This shows the combined voting share of Labour/Conservatives, in the general elections and European elections since 1979 (when direct European elections started). Blue is general, Red is Europeans.

There is a notable tend, in that while the Lab/Con share for European elections starts higher than generals, it ends up much lower. For European elections from 1979-1994, large single-member constituencies were used, making the system even less proportional than the system used for general elections.

There's a consistent downward trend for the European elections, but it starts seriously dipping below the general election figures in 1999, the first time PR is introduced. The next time round in the Europeans the combined vote share of Labour and Conservative drops below 50%, and falls even further in 2009. Doesn't it look like voter behaviour is aware of the electoral system and changes accordingly (if with a little lag)? Yet the media appears to treat these vote shares as comparable.

I always like to cite my sources. So when this happened

Stephen Pound: [talking about why PFI seemed like a good idea] Jubilee Line Extension was on time and on budget -

abigailb [interrupting]: NO IT WASN'T. IT WAS A YEAR LATE! CHECK HANSARD!

I feel the need to reference my heckle further.

So, the links are: here, where Baroness Hayman reports that "London Transport is planning to open the line in September 1998". A BBC news story from November 1999, reports "Jubilee Line finally opens". Westminster station was not to open until later, in December.

Yay!

so it appears i will be having some form of flatcooling party saturday week afternoon/evening, before going to intelekt! which has been kindly moved to a saturday! (thanks guys ;)

i was half-heartedly protesting against things on Whitehall/Westminster Bridge earlier this evening. things I protested against included: Tony Blair, the war, etc, cheese, roadworks, Big Ben (in fact i denounced all clocks as evil), and also the very bridge itself, which i claimed was stopping people from learning to swim. i appear not to have been arrested yet, although in fairness if i was going to get arrested for anything it was more likely to be for drunk & disorderly... ;)

Rehnquist dies. So, Bush gets his 2nd Supreme Court appointment.

I think I jinxed it. Oops. Sorry.

(link fixed now)

apparently, in a staggering display of missing the point, the new Minister for Women and Equality is working unpaid.

i mean, blergh??? they have an excuse (the number of paid ministerial positions is limited by law) but it doesn't sound like a very good one. you only need so many damn minister of state for paperclips at the department of administrative affairs, and this, whilst not exactly a high-profile position, is actually a position with wide-ranging responsibility, and not really subordinate to any one department.

"On its world", said Ford, "the people are people. The lizards are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd", said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did", said Ford. "It is."

"So", said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don’t people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn’t occur to them", said Ford. "They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes", said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But", said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard", said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

[Excerpt from So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, by Douglas Adams.]

[ update in april 2006. so. whee. several days later the radio version of this was broadcast. they got rid of the lizards. :( however it got added back in the cd! with some added bits regarding reality tv. ]

There is an opinion poll in today's NME, of NME readers. It has the figures :

Lib Dems - 37%

Labour - 26%

Tories - 17%

Other - 9%

Undecided - 13%

If I plug these numbers into the BBC's handy thingy, we discover that this would result in a Liberal Democrat majority of 194 (with Labour having 196 seats, and the Tories none).

strangely down today.

got annoyed by a UKIP guy i think on the radio just now, who tried to reconcile their supposed "zero tolerance" approach to crime, with their endorsement of speeding, by claiming that they only meant zero tolerance for "serious crimes". obviously this man has no idea what zero tolerance was supposed to mean. Yet another term becoming devalued.