Has Brown Blown Labour's Last Chance To Win?

Ten of you Prospering for Evil.
Ten of you Suffering for Good.

The balance between Good and Evil teeters on a knife edge...

OK, this week's poll is actually about polling.

Has Gordon Brown made a silly mistake?

Certainly, I can't see Labour having a better poll position than they have had of late. It's not going to get any better. Iraq will go on and on, the housing market will burst soon, the economy is going to take a downturn for sure, Scotland will remain an uncomfortable issue and basically, the public are soon going to remember just how sick of New Labour they are.
Even with a personnel change.

This was almost certainly his only shot.
Because elections aren't about opinion polls- they are about how people vote on the ground. And what many of you may not realise, is that the odds are, Labour would lose their majority, even if the national voting percentages exactly replicated the last election.
There are two reasons for this.

Firstly, new constituency boundaries will be in place at the next election. This irons out some of the inequalities in constituency size which give Labour such a lead in seats. It doesn't make much difference, but if every voter in 2005 voted today the same way, the Labour Majority would drop from around sixty to around thirty.

Secondly, tactical voting and tactical unwind.
In 1997, everyone wanted the Tories out. In many Tory-Labour marginals, the LD vote collapsed, as LDs voted tactically for the Labour candidate. In Tory -LD marginals, Labour voters voted for LD candidates.
Thus the Tory defeat was skewed by everyone voting for who wasn't the Tories.



This phenomenon was still in effect in 2001, but by 2005, had shifted a little. By this time, Tories were happy to vote LD to get Labour MPs out, and sometimes vice versa.
But the Tories were not yet benefiting from tactical voting against them abating.

That will happen next time. It will be LABOUR, that gets hit by tactical voting. The Tory vote will probably drop in seats Cameron can't win, but the LDs can. Seats such as Norwich South, represented by the unpleasant Charles Clarke.

Correspondingly, LDs will hold their noses and vote Tory, where this can help get a Labour MP out.

The polls don't show the electoral arithmetic. Time and time again, we have seen parties LOSE votes, yet WIN seats- The LDs are a good example, but Plaid Cymru have done it more than once.

Tactical voting and tactical unwind will probably cost Labour fifteen or so seats.

Oops. There goes that majority.
And that's without a poll shift from 2005.

Had he called an election now, maybe he could have scraped home. I think the LDs would have been hardest hit right now, but the Tory advance would have been negligible. Even if Brown lost his overall majority, he would probably have been in the position of being the only party realistically able to broker a power deal.

He won't get the chance again, in my opinion. Election Fever has woken the Tories up. They have started to think about policies. OK, not many of them are any good, but nor are Brown's.
And the Tories haven't been in power for ten years, so if they start to oppose properly, they will wear this government down.

All Brown has to do to give Cameron an absolute majority, is go full term. The longer he goes on, the more seats he will lose.

John Major made that mistake.



Well, he had his chance. Five more years of Labour.
Maybe he realised that Labour really couldn't take another five years- that another five years would make it so unpopular, it would be annihilated in the election after.

Or maybe he wants to adopt a scorched earth policy.
Maybe it doesn't matter. Who are the Tories pretending to Socialists, and who the Socialists pretending to be Tories?
Or have we got two brands pretending to be both?

It's an amusing game to watch, but it really is Nulab versus Blulab.

Do you think Gordon has blown it?

Have your say!

PS For those of you interested, I've decided to start posting my novel online as an incentive to myself to get on with writing it. If you think it's drivel, please let me know. It's linked in the sidebar above the blogrolls under its working title 'In the Service of Order'. I intend to post bit by bit as much as I have actually got typed up.

The Eighties- Oh, But There Was Style!

Whatever people say, there was something very stylish about the early eighties. Until Stock, Aitken and Waterman appeared with their nasty little mission to turn the whole world of music into a processing machine for Belinda Carlisle clones and Boy Bands, music hit a state of brilliance, it has never quite found since.

There was so much great music produced in the early eighties, so many great bands were formed then, or produced their greatest works in that period.

I find the eighties a paradoxical time. Like the renaissance, it was very dark in social terms, a decade of greed, selfishness and the systematic destruction of a sense of social responsibility.
But in artistic terms, certainly in Music and Films, it was a peak.



As some of you will know, many of my favourite groups originated in this period; notably Depeche Mode and New Order, but also The Human League, Heaven 17 and several others.
The three tracks I've chosen here are examples of eighties tracks I love for their sense of style and sophistication; they ooze city lights, luxury and good times.

If eighties music is not your cup of tea, or you are interested in matters of thought, I've done a post at Imagined Community, which may interest you.

Lastly, although this may seem an odd place to mention it, I'm very flattered to appear in Iain Dale's top 500 UK political blogs.
I'm not sure how I appear in this work at all, but all I can say is I am extremely honoured and a big thankyou to those who thought I deserved a place in it (174- that's really not bad going for a little blog like this).



I hope you enjoy these tracks and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

xx

Literary Snobbery- Do you Read to Enjoy, or Read to Impress?

One thing I have always found annoying about literature, is the so called 'canon'.

Those sacred texts which get to sit on special shelves at Waterstones, the 'superior' works which are marked out from the common works which fill the rest of the store.

Annoying, not because there aren't works which rise above the norm.
But because of the bizarre way this elite set seems to have been decided.
And how this group is treated.

I have always held the view that there are really three canons.

The first canon, I call the pseudo-canon.

These are works which have had the merit of being read a lot over time. The thinking is, lots of people have read these books, therefore they are well written, cleverly put together, with something earth-shattering to say.

In fact, it isn't so.
Jane Austen, for example. Her books have sold a lot, I agree.
So have those of Jackie Collins and Barbara Cartland.
I wouldn't read either of those out of choice either, and as far as I see, the only difference between the works of the latter two ladies and Ms Austen, is about two hundred years.

Jane Austen is lightweight Mills and Boons drivel, but the presence of her novels in the canon, as with those of the Brontes, allows people to believe that they are educated intellectuals, because they have read a few 'classics'.

Well, if these are the only 'classics' you have read, I'm afraid it is a delusion.

Wordsworth too, is over rated. He is the best known poet of the nineteenth century, because he is the easiest- and the dullest.

Even Dickens, I have to say gets a slightly better press than he perhaps merits. I'm not saying he can't be witty sometimes, but excepting the loathsome Charles Kingsley (a rare example of an author I have given up on in disgust), few authors have such an intrusive authorial voice or such cardboard cut out characters.

And whilst his plots are well constructed, they have a habit of stretching coincidence and implausibility to levels which make the reader cringe.

I'll give him a Christmas Carol and one or two others, and I'll concede he is a GOOD author.
But not a GREAT one.

The second canon, is what I call the true canon.
These are the works which are accepted as greats, and in my opinion, deserve it.

Shakespeare stands out here. Not all of his comedies, many are tedious.
But King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V, Merchant of Venice, Richard III to name but a few, these MUST count as masterpieces.

I often feel we waste Shakespeare by forcing him too young on underappreciative schoolkids.

He IS the greatest playwright ever, and people need to come to that discovery through free will.

Also hiding away in the true canon, are those works which many have heard of, but never read.
Spenser's Faerie Queene, almost certainly the greatest epic poem ever written in the English language, Milton's Paradise Lost, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake.



And whilst the Bard reigns supreme amongst the dramatists, we should not forget Marlow.

And skulking at the edges of the true canon, when by rights he deserves a place at its heart, is John Dunne.

Lastly, we have what I see as the hidden canon.
These are works which put the false canon to shame, but are kept out by snobbery. Works which really do have something to say, are well written and unforgettable.

I always judge all literature by what I call the Aeneid test.

To me, Virgil was the man, as far as classical literature goes.
It annoys me when people place the Iliad above the Aeneid. If you've ever read both, there can be no question.
The Aeneid set the standard for all time, as far as I see it.



So what do I put in my hidden canon?
The works which I think show someone who actually IS well read, not just out to impress.
Well, I always did have Lord of the Rings there, but I think since the films, that has finally been accepted as the classic as it truly is.
It IS the best piece of literature ever written.
No doubt about it.

I think 1984 has always been accepted, and HG Wells is begrudgingly half accepted now as canon, though not nearly enough.

But in my hidden canon, I include CS Lewis' underappreciated Out of the Silent Planet and succeeding novels.
Huxley's Brave New World certainly belongs also. Scott Fitzgerald is definitely a classic author, certainly for the Great Gatsby if nothing else, and I'd also add Graham Greene.

And of modern dramatists?
If you are not mesmerised by an Arthur Miller play, you have no soul.

So there it is. I had to read Sense and Sensibility AND Pride and Prejudice for my degree, but I find the Conan the Barbarian stories as enlightening, and a lot more interesting.

The best reads are rarely the ones they televise.

Stand Up and Be Counted- Because Others Can't

Today this image is to be found on many blogs, uniting 'left' and 'right', man and woman, European, American, Australasian alike.

Where blogs can be free, a message is here.
I committed myself to this yesterday, as have many, but I'm afraid I'm breaking one of the rules.
The image is supposed to stand alone, in silence.

But I'm not the silent type.

We aren't going to overthrow the regime in Myanmar by doing this, but we are showing the people of that oppressed and wounded land that we are here for them. Ordinary, common people.
We are showing faith that every voice can make a positive contribution.

And that's something.
It's a start.

Because since General Ne Win took power in 1962, it's not been a happy story in that country.

But let's not leave it there.

Let's ask the harder questions.
What else can we do?

Not just about Myanmar, either.

When are we going to start waking up to the ethical consequences of what we buy?
When are going to realise, that the only real differences between Myanmar and China, is the lack of clout Myanmar has.
No one will dare bat an eyelid at China.

We console ourselves that they are becoming good free market capitalists, with a growing economy, forgiven the atrocities of Tianamen Square, because they are a source of cheap goods for our consumer society.

But where do those goods come from?



Made in China, often means made in Labour Camps.
Made by prisoners, some of them simply political dissidents.

Part of China's 'booming' economy, is sustained by a production sector with NIL Labour costs.
Human beings being worked to death.

Working in the sector I do, I see day to day, how much manufacturing has moved out to China.
Why?
So they can buy their components cheap at source from Prison Labour, package them in their own plants nearby and send on to the affluent west.

This is happening and we all benefit. But it's no better than buying lampshades made in Belsen.

We can't know how everything we buy was produced. But we CAN look and see if it was made in China.

Just as we can ask why our governments have troops in Iraq, but not Darfur.



The people of the west, united, CAN make a difference.

And demanding that Burma be free, is as good a place as any to start.

Watch the Screen

A two week deal in Singapore
prices slashed like never before,
we can find insurance deals,
children's toys and ready meals.

Celebrity Big Brother starts at nine,
don't these diamond rings look fine?
What is nasty, what is nice?
Both can be altered, for a price.

Cookers, fridges, freezers, beds.
Keep these images in your heads.
Stay on the sofa, watch the screen,
not just the films, but what's in between.

Garden sheds and double glazing,
a higher premium on your savings,
a house, a car, two kids, a wife,
we'll give meaning to your life.

Work for five days, spend for two,
the power for us, the product for you,
and amidst this shining array of choices,
no one will hear the dissenting voices.

Free Will and Predetermination in the Best of All Possible Worlds

Ok, this post may get a little uncomfortable, but I think it will end on a positive note.

One of the great questions that troubles religous or philosophical minds is the whole Free Will versus Predetermination thing.

Some believe your choices are down to you.
Others believe that everything was laid down at the begining of time.

So which is true?

Or are they both true.

Well, in a sense, they must be.

As I have already implied, the universe will not end a second later than it has to. I cannot see any other way than saying that from the instance of the big bang, everything that happened must be pretty much set in stone.

There will have been many routes to the end.
But only one is the fastest.
And that is the one we experience.

So let's look at your choices.
Right now, you are choosing to read this. A choice you made.
But what is the YOU that made that choice?
What kind of entity are you?

What dictates your thoughts?



Basically, electro-magnetic impulses following grooves eroded into your brain. Your thought patterns have developed over time and been built on. They are the product of the chemicals present in your brain and the grooves that have been laid down by their reactions over time- what we see as our experience, our 'memory'.

It's all a chemical construct. What we see as our thoughts, are entirely chemically conditioned.
Ultimately, you make good choices, because you are a machine that works, you make bad ones, because you are one that doesn't.

The you that decided to read this, is a series of chemical reactions.

Now chemical reactions simply follow the laws of nature.
You have no control at all over your thoughts, really.

Yes, you have free will. You can make any decision you want.
But chemicals will make it for you.
Because that is what you are.

When you face moral dilemmas, when you agonise for days over a course of action, still, when it comes down to it, the decision will have been made by the paths followed by the chemicals in your brain.

So really, everything that happens is simply just all part of one big series of reactions, all part of the same reaction, the one we call the universe.

So when you do good things, you were always going to.
And when you do bad things, you were always going to.

The mistake people make (though of course, those who make it were always going to make it) is drawing the wrong conclusions here and forgetting that the very processing of this fact is being done by those same chemicals.

If you blame fate for doing the wrong thing, it was inevitable you would.
If you choose free will and make a hard- but right- choice, that too was inevitable.

Because the universe will not end a second later than it has to. We live in the universe that uses up most energy quickest- that is certain.
And the one that uses up most energy, must be the one, surely, in which life proliferates as much as it can, does as much as it can, LIVES as much as it can.

This is not only the most efficient universe there can be, it is also the best of all possible worlds.
It is the one where Life crawls from the Amoeba, through the Hagfish, the Reptile, the Monkey, then Man, Superman, till we are indeed gods.

God did not make Man in his own Image- he gave Man an Image of what Man would be.

Which means that everything we experience, everything that happens to us, every pleasure we experience, every pain we suffer, it all serves some purpose.



We cannot see it ourselves, we may die miserable, unable to comprehend.
But not that often, I think, if we learn to go with the flow of the universe.
To accept what life gives us, both the pleasure AND the pain.

Because we are being taken somewhere, and if the universe truly is as efficient as it can be, it must seek to reconcile as far as possible the capacity to feel contentment and enlightenment that it has given us, with a realistic possibility of actualising that.

Nothing has no reason.
Nothing serves no purpose.

Out of everything we think we have lost, a greater good will come.

Regret nothing.
Rejoice at every experience you have had.
It is part of your journey.

End and Means- The Curious Blend of Good and Evil

Well, twenty of you are being won by Inner Monkey.
Worryingly, the Reptile has four of you...

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Or so the saying goes.

And it is true. It isn't a platitude. It IS something we really need to get to grips with, not just in the world at large, but in understanding ourselves.

The problem seems to be, that Good and Evil don't appear to us in black and white.
We can't see the difference easily.
It's easy to judge others when we see outcomes, but we don't always know motivations.

For example, I always get a little disconcerted reading about the Nuremburg trials. Some of these guys perpetrated some of the greatest evils of our time- or were silent accomplices to them- but some, were to my mind anyway, Good men with Good intentions, at least to begin with. When did they realise they had crossed the line?
Did they ever realise?

It is disconcerting. Good men with Good intentions can equal Evil.
And then of course, we find ourselves confronted with the reverse.

Sometimes, Evil men with Evil intentions cause Good.

How can this be?

It's what I call the John XII Paradox.
As a Catholic, I have to have faith that the Church- my Church- is, and always has been serving the purpose of perpetuating the teachings of Christ.
That, like any institution, some of those serving in it, are Evil.

But the overall thrust is Good.
I do believe that the world is a better place for the existence of the Catholic Church.
I don't particularly ask YOU to take that as proven, but I think its overall contribution to the world, has been for Good.

But if you are to be devout- but honest- it has to be accepted, that several of those selected by Christ to be his Vicar on Earth, were not Good people.

John XII being a good example. It's a safe bet that if there is a Hell, it contains John XII.
So why would Christ CHOOSE this man, to lead the faithful?
Or Alexander VI, the Borgia Pope?



One is left with only one sensible answer.
That somehow, it served Christ's Church, and the Universe as a whole, for the Church to be led by an Evil man.
That through it, greater good would come.

And if Good came out of the Holy Roman Empire- something that accidently emerged from the machinations of this Pope, then maybe that was God's purpose.

But the paradox there is- If John XII had been a Good man, and a Good Pope...
The world would have been a WORSE place, in the long run.

This is the only way I can reconcile myself to things like the Inquisition.
The Conquistadors, I have less of a problem with, when I look at Montezuma's temples full of hundreds of still beating human hearts.

But if we accept all this, then we have to accept the startling consequences that for some of us, our successes are denied, because they would make the world as a whole worse.

And more sinisterly, there MUST be some people, who if they won their own battle with Good and Evil, would make the world a worse place, than if they lost it.

Good and Evil are intertwined in ways the complexity of which is hard to fathom.
Each one of us is such a blend.

And each one of us faces most of our choices blind.
If they were that clear, with Good white, and Evil black, I'm not sure everyone would go for Good, but at least people would know where they were going.



Because as it is, Good intentions by Good men, are not enough for Good to win.
Good men need to know exactly which blend of Evil they need to use to acheive Good.
Because the wrong blend really will lead to Evil.

But none at all, will also lead to Evil.

Because Evil doesn't JUST entice us with the things we know can corrupt.
Wealth. Power. Sex. Drugs.

Sometimes, it can entice with wholesome things too.
Loved ones. Family. Children. Happiness

And sometimes, the road to true Good may REALLY mean, that we have to make the hardest choices of all. Maybe surrender any chance we have ourselves to be happy.

Could you make that choice?

Prosper for Evil or Suffer for Good.

Have your say!