Sam's Blog

Sam is ranting again. I say again, she's better at this than I am.

VW Beetles and Citroen 2CVs

I have never seen ths point of these two cars. At the end of the day, they are both poor cars and tend to be driven by people who think they are the epitome of "cool" - if you are trying too hard it usually means you are forcing it. Just like the Oxford students who throw themselves off Magdalen Bridge and into the JR's Accident and Emergency Department, owners of 2CVs and Beetles are simply conforming to a stereotype.

People who have sunflowers in a new Beetle, or have painted their old Beetle or VW camper van with flowers are not being cool, trendy or hip. The cars are still crap. This does not mean I have no romance in my soul. It just means I refuse to play along with the Disneyfied / PC version of the Sixties, where every alternative culture or lifestyle has to be correct. Just sometimes, the mianstream way of doing things might have merit - it might be the "better" way.

Herbie is not a good film, nor in any way cute or endearing. 2CVs (especially driven up mountains by French grandparents) are not safe vehicles. That is not fun.

Time Team and Experimental Archaeology

Is it a condition of employment on Time Team that you should wear ridiculously coloured handknitted jumpers, and be very very excitable? Or is this just a condition of the profession (Dan...?)

Oh, and is experimental archaeology just another name for finding a tiny piece of flint/iron/carved stone/bone and making up an entire history of a nation from it?

UK General Election (1)

There are several points to be made on the undemocratic manner by which the UK is governed. It is a parliamentary democracy, and is one of the oldest democracies in the world, but it has a lot of quirks by which it is a long way from being trully democratic.

Size of Constituency

Isle of Wight - Population 100,000. Constituencies - 1
Western Isles - Population 20,000. Constituencies - 1

Not all areas have equal representation.

Size of Popular Vote

On the BBC website, they had a calculator which would work out the number of seats to be won by each party with a specific percentage of the popular vote. If the Lib Dems, Conservatives and Labour each received 30% of the vote (10% to Others), the seats would be allocated as follows:

Labour - 328 (overall majority of 10)
Conservative - 201
Lib Dems - 86
Others - 31

(see:Calculator).

With the same amount of the vote, the Lib Dems would get 13% of the seats, and Labour 51%. Is that fair?

Voting for candidates

Electors generally do not vote for candidates, they vote for parties, or more specifically party leaders (with the exception of the occasional seat where there is a specific local issue - Blaenau Gwent, Wyre Valley, George Galloway's seat). The proof of this was in Robin Cook's constituency, where Labour voters who had been against the war told him that they could back him, even though he had been completely against the war.

This makes the whole election a Presidential race.

Anonymity

Your voter number is compared to a list, and a number unique to you is then written on the ballot paper. This can then be traced back to you. While I am certain that this would not happen in the UK at the moment, it does open the door for unscrupulous people to find out voting habits should they have access to this information.

Party Activists outside Polling Stations

I wonder how many people realise that they do not have to give their names and numbers to the party activists sitting outside the Polling Stations. I resent them asking for/demanding my number and not stating very clearly that (a) they need this information for their own ends and (b) it is NOT part of the voting process. I now refuse to give the information, but its only recently that I relaised that I could do this. In a short time standing outside my Polling Station holding the dog, waiting for my wife to vote, no-one else from 30-40 people refused to give their information or question the activists. Admittedly they were wearing rosettes, but apart from this it was not clear that they were not pollling "officials".

More later.

Candidates

The Tories fielded a candidate called "Rotherham" in Rotherham. The candidate called David Davies standing as an independent against David Davis pulled out. The Tory candidate in Medway was called Mark Reckless. A candidate standing against President Tony in Sedgefield was Cherie Blairout.

Well, I found them amusing.

Oh, and of course the UKIP candidate for Wantage was Nikolai Tolstoy-Miloslavsky. Wonderful name. So much so, I voted for him.

Paxman vs Galloway

This is copied directly from the BBC website: see the link above. An absolutely class piece of interviewing by Paxman.


For anyone who missed it overnight, the tussle between George Galloway and Jeremy Paxman was one of the highlights, which came shortly after his victory over Labour's Oona King.

JP: We're joined now from his count in Bethnal Green and Bow by George Galloway. Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?
GG: What a preposterous question. I know it's very late in the night, but wouldn't you be better starting by congratulating me for one of the most sensational election results in modern history?
JP: Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?
GG: I'm not - Jeremy - move on to your next question.
JP: You're not answering that one?
GG: No because I don't believe that people get elected because of the colour of their skin. I believe people get elected because of their record and because of their policies. So move on to your next question.
JP: Are you proud -
GG: Because I've got a lot of people who want to speak to me.
JP: - You -
GG: If you ask that question again, I'm going, I warn you now.
JP: Don't try and threaten me Mr Galloway, please.
GG: You're the one who's trying to badger me.
JP: I'm not trying to badger you, I'm merely trying to ask if you're proud at having driven out of Parliament one of the very few black women there, a woman you accuse of having on her conscience 100,000 people.
GG: Oh well there's no doubt about that one. There's absolutely no doubt that all those New Labour MPs who voted for Mr Blair and Mr Bush's war have on their hands the blood of 100,000 people in Iraq, many of them British soldiers, many of them American soldiers, most of them Iraqis and that's a more important issue than the colour of her skin.
JP: Absolutely, because you then went on to say "including a lot of women who had blacker faces than her"
GG: Absolutely right, absolutely right. So don't try and tell me I should feel guilty about one of the most sensational election results in modern electoral history.
JP: I put it to you Mr Galloway that Nick Raynsford had you to a T when he said you were a "demagogue".
GG: Sorry?
JP: Nick Raynsford. You know who I mean? Nick Raynsford. Labour MP?
GG: No, I don't know who you mean.
JP: Never heard of him.
GG: I've never heard of Nick Raynsford, no.
JP: What else haven't you heard of?
GG: Well, I've been in Parliament a long time...
JP: He was a Parliamentary colleague of yours until very recently.
GG: Well, most of them just blend one into the other, Jeremy, they're largely a spineless, a supine bunch.
JP: Have you ever heard of Tony Banks?
GG: Yes I have, yes.
JP: Right, Tony Banks was sitting here five minutes ago, and he said that you were behaving inexcusably, that you had deliberately chosen to go to that part of London and to exploit the latent racial tensions there.
GG: You are actually conducting one of the most - even by your standards - one of the most absurd interviews I have ever participated in. I have just won an election. Can you find it within yourself to recognise that fact? To recognise the fact that the people of Bethnal Green and Bow chose me this evening. Why are you insulting them?
JP: I'm not insulting them, I'm not insulting you
GG: You are insulting them, they chose me just a few minutes ago. Can't you find it within yourself even to congratulate me on this victory?
JP: Congratulations, Mr Galloway.
GG: Thank you very much indeed. [Waves, removes microphone]

Mark Boucher

Mark Boucher could possibly have the best career bowling analysis in Test cricket history. In the seemingly rather dull draw between South Africa and the West Indies that has just fiished in Antigua, he had the following bowling analysis:
8 balls - 1 wicket for 6 runs, Avge 6.00

To explain, South Africa batted first and scored 588-6 dec (de Villiers 114, Smith 126, Kallis 147, Prince 131). The West Indies then scored 747 all out (Gayle 317, Sarwan 127, Chanderpaul 127, Bravo 107, Lara only 4), and South Africa 127-1.

All South Africa's players bowled in the West Indies' innings, with Gibbs and Boucher bowling for the first time in Test cricket.

The ground is the same one on which Lara twice made enormous scores against England (i.e., 375 and 400 not out in 1993/4 and 2003/4 respectively).

Is it attractive?

Is it attractive for women to have a massive canyon between their breasts, with the breasts themselves having no natural shape, but looking like gravity-defying lumps of plastic? Left breast, can I introduce you to right breast. Have you met? No, I didn’t think so – you don’t look like you’ve moved since the surgery.

I am getting old

You get to a certain age and take a critical look around at the world and see how it has changed. Suddenly, a lot of the changes do not seem to make sense and you get nostalgic. I remember when:
• Most people could name more than 1 person in the Conservative party.
• You couldn’t buy anything on a Sunday and had a day to rest and recuperate from the week.
• The Labour party believed in socialism and democracy.
• Tesco stuck to what it was good at, and only sold food.
• Proper subjects were taught at school: science was not marginalised and combined into an amorphous mess but taught properly as distinct subjects. The school curriculum was not broken down into examinable chunks with no sense of cohesion between the parts.
• Vinyl was not a “collectable item” but contained an annoyingly short piece of music, scratched, warped or got dirty very easily, needed to be turned over every 20 minutes, and couldn’t be played easily in your car.
• Footballers tended to play in the country of their birth.
• ITV had never heard of rugby.
• Radio 1 had a decent Rock show.
• Cars were recognisably different, and had not all been designed to look exactly the same.
• The Scottish, Italian and Welsh rugby teams had people who were actually Scottish, Italian and Welsh, respectively.
• Celebrities had actually achieved something, or had some talent, before the public were interested in them.
• British democracy was not corrupt.
• An MPV was still known by its proper name of “minibus”.
• Drum machines were on less than half of all single releases.
• Prices were displayed on items in supermarkets, and bar codes were found in pubs only.
• Pubs concentrated on alcohol not food.
• River Island sold decent clothes.
• There was a noticeable difference between the main political parties.
• HMV was the cheap place to buy records.
• Breasts were generally naturally shaped.
• The EU had not started to ruin the national football teams by allowing anyone to play for any team.
• The BBC had not discovered costume drama on a Sunday night.
• Disney made endearing cartoons films rather than trying to take over the entire holiday entertainment and children’s television markets.
• Irish pubs were only found in Ireland.
• “Rights” were well understood and obvious, and followed common sense, rather than allowing anyone to do what they wanted.
• Reality shows and fly-on-the-wall documentaries were a novelty.
• BMW only made executive cars and had not tried to take over the world by making cars of every type imaginable.
• Parents found things to do with their children rather than sitting them in front of the television.
• The BBC’s televised cricket coverage was second to none.
• There were 4 channels with the occasional decent programme rather than 600 with the same amount of good material spread far more thinly.
• Rugby Special (with Nigel Starmer-Smith) and Ski Sunday were proper viewing for a Sunday night.
• Nobody was interested in the inside of a Coronation Street actor’s house.
• Cartoons were drawn by hand rather than using computer generated characters than do not look like anything on earth.
• Teachers and policemen engendered respect.
• Championship Manger and Football Manager had not taken away days of my life.
• The battle between computers was being won by the inferior ZX Spectrum over the Commodore 64.
• Models showing all their bones was not considered attractive.
• Abba were still recognised as being crap rather than retro-chic.
• League number 2 in England was not at the 4th level of football.
• School sports days were suitably competitive, children got exercise and left school with some modicum of fitness.

Living in a Box

A little known fact about me: I bought every single release by Living in a Box.