Life: Downloaded

The end and a new beginning

2010-02-28T01:48:00.001Z

I will not be using Blogger for this blog anymore. I have been on here for a long time, but I now feel the design and layout aspects are too restrictive. The plugins don't always meet my needs either.

At the time of typing, I am putting a website together. It isn't all done yet, but I have completed the blog setup (and made my first post).

All of the posts on here can also be found on my new blog (along with the comments).

The new location for my blog is here.

HUU Elections 2009 - The delayed President

2009-03-13T11:34:00.015Z

One of the more controversial aspects of the elections that recently took place at Hull University Union was the disqualification of one of the Presidential candidates - Jamie Scudamore. Due to that decision, made by Returning Officer Kat Docherty, Jamie appealed and that meant an Election Appeals Committee had to be arranged. This delayed the result by a week.

Final round results
As the decision to disqualify Jamie Scudamore was reversed by the Election Appeals Committee, he has been elected President and all of the results from the polling period stand. R.O.N was out of the running first. In the next round Ben Hall and Rory Stobo were out of the running, which meant there was three candidates in the final round:

Candidate	Votes
Jamie Scudamore	1152
Amy Hopkinson	655
Andrew Barrett	471

Q&A with Alex Hamilton

After the result of this particular election was announced, I had several questions. A number of rumours were being circulated and I wanted to make sure I had the truth before blogging anything. Yesterday I sent an email to Alex Hamilton (the UST and Deputy Returning Officer), containing the questions that I had and I got the following responses this morning:

Are the minutes of the EAC going to be published on hullstudent?
I'll have to check with Paul what the availability of closed committee minutes is. The reasons to go into closed session were the reports of what has happened previously in EACs, regarding intimidation of the EAC by the behaviour and amount of people present (Amy had arrived with about 15 very vocal supporters); also some of the evidence given would be prejudicial against one of the complainants if the EAC decided to re-run the election so it was deemed unsuitable to be heard publically.

Is it true that there was a 12-0 vote in favour of Jamie Scudamore winning, despite him breaking rules?
The vote was 10-0 as only ten could make the meeting (quoracy is seven). They decided that the infringements during the election that were dealt with to the RO’s satisfaction were not grounds to exclude him and that the only unresolved issue, the one for which the RO excluded the candidate was insubstantial, especially given the circumstances in which it was initiated.

Was the EAC called because he was canvassing (e.g. knocking on doors) in areas where he wasn't supposed to?
It was not. There has been a rumour of a local council byelaw prohibiting this, but no proof has been offered. I have myself researched this and the only thing I could find was a byelaw preventing the employment of children for door knocking/ canvassing without an adult present; which would of course imply that adults can do so.

There have been accusations of rigging (I'm not going to name anyone). Can I get your confirmation that it was completely random selection that decided who was part of the EAC?
I can confirm the students were entirely random, as the Chair of Council (Paddy) and James Brooks can attest to.

The process I used to select the students was http://random.org/integers/ to generate 200 random positive integers, these numbers then corresponded to a cell on an excel spreadsheet of all students, which has them listed 1-17000ish. These names were then checked against the list of candidates, proposers and seconders. I then sent an email to these students explaining the situation (an appeal had been made which required adjudication). I also checked the respondents’ facebooks for any campaign ties, and then found a time that at least 7 could make to hold the meeting. I also did not know any of the EAC.

I must also point out that I refused to release the names of the EAC prior to the meeting, despite threats of a motion of no-confidence against myself (which was subsequently made) from Amy’s campaign team, notably Sam Greenwood.

What are your thoughts on the decision of the EAC to elect Jamie?
I am of course impartial to any proceedings during the election period. I am satisfied though that the EAC carried out their duty satisfactorily and professionally.

Alex finished off the email by stating:

"There have been a great deal of rumours surrounding the President election (as there are almost every year), this year I feel the difference is that two actively political campaigns have not succeeded against what is seen as an outsider to HUU politics, and due to the last minute resignation of the previous RO, a Sabbatical needing to take on the deputy duties, as I am available on campus during the period – as a result the parties involved moved their attentions from campaigning for a victory to undermining the processes involved.

The recently elected Officers have a massive democratic mandate as a result of our highest ever turnout, and as such it is a shame that some groups within our democratic structures are intent on ignoring and undermining this."

First of all I have to thank Alex for taking the time to answer the questions. It would have been easy to ignore them and keep speculation circulating around the union.

Despite the detail of these responses, I still have some concerns. Kat Docherty was only present on the results night and there is no evidence to suggest she was present at the EAC to justify her decision. His refusal to release the names of the EAC is also worrying.

There is only his word which states the membership wasn't rigged in any way. This doesn't help to make the union transparent and also means there is nothing to prove that what he says about committee selection is correct. In the past, I have seen EAC membership announced and it's even more important given that there's a no-confidence motion against him.

In point 3, he stated that he could not find evidence to prove that the accusation about canvassing was against the rules. After searching election laws, Standing Order 2003 (governing elections) and the HUU Bye-laws I could not find anything either. If there is proof - then please leave a comment on this blog post.

If there's no proof of that though, what was the reason for the initial disqualification? This needs to be stated to make sure the union remains transparent.

Alex also mentioned the subject of the previous RO (Paul Tatton), resigning from that position. Even though Alex felt an impartial replacement needed to be found, this does not mean that he should necessarily be the automatic choice as a deputy. As I have stated in a previous blog post, theoretically he could influence the result and (as he rightly states), executive officers are meant to be impartial.

Public opinion
I have asked other people what they feel about the decision to elect a candidate who was initially disqualified. One person said:
"I think its right
There is no way you can say that the number of votes cast has been dramatically affected by what happened.
His vote count was far too high for that."
I replied by stating that "while it's true that there is no proof that the two things are linked, is it right that a person who was initially disqualified should be elected?". The person said:
"i still feel it was in the best interests of the students and the union itself"
It is an interesting point. Not being able to found out who can rightly call themselves President as soon as possible can have a huge impact. It affects training schedules, teamwork and could potentially mean voters lose faith in the union's ability to manage itself properly.

However, it is important that those who are elected have the right to hold that position and all necessary steps need to be taken to ensure that.

Summary and Conclusion
I would say that the biggest problem is communication. As I have mentioned, there is evidence of a lack of transparency and people need this to know that their votes have meaning. There needs to be appropriate publicity for all elections and all info that is published needs to be 100% accurate.

The presidential election could have been handled better, but I applaud Alex for giving answers to important questions in an effort to reduce the number of concerns people have. If you have any issues with the election, it is always important to contact the RO or the deputy.

It will be interesting to hear what happens with the no-confidence motion. There seems to be a large amount of support for it, but will people give up as the election process is now completed?

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Election, HUU, Politics, Student Unions, President

HUU Elections 2009 - the results (with a twist)

2009-03-06T09:05:00.010Z

The last day of voting and the announcement of the results were both very eventful. Naturally, there was a lot of tension and when each result was announced, there was a huge amount of emotion shown. Amongst the chanting and the tears though, we now have most of the team that will be in charge of the union for the 09/10 academic year.

A note about the presidential election
The following quote is from a statement made by Kat Docherty, the returning officer for this year (the full statement can be found here):
"During the course of the elections, a number of complaints were received by the Returning Officer regarding a particular candidate for the position of President. Some of these complaints were upheld and the decision made to exclude the candidate from the elections."
The disqualified candidate (several reliable sources told me it was Jamie Scudamore), has appealed the decision and there will be an Election Appeals Committee meeting that decides who becomes President next year. As a result of this I will be posting the result of the Presidential election in an extra (fourth) entry about the elections.

The results
VP Welfare

Candidate	Votes
Alice Marshall	910
R.O.N.	318

VP Community (final round results)

Candidate	Votes
Ben Wilcox	681
Katie Beth-Hardy	350
Andrew Corless	331

VP Education (final round results)

Candidate	Votes
Chris Marks	530
Mark Tyson	398

VP Sports (final round results)

Candidate	Votes
James 'Wayne' Kerr	930
Nathan Webster	921

Chair Scarborough

Candidate	Votes
Darius Navickas	249
James Nicholson	221

Chair ISA

Candidate	Votes
Line Kristensen	543
Joe Kitanosono	156
R.O.N.	69

Chair Media Committee

Candidate	Votes
William Langdale	518
R.O.N.	207

Chair Campaigns & Democracy

Candidate	Votes
Basit Mohammed	530
Kaveh Azarhoosh	409

Other winners
There were several other positions up for grabs during the elections. One very intersting election was for the position of Chair RAG. In the final round, Ellen Hinsley won by just two votes. It's also interesting to note that after the first round she was only leading by three.

Some of the other elections only had one human candidate and the Re-open nominations option, so it was almost certain who would win that. For example, that happened in the case of Disabled Students Chair (won by Stephen Lee), the Male Chair of LGBT (won by Daniel Horner) and the Chair of the Mature Students Committee (won by Luke Howard-Pask).

Comments on the results
I find the result for the VP Education election very interesting. Chris Marks has managed to repeat what Richard Jackson did in last year's elections by winning despite having no experience of the area he's going to be in charge of. Hopefully, the students thought his policies were good enough. I also have to mention that Mark Tyson wasn't helped by his campaign team being absent most of the time. I have mentioned in a previous post that this was disgraceful. If you don't have a noticeable physical presence at election time, you're going to be disadvantaged.

The VP Sport election was incredibly tight (nine vote difference). I think that has to be one of the closest results for a full-time officer position in a number of years.

The picture above shows Nathan Webster (runner-up in the VP Sport election) doing some karaoke with some of the winners (I have to point out that the choice of song was incredibly clichéd), which shows in most cases, elections were cleanly fought and people were friends afterwards - which is nice to see. It's just things like the presidential election which casts a shadow over everything.

Voter turnout/apathy
This was something that really impressed me. The turnout was 3087 and that is a 58% increase on the previous. Congratulations have to go to the union for improving it by that much. The biggest change to the voting setup was using the university portal as a login method, so I assume the decision to use that helped improve the turnout.

Another important figue is what the turnout is as a percentage of the total student population. According to the university website, the number of student scurrently stands at 19,818. Assuming that there were no people who opted out of union membership, that means 15.58% of students voted.

While that is still an impressive figure both compared to previous years and compared to other unions, it still means that the majority of students didn't vote. It means that next year's UEC still have work to do. However, it is always hard to get rid of student apathy. I can't see anything like 90% turnouts anytime soon.

Summary and Conclusion
This election has been 'mixed', to say the least. While most elections have been fought cleanly, things like the presidential election have caused considerable controversy and tarnished the outcome. The turnout was great. Also, many candidates performed well, despite not having that many posters or a physical presence.

Another thing to note is R.O.N. Although in some cases that option was removed in the first round, a surprising number of people voted for it. That has both positives and negatives. It means that more people are willing to engage with the political process, but it also means that they are prepared to delay things. Having said that, if it means the best person gets chosen for the job - it's a good thing.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: HUU, Student Unions, Election, Politics

HUU Elections 2009 - Polling days

2009-03-04T11:34:00.017Z

Before I get onto the subject of this entry, I should point out that the current UST (Alex Hamilton) sent a message to me and said that as a result of my discovery about the confusing Returning Officer notices, the incorrect notice has been removed from Hullstudent.com. He has also informed me that there are plans to work on improving the mentions of the Election Appeals Committee in the relevant standing orders.

Anyway, at the time of typing, it's the second polling day of the elections at Hull University Union.

Physical presence

Oddly, the campaign teams were allowed to have a presence before the polling started. This is a strange decision by the union because anyone who talked to the campaign teams couldn't go and vote afterwards.

It was good to see that at least some of the teams were out there from early on though - it definitely shows committment. Unfortunately, I spoke to one candidate who said his campaign team had "slept in", which is incredibly lazy, unhelpful and shows a huge lack of support. Sure some people might have lectures during the day and, to be fair, they should be allowed to attend those. However, not everyone has lectures from 9-6, so they can be around some of the time. I suspect the candidate I spoke to will have had words with his team!

On the first polling day, there was a solid presence outside the Brynmor Jones Library. It is a massive improvement on last year, when large proportions of the teams only turned up on the final day. However, as it was the last opportunity for people to vote, you can understand why they all appeared!

One thing I saw that was disappointing was campaign team members hanging around where people were voting. There was two or three from one team and someone else who was quite close to voters trying to give them stickers. This is very much against the rules (Standing Order 2003, point 28(e)) and all candidates should have explained this to their teams (the standing order is issued at the procedural meeting to all candidates - points 15 and 25(a) of S.O. 2003). I know that at least one of the people in that area was (or still is) a Union Councillor, so that's even more disgraceful. Naturally, I reported this to the UST and as far as I know, he's going to put a notice up about that, which is better than nothing.

Gimmicks

Gimmicks are almost an ever-present part of student union elections across the country. They are meant to introduce a bit of fun because the theory is that many students think politics is boring. If politics is made interesting, then people maybe more likely to listen to what you have to say and vote for you. As you can see from the two pictures above, the gimmickry comes in a variety of forms and for some voters it does work. However, it's not for everyone.

I am not a fan of gimmicks in this context at all. Although they may get the occasional laugh, students want a student union that 'just works', provides enough services and represents them - basically good value for money. I'm not sure you can get that across by using an inflatable castle, shiny wigs or things like juggling. If anything, the latter could be a metaphor for not being able to stabilise finances - especially if you drop the juggling balls!

Tom Bramall, the Welfare Officer in 2008 for the University of Sheffield Students' Union, summed it up best by saying:
"So when your at the ballot box don't think who has the catchiest slogan or the most gimmicks, think - Who's going to represent my needs, my wants and help make my University life the best ever."
Publicity
In the HUU elections, you can use many forms of publicity, such as radio interviews, flyers, posters and stickers. They can have varying forms of success - especially the flyers and stickers. This is because your average student often feels hassled by the various campaign teams. The best strategy would be to say something short and concise, then if they're not interested, simply leave them alone. Forcing people to wear stickers doesn't exactly attract their vote. It might even stop them from voting altogether.

As for posters, there are a number of pitfalls here. The main one is too much text. When people walk by your poster, they are not going to want to read several paragraphs - especially if they are rushing to e.g. a lecture or a meeting. The best thing is short sentences or bullet points.

The next thing is coverage. There are two ways of doing this. One is to simply put lots of posters up everywhere. However, this only works if you have a large campaign team because when the posters go up, everyone is trying to get in front of you to grab a prime location. If you have a small team, you'd have to be very quick and determine which are the best spots first. These tend to be near the stairs or anything at eye level. Nobody is likely to kneel down to read a lot of text on a crowded piece of A4 (or A3).

The other way works if you have a small team. If there is already a large collection of posters in one area that are one colour and you have a poster that is substantially different, put in the middle of the large collection. As it is different, people will notice it. Once again, the stairs and anything at eye level is a good place to go. This method can also work if you have limited camapign funds.

When I was campaigning in 2006, I had a very small team (at times it was myself, but I did have two others who alternated). This made it difficult when putting up posters, but while everyone was concetrating on one area of the building, I rushed up to other areas and took full advantage of the empty space.

In the picture above, you will see that those posters aren't at eye-level. However, they can be seen when you're near the top of a nearby staircase. Providing the text is big enough, you might get away with that.

This year, I've noticed that some candidates haven't done any posters. This surprises me, but it might appeal to those voters who don't like how excessive postering makes the union look a mess (believe it or not there are restrictions on where you can put them - point 28 of S.O. 2003). However, this only works if the voters know who you are via other means. You also have to think that not everyone will have a detailed look at the nomination forms.

Summary and Conclusion
I think the physical presence of campaign teams this year has been very good. Poster coverage has been ok too, although some will suffer because they haven't put any up - either in the major locations or nowhere at all. I am also disappointed by the occasional bit of rule-breaking, but this often happens. Candidates really should remind their teams about the restrictions.

I'm not entirely sure about voter interest so far - I haven't seen crowds of potential voters surrounding people in brightly coloured t-shirts. Having said that, the best way to tell is when the voting figures are released. I'd also like to see what happens on the final polling day and whether activity picks up then.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: HUU, Student Unions, Election, Politics

HUU Elections 2009 – Candidates & Controversy

2009-03-02T00:14:00.003Z

I haven’t posted since November last year. To be honest, I had lost the motivation to blog and I had other things that used up my time. Each of my posts take a while to research. Anyway, certain things have happened recently which have given me some motivation again.

The importance and history of elections
At Hull University Union, the elections are some of the most important things to happen in the academic year. Unfortunately, apathy is rampant in student unions. It is the job of the executive to effectively communicate the importance and to use more than one medium, which will increase the chances of the relevant information being seen. In the past at HUU, the percentage of students voting has been below 20% (most of the time it’s below 15%). It would be good if the percentage goes up each year. If you vote then there’s a greater chance of the best candidates getting elected.

Candidates
Once again, all of the major positions have candidates. However, it concerns me that some have only one candidate (e.g. VP Welfare). While this doesn’t necessarily mean the one candidate will be bad, having some competition is always better. In the VP Education category, only one person has any student rep experience (student reps being one of the things VP Ed is responsible for). This could be problematic as experience of the area can provide a better understanding of the role. However, previous elections have shown that a non-rep can get successfully elected (see the ‘08 VP AR results and the Richard Jackson victory).

I don’t like criticising an individual candidate, but I think one of the people attempting to become President is severely harming his chances by what he has written on his nomination form. The reasons for standing should be detailed and contain policy ideas, as well as information about relevant experience. However, he is not breaking rules set out the the standing order governing elections. It is up to the voting members to decide if this is acceptable.

Major discrepancy
As I have already mentioned, communication of relevant information is important. Unfortunately, I have noticed some problems in this area and it worries me greatly.

One of the most important people in any election is the Returning Officer. Point 4 of Standing Order 2003 states:

“The Returning Officer (RO) is to be appointed by the Union Executive Committee when elections are called and can be either a permanent member of Union Staff or an assigned National Union of Students RO. Notification of the appointment is to be posted by the General Manager’s Secretary on the elections board within forty eight hours.”

In the Election Handbook, it states the Returning Officer for this year is Kathryn Docherty, who is a member of staff at the NUS. However, if you go here, you will find that Paul Tatton (the Union General Manger) was chosen as the RO.

You will see in the above quote that the RO is announced on the election board. Fair enough – that name will have to be considered accurate. However, this confusion on hullstudent.com is likely to confuse many students as few will read right through the standing order to find out about the election board. The website would be a more obvious port of call.

The bigger notice that mentions Paul Tatton will probably be the one that students see first. This is because the point about Kathryn Docherty is hidden in the middle of one download and is not shown anywhere else. If it turns out that Paul Tatton is not the RO, then this demonstrates both a lack of transparency and clarity. In both cases, there are no details about how to contact those people. If people have a complaint or other issue, they might not know who to talk to.

Other issues
The previous point is probably the biggest problem in my opinion, but there other things that need to be mentioned that are related to clarity and transparency.

Point 7 of S.O. 2003 states what will happen if there is a serious or wilful breach of election procedures:

“If the RO has any doubts as to the eligibility of a candidate or considers that there has been a serious or wilful breach of election procedures then disqualification is mandatory.”

Later on in the document, point 25(a) mentions rules for campaign team members:

“Candidates are responsible for the behaviour of their team members during the election campaign. It is their responsibility to ensure that all of their campaign team are briefed on the rules and regulations surrounding elections. Candidates are all provided with Standing Orders governing elections and it is imperative that they relay this information to their teams and explain that many of the rules also apply to team members. If a complaint is made it will be referred to the RO who will then decide on the appropriate action to take, see 7.”

The above mentions that point 7 talks about appropriate action for the RO to take. However, that only talks about disqualification. Nowhere does point 7 mention the EAC (Election Appeals Committee) or what happens in the case of a minor issue.

This could be interpreted in two ways:

It is simply badly worded and should say something like: “for an example of appropriate action, see point 7".
The only appropriate action for any complaint is disqualification, but what if it’s only a minor issue? Where does the EAC fit into this?

This point needs to be much clearer.

During the elections, the Returning Officer can choose any number of Assistant Returning Officers (point 6 of S.O. 2003). There are also eligibility restrictions (they must be a full member of the union who is not a proposer or seconder). Looking at this point, it is perfectly possible for a part-time UEC member to be chosen or supporter who is neither a proposer or seconder.

This introduces an element of bias. There’s also nothing to suggest the names of AROs will be released. These points show a lack of detail and transparency.

Summary and Conclusion
The issues I have mentioned above have varying levels of importance, but I think it’s clear that a number of them relate to the role of the returning officer, as well as communicating in a clear and transparent fashion. The major problem is finding out exactly who the RO is and how to contact them. Other points can hopefully be addressed in the next iteration of S.O. 2003.

My next post will relate to the polling days and the post after that will be a general post-mortem of the whole election process.

So, what do you think? I welcome any comments from students, UEC members and anyone else who is interested.

Technorati tags: HUU, Student Unions, Elections, Politics, Governance

Obama 338 - 163 McCain

2008-11-05T09:39:00.004Z

As you can see from the result above, the Illinois Senator Barack Obama was elected to be the next President of the United States. He will start that job on January 20th, 2009.

Results breakdown
Here is a graphical representation of who won each state:

Here is a simple breakdown of the numbers

Choice	No. states
Democrat	28
GOP	21
Incomplete	2

The result above is about electoral college votes and that's what decided who won the states. Remember that the votes of the people don't count in the US, although it's expected that the members of the Electoral College assigned to each state will vote the way the people do. It hasn't always happened like that though (have a look at the results from the 2000 Gore vs. Bush election).

Big switch
One of the most interesting facts from this result is that nine states switched there support and in all cases it was from GOP (the Republicans) to Democrat. Those states included Florida, an important state in 2000 and has been Republican for a number of years. It was an area that Rudy Giuliani concentrated on heavily when he was campaigning.

What reasons could there be for the big switch in those nine states? Well, there are several possibilities. A campaign theme for McCain was based around fear (because of the terrorist attacks). Maybe Obama's message of hope was more appealing. The VP picks have been frequently analysed and maybe the gaffes of Sarah Palin were a factor.

Exit poll analysis
The exit polls on CNN reveal some interesting information about the way people voted. Some of it is stating the obvoius, but it's better when it's confirmed with numerical data.

It seems a large proportion of John McCain's votes came from the older white population. Obama dominated the young and non-white demographics. As an example, 55% of the white population voted for McCain and a spectacular 94% of African-Americans went for Obama. Another example is that McCain got 53% of the 65 and older demographic.

This goes to confirm that age and race still play a major part in the election. It's worrying, but not unexpected.

Speeches
The following is Barack Obama's victory speech:

This is the sort of speech that Obama has been giving throughout the camapign. Although it is full of inspirational talk and essentially a message of hope and change, it doesn't give us anything new.

Lack of detail in speech
He doesn't go into specifics about all his policies either. A criticism of him has been that he hasn't done that thorughout his campaign. However, I believe he has - for example, he has a plan for improving national security freely available on his website and it contains budget figures, military numbers and deadlines. Also, he can give us more detail when he actually gets into the Whitehouse because then he'll have access to more information.

GOP defeat
John McCain was gracious in defeat, saying that he now hopes that America can move forward:

"This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and the special pride that must be theirs tonight"

"These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face."

International recognition
There were many leaders who congratulated Obama on his victory - but then that's to be expected. They want to have good relationships with one of the most powerful nations on earth. It's something that's been done over many years. Here is what Gordon Brown had to say:

"I hope to be able to work with Senator Obama to bring the world together so that we can face these difficult times with more coordination and more unity than we've seen before."

Problems
It seemed to be a relatively smooth election day. The only problems that were reported mainly focused on long queues and faulty e-voting systems. The queues are unavoidable, but they could be minimised if more polling stations and voting booths were made available. It's a simple formula. The availability of voting machines cannot be based on the turnout of a previous election because it doesn't take into account the candidates and the current public feeling towards politics and other current affairs.

E-voting was something heavily criticised in previous elections and it is something that I've blogged about before, but providing more research and development is done, it can work.

Summary and conclusion
It has been a very long election process. Most people will agree that it has been too long. There needs to be some reform in this area soon. The scheduling of primaries needs to be worked on too - entire states were robbed of the delegates that would normally go to the party conventions where the presidential candidates are announced.

It has also been heavily money-driven. There were several stories in the media about campaign funding. Several people support the idea of a funding cap. It's something I agree with because if everyone has the same amount of money, it shifts the focus from finances and onto the important politics.

Despite all that, I believe a high calibre candidate has been elected as President and hopefully his promise of change will be reality during his tenure (whether it's four or eight years).

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Politics, US Election, John McCain, Barack Obama, Government,

All the excitement of a governance review

2008-10-20T13:38:00.011+01:00

I won't bore you with the reasons why I haven't blogged much recently. I could have posted my opinions on the credit crunch or the latest news about the US election, but I'm not going to today - that will come later. This post is more of a continuation of my last post as it's about HUU's latest governance review.

The last post analysed the draft constitution when it was at it's green paper stage. Now it's after the white paper stage and it's time for a referendum - the point where the student population gets to decide whether the document is acceptable.

Publicity
I have to admit that the publicity for the voting period has been superb. There's been balloons, flyers, posters, information on HUU's website and more. Some people might say that it's too much (too many posters was often a complaint in previous sabbatical elections) however, you cannot say that they haven't made people aware that something is happening. There was a budget of £5k for this campaign though (see minutes of the UEC meeting from August 20th).

There is a couple of things wrong with the publicity though. Firstly, they don't have the details of how to vote on the flyers (e.g. website). A big ommission, especially considering not everyone goes on the union's website regularly.

Secondly, everything says 'vote yes'. This is a classic psychological tactic that used in the NUS and used by a number of factions within the student movement. It plants a thought in the mind of the student populus that there is only one option, when there's clearly two. The whole point of having a vote is allowing students to make their own decision. The union should present their proposed documents alongside the facts and the history of the governance review. If the UEC were right, then it's quite possible that the students could vote yes without needing their choice forced.

The final point about publicity is fairly serious. Considering there is a substantial budget for this, it would be sensible for large expenses to be approved by UEC. In the minutes of the UEC meeting from September 23rd, there is this in the President's report:

"Have ordered the 'year of change' banner to go across the entrance to the Union. Apologies to all members of UEC for ordering this without approval and not consulting on the cost. Hope to have the banner up for Welcome Week."

Helen apologised for the oversight, but it's still a significant expense and it has a message that was not approved by the UEC. It sets a dangerous precedent.

Draft Constitution - Part 1
The first issue in this part of the constitution is in point 2 ('The Name'). It states:

"The Association’s name is Hull University Union."

Currently, the student union is an un-incorporated association, but under the new constitution it will be a registered charity. Surely it should read 'The charity's name is Hull University Union'.

The next problem is in point 3 ('Objects of the student union'). These are included to tell you the union's reason for existing. They have to feature in the list of charitable objectives in the Charities Act. This is from the union's proposed constitution:

"The objects of the Students’ Union are:

1.1. The purpose of Hull University Union is the advancement of Education of students at the University of Hull.
1.2. It will achieve this by:
1.2.1. Promoting the interests and welfare of students at the University of Hull during their course of study and representing, supporting and advising members.
1.2.2. Being the recognised representative channel between students and the University and any other external bodies.
1.2.3. Providing cultural, sporting and recreational activities, opportunities to volunteer in the community and forums for discussion and debate for the personal development of its members."

For an official document, this is incredibly poor layout and could easily be misinterpreted. According to that section, the union can advance the quality of education at the university by providing such things as sporting and cultural activities. That makes no sense. Sport is an object separate to education.

In point 4 ('Application of Income and Property'), sub-clause 3 places restrictions on what money/remunaration can be given to members (for instance, no income or property of nthe charity can be given to a member) unless it's a reimbursement for a product or service. However, sub-clause 8 conflicts with that by stating that a trustee can receive a benefit not permitted in sub-clause 3 providing they declare interest, do not attend relevant meetings and do not vote.

Draft Constitution - part 2
In the section aout membership, it lists the various different types of membership for the student union:

Full members
Honorary Life members
Life members
Reciprocal members
Associate members
Temporary members

It also provides detailed information about your rights as a full member. However, there's no part of the constitution that gives information about the other types of membership.

The next point refers to Union Extraordinary General Meetings. The Board of Trustees, UEC or 100 full members can convene an EGM. Is 100 members enough peopleconsidering there are several thousand members in total? I can only assume that it's this number due to the apathy that exists amongst the members of the union. The problem is, this could lead to minority rule. A larger number is required, but nothing like e.g. 40%, because that is just ridiculous.

In the point about the board of trustees, it states that trustees must keep minutes of meetings. Wouldn't it be better if an actual secretary did this and sent the minutes to the trustees afterwards? It would ensure consistency.

Ten committments
From the UEC meeting on the June 3rd (i.e. last academic year when Ed Marsh was the President), the following committments were agreed and would form part of the new constitution:

Week 2, semester 2 council and open policy forum to be held in Scarborough
the removal of VP SC will be reviewed against bench marks after 2 years
all committee's must be run with representatives from both campus's, e.g. Women's, Societies and Media
Union Manager Scarborough to keep a record of Sabbatical Officer attendance in Scarborough, to be presented at Council in week 12
creation of Video Conferencing Facilities in both Unions
president to hold 2 open forums a semester in Scarborough
part Time officers to visit Scarborough twice a semester
to run a Scarborough Specific Marketing Campaign aimed at explaining that Scarborough students can run for cross campus positions from President to A.U Council rep on union council
to safeguard the recognition of Scarborough’s individuality by ring fencing its proportion of representation for 6 years
to ring fence the wages of the VP SC for 5 years, so if it is reintroduced by UEC the required funding will be available

Under the consitution that is being put to referendum, Open Policy Forums no longer exist (despite it being implied that their existence is set in stone according to the UEC minutes from September 4th). Instead, there will be a one-per-term General meeting. There is no information about whether the committments relating to OPFs would be applied to this new meeting.

There is also no follow-up information in the UEC minutes about whether point 2 will still be happening. The same applies to points about finance. Also, will any general meetings, Zone meeting, EGMs or AGMs take place in Scarborough? If this is to be explained in the standing orders, fair enough. However, standing orders should already be available for viewing on the governance review pages of hullstudent.com. They are governance documents and I presume new versions will be written.

Summary and Conclusion
The constitution that is being voted on contains sections that are poorly laid out and could be easily misinterpreted. The section about money for trustees contains a potential loophole and the publicity is highly visible, but has a message which almost forces a particular choice from the students. Parts of the publicity are not approved either and some key details have been missed off.

All that, plus the fact that some pledges agreed last year have not been included in the new constitution. Unfortunately, the proposed documents cannot be altered now as it's part way through the voting period and it would mean voiding the votes that have already been cast.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Student Unions, Politics, Governance

The HUU Governance Review

2008-05-12T09:42:00.009+01:00

This year, after a referendum at HUU, a review of the current governance structures has been initiated. It's the second one in three years and it attempts to correct any flaws in the existing setup that was created to make the union more compliant with charity laws. At the time of typing, the green paper has been available for a few days and this post serves as a critical analysis of it.

Membership of the UEC
Currently, there are 10 members of the Union Executive Committee (7 full-time, three part-time). The part-time officers (UEOs) were a recent addition in the previous governance review. See the bottom of this page for more information. In the green paper, the following is proposed:

President
VP Community
VP Education
VP Sport
VP Welfare
Chair Scarborough Executive Committee (part-time)

There would also be the non-exec positions of Campaigns & Democracy Officer, Chair ISA, Media Officer and Societies Officer. A clear benefit of this will be the fact that meetings will be quicker. However, I think there are some problems with it.

You will notice that there is no Treasurer position on the committee, something which has been present in various forms over a number of years. The green paper states that the responsibility will be given to an external trustee. According to a source in the union, the reasons for this are:

"The charity is too complicated for anyone but an expert to understand the complicated finances"

Another reason was that it's often the case that the UST doesn't have a finance-related degree, so if the Finance Manager isn't doing his job properly, he may not notice.

During the training period for new sabbaticals, all members of the exec are given budget/finance training and there is also a presentation from Cazenove, which is the investment group HUU work with. In the handover time the present UST gives the successor information and advice about this area. The General Manager also gives comprehensive information and resources relating to charities. All that, as well as the self-learning you're expected to do, should mean that the UST would be prepared to do the job. Providing that the UST is doing their job properly, they should also be able to notice if the Finance Manager is not doing their job properly. If there is some uncertainty, you could always talk to the GM about it.

If the responsibility is given to an external trustee, it means there isn't anyone with that responsibility on the exec to give relevant reports. The external trustees aren't there all the time, so how can they do the job that the UST currently has?

Democracy
I can understand why Campaigns and Democracy is a part-time position in this proposed structure. The UST used to have responsibility for societies, but that's under the remit of VP Media & Volunteering at the moment. The new proposals also take away the treasurer responsibilities, so they obviously feel there's not enough left to justify a full-time position. However, it would mean there is no-one on the executive who is responsible for ensuring there's a democratic union. There's many elections to co-ordinate and the perennial task of battling against the dreaded student apathy. Whether this is a full-time position or not, I think it deserves a position on the exec.

Scarborough
I can forsee the decisions about Scarborough causing big problems. I'm not sure how many people would like the fact that the Scarborough exec chair would lose VP status and not be full-time. To some people, 'Chair' doesn't sound as important as 'Vice-President'. Scarborough is a big responsibility and previous VPs of that campus have shown that they have a large amount of work to do. Could a part-timer cope with that whilst doing their degree?

This could be an attempt to strengthen the Two campuses, one union image though. If the rest of the exec spend more time at the Scarborough campus, the workload could be shared. However, there is also the issues affecting the Hull campus and the union as a whole to take care of - would this be too much for the other positions?

Education
The green paper states that the VP (Academic Representation) would be called VP Education. I think this is a good decision because many other unions across the country (for example, Surrey SU and Loughborough SU). Apart from this and the inclusion of the zones, there doesn't seem to be a great deal of changes.

The exec might want to look at the committee lists to see if they're accurate. For example, I notice they made some valid changes to the VP Education committee list (which I recognise from Standing Order 3.001 that I rewrote), but there are still some inaccuracies (Graduate Research Committee is now called the Research Degrees Committee and there is no inclusion of the Library User Group, Free Electives Panel or Widening Participation Committee).

VP Community
The current role of Chair HUSSO is part-time, but the changes stated in this paper would mean that student community action would have a full-time officer again and more time can be given to making this valuable area of the union even better.

Meeting times

"The UEC shall meet in weeks 1, 4, 6, 8 and 10 of each semester. Meetings shall also occur outside of term-time as and when they are required"

This has the potential to be good for the increased number of part-time officers as it reduces their workload slightly. However, fewer meetings could mean that the executive is less responsive in certain situations. Remember, if there isn't enough to justify a meeting at some point, then it could always be cancelled.

Zones
This is a similar model to the one that the NUS use. I can see some students thinking that this is easier to find who is responsible for certain areas, but I see it as too many layers. You would have the zone committees who each decide on a policy that will be submitted to an Open Policy Forum. The OPFs decide which policy ideas go to a referendum (this is noted at Union Council). Too many layers means too much bureaucracy and additional paperwork.

The point about only one policy from each zone going to an OPF is a serious one. What if there is more than one vitally important policy that needs to be pushed through? It means one would have to be either abandoned or delayed until the next Zone committee. This could cause severe delays in the improvement of the union.

Open Policy Forums
The following is from the green paper:

"The OPF to Referenda process will run independently of the governance structures of HUU..."

This is total nonsense. Governance policy can pass through that process. It's part of the union's democratic processes, so how is it independent?
This is from an entry on the CommonSenseAlliance blog:

"This year, Open Policy Forums were introduced - and haven't been the biggest hit in the Union... It is all down to the shortcomings of the Constitution - it only had about three lines about OPF's - so really, the UEC have done a good job with it. But this review cements it into the constitution."

It's not all down to the constitution. Yes, it might have helped if there was more detail about them (maybe even a standing order), but in this situation it's up to the UEC to sort out suitable times and publicise them appropriately. Using Hullstudent.com and Facebook isn't necessarily enough because not everyone is a member of the relevant groups and not everyone visits hullstudent.com regularly. I saw no posters in the union stating that these were taking place.

Referenda and voting
This is from the green paper:

"All members of UEC except the Chair are entitled to vote at UEC. All votes of UEC shall be recorded and displayed in the minutes to allow UEC to be held to account by council. In the event of a tied vote the Chair of UEC shall have a casting vote. In this instance the casting vote must be justified for the minutes."

Does this mean the number who voted for and against, or the specific names? It doesn't specify if it's 'secret ballot' and that needs to be clear (as is the case in other parts of the paper, e.g. the part about the election of zone chairs).

Proportional representation is something which is mentioned repeatedly, but there is no mention of the specific version (if I remember correctly, it's Alternative Vote, the single seat election mechanism approved by the Electoral Reform Society). The paper also doesn't mention the method of election for the multiple-seat Union Council. Just saying 'proportional representation' is far too generic because it allows people to constantly change the election method and there would be no consistency.

Other points
On page 13 of the green paper, it states that the UEC is "elected once annually", but what about the part-time officers? Does this mean that they can no-longer go for a full-time position and therefore a second year?

The paper doesn't mention the AGM anywhere, which is one of the most important events in the union calendar. The publicity arrangements for this year's AGM were heavily criticised - so much more planning is needed.

There is also no explicit mention of the fact that the trustee board can reject policy approved by the students.

This is from the CommonSenseAlliance blog entry that was mentioned earlier:

"This year we've moved to change the standing orders so that only 10% of the students have to vote to change."

I understand the reason for this. Votes in the past haven't had the required numbers to be legitimate. Going down to 10% means that more referendum results will become union policy. However, 10% isn't really representative of the whole student union membership. It needs to be a higher percentage (e.g. 20%).

I feel this is too soon after the last governance review. There hasn't been enough time to fix the initial teething problems that you get with anything new. Some of the problems could be fixed by altering timings and publicity, without the need to alter the constitution. What would other people think of us if our governance is in a constant state of flux? I'm not against regular reviews - I just don't think they should be as regular as this.

Summary and Conclusion
This green paper definitely has some good points in it. I think the people who have contributed to this have put a lot of effort in and genuinely want to make the union better. However, I believe it needs significant changes before it goes to a vote as a white paper.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: HUU, Student Unions, Politics, Governance

The '08 primaries - not many left

2008-05-07T10:12:00.009+01:00

On May 6th we had the primaries for Indiana and North Carolina. These states were incredibly important for Hillary as it was a chance to build up more late momentum (after her win in Pennsylvania). For Barack Obama, they were a chance to get an even bigger lead in the delegate count prior to the Democratic National Convention in June. As for John McCain, he was able to do more profiling and preparation for the general election portion of the election season.

Here are the Democrat results for the primaries that took place on May 6th:

North Carolina

Candidate	Vote %age	Delegates
Barack Obama	56	58
Hillary Clinton	42	42

Indiana

Candidate	Vote %age	Delegates
Hillary Clinton	51	37
Barack Obama	49	33

If you just look at who won, you would think it's 1-1. However, it's a bit more complicated than that. Obama won North Carolina by a significant margin (in terms of votes and delegates) and only narrowly missed out on a win in Indiana (2% behind Clinton in votes and a difference of four between the two delegate counts). In reality, this was a good night for Obama because he takes 91 delegates and Clinton only takes 79.

Naturally, Hillary tried to put a positive spin on the results by saying:

"Not too long ago, my opponent made a prediction. He said I would probably win Pennsylvania, he would win North Carolina, and Indiana would be the tiebreaker.

Well, tonight we've come from behind, we've broken the tie, and, thanks to you, it's full speed onto the White House."

This is a clever thing to say because the voters who aren't necessarily interested in the finer details may think she's still got a really strong chance of winning and then go and vote for her. The truth is that she has a chance, but it's far from strong.

This is what Obama had to say:

"You know, there are those who were saying that North Carolina would be a game changer in this election. But today what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington, D.C.

I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on what appears to be her victory in the great state of Indiana."

This was also a clever things to say. He is getting the people of North Carolina on his side and also pandering to the Hillary Clinton supporters. This will become increasingly important if he wins the nomination because he'll need all the votes he can get when he goes against McCain, who's had solid GOP backing for a while.

So, how can Hillary win? Well, according to the CNN Election Center, Obama has 1,836 delegates and superdelegates. Clinton has 1,681 (which means there is a difference of 155). In the remaining primaries, there are 217 delegates available. This is one of the reasons why I said Clinton didn't have a strong chance earlier. She would have to win nearly all the remaining primaries by significant margins.

Of course, it would be easier for her if some of the undecided superdelegates pledged their allegiance to her (270 available), but they might just go with the popular vote if they haven't made their minds up yet.

Michael Tomasky has an interesting point in this article. Even though he believes Obama has the advantage, he thinks that Obama has had multiple opportunities to "close the deal" and hasn't done that so far. He wonders if that is an indicator of what may happen.

Obama, like any candidate, can theoretically have a runaway victory providing there's enough positive publicity and decent early results. Obama certainly had that (e.g. Iowa). However, John McCain has proved that you can come from behind and finish strongly. Tomasky cites New Hampshire, California, Texas or Ohio and Pennsylvania as points where he could have won. I agree with Pennsylvania because of the significant number of delegates, but the others aren't good choices as they are too early on in the process (especially new Hampshire - that was the second primary/caucus).

This article states that some of Clinton's aides are now saying it's nearly impossible. That is something very important. If the people in your campaign team are losing faith in your chances, what hope do you have?

It gets even worse for Clinton because Obama seems to have survived the problematic issue of Jeremiah Wright - his former pastor. That could have (quite easily) turned into a public relations nightmare, but it hasn't.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Elections, Politics, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton,

The NUT industrial action

2008-04-25T10:14:00.009+01:00

On Thursday, April 24th, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) members went on strike for one day, but there is the possibility of further action in the future. The reason for the strike was poor pay and conditions, however I think that this is a dubious claim and the type of action was the wrong one.

The following is a statement from the NUT website:

"Thousands of members turned out to support this day of action. It shows the NUT made the right decision to call upon its members to strike. Erosion of teachers’ pay is now firmly on the public agenda as a result. We have highlighted the case for pay which at least keeps up with the rate of inflation as measured by RPI."

So, the main point is that they feel they are not being paid enough for the work that they do. I will agree that teachers do an absurdly large amount of work and can get very stressed as a result. However, I do think they get decent wages. In this document, the following pay scales are shown:

Level	E & W	I. Ldn	O. Ldn	Fringe
M1	£20,133	£24,168	£23,118	£21,102
M2	£21,726	£25,548	£25,548	£22,692
M3	£23,472	£27,327	£26,247	£24,438
M4	£25,278	£29,328	£28,053	£26,250
M5	£27,270	£31,584	£30,432	£28,239
M6	£29,427	£33,936	£32,751	£30,393

N.B.: E&W = England and Wales, I. Ldn = Inner London, O. Ldn = Outer London

That doesn't seem too bad, even on the bottom end of the scale. It means that a relatively inexperienced teacher gets more than I do in a year. However, that is an unfair comparison as their work goes beyond 9-5. I'll compare the above rates of pay with the wages in nursing - another high pressure job with long hours:

Level	Min.(£)	Max.(£)
Band 1	12,182	13,253
Band 2	12,577	15,523
Band 3	14,437	17,257
Band 4	16,853	20,261
Band 5	19,683	25,424
Band 6	23,458	31,779
Band 7	28,313	37,326
Band 8A	36,112	43,335
Band 8B	42,064	52,002
Band 8C	50,616	62,402
Band 8D	60,669	75,114
Band 9	71,646	90,607

According to the NHS payscales, a teacher at the M1 level in England and Wales gets paid more than:

Clinical support workers (both nursing and community)
Clinical support workers - higher level (nursing, community and mental health)
Maternity care assistants
Nurse associate practitioners (acute, community and mental health)
Nursery nurse (community)
Midwife (entry level)

A more experienced, M6 level teacher gets more than those plus most non-management nurses. I should point out that there's a scale of pay for teachers above the one that I have shown where they get paid more and advanced skill teachers can get over £30, 000. These numbers make me think that teacers aren't the ones who are struggling.

Support for the strike
Despite this, there are groups who support the strike. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) and the National Union of Students (NUS) recently did demonstrations that called for teachers to get better pay.

Photo originally taken by Dave Lewis and can be found here.

Finances
In the Independent, there were quotes from a few supporters and they were mainly people who'd recently graduated from university and were still saddled with debt:

Carrie-Ann Taylor earns £25,000 a year and is paying back her student loan at a rate of £1,000 per month:

"That's half my income gone. I'm getting a 2.45 per cent pay award but inflation is at about 4.5 per cent. Even as an English teacher I can see that the maths doesn't work."

Catherine Tooley survived on £3,000 as a student and is paying back her loan with a rate of 4.8% interest:

""Only half that as a pay rise is a bit of an insult," she said. "I have to spend part of the summer holiday working at another job to pay back this debt I got in order to be a teacher."

I have to agree that the situations described above are tough ones. When I was studying for my degree I often heard stories of people struggling due to lack of funds. For some of them that was the case even if they had a proper budget and didn't spend their money too quickly. However, paying back their student loans won't be as difficult as it is for other people.

Other teaching unions and the government
It seems the NUT are the only union that want strike action (it's important to note that even though the UCU want better pay for teachers, their members are not on strike). The Association of Teachers and Lecturers strongly advise their members to not show support as they say the action is unlawful. The NASUWT agree with the pay offer and have no plans to strike. According to their website, when other teaching unions go on strike, it is unlawful for any NASUWT member to join them.

According to this article, all of the main political parties condemn the strike aswell. With this lack of support from a number of major bodies, their chances of getting what they want have to have been reduced.

What about the children?

In Liverpool, 135 schools were either closed or had to turn some pupils away. Council officials had predicted 67.
In Birmingham, predictions were that 75 schools would be affected; 164 closed and 84 turned some pupils away.
Camden, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, Warwick, Middlesbrough, Oxfordshire, Doncaster and Bristol all reported more schools affected by the strike.
In Wales, half of schools were shut or partially shut.

Those stats were in this article. The children who go to the schools in all of those areas had their education interrupted. It might only have been for a day, but that could still cause problems as it's e.g. harder to get all the required knowledge across to the pupils/students in the time that they have (that will be even more apparent if there is more strike action).

This also affects working parents. They will have to rush to find necessary childcare for the time that would normally be taken up by school. They might even have to take a day off, which will disrupt their working routines too.

Summary and Conclusion
As I have alreay mentioned, teachers have an incredibly stressful job. The media piles pressure on the curriculum that they teach and they can frequently get abuse from some of the pupils/students. They may even get criticised by parents at times. However, they do get decent pay (especially when comparing it to some people in the medical profession) and the strike action is unlawful. Any future action has the potential to harm the progress of many pupils/students. In short, I didn't support the action that took place yesterday and I won't support further action from the NUT either.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: NUT, Strike, Teachers, Employment

Pennsylvania Wars: Clinton Strikes Back

2008-04-23T11:37:00.004+01:00

Photo taken by Barbara Kinney

Before the voting day in Pennsylvania, many people felt that Obama would lose in that state. He was behind in the polls and the citizens are people who fall into the categories that typically vote for Clinton. However, I'm always skeptical about polls - especially after the surprise in Iowa earlier on this year.

Anyway, as the results show, the polls were correct:

Candidate	Vote %age	Delegates
Hillary Clinton	55	52
Barack Obama	45	46

This is undoubtedly a good result for her as it's a big state with plenty of delegates and it will give her a certain amount of momentum. However, it's not as big a margin as everyone thinks.

It seems that even after all this time, the media still doesn't undertand how the election process works in the US. They are all reporting the "big" 10% gap and forgetting that the vote percentage counts for absolutely nothing. The important statistic is the relatively small difference between the two in terms of delegates (six). That doesn't prove there's a huge swing towards Hillary (which is why I said 'a certain amount of momentum').

This is what Hillary had to say after the results were announced:

"You know, some people counted me out and said to drop out. But the American people don't quit, and they deserve a president who doesn't quit, either"

It's true - she hasn't quit. It would have been easy to do that earlier on because Obama continually won primaries and got to the point where he went past her delegate count. However, she realises that there is still time to overtake him because there are 9 Democrat primaries/caucuses and numerous delegates left before the the party's convention.

As a side note, it seems that Mike Gravel dropped out a few weeks ago. It shows how effective his campaign was when the media barely report it. I was thinking that he decided to remain in the race because he wanted to do some profiling before a run as an independent. However, due to the lack of media coverage I doubt that many people will know about him when the general election starts.

So, what about John McCain? I haven't heard much from this guy lately. It's possible that he could be pleased that the Democrat race is still going on. It means that there is still indecisiveness among the party and that could give him an advantage. It also means he has a bit more time to prepare his general election campaign. However, the continuing Democrat contest gives more media coverage to that party. It means that the voting population know more about the candidates and what they stand for. To stop this from being a problem, I think McCain needs to start doing a lot more.

According to the polls, the presumptive GOP nominee is way behind Obama and Clinton. As an example, here are the fundraising totals for March:

Candidate	Money ($)
Barack Obama	40m
Hillary Clinton	20m
John McCain	15m

It's amazing that Obama is able to raise twice as much as Hillary and 25m more than McCain in just one month. It'll give him a great advantage interms of creating publicity if he becomes his party's candidate.

It's interesting that, despite all that Obama momentum and the total dominance of McCain on the Republican side, there are still some sections of the media that have a bias towards Clinton. Take this article in the Telegraph as an example. All it mentions is Hillary. It's almost as if nobody else was running. I wonder if this is still the case on some of the US media networks aswell.

Another thing that hasn't changed is the ability of each candidate to use tired clichés. On Monday's episode of WWE RAW, each candidate made a short speech about why they should be the President. Each speech contained a healthy dose of clichés that were (presumably) included so that they would appear to be in touch with the people that they are talking to. There were classics such as "the election is like the King of the Ring" and "Can you smell what Barack is cookin'?". Oh dear. I'm sorry, but if they wanted to appear 'in touch', they should have avoided those and respected the intelligence of the fans by just talking about policies.

Anyway, the race to the Whitehouse carries on and the conventions to decide the candidates are getting closer (I say that because McCain is only presumptive and, technically, the delegates still have to cast their votes). There will be many people who will be glad when this lengthy process is over, but I have found it both interesting and enlightening.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Election, Politics, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama

Zimbabwe - the current situation

2008-04-15T13:39:00.004+01:00

Since my last post about the problems in Zimbabwe, there has been even more developments - most of them are worrying. There has been increasing pressure on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and even more comment from the international community as well as further involvement from South Africa.

The ZEC and the results
The results of the presidential part of the Zimbabwean elections have not been announced yet and the Movement for Democratic Change (the opposition party led by Morgan Tsvangirai) has gone through the courts to get this information released.

The decision in the court case was recently revealed in the state-owned newspaper, The Herald:

"HIGH Court judge Justice Tendayi Uchena yesterday dismissed with costs an application by MDC-T seeking an order compelling the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to announce results of the presidential election"

This can only be seen as an unfortunate result for the MDC. Later on in that article, it's reported that a spokesman for the ZEC mentioned that it was up to them when the results should be released. That same spokesman also said that the "integrity" of the ZEC should not be questioned and that "trying to interfere with the independence of ZEC would create problems in future".

The Constitution
It's interesting that he used the word independence in his statement. Let's examine that. The following is from the Constitution of Zimbabwe, which was created in the year that Mugabe took power:

"1. There shall be a commission to be known as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission which shall consist of:
a. a chairman who shall be a judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court or a person qualified to be appointed as a judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court appointed by the President after consultation with the Judicial Service Commission

b. six other members, at least three of whom shall be women, appointed by the President from a list of nine nominees submitted by the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders.
2. If the appointment of a chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is not consistent with any recommendation of the Judicial Service Commission in terms of subsection (1)(a), the President shall cause Parliament to be informed as soon as practicable."

This basically states that the chairman and all other members of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission are appointed by the President (Mugabe). It also states that he must consult with the judicial branch when appointing the chair, but (according to section 84 of the constitution), Mugabe also selects the judges. These facts mean that the ZEC can't possibly be independent. If you read the full article in the state-owned The Herald, you'll notice that this issue isn't raised - Mugabe wouldn't want the population knowing all the facts.

Thabo Mbeki and the SADC
The Southern African Development Community has enlisted the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, as the person who will mediate with them and Zimbabwe. At the moment, Mbeki feels that there is no crisis in that country:

"There is no crisis in Zimbabwe....The body authorised to release the results is the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, let's wait for them to announce the results,"

What the South African leader fails to understand is that even though the ZEC are the group that release the results, they are not independent. Theoretically, Mugabe could influence them so that they delay the announcment for several months.

Another indication that Mbeki is out of touch his own party, the ANC, disagreeing with him:

"The ANC regards the (Zimbabwe) ruling party ZANU-PF as an ally. However it is concerned with the state of crisis that Zimbabwe is in and perceives this as negative for the entire SADC region"

Oh dear - was he really the right choice for mediation and diplomatic duties in this situation?

A strike
The MDC stated that there should be a general strike (in the form of a 'stay-in'). They felt that it would force the ZEC into releasing the results. A lot of citizens ignored this as they simply cannot afford a strike and the unemployment rate is 80%, so people have questioned whether it would make a difference. I feel that any strike at this stage would be a bad move for the MDC. Doing nothing would give Mugabe more time and it's unlikely that the ZEC would be influenced anyway.

Violence
The following is from this article:

"Government spokesman Bright Matonga said the only violence in Zimbabwe was by the opposition MDC party, which he said had "sent their youth to burn down property."

This was said in response to the MDC's accusations of intimidation and suggestion that Mugabe uses youth militias. What Zanu-PF (the current ruling party) fail to point out is that their supporters have been clearly violent and in one reported case, they have even killed an MDC supporter. The Zimbabwe police claim that the violence isn't political, but that is ridiculous. However, I guess the police were forced to say that as they are run by the government.

David Miliband and the UN Charter
The UK's Foreign Secretary recently stated that "The international community, given the consequences of the situation there, has a responsibility also to engage with the issues". I'm pleased to see that this stance has been adopted. Non-military action by external countries is the way forward in this situation. In my previous blog post I stated that no country has the right to intervene by using force.

Morgan Tsvangirai recently called for the intervention of the UN and other countries, but it's important to remember that the UN or it's members cannot take military action as it's only a domestic issue. If Mugabe is re-elected, it would not e.g. greatly affect the economic status of all the other nations. If military action was taken right now, the Charter of the United Nations would be broken (in several places).

For instance, point 1 of Article 1 states that the UN should maintain international peace and security. Starting a war would be the exact opposite of that (anyone remember Iraq?). Point 4 of Article 2 states that:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state"

Only using military force in international situations is also mentioned in articles 41 and 42.

Conclusion and Summary
The biased Zibabwe Electoral Commission is delaying the results and isn't stating when they will be released. The result of a court case means that there is no progress. The MDC is (worryingly) making some questionable decisions such as proposing a strike, but fortunately nothing happened with that. The international community can do nothing but continue to impose sanctions. Alongside that, it seems that violence is increasing dramatically and it only improves the chances of Mugabe being re-elected. However, as he has lost the parliamentary election, how much power would he have?

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Election, Government

Ofcom's social networking report

2008-04-08T14:16:00.006+01:00

There have been many developments in social networks recently. It all started with the likes of Friendster and Friends Reunited. Now we have Facebook and many more people hoping to mimic or eclipse the success of Facebook's creator, Mark Zuckerberg. The positives and negatives of this variety of website were looked at in Ofcom's recent report called Social Networking: A quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use. This blog post is an analysis of that report.

What were the objectives?

to set social networking sites in the wider media literacy, online and communications context
to profile the use of sites
to understand people’s use of sites
to investigate concerns about privacy and safety

Looking at these makes me think that Ofcom didn't make any large assumptions before conducting the research. They will also be looking into one of the most important issues that has been talked about recently - security, which makes the report relevant. One concern I do have is that they are using significance testing. There is an argument against this as it can require a lot of benefit for very little benefit. You could quite easily create this report and ignore statistical signifcance.

Research methodologies
This is an area of the report where I have major concerns. It is absolutely vital to get the methodology right. If you don't, there's a risk of the data being misinterpreted and it being unrepresentative. This social networking report makes use of multiple methodologies.

The work that was done especially for this report has a sample size that is far too small (52). That means that the outcomes are likely to be unrepresentative of the UK's opinion. There is also an unfair weighting given to the users of social networks (39 of of that 52 are users). It would be much better if the ratio was 1:1. People who have used social networks before also had to complete a small task beforehand. We have no idea of what that task was, or if there was a time limit. Another thing is that we don't know if the experience of those who are users is equal. Finally, the observation is done using pairs, groups of three and groups of four. I see no point in having anything other than the pairs.

For complete descriptions of the methodologies in the other sources, look at Annex 1 of the report. Here are some of the problems I have with those sources:

In the report Ofcom Media Literacy Adult Audit research, they class adults as 16+, which is completely wrong of courses and means that an inappropriate group of people are used in the results. The sample size is bigger (2905), but it's not necessarily representative. There is also no specifics of the weightings used on the old census data and we don't know the diversity of the sample.
In the Ofcom Communications Tracking Survey, adults are incorrectly defined as 15+ and we don't know the specific of the weighting system that they state is used to make the data representative.
The Ofcom Young People and Media Tracking Survey is used, but we aren't told about the weighting and data is used from 2001 (the census).
Third party research is also used and I don't know about the methdologoies used there. I wonder if they're up to standard!

Engaging with social networks
This section looks at internet usage and rules imposed regarding the use of social networking. It therefore means that the reader will have a better idea about how popular social networking is at what it's limits are.

An early part of this section uses this article as a reference. The article is about Trasport for London stopping it's employees from using Facebook.

"UK users spend an average three hours 11 minutes on the site each month, according to data from web monitoring firm comScore, slightly lower than the global average of three hours 41 minutes."

This might be true, but what if the employees complete their work to the required standard, despite their usage of the site. 11 minutes isn't a lot. Also, how much of that 11 minutes of use was during work hours? You also have to remember that this decision was based on "concerns", rather than 'evidence'.

It's interesting that the people who noted this used F.W. Taylor's Scientific Management model. That's the one that states money is the most important thing and determines whether an employee works hard. Elton Mayo performed the more recent Hawthorne Studies and found it's not necessarily the most important factor. He found that a pleasant work environment that has the occasional break is important to. Maslow discovered (using his hierarchy of needs research) that both structure and socialising are crucial. Surely these two studies prove that employees shouldn't be banned from using social networks and providing that they don't use them 24 hours a day, that break from work could actally improve overall performance.

Other rules are generally imposed on children as some parents feel that too much internet usage can have negative effects. Section 4.6 of the report states that rules include not being allowed to meet someone in person after you have befriended them online and revealing personal details. I can understand the one about befriending people online though because some children may not realise that some of those people could be paedophiles.

Attitudes and usage of social networks
Sections 5 and 6 concentrate on these areas. Section 5 focuses on the types of people who use social networks and the reasone why some sections of the public don't use them. Apparently, the categories that the users tend to fall into include "Alpha socialisers" (those who like making new friends at every opportunity), "Attention seekers", "Followers", "Faithfuls" (those use use the sites to strengthen existing relationships) and "Functionals" (these are the people who use a site for a specific purpose, such as finding out information about a potential employee, or looking at upcoming events for a local band).

The report states that those who don't use social networks are people who think they're a "waste of time", think there are too many security issues or are people who don't have enough IT expertise. This information is both interesting and useful.

The report mentions that these benefits include being "a tool to build confidence", "an easy way to link up with old friends" and being "an efficient way to manage existing relationships". It also points out some negatives though. For instance:

"Some younger respondents who were committed users of these sites reported using them ‘to get back at people they had fallen out with’, by posting rude or abusive message on their sites or even going so far as to set up a fake site in the person’s name and posting obscene messages about them."

I don't think that section 6 tells society anything new at all - it simply confirms what we already know.

Privacy and safety
Section 7.3 of the report lists the following risks:

Leaving the privacy settings ‘open’ as default
Giving out personal information
Posting personal photographs
Becoming online friends with people they did not know
Meeting people they didn’t know

The report (correctly) states that these problems often arise due to a lack of expertise, lack of reasoned judgement or a feeling of invincibility (particularly relevant with young children and teenagers). It is also true that registration procedures for some websites are totally ineffective. For instance, without an image of a randomised code for the user to enter during the signup process, it easy easy for 'bots' to enter a site. It is also easy to work out what birth dates would mean you are above the minimum age to use a social network.

However, not everything is the fault of the social network. Many make great efforts to provide help systems, technical support and customisable privacy settings. It's up to the users to take notice of these before they consider using a service - it's common sense.

Conclusion
This report gives the reader plenty of interesting information in a well structured document. There are plenty of fairly useful facts and statistics, but I don't think it tells us many new things (e.g. we already know there are privacy concerns). I am also really worried that they haven't taken care with the research methodologies, which risks making a lot of the work useless.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Social Networking, Ofcom, Internet, Privacy

Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe

2008-04-03T13:38:00.005+01:00

1980 will always be perceived as an important year in the history of Zimbabwe. It was the year the Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of the country. He stayed in that position until 1987. After that he was appointed President and discontinued the role of Prime Minister. It meant he had increased powers and control over the country. Prior to 1980, he was the Secretary General to parties that were supressed due to their opposition to white rule. His current part is the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

Despite is involvement in the end of white majority rule in that country, he has made several decisions which have had catastrophic effects. To say he is reviled by the international community is an understatement. Over the past 28 years, the economy has spiralled out of control, healthcare is poor and foreign-relations are non-existant.

The economy
In this article, it's reported that the current rate of inflation is 24,000%. The country has also recently introduced a $10m bank note. As an example of the price change of products, the current retail price of the state-owned Herald newspaper is $3m. That is a 200,000% more than it's price in January 2007. A further example is the value of basic food ingredients. On the TV news yesterday I noticed that a simple bag of flour was $12.5m. These statistics mean that citizens find it difficult to get information about what is going on and also starve becasue they cannot afford the basics for meals. So, Mugabe wanted an end to the white majority rule and he's now forgotten about the people he fought for in the first place.

International relations
I don't believe that nations such as the United States have any right to intervene in the running of the country, regardless of whether they oppose Mugabe. However, this doesn't mean they cannot apply sanctions. In this document, there are details about restrictions, which include the following:

"The new Executive Order prohibits U.S. persons, wherever located, or anyone in the United States from engaging in any transactions with any person, entity or organization found to: 1.) be undermining democratic institutions and processes in Zimbabwe; 2.) have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support to these entities; 3.) be or have been an immediate family member of a sanctions target; or 4.) be owned, controlled or acting on behalf of a sanctions target."

This means that a US citizen cannot conduct any business with the current Zimbabwean government or it's supporters. The European Union has also implemented sanctions and these include travel to Zimbabwean government members being banned from travelling to EU countries and European-based assets being frozen. The EU ruling was introduced in 2002, but it has already been broken as Mugabe was allowed to attend an EU-Africa summit last year. At that event he signed a pledge which meant he would introduce democracy. Allowing him to attend that summit means the strength of the sanctions has been weakened and that 'pledge' doesn't necessarily mean he'd do anything.

Honours and awards
This has proven to be a highly controversial subject. In June 2007, The Times reported that Mugabe had just been stripped of an honorary degree that had been awarded to him by the University of Edinburgh in 1984. That was the time that a British university has done that. The University of Massechusetts has also given him an honrary degree in the past and there was a large camapign to revoke that award aswell.

In March 2007, Andrew Robathan MP called for Mugabe's Order of the Bath medal to be revoked. However, Margaret Beckett (the Foreign Secretary at the time) felt that there were more important matters to deal with. While it's true that the oppression of the Zimbabwean people takes priority, I do not believe that Robert Mugabe should have any awards such as those that I have mentioned. They are for people who have achieved great things, not for people who destroy countries and intimidate people.

The opposition
For many years, the largest opposition body has been the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which is lead by Morgan Tsvangirai. His period as leader of that party hasn't been easy. In 2003, he was arrested for organising anti-government protests. This was a move to silence both competition and free speech - both would mean that his control over the country would have been weakened. In 2004, the Guardian reported that Tsvangirai had been accused of plotting to assassinate Mugabe, but he was later found to be not guilty. If it was true, it would have meant that Tsvangirai had gone down to Mugabe's level - that would have been terrible.

Elections
In Zimbabwe, there are separate elections for the House of Assembly (210 seats), the Senate (93 seats) and the role of President. Both the lower (Assembly) and upper (Senate) houses operate on plurality voting systems (First Past The Post) and the election for President is uses Universal Adult Franchise, which basically means you can vote if you're an adult. If none of the presidential candidates receives 50% of the vote, there is a runoff between those with the most votes.

At the time of typing, Mugabe's Zanu-PF has lost the elections for the houses. The full results can be found here. Tsvangirai's MDC won with 99 seats, compared to Zanu-PF's 97.

As for the Presidential election, one of two things could happen. Either Mugabe will step down and Tsvangirai would be elected, or there would be a runoff as neither man as achieved the required 50% (despite the MDC saying otherwise). This could potentially take a long time and would give Mugabe an opportunity to use coercion to get people to vote for him.

Conclusion
Robert Mugabe has destroyed the quality of life for the people of Zimbabwe, despite being involved in the ending of white majority rule. International relations are hostile and he uses intimidation to retain control. In short, he has to go. Morgan Tsvangirai would have to keep his promises though. Without that, sanctions would not be lifted and the country would go nowhere.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Election, Government

The Single Transferable Vote system

2008-03-24T16:12:00.004Z

In the publication How to conduct an election by the Single Transferable Vote, the following objectives for a valid election are listed:

To discover the wishes of the electorate
To ensure that as many voters as possible have an equal effect on the outcome
To ensure as many people as possible have their choice of elected representatives
To make sure that the outcome of the election is proportional to views of the nation

The publication goes on to say that multple voting systems fulfil these criteria, which is perfectly true.It is also true that multiple methods don't meet all those objectives. For instance, the United States use the Electoral College, which discovers the wishes of the electorate (the 'popular vote'), but not everyone has an equal say in the result as delegates decide who gets into the Whitehouse and there are also different types of delegates.

The authors of the publication believe that the Single Transferable Vote (STV) method achieves all the above objectives with "economy, efficiency and certainty". So, how does STV work? Basically, you have a list of candidates and you put them in your preferred order. In the first round of counting, the person who had the least '1's gets knocked out and votes for them get transferred. People who were the second choice get those votes added to their total and the person with the most votes at the end of the final round wins. There is a version of this system which uses Re-open nominations (RON). This means that if RON gets the most votes, the relevant officials have to restart the election for that position (or positions).

The Electoral Reform Society offers these arguments in favour of the STV system:

The system offers more choice
Fewer votes are wasted
Parties have a powerful incentive to present a balanced set of candidates (helping gender balance and opportunities for ethnic minorities)
Parliament is more likely to be representative of a nation's views and more responsive
No safe seats
Negative campaigning is diminished
Tactical voting isn't necessary
A more sophisticated link between constituency and representative

The Chief Executive of the ERS made the following comment in this article:

"Make no mistake. The change in the way Scotland votes has transformed the political landscape. It has empowered voters to boot out previously unshakable administrations that simply don’t enjoy popular support. It has given a voice to independents and party candidates in places that were until 2007 no go areas."

In 2003, voters in Vancouver decided they wanted to use an STV system. According to the author, a by-election (which was recent when that article was posted) would have had a very different using that method. He stated that under the current system, 66% of the people didn't influence the outcome. He went on to mention that votes wouldn't be wasted using STV. You can read the complete article here.

So, many people seem to think it's the way to go (not just in this country). A major organisation also has a large list of the system's advantages. It is also the de facto method of voting for elections in student politics. What could be wrong with it? Why would you want anything else? At the most basic level it achieves all four of the objectives at the top of this blog post.

There are problems with Single Transferable Vote though. The ERS list of advantages states that there would be "no safe seats". This is nonsense. With First Past The Post, it's true that you can get the majority of people voting for the same people every year. However, under STV voting preferences could also be the same every time. In that case it's not the system that makes the difference, it's the quality of candidates and party loyalty.

Another point was that parliament would be more representative and responsive. Unfortunately, STV doesn't stop candidates (or parties) from saying one thing during an election campaign and then changing their minds once they are elected. This is another area where the voting system makes no difference. It's not going to be more responsive either. That can only be improved with changes to governmental administration and faster decision making from the politicians.

As for a "sophisticated" link between the constituencies and representatives, I would have to disagree. The ERS says there is more incentive to campaign at a local level, which would mean that the politicians are in sync with the electorate. It's not STV that does this though - it's the approach of the politicians. You could have perfectly good local campaigning under First Past The Post aswell because you are still trying to get as many people as possible to vote for you.

The ERS also talk about reduced tactical voting. Sure, with FPTP you could hope that a third party takes away potential votes from your opponent to increase your chances - that can definitely be considered tactical. However, it's also tactical to say "if you're not putting me as your first preference, at least put me as number 2", because even if you're behind after the first round, you could always catch up later and win.

What about the article about voting and elections in Vancouver? It's true that under STV, your voting preference has greater longevity as you are allowed more than one choice. It would mean you would still have a say in future rounds if your first choice was the first to be eliminated. However, what if some voters only want to consider one person/party or less than the total number of choices? There votes aren't carried all the way through in that case. There is no real incentive to consider the views of all the candidates.

There's also the perennial evil that is voter apathy. How does STV counteract that. In all the articles and papers that I have found, nothing is mentioned about this. Getting the population of the country more interested in politics is the only real way to make a Parliament or set of officers representative. It means it is more likely that those who are elected will be the most responsive ('most responsive' doesn't necessarily mean 'responsive enough' though).

In conclusion, I don't think that Single Transferable Vote is a system that has definite advantages over other methods such as First Past The Post. I prefer FPTP because it means the party with the most votes wins and that is shown in a quicker way because there is only one round. It doesn't mean that a party is chosen because they were voted e.g. 5th choice the most times.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Voting, Politics

E-voting: should we use it?

2008-03-19T09:23:00.007Z

There are multiple methods of voting and, for many years, a paper-based method has been preferred (in the UK, the United States and many other countries). However, in recent years there has been movements towards electronic methods. Several people have pointed out flaws, but there are also some great benefits. So, should we change to e-voting and what version of it should we use?

Governmental stances
The Institute for Public Policy Research published a background paper called E-voting: Policy and Practice and it revealed that the UK government has plans to implement an e-voting system as a way of increasing voter turnout. In the government paper In the Service of Democracy, there were four things listed that could help to achieve their goal:

Online electoral register
Online registration and online applications for postal votes
Online and text voting
Electronic counting and collating of election results

The United States have had e-voting systems for a number of years. In March 2002, California approved the Voting Modernization Bond Act, which allowed the purchase of modern electronic voting systems to replace their existing punch-card method.

The following shows the state's committment to this form of voting:

"In December 2003 California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley released My Vote Counts: California's Plan for Voting in the 21st Century, which outlines California's plan for complying with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The state expects to receive over $100 million in HAVA funds. In November 2003 the Secretary of State issued a position paper on the deployment of touch-screen voting systems in California."

E-counting
The Electoral Reform Society disapprove of most of the current state of e-voting in their policy document that can be found here. However, one thing they do approve of is electronic counting of paper ballots. They feel it speeds up the whole process and if it failed, you could always do a manual count as there is a paper-baseed element to it. The IPPR document mentioned earlier also details the benefits of e-counting and goes on to say that "In India the electronic system allowed the results to be announced a matter of hours after the polls closed".

I'm glad that there is approval for electronic counting and I can understand why some people would want a paper backup. However, there really is no need for paper providing the technology is implemented properly. For example, you could have a voting machine using RAID 1, which means that if the primary disk fails, you still have the information on the second disk and you could even remove it and do the counting on another system. If you have to use paper ballots, you could always do multiple electronic counts (possibly on more than one machine) to ensure accuracy. That would reduce the amount of staff/volunteers required and therefor reduce costs.

Machine voting
The following is from the Electoral Reform Society's policy:

"To minimise the risk of fraud, voting machines should produce voter verifiable audit trails. Rather than the voter completing a ballot paper, the machine should produce a ballot paper which the voter verifies and then puts in a ballot box. Should there be a dispute over the result, the paper ballots should be regarded as the definitive votes rather than those recorded on the machines.

Additionally, there should be safeguards equivalent to those described for e-counting."

I get the impression that they would be happy happier if machines weren't used as their suggestion still goes through the same amount of paper as a non-electronic system, therefore reducing the machine to 'an extra hurdle', which could potentially slow things down.

"Following the March 2004 primary election, the performance of Diebold touch-screen systems used in some California counties came under increased scrutiny. In public hearings conducted by the Secretary of State's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel, it was confirmed not only that uncertified versions of Diebold software had been used in some counties, but that some of the software had been inadequately tested and had performed poorly, resulting in lost and miscast votes"

If you read the quote above, you can see why some people would stop trusting machine voting. However, that situation wasn't totally the fault of the machines. It was the counties at fault for not implementing approved systems.

Remote voting
I can understand why the ERS don't approve of this as networks can be hacked and if you have unsupervised locations, there's the possibility of coercion. Despite this, you could still have polling stations with electronic voting machines until the security for remote voting has been suitably improved.

Security
In all the articles and research about e-voting, the biggest problem is security (especially in the case of remote voting). The IPPR document states that

ID cards and/or passwords could be stolen
If passwords are to be used, they would need to be short so they can be remembered, but that makes them more vulnerable
Biometrics could be used, but there would be a huge cost (the UK government estimates £31bn)
Viruses, firewall holes and network hacking
Voting programs are made by commercial sources. In the US there were calls to make the code 'open source' to ensure transparency, but doing that would mean voting systems could be hacked more easily

The last two problems could instantly be solved by not having remote voting until security has improved. You could just have unnetworked voting terminals and put together the totals at the end of the voting period. With biometrics, there is a long-term benefit, so the high cost might be worth it. Biometric cards would definitely be better than standard ID cards.

So, how would you improve security so that remote voting could be trusted? Well, you could use strong encryption on the database where the votes are kept. You could also use SQL stored procedures for website logins. This has been proved to protect against things such as SQL injection. There's also RAID, mirrored servers and making sure the server is in a physically secure location. Some would say that encryption can be weak, but there are also extremely strong varieties.

Paper-based systems
Dr. Rebecca Mercuri is a noted expert in this field and was involved with the decision to have a hand recount of votes in Florida in the 2000 US Presidential election. She strongly opposes any 100% electronic method (so she'll probably not be happy with the fact that 23 US states don't require paper records of votes). In this article, she mentions the problems in California. What Dr. Mercuri fails to realise is that is was at least partly the fault individual counties for not using approved versions of the Diebold voting system. She also doesn't consider the fact that a lot of security problems are caused by the machines being networked (they don't have to be). E-voting speeds up the counting process and can help people with disabilities, so there is benefits.

Disabled people
According to the IPPR background paper, privacy is increased for disabled people (this is because they can use the same systems instead of going to a separate location). The height of the machines could also be increased or decreased for those with back problems (or for people in wheelchairs). You could also have audio versions of the ballot for those who are blind. E-voting can therefore make democracy more inclusive.

Trials
In Britain there were several trials (15 in total) and the most notable ones were in Swindon and Sheffield. In both cases the voter turnout increased. In Swindon, 61% of voters in a survey felt that e-voting was better and 94% stated that they would use e-voting again in a general election. In 2002 (the Swindon trial), turnout was as high as 31.2%. This may seem low, but it's still a significant increase compared to previous years (for further details of the trials, see the E-voting: Policy and Practice document).

Usage in the student movement
Many student unions across the country have recently started to use e-voting and most seem to include remote voting in their implementation because it means people don't necessarily have to go to the campus just to vote (they may not necessarily have lectures/seminars/labs on that day). At Hull University Union, the first year of e-voting had had 1718 voters, which was a 25% increase on the 06/07 total. There has been a lot of controversy with remote voting though. The University of Essex's student union had to change the result of their presidential election because there was electoral misconduct and an unusually large number of votes coming from certain IP addresses. This could have meant that people were taking others over to a particular machine and influencing the way they vote. Coercion might have happened, but cancelling all the votes from those IP addresses could mean that some perfectly legitimate votes were made useless. They should have got the usernames and investigated those people instead.

Conclusion
There are (currently) a number of security issues with e-voting and many of those are linked to remote voting. This is unfortunate because remote voting allows greater flexibility. However, there are ways to improve security. E-counting and machine voting definitely have benefits and there is no reason why they cannot be used straight away (providing approved systems are implemented).

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: E-voting, Technology

The BMA vs. MMA

2008-03-09T13:09:00.005Z

Since 1982, the British Medical Association have had a strong anti-boxing stance. It has called for a total ban on all amateur and professional competition. However, everyone has ignored this and many people continue to watch and enjoy the highly trained competitors in action.

Now the BMA are taking on the world of Mixed Martial Arts:

"As with boxing the BMA opposes mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting and calls for a complete ban on this type of contact sport. Ultimate fighting can be extremely brutal and has been described as ‘human cockfighting’. It can cause traumatic brain injury, joint injuries and fractures.

The BMA believes that doctors cannot stand by while violent fighting tournaments are allowed to take place. Large amounts of money can be earned by participants, promoters and others linked to ultimate fighting but no amount of money can compensate for permanent brain damage and premature death."

There are two things in that first paragraph that really annoy me. First of all, it would be good if the BMA did their research properly so that they could get the terminology right. 'Ultimate Fighting' is a term that's linked to one promotion - the Ultimate Fighting Championship (which happens to be the first and biggest of the promotions). Mixed Martial Arts is the sport.

'Human cockfighting'
This was the second annoying thing about the above quote. It was the Arizona Senator (and current Presidential candidate) John McCain who used this to describe MMA back in 1997. This article tells you that he has attempted to get shows banned in the past. Back in those days, MMA was still relatively young and there were fewer rules. It was closer to Vale Tudo fighting, which means 'anything goes' (that particular style became popular in Brazil).

However, that was 1997. On November 17, 2000, UFC 28 was the first event organised by that promotion to follow the Unified Rules of Conduct, which were implemented by the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board. Now, all MMA events in the USA must follow these rules. In the UK, Cage Rage (the buggest British-based promotion) also follows these rules, even though they don't necessarily have to.

In the second paragraph from the quote, the BMA state that can cause "traumatic brain injury, joint injuries and fractures". You can get joint injuries and fractures in football and many other sports - why aren't the BMA banning those? You can get brain injuries if you're involved in certain types of driving accidents, so why doesn't the BMA ban both the sport and non-sport versions of driving? That's what you call double standards!

The rules of conduct
The following is what you aren't allowed to do if you follow the Unified Rules of Conduct:

Head-butting
Eye gouging
Biting or spitting
Hair-pulling
Fish-hooking
Groin attacks
Intentionally placing a finger in any opponent’s orifice
Elbow strikes that point downwards
Small joint manipulation
Any kind of strike to the spine or the back of the head
Heel kicks to the kidney
Throat strikes
Clawing, pinching, twisting the flesh or grabbing the clavicle
Kicking a grounded opponent in the head
Kneeing a grounded opponent in the head
Stomping on a grounded opponent
Abusive language
Unsportsmanlike conduct
Attacking during a break
Attacking the opponent if he/she is under the referee's care
Being too timid
Interference from a fighter's team
Throwing your opponent out of the combat area
Ignoring the referee's instructions
'Spiking' an opponent to the canvas on his or her head or neck

A classic theory of martial arts is that technique can overcome power and weight. However, as an additional safety measure, weight classes have been introduced in a lot of competitions. There is also no inter-gender contests.

What about non-mixed martial arts?
After doing several searches, I cannot find a single article which states that the BMA have similar campaigns against non-mixed martial arts, e.g. Karate, Tae Kwon Do and Muay Thai. As a brown-belt in Gendo-Kai Karate, I know that both minor and major injuries can happen e.g. dislocations and breaks. However, I also know that there are and regulations (e.g. these) that have existed for a long time. Competitive Karate has referees and you can be warned and disqualified for breaking the rules. The BMA should either drop it's campaigns against boxing and MAA or make attempts to get all competitive contact sports banned.

Recent news
The BMA reminded us of their policy recently because the first English-based women's MMA bout took place at Cage Rage 25. It was a short fight, but it meant that anyone doubting the ability of female fighters was proved wrong. It should be noted that there was a female MMA fight in Wales a few years ago and matches between women have been taking place in the likes of the United States for ages (competitiors such as Gina Carano have enjoyed considerable success). Yes, they get both minor and major injuries (proven in the match at Cage Rage 25) just like the men. However, if they have the talent and determination, there is no reason for them to not compete.

Criticism from the fighters
In this article, Ian Freeman (a veteran MMA fighter who has just announced he's coming out of retirement), expressed his annoyance at the BMA's stance and reminded us that they had a similar policy with Kickboxing a few years ago:

"You had people saying guys were going to get maimed, they were drawing comparisons with boxing and saying it’s more brutal and guess what? There wasn’t a single KO for something like 6 months."

Conclusion
We have learned that the British Medical Association are basing their opinions on outdated information. In reality, the sport of Mixed Martial Arts is well-regulated and has been for some time. Many promotions have drug testing policies and events have on-site medical staff in case there are any injuries. The BMA also use double standards in their reasons for wanting to ban the sport. In short, their campaign is incredibly weak.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Mixed Martial Arts, British Medical Association, Regulations

Images and applying licences

2008-03-07T13:38:00.007Z

There are many situations where you wouldn't want your property stolen or misused. Fortunately, there are many ways to protect your work (if you want it to be protected). In the software industry there are a vast array of open source licences and the most popular has to be the GNU General Public License. Microsoft has it's own, proprietary, End User Licence Agreements (EULAs). An example of one of these is the licences is here. Microsoft also has it's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) and the music industry has a history of using Digital Rights Management (however, DRM is no longer used by some major music companies. An example of this would be Warner Bros.).

You also have a number of choices when dealing with images. First of all, there's the standard Copyright, where all rights are normally reserved. This means that the only way to do anything with the image would be to ask the permission of the owner (or pay for it if there's some form of revenue model in place). This can be considered very restrictive, but it does mean that nothing will happen if you don't want it to. If someone does try to break that licence, you could ask them for a share of the profit, get them to stop using the images, or in some cases you could take them to court.

When dealing with images, I apply licences, but they aren't forms of Copyright. I use licences created by Creative Commons. These are less restrictive, but they still have rules that you must follow. For example, their Attribution licence means:

"You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request."

Another example is the Attribution-Non Commercial-Non Derivative Works licence, which means you can use the image if you give credit to the author, but it can't be for the purposes of earning money and you can't change it in any way.

What do I use?

Photos - for all my photos I use Creative Commons Attribution. I like to have credit if my pictures are used for anything and I don't mind if it's commercial or not-for-profit. I don't mind people changing the pictures, simply because I'm not the best photographer and someone else could dramatically improve what I've done. However, if my standard improves, I might change my licence.
Photo-edits - Recently, I've been doing a lot of work in Adobe Photoshop. I take photos and play around with the program's various features to see what works. If I produce anything that I think is decent or better, I apply an Attribution-Non Derivative Works licence. This is because (as I've already said) I like getting credit for my work and if (either myself or someone else) can earn money from what I do, that's great. However, I have started to put a lot more time into making these photo-edits good, so I wouldn't want people altering them.

Other aspects of my policy
If I ever make a photo-edit using someone else's photo, I always ask permission first. They might not have the same licensing system as me, so if I took something they did without asking, I would be stealing. Also, if someone didn't want me to take a photo of them, I would never question their decision or forceably take a picture. If I did the opposite of that it would be unfair and could be considered an invasion of personal space. I would also remove a photo or photo-edit from the internet if the subject asked (they might not like what I've done).

One thing I've started to do recently is change the licence type on an image if someone made a request. For example, if I uploaded a photo, they might not want profit made from the work. I wouldn't question the reasons and in that case I would change the standard Attribution licence to Attribution-Non Commercial.

Enforcing Creative Commons
There is one notable case where breaking one of these licences initiated a court case. Adam Curry, a former MTV presenter who is currently the Founder and President of Podshow (a successful podcasting network) frequently posts photos to the online photo galler Flickr (a website that I use). The licence that he uses is Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike. However, a dutch gossip magazine used four of these photos for commercial purposes (i.e. selling their magazine) without asking permission. When Adam Curry found out about this, he took the magazine to court and won. This is now used as a test case.

Not using a licence
There are many people who don't apply licences to at least some of their work. This is fine if they don't mind people doing anything with what they've created. However, it might be difficult to e.g. win a court case if your image was used in a way that you didn't like. The person who did something with the image would not be under any obligation to remove it from wherever it was placed/posted.

So, licensing can be important. You must also remember that their are plenty of choices out there, so it's likely that you'll be able to find something to suit your needs. I have a licensing policy, but as you can can see I allow some flexibility.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Photography, Photoshop, Images, Licensing

Two Democrats and a Republican

2008-03-05T14:52:00.006Z

The following is the results from the Democrat primaries which took place on March 4th:

State	Candidate	Vote %age	Delegates
Texas	Hillary Clinton	51	16
	Barack Obama	48	10
Ohio	Hillary Clinton	54	62
	Barack Obama	44	46
Vermont	Hillary Clinton	60	9
	Barack Obama	38	6
Rhode Island	Hillary Clinton	58	12
	Barack Obama	40	8
	Uncommitted	1	0

N.B.Texas seems to have a caucus and a primary, which is something I've not seen before. I'm not showing the result of the caucus because at the time of typing, the results are still being processed.

This table shows the GOP results for the primaries on March 4th:

State	Candidate	Vote %age	Delegates
Texas	John McCain	51	70
	Mike Huckabee	38	0
	Ron Paul	5	0
	Uncommitted	1	0
Ohio	John McCain	60	79
	Mike Huckabee	31	0
	Ron Paul	5	0
Vermont	John McCain	72	17
	Mike Huckabee	14	0
	Ron Paul	7	0
Rhode Island	John McCain	65	13
	Mike Huckabee	22	4
	Ron Paul	7	0
	Uncommitted	2	0

The wins for Hillary Clinton were very important. It meant she secured a significant number of delegates and gained some much needed momentum after losing Barack Obama in eight primaries in a row. However, it should be noted that Obama also increased his delegate count and that meant the victories weren't so spectacular. As a result, Obama still leads the overall delegate count (1451 vs. 1365).

The Washington Post has an interesting viewpoint:

"For months before his victory in Iowa, doubters questioned whether Obama had the stomach to deliver the blows necessary to wear down Clinton's advantages. Now, the question is whether he can take a punch..."

I don't understand why they think Obama is struggling. He's still in the lead - look at the statistics! He's won 25 primaries/caucuses, Hillary's won 16 and two of those had no delegates up for grabs. How on earth could that be considered 'struggling'?

According to CNN, the delegate count that's needed to secure the Republican nomination is 1191 and John McCain 1226, so he will become the GOP candidate at convention time. It's quite a comeback considering he was short of money early on and Mitt Romney was taking some big victories. Losing the first caucus (Iowa) was also a blow. However, McCain ended up winning in the places that had the most delegates and, as we all know by now, delegates are the most important thing in a US election.After the results were announced, Mike Huckabee dropped out of the race which means the only other active GOP candidate is Ron Paul, but his total is comparitively minor (21).

What McCain doesn't want to see is:

"...another tired debate of false promises, empty sound bites, or useless arguments from the past that address not a single of America’s concerns for their family’s security."

The following picture is from this article:

Yes - that's right. John McCain has now received the dreaded 'Kiss of Death'™. George W. Bush has officially endorsed him. You might see him smiling in that picture, but now McCain will struggle to attract the anti-Bush crowd.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Election, Politics, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, USA

HUU Elections - the results

2008-02-29T11:52:00.004Z

Voting day three was very interesting. As expected, there was a much bigger campaign presence on the Hull campus. We also saw sightings of people dressed up in costumes (one being an oversized Elmo!). This was a return to the great levels of activity that have been shown in previous years at election time.

According to a source on the Scarborough campus, the campaigning had slowed down over there. That may have been because people had to make travel arrangements so that they could be at Hull for the results. It could also be because people were tired of the hard work involved in campaigning.

Results time
The results party started at about 8pm and there were plenty of people from the start. However, at just after 9pm it was absolutely packed becuase it was time for the results (that part of the evening would have started earlier, but there was a technical problem with the new setup - any new system is open to that sort of thing).

The announcement was done differently this year in an effort to keep up the levels of excitement. In previous years the tension was built up because it took time to count the ballot papers. This year, we had karaoke and then the results of the first round of voting for all positions. This carried on until we reached the final round of voting in the presidential race. As usual, the announcements were made by the General Manager, Paul Tatton who was in the role of Returning Officer.

Anyway, here are the results:

Position: President

Winner	Votes	Round	Margin
Helen Gibson	602	6	111

Position: Union Secretary & Treasurer

Winner	Votes	Round	Margin
Alexander Hamilton	426	5	77

Position: Vice-President (Academic Representation)

Winner	Votes	Round	Margin
Richard Jackson	n/a	2	n/a

Position: Vice-President (Welfare & Equality)

Winner	Votes	Round	Margin
Coralie Tringham	414	2	n/a

Position: Vice-President (Media & Volunteering)

Winner	Votes	Round	Margin
Wayne Buisst	392	3	11

Position: Vice-President (Sport & Leisure)

Winner	Votes	Round	Margin
Laura Bennett	434	4	35

Position: Vice-President (Scarborough Campus)

Winner	Votes	Round	Margin
Mark Alcorn	n/a	3	n/a

Position: Chair Campaigns

Winner	Votes	Round	Margin
Barry Nason	312	1	n/a

Position: Chair HUSSO
Abby Lester elected unopposed

Position: Chair ISA
Jan Zahuta elected unopposed

N.B. - Candidates who were elected unopposed were against RON (re-open nominations), but I have ignored that as RON is not a real person (apologies if I've just offended anyone who is called Ron!)

You'll notice that some parts of the results tables are marked 'n/a'. That's simply because I didn't have enough time to make the relevant notes. If anyone can fill in the gaps for me, that would be great.

In the elections for some of the other positions, the current Vice-President (Academic Representation) (Daniel Harrison), was elected as the Men's Officer, Senate rep for the Faculty of Science and the Chair of the Postgraduate Committee. Isi Genn-Bash was elected as Women's Officer. Emma Sharp was re-elected as the Postgraduate Senate rep and became the student union's Training Officer for the second time. To see the complete set of results, go to this page.Congratulations to everyone who won and I hope you have a great 2008/2009! As there are some vacancies, there will be a second election period in week 8 of this semester.

Turnout
The voter turnout for the elections was 1712 - that is a 25% increase on the previous year. It definitely shows the benefits of e-voting. There were over 1000 voters in the AU election and the Scarborough campus had roughly 700 voters, which are excellent results. Hopefully these figures will carry on increasing year after year. It will take a long time to kill off the dreaded 'student apathy™' though.

Tension
As the Sanctuary was packed, you'd expect plenty of noise. However, I didn't expect the amount of noise that could be heard during the announcements for each round of the Presidential election. Every time Helen Gibson's name was mentioned, there was a few cheers and a chorus of boos. Whenever you heard Chris Webb (the runner-up) mentioned, there was huge amounts of cheers. So, when the final result was announced, you can guess what it was like.

Rumours
I've heard rumours of negative campaigning in the race to be President, which can't have helped matters. If that's true, then I'm disappointed in whoever did it. Candidates should concentrate on their own policies and their own camapaign. If I remember rightly, you are not allowed to comment on other candidates. Fortunately, there are proper ways to make a complaint and hopefully that process will solve any problems. There is already a group on Facebook where the members want to challenge the results of this particular election.

Emotions
After each result was revealed, there were a number of candidates who were (understanbly) distraught. However, those people worked very hard and should be proud of getting that far. I hope they do well in whatever they decide to do in the future.

Finally...
Once again, congratulations to the winners. I hope you all get on well together and are able to do what's best for the union in your roles. There will be some incredibly stressful times, but please remember that you will have some great experiences throughout the year. If you do disagree, I think it's important that you resolve any issues and then present a united front. If the students frequently see arguments between the people running the union, they may feel that their vote won't benefit anything and voter apathy will increase.

Technorati tags: Student Unions, Students, Election, Politics

HUU Elections - voting day 2

2008-02-27T22:32:00.003Z

It seems that there was more of a campaign presence on the Hull campus today. This is possibly because it's getting closer to the end of the voting period, so the candidates have to everything they can to persuade people to vote for them.

However, I still think that more of the candidates should have been doing this straight away. As I said in my last post, it would get you noticed and increase the chances of people putting you as their first choice in the relevant election.

I also saw some people around the library, which was a refreshing change. In previous years there have been huge numbers of people there. Whether the library is a polling area or not (technically, it still is because of the computers), it's a place where many students go, so you should be there for as long as possible.

Once again, I didn't hear a huge amount of noise from the campaign teams. Some students would cosider this a good thing, but only because it's often accompanied by people shoving flyers in your face. However, you can still make a noise without resorting to those practices. Without it, there isn't much of an atmosphere and some students may fail to realise the importance of the event.

Anyway, that's all about the Hull campus - what about Scarborough? For those who aren't familiar with the University of Hull, it might seem strange to have a campus in an area that isn't Hull. However, it's quite common to have multiple campuses in different areas - it's something that has happened for years. For instance, before 1954, the University of Hull was actually a college that was part of the University of London.

According to a comment that was left on my last post (presumably by a campaigner), the candidates for the position of Vice-President (Scarborough Campus) were out in force and I'm guessing the people running for other positions were out there too. I say 'other positions' because this year is a rareity - we have Scarborough based candidates for more than just one exec position. This is in addition to the positions available on the Scarborough Executive Committee. I think this is really good news and I hope the same happens in future years.

So, what about the possibility of the dreaded 'student apathy™'? Yes, you read that correctly. Once again I've mentioned that phrase that makes the sky go dark, makes babies cry and also makes executive officers so stressed their heads explode. Well, it could happen. No matter how hard unions across the country have tried over the years, voter turnout has been consistently low.

At Hull, we've had highly visible themes relating to such things as Superman (last year) and Heroes (this year). These themes are an attempt to engage the student by using something that relates to them, instead of making it dry and verbose.

After talking to a reliable source (the President), voter turnout was at about 700 (this was at lunchtime today). I expect a lot of people will leave voting until the last minute, so there could be a sharp increase and this would mean the individual turnouts of the previous three years would be beaten - a great result. Apparently, there is a target of roughly 2000. Last year, around 1600 people voted, which is roughly 10%. 2000 would be a big achievement.

There are a couple of things in Hull University Union elections which make them different from those which take place in some other unions. The first is that HUU does not allow 'slates'. A slate means that multiple candidates would be campaigning as a cohesive unit. I have always had a big problem with them because firstly, it can only increase factionalisation - which also increases the chances of there being an unrepresentative exec. Secondly, there could be potential problems if only part of the slate is elected. It could lead to a divisive exec and disjointed decision making. I am glad that slates are not allowed.

In some unions they are perfectly legitimate. For instance, at the 2007 NUS Annual Conference, Student RESPECT had a slate that had four people running for different positions (Rob Owen for President, Assed Baig for National Secretary, Clare Solomon for VP (Welfare) and Siobhan Brown for VP (Further Education)).

The second difference between HUU elections and those in some other unions is that the full-time executive officers can only stay for a single one year term. In many other unions across the country, officers can campaign for a second year, which is the maximum that is allowed.

This HUU policy is something that I have consistently disagreed with. Although you can make numerous changes in one year, you could make even more of a difference and implement more long term policies if you had two years. This can be especially crucial when dealing with a university, as their hierarchies are typically much slower to respond.

However, there is a way around this problem. 2007/2008 was the first academic year where there were part-time officers on the union's executive committee. You could get elected into one of those positions and then be elected as a full-time Vice-President (or the President) for the following year. Even though that is case, you could still have a situation where the majority (or all) of the executive changes every year.

So, who is the person on the exec that is responsible for the elections? At HUU, it's the job of the Union Secretary & Treasurer (currently Jay Webster). Unfortunately, Jay is currently suspended from his duties, which means more work for the President and other exec members. Hopefully, the problem that lead to his suspension will be resolved quickly as it has a potential impact on the handover for his successor (among other things).

I must also respond to an anonymous person who commented on my previous post (about the first voting day). It is true that the sabbatical team should be able to encourage students to vote and therefore increase turnout year on year. I must also thank him for mentioning my awe-inspiring victory last year. However, I must disagree with him on one point - I think the 2006/2007 sabbatical team were much more attractive (especially the person that was responsible for Academic Representation!).

The next post will have news of day three and the results.

Technorati tags: Election, Politics, Student Unions, Students

HUU Elections - voting day 1

2008-02-26T22:33:00.003Z

It's that time of the year again where you see all the colours in the rainbow, plenty of catchy/cheesy slogans and people in costumes - yes, it's the week 5 elections in Hull University Union. What will happen? Will the changes make a difference to the voter turnout? Will there be rule-breaking and arguments? Will there be more student apathy? I guess we'll find out for sure after the count, which happens on the evening of the 28th.

So, what are the 'changes' that I mentioned? Well, for the first time there is a fully-functioning e-voting system in place on the student union's website and that is the replacement for the old paper-based system used in previous years. There was an e-voting system when I was a sabbatical officer at HUU, but it wasn't reliable enough - especially for something this important. The website changed at the beginning of the 2007/2008 academic year and it's much better (go to this Wayback machine page to see what the site used to look like). There's also 'assisted polling' in various locations, so people can have help with the new system if they need it. E-voting is definitely a good thing because it means students don't have to travel all the way to their campus to vote.

Another major change is that the elections that have previously happened in week 7, now happen in this period. I can see the benefit in this, because it means that the election period doesn't go on for too long, which could annoy some students. HUU doesn't normally see publicity for the (what used to be) week 7 elections, but the possiblity for that was always there. After looking at some of the posters that are around the union, I can see that the possibility has become a reality.

Candidates are now allowed an internet presence. In my year (and the years before that), you weren't allowed to have a website because it was felt that with varying levels of IT skills, some candidates could gain an unfair advantage. I don't agree with this because it's really easy for anyone to get something up on the 'net. It seems the current executive had the same view. There do seem to be some restrictions though. For instance, if you have a Facebook group setup, you cannot accept membership requests.

So, what positions are up for grabs?

Full-time UEC member (one year term, cannot go for re-election)

President
Union Secretary & Treasurer
Vice-President (Academic Representation)
Vice-President (Welfare & Equality)
Vice-President (Sport & Leisure)/Athletic Union President
Vice-President (Media & Volunteering)
Vice-President (Scarborough Campus)

Part-time UEC member (one year term, option to get elected as a full-time officer in a future year)

Chair Campaigns
Chair HUSSO
Chair ISA

Other positions (one year, voluntary, can be re-elected)

Union Councillor (16 positions)
NUS Conference Delegates (9 positions + current President as delegation leader)
Finance Committee (8 positions)
Scarborough Executive Committee (7 positions)
Societies Officer
Training Officer
Chair RAG
Chair Postgraduate Committee
Women's Officer
Men's Officer
Cultural Diversity Officer
Health Officer
Disabled Students Officer
Chair LGBT Committee
Chair Mature Students Committee
Environmental Issues Officer
Scarborough Finance Committee
Senate Reps
Delegates for the conferences of various NUS campaigns

So, there are definitely plenty of opportunities for students to get involved in the running of their union. You can see the nomination formas of the people who have gone for the positions listed above by clicking here. You can find out about some of the jobs that are available here

What about the famed 'student apathy'™, the great democracy killer? Well, it's true that most student unions have low voter turnout and the occasional uncontested election. The days of 24/7 protests are long gone. However, unions still do a lot. Who gets the food and drink in the union shop that students go to frequently? Well, it's the union dealing with groups like NUSSL. More importantly, they stand up for your rights in the areas of academia (remember, you went to university to get a degree and you want to have a fair chance) and welfare (e.g. dealing with the perennial problem of troublesome landlords™). They give you a wide variety of entertainments and the opportunities to indulge in a personal interest.

How is that kept at a high standard? Well, you need to ensure that you vote. I would like to see a bigger voter turnout compared to previous years (around 10-12% recently).If everyone votes then it's likely you'll get the best team for the job. If that doesn't happen the executive could be dominated by e.g. an unrepresentative faction that has their own agenda, instead of listening to the students that are members of their union.

If you're wondering who I think the best candidates are, then I'm afraid I can't tell you because I don't want to be giving anyone an unfair advantage. I'm also university staff, so it could be seen as a conflict of interest. What I will say is that there seems to be plenty of good candidates who have experience and policies.

Another thing that I have noticed is that there's a big difference in the actual campaign presence. Today I hardly saw anyone outside the union handing out flyers and talking to students. There were only a few people who were inside the union. This is possibly the effect of online voting. I still think that there should be a strong physical presence though - it gets you noticed and people are more likely to go to the computers and vote for you.

There will be more news tomorrow. If you are a student at Hull uni, please vote. If not, I hope you have found this post about HUU elections interesting.

Technorati tags: Student Unions, Election, Politics, Students

Texas - did we need the debate?

2008-02-23T21:33:00.002Z

I started watching the Texas Democrat debate on YouTube (one which, like many of the others before, ignored Mike Gravel) and I started wondering if this was going to give information about the candidates that I haven't heard before in the other debates.

The opening statements from Obama and Clinton were interesting. It didn't take long for the former First Lady to mention her successes with healthcare for kids. This is almost getting like Giuliani's 9/11 tourettes! She mentions an old policy numerous times and fails to talk about anything that could be considered recent. She also namechecked two Texans - a former governor (Ann Richards) and Barbara Jordan, who was an ex-President of the Texas state legislature and an ex-US congresswoman:

"And among the people whom I got to know, who became not only friends, but heroes, were Barbara Jordan, who taught me a lot about courage, and today would actually be her birthday. I remember all the time about how she got up every single morning, facing almost insurmountable odds, to do what she did. And another was my great friend Ann Richards, who taught me so much about determination. Ann was a great champion for the people of Texas. She also reminded us that every so often it is good to have a laugh about what it is we're engaged in."

Sure, these two women were clearly great people, but if they were important figures in Clinton's life, why has she only started talking about them now? It's a clear attempt to get applause from the audience. However, I think it would have been better if she talked about policies that would benefit Texas and the whole country.

Obama made a slightly different statement. He concentrated on policy and didn't bother namechecking people. He didn't mention anything that was as old as Hillary's healthcare policy. This made is speech the better one of the two.

One of the first topics that was dicussed was possible negotiations with Cuba. This was raised because of Fidel Castro's recent announcement that he would not be continuing with his job as President of the country. Yes, this was new - but only because Castro's announcement was recent.

It's an interesting subject because it's well-known that the USA have consistently believed that the Cuban people are oppressed. Obama and Clinton agree with that notion, but now that the leadership is going to change, they mentioned negotiations. Hillary wanted talks with Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and heir - but only if they show signs that they want to shift to a democracy. Obama wants unconditional talks. They both agree that there has to be a lot of preparation before any talks happen though and human rights would have to be at the top of any agenda. Obama made the point that the United States should have diplomatic relations with both their enemies and allies. This is a good point because you don't make any progress by only talking to your friends. For this reason, I thought that Obama won that part of the debate.

Despite all that it's important to remember that Cuba is not part of the United States - it is a completely separate country. Why does the US think they should be the ones implementing regime change in a place that they do not control? Also, Castro ended the corrupt second term of Fulgencio Batista that was supported by the United States for six years. Castro has also decided to step down when he is ill, instead of foolishly trying to hold on to something that requires a good level of health. The travel embargo was enforced by the United States, not Cuba. If that wasn't in place, innocent people would still be free to move. Yes, Cuba is under Communist leadership, but it's not exactly the same as the situation in the former Soviet Union.

The next topic was immigration. I can understand it being mentioned because Texas has a border with another country (Mexico) and there is a high number of illegal immigrants getting through. Both felt that there needed to be a significant policy change. They felt that legalisation needed to be an option that was available to all and that there needed to be an end to the hate crime that hispanics suffer from. They both felt that the United States should help it's neighbour improve it's employment opportunities aswell. It was hard to see the differences, so I thought it was a draw.

The economy was discussed (yet again) and that was added to the list of topics that have be mentioned ad nauseum. What is the point of having all these debates if we are just going to hear the same old material? The only people that benefit from them at the moment are some of the audience at the venue, because they will probably only go to one of them. The TV and internet audience have this pushed down their throats repeatedly.

There are two possible solutions. One would be to have a single debate. Another idea would be to have multiple debates, with each one having a different focus. The advantage of the former is that the whole process would be shorter. The benefit of the latter is that there is a reason for people to view all the debates. The first option could be difficult though - television networks would be constantly battling for the chance to host the debate.

It will be interesting to see what happens after the Democrat and GOP conventions. There will be debates featuring candidates from both major parties. The same subjects will probably be discussed, but there will be a different dynamic. I can only hope that there won't be as many debates at that stage.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Politics, Election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton

Making Democracy work

2008-02-18T12:09:00.003Z

The dictionary definition of Democracy is:

"Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system"

In Britain, we elect our MPs on a regular basis to represent us in Parliament and the Prime Minister is the leader of the party with the most MPs. In the United States, Representatives and Senators are elected to generate national policy in Congress and the President is also an elected official. In both countries, the leader selects a 'cabinet' and each member has a clearly defined role. Although they are selected, the theory is that the people trust the leader to pick the right people for the job. Other countries have the same or similar systems.

What happens if the population of a country are apathetic?
If the people who elect the officials are not interested politics, there is a risk of an unrepresentative government being created. Once that happens, all sorts of policies could be passed that could negatively affect the future of a number of people (e.g. the apathetic majority).

In countries that have a system like the United Kingdom, it could be a number of years before a party loses power. For example, between 1905 and 1922 the UK was run by the Liberal party (the leaders were Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George). If any party had power for that length of time based on the votes of a minority, there is a strong chance of the government losing touch with the people and not taking the country in the direction that the people want.

In the United States, the situation is very different. Although the people vote for the person they want to be President, their votes don't actually have any weight as that particular official is elected using delegates. Although the delegates are supposed to be loyal, there is always the possibility of them changing their minds and voting for someone else. This could mean that there is always an unrepresentative leadership, even if the majority aren't apathetic.

In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush got elected because of the Electoral College, which means the US had (and still have) a leader who does not represent the views of the people. This is confirmed in recent polls which show that Bush's approval rating is 30%.

What if the public cannot decide who they prefer?
If the population of a country cannot decide which party (or candidate) they prefer, there cannot be a situation where no government is elected. A democratic system demands a government and anything else would possibly lead to Anarchy.

If there are multiple parties with the same number of votes (unlikely in a 'First Past The Post' electoral system) or there is a situation where the majority of votes is not large enough, another election could be called or there would be a coalition (the leader of that group would then become Prime Minister and a cabinet could be formed).

If the majority vote and the parties forming the coalition have similar policies, this might not necessarily be a problem. However, if the parties have substantially different views then the leadership would be divisive and decisions would be harder to make. If it is harder to decide when to e.g. initiate an election, a divisive leadership could negatively affect the country for many years (especially if the majority of the population are apathetic).

In recent times, Holland had a coalition government, which was a combination of the Christian Democrats, the CDA, the VVD and the LPF. The coalition eventually collapsed due to major disagreements.

What if the majority are wrong?
In a situation where the majority of the population vote, it's possible for them to not know what is good for the country and a reason for that could simply be lack of appropriate education. You could then have a representative leadership that has a negative effect on the country. This is a problem with Democracy. Elections can theoretically prevent this from being a permanent problem, but the people could consistently be wrong.

Conclusion
In reality, no political system is perfect. To give Democracy the best chance of working, the majority have to be well-informed and have to vote. To be well informed, they need to use a variety of sources (doing this can create a more balanced view). If the people complain about the government not doing the right thing and then mention that they didn't vote in the election, you can only say to them that it's at least partly their fault. In theory, one vote can be the decision maker.

It's no good if you keep informed at one election and then ignore everything. That would mean you run the risk of a party staying in power for too long and possibly losing touch with the views of the people (which would make them unrepresentative).

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Democracy, Politics

The Potomac primaries

2008-02-13T11:48:00.005Z

Barack Obama is building up a lot of momentum, especially after his successes in the Potomac primaries. John McCain solidified his lead by winning in all three of the states that were voting (this happened on February 12th). The tables below are the results.

Democrats

State	Candidate	Vote %	Delegates
Columbia	Barack Obama	75	9
	Hillary Clinton	24	2
	Uncommitted	1	0
Maryland	Barack Obama	60	11
	Hillary Clinton	37	5
	Uncommitted	1	0
Virginia	Barack Obama	64	50
	Hillary Clinton	35	26

Republicans

State	Candidate	Vote %	Delegates
Columbia	John McCain	68	16
	Mike Huckabee	17	0
	Ron Paul	8	0
Maryland	John McCain	55	13
	Mike Huckabee	29	0
	Ron Paul	6	0
Virginia	John McCain	50	60
	Mike Huckabee	41	0
	Ron Paul	5	0

N.B. - Mitt Romney was on the ballot papers and received some vote (strange). However, I've not included him in these tables as he is out of the race.

For the Republicans, Maryland was the smallest of the three primaries, but Ron Paul must have been unhappy with his result there because he finished below Mitt Romney (in terms of vote percentage) and Romney isn't even in the race! However, there is no chance of Paul getting the nomination anyway. It's more about making a statement and raising important issues now. Any profiling he does will help him if he wants to run as an independent.

Mike Huckabee didn't get any delegates, but that's because the GOP have a system where all the delegates go to the winner. The important thing for him will be the vote percentage and, unfortunately, that doesn't look too good. I'm not sure if Huckabee will stay in the race until the end now. After 'Super Tuesday' I thought he would, but these results have made things more difficult for him. He's still a possible VP pick though.

This is what John McCain had to say after the results were announced:

"We do not yet know for certain who will have the honor of being the Democratic Party's nominee for president. But we know where either of their candidates will lead this country, and we dare not let them. They will promise a new approach to governing but offer only the policies of a political orthodoxy that insists the solution to government's failures is to simply make it bigger."

He also said:

"I seek the presidency with the humility of a man who cannot forget that my country saved me"

I think it's interesting that most of McCain's quotes are either inspirational or negative. In a victory speech, making inspirational statements is fine - in fact, it's almost expected. However, I would have mentioned something about the next primaries/caucuses and (possibly) something brief about policies (instead of criticising candidates). That sort of behaviour has occurred since the start of the process though.

On the Democrat side, Barack Obama improved his position, although there weren't too many delegates up for grabs. However, his momentum will mean he is more likely to gain large amounts of delegates from the remaining states. This is what Obama had to say:

"Today the change we seek swept through the Chesapeake and over the Potomac. We won the state of Maryland. We won the commonwealth of Virginia. And though we won in Washington, D.C., this movement won't stop until there's change in Washington, D.C., and tonight we're on our way. Tonight we're on our way, but we know how much further we have to go. We know it takes more than one night or even one election to overcome decades of money and the influence, the bitter partisanship and petty bickering that shut you out, let you down, told you to settle."

This was a typical Obama speech - plenty of inspiration and calls for the arguments to stop. Some people say his policies aren't detailed enough, but he included plenty of detail in the debates (see 'Obama vs. Clinton - the CNN debate' and 'South Carolina - not on topic, not much detail').

For Hillary Clinton, her losses in the Potomac primaries weren't the only problems. Her deputy campaign manager, Mike Henry, has resigned. He was expected to leave because the person who recruited him - Patti Solis Doyle - also stepped down recently. Some of the US public will see this as a loss of faith in Hillary and her chances of winning.

According to this article, Clinton now sees herself as the 'underdog', which is a huge change for her. ever since the early stages of her campaign, she has mentioned how she has the advantage in terms of experience and policy detail. If she's losing confidence then it confirms that there's a serious problem.

CNN's total delegate estimate is:

Obama - 1215
Clinton - 1190
McCain - 812
Huckabee - 217
Paul - 16

It's interesting how Clinton (second place for the Democrats) has more delegates than the combined total of all the remaining GOP candidates.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Election, Potomac, Primaries

Mitt Romney drops out of the race

2008-02-08T10:07:00.000Z

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massechusetts, dropped out of the race to be the GOP nomination for the presidency yesterday. I'm surprised he didn't stay until the end of the race, even though it looked even more likely that John McCain would win. He said this on the night of Super Tuesday:

"We're going to battle, go all the way to the convention, win this thing, and get to the White House"

So you can understand why I'm surprised!

At the Conservative Political Action Conference, he made the following statement:

"This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters – many of you right here in this room – have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.

I will continue to stand for conservative principles. I will fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of those things is that we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism."

So, he will continue to be active in campaigning for what he thinks is right - fair enough. This could mean that he goes for another term as governor of Massechusetts. He might even end up trying to get a place at Capitol Hill (either the House of Representatives or the Senate).

What is interesting is that he didn't explicitly endorse anyone. At the moment, the remaining GOP candidates are John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. It's clear that he won't support McCain (see my last post), so it's likely that if he were to actively support someone, it would be Huckabee (there's an evangelical connection). Romney's endorsement could be a big boost for the campaign.

Romney's performance in the primaries

State	Place	Vote %	Delegates
Arizona	2	34	0
Arkansas	3	14	1
California	2	34	6
Illinois	2	29	2
New York	2	28	0
New Jersey	2	28	0
Georgia	3	30	0
Alabama	3	18	0
Tennessee	3	24	8
Oklahoma	3	25	0
Massechusetts	1	51	22
Conneticut	2	33	0
Missouri	3	29	0
Utah	1	90	36
Delaware	2	33	0
Florida	2	31	0
South Carolina	4	15	0
Michigan	1	39	24
New Hampshire	2	32	4

Romney's performance in the caucuses

State	Place	Vote %	Delegates
Minnesota	1	41	38
Alaska	1	44	12
Colorado	1	60	43
Montana	1	38	25
North Dakota	1	36	8
West Virginia	2	47	0
Maine	1	52	18
Nevada	1	51	18
Wyoming	1	67	9
Iowa	2	25	12

As you can tell, he did do well (especially in the caucuses) and won in some areas where there are a substantial number of delegates available. The reason he is so far behind John McCain is because he didn't win in the states where it was possible to get 50 or more.

So, why didn't he do better? One reason is that some people found it difficult to believe him as some of his stances have changed over the years. People said that he was only doing this to attract 'social conservatives'. The other candidates called him 'inconsistent':

"Romney, in his appeals to voters, never overcame charges that he had flip-flopped his way through his political career -- on abortion, gay rights and other issues of importance to those he was hoping to win over."

A lot of people didn't like his negative campaigning either:

I've always thought you should focus on your policies, why they would be good for the country and also why they would improve the current situation. If a candidate is asked to comment on the differences between him/her and any others in the running, that should be the only time where you go negative.

Anyway, now that he's out of the picture, the winner of the Republican nomination will be in a stronger position. That can only be a good thing for them at general election time.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Mitt Romney, Election, USA, Politics

Super Tuesday

2008-02-06T09:22:00.000Z

This is possibly the biggest event in the races to decide the GOP and Democrat nominations for the presidency. Twenty four states have been holding primaries or caucuses (a lot have had these for both parties).

The table below shows the winners and the delegates they gained:

State	Democrats(Del)	GOP(Del)
Alabama	Obama(20)	Huckabee(14)
Alaska	Obama(29)	Romney(12)
Arizona	Clinton(26)	McCain(50)
Arkansas	Clinton(23)	Huckabee(25)
California	Clinton(42)	McCain(56)
Colorado	Obama(13)	Romney(22)
Conneticut	Obama(26)	McCain(27)
Delaware	Obama(9)	McCain(18)
Georgia	Obama(27)	Huckabee(45)
Idaho	Obama(15)	n/a*
Illinois	Obama(62)	McCain(54)
Kansas	Obama(23)	n/a
Massechusetts	Clinton(54)	Romney(21)
Minnesota	Obama(48)	Romney(36)
Missouri	Obama(30)	McCain(58)
Montana	n/a	Romney(25)
New Jersey	Clinton(51)	McCain(52)
New Mexico	rp**	n/a
New York	Clinton(127)	McCain(101)
North Dakota	Obama(8)	Romney(8)
Oklahoma	Clinton(24)	McCain(32)
Tennessee	Clinton(34)	Huckabee(21)
Utah	Obama(14)	Romney(36)
West Virginia	n/a	Huckabee(18)

* - This means that the primary/caucus hasn't happened yet in that state for that party.
** - This means that the results were still being processed while this blog post was being typed.

I didn't include the voting percentages this time because it would make the table too cumbersome. If you're interested in those details, you can go here.

The Delegates
I noticed a few strange things when looking at the results. The first is the amount of delegates that New York got from both parties (the Democrats had 214, the GOP had 101). Those are - by far - the biggest numbers in a state. It's strange because California has a larger population, larger voter turnout and is physically bigger (in terms of square miles). Under the current US system, I would have thought there'd be more delegates for the bigger states. Clinton won New York with 57% of the vote (Barack Obama got 40%), which was to be expected as it was her home state. You could almost say the large number of NY delegates gave Clinton an unfair advantage.

Alabama and Missouri also had strange results. Despite finishing second in Alabama, Hillary Clinton got one more delegate (she was 14% behind Obama too). I thought the Democrats distributed delegates based on vote percentages. In Missouri, both Clinton and Obama got 30 delegates, even though Obama won by 1%. Those two results make no sense at all!

In other non-standard news, California, Illinois, Georgia and Massachusetts were the only states where the Republicans didn't operate a winner-takes-all-the-delegates system. I think it would be better if all states used the same system and it would be even better if that system was used by both parties. It would make the results much easier to analyse.

The candidates - Democrats
While it's true that Hillary Clinton got more delegates than Barack Obama on Super Tuesday (just under 60 more - this doesn't include New Mexico as the final results haven't been processed), there are still many states left and her overall total could be overtaken. Obama has to be pleased with the fact that he won more states.

The candidates - Republicans
John McCain is getting further ahead of the competition after winning nine states. Even though Mike Huckabee won five, his chances of getting the GOP nomination are getting even more distant. Mitt Romney did well winning seven. However, as we all should know by now, it's delegates that are the most important thing and John McCain managed to win in the states where there were the most delegates. It's not impossible for Romney to win, but it's unlikely that it'll happen.

Vice-presidential choices
Ever since John Edwards dropped out, I felt that he would be the VP pick for either Clinton or Obama. In my previous post about the CNN debate, I noted that they both constantly mentioned the former Senator's policies and congratulated him on agood campaign.

There are many people who think that Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton would be the best for the Democrats. It's true that some of their policies are similar and their combined support would be tremendous, but could they ever work together? There have been a number of occasions where they have had lengthy arguments. Obama did recently say that Clinton would be an asset for anyone and Clinton replied with a similar statement, but that could just be for the media and may not be what they actually think.

It's even more dificult to think who the pick would be for the Republicans. If John McCain was the GOP pick, I can see him choosing Rudy Giuliani because the former Mayor of New York dropped out of the race, he gave McCain a glowing reference. The Arizona Senator could also choose Mike Huckabee because it would mean he's more likely to attract the large evangelical section of the US population.

One certainty is that he wouldn't pick Mitt Romney, even though for former Massechusetts governor is currently in second place overall. This is because McCain has accused him of changing his stance on a number of issues and has also been critical of Romney's negative ad campaigns (he should be critical - Romney should be focusing on his own policies).

If Romney, made a late surge and won the nomination, I can see him picking Mike Huckabee to attract the religious vote.

Ron Paul
It's certain that he won't be the GOP nomination for the presidency. It's also unlikely he'll be the VP pick for any of the top three because only has 16 delegates and has a comparitively minimal number of votes. He also hasn't won a state yet. So, what is he going to do? Will he drop out before the GOP convention? It's becoming more likely, although I can't be 100% certain.

According to this article, 29% of US voters believe that he will run as an independent candidate. It's theoretically possible because some of his views don't match with the majority of the Republican party. The same article states the 15% of those voters would vote for either him or Michael Bloomberg (another independent possiblity). With a percentage like that, Paul wouldn't become President, but he could influence the result (something that Ralph Nader did in 2000). However, Paul has said in the past it's either the GOP nomination or nothing at all.

Mike Gravel
Remember him? When the Florida primary results were announced, I noticed Gravel wasn't mentioned on CNN, however he was still on the results page on a Florida local government site (remember that candidates can still be on ballot papers after they withdraw because of reprinting costs). Apparently he's still going and there's a possiblity of him being an independent candidate. However, if he did go down that route I doubt he'd make an impact - have a look at his results in the primaries and caucuses so far.

Summary
It was a big day in the US and for the Democrats, it didn't really make it any easier to predict who would finish with the most delegates. For the Republicans, things became a lot clearer and McCain's momentum has grown substantially.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Election, Super Tuesday, Democrats, Republicans

Obama vs Clinton - the CNN debate

2008-02-01T15:11:00.000Z

You can see the first part of the debate here. There are links to the other parts here.

The has to have been the tightest debate I've seen so far. There were so many of the topics where both of the candidates were even, but I think Obama was the overall winner. He won more of the topic discussions and also appeared more natural. Hillary did well, but everything seemed rehearsed and not from the heart. I think it's important that the leader of a country should know what they are saying and also believe in it.

It's also important to note that, early on, both of the candidates made frequent references to John Edwards in terms of campaign strategy and policies. Both of them saying things like that makes me think that it's even more likely that he'll be a VP pick. If he isn't (some people think a good VP pick would be Bill Richardson because of the hispanic vote), then I think he'll have a place on the cabinet - possibly in a role where he can work on his central issue - poverty.

One of the first topics that was discussed was the policy differences between Clinton and Obama. It's an important question because if none of the voters can tell the difference, they won't know who's best for the job. There's no guarantee that both people will be involved with the cabinet.

Healthcare
One of the differences is on healthcare. Clinton wants to introduce caps on healthcare premiums so that it can become more affordable for everyone. She also wants a tailor-made system where those who are satisfied with their healthcare aren't affected, but the people who benefit are those who aren't happy. After that she went on to talk about her past achievements (neatly moving past her failures and focusing on how she got her kids healthcare proposal approved).

Obama disputes a well-used statistic about there being 15m people who don't want healthcare. He thinks that the 15m are actually people who can't afford it. Obama also disputes Hillary's details about healthcare subsidies. He thinks that they do work, but doesn't explain why.

I think Obama won this section because cuts on premiums will appeal to a lot of people and he also offered more statistical analysis. I think that Hillary's approach to universal healthcare is flawed because she wants to provide for illegal immigrants - they aren't legitimate citizens and they don't pay anything. Why should they benefit?

Immigration
Obama answered first and said that the USA needs to control it's borders (obvious statement, but I guess it needed to be mentioned). Obama also felt that there needs to be a crackdown on those employers who exploit the immigrants and don't charge them the minimum wage. A lot of these people won't necessarily have the confidence to speak up for themselves, so it's definitely a positive statement. He also suggested that there should be opportunities for them to become US citizens and learn English. These ideas have been suggested/implemented in Britain and providing they are properly implemented, they are good policies.

When Hillary answered this question she offered nothing new. In other parts of this debate she has said she agrees with Obama if there's no difference between the two. However, this time she said the same things with a different word order - therefore trying to make people think it's something better. This was a bad move in my opinion, but unfortunately I don't think everybody will notice what she did.

I think this part of the debate was won by Obama.

'Tax and spend Democrats'
This wasn't exactly a tough question to answer. Under the Bush administration, the US economy has gone down the toilet - partially because of the huge amounts of spending on the war in Iraq. John McCain said in the past that it was irresponsible to cut taxes when going into war (although now he approves of Bush's extensions to those tax cuts). Both of them took full advantage of the opportunity, so I think that this round was even.

The War in Iraq
It has been clear from the beginning that they both want to withdraw the troops. However, you'll notice that in a previous blog post I mentioned that Obama has offered more specific details (going into timelines about e.g. removing brigades). All Clinton has done is say that she wants the troops out quickly and she will start that process within the first 60 days of her term in office.

In this particular debate, we finally heard some more details about her plans. She also felt that it had to be planned properly. This statement would go towards explaining why she hasn't been specific in the past. However, Iraq and the war on terror is such a hot topic, so I would have thought it'd be better to sort out your plans early on.

There was a point about her initially approving the President's decision to go into Iraq without Congressional approval. She was asked if she felt that was a naiive decision. It's stupid to ask that - Hillary would never say that she was naiive on national TV. She said she was acting on all the information that she had at the time.

However, I feel that Congress is there for a reason. Without Congress there would be a dictatorship. Such a major decision should always go through a body like Congress. Obama seems to feel that way because he repeatedly said he has been consistent from the beginning on this issue (he disapproved of the invasion both then and now).

Due to him highlighting his consistency and Hillary trying to avoid questions, I feel that Obama won this round.

Other issues
The above issues have been covered in many of the previous debates, so it was refreshing to hear a new question - it was about the levels of sex and violence in Hollywood. Obama won this round because he was the only one to answer. He felt that censorship was partly the responsibility of the parents and he also said that adverts for things like horror films should not be shown in the middle of family programming (this was basically a swipe at the television networks that allow this to happen).

Summary
As I said earlier, it was one of the closest debates, but I felt that Obama won.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Election, Politics, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama

More dropouts during election season

2008-01-31T11:14:00.000Z

Yesterday we found out that both Rudy Giuliani and John Edwards dropped out of the race to be the nomination for their respective parties. I wasn't particularly surprised about Rudy going - as I mentioned in my last post, he put an awful lot of work into winning Florida and he only finished third. That and he has failed to win any primaries or caucuses so far.

Here is a list of Giuliani's performance in all the primaries and caucuses that have happened so far:

State	Vote %	Delegates
Iowa	4	0
Wyoming	0	0
New Hampshire	9	0
Michigan	3	0
Nevada	4	1
South Carolina	2	0
Florida	15	0

After deciding to drop out, he announced that he is going to be supporting John McCain, who recently went ahead of Mitt Romney in terms of delegates:

"John McCain is the most qualified candidate to be the next commander in chief of the United States"

In response to Giuliani's speech, McCain said:

"I want to thank my dear friend, my dear friend Rudy Giuliani, who invested his heart and soul in this primary and who conducted himself with all the qualities of the exceptional American leader he truly is"

After the mutual back-slapping was over with, they shook hands. Now that McCain has been endorsed by Giuliani, it must give McCain even more momentum and could influence the way a lot of people vote on Super Tuesday.

(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

John Edwards leaving was more of a surprise. Although he hadn't got as many delegates as Obama and Clinton, he still had a few and with Super Tuesday coming up there was still an outside chance. Even though it wasn't a certainty that he'd get the most delegates, I thought he'd stay until all the states have finished voting.

Here's Edwards's performance in the primaries and caucuses:

State	Vote %	Delegates
Iowa	30	14
New Hampshire	17	4
Nevada	4	0
South Carolina	18	8
Florida	14	0

Remember that Wyoming hasn't happened yet for the Democrats and Edwards boycotted Michigan because of the controversy over there.

"With our convictions and a little backbone, we will take back the White House in November"

So, even though he's out of the race, he still makes an appeal to the nation in an attempt to get the Democrats back into the Whitehouse.

It will be interesting to see who Edwards endorses. As he has built up quite a following, whoever he decides to support will have a massive advantage. He might also be a viable vice-presidential pick - he'll definitely be in a better situation than he was with John Kerry in 2004. If he doesn't get picked I can see him campaigning to make a return to the Senate - he's young enough to be able to do that and stay there for a few years.

Alfred Thompson made this comment on my blog entry about South Carolina:

"If he is elected VP there is time for him to still be president some day. And I think he'd be a good one."

So, I'm not the only one who thinks he'd be a good VP pick! I'm not sure whether he'd go for President again though. I guess nobody will know for sure until the next President's term in office is over.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama congratulated him for a well-run campaign and thanked him for the hard work that he's done highlighting poverty, which was his central campaign issue. They obviously want to be really nice to him because they realise how important his support could be.

Apparently he is able to 'release' the delegates who supported him, so they would be free to vote for whoever they wanted. If they are released, it would make the convention even more interesting.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, USA, Election, Politics

The Florida Primary - it's Michigan (the remix)

2008-01-30T10:10:00.000Z

This state has plenty of election history attached to it. In 2000, there was the famous Florida recount, which turned into one of the most important factors in deciding the presidency. You will probably remember that Al Gore won the popular vote (which, in my opinion is the most important thing because you will be represeting those people), but George W. Bush got into the Whitehouse because of the Electoral College system.

These are the results for the 2008 Democrat and GOP primaries in Florida:
Republicans

Candidate	Vote %age	Delegates
John McCain	36	57
Mitt Romney	31	0
Rudy Giuliani	15	0
Mike Huckabee	14	0
Ron Paul	3	0
Fred Thompson	1	0
Duncan Hunter	0	0

Democrats

Candidate	Vote %age	Delegates
Hillary Clinton	50	0
Barack Obama	33	0
John Edwards	14	0
Dennis Kucinich	1	0

This was a terrific victory for John McCain. In terms of voting percentages it looks quite close between him and Mitt Romney, but because it's the delegates that matter, the difference was actually massive. The gains in Florida mean that McCain is now ahead of Romney overall. He will be hoping that the momentum can continue into Super Tuesday. If he does well in that, it would almost certainly mean that he'll become the GOP nominee for President. This is what McCain had to say after the victory:

"Thank you, Florida Republicans, for bringing a former Florida resident across the finish line first in - as I have been repeatedly reminded lately - an all Republican primary.

My friends, in one week we will have as close to a national primary as we have ever had in this country. I intend to win it, and be the nominee of our party."

Even though he got no delegates, it was one of Rudy Giuliani's best performances so far. The bad news is that he put a lot of work into winning this primary and ignored some of the states that have already voted. He felt that winning that state would show the rest of the US public that he can win the tough contests. As he finished third, there will be even more doubts about his credibility. He didn't say that he'd withdraw from the race, but he referred to his campaign in the past tense:

"I ran a campaign that was uplifting."

Apart from ignoring the early states, it didn't help that he was one-dimensional (frequently mentioning 9/11).

Mike Huckabee seems to be slipping down the results tables, which doesn't look too good. However, there is still Super-Tuesday where everything could change and he has shown the US population that he's capable of winning a primary. Even before the results were released in Florida, he knew that he wasn't going to win in the state, but he won't stop campaigning:

"Thank you folks for being here. God bless every one of you. Pray hard, work hard, get the votes out. Remember this -- if they're going to vote for me, make sure they come. If they're not, don't let them out of their driveway."

At the bottom of the results table for the GOP you'll notice that there's Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson. I mentioned in a previous post that Hunter withdrew from the race and I assume that his name was left on the ballot papers because there wasn't enough time to produce a new batch. Apparently Fred Thompson has also quit the race and this actually happened a few days ago. It was such a quiet withdrawal and I don't think many people noticed (despite this, he still managed to get a small percentage of the vote - how strange). He said the following in a prepared statement:

"Today, I have withdrawn my candidacy for president of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort"

The South Carolina result had sealed his fate.

It was a very different story for the Democrats. As you can see from the table near the top of this post, there were no delegates on offer (like Michigan). This was because they had brought their primary forward, but had not followed the rules. None of the leading candidates bothered to campaign in the state as a result of this, so you have to wonder why they bothered to have a vote. All it did was give Hillary Clinton - the 'winner' - a bit of extra press coverage (like Michigan).

You'll notice that Mike Gravel wasn't in the results table (that you can also see on the CNN website). This intrigues me, because he is still running (apparently) and this was confirmed when I looked at this. Do CNN not like him for some reason? Did they decide that he was no longer credible enough? I don't think it's for them to say. He was the only Democrat who campaigned in Florida. I didn't expect him to still be in the race at this stage because he's behind Dennis Kucinich overall and he doesn't have much chance of winning either. I suppose it's theoretically possible that he could do well in Super Tuesday, but it's highly unlikely that will happen.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Election, USA, Politics, Florida, Rudy Giuliani, Republicans

State of the Union - it sounds familiar

2008-01-29T13:39:00.000Z

The State of the Union address is a big deal in the USA. It's a chance for the President to tell the Congress and the public what the situation is and how the country should move forward. The 2008 address was the final one for George W. Bush and I bet the Democrats were glad.

Anyway, my thoughts on the speech are below. You can find the complete speech here.

Subject - The War on Terror™ and Iraq

"We gave our troops a new mission - work with the Iraqi forces to protect the Iraqi people."

He said this when he was talking about the 'surge'. What was the mission before the surge then? Were they not ordered to protect the Iraqi people? Supposedly, one of the reasons that the US went into Iraq was to liberate the Iraqi citizens from the likes of Saddam Hussein and terrorist groups. Saying something like that was a serious mistake.

After that he mentioned that the Iraqi people were "worried" that the US troops would abandon them, but instead of doing that, the troops would stay until the terrorists were gone. That is a huge, steaming pile of cra....erm, rubbish. I don't hear of a large number of Iraqis worrying about that. Also, if the troops stayed behind that is more lives at risk and many have died (needlessly) already. If the troops stayed it would also mean that the Iraqi government is undermined and that US forces would be stretched if they got involved in any other international conflicts.

At one point he mentioned that the troops have the "gratitude of the entire nation". This is totally true, but I couldn't help but feel this was purely done for TV because he knew both the Democrats and Republicans would give standing ovations for that - it was an attempt to make him look good, although he was only stating the obvious. There should be more detail in what he says.

"The American and Iraqi surges have achieved results few of us could have imagined just one year ago."

Ok, they have achieved results, but are they the results that he wanted? This statement was a cue for more clapping and then a standing ovation from the Republican supporters/members in the room. During this period, the Democrats remained remained seated and didn't clap at all. It shows that they (quite obviously) disagreed with what he was saying. It's not just the Democrats in the room that disagree with him - remember that his national approval rating has been below 40% for a while (the most recent poll showing him at 31%). Further evidence of that is shown in these statistics:

Over 60% of Americans want all troops out of Iraq withdrawn within one year.
41% of Americans think that President Bush is "definitely worst than most" past presidents.

Anyway, back to the speech:

"Some may deny that the surge is working, but among the terrorists there is no doubt - Al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq and this enemy will be defeated."

Time for another round of clapping (another standing ovation with cheers). Again, he states the obvious and it was another obvious move to get the Democrats to applaud and therefore make him look good on TV. He's also got his terrorists mixed up again. I have no doubt that there's an Al-Qaeda presence there, but Osama Bin-Laden won't be there (way too risky) and it's mostly Iraqi citizens who are attacking US forces.

"You will have all you need to protect our nation"

He said this when talking about the US forces. He also mentions that some of them are returning home. This is yet more stating the obvious and boring, repetitive rhetoric. The current withdrawal of troops is slow. A huge chunk of the US population sees that - I've already shown you the statistics that prove that.

"We will stay on the offence, we will keep up the pressure and we will deliver justice to our enemies."

This was said when talking about the War On Terror™, and this section had a focus on liberty and independence. This was another opportunity for Dick Cheney to get out of his chair and clap. He could be employed as a cheerleading coach after he leaves office! I wonder if anybody's worked out if he spends more time standing up and clapping than he does sitting in the chair. This whole section was another exampled of rhetoric recycled from previous speeches. It contained no detail at all - totally pointless!

He mentioned that there was one thing that the US and the terrorists agree on - ending tyranny. I think this was a bad move. Ok, each side wants to end what they perceive as tyranny, but he said that we agree with the terrorists. That statement could easily be taken out of context and twisted by several groups.

The Democratic response
The response was delivered by Kathleen Sebelius, who is the Governor of Kansas. She was calling for action that is more reflective of America as a whole - a more balanced approach. She also stated that even though the withdrawal of troops were a good start, it's too slow and there is more work to be done. Here's a response from another Democrat - Russ Feingold:

"Perhaps most troubling was the President's steadfast commitment to an Iraq policy that has led to the deaths of nearly 4,000 American troops, continues to cost this country billions of dollars per month, and fails to make us safer in the global fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates. The president's policies are keeping nearly 160,000 American troops stuck in Iraq and sapping our ability to address the global terrorist threat presented by al Qaeda."

Dick Cheney and Nancy Pelosi
It was funny watching these two and they were a true contrast. Cheney was frequently smiling and gave a lot of standing ovations, whereas Pelosi looked uncomfortable, hardly smiled while Bush was talking and was less prepared to clap. She hardly gave any standing ovations either. Pelosi's attitude was reflective of the entire of the entire Democratic part of the room. The same can be said for Cheney and the GOP part.

The thoughts of the audience
Below are two of the reactions after the speech from the politicians in Congress. The first is from Barack Obama:

"Tonight was President Bush's last State of the Union, and I do not believe history will judge his administration kindly. But I also believe the failures of the last seven years stem not just from any single policy, but from a broken politics in Washington."

This quote is from John McCain:

"I applaud the president's efforts to reduce earmarks and their influence on federal government spending. Earmarks and pork-barrel spending steal valuable taxpayer dollars from national priorities, skew the budget process, and have led to corruption among lawmakers."

Those two quotes are further examples of how President Bush failed to unite Congress in his final State of the Union. It was a truly awful performance which had no detail and used far to much tired rhetoric.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: George W. Bush, State of the Union, USA, Politics

South Carolina - not on topic, not much detail.

2008-01-27T13:21:00.000Z

A few days ago I heard about a debate on CNN between John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I recently watched it on Youtube and made numerous observations.

The Withdrawal
The first observation was the absence of Dennis Kucinich, the person who seems to be forgotten frequently during this campaign. What was the reason for him not being there? Apparently, he has withdrawn from the race after several poor performances in the states who have already voted:

"Kucinich, speaking at a union hall, told supporters who chanted "Dennis, Dennis," that he would work to keep his campaign promises, not as president, but as a member of the U.S. House."

So, he'll continue his work in politics and will stay consistent with his policies. I expect him to get into Congress again.

The Debate
The first part of this televised debate was about fiscal responsibility (which has to be one of the most important topics at the moment) and employment. Hillary Clinton started off strongly, talking a lot about her policies. However, she didn't explain how these policies would be feasibile. The usually eloquent Obama started off shakily and stuttered through the first part of his speech. However, later on he became more analytical. As for John Edwards, it took a long time for him to get involved in this part of the debate, which can't be considered positive. He needs to keep himself in the limelight. He criticised Bush for some of his fiscal decisions, but not as much as Hillary did. He didn't say much about his own policies though. One good point is that he took control when the presenter tried to interrupt him, which gave him a chance to get more of his views across. This part (the first 10 minutes) was won by Hillary in my opinion due to her confidence and concetration on policies.

Clinton then decided to go way off topic and say that Barack Obama's speeches in the US Senate about Iraq did not match his voting decisions. John Edwards talked negatively about Obama and seemed to ignore Clinton, then went to to mention his family history, to give people the impression he understood what they were going through. Obama said the talk should be about policies they should employ, not personbal attacks. However, when he responded to reported criticism that said his policies were feasible, he didn't actually say how they'd work - which was disappointing. He still won this section though as he did try to get the debate back on topic and didn't mention irrelevant family history too much.

The next period was interesting because John Edwards started off extremely weakly. He was clearly sidelined during an argument between Clinton and Obama, who are seen by many to be the top two Democratic candidates. However, when forced into the debate by the presenter he took control and made an extremely strong speech. He felt that the arguments "would not move America forward" and cleverly pushed the debate back on topic. He also explained that he was the candidate who was first with ideas about things such as how to end poverty (this was something he repeated constantly through the entire debate).

The next few sections of the debate were dominated by Obama. The subjects covered included healthcare, voting records in Congress and Iraq. Healthcare was interesting because all three had different policies, but Obama was the only one who didn't want to provide for illegal immigrants. He felt this was necessary due to the country's lack of resources. Clinton and Edwards argued with him about this, but why should you immediately benefit from a system if you didn't enter the country using the appropriate methods? If you then apply for asylum later on and are successful, you should be allowed to benefit though.

I'm surprised Iraq wasn't discussed earlier on as it has been such a hot topic recently. I think Barack Obama was better in this area as he actually got into some detail about the removal of troops and bases. Edwards and Clinton said they wanted to remove troops quickly - but didn't mention how quickly.

Other topics covered included sources of campaign funding, their respective advocates and the voting patterns of African-Americans. It was interesting seeing the arguments between Edwards and Clinton at this stage. Edwards felt that it was wrong to take money from lobbyist groups, but Clinton said that Edwards also did that. However, she failed to realise that there's a big difference between taking money from lobbyist groups and taking money from individuals who work for or are affiliated with those groups.

The questions about African-American voters seemed tailor-made for Obama and gave him a bit more of a platform. It's unfortunate, but as South Carolina has a large African-American population, it was unavoidable. Obama said that it was important to focus on policies, not race or gender (obviosuly the gender issue was focused at Hillary).

There was even time during this debate for several jokes (some at the expense of John Edwards). For example, Obama said it was "a race where you've got a woman, an african-american and John". When asked about whether he thinks Bill Clinton was the first black President, he said that he "has to investigate Bill's dancing abilities before he decides whether Bill was a brother or not".

Towards the end of the debate, Hillary started to get more defensive, Obama appeared even more relaxed and confident and Edwards seemed weaker as he ignored policies and focused on family history. Overall, I believe Barack Obama won with an extremely strong performance. I think it would have been better if all the candidates stuck to the topics though.

The vote
These are the results from the South Carolina primary:

Candidate	Vote %age	Delegates
Barack Obama	55	25
Hillary Clinton	27	12
John Edwards	18	8

According to the Daily Kos, Obama received more votes than all Democrats in the 2004 South Carolina Democratic Primary (292,383) and had more in this primary than George W. Bush received in 2000 when he beat John McCain (Bush won 293,652 votes). It was disappointing for John Edwards as he grew up in this state and won it when he went for election as the Democratic candidate in 2004. Click here to read his post-primary speech.

Anyway, Obama got the most delegates and that's crucial for him. It might give him momentum going before 'Super Tuesday', but pundits and polls have been proved wrong before (Iowa, New Hampshire).

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Election, Democrats, USA, Politics, South Carolina

US election process confuses the media

2008-01-21T09:23:00.000Z

After I found about about the results in Nevada and South Carolina and read some of the analysis on the internet, I ended up thinking the following:

Does the mainstream media in the US understand their country's election process?

At the moment I don't think they do. Recently Nevada had their caucus and the following is the results for the Democrats:

Candidate	Votes (%)	Delegates
Hillary Clinton	51	12
Barack Obama	45	13
John Edwards	4	0
Uncommitted	0	0
Dennis Kucinich	0	0
Bill Richardson	0	0

You'll notice that even though Clinton got more votes, Obama got the most delegates. It seems that most of the time getting the majority of the votes means you'll get the most delegates, but as you can see from this, it doesn't always happen (another example of this would be the election in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won because more people in the Electoral College voted for him).

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, delegates mean more than actual voters in the US because it's those people who go to the conventions and decide who will be the presidential candidate for their party.

This article in the New York Times is a perfect example of how the media is reporting the result:

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, capturing strong support from women voters and adding a fresh boost of momentum to her campaign as the Democratic presidential race heads to South Carolina, where she is engaged in a fierce battle with her rival, Senator Barack Obama."

Yes, she won the popular vote, but as I've just mentioned, that means nothing. Obama got more delegates in that state and has the most overall on the Democrat side - so he's the real winner. The likes of the NY Times seem to forget that.

There was a poor result for John Edwards, but there is still time for his prospects to improve. There's always the possiblity that Super Tuesday (an event when multiple primaries happen on the same day) could make him the front runner. Uncommitted - that mysterious candidate who did so well in Michigan, managed to finish ahead of Dennis Kucinich, but both got 0 delegates, so they both must be disappointed. I noticed that Bill Richardson was on the results table, which is strange because he's withdrawn from the race. I noticed that same thing happening with Chris Dodd and one or two others in some states - I wonder why their names aren't removed?

On the Republican side, more candidates got delegates, but it was Mitt Romney who won by a signifcant margin in terms of delegates (18) and votes (51%). Surprisingly, Ron Paul finished second in terms of votes and joint second with John McCain (both candidates got four delegates). As usual it was a poor performance for Rudy Giuliani and as each state vote passes by, it looks even less likely that he will become the GOP candidate for President - but there is still time for things to change.

According to this Los Angeles Times article, only Romney and Paul were the active campaigners in Nevada though. I still think it's disgraceful when candidates don't treat every state with respect.

In South Carolina, the GOP primary also took place (the Democrat primary happens on January 26th) and there was a big win for John McCain, which makes him look more and more like a top contender. Even though he only beat Mike Huckabee by 3% in terms of votes, but he gained significantly more delegates (McCain got 19, Huckabee got 5). Ron Paul didn't perform as well getting 4% and 0 delegates (others to get 0 delegates were Mitt Romney - surprising, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and Duncan Hunter).

It's worth pointing out at this point that Duncan Hunter has now dropped out of the race:

"I ran the campaign exactly the way I wanted to, and at this point not being able to gain traction in conservative states of Nevada and South Carolina, it's time to allow our volunteers and supporters to focus on the campaigns that remain viable."

The media isn't the only people who are confused at the moment. Recently, USAToday mentioned the following in this article:

"The former president trumpeted New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's accomplishments while painting Obama as the "establishment" candidate who would bring only the "feeling of change.""

Obviously, this is heavily biased given that Bill is Hillary's husband and also part of her campaign team, but the former President seems to forget that Hillary is the one with the Whitehouse experience (as she was the former First Lady).

It was also implied in this article that Bill questioned Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq. I seem to remember in some of the debates that Obama, like most of the other candidates felt that a withdrawal was needed. I also decided to look at US Senate records and I found the following:

IRAQ -- (Senate - January 30, 2007)

"The American people have waited. The American people have been patient. We have given chance after chance for a resolution that has not come and, more importantly, watched with horror and grief at the tragic loss of thousands of brave young American soldiers.

The time for waiting in Iraq is over. The days of our open-ended commitment must come to a close. The need to bring this war to an end is here.

That is why today I am introducing the Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007. This plan would not only place a cap on the number of troops in Iraq and stop the escalation; more importantly, it would begin a phased redeployment of United States forces with the goal of removing all United States combat forces from Iraq by March 31, 2008, consistent with the expectations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that the President has so assiduously ignored."

EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF THE CONGRESS ON IRAQ--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - February 17, 2007)

"I will vote today to bring up a resolution for debate that would disapprove of the President's policy of escalation in Iraq."

It seems that the President doesn't have a knowledge of recent senate activities or his wife's CV. It's amazing what bias does to a person.

So, what do you think?

Democrats, Republicans, Elections, USA, Politics

Wyoming and Michigan - controversy reigns

2008-01-17T09:31:00.000Z

Everyone seems to have ignored the result in Wyoming. This is possibly because only the Republicans had their vote - the vote for the Democrats comes later on in the year. Only three candidates got delegates. Mitt Romney did well and got eight, Fred Thompson got three and the surprise was Duncan Hunter who got one. It was surprising because he's normally bottom of the results table and this time there were no delegates for the likes of Ron Paul, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani. As there is such a lack of reporting on the GOP Wyoming caucus, it's highly likely that this won't have any influence on the people who are waiting to vote.

So, why did Romney get so many delegates compared to the other candidates? This seems to give a good reason:

"One thing to note is that about 10 percent of Wyoming’s population is Mormon. That being a significant number, it may have given Romney an edge."

If you remember the Iowa caucus, you'll know that religion can have a big influence in United States politics.

Why was Wyoming virtually ignored? According to this article in the Kansas City Star, 14 of the 28 delegates were removed by the GOP. As there were fewer delegates up for grabs, perhaps some of the candidates felt it would be worth campaigning. There's also the fact that the cacus was done much earlier this time. Perhaps some felt they couldn't give necessary time. I hope that some of the candidates didn't ignore it because they felt it was an unimportant state. That sort of message could affect future performances.

This AP article gives the reason why the state was punished:

"RNC rules require the punishment for states that hold their nominating contests earlier than Feb. 5. Iowa, which held caucuses on Thursday, will not be penalized because, technically, the caucuses are not binding on convention delegates. Nevada, which plans to hold its caucuses on Jan. 19, will not be penalized for the same reason."

The states know the rules and they know what happens if they break them. I'd like to know who thought it would be sensible to organise the caucus so early.

I'm interested in seeing how the Democrats handle Wyoming. They've seen what happened to the Republicans. Surely they will do things differently.

Another rule breaker was Michigan, but this time it was on the side of the Democrats:

"...the DNC revoked the state's delegates to the national convention for moving the state's primary to Jan. 15 in violation of DNC rules."

Here are the Democrat results for that primary:

Hillary Clinton - 55%
Uncommitted - 40%
Dennis Kucinich - 4%
Chris Dodd - 1%
Mike Gravel - 0%

It seems the success story of that particular vote was a mysterious candidate called 'Uncommitted'! Seriously though, the that category had such a high percentage was that John Edwards and Barack Obama withdrew from that state due to the rule breaking. As the Democrats removed their delegates from the state, Hillary Clinton's win meant nothing anyway.

I still don't think that Hillary has performed very well so far, despite her winning two primaries, compared to Barack Obama's one caucus victory. New Hampshire was a narrow victory and Obama finished second, whereas in Iowa Obama won and Clinton was way back in third. If Clinton was seen as credible in Michigan, then she would have got more of the votes from the people who would have gone for Obama and Edwards. I also have to remind everyone that there are still many states left, so she could still lose the race.

As there seems to be so much controversy over delegates in both Wyoming and Michigan, some of you may be wondering what the delegates do. I must admit that that aspect of the US elections was confusing me for a while. Well, it's a similar principle to the US Electoral College. If you were to e.g. vote for Hillary Clinton in a primary, you would also vote for the delegates that support her in that state. When it's time for the democratic National Convention, all the delegates vote for the candidate that they support. Theoretically, you should get a party candidate after that. However, if they don't get a certain majority, it goes to a second ballot and then the delegates could change their support. That second ballot rarely happens though. Usually the person with the most delegates gets to be the party's candidate.

This means that the popular vote means absolutely nothing. Supporters of the delegate system say that it's better because then the bigger states don't always get to control who becomes the party candidate. However, I feel a major disadvantage is that you could have a situation where e.g. Mike Gravel only has one delegate at the time of the party convention and if it goes to the second ballot he could then get all the delegates. This may be highly unlikely, but it's still possible and would reflect the views of the US population because not many people have voted for him (so far). You could also have 'faithless electors', who are people that are supposed to vote for one person, but actually choose someone else. It would be much better to let the people decide - at the moment the popular vote has no legal binding.

So, we have learned that some states aren't capable of following long-standing rules and regulations. We've also learned Mitt Romney can take advantage of candidates failing to campaign in certain states. We also know that Hillary Clinton is willing to stay in a primary just to get a perceived victory, when it actually means nothing to win it.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Democrats, Republicans, Election, USA, Politics

New Hampshire - the aftermath

2008-01-09T09:35:00.000Z

"I hope things are still unsettled after New Hampshire..."

The quote above is from a comment that Alfred Thompson left on my previous blog post, which was about the US election up to (and including) the Iowa caucus. He typed that because he doesn't want the whole process to be dominated by one person - which is fair enough. What would be the point of voting if that were the case?

Well, it seems he got what he hoped for.

The Democrats
For me, the result was a total surprise. Despite trailing Barack Obama by 10 points in the state polls, Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary. All the momentum seemed to be with Barack Obama up until the actual vote.

However, it was only a narrow victory. A difference of 3% is negligable. In Iowa, Obama won and Clinton finished third, so in terms of positions so far, Obama is still ahead. I would give the vote totals so far, but it's impossible as the Iowa Democratic Party only releases a total estimating the number of delegates to the state convention each candidate will receive.

As for the other candidates, John Edwards (who finished second in Iowa), was third, but he was behind Obama by 20% - which has to be disappointing. He will still continue though. Bill Richardson had a better result this time (he got 5%), but he is still far behind the top three and I still believe he will drop out at some point. Dennis Kucinich got 1% and Gravel (once again) got 0%. I would be surprised if Gravel stayed in the race for much longer.

GOP (The Republicans)
The situation for the GOP candidates is very different. John McCain recovered from finishing joint third place Iowa to win the New Hampshire primary. However, the difference between first and second was 5% and Huckabee's winning margin in Iowa was 9%. The GOP race seems to be more open, although Duncan Hunter finished last for the second time and I don't think it will be a long time before he drops out.

Mitt Romney finished in second place again, which is more consistent, but not necessarily advantageous. The positive thing about his results is that he is still getting substantial numbers of people voting for him. Without that, some people might start to doubt his credibility.

Even though Ron Paul got 2% less in New Hampshire, he still has an outside chance because of the large internet following that he has and his record of getting large amounts of money in a short space of time. He needs to start finishing higher in the next two or three primaries though.

Rudy Giuliani continues to disappoint, but I expect him to continue until all 50 states have voted. Fred Thompson will also remain for a while, although he might not necessarily stay until the end.

Futher comments
I've noticed that after Hillary won in New Hampshire, a lot of pundits siad this may be the beginning of the end for Obama. That has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've heard. There are 48 states left! The people who said that must have no knowledge of the size of the country. A lot can change in that time. If you consider Hillary's poll-defying result then you'll realise that anything is possible.

The results of Iowa and New Hampshire should only be used as rough indicators of the end result. Historians will tell you that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush became President without a victory in the New Hampshire primary.

I've also noticed that the amount of personality politics has increased dramatically in this election now (there was a lot of that at the start though). I'm hearing less and less about the policies of the candidates. It's sad that election campaigns around the world often end up like that.

The next caucus will be taking place in Wyoming. The Democrats haven't started yet, but you can already see that Romney is ahead, with Fred Thompson second and Duncan Hunter a very surprising third. However, there are still a few days left for people to vote, which means a lot could change.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: New Hampshire, Primary, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, USA Election Politics

U.S. Elections 2008 - up to Iowa

2008-01-04T10:49:00.000Z

This is probably going to be the first of a few posts covering the presidential race in the United States. I've been following it very closely because I have an interest in US politics and something like this is internationally important.

First of all, below is a list of the candidates form the Democrat and Republican parties at the start of the whole process:

Democrats
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York)
Senator Barack Obama(Illinois)
John Edwards (former Senator)
Governor Bill Richardson (New Mexico)
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Ohio)
Senator Joe Biden (Delaware)
Senator Chris Dodd (Connecticut)
Mike Gravel (former Senator)

GOP (the Republicans)
Mike Huckabee (former governor)
Mitt Romney (former governor)
Senator John McCain (Arizona)
Fred Thompson (former Senator)
Congressman Ron Paul (Texas)
Rudy Giuliani(former Mayor of New York)
Congressman Duncan Hunter (San Diego)
Congressman Tom Tancredo (Colorado)
Tommy Thompson (former governor)
Senator Sam Brownback (Kansas)

N.B. - There are other candidates, such as independents. However, under the current US system, they hardly get a chance to compete with the GOP and the Democrats. Typically, they have to have significant funds to get any sort of presence (notable non-GOP/Democrat candidates in previous elections include Ross Perot and Ralph Nader).

There can be numerous reasons for a candidate dropping out of the race to become the nominee for their respective party. For example, the candidate might have failed to raise enough funds to campaign effectively. Another reason is that they have had poor ratings in opinion polls and they feel that there would be no point going any further. Early dropouts from this campaign are Tommy Thompson, Sam Brownback and Tom Tancredo.

One reason for all of the early dropouts being Republicans could be that GOP approve most applications to be a presidential candidate. With the Democrats, they have a stricter system and don't approve an application unless they consider the person to have a realistic chance.

The campaigning has been relentless and I've noticed there seems to be a significant focus on funding (this link shows you the current funding levels for each candidate). I can understand this - more funding means you can afford more campaigning resources. However, the chosen GOP and Democrat candidates should not be decided on the money that they raise. It should be about policies.

That's why I was pleased to see Mike Huckabee finish top of the GOP caucus poll in Iowa as he isn't the biggest Republican fundraiser by quite a large margin. People have said this some of his success could be because of his religious beliefs and the fact that there is a highly influencial evangelical section of the US population (that point is mentioned in this article and also notes that Huckabee is a Southern Baptist minister).

One of the other GOP candidates, Mitt Romney, has a much larger amount of funding and finished second in the poll - 9% behind Huckabee which is quite a substantial difference. The former governor of Massachusetts (left the position on January 4th, 2007) was considered by many to be the front runner.

Another candidate who was supposed to be one of the favourites is Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York. He only got 3% of the vote and finished second bottom (ahead of Duncan Hunter). One problem I have with Giuliani's campaign is that he focuses on 9/11 too much. One person described it as '9/11 Tourettes'! It might have been an incredibly significant moment in modern US history, but it happened 6 1/2 years ago. He needs to comment more on other important issues, such as healthcare and the national debt. Yes, there should be talk about getting the US troops out of Iraq (how Bush linked Iraq to 9/11 is still beyond me), but it shouldn't be his only issue.

As for the Democrats, a few different prospects were offered. You could have the first woman President or the first black President. While it is good to see women and people from the black community entering the race, I don't think their gender or colour shouldn't be commented on so much or be the deciding factor. It should be about policies. However, in politics this is not always the case.

The Democrats seemed to be more focused on getting the troops out of Iraq, which will definitely please a lot of people - especially those families who have relatives that are in that particular country.

In the Iowa caucuses, it became clear that it's a three horse race to become the democrat candidate:

Barack Obama: 929 (38%)
John Edwards: 738 (30%)
Hillary Clinton: 728 (29%)
Bill Richardson: 52 (2%)
Joe Biden: 23 (1%)
Uncommited: 3 (0%)
Chris Dodd: 1 (0%)
Mike Gravel : 0 (0%)
Dennis Kucinich: 0 (0%)

The only shock with the top three is that Hillary Clinton finished third - previous polls suggested she'd be one of the top two. The doesn't seem to be much coverage of Bill Richardson's campaign at the moment. If the results from this caucus are repeated in the New Hampshire primary, I doubt he'll continue campaigning for much longer.

I thought Biden and Dodd would have got larger percentages of the vote, but as they haven't I can understand why they've ceased campaigning (see this and this). I don't think that Gravel and Kucinich will stay around for much longer either.

When events such as this take place, I am thankful for the internet's existence. The BBC TV news and other news organisations in Britain only mention the big/recognisable names, so you don't get a complete picture of what's going on. They never seem to cover things such as the remarkable funding successes of Ron Paul, or his unique policies.

Without the internet, I wouldn't have heard about Paul, Brownback, both Thompsons, Hunter, Tancredo, Kucinich, Richardson, Biden, Dodd or Gravel. Even after the Iowa caucus result, they barely mentioned John Edwards despite him finishing ahead of Hillary Clinton. I think they might have even mentioned Clinton more than the winner of the caucus - Barack Obama!

There also seems to be much more coverage of the Democrats. Maybe the people making the TV news think they have a greater chance of getting a candidate into the Whitehouse. That is not for them to decide though - they should give balanced coverage of both parties and allow the viewers to make up their own opinions. The internet might also have it's fair share of opinions and bias, but you can always look at multiple resources to get a more balanced view.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Politics, Election, Republicans, Democrats

The factionalised nature of the student movement

2007-12-20T09:56:00.000Z

Student unions have been around for a long time and provide students with a number of different services. The University of St. Andrews Student Association, started in 1864, is the oldest in Britain. Since that time the student movement has seen a number of changes, one of the most notable being in 1994, when the Education Act was implemented. This defined the basic purposes of a union, the composition of membership and what it required to have in place.

According to the Act, this is the meaning of a student union:

"(a) an association of the generality of students at an establishment to which this Part applies whose principal purposes include promoting the general interests of its members as students; or

(b) a representative body (whether an association or not) whose principal purposes include representing the generality of students at an establishment to which this Part applies in academic, disciplinary or other matters relating to the government of the establishment."

So, student unions must represent their members in the areas of (at least) academic issues and welfare. This isn't just on campus - they also represent their members at conferences such as the NUS Annual Conference (which will become the Annual Congress because of the recent governance review). Therefore part of or all of the executive of a union must not represent the agenda of anyone else, such as a national political faction.

Why then, do I see things such as the presence of factions like Student RESPECT, Labour Students and Education Not for Sale at e.g. conferences? It's an interesting question.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having socities at student unions that relate to political parties and discuss e.g. national and regional issues from their perspective. However, if a student union executive is dominated by members of a faction and attempt to implement policies which always echo the views of said faction, it's possible that they are no longer representing the views of that university's student populus. This means they are contradicting the definition stated in the Education Act.

How can you stop factions from having this sort of influence though? It is certainly difficult. If it's obvious that the manifesto of a potential union president is faction-centric and not student-focused, it's up to the voter to decided whether that candidate is unsuitable. Due to the nature of student apathy though, it is more likely that factions get a foothold as their members will be the active few who are certainties to vote.

The only way is to get the apathetic majority interested in student politics, but without being biased. That balanced viewpoint will then lead to all unions being run by people who comply with the Education Act definition. It will also lead to a National Union of Students who is always student-focused.

Don't assume that I think the whole student movement is factionalised though. From my time in the student movement I have known many examples of executives and individual executive members who are active, but present balanced viewpoints. These are the 'independents'.

These people must not be confused with the 'Organised Independents (more commonly known as the OIs)' who ironically have the word independent in their name, but act as a group. Stephen Brown, the current National Secretary of the National Union of Students once made this comment about OIs on an entry in my now-discontinued education blog (it was difficult to generate enough education content worthy of a separate blog):

"We work together on common issues but do not take a line from an outside organiser."

Hmmm. They may not be influenced by a third-party, but they do come together on various issue and agree a way to approach them. That means they are a faction. Mr. Brown has managed to contradict himself.

I applaud any union who actively tries to eradicate student apathy. It might be a long and difficult task, but if nothing if done it's certain that the apathetic masses will grow.

The 'Vote 2008' campaign that Hull University Union is currently implementing is a great idea. Having something there from the beginning to the end of the academic year means that minor elections get more prominence and there will potentially be interest growing throughout the year which results in an increased voter turnout for the major union executive elections.

Maybe I seem old-fashioned, but I believe that student union executives should comply with legislation and represent the views of it's members and work on issues that are relevant to them, instead of executives being proxies for national political factions.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Students, Politics, Student Unions

The Men's Officer Referendum

2007-12-14T10:08:00.000Z

First of all I think I need to explain why a referendum is happening. In the recently revised Constitution for Hull University Union, it states that Referenda decide union policy and the Open Policy Forums (that any student can attend) decide what goes to a referendum. A number of these happen throughout the academic year. Any policy decided by referenda lapses after three years (this means that it stops being a piece of union policy).

Now for the subject of one of the votes - the abolition of the Men's Officer. The minutes of the Open Policy Forum where this was originally proposed can be found here(November 19th) and the relevant section is below:

"For:
There is no need for a Men’s Officer as this diminished the effectiveness of all the other liberation campaigns.
Men are unfairly over-represented in both society and the structure of the Student’s Union.
Issues in the Men’s Officer remit can be easily dealt with by the Health Officer and HUSAC.
Against:
Men are discriminated against in society, for example, job quota filling and higher unemployment rates.
If there is no Men’s Officer position then there is no support for men who are victims."

It's also important to note that the National Union of Students doesn't have a Men's Officer and a lot of people within the NUS don't believe one should ever exist (I know this from my time as a sabbatical officer at HUU and the fact that the NUS Women's Officer - Kat Stark - is signed up to the Facebook group approving the abolition of the position).

Now I'll address the points raised in the Open Policy Forum.

"...diminished the effectiveness of all the other liberation campaigns."

I'm not entirely sure how this could happen. The other liberation groups are Women, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender), Disabled Students and Black Students (those four are the NUS Liberation campaigns too). All committees/officers have clearly defined job descriptions in the student union standing orders. The Men's Offer does not represent women. That person does not represent men on issues covered by other campaigns either.

"Men are unfairly over-represented in both society and the structure of the Student’s Union."

Was the second part of that point made because the current Union Executive Committee has eight men and two women? That didn't happen because women were oppressed. In some of the previous executive committees there have been equal numbers or more women than men. For instance, in 2004/2005, there were four men and four women. In 2005/2006 there were five women and three men. The executive teams were elected because the voters felt that they had the necessary skills and experience to do the job well.

The student union also has a long-standing equal opportunities policy which states everyone can join any clubs and societies. This means that there are no instances of women being prevented from joining. Both men and women can go for executive positions in clubs and societies too . For example, the current President of the Drama Society is a Woman. The current President of the Labour club is a woman.

So, what about society? Well, first of all, the positions that are being talked about in this post do not have a responsibility for the whole of society in England (or any other country). Those positions have a responsibility to represent the relevant group(s) of students at the University of Hull. Secondly, there are plenty of examples of women in high ranking positions all over the world. For example, there is a female member of the University's Senior Management Team and there are several university departments that have senior members of staff who are female.

Outside the university, there are even more examples. Angela Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany, the Queen is our sovereign, Hillary Clinton is a potential future President of the United States. Condoleezza Rice is the US Secretary of State and Nancy Pelosi is the current speaker in the United States Congress. You might also remember Margaret Thatcher - one of our former Prime Ministers.

Remember the 'Blair Babes' from 1997 when Tony Blair was elected as the Prime Minister? There were celebrations about how many women were in positions of power. That doesn't seem like an example of women being oppressed to me.

"Issues in the Men’s Officer remit can be easily dealt with by the Health Officer and HUSAC."

Interesting point. I agree that it's logical for men's health issues to be managed by the Health Officer. However, they've defeated themselves by mentioning the Student Advice Centre (HUSAC). This is because they could also deal with some women's issues and some matters that are covered by other liberation groups. Surely this means that there is no need for a Women's Officer too!

"Men are discriminated against in society, for example, job quota filling and higher unemployment rates."

This is definitely true. In a Guardian article from 2005, it was reported that the Hansard Society felt that all-women shortlists are the only way to increase the number of women in the House of Commons. However, using all-women shortlists means that men are prevented from going for a particular position, which is a form of positive discrimination.

There are plenty of examples of women being strategically positioned around the PM during Prime Minister's Question Time to highlight the fact that Labour includes a number of women. However, preventing some men from sitting where they want because they are a man is a form of positive discrimination.

A Men's Officer is required within Hull University Union to ensure that there are no examples of positive discrimination.

"If there is no Men’s Officer position then there is no support for men who are victims."

True. What about men who are abused by women? The Women's Officer doesn't deal with that. There needs to be representation for men.

As you can tell, I believe that there should be a Men's Officer. You couldn't have one officer represented both genders so it's sensible to have one for each and then both genders feel that they have representation.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Equality, Liberation, Representation, Democracy

Union debates about free speech

2007-11-27T10:28:00.000Z

The Oxford Union is a very old and highly respected debating society. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Oxford University Student Union - people often get confused about this. In the past, they have had names such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Ian Paisley, William Hague and Stephen Fry. The Union covers a range of subjects and there can be input from students and academics.

Recently, there has been a huge amount of controversy about a debate on free speech which featured Nick Griffin and David Irving. The former is the chairman of the British National Party - widely regarded as racist and the latter is famous for denying the existence of the holocaust - one of the most horrifying aspects of World War II. Apart from the controversy, there has also been protests against the debate and an MP has quit the Oxford Union because the debate was going to take place.

Despite all these protests and negative media coverage, the Oxford Union insisted that the debate should still happen:

"I find the views of the BNP and David Irving awful and abhorrent but my members agreed that the best way to beat extremism is through debate."

A collection of quotes from people against the debate are on the United Against Fascism. One of the quotes is from the President of the National Union of students - Gemma Tumelty:

"The Holocaust denier, David Irving and leader of the fascist BNP, Nick Griffin have no place in our multicultural society let alone on our diverse university campuses. NUS utterly opposes racism and fascism wherever it arises and will certainly oppose any attempt by Oxford University's Debating Society to invite Irving and Griffin to speak.

The pair's racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, Islamophobic views threaten the safety of our diverse university communities. For example, wherever the BNP is active, racist attacks and other hate crimes increase."

Yes - Griffin and Irving express views that are racist and anti-semitic. However, the best way of destroying the credibility of those views is to have a group of highly intelligent people debate with them. Preventing the debate from happening makes them martyrs. Apart from that, they are not advertising political parties - that's not the subject of the debate. The subject was free speech - it would be ironic to prevent them from debating this.

"Kill Tryl" was one of the slogans in the protests outside the union building, according to this news article(the slogan is directed towards Luke Tryl - the President of the Oxford Union). This means he is getting persecuted for providing an opportunity for people to humiliate and discredit two racist and anti-semitic people. Does that make sense to you?

However, if this wasn't a debate, it would be a different matter altogether. If the British National Party were advertising their policies without any opportunity for someone to respond - for instance, an on-campus campaign - that would deserve a 'no platform'.

To conclude, I will say that I am strongly against racism. A debate featuring intelligent people discrediting and humiliating racists seems like a great way to comabat it. The Oxford Union was not organising a biased campaign platform for one political party. The death threats directed towards Luke Tryl are totally stupid.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Oxford Union, Free Speech, Nick Griffin, David Irving

An unbelievable loss

2007-11-25T15:30:00.000Z

Prior to the event happening, many people would have assumed this sort of thing could never happen. Maybe you thought that there would be enough safeguards in place. Obviously, we now know that this is not true. What am I talking about? This blog entry is about the 25 million Inland Revenue records that were lost in the post recently.

This article contains a timeline of the events leading to the current situation:

18 October - Junior official from HMRC in Washington, Tyne and Wear, sends two CDs containing password-protected records to audit office in London through courier TNT, neither recorded nor registered
24 October - When package fails to arrive, second one is sent by registered post and arrives safely
3 November - Senior managers are told first package has been lost
10 November - Prime minister and other ministers are informed
12 November - HMRC tell ministers CDs will probably be found
14 November - When HMRC searches fail, Metropolitan Police are called in
15 November - Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner, says remedial action must be taken before public is informed
20 November - HMRC Chairman Paul Gray resigns; Chancellor Alistair Darling makes announcement to House of Commons

In addition to this, HMRC gave the National Audit Office a full copy of child benefit data in March, which is a "breach of protocol". Also, 15000 records went missing in September after HMRC sent them to Standard Life and a laptop containing 400 ISA details was stolen.

A few interesting questions arise from the timeline above. Firstly, why was the original package not sent using recorded delivery and why wasn't it registered? Secondly, was there anything done between the 18th and the 24th to ensure this mistake wouldn't happen with the second package? Thirdly, why were senior managers told of the loss of the first package several days after the successful delivery of the second? Surely they should have been told straight away. Lastly, were ministers told of the specifics of the HMRC search? 'Probably' is a very vague term to use and inappropriate for the situation.

I also wonder about the password protection on the discs. There are multiple ways to implement password protection. Also, was anything encrypted? If it was, what was the strength of the encryption. If a mistake of this magnitude was made, can we automatically assume that there was appropriate security measures on the discs? I have not heard answers for any of these questions yet.

In this article, the following was mentioned:

"Darling stressed that there was no evidence that the data had fallen into criminal hands, but urged Britons to keep a close eye on their bank accounts."

This is definitely true - we don't have any evidence which implies that crimes have been committed using the information. However, we don't know that crimes haven't been committed either.

I the House of Commons, Conservative leader David Cameron said this:

"Millions of people today will be worrying about the safety of their bank accounts and the security of their family details, but they will not just be worried, they will be angry that the government has failed in its first duty to protect the public."

Well, it's not just the government that's to blame - however, they are at fault because they oversee HM Revenue and Customs and are supposed to be making sure that they always do their job properly. It's also the fault of HMRC themselves though - they should have ensured that existing security procedures are correctly implemented - especially after the earlier mistake in March.

The civil servant working for HMRC who originally made the mistake, remains unnamed according to this Telegraph article. For that person, it is probably a good thing - if he was named then a large portion of the country would be tracking him down. However, he needs to be punished and I hope that he has lost his job because of this fiasco.

Paul Gray, the Chairman of HMRC has left - which is the right thing to do. What about Alistair Darling though? He is at the top of the Treasury and in generally in charge of financial matters. What will happen to him? This article highlighted a poor performance in the Commons following the data loss. He hasn't resigned though - which is interesting. I think he should resign, but how would that affect Gordon Brown, who chose him to be the Chancellor?

Banks are preparing for panicking masses who will be enquiring about their personal details. The current levels of identity theft in this country definitely doesn't help. CIFAS, the fraud prevention service in the UK, has the following statistics:

Year	Cases recorded
2006	80000
2005	66000
2004	56000
2003	46000
2002	34000
2001	24000
2000	16000
1999	9000

Those figures show that although it's not yet a massive crime, it is on the increase - it could increase even more now that this problem has happened. Even if it doesn't, the worry will still exist amongst the general public.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Inland Revenue, Finance, Government

BBC job cuts - oh dear

2007-10-19T14:04:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday, October 17th, the BBC Trust approved plans to make job cuts which supposedly help the corporation become more financially efficient. The follow points are from this article:

Closing 2,500 job posts over the next six years.
Creating about 1,000 new jobs, many of which will be filled internally.
Making 10% fewer original TV programmes by 2012/13, focusing on fewer, high quality shows.
Establishing an integrated newsroom - merging TV, radio, and online.
Reducing the size of the BBC's property portfolio by selling BBC Television Centre by 2012/13.
Scrapping proposals for new activities, including plans for four new local radio stations.

The second point is cleverly written because it mentions the creation of jobs, but it's only internal reorganisation - there's no net gain there. The point about focusing on fewer high quality shows is worrying. High quality programming is what the BBC is all about. That will mean more repeats. The same article also provides net redundancy stats for each department:

Department	Responsible for	Redundancies
Vision	Factual, childrens, entertainment	640-660
Nations and Regions	Regional programmes	510-550
News	TV, radio & new media news	355-370
Future Media & Tech	Online, mobile, interactive, archives	120-130
Audio and Music	Audio on all platforms	65-75
Professional Services	Marketing, legal, finance	Up to 75
Sport	Sport on all platforms	Up to 20

BBC Northern Ireland will be losing 100 jobs across a range of departments. They only employ 675 people at the moment, so that's a considerable loss. BBC Scotland will have 210 jobs cut, but because of some jobs being created there will be a net loss of 80.

"Among the ideas approved by the trust were an undertaking to commission 10% fewer programmes as part of Mr Thompson's 'fewer, bigger, better' strategy. The move will mean budget cuts, more repeats on BBC2, BBC3 and BBC4 and also more 'repurposing' of content for the web."

The above quote is interesting because it highlights a flaw in Mark Thompson's thinking. In my blog post about the TV licence fee, I highlighted the fact that a number of digital channels have low ratings. If they were cut then there would be a huge finiancial saving and any original content could be moved on the other channels to reduce the number of repeats. Using Mark Thompson's strategy, those uncsuccessful channels will still exist, but they'll have more repeats and therefore fewer quality. There will also be fewer people to maintain what is already there.

The following is reported by Kate Holton (Reuters):

"News and factual departments will be hardest hit in the move, which follows almost 4,000 job cuts announced in 2005. The public service division employs about 18,000 people and most job cuts are likely to happen sooner than the plan's 2012-13 deadline."

It's worrying that news will be one of the biggest casualties. The BBC News is widely regarded as one of the best news services in the world and having fewer people maintaining that standard could potentially meant that there will be an impact on quality and the reputation of the service will be reduced. Fewer journalists means fewer original stories. If you watch the 24hr news service, this will mean that you could see even more of the same.

These job losses will mean a saving of £155m per year for five years according to this Telegraph article. The big figure will have made the BBC Trust members happy.

However, there is another point. Trustees are meant to be separated from the day-to-day management of the BBC. As this is the case, they are more likely to approve decisions of the management as it has already been through their processes once. This does not mean they automatically approve everything though. Major job cuts may be good financially, but as I said it could affect the general quality of programming and could cause viewing figures to go down. Strategically, this is very bad and is a reason for the trustees to reject anything on this scale.

The following quote is from the online version of The Scotsman:

"The BBC has come under fire for paying Jonathan Ross £6 million a year, comic Graham Norton £2.5 million and Jeremy Paxman a reported £1 million."

If those 'stars' were paid much less, surely that would make a significant finiancial saving and/or sustain the jobs of some journalists in the news department. I would have thought that that my suggestion of cutting the digital channels alongside this would be hugely beneficial.

The National Union of Journalists has said there may be a strike. The problem is that because there is so much choice on TV, people will just choose another channel if it affects any of the broadcasts. I can understand why people would want to protest though.

In conclusion, I would say that although financial savings may be needed, Mark Thompson's strategy is the wrong approach. I think the BBC Trust should have rejected the proposals.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: BBC, Employment, Finance

'No pimps allowed'

2007-09-27T13:53:00.000+01:00

Wikipedia has been a valuable reference tool for many people since it's creation in 2001. Below is a list of the number of articles submitted in each of Wikipedia's 10 most popular languages:

English: 2,025,577
German: 644, 514
French: 562, 648
Polish: 427, 910
Japanese: 417, 000+
Dutch: 361, 237
Italian: 353, 135
Portuguese: 287, 645
Spanish: 282, 076
Swedish: 252, 261

There's also several other languages including Danish, different types of Norweigian, Welsh and Scottish.

There might be the occasional question over the accuracy of some of the articles, but that is because it allows anonymous posting - so there is no way of ensuring that only trustworthy people make the edits. However, you can create a user account (as I did) if you don't mind being identified. It will also allow you to carry the list of contributions you have made from computer to computer (for anonymous posting, Wikipedia takes the IP address of the computer).

Under the name 'Pimp Daddy', I have made 36 contributions to Wikipedia. They have ranged from spelling corrections to the creation of pages (e.g. I created an article about the World Darts Federation).

My username might not be the most serious looking choice, but it contains no swearing, no racism, no anti-semitism, etc. It's just a bit of fun. However, Wikipedia have decided to block me from editing because they felt it was inappropriate. This has happened despite my numerous contributions to the site using that name already. There are many people who include things such as bias in their contributions, cause controversy and don't even bother to create a user account - but most of them do not get blocked.

This was the message that I get when I try to edit an article:

"You have been blocked from editing, or tried to edit a page to which you do not have editing access.

Pimp Daddy (your account, your IP address or a range of addresses) was blocked by DragonflySixtyseven for the following reason (see our blocking policy):

no pimps allowed

Your IP address is 150.237.47.14, and your block has been set to expire: indefinite."

Obviously, I was annoyed by this. I sent an email to one of the Wikipedia administrators (DragonflySixtyseven) expressing my opinions (without swearing) and I received this response via Wikipedia's 'My talk' feature (part of the email I sent is shown at the top):

""I have been blocked from editing pages and the reason given was 'No pimps allowed'. I think this is a totally unjustified reason - it is only a username."

No.

You have three choices:

1. you can start over with a fresh username. This is easiest, but you will lose all your previous edits.
2. you can post a request on WP:CHANGE to have your username changed. If you opt for this, you will have to post on your talkpage first to ask to be unblocked so that you can post your request.
3. you can walk away from the project in disgust.

I suggest option 1 or 2, but some people do opt for 3.

DS 22:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)"

I still believe that this is not a valid reason given my good conduct and accurate contributions on the site. As a result of this I won't be using Wikipedia again.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Wikipedia, Wiki

The cost of blogging

2007-09-24T13:49:00.000+01:00

There has been plenty of news and opinion recently about whether bloggers can be considered journalists and whether they can expect certain rights and privileges. Recently, another story in a similar vein was reported by a number of people across the internet. The following is a quote from an article on the Bit-tech website:

"...Jessica Zenner, a 23 year old contractor for Nintendo who has been formally fired for posting inappropriate comments on her personal blog. Jessica, who posted under the pseudonym of Jessica Carr, was unaware of Nintendo’s scrutiny and thought she was protected by her right to freedom of speech."

Yes - Jessica Zenner has been fired for using her right of free speech.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

You could argue that the release of important company information in her blog would harm the company in some way, but after reading the blog there is nothing like that posted there - it's mostly personal stuff. There is one section where she insults a fellow employee, but there is no name mentioned.

The way she was fired wasn't exactly appropriate either. According to The Stranger, she was told by the Human Resources Director via her BlackBerry. The proper way of doing it would be to arrange an appointment with Ms Zenner so they could talk to each other in person.

Ms Zenner could go for wrongful dismissal, but if she did I think she'd only want compensation. Why would you want to be reinstated to a business where there is so much ill-feeling?

Providing people follow things like Non-Disclosure Agreements, you should not be fired for blogging - especially if it's a blog not hosted on the servers of the company. Jessica Zenner used Live Spaces, the Microsoft blogging platform.

So what do you think?

Technorati tags: Jessica Zenner, Nintendo, Blogging

Gone to SEED

2007-09-18T12:26:00.000+01:00

Taken from The Free Dictionary:

"Idiom:
go/run to seed
1. To pass into the seed-bearing stage.
2. To become weak or devitalized; deteriorate: The old neighborhood has gone to seed."

One of those two definitions is probably what you were thinking after you read that title. Well, both are wrong. I've actually joined a software development place called SEED Software, which is in the University of Hull's Computer Science department.

This doesn't mean that I've finally joined the ranks of the tax-payers again though. SEED provides training and much-needed experience of working on software projects for real clients while you look for a job. So many computer jobs ask for prior experience, but how can you possibly get that without a job? Well this is an answer to that classic Catch-22 situation.

I don't really know how long I'll be here, but it's already proved to be useful and this is only my second day. I've learned a bit more about how C#/.NET handles TCP and I've found out more information about the inner-workings of an instant messenger program. This is because my first task was to create something that has the basic functionality of Windows Messenger. It's a throw-away project though. I chose that instead of going onto a real-life project straight away because my programming skills are a little rusty and that could mean I end up missing deadlines. I'll be moving onto one of those 'real-life projects' once the IM program is completed though.

Iain Kelwick, the SEED Manager was very helpful - he took me through the initial stages of this messenger project and that lead up to my lunchbreak nicely. This is the point where things became interesting though. I was going to go into Staff House for some food - but it was too late (my lunchbreak started a little later than expected), so I went into the union (the first time since I left my sabb job). I ended up talking to loads of people and catching up on things (which was good), fixing two computer issues (which seems to be my role in life), working on another problem and getting no food at all. The union shop was closed at that point and the vending machines were almost empty - grr. At that point I went back to the Computer Science department and got something from the vending machines (how nutritious!).

Anyway, I went home at a reasonable time and now I'm back again today to carry on working on the messenger program.

Has anyone else been in a situation where they need experience to get a job, but need a job to get experience?

Technorati tags: SEED, Software Development, University

Journalistic standards

2007-09-11T12:00:00.000+01:00

Following on from my post about the licence fee etc. in a previous post, I have found another reason to criticise the BBC - this article.

Here's an example of why that piece was badly put together:

"A 2005 study showed that an increase of 10 mobile phones per 100 people could increase GDP growth by 0.6%."

This was a study from two years ago. The information might be accurate, but wouldn't it be better if the journalist used a more recent reference? If there's no study covering this from 2006 or this year, go and look for another type of source. Also, what is this study called and who did it? It's common (and required) practice in universities and many other places to cite your references properly. You would think that someone from an organisation such as the BBC would know that you do that to prove the reliability of the information.

Ok, next point:

"Nearly half a million people, described by the UN as "the poorest of the poor", will soon be able to make mobile calls."

"It is hoped that the connections will help improve healthcare and education, as well as boosting the local economy."

The UN thinks that mobile in Africa would help solve problems such as healthcare and education? I can see that it would help if you need to contact the emergency services and you're in the middle of nowhere, but surely the most important things would be to improve training, build more hospitals, provide medical instruments and increase the provision of effective drugs. Mobile/Cellphones cannot improve those three things. As for education, the important things must be books and other reference resources, plus training for teachers.

Another interesting thing is that I can find no other coverage of this story on any other the other major news websites (e.g. CNN, Reuters) or after looking through the results on several search engines (e.g. Google, Live Search, Yahoo, Mahalo). I found nothing on Technorati or del.icio.us either. That might just mean that the BBC is way ahead of the competition on this story, but it's also likely that nobody else finds this newsworthy.

There is little or no balance to this article either. You can read plenty of positives and other assorted information about the project, but their is no criticism anywhere. There are no quotes from anybody saying things like 'this aspect of the Millennium Villages project is a waste of time and money'.

Anyway, there are some positives to the project. It is another way of improving the resources for the poorest people and mobile/cellphones can be useful when there is no-one else nearby who can help - but that is all.

This is just one article by one of their journalists too. It is not representative of the entire corporation. However, there should be efforts to prevent low quality articles such as this from being submitted to the website.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: BBC, Journalism, Mobile Phones, Cellphones,

OOXML fun and games

2007-09-05T13:20:00.000+01:00

If you're an average home user, then I know what you're thinking:

"I can't wait to hear the latest news about the emotional rollercoaster that is Office Open XML."

I hope you all noticed the slight hint of sarcasm there. The fact is, no average home user (at least no-one who fits within the currently accepted definition) will care about whether the new default file format for Microsoft Office complies with international standards. They will just want to start the program, create the document, save the file and open it again later.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't important for some people. In fact, it's causing uproar in the tech community. It has a bias towards English and uses a non-standard dates system. Another major point is that there is already a standard open file format that's used by products such as OpenOffice (it has that format set as default). With all that in mind, how can the computer companies and geeks create fully working programs that are suited for the average user which uses that format?

For those who understand XML (eXtensible Markup Language), this is an excellent article and exposes the major flaws - including my personal favourite which is that the files described in this ECMA standard for Office Open XML don't actually exist due to programs wrapping it in proprietary technologies.

ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association) has a process that allows you to 'fast-track' something towards becoming an international standard, something which is ultimately decided by the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation). If the only place where OOXML is used (Office 2007) changes it in such a way which means it no longer complies with the ECMA document, how can the ISO possibly make into an international standard?

If it is, then one of three things could happen:

To enable other programs to interop with the files, companies would have to buy a licence to use the proprietary parts or attempt to reverse engineer everything (the latter has been done with the .doc format in OpenOffice, but it won't necessarily be 100% perfect)
No custom program manufacturers will use the format. This would mean communication problems between software and they will end up using another format (probably the old-style MS Office formats or OpenDocument(used in OpenOffice))
Everyone would have to adopt Microsoft products

I would prefer the second option.

Other criticisms of OOXML include the use of VML (Vector Markup Language). This is something which (apparently) has little documentation and no library to use in programming. The proposed standards document for this was rejected by the W3C (World Wide Web C) due to their being a competing format at the time. Instead, the two were combined to form SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). VML is also used in Internet Explorer 5+. The documentation states that VML is only included for legacy purposes, but constantly building on top of things leads to a cumbersome and unmanageable nature. It would be better to just scrap the use of VML which would then make it more stanrdards compliant. Microsoft could even make use of the already-accepted SVG.

According to this article on Ars Technica, the Linux Foundation are pleading to countries to say no to the OOXML format. There is also a petition that you can sign (I've done that).

ISO have recently rejected an initial fast-track submission, but it could still be accepted if Microsoft address the technical queries. If it's accepted after that though, a patch would have to be issued so that the original version of the format (already in use on a number of machines) can be changed.

The O'Reilly Radar - a major tech news source - has widespread coverage of this story and it's journalists also criticise the format. You can find further articles about this on Opportunity Knocks and CNET. Bit-Tech has an article about this too.

I consider this to be a PR disaster for Microsoft.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: OOXML, Microsoft, ISO, ECMA

Is the BBC and the licence fee value for money?

2007-08-16T11:50:00.000+01:00

I was watching the TV one night and started to watch a program that I liked, but found out that it was an episode I'd already seen. This annoyed me and while I'm not the licence payer in my house, that person has experienced the same problem too. That got me thinking - exactly how many repeats are there at the moment and that ended up progressing to me thinking about the licence's value for money.

Lets start with the repeat problem. As the licence fee covers BBC channels (a point I'll mention later), I decided to look at the two most watched BBC channels - 1 and 2. One of the reasons they are the most watched is because they are the two terrestrial BBC channels and everyone has that, whereas not everyone has satellite/cable. I also took the figures from two days of scheduling and not one (if all the repeats are on one day and I just happen to pick that one, I'll get an unfair result).

Here are my findings:

Date	Channel	Programmes	Repeats	% repeats
August 13th	BBC 1	30	7	23.3
August 13th	BBC 2	33	20	60.6
August 14th	BBC 1	29	12	41.4
August 14th	BBC 2	31	22	71

The percentages for each day were:

Date	% repeats on both channels
August 13th	42.9
August 14th	56.7

It seems there are many more repeats on BBC 2 compared to BBC 1, but the figures for both channels are awful. It's even worse when you look at the second table. The BBC get plenty of money from the licence fee - you would think they could stop showing repeats and only show original programming. However, their funds aren't just going into developing and broadcasting on the two terrestrial channels - they have a set of additional digital channels too. Those are BBC 3, BBC 4, BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, CBBC and CBeebies. That's quite a lot, but lets see if they are worth the cost by looking at the viewing figures (the following are the average weekly figures - if you click on the link you can also find out average monthly data):

Channel	Weekly reach - 000s	Weekly reach - %
BBC 1	35,947	77.5
BBC 2	26,750	57.7
BBC 3	11,905	25.7
BBC 4	5,542	11.9
BBC News 24	6,589	14.2
BBC Parliament	278	0.6
CBBC	3,875	8.4
CBeebies	4,428	9.5

It seems the only BBC network channels to go past 10m are BBC 1, BBC 2 and BBC 3. I'm sure the corporation could save a lot of money if the removed the other five channels and placed their original content on the three that are more successful. Having BBC 3 would still mean they have a digital presence pre-switchover aswell. For instance, in the morning on BBC2 they show repeats of childrens programmes. If they were to remove CBBC and CBeebies, they could put their original content onto BBC 2 in the mornings and solve that part of the repeat problem.

The worst digital channel in that table has to be BBC Parliament. It doesn't even break into the millions for average weekly reach and the first two BBC channels already have current affairs and political content (although they could have a bit more). The one problem is that there would be very little room in the schedule for things like select committee coverage. However, that could always be streamed on the BBC website and is therefore accessible for those who want it.

It is important to remember that people occasionally miss programmes that they want to see though - that one of the reasons why repeats are broadcast. Instead of putting the repeats on the BBC channels, why not offer them to the likes of UKTV who already show a lot of old BBC programming. Another possibility would be to make them available on the BBC website.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier I was think about if the TV licence is value for money. It shouldn't really be called a TV licence because it only funds BBC channels. What if you don't watch any BBC content? You still have to pay the licence fee but you aren't getting much value for money.

My next point is about students. I used to be one and I know several other students who had money issues. According to this page on the TV Licence authority's website, they provide several ways for students to pay, but they still have to pay the full amount. I think it would be better if students had a discounted rate to pay - other groups of people such as those in residential care who might not have a huge amount of money are charged a reduced fee. The one good thing if you're a student is that you can apply for a refund if you're not in student accommodation for 12 months (licences are renewed annually).

Then there is an issue for the blind people. According to the TV licence website, they are charged 50% of the full fee. Which fee is that though? Is it the full colour licence (£135.50) or the full black and white licence (£45.50)? It would be unfair if it was 50% of the colour licence because they would still get charged more than the full cost of the black and white version and they don't benefit from having the colour (especially if they're totally blind - which is obvious). It would be better if the charges were made a bit clearer.

According to this article, TV licences cover TVs, VCR, set-top boxes and PC-tuner cards that receive broadcasts. Notice how that list doesn't include radio. I'm sure you could understand that as it's called a TV licence. So why, when I like at the most recent edition of the BBC's Annual Report, do I find that a portion of the licence fee money goes towards radio stations (page 4)? According to this article, just over 22% of the licence fee income goes towards radio. You definitely have to pay less every year if that portion of the fee was removed.

Finally, I'd like to mention the pay of executives. On page 86 of the Annual report, I notice a table which states that no executive director who is still at the BBC got paid less than £100,000. They also get a healthy pension and other remuneration. The total basic pay for the Executive Directors in 2006/2007 was £3,422,000 and the total of the executive board was £3,477,000. Trustees are only supposed to be paid expenses, but the total figure that they got is suspiciously large (I suppose it depends how many trustees there are though). If the rates of pay for people like the directors were more sensible, costs would be cut dramatically and the BBC could put more into things like developing television and radio, as well as discovering new talent.

Overall, I would say that the BBC doesn't always use the money from the the licence fee well (or properly e.g. my point about the radio) and the directors get paid way too much. I also think that there are significant problems with the licence fee charging structure.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: BBC, Licence, TV

Is the mobile phone extinct?

2007-08-10T11:38:00.000+01:00

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of a mobile/cellphone is:

"noun:
a hand-held mobile radiotelephone for use in an area divided into small sections, each with its own short-range transmitter/receiver [syn: cellular telephone]"

and the definition of a telephone is:

"–noun
1. an apparatus, system, or process for transmission of sound or speech to a distant point, esp. by an electric device."

So, put simply, a phone is used for calling people. In 1985 the GSM standards included some called the Short Message Service, or SMS and the first commercial text message was sent over the Vodafone network in 1992. As text messaging was part of the GSM standards, you could still call the device a phone.

Things seem to have moved on a bit since those days. Lets have a look at an example of a recent mobile/cellphone - the iPhone:

The spec of the iPhone is:

4GB or 8GB flash drive
3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen multi-touch display
480-by-320-pixel resolution at 160 dpi
Uses Mac OSX as it's operating system
2 megapixel digital camera
Can play music formats such as WAV, AAC and MP3
Can play multiple video formats
WiFi and Bluetooth enabled
You can browse the internet

It's quite different from the standard concept. A fairly large touchscreen is a great idea for a phone - if you have a massive contact list then it's easier to navigate and with something like the iPhone you can store more details about each contact. A big memory is useful too if you're one of those people who downloads a load of e.g. ringtones.

Remember the definition of a phone and the GSM standards though. If you go by those phone are for calling and texting people. It states nothing about video playback, cameras, playing music or browsing the internet.

I think that there is no such thing as a mobile phone in production anymore. As there is so much added functionality (like what has been mentioned above), you can't really call them phones, or have any name with the word 'phone' in it. Calling people and sending text messages is a subset, and not a superset like it was previously.

So, what can we call them? It's better to use a generic term like 'mobile device' - something which is also used to describe PDAs. It would be difficult to come up with something more specific as it would end up being too long. Can you imagine an advertising department trying to create something for the 'Mobile-SMS-video-mp3-web phone'? Their brains would explode! It needs to be something much shorter and 'mobile device' is definitely shorter than that.

I'm not saying that they should all go back to a state where you can just call and text people because the big positive to having a lot of functionality on one device is that there's less to carry around. I just think that people who want to produce anything called a mobile phone should stick to the definition and GSM standards.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Mobile Phones, Cellphones, Smartphones, iPhone, Communications

How do you get your news?

2007-07-25T17:01:00.000+01:00

Originally people got news via the radio, broadsheet newspapers and occasionally via the cinema screen. This was perfectly fine for many years. However, with the increased use of technology people seek (or should seek) other sources to get a high standard of news.

If you stick with one source, such as the newspaper, it might give you plenty of information, but your views could become biased as you're only getting one angle on events. Also, newspapers have to cater for the majority because if they do that then they are more likely to get a high number of sales. What if the majority like to read about something that you're not interested in - or vice-versa?

Sometimes, the audience is not the only factor in deciding what news is released. It is an unfortunate fact of life the some media sources are heavily influenced by big businesses. For instance, a big business who owns a news network might not want a crisis relating to them broadcast 24/7. There could also be the threat of sponsorship withdrawal. Some news sources could be heavily dependent on sponsors to keep them running. What would happen if a news item put a sponsor in a bad light? The deal could be cancelled and then that news source could cease to exist.

I am a big advocate of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and RSS aggregators. It allows me to get news from several online sources without having to go through each individual website. I can get text-based news, download podcasts and video news and also go straight to the webpage of a particular news item if needed. I can also choose which type of news I receive. If e.g. I don't want to read about Big Brother, then I don't subscribe to any news feeds which would give me that information.

In the morning, I listen to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. I also occasionally watch both local and national news on TV. Yes, most of the TV and radio is BBC, but I still have the variety of RSS-based news sources to keep things more balanced.

Earlier I briefly mentioned podcasts. I think these can be hugely important. Like RSS, it allows you to get news whenever you want and pick the types of news you get. I get a large amount of tech news via this method, but you could get stuff about sport or politics.

Online media means a huge growth in 'user-generated content'. You can get news, commentary and opinions from blogs, wikis and videos. By 'users', I meant the people who would normally receive the content, for instance me. There has been some criticism of this as these people don't necessarily have professional journalism experience. However, just because people don't have that experience doesn't mean they can't do research and backup their content with facts. When I comment on current affairs in this blog I always make sure I use multiple references and use quotations relevant to what I'm talking about. The theory is that this will give my opinions more of a weighting.

I can see a day where there are no newspapers. I could quite easily stop using the likes of TV and radio now and just use the internet for my news. I could go to websites and watched news over a webstream, continue to use RSS and continue to get podcasts and download videos. I'd save money because I wouldn't be subscribing to a newspaper. I wouldn't have to waste time waiting for an item to be discussed on the TV news - I could get information about that item immediately by going online.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: News, Online Media, Newspapers, TV, Radio, Information

The life of an unemployed man

2007-07-04T22:00:00.000+01:00

I had been the Vice-President (Academic Representation) at Hull University Union for a year, had got settled and really enjoyed it. The job was one of the best experiences of my life. However, at midday on June 29th 2007, I became an unemployed man.

It was strange because for a while, the feeling of being unemployed didn't really hit me. However, it's now Thursday and I haven't been to work for a few days. I've been able to do a few things that I wouldn't normally have the time for because of the hours dedicated to my job. I don't feel as physically drained at the end of the day now and believe me, that's a good feeling. When I was working, I frequently fell asleep on the bus going home at the end of the day because I felt so tired.

The thing is, despite all the stress and tiredness, I would happily do the job for another year. Being a sabbatical officer at a student union has given me so many opportunities and experiences and I've met many great people. Many people who I know feel that I've done a great job as well (always great to hear that), which would've been something I'd have liked to build upon.

Oh well, another year is something that will not happen - so what's next for me?

People have asked if I'm going for a postgraduate degree. Well, I'm not. If I was more certain about which sector I'm going into, I might have considered postgraduate study because my education would then be more tailored to a particular role. However, I'm thinking about careers in computing or admin/management roles in higher of further education. Those two areas are both big and different. Something as specific as postgraduate study wouldn't suit that in my opinion.

I know a guy called John Franks who has had many years of experience in careers advice. He suggested looking for a job where I am able to figure out why computing graduates are not going into computing jobs and then figuring out a solution for this. It's an interesting idea and something that will allow me to be in both the computing and education sectors at the same time.

Another suggestion was to work for the University of Hull's Computer Services. Again, this may be something that allows me to be in both sectors. It's definitely something I won't be ruling out, but there are many different aspects to Computer Services, so I would be looking at job descriptions carefully.

I'm not just looking at jobs in the University of Hull though. Doing that will give me a smaller range of options and that will ultimately reduce my chances of getting a job. I have looked at other universities and places that aren't universities. The one major limitation is that that I can't drive - so if it is a job outside Hull it will have to be somewhere easily commutable by train. Either that or I get a great starting wage at some place which allows me to relocate (unlikely at this stage in my career though). Once I am able to drive, this will greatly increase my chances of getting jobs in the future.

So, how am I looking for jobs? In the past, people used to look in places like the Job Centre and the newspaper. The newspaper is something that I will be using, but I will also be looking towards recruitment agencies like Hays and using job websites like Monster, Jobs.ac.uk and the pages on DirectGov.

I have applied for some jobs already. Two were in administration, one was in quality and standards and one in international student recruitment. All four were university jobs and all four were unsuccessful. The money was good and my CV was a good fit in most cases. I think the big thing that lets me down is experience. Now I'm unemployed I think I'll do more frequent job applications for different levels of pay. The only thing about pay is that I want something more than what I got in my last job (it was unsurprisingly low as it was an honorarium).

One of the things that I became interested in when I was a sabbatical officer is governance. One day I would like to become a governor in a college or school and/or a charity trustee. However, I want to secure a full-time job first so I know how many hours I could give to something like that.

If any readers of this blog have been unemployed at any point, I'd be interested in knowing your experiences and how you went looking for jobs.

Technorati tags: Employment

The Blair Effect

2007-07-01T17:40:00.000+01:00

The year was 1997 - Tony Blair had just won a historic general election and become Prime Minister. There were crowds of people cheering as he went down Downing Street. The following are extracts from his victory speech on May 2nd of that year:

"And this new Labour government will govern in the interests of all our people — the whole of this nation. That I can promise you. When I became leader of the Labour party some three years ago I set a series of objectives. By and large I believe we have achieved them. Today we have set objectives for new Labour Government - a world class education system. Education is not the privilege of the few but the right of the many.

A new Labour Government that remembers that it was a previous Labour Government that formed and fashioned the welfare state and the National Health Service. It was our proudest creation. It shall be our job and our duty now to modernize it for a modern world, and that we will also do."

and...

"And it will be a government that seeks to restore trust in politics in this country. That cleans it up, that decentralizes it, that gives people hope once again that politics is and always should be about the service of the public. And it shall be a government, too, that gives this country strength and confidence in leadership both at home and abroad, particularly in respect of Europe."

There were plenty of promises and 10 years of leadership should be time for those promises to be delivered. The list of achievements below is taken from the Keeping the Faith website, which is dedicated to supporting Tony Blair (or was):

Britain now has the lowest inflation for thirty years and the lowest mortgage rates for forty years - saving homeowners an average of £3,700 a year compared to the Tory years. We have the longest period of sustained growth for 200 years.
The number of people in work is at a record level, up by over 2 million since 1997.
Over 1.5 million working people are better off thanks to the National Minimum Wage.
Hospital waiting lists in England are at their lowest since 1987.
In the NHS there are 19,300 more doctors and over 77,500 more nurses working with modern equipment, giving faster access to more people, all free at the point of need.
Standards are up across the board including the best ever primary school results. More teachers are in our schools than at any point in last 20 years - 28,500 more than in 1997.
Police numbers are at record levels - up over 12,500 since 1997, and are assisted by over 4,000 new Community Support Officers.

Seven achievments in 10 years. Wow - that's impressive (you might note a tiny bit of sarcasm there).

Let's think about the point about employment 2 million more people in work is absolutely brilliant. Well, it is brilliant until you find out that Britain is capable of increasing it's population by 1,420,306 in four years. That 'achievement' assumes that the population is static for 10 years.

Another interesting thing is that 'full employment' is frequently mentioned in New Labour propaganda (for instance, Gordon Brown mentioned it in this speech back in 2005). Full employment is - and always has been - impossible. There's always going to be a certain amount of people who spend a few days or week 'between jobs'. This could be due to resignations, redundancies and all sorts of other things.

The point about the NHS is interesting. It mentions how many doctors and nurses that have been recruited since 1997 (a combined total of 96,800), but it doesn't mention how many doctors and nurses have left since '97. According to this article, 20000 nurses have left the NHS (not sure whether this is since '97 or later than that), in 2006 3000 nurses went to work in Australia and there'll be a nursing shortfall of 14000 by 2010. That makes the recruitment figures less than impressive as it means there could either be a smaller overall gain or even a loss.

After Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Patricia Hewitt lost her job as Health Secretary:

"She was widely expected to lose her post after increasing pressure over NHS deficits and doctor training schemes."

That doesn't sound particularly good, does it? This article states that a study reveals that only 34% of the country believe that the Labour government had made the NHS better (this study was done by the British Medical Association, so it's a reputable source). Is that good? I don't think so. It's also interesting to note that the 2005 general election exit poll showed 37% of the vote was Labour (although this is made slightly less relevant by the fact that the turnout was 61.3%). That might account for some of the percentage at least.

Now for education. This was one of the things Blair and the New Labour regime focused on the most (at least initially). As well as the point in that achievements list, they often mention the City Academies, the 50% target for Higher Education and lifelong learning.

On the subject of Academies, this is how they're defined:

"Academies are all ability schools established by sponsors from business, faith or voluntary groups working in highly innovative partnerships with central Government and local education partners. The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) meet the capital and running cost for the Academy in full."

Tony Blair has said that parents back the scheme and Gordon Brown intends to continue with the plans under his regime, but people such as Estelle Morris (former Education Secretary and now a university Pro-Vice Chancellor) has her reservations. The academies scheme has also been criticised by the Education and Skills Select Committee and the Liberal Democrats.

The 50% target for universities is ridiculous. What about people who don't want to go down the academic route and want a more vocational style of education? What about the people who don't need that level of education for the job that they want to do? If the cap is to be taken off fees, then less people will be able to afford that level of education - which means the target will never be reached. For those who get to uni, it will mean that they'll have to take on even more part-time work, which will increase their stress levels and affect their academic performance. Sure, I think unis needed more money to improve resources for the increasing numbers, but I don't think the cap should be removed.

Lifelong learning has been a success. More and more mature students are coming to universities now to seek a higher level of education for a variety of reasons. However, if the cap were to be lifted - what would happen to them? A lot of mature students have extra responsibilities such as children and a lot of their money goes towards caring for them. How could lifting the cap make it easier for them to get into HE?

I won't cover this much more though, as I have an educational blog to go into more detail about this. I won't go into detail about the 'war on terror' either - as I have made it clear in a previous post on this blog that I strongly oppose it.

Lets not forget that Blair and Labour have done some good things during the past 10 years. They helped to secure the 2012 Olympic Games and....erm...help me out here!

Now we hear that Blair has become a Middle East Peace Envoy. I'm not quite sure why anyone could see him being effective in that role. Alongside George Bush, he went to war in Iraq and has stood alongside Bush in his opposition to any nuclear weapons programme in Iran (as I stated in a previous blog post, they have no proof of that programme yet).

There are plenty of other things I could comment on, such as the failing immigration system, the failed ASBO system, The New Deal or the fact the for years we have had a Deputy Prime Minister (John Prescott) who has done very little apart from go on junkets, have scandalous affairs and speak completely incoherently, but I won't as I'd be here forever.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Government, War, Healthcare, Education, Democracy, Tony Blair

The Eurovision Song Contest

2007-05-12T22:52:00.000+01:00

Serbia won this year's Eurovision Song Contest and their entrant was called Maria Serifovic. The choreography in the performance of her song was strange, but the song wasn't the worst I've heard in this competition.

Unfortunately, the usual (and obvious) voting strategy of the eastern bloc countries was present. This meant anything resembling a decent song was completely overshadowed and you can never determine whether the victory was on merit. That sort of thing absolutely sickens me. It's a song contest, not something that should involve political maneuvering.

You could tell that even ever-present Eurovision commentator Terry Wogan was getting tired of it. The thing is, many people in this country still like it, so it will still get put on our TV screens an mean better quality programmed is shifted somewhere else.

It's not just the eastern bloc voting that I don't like though. The entries that some countries have are so incredibly formulaic in terms of the tune. Also the lyrics of some of the songs are so simplistic and there can be too much of a focus on the performance. Yes, there is a huge audience so there should be a performance element, but let's remember that this is a song contest - so the quality of the song should be the thing that has more of a focus.

This is a classic example of what I'm talking about:

This - the Ukrainian entry - has repetitive lyrics, a formulaic dance tune and way too much emphasis on performance. It came second though! If this came second, it clearly means that many of the Eurovision fans don't care about serious music - they prefer it to be funny and/or silly. That sort of entry is why many people think the contest is a joke. As people think it's a joke, more recognised artists don't enter because if they lost, it would ruin their career.

I didn't see the whole of the programme because I was watching something that was recorded earlier in the week which was better quality. Of the entries that I did see, I thought Moldova was the best. It had a unique (for Eurovision) mix of classical and rock, there was an edge to the tune, the costumes weren't as silly as Ukraine and the lyrics weren't as repetitive. Here's the video that went with the song when it was originally released:

I also liked the Bulgarian entry (mostly for the impressive use of drums) and the German entry (because it was a big band style that no-one else did and I haven't seen when watching bits of the contest in previous years).

The UK has some good artists, could we submit something of a high standard? The answer to that would be a 'no'. Instead of something edgy, anthemic or original, we submit this:

If you liked clichés, needless sexual innuendo, a tune which makes you think you've heard the song a million times before and a group where none of the artists have a particularly strong voice, then this is for you. However, I don't like it at all. I wonder how many of the people who voted for Scooch to be the UK entry were under the age of 13. Scooch finished second-bottom with 19 points (the same total as France). We only got points from Ireland (who came bottom with five points - Albania giving them those) and Malta (who, for some reason, gave us 12). If anyone is interested in the points totals and who gave points to who, you can look at the table here.

Having just looked at the other UK entrants on Youtube, I can safely say that my preference would have been Big Brovaz. The music wasn't trashy, formulaic pop and the lyrics had more than three words to them. If I had my way the order of the UK candidates would have been:

Big Brovaz
Cyndi
Brian Harvey
Hawkins & Brown
Liz Mclarnon
Scooch

The lyrics of Liz Mclarnon's song were incredibly simplistic (I lost count of the amount of times she said "yeah" and "happy"), but the tune was fairly catchy and she had a better voice than any of the Scooch singers, which is why she finished above them. Justin Hawkins has the most unique voice out of any of the singers and he was the only one to use an instrument, but the song was unoriginal and the lyrics were poor, which is why that entry isn't my favourite. Cyndi had a powerful voice and the tune was good, but I didn't think her song was quite as good as Big Brovaz. If she had been the UK entry, she would have got many more points than Scooch.

Last year's winner was Lordi. Their song was so different from the other entries, the music had a definite edge to it and it's something that people remembered for a long time after the contest. You'd think that people would learn cheesy music wasn't the way to go after they won - but obviously not.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Eurovision, Voting, Entertainment

Shock in Virginia

2007-04-22T12:55:00.000+01:00

The mobile phone footage of what happened at Virginia Tech. contained in this video has been broadcast all over the world:

Obviously everyone's thoughts go out to the grieving parents and students.

There is a major problem with responsiveness though. Cho Seung-Hui, the student who killed all those people and, after that, himself, killed two students and didn't continue until two hours later. Surely that period would have been enough time to make sure everyone is notified and enough time to make sure the university is 'locked down'.

Four emails were sent to the students about the initial shootings just as Cho Seung-Hui started again. Those emails could have been sent quicker, but the uni could also have used other methods to communicate the dangers to the students. Not everyone reads their emails frequently and they won't all necessarily check them at the same time, which would always leave some at risk. What about PA systems? alarms? mass text messaging?

I'm not the only person to think two hours for any notification is slow. The following quote is from this article:

"As America struggles to come to terms with the tragedy, questions are now being asked about why the killer was not detained between the two shootings, and whether the university authorities could have done more to warn students.

Email alerts were only sent out two hours after the first incident, as the second rampage was well under way.

"I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason, an 18-year-old student."

It's important to note that it wasn't just the university admin who were slow. What about the police? Where were they after the initial shootings? They are on-campus police, so they should have been quick to respond. They may have had to bring other people in to help, but they could have done something while they waited for the others to arrive.

Now lets address a wider problem - use of guns in the USA. It's written into their Constitution (well, it's an amendment to the Constitution in the Bill Of Rights):

"Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Naturally, if it's in there, it's very hard to remove. The amendment has been in there for so long, the right to bear arms just seems normal to a lot of US citizens.

There are some people who suggested that some people should have been allowed to have guns at the university so that Cho Seung-Hui could have been stopped much earlier. This is a weak argument though. That just means that there are more people who could shoot others. Not only that - if those guns were owned by responsible people, they could still be stolen by the irresponsible ones. In Britain, we don't have a citizen's right to bear arms and there are far less instances of shootings in educational institutions. Examples of shootings at US educational institutions in recent years are:

Sept. 24, 2003 - Cold Spring, Minn. - Two students are killed at Rocori High School by John Jason McLaughlin, 15.
March 21, 2005 - Red Lake, Minn. - Jeff Weise, 16, killed grandfather and companion, then arrived at school where he killed a teacher, a security guard, 5 students, and finally himself, leaving a total of 10 dead.
Nov. 8, 2005 - Jacksboro, Tenn. - One 15-year-old shot and killed an assistant principal at Campbell County High School and seriously wounded two other administrators.
Aug. 24, 2006 - Essex, Vt. - Christopher Williams, 27, looking for his ex-girlfriend at Essex Elementary School, shot two teachers, killing one and wounding another. Before going to the school, he had killed the ex-girlfriend's mother.
Sept. 26, 2006 - Bailey, Colo. - Adult male held six students hostage at Platte Canyon High School and then shot and killed Emily Keyes, 16, and himself.
Sept. 29, 2006 - Cazenovia, Wis. - A 15-year-old student shot and killed Weston School principal John Klang.
Oct. 3, 2006 - Nickel Mines, Pa. - 32-year-old Carl Charles Roberts IV entered the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School and shot 10 schoolgirls, ranging in age from 6 to 13 years old, and then himself. Five of the girls and Roberts died.
Jan. 3, 2007 - Tacoma, Wash. - Douglas Chanthabouly, 18, shot fellow student Samnang Kok, 17, in the hallway of Henry Foss High School.

Is this enough evidence to show that allowing guns in schools, colleges and universities would be bad?

What have we learned from this? Having a right to bear arms can cause all sorts of problems and the police should have been trained to respond to this sort of thing. Virginia Tech might have been a gun-free zone, but some people actually break the law! Also, the Virginia Tech admin should have been much quicker in alerting the students about the dangers of the situation.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Virginia, University, Firearms, Murder

Blogging Code of Conduct

2007-04-09T12:52:00.000+01:00

Recently, Tim O'Reilly called for a blogging Code of Conduct. The rules in it were:

We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
We connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
We do not allow anonymous comments.
We ignore the trolls.

He also believes that there should be a symbol on blogs that don't comply with the guidelines, which therefore warns any readers that there may be uncensored arguments, etc.

Point 1 makes perfect sense. You type the words on the blog - you should be responsible for what happens as a result of them being published. You could say that something was a throw-away statement, but the millions of potential readers might not necessarily see it in the context that you meant.

Being criticised because of the comments that were left on a post is an interesting one. If they end up offending a group of people and they were on your blog - I can see why people should think the owner of the blog should be ultimately responsible. As a lot of blogs have comment moderation, that's another reason for the owner of the blog to be responsible.

However, there's an argument for you not being responsible for the comments. The comments were made by other people - therefore the opinions expressed in those comments are not necessarily the ones you share.

The second point is more complex. If you are in a position that means e.g. your job could be at risk by expressing your views on something, then you couldn't possibly comply with it. I can see situations such as politicians having a view that might not necessarily follow the party line. If they were to reveal that on the internet - in front of millions of people. It could cause many problems.

Some could call that cowardly though. I think that it depends on the situation. If it's in a work context and you need your wages because you are e.g. the sole earner in your family - you may want to think about it carefully (of course you might also want to look for another job - because that sort of environment doesn't sound perfect). If you are posting e.g. racist views that you know will offend a lot of people and you aren't willing to defend yourself - then that's something very different.

However, I would comply with that point because they are my views and not necessarily the views of the people who I work for (and with). If I have to put a disclaimer at the top of my blogs to clarify that - I will do.

The third point is interesting. I can see the logic behind it - you wouldn't want to post something and then find it's all wrong - you'd want some clarification first. What if it's difficult or impossible to get a response though? Also, the internet contains a vast array of information and opinions to help you clarify something. Maybe the third point isn't necessary.

Point 4 is common sense. If you feel strongly about something (or someone), you wouldn't want to see unfair accusations aimed at it (or them). You would want to defend your view. I would totally agree with that point.

My views about anonymous comments are the same as my views for point 2.

As for ignoring trolls, I think it depends on the situation. You might be faced with something that is like point 4 - which means you would respond to the trolls. However, simple and fact-free comments that are repeated again and again (even after you responded the first time) should be ignored. Perhaps you shouldn't approve them either. When I say 'simple and fact-free', I mean things like "Linux sucks!!!". There is no factual basis and nothing particularly complex. You might only want to respond to that sort of thing once.

I'm not the only one who has these views about the proposed code of conduct. Robert Scoble - 42nd in the Technorati 'Top 100 blogs' list, posted this as a response in his blog:

"I’m not able to currently sign this, either. First I allow anonymous comments. I do watch for hate speech, though, and delete that when it’s found (pretty rare, actually).

Second, I engage with my trolls. Why? Cause if they show up here I think they deserve an answer and I find they often get me to think deeper about the topic that I’m writing about than if we didn’t engage in a little gutter wrestling."

and:

"I do find disquieting the social pressure to get on board with this program. Tim O’Reilly is a guy who really can affect one’s career online (and off, too). I do have to admit that I feel some pressure just to get on board here and that makes me feel very uneasy."

Robert makes an interesting point about the pressure on bloggers to comply with this. I can see the logic, but not everyone reads Tim O'Reilly's blog - some might not read any blogs apart from their own. This means that the message won't get out to everybody and that makes getting the message across more difficult. Of course, not everyone who regularly reads the blog will agree with the code anyway (like Robert).

This was Alfred Thompson's response, which was also a response to Robert Scoble's comments (Alfred is a Microsoft employee involved with education sector. He has several highly popular blogs):

"Without a timely and public reply and correction things can be hard to get corrected. Sometimes it is a great idea to try and get things corrected privately and I have done that myself. Other times it is clear that trying to get a correction in private communication is not going to be sufficient."

and:

"If someone unfairly blocks anonymous comments that word will get out and people may choose not to read, link to or otherwise support that blog. Let the market decide but let bloggers have some principled control over their comment sections."

This is an interesting article on the BBC website which goes into a bit of detail about the reasons why the Code of Conduct was thought up in the first place and a valid point is made about the difficulties of enforcing it. As there are so many blogs out there, it is impossible to make sure everyone complies.

Although the code of conduct is well-intentioned, I don't think you could ever get everyone to agree with it and it could never be enforced.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Blogging, Code of Conduct, Tim O'Reilly

Demand and the loss of human sanity

2007-04-06T11:47:00.000+01:00

One of the problems with high demand was highlighted in this Guardian article:

"By 10am, the doors had been knocked off their hinges by the eager shoppers, desperate to get hold of a pair of £8 jeans. By 11am, a floor manager had been knocked to the ground by the hordes, trampling all that was in their path in search of a £2 bikini. And by noon the queue to get in snaked all the way down Oxford Street to Marble Arch with a waiting time estimated at a couple of hours."

One thing that seems to go out of the window when something is popular is patience. There was an opening time for the shop - but people seemed to ignore that. It is a big shop too, so it's not as if only a few people could fit in the place at any one time. Also, Primark tends to have plenty of everything - so it's unlikely that you'll be out of luck if you were to wait. There's also the concept of restocking - people forget that. If something sells out, the business notices that it is popular and therefore thinks it's worthy of ordering more. That means anybody who can't get what they want can always come back later.

There was something else related to this story that I found both amazing and utterly stupid:

"Sheila Drouin, 61, had come up from Bath with a friend for the opening. "When I heard they were opening a flagship store my friend and I decided to make a day of it," she said, clutching a £20 duvet set."

There are other Primark stores across the country - why not go to one that nearer? That would be the sensible option. Oh wait, I forgot - when something's popular sense goes out of the window! Just to prove that the sensible option that I just mentioned is possible, I had a look on Google Maps and found that a store in Bristol(journey takes 31 minutes) is closer to Bath than the store in Oxford Street(journey takes 2hrs and 15 minutes).

One other strange thing about this story was highlighted in this Telegraph article:

"A group of schoolgirls from Westminster said they were there to shop for cheap clothes to lounge around in. "We wouldn't come here for going-out clothes.""

Primark sells cheap clothes - that's why there's always so much of everything. There were queues for cheap clothes that some people only want to "lounger around in". Unbelievable.

In the Independent, there was a quote from a student which mentioned it was bigger than other Primark stores. Ok, if the store is bigger then you have more of a chance to get the stuff you want. That still doesn't excuse the mad rush and the panic that was caused as a result.

This picture was shown in the Daily Mail and it gives a good example of the madness outside the store:

Looking at some reviews of Primark, you can see that the problem with queues is a recurring theme. However, they don't seem to be doing much about it and they are still getting plenty of revenue. It seems that the people who go to Primark don't mind queues and huge crowds.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Queues, Crowds, Demand, Madness