Labour’s rules & PR Lists

As far as I know, we already have proportional voting systems in the UK, in Scotland & Wales for the their Assemblies, in London for the GLA and for the Members of the European Parliament. I have experience of standing for and/or selecting/triggering Labour candidates in the latter positions.

While much focus of late has been on selecting/re-selecting MPs in the House of Commons these positions represent a special case.

Labour’s re-selection processes for “list” based seats in local government in England, currently only the GLA, unless we remain in the EU requires that incumbents are confirmed or otherwise as candidates (via a trigger ballot), and that new candidates are found and approved by panel. All the candidates are then ordered by a member’s vote, with the incumbents guaranteed the highest places.

This protection i.e. the guarantee that incumbents must get the highest ranking places on the list should be removed; the member’s votes should determine the order that incumbents and challengers are placed on the list, subject to the gender quota rules. The members should be offered an additional two candidates, who then become available for call up in the case that any of the selected candidates are unable to run. …

Thoughts

When I felt the need to start shouting on Facebook, I needed a somewhere else to put my less well formed thoughts and diary-like notes. Firstly I experimented with ello, but I later transferred my ello to a wordpress blog site, ello.davelevy.info in July 2016, to make it easier to share and integrate. I moved these posts to this site in March 2018. I categorised my entries in that blog as “thoughts” and category thoughts remains in place. I occasionally still use it. I documented the ello blog as page on this site, and with a carousel entry on the home page.

I continued to use ello for sillyness and stuff and there is a link to it at the bottom of all pages, in the black panel.

Comments are now auto closed after 14 days, there is be a social login plugin to allow you to comment using your own social network logins.

Articles on the thoughts blog are more likely to be unfinished, often representing work in progress, or ideas with insufficient time invested.

Today, I transferred this content from a page to this post. …

More on Millwall

The Dyson Report, the lawyer led enquiry into Lewisham Council’s handling of the planning application is out …

  1. The Council’s summary, which “concludes that, ‘there was no impropriety, lack of due diligence or breach of a code of practice on the part of any council officer or member in relation to.” and the page lists the things that there has been nothing to see.
  2. The Full Report, in .pdf
  3. A Q&A by the Council, on their web site
  4. A statement by the Millwall

Let’s remember, that Lewisham Deptford CLP wants to see football stay at the Den. …

Windows RT

A friend asked about Windows RT. I have a windows RT tablet, made by Nokia. it’s core difference from other windows OS’s is that it runs on ARM processors. This means that the versions/instances of the apps are different from those that run on the other versions of windows which need Intel processors. The app. choice in the store is much more limited than if using other versions of windows, but all the basics are there and it can co-operate with Microsoft & Google’s cloud services. It has a desktop application panel, and so can use MS Office applications and the file explorer.

Microsoft have decommitted from RT so the versions of the software (apps & OS) that work are old. This includes internet explorer, which means that some/many web apps will no longer work and places a future risk on the use of such web/apps. Third Party developers no longer develop for this platform. This makes it hard to keep up to date. This will only et worse.

I bought a Bluetooth keyboard (and mouse) and use it mainly for blogging on the road as it is much lighter than my current first choice laptop.

I like the Metro interface but I think RT’s time is past, even if it is used by Felicity Smoak. …

Mayors

In May, a Research Paper was published by the House of Commons Library, authored by Mark Sandford, who catalogues the law, and its recent changes, including the fact that most referenda introducing directly elected mayors have been lost. On th whole it would seem people don’t want them. There’s an additional piece of research here as to what the common features are for those areas, the majority, that reject elected executive Mayors. This paper also says that since 2012, Councils can return to “committee led” councils on the authority of a Council resolution. It also says that referendums cannot be held more frequently than every 10 years. …

Jared Anderson wrote …

Jarred Anderson wrote an interesting little piece on Pulse, questioning how the right to be forgotten can be implemented in the block chain; in my view a false dichotomy since the right to be forgotten is being applied to search engines and the regulators’ need to prove non-repudiation will probably override citizens rights to privacy. It is even more interesting that he catalogues the jurisdictions implementing a strong right to privacy as Argentina and the EU; both places with histories of fascist, neo-fascist, Stalinist regimes and murderous secret police forces. …

Harbinger of Disaster

Harbinger of Disaster

I made this storify, called “Has the earth moved/”, it would seem a couple of days before the Referendum, a harbinger of disaster!

 

I talk about the growing split in the country. I start by suggesting UKIP is here to stay 🤔, look at some aspects of the politics of Jo Cox’s murder and finish with this,

You can’t oppose racism and pander to it.

 …