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Tuesday 12 April 2011

A note from the front line

Life feels a bit busy right now, and with a week off next week, I need to do my best to close down all my loose threads at work, to make something easy to hand over to another colleague.  Poor sucker.

At home, the extension is still progressing, and there may well be some problems with the drains, which is not good news, particularly for the guy who has found the problem.  Not wishing to put you off your dinner, all I can say is that you should be glad, for now, that your work does not include digging for drainage.

Other news is there is no other news.  I am really enjoying the sunshine and realise that I am not Winter's biggest fan.  I like the way the days are lengthening out, the days are warm and the spirits of my fellow humans, for the brief honeymoon period between it starting and the roads beginning to melt, are soaring as well.  I just hope it holds for next week when we go away with Brad and Angelina and the entourage of Maggots.

Until we speak again, be good, enjoy the sunshine, and don't step in anything smelly.


P.S.  I have been doing some thinking on AV.  My first important thought was that if it did come in, and a chap was not a fan, then all that chap would need to do is to only vote for one person, and then their vote would be as it is now in the first pass the post (FPTP) approach.  Now, if everyone on the whole country did that also, then AV would be no different to FPTP. 

Therefore, I was thus far thinking we may as well go for AV.

Then I had a second thought, and that was that the only time the second vote was of any use was if a chap was to vote for the person who ultimately comes last.  Only in that situation would his second vote have any influence.  Now, this would mean that a chap would have to vote for, say, the Monster Raving Loony Party with his first vote, and then something that was either first or second with their second vote for the AV principles to have any real impact on a chap's vote.  When I gave that some thought, I was not sure that AV was going to change stuff very much at all.  The ideas a chap has heard on the old wireless seem to be the idea that an chap or chapess may be more likely to vote for who they really want to vote for, and put the party they dislike least as a second, rather than use their first vote as a protest vote.  Now, this is all well and good, except the chap's first vote would have to come last for the second vote to have any effect.  A chap does not have the data to hand to prove it, but rarely has a serious contender in a constituency come last, since there is always at least one nutter party "Free gobstoppers for all" or "the yellow custard party" or some such thing, who will take the bottom slot.  And is someone really going to vote for free gobstoppers with their first vote, and the Lib Dems for their second? 
So, based on that, I am not sure how much influence AV will really have.  Maybe it really is a "miserable little compromise".

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