Transparency

There’s a tragedy happening in Venezuela. I am trying to discover the truth but one part of the story struck me as interesting and odd. Venezuela, it would seems use an e-voting system. This is supplied by Smartmatic, a British based company and their CEO, quoted in the Guardian, has announced that he believes that

 … results recorded by the company’s systems show “without any doubt” that the official turnout figure was tampered with

This is the problem with e-voting systems. How can he know and how can anyone know the truth? …

Localism

I am talking on the phone with a teacher. They have decided to work elsewhere next academic year; the school they were working at is suffering a 100% staff turnover over the summer. It’s a story we’ve heard before, a weak management let a deficit occur and the local council insist that they repay it from their own resources, which means significant redundancy and an increased, intolerable workload on those that remain. The truth is that they don’t have to, and haven’t.

How long will we let local management of schools continue and continue failing? …

Trade

I keep having to remind myself that with over ½ million members, the way we do politics is changing. I went swimming yesterday and ended up discussing public housing policy in the canteen. The big policy items are that local authorities cannot borrow to build, all building is done by private developers and that the amount of “affordable” or social housing is based on a trade for permission. The other item is that affordable is deemed to be 80% of market rates; this was set by Boris Johnson while he was Mayor of London. What is he and we doing about resetting that? The only answer might be private legislation! …