 17, to require the Government to go
+to the High Court to get an injunction if it wanted to require ISPs to block access to websites that persist in publishing a
+substantial amount of copyrighted material despite repeated requests to remove it. It creates quite a high threshold that the
+Government would have to overcome, and ensures that – if this provision is to remain – then there must be proper scrutiny and
+due process. It requires that all of the following conditions are met:

a) The website is holding a “substantial proportion” of copyrighted material;
b) The operator has been contacted a number of times and asked to remove the content but failed to do so;
c) The copyright holder has made a reasonable effort to ensure there are legal ways of accessing the content online;
d) Human rights implications, such as the right to freedom of expression, have been taken into consideration by the
+Court.

Even with this amendment, I believe that the Bill still represents a threat to freedom of expression. I am confident that, due
+to the controversial nature of the Bill, it will not be able to be passed in the likely remaining 8 sitting days of this
+Parliament, or that this measure will go through in the “wash-up” when parliament is about to be resolved and the parties
+negotiate what bits of bills can get through. However I am not complacent about this and it is important that organisations
+such as the Open Rights Group keep up the pressure to ensure that both Labour and the Conservatives are aware of the
+electoral costs of allowing this legislation through.

Particularly following the Conference vote, I would like to take the opportunity to highlight the fact that it is now Liberal
+Democrat policy to oppose:
a) Website blocking and disconnection
b) Sweeping monitoring of internet activity
c) Threats to net neutrality

Liberal Democrats are instinctively opposed to attacks on civil liberties and censorship – and I will continue to vote against
+these extreme proposals whenever they come up.

2. BETTER SCRUTINY

For many years I have been a strong advocate working for better scrutiny of legislation in Parliament. In the abstract it
+seems like something of a technical concern, but in reality it has a fundamental impact on the legislation passed in this
+country. There are countless examples of important Bills where whole groups of amendments or clauses are never even debated
+let alone voted on in the elected House. The reason for this is that the Government has control over the entirety of
+Parliament’s timetable. It cannot be right that the Government regulates (and indeed inhibits) Parliament’s ability to
+scrutinise the Executive – and it seems fairly obvious that it’s the job of legislators to scrutinise legislation.

Recently as a leading member of the elected Wright Committee on the Reform of Parliament I was successful in pushing through
+an amendment, on a cross-party basis, to establish a “House Business Committee” at the start of the next Parliament. This
+would ensure that the House itself, not the Government whips could decide its own timetable, while providing for sufficient
+time for the Government to put forward the business that it was elected on, and mandated to carry out. Scrutiny will
+obviously depend on good MPs to scrutinise the legislation, but this change will at least give them the opportunity to do so
+- an opportunity they are currently denied. A report of my efforts in this area can be found in this article by Henry Porter
+in the Observer: http://bit.ly/cjpDmN

However, another part of the problem for timetabling is that Parliament’s time is very unpredictable, as the Prime Minister
+can call an election at any time. When the election is called there is therefore the issue of what to do with legislation
+that Parliament has spent a lot of time on, but not yet passed into law. Fixed-term Parliaments would get round the problem
+posed by this and the horse-trading the parties (commonly known as the “wash-up”) could no longer even pretend to be
+justified. I, along with the rest of my party, have long supported fixed-term Parliaments.

Accordingly I think I have a strong record of action supporting my belief that legislation should not be passed without
+sufficient and effective scrutiny. But in this case, I have additional concerns about the legislation in question.

Thanks once again for contacting me about this important issue, and thank you for keeping up the pressure against this
+unacceptable legislation.

Yours sincerely

Of course much of the reply is a stock reply, since given the online-organised campaigning against the Bill, MPs will have received many messages similar to mine. However, it’s vaguely reassuring that the LibDem’s are on-board on this one and – if possible – will fight against the Bill simply being ushered into law without further debate.

After quite a long gap, I’m finally getting round to uploading some more of the old tracks. Here are two versions of a song written in 1994, called “Hey, I’m confused enough as it is”. There are lyrics, but not on this recording, you’ll probably be glad to hear. The first verse starts “It’s a vicious circle, and I’m stuck in the corner…”

• Hey, I’m confused enough as it is (7″ mix) (1994, 3 mins 59 secs)
• Hey, I’m confused enough as it is (12″ slapdash mix) (1994, 4 mins 10 secs)

This is one part of a series of posts where I release fully finished tracks from what I am now referring to as “Dave Ewart: The Back Catalogue”, and some unfinished/demo tracks from what I am calling “Dave Ewart: The Lost Demo Tapes”. The full list of all released tracks is available on the Music page.

All tracks are licensed under the Creative Commons Non-Commerical Share-Alike license.

This license means that you are free to distribute and copy, provided that you attribute it as being my work. If you wish to make derivative copies (e.g. remixes) you must release those works under this same license. Commercial use is not permitted.

Found an excellent little javascript utility for displaying chess games on the web: the moves from my games from the weekend, together with my comments as a result of post-match analysis, are available here: Kidlington Chess 2010 games

And the final results table is here: Kidlington Chess 2010 U-145 – I’ve taken a local of from the Congress site, just in case the latter doesn’t stay online permanently.

The First Weekend In February is when chess fanatics from all over England gather for the Kidlington Chess Congress. Unlike last year I had had much more practice and felt more confident of doing well this time.

Last year I played four games: I drew three and lost one. Not great, but OK for not having played competitively for so long.

This year I was playing in the Under-145 tournament: my last posted grade in the 1990′s was 139 and my performance last year was equivalent to about 130, so this seems reasonable. In fact, this year all of my opponents had grades in the 130s.

• Round One: As Black I managed to get a mediocre position out of the opening. I was definitely a little worse when my opponent made a mistake which meant he had to give up his Queen for a Rook and Bishop. This was good for me but, ultimately, the placing of the remaining pawns and accurate defence by my opponent meant that the game ended in a Draw. Score 0.5 out of 1.
• Round Two: As last year, I took this round (Saturday afternoon) as a pre-arranged bye, to avoid spending the entire weekend away from the family. So that was worth another half point; score 1.0 out of 2.
• Round Three: For the Saturday evening game, I played White against an elderly chap who made his moves incredibly quickly. He only used about 15 minutes for the entire game. I hoped that his rapid play would be his downfall, so I played carefully and looked for moves with deeper consequences than I thought he would see. Eventually he made a seemingly ‘natural’ reply which was in fact a blunder: I won a knight outright and from then it was only a matter of time before I Won. Of course I was absolutely delighted with this, given my failure to win a single game last year. As an extra bonus, his quick play meant that the game didn’t end too late, so I could get a good night’s sleep prior to the Sunday games. Score now 2.0 out of 3
• Round Four: Playing Black, I opened with the Caro-Kann defence, which I’ve never played before competitively. Without making any obvious errors I got into a position where my opponent had a huge amount of play and plenty of attacking options; I didn’t really have much choice other than to defend as carefully as possible. When his attack fizzled out, my opponent made a misjudged sacrifice of rook for bishop, hoping for compensation to continue his attack; this didn’t work and from then on, I was on the offensive. It was a long game, more than three hours, but I eventually managed a second Win. Score now 3.0 out of 4.
• Round Five: In the final round, I played the Morra Gambit as White, which I haven’t done before: he played the 3. … d3 line which is essentially the Morra Gambit Declined, which meant that I had a reasonable position out of the opening without having sacrificed a pawn. My opponent castled riskily into a Queen’s side attack and the game finished rather quickly, although I made a mistake right at the end which, fortunately, he missed. That was my third Win in a row and left me with a very respectable score of 4.0 out of 5.

My final round game finished fairly early, so I stuck around watching the other games play out: at some point it dawned on me that, depending on how these other games finished, there was a possibility I’d be in the first few places and be eligible for a prize. At one stage, there was a chance that I’d be part of a massive share of 2nd Place, but in the end I came equal 4th: the winner of the competition had 5/5 and two others had 4.5. There were three of us on 4/5, sharing the £40 prize, which the organisers very generously rounded-up to £14 each

Overall this was a very good tournament for me: I scored 3.5 out of 4 over the board and remained unbeaten. My calculations show that my grade for this tournament was around 170, with which I’m very happy. I still haven’t played enough games in the last two years to get back on the ‘official’ English Chess Federation grading list, but maybe if I play again next year… ?

Normally the two girls play lego on their own. Yesterday, I played lego with the oldest (aged eight) instead. This interesting adventure for her led to the discovery of what can only be described as Boy Lego, rather than Girl Lego.

It all began sedately enough, each of us constructing a small house in the empty lego ‘village’. I then began building something rather different in the front ‘garden’ of my house: a swivel mounted, high-calibre artillery piece to be exact.

“Er… what are you building there, Daddy?”, she asked, eying the new construction suspiciously.
“It’s a gun. A really big gun”, I replied. “Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” she demanded.
“Just in case they” – I pointed to the far end of the Lego village – “decide to invade. Why don’t you turn your little house into a guard tower to watch over the main road?” I suggested.
“Well … OK”, she agreed, somewhat reluctantly.

We continued building for a while in silence. Then I found another circular, swivel piece.

“Ah! Just what I need: this can be for my new gun turret”, I muttered, mostly to myself. Not quietly enough, as it turned out.

“Gun turret?”, she demanded. “It’s not a gun turret, it’s a merry-go-round. For the village’s Children’s Play Area.”
“Not any more it’s not. Now it’s a gun turret”, I explained.
“Gun turret for what?”, she asked
“For my little tank.”, I responded.
“Tank? You haven’t got a tank”, she stated.
“This tank here” – pointing at my future tank – “and it needs a turret on the top.”
“That’s not a tank, it’s a taxi. That’s always a taxi when I play with $SISTER.”, she complained.
“Well, it’s a tank now. We need mobile defence in case of invasion, you see. The guard tower and fixed artillery are limited in their scope when faced with a mobile enemy.”, I explained.
“Hmmm” she sighed, clearly defeated by this faultless chain of logic.

We continued building our defences against possible invasion by … Them. This included turning more of the swivel pieces into propellers for my (sorry, I mean our) small squadron of aircraft.

“Is this how boys always play Lego?”, she enquired.
“Yes. This is Boy Lego.”, I informed her.

Then it was time for tea, time for bed and so on, and the Lego stopped.

This morning, I was somewhat disappointed to see that the village had been … *gulp* I can hardly bring myself to say it … demilitarised.

“We prefer Girl Lego!” the two girls announced together.