More nonsense on Bitcoin

The Indy reports on Bailey of the Bank on Bitcoin, who warns, “Cryptocurrency has ‘no intrinsic value’ and investors will ‘lose all your money’, says Bank of England chief” I add, “Bitcoin only works because the ‘proof of work’ is so expensive and time consuming; and its also destructive of the environment due to its useless power consumption. (It’s also very slow, doing 700 TPS, that’s not enough for a business, let alone an economy.) …

We’re all going on a summer holiday … or maybe not

We’re all going on a summer holiday … or maybe not

Will we go abroad for holiday’s this year? Boris, in Hartlepool, says maybe, Shapps says, dig out your passport. We’ll find out on May17th, but it looks as if the Govt will operate a traffic light scheme, requiring returning holiday makers to have a PRC test on return for Green list countries, and 10 day isolation for Amber, and a10 days in an approved hotel stay for Red list countries. Who bears the cost of testing is unclear, who bears the cost of hotel stay is not, it will be bourne by the traveller. I have taken the controls from the another BBC article. So it might be Devon, or Skegness?

Even if we don’t go abroad, are we putting our health in the once struggling NHS track & trace system? …

When 2nd best is actually best!

Another note on proportional representation. We elect MPs for two purposes, to represent us in Parliament and to choose a Prime Minister.

Sometimes the best and most supported answer is a compromise of 2nd bests which only a Parliament can deliver. i.e. the former role is more important.

Opponents of PR, within the LP, have a vision of a Labour Govt., exercising the powers of the elective dictatorship, (presumably without the corruption) ruling on the basis of a minority plurality. This always ends badly.

As other’s have said, the UK’s system i.e. FPTP is little used in democracies, and truth be told, not used in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales or London.

PR may or may not benefit Labour or the progressives in the UK, but the UK is a ‘flawed democracy’ and something must change to ensure this kakistocracy is never repeated. …

A step too far?

A step too far?

Johnson’s in a bit of bother, and it’s not his Johnson this time, at least as far as we know. The outrage that has the media’s attention is that he is accused of having said, “No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” This is disgusting but almost as bad is the fact that this has been kept hidden for over 6 months.

When you add to this, the Greensill Fund affair and Cameron’s lobbying, where it seems the Tories are ready to let Cameron hang out to dry, the failed and extortionate priced track and trace system (£37bn and counting), shipping contract to a company without ships, the lobbying for favoured tax status and contract for ventilators to a company that’s never made them, the failure to acquire PPE for NHS staff and many more. To this we can add the creation of a No 10 press suite which they no longer plan to use, the murky finances of the redecoration of the No 11 flat, and the resurrection of the Arcuri affair (narf narf), this Govt. is the epitome of corrupt although it doesn’t seem to have come through in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index yet, although they identify the pandemic as a major global threat for corruption. For more on corruption and impunity see, “Corruption Britain has reached new heights under Boris Johnson’s government” at the New Statesman (£). …

A better Brexit?

Another Europe (AEIP) have issued a pamphlet, called “The fundamental problems in the UK-EU trade deal and how it can be reformed”, it’s release is announced on the AEIP blog and commented on in the Guardian, Labour group urges Keir Starmer to back better Brexit deal

Report: Don’t accept this terrible Brexit deal, the case for reform

Luke, its author has started a thread on twitter which I have unrolled here. Central is the argument that the negotiated sovereignty is bogus and that it would be more efficient even in liberal terms to synchronise some laws and regulation. It catalogues what it sees as the weaknesses of the agreement and the demands are summarised as,

  • Harmonisation with EU standards, with a no-downgrading principle written into future deals
  • A review and weeding out of regulatory duplication
  • Re-joining EU programmes on the basis of common interest e.g. Erasmus and Erasmus+
  • A mutual rights agreement for UK and EU citizens to reinstate free movement rights
  • Promoting a democratic economy, with state investment and industrial strategy sitting alongside strong protections against cronyism
  • The creation of a forum in which to cooperate on human security and foreign policy

I am disappointed that he doesn’t talk about the customs union, as this is key remedying the collapse of the SME import/export industry and part of the threat to the Good Friday Agreement.

I am also disappointed that he doesn’t talk about Parliament and while I understand why, I think it’s a mistake, but I am equally disappointed with the apolitical nature of UK trade and business commiussion and the support it has won in the PLP. Its a lack of a political defence of the EU and its internationalist future that has led to us being where we are today.  …

Pasokification: evidence from Germany

While Labour campaigns for the most extensive local elections in decades with one Parliamentary by-election, much internal attention is turned to its strategy. There are important lessons to be learned from Greece and now Germany. In 2013, the SPD, Grüne and die Linke won a tiny majority in the the Bundestag, but the result of the election was another Grand Coalition of the CDU & SPD. I wrote at the time,

We’ll see if her prediction, that the smaller party always get screwed remains true. It’s hard to believe that the SDP will allow her to do it twice.

Me on this blog 25 Sep 2013

The polls are quite different today. The SPD has been in government since the fall of the wall, mainly as junior partners in a Conservative led government. In 2013, the SPD won 25.7% of the vote, (in 1998 it was 40.9%) today they are trailing Die Grune at 15%. For those for whom the mantra without power we can do no good, I ask how much good do you think the SPD have done over the last four years.

Here is where all the parties stand today.

I have chosen to use a stock price chart type, solid boxes are movement’s down, white boxes are movement’s up, line’s up are the 6 month high (if different from the open or closing score) and lines down are the 6 month low (if different from the open or closing score). …

The Senedd, proportionality and size

The Senedd, proportionality and size

I have been thinking how many politicians is the right number and how to build proportional voting systems, these came together in a chat about the Senedd, so I thought I’d share.

The Welsh Parliament is elected in two classes, one class (40 seats) is elected in constituencies by first past the post, the remaining 20 are elected in five super constituencies of four members elected using a D’hondt count. The D’hondt count is done allocating the first places won in the count by a party to their constituency assembly members. This means that the results i.e. the number of assembly members/party are proportional within the super constituencies subject to rounding. This is as is done in London.

Acadmemia may suggest that assemblies that are too small become dominated by the executive, which in Wales is limited to 14, while those that are too large become prone to low quality legislation and corruption. It has been suggested that the optimum size of the Welsh assembly would be 147 based on a cube root rule. See also, “Wales needs 20 or 30 more Members of the Senedd, says committee” at Wales Online.  Other work suggests that we, in the UK have too few elected politicians because we have the House of Lords and too few councillors.

Proportionality depends upon the ratio of list AMs to constituency AMs. In Wales it’s ⅓, 43% in Scotland, 44% in London and 50% in Germany, who also have very finely calculated additional seats to eliminate rounding errors and any ‘crowding out’ effect.  i.e. the Bundestag is not of a fixed size, but as one reduces the size of the top-up class of seats, we reduce proportionality. …