ChristopherWhite.info

Firstly, forgive the crudity of my methodology.

These have probably been up for some time, but I’ve just had a look at the overall results [scroll down a bit] collated from more than 25,000 people who took the Vote Match quiz before the London Mayoral election.

I then ran the archived version of the quiz, clicking “agree” for those issues with which a clear majority of particpants agree, “disagree” for those with which a clear majority of participants disagree and “neither” for those with a small difference (less than around 7%) between the two.

For which issues were considered important, I picked the top five — the table is ranked in order of importance.

Doing this gives the order of preference of candidates as follows:

While this isn’t entirely accurate, it does seem to lend weight to the idea that past electoral habits and/or the probability of victory are as big a factor in determining who to vote for as the parties’ actual policies are. More on this later.

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Oona King on BBC2’s The Grumpy Guide to… Money the other night:

“I earn quite a decent salary and still quite often find I can’t get money out of a cashpoint.”

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Labour can’t even be bothered to keep up the pretence of honesty any more:

The public should not expect promises made in Labour Party manifestos to be kept. That was the astonishing claim made by Gordon Brown’s barrister at Brighton County Court in a case brought against him by a member of the UK Independence Party.

Speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister, Miss Cecelia Ivimy said that “manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation.” She was arguing that Gordon Brown had not committed a breach of contract by refusing to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Constitution.

Stuart Bower, a onetime Labour activist who subsequently joined UKIP and who launched the action against the Prime Minister, said later: “To file a defence that says ‘I can be a blatant liar in a manifesto and get away with it’ is utterly mind-boggling.

“We lend politicians power and they should have the decency to keep their promises. Clearly, this is not the way of thinking in the Labour Party.”

Mr Bower was refused leave to proceed with his case.

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Just before Christmas I asked the Home Office — out of curiosity more than anything else — how many ways there are that they’re aware of in which it is possible to compromise the proposed National Identity Card, as the scheme stands¹.

The National Identity and Passport Service replied that they’re not obliged to provide the information as it fails the public interest test, stating:

[I]t is not in the public interest to disclose IPS’s strategies or tactics for dealing with fraud as this information may provide valuable intelligence to the perpretators of crime.

If the Home Office thinks that a simple number consists of “strategies or tactics”, then we’re in more trouble than I thought.

Or, bearing in mind that they took three more than the maximum 20 working days allowed by the Freedom of Information act to tell me that they can’t tell me, could they have refused simply because it’d be embarrasing for them?
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1 This supposes that they know how they’re going to implement it, which I’ll admit is a totally unwarranted assumption.

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Sounds like a smashing idea.

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So, if I signed a contract of employment that stipulated a dress code, and then chose to ignore it, I’d probably be disciplined.

But if I signed a contract of employment that stipulated a dress code, and then chose to ignore it because of my personal beliefs, I’d get paid £8,500.

Right…

Really this is about direct and indirect discrimination:

Direct discrimination

You have the right not to be treated less favourably than someone else (eg not being promoted) because of your religion or belief, your perceived religion or belief, or the religion or belief of people you associate with.

However, direct discrimination is allowed where religious belief is a necessary requirement for the job. For example, a Roman Catholic school may be able to restrict applications for a scripture teacher to baptized Catholics.

Indirect discrimination

You have the right not to be disadvantaged by a policy at work because of your religion or belief. If you’re a devout Muslim or Sikh for example, a head-covering policy for all employees could discriminate against you.

This kind of indirect discrimination may be unlawful, whether or not its done on purpose. Its only allowed if its necessary for the way the business works.

Direct discrimination — ok, it’s not cricket. But “indirect discrimination” is not discrimination.In the example given from DirectGov, the head-covering policy applies to all empoyees. If people feel that they cannot comply with it then that is their choice.

As another example, my uncle drives a lorry, and delivers to supermarkets. At one of these supermarkets he often has to unload the booze orders himself, because one of the employees that is supposed to unload the delivery is Muslim and refuses even to touch alcohol.

Personal beliefs, or that nebulous concept “religion”, are not a good enough excuse to simply refuse to do one’s job.

Terry Sanderson ends that CIF piece with:

It should now be OK to say: “Leave your religion at the door, please. And if you won’t and your religion doesn’t permit you to work in the way that this jobs demands you do, then please find another job that will.”

Yes, yes it should. Otherwise, “religion”, “personal beliefs”, or however one chooses to phrase it, simply translates as: “The rules do not apply to me.”

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Hang on.

On Downing Street’s website a couple of days ago, on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto:

The Prime Minister has said that “cowards afraid of democracy” assassinated Benazir Bhutto earlier today.

This from the man who wouldn’t allow a referendum on the EU reform treaty because he was afraid of losing, wouldn’t call a general election because he was afraid of losing, was crowned by his party rather than properly elected, and wants to make political parties state funded because he’s scared people will give money to the ‘wrong’ parties. For Gordon Brown to call anybody else “afraid of democracy” is truly staggering.

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Via Tim, Antonia Bance on Griffin and Irving’s appearance at the Oxford Union:

“And even if they were to, is it not breathtakingly arrogant that Oxford undergraduates believe that in a five minute debating speech they could somehow defeat either, when it took a Cambridge Professor of Modern History weeks on the stand to rebut Irving’s assertions?”

It took a Cambridge Professor of Modern History weeks on the stand to rebut Irving’s assertions to the standard required in a court of law. Hardly the same, is it?

Personally I’d love to see the cream of the UK’s students rubbishing BNP plans to spend a fortune to encourage every last non-white person to leave the country.

UPDATE:

Crikey.

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Oh, what a freedom-loving country we are.

First some poor sod gets put on the sex offenders’ register for having sex with a bicycle in the privacy of his own hotel room.

Then an unfortunate woman, Samina Malik, gets banged up for writing shite poetry. Alright, shite poetry about terrorism:

On a mirror were found the words “Lyrical Terrorist” and on one piece of paper she had written: “The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom, the need to go increases second by second.”

In her poems she wrote about killing heathens, adding: “Kafirs your time will come soon, and no one will save you from your doom.”

In all probability she’s as mad as a bag of wasps, and there’s every reason to keep an eye on her. But given that she hasn’t actually done anything, prison seems a bit extreme.

I’m hiding my copy of Paradise Lost.

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Mike Ion:

I struggle to understand why anyone on the Left of British politics could oppose Gordon Brown’s moves, mentioned in the Queen’s speech yesterday, to raise the education leaving age to 18.

How about: ‘Because the Left includes those who think that people should be able to do largely what they like as well as those who think that people should do as they’re told, in precisely the same way that the western half of a map includes the southwest as well as the northwest.’

One might hope that someone selected by the Labour Party to contest a parliamentary seat might have twigged that little fact, and also that a site calling itself Liberal Conspiracy might tend towards the former rather than the latter, but apparently not.

Chris Dillow suggests a sensible-sounding alternative: raising the Education Maintenance Allowance, relieving financial pressure on those who drop out of school because they need the money and achieving much the same result without compulsion. More carrot, less stick: good. (It may seem like doing this would cost more, but since the actual proposal includes “training” as well as academic education, and the government are apparently going to conjure up 90,000 new apprenticeships, possibly not.)

Now, it’s perhaps not as illiberal as it first appears, given that 16-year-olds who want to go and work will apparently be able to do so four days a week and spend one day training/studying. Though I turn 25 next month, in many ways I think of myself as a permanent 17, and so I can say with some degree of confidence that if I was 16 years old and being faced with a £200 fine for doing what I actually want to do rather than what Gordon Brown says I should do, I’d be more than a wee bit annoyed.

But really, it highlights what a no-man’s land 16- and 17-years-olds are in, as neither adults nor children.

In England, 16-year-olds can reproduce, but they can’t get married. They can fuck, but they can’t have a cigarette afterwards. They can fuck, but they’re forbidden Dutch Courage³ when talking to the opposite sex⁴. They can fuck, but they can’t buy pornography. They can fuck, but they can’t get paid for it.

They can live alone, but not get a mortgage. They can work, and therefore pay taxes, but not vote and have a say in how those taxes are spent — the ostensible purpose for one notorious revolution. They can ride a moped, and at 17 drive a car, but can’t hire one. If arrested, they don’t need an “appropriate adult” present, but won’t be sentenced as adults if found guilty of a crime.

They are both adults and not adults at the same time. If I were the children’s minister I would probably suggest to the boss that perhaps this mess should be sorted out before deciding whether they be forced into continuing education against their wishes.⁵

And once this has passed, how much easier will it be for Vacuous Dave⁶ to create his Cameron Youth?
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1 Ant and Dec rapped that, before they were Ant and Dec. The full verse is: No jokes, no messin’/We’ll teach you a lesson/A state of confusion to keep you all guessin’. Buggered if I know what it means. But they didn’t need extra training beyond 16.
2 I’ve just finished a postgrad diploma that cost me five grand, but education ain’t for everyone.
3 Why “Dutch”?
4 I have an entirely facetious pet theory that arranged marriages are so common in the Islamic world because, without booze, nobody can ever pull
5 Crap, obviously. Ministers almost by definition are toadying lackeys virtually devoid of initiative.
6 Henceforth to be known as VD.

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