Tag archives for 2015 - Page 3
Tactical Voting 101
Why you should consider tactical voting, and how to vote tactically. What is Tactical Voting? Share of the vote received by Conservatives (blue), Whigs/Liberals/Liberal Democrats (orange), Labour (red) and others (grey) in general elections since 1832. Table "Summary Results of General Elections 1832–2005 (UK)", British electoral facts, 1832–2006, by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, 7th edition, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7546-2712-8, p. 59. Election 2010 Results, BBC News. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) This is nothing to do with military tactics, no need to dress in combat gear or sneak around. Tactical voting is about looking wider than just your own constituency and trying to understand the best outcome for the party that you believe supports you across the country. Why would I want to vote tactically? Mostly this comes about when the candidate that would best represent you is quite unlikely to win the seat…
New Books of 2015 pt.3
This is the third batch of physical books that I have acquired this year. The reasons and methods of acquisition are more diverse than the first and second batches. There are nine books here, bringing the running total of hard copy books acquired during 2015 so far to 23, which increases my paper book reading target from the original 20 to 28 (because I said I'd try and read the greater of 20 or five more than I'd acquired.) So far I've finished 15 books, of which seven were paper. You can see my 2015 reading progress on Goodreads. A quarter of the way through the year and I've picked up more physical books than I expected to for the whole year. However some of this is front loaded because my birthday is in January. Also I managed to only…
General Election Opinion Polls
All the opinion polls that you look at for the UK General Election in May show a hung Parliament as the most likely outcome. However, things are likely to crystallise a bit more over the next few weeks now that Parliament has been prorogued and the election officially called (although we've not had any doubt over the date this time). If you read my previous series on the opinion polling for the Scottish Independence Referendum then you might be familiar with the graphs I produced. However that approach isn't really helpful for the General Election. With the Independence Referendum there was a single binary question, and the aggregate national answer was what counted. So to predict the result you could simply track the polls and look at the trends. The 2015 General Election is a series of 650 first past the…
Warning! Politics and Elections Ahead
A ballot paper used in the 2005 UK General Election. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) If you are in the UK it won't have escaped your notice that we have a General Election in a few weeks (on Thursday 7th May). Campaigning hasn't moved into high gear yet, but it will next week when Parliament is prorogued. (Maybe that word implies a lot about our politicians, pro rogues!) don't care about politics? Voting isn't mandatory in the UK. However, t if you don't vote don't expect anyone to listen to you complain about the government or anything affected by what it does. That includes the economy, housing, immigration, defence, policing, traffic, trains, prices of things, the NHS, public services, or just about everything else. In fact you can probably only talk about the weather, reality TV and football. I personally don't want…
New Books of 2015 pt.2
Here is the second batch of books that I have so far acquired this year, another seven titles to add to the previous seven. So far that makes 14, and my paper book resolution target is still at 20 (but only just, I said I'd try and read five more than I acquired). Like the previous batch there are a couple of late 2014 acquisitions in this group, but some of these are genuine new books of 2015 for me. Here are some of the reasons that I have chosen these titles (where I did choose them, one was an unexpected present). Up Against It by Locke I saw this recommended on Charlie Stross's blog by the man himself. It was cited as being a very good view of the harshness of life in space, especially if you were trying to…