Part of my argument in my earlier post was that there needs to be cultural change in politics. When I listened to the radio last night and heard David Cameron and Nick Clegg enthusing about the “new politics”, I felt like a major hurdle had been crossed. Of course, a lot of it is probably hollow rhetoric. But with the parties’ actions so far, they have shown that they can put aside party differences and constructively work together. This is — without a doubt — a great thing.

Is there enough action on the voting system?

Of course, it is not easy to stomach some of the things the Liberal Democrats have had to concede. For instance, I did not think a referendum on Alternative Vote represented radical enough electoral reform to secure agreement.

Another Liberal Democrat member I know was much more enthusiastic than me a few days ago. Believing that AV can be a staging post to proper electoral reform. I don’t like the idea of having to change the voting system several times if it is possible to make the right change once.

But we have to be pragmatic about it. On this issue, the Conservatives have given up a lot of ground. They have never shown any sign of being interested in moving from first past the post, but now they have opened the door that may let it happen. I’m sure if I was a Conservative, I would be feeling much more pain over this than I am as a Liberal Democrat.

The cabinet

All-in-all, I think the Liberal Democrats have done very well out of this deal. They have just 16% of the MPs, but have secured a lot of power. I was surprised that they have ended up with five cabinet seats, even though none of them (with the exception of Deputy PM) are particularly big posts.

In fact, the way the Lib Dem cabinet posts have been handed out seems to be more about convenience. They couldn’t credibly leave Vince Cable out, but making him Business Secretary keeps him at arms length from the George Osborne’s plans for economic policy.

Giving a Lib Dems the Energy and Climate Change job is also quite convenient for both parties. The Conservatives can be associated with green policies while being able to explain it away to grass roots members who may not agree with action on climate change.

And isn’t it useful to be able to give a Liberal Democrat the role of Scottish Secretary? With one move, the Conservatives have insulated themselves from accusations that the government doesn’t represent Scotland.

On the Conservative side, the picture is very mixed from my point of view. The party’s “good guys” (chiefly Kenneth Clarke and William Hague) are outweighed by the more dislikeable element (George Osborne, Liam Fox, etc.).There has already been criticism for the appointment of Theresa May as Equalities Minister. This is an odd choice for a party that is trying to avoid its “nasty party” image!

Policy

On policy, too, my feelings are mixed.

I am delighted with the political reforms, that have been proposed. It looks like reform of the House of Lords — using proportional representation no less! — may finally happen, along with a reduction in the number of MPs and the ability to “sack” corrupt MPs.

Political reform was one area where Labour did well in its early days in 1997, but it had long run out of steam and dithered on making reforms that have become overdue. The agreements in this area made by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats offer a lot of promise in my view.

The Liberal Democrats have lost big time on foreign policy though. My views on immigration are probably even more liberal than what the party had outlined in its manifesto. But it is clear that this issue, along with the party’s stance on the euro and Europe in general, is a big electoral liability for the Lib Dems. As such, it is no surprise that the Lib Dems have had to drop its policies here. It’s disappointing, but understandable.

Nor am I very happy that the Conservative proposal to give tax breaks to married couples has been given the go-ahead.

Civil liberties — the great area of agreement

But while some of the Conservatives’ social policies still seem a bit antiquated, they offer a great deal of hope on the issue of civil liberties. At last, the relentless assault on civil liberties will be reversed by the new government.

The attitude towards civil liberties is central to the Lib Dems’ ideology, and crucially it is also an area in which the Conservatives have good form. This is one of the core reasons why I favour the Conservative–Lib Dem coalition. At long last, we have a liberal government. The Conservatives can help deliver a genuinely liberal agenda in a way that Labour simply don’t know how.

What’s to hate about the Tories?

While the Conservative party still generate a lot of anger among some, it’s not clear to me just why. Thatcher is 20-year-old news, and no-one holds Labour to account for Michael Foot’s policies.

I think the left must realise because you hear the shrieks of “poll tax” much less often than you did even just a couple of years ago. I have found it very interesting that time and again people instead bring up fox hunting. Admittedly, this is sometimes in a light-hearted way. But it has clearly become the new lazy way of criticising the Conservatives.

Is fox hunting really the worst thing about the Conservatives today? If so, I see no reason to worry too much. It’s an odd issue to get worked up about. If you are worried about a few dead foxes, why don’t thousands of dead Iraqis matter so much?

Let’s be fair. Labour have had their time, and it was not pretty for a liberal. It has been 13 years. Let’s at least give the Conservatives a chance.

Overall: a tentative thumbs up

There’s no doubt about it — there be dragons, potentially. Both sides will have plenty to disagree with, and a lot of it is difficult to swallow.

But this is the way coalitions work. We see coalitions work like this in democracies around the world, and they have worked in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I am delighted at the grown-up way in which the political parties have handled the situation. Although some voters clearly have a bit to go, this bodes well for the idea that this country truly is ready for positive political reform. A “new politics” gets the thumbs-up from me — but time will tell whether it can last.

Most of all, it pleases greatly me to see a liberal — big ‘L’ and small ‘l’ — government. It already feels like a breath of fresh air.

This the accompanying article to my contribution to this week’s edition of The Pod Delusion. Here you can find videos and links if you want to delve further into the topic.

You can listen to the full podcast below.

My name is Duncan, and I am a motorsport fan. Is it a bad thing? Am I evil? Do I need to join Petrolheads Anonymous?

This year’s Formula 1 World Championship is coming to an end. The Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships have been wrapped up by Jenson Button and Brawn-Mercedes respectively, and now we have one last race to enjoy before the sport takes a break for the winter.

This has not been an easy year to be an F1 fan. In terms of newsworthy stories, it’s the sport that keeps on giving. But even by F1′s standards, it has been an extraordinary year for scandals.

Bear in mind that in previous years Formula 1 has brought extraordinary enough stories. There was, for instance, the so-called “spying” scandal which led to the sport’s governing body, the FIA, handing the McLaren team a fine of ONE HUNDRED MEELION DOLLARS. Then there was the “German prisoner” sex scandal involving the FIA’s President Max Mosley.

This year cranked up the scandal ever-further. Even in the first race, a major scandal blew up when Lewis Hamilton and his McLaren team were caught lying to the race stewards.

It also emerged this year that the Renault team had colluded with its driver Nelsinho Piquet to deliberately crash his car to hand an advantage to his team mate Fernando Alonso in last year’s Singapore Grand Prix. This endangered the life of Piquet and of other drivers and spectators.

In the past year, two major manufacturers — Honda and BMW — have pulled out of the sport, with persistent rumours surrounding the commitment of the other manufacturers. Moreover, almost all of the teams threatened to break away from F1 to set up a rival championship, in protest at the way the sport is governed by Max Mosley and the FIA.

The governance of the sport may change this week, as Max Mosley is stepping down as FIA President. The election to replace him is taking place today, on Friday. This actually may have more widespread implications than many realise.

Even though during last year’s sex scandal Max Mosley was persistently described by the media as “F1 boss”, the job of FIA President goes much further than that. The FIA has significant sway over road safety issues and effectively represents car users on the world stage. If you are a member of the AA, the RAC or even the Camping and Caravanning Club, you are represented by the FIA.

Clearly, this year there has been a lot going on in the world of motorsport. While cynics point out that, for the sport’s commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone, any publicity is good publicity, this all served to further discredit a sport which isn’t exactly the most popular among some. Formula 1 is seen by many as a sport which is dangerous, environmentally unfriendly, the personification of greed — and perhaps even sexist.

No doubt there is an element of truth to some of these accusations. So, how does this sit with me? I am a massive fan of motorsport, but I have liberal political views and a concern for the environment. Do I lack principles? Is F1 a guilty pleasure for me?

I actually see no reason why it should be. Some motorsport fans are unapologetic about their passion, and they see no reason to dress it up as anything but an extravagant bit of fun. But I see motorsport as a positive force that has a lot to contribute to the world.

Yes, Formula 1 is dangerous. This year, one driver, Felipe Massa, had an horrific accident when he was struck on the head while travelling at 170mph by a spring as heavy as a bag of sugar which had fallen off another car and was bouncing around on the circuit. He was lucky to have suffered no long term damage. The spring destroyed his helmet, but if it had hit him at another point he could have lost his sight or even died.

Sadly, one Formula Two driver was not so lucky. Henry Surtees was killed when he was struck on the head by a tyre which was bouncing around on the circuit after it had detached from another car in another accident.

While a ticket to a grand prix states in large letters, “motor sport is dangerous”, such accidents are mercifully rare in top-line motorsport these days. Major injuries are rare, and the last fatality in Formula 1 was in 1994. Believe it or not, more than 2½ times as many people have died while competing in the Great North Run than have died in F1 since 1981, when the Great North Run began.

But this year’s events in motorsport show that complacency should never set in, which is why improvements in safety are always being pushed forward. Perhaps the real scandal though is that, despite the increasingly safe environment that professional racing drivers face, 1.3 million people still die on the world’s roads every year.

F1 technology can play a major role in reducing the number of accidents on public roads, and already has done. In 2007, one F1 driver, Robert Kubica, survived a 75g impact with nothing more than light concussion. The materials that make an F1 car so safe are exotic and expensive, meaning that the opportunities to help make road cars safer using F1 research are a bit limited.

But electronics such as ABS and traction control are commonplace on today’s road cars. Such technologies unquestionably save lives all the time, and their development was helped by early applications in racing cars.

The money that flows through F1, and the high-stakes nature of the competition, make it a great test bed for important technologies that improve our daily lives. F1 is an R&D powerhouse.

There is currently an exhibition in the Science Museum in London called Fast Forward, which showcases twenty instances of F1 technology improving the lives of others.

Included on display are high-tech tyre pressure indicators which alert drivers to a developing puncture before it becomes dangerous. Then there are F1 materials being used to help protect troops in Afghanistan from bullets and explosions. Slip-resistant boots based on F1 tyre technology for people who work in slippery environments, thereby reducing injuries in the workplace, are also on display.

A bit more down to earth is the gadget that can stop your central heating system from becoming clogged up with rust and sludge, thereby reducing energy consumption in the home. Hospitals have even analysed mechanics’ behaviour and procedures during pitstops in order to improve the speed and accuracy of medical teams.

But how about the environmental impact of this gas-guzzling sport? I must say that my view is that rather too much is made of this. That is not to say that Formula 1 does not a significant environmental impact — it does. But emissions from the F1 cars themselves are actually a drop in the ocean. The racing itself does little environmental damage.

What is really damaging is all the travelling that teams, the media and fans must do in order to attend the races. The good news on this front is that F1 is carbon neutral, and has been since 1997. The FIA Foundation, the charity arm of the FIA, has taken into account not only emissions from the F1 cars and the travel of the teams, but also the transport of the fans that attend the races.

But any activity that involves being somewhere requires travel. F1 is a global sport, so there is a lot of global travel involved. But otherwise the sport actually seems rather restrained. In just 17-or-so races, a World Champion driver emerges.

Compare this to another competition, say the English Premier League in football. To come up with a mere national league-winning club, 380 football matches must be played, with all the travel this entails too. In comparison, F1 looks positively restrained.

Maybe that is an apples-and-oranges comparsion. It is just as well, then, that F1 technology also looks set to pave the way towards a green future. Formula 1 has the potential to help greatly reduce energy consumption. Refuelling during races will be banned from next year, shifting the balance more towards fuel consumption rather than raw power.

Another major initiative is the Kinetic Energy Recovery System, or kers, which the FIA finally legalised for this season. Kers is a system which harvests the kinetic energy that is dissipated under braking and would otherwise be wasted, and re-deploys that energy into the powertrain.

This technology has had a rather troubled birth in F1. The systems have been too expensive for teams to develop in the current economic climate, and it looks as though kers may take a back seat for a few years. There is also scepticism over whether kers as it is applied in F1 is actually relevant to road cars.

But one team, Williams, is adamant that its flywheel system will find a large variety of applications in the real world. The team says that its energy recovery system could improve road cars, vehicles used in mining, rail systems and “anything that moves”.

(For more on this, I highly recommend the recording of a Q&A with the Technical Director of Williams, Sam Michael. I was lucky enough to be invited along to the Williams F1 factory earlier this year along with a number of other web journalists and bloggers. The excellent Brits on Pole website has fantastic coverage of the visit.)

Plans continue to gather pace on this front. On Wednesday, the FIA outlined its plans for a green future of F1 (PDF). This includes a plan to make motorsport a competition based more on efficiency than raw power, and a stronger focus on energy recovery technologies.

The FIA also plans to introduce its own carbon neutral scheme, including offsetting its regulatory presence. It may also make carbon offsetting a condition of involvement in a championship.

So there you have it. Motorsport is a force for good in the world. Not bad for something that is hugely enjoyable. My halo is in tact.

The decision to vote

A series of posts

1. A pathetic situation
2. Five disturbing things about democracy
3. How should politics be reformed?: Part 1
4. How the new politics might look: part 2
5. European election leaflets: The main parties
6. European Parliamentary Election literature: small parties
7. A second opinion
8. I decided! And I decided to vote

Scottish Conservatives

This is a pretty substantial leaflet, with lots of copy for you to read. It’s pretty slick. One thing that strikes me is that it avoids the tacky symbolism adopted by the other right-wing Eurosceptic parties. The only sign of nationalism is a rather washed-out Union Flag acting as a background.

Content-wise, it starts with a number of cut-outs of newspaper headlines chronicling Labour’s many disasters — as if we needed reminding. Below that is a picture of Gordon Brown photoshopped to make him Janus-faced, which is disappointingly base.

Policy-wise, the focus is very much on European issues. While I may not agree with all of their policies, I appreciate the effort they have taken to tell us exactly what they have done and plan to do in the European Parliament.

Unfortunately, this focus on Europe goes out of the window during the message from David Cameron and Annabel Goldie. They essentially encourage you to vote to send a message about the Labour government in Westminster. There is no escaping the fact that the European Parliamentary election is a second-order election, and will therefore often be used as a way to “send a message” to the government. But I’d rather the Conservatives wouldn’t encourage people to discard European issues for a European election.

No word on the coalition of charmers they are trying to build up either.

Scottish Greens

We have not heard a peep from the Greens. No leaflet came through the door. So I have taken a look at their website.

The blurbs are full of the sort of stuff you come to expect from Greens. For instance, it attacks “reckless growth”, apparently oblivious to the fact that it is the lack of growth that is hurting everyone so much just now. They attack the economic system, but offer little in the way of alternative ideas, apart from more control and more regulation. And renewable energy.

Among their main plans is a promise to create “hundreds of thousands of jobs”. Good luck with that one. They also advocate mutual financial institutions, glossing over the problems that hit the Dunfermline Building Society.

Scottish Labour

This leaflet is not just tailored for Scotland. It is aimed more narrowly at Fife and Tayside. We learn that Labour has the vote of Kariann and Kenneth from Rosyth, whose are pictured with their son Ryan. Oddly, they all look rather glum. Their quote says:

It’s Gordon Brown’s leadership that will get us through these tough times. Labour is the only party on the side of hard working families, standing up for Scottish people nationally and in Europe.

They’re not doing a very good job of it though, are they? As for “Gordon Brown’s leadership”, I can only imagine that Kariann and Kenneth are by now the laughing stock of Rosyth. There can’t be many towns in Scotland that have been more badly hit by Labour’s disastrous economic policies than Rosyth.

I’ll never forget the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, when Gordon Brown stood in Rosyth banging on about job security — only for 700 jobs to go at Lexmark. According to this page, 1,599 jobs had been lost in Rosyth — around an eighth of the town’s population — between 1997 and 2006. Labour’s economic legacy in Gordon Brown’s patch.

When you open up the leaflet, the first thing it does is play the unionist card, as you would expect from Labour. It’s not that I disagree with the message, but it does seem a bit ham-fisted. It is perhaps a mistake for the rest of this page to focus on Labour’s economic record, which is in tatters.

Page three concedes that “it may seem hard to talk about an upturn now”. It certainly is hard to talk about it while Labour are in charge. There is only a brief mention of what Labour’s MEPs have done, and nothing at all about what they plan to do in the future. The rest focuses on the SNP’s record in the Scottish Government. Above this blurb is a rather unflattering photograph of Gordon Brown and Lindsay Roy, two people who always look uncomfortable in front of a camera. Neither of them look particularly happy, reflecting the mood of the times.

The back page sees the return of Kariann and Kenneth, telling us what they think. They tell us that the SNP “have broken almost all their election promises”, then list all the “wrong decisions for Scotland” the SNP have made. Nothing about European issues.

They are “not voting for the Tories because of the last recession.” Hahahahah! Quite why the relatively benign recession that happened almost twenty years ago matters more than the one that is ruining everyone’s lives today is not entirely clear, although I suppose we have come to expect this sort of logic from Labour supporters. Anyone but the Tories, never mind the facts.

Scottish Liberal Democrats

The Lib Dem message on the front is simple and effective: “Stronger together, poorer apart”, illustrated by a tug-of-war team wearing orange and black. Inside, the copy focuses on “international action” that the Lib Dems help take.

Admirably, the entire leaflet focuses largely on European issues. There is a section at the bottom on why each of the other major parties are so bad. Gordon Brown is pictured shaking hands with George Bush — a bit of a cheap shot. The SNP are bad because a “broken up” Britain would be weaker in Brussels. The Conservatives would also isolate us from Europe. Apparently the Tories “only agree with small fringe parties including UKIP and Sinn Féin.” Ouch! Another low blow.

Despite the cheap shots, this is easily the leaflet that speaks the most to me. I appreciate the focus on European issues, underlining the importance of international action in certain areas — a concept I agree with.

SNP

The SNP are a major party, so there are none of the amusing loon-policies. However, what it does mean is a lot of bland platitudes. “SNP MEPs will always do what’s best for our nation, our families and our communities.” What does this actually tell us? Would any party say they wouldn’t do that?

One thing that differentiates the SNP is the promise to “Campaign for Scotland to be a member of the European Union in its own right” — in other words, independence. Surprise surprise.

Disappointingly, Alex Salmond’s message focuses on what the SNP Scottish Government is doing, rather than what the party plans to do in Europe. The back of the leaflet provides a list of what the SNP is doing to protect Scottish jobs. This feels more like an opportunity to remind us of what the Scottish Government is doing rather than a plea for us to vote SNP in the European Parliamentary election.

The Greens seem set to use their status as potential kingmakers within the Scottish Parliament in the current budget negotiations to persuade the Scottish Government to adopt their policy of providing free insulation to all of Scotland’s homes. I raised my eyebrows when I first heard about it, thinking it was bound to be expensive. But it’s not really. The scheme would cost £100 million, which is pocket money compared to the £33 billion budget that the Scottish Government has at its disposal.

As such, I’m finding it impossible to see the downside. Everyone in the country gets their homes insulated for free. This allows us all to turn the heating down, with the dual effect of saving us money in the long run and reducing energy consumption (and climate change). Then there are the health benefits involved in having a warm home. It will also provide some jobs in construction at a time when there is slack in that sector — a good bit of Keynesian medicine at just the right time.

Best of all, the scheme is based on a successful experiment that has already taken place in Kirklees, so we know it can be done. It seems like a win–win situation all round. The scheme is relatively inexpensive and the money will soon enough be recovered in the saving in energy bills. It’s difficult to see how it could go badly wrong.

I write about this because it’s a long time since I’ve been so heavily in favour of anything any political party has said. I had rather lost my faith in political parties, and had become jaded with the whole political process. What’s surprising is that it’s the Greens who have grabbed my attention with this excellent policy. Even more surprising is that it’s a policy that involves a degree of extra government intervention. I’ve got to take my hat off to the Greens for managing to get me applauding a policy like this. It gives me a warm feeling, which is quite appropriate.

The Greens have a campaign website called Warm Scotland where the policy is explained in more detail. See also this blog post at Two Doctors. I hope the scheme gets the go-ahead.

Normally, that is more or less true. But this one time the software was downloaded, and my Freeview box has not quite been the same since.

The software was for the Teletext Extra service. In essence, Teletext Extra is just a really elaborate, annoying EPG. Quite why this was required when I already had a perfectly functioning 7 day EPG is unclear.

What is clear is that I have been unable to use my Freeview box in the same way since that day. Every time the box is switched on it defaults to Teletext Extra. You then have to wrestle with the remote control just to switch this blasted EPG off. It’s as though they thought I would want to switch me television on to do something other than watch television.

Mercifully, the old default EPG is still available, so you can choose never to see the Teletext Extra service. Don’t think this gets rid of all the bloat bullshit though.

If, for instance, I dare to switch it off at the mains, the next time I want to watch television I am harassed by a new message telling me that I might as well have thrown my television off a cliff. It then switches into some kind of spooky mode in between standby and full power which makes the red light flash.

It remains in this mode for several minutes, sometimes around half an hour by my estimation, downloading crap for this rubbish EPG. The EPG that I don’t use, and have actively switched off.

In these energy-conscious times, it seems like an anachronism to actually be forced to leave my Freeview box on standby permanently. And just why does it take half an hour to download this programme information when the old default EPG managed it with no bother, with no time-consuming downloads?

Even worse, should I be committing the heinous crime of watching television at either 3am or 5am, the Freeview box displays yet another message warning me that I have 30 seconds to press the ‘quit’ button on my remote control or else it will go into the aforementioned spooky mode. Worst of all, sometimes for whatever reason it ignores my button presses, and I have mashed the quit button so much in my attempts to avoid spooky mode that it is now partially broken.

I mean, is this not just immensely stupid? Is there not a way for the box to say to itself, “Oh, it looks like my owner is watching television. I guess I had better not bombard him with messages obscuring the programme, and I had definitely better not switch myself off automatically.” Seemingly not!

The worst bit comes, though, when you want to watch television when it has already entered spooky mode. You can press the power button all you want, but there is only a small chance that it will ever bring itself out of spooky mode to allow you to watch television. You know watching television. It’s that thing that I bought the blasted box for in the first place! Even if you manage to get it to stop its spooky behaviour, chances are you will be greeted by a blank screen, so you will have to try again.

Now this is becoming big news. It seems as though I am not the only person to have experienced trouble with this Teletext Extra service. In fact, several people have reported a variety of different complaints ever since Teletext Extra began to pollute the DTT service.

Given the immensely important role DTT and Freeview has to play in the impending analogue switch off, the fact that Teletext have rolled out a service that has crippled so many boxes is rather concerning. Particularly given that I never use the Teletext Extra service, nor do I ever intend to use it in the future as I already have a completely fine EPG on my Freeview box, I do regret letting the download happen.

Having said that, I can’t even remember if I had the opportunity to refuse it. I certainly was not made aware of the nature of the download — what it was for, and the implications it would have on the functionality of my Freeview box. No doubt if I did refuse the download, I would still to this day be getting the notifications every time I switched on my Freeview box.

But ranty Alex has written a post about it, and it’s true!

…if you get the data, you’ll find that, when you interpolate the emissions from aviation fuel uplifted from the UK, it makes up 5.5 per cent of the UK’s CO2 emissions. (Comparison – electricity generation is 30 or so, road transport a quarter)

It is a cracking post. Alex goes on to ask why environmental campaigners are so deseperate to cut aviation when even if flying were ever to be completely eradicated (which I think most whould agree is not even remotely on the cards) we would still be left with 94.5% of that mucky CO₂ in the air.

So why would you go for the hardest problem first, especially when it only represents 5 per cent of the problem?

In my opinion, much more energy could be saved, and less CO₂ emitted, if people would switch off unused lights, switch off their computers overnight, don’t leave their televisions on stand by, and so on and so on. Why do shops leave their lights on overnight? That makes me mad.