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.

It’s difficult to know what I am hoping for. The party I am most sympathetic towards — the Lib Dems — has a pretty low chance of achieving anything meaningful. And let us face it, the only reason Glasgow East has interested people is because Labour have a chance of losing a safe seat to the SNP.

Watching the SNP and Labour battling for votes in Glasgow East is like watching the two biggest bullies at school trying to win a popularity contest. You don’t want either of them to win, but deep down inside you really like it when one messes it up, even if it gives the other guy an advantage.

It’s been quite fun to see, therefore, both parties messing it up a bit. Labour’s woes have been pretty well documented. The former MP, David Marshall, is involved in a slimy corruption scandal. He pocketed half a mill in office expenses when his office was his house and his office staff was his family — while representing the poorest constituency in the country. Yes, that sort of brass neck would make me feel ill as well!

Then the candidate Labour were going to put up for the by-election turned out also to be very possibly a corrupt bastard as well. And the two people who “stood against” him magically disappeared — presumably because they were never intended to have a chance of actually being Labour’s candidate.

So Margaret Curran was parachuted in. She is actually quite good, though the “fourth choice” jibes are pretty damaging. This also leaves “the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament” in a bit of a pickle because she was going to be their leader. But that’s a worry for another day.

I said Margaret Curran is quite good. I meant that she comes across well on the telly. But of course since she is a Labour politician she is actually a honking liar. She said she’s lived in the east of Glasgow all her life, when in fact she has lived for years in a fancy house on the south side. And she mistook a 67-year-old Labour Party activist for a 93-year-old World War II hero “who looks not a day past 70, by the way”.

Not that the SNP’s candidate, John Mason, seems to be much better. In fact, he seems like the sort of person your mother warned you about. When asked about his views on an independence referendum, his answer was somewhat creepy.

When you ask someone to marry you, sometimes you have to persist.

Lovely.

John Mason also has a history of anti-English behaviour, demanding that a school remove England flags from a World Cup display. Given that the SNP is supposed to be trying to do away with the perceived anti-English element of the party — and does a good job of it, by and large — I am surprised that the SNP should give someone with these views a platform in an important by-election.

I don’t believe the SNP is an anti-English party per se (though undoubtedly many of its supporters are anti-English). But if they do not put a lid on this element more effectively might it become their Clause IV?

This is becoming a running theme of this blog, but I’ll say it again — you can’t blame people for not wanting to vote. And it looks like turnout will be very low in Glasgow East.

That is not just because the two front-running parties keep on fouling up. It is because of the decades of Labour neglect that have been inflicted on the area. Glasgow East is a part of the world that has been held by Labour since 1922. Yet it is in an utterly terrible shape.

The statistic about life expectancy in Glasgow East being roughly equal to that of the Gaza Strip is untrue. Life expectancy in Gaza is 71.01 years. In one part of the constituency, Calton, life expectancy is as low as 53.9 years. You can expect to live longer in Pyongyang than in Glasgow.

(Update: Bellgrove Belle pointed out in the comments that Calton is actually in the Glasgow Central constituency, not Glasgow East.)

It is staggering that this kind of poverty exists in the UK. And this is a seat that Labour have held for eight and a half decades straight. Labour is the party of the poor? If by that you mean they like there to be lots of poor people, then you are bang on.

You can blame the Conservatives all you want, but the fact is that in the 86 years Labour have represented the area, Labour have been in government for around 40 of them. And of course 11 of those have been the last 11 years. Given that it is such a poor area, you would have thought Labour would be eager to help them out. Given that Glasgow East is such a safe seat, where Labour have one of their most convincing mandates, you would think Labour would be eager and willing to repay their voters.

But no. As Fraser Nelson has shown, Glasgow East is the ultimate example of the utter failure of Labour and its policies.

Of course, it is also a shining example of the problems created by Labour’s best pal, the First Past the Post voting system. It was the very safeness of the seat that enabled Labour in the west of Scotland to become the arrogant, corrupt cesspit it became.

That is why David Marshall has absolutely no data on the voters of Glasgow East. He just didn’t care. It is the voters’ very loyalty that has meant that the Labour government has continued to ignore the area. “Not a marginal seat? Not a swing voter? Not interested.”

Given that these very voters are constantly lied to by the media and various other people that Labour is the only party that can act in the interests of the poor, it is no wonder that apathy is so widespread in Glasgow East. If I thought Labour — the party that’s been in charge since 1922 — was the best hope for change, I’d be pretty glum about it too.

The really depressing thing is that Labour will almost certainly win this election. That is partly because of the lies I’ve described in the above paragraph. Is it a cliché to say that a monkey in a red rosette would win in Glasgow East? That is the only conclusion you can come to when, time and time again, the voters keep on re-electing this bunch of failures that have done absolutely nothing for them. It is accurate to describe these kinds of seats in the west of Scotland as the modern equivalent of rotten boroughs.

As for the idea that Glasgow East’s voters will be confused between Margaret Curran and the SSP’s Frances Curran, thereby losing Labour some votes, I don’t buy that. The voters won’t be looking for the name ‘Curran’ on the ballot slip. They’ll be looking for the word ‘Labour’.

I was quite surprised therefore when at the start of the campaign political pundits based in London were confidently predicting an SNP win. I think they couldn’t imagine Labour winning any election in the kind of climate the Westminster Government finds itself in at the moment. But they didn’t count on the trusty voters of west central Scotland, who continue to vote Labour like a dirty old man who likes a good hard spanking.

It shows how out of touch the political pundits in London are with the rest of the UK. Since then, things have stabilised and received wisdom seems to point towards a Labour win, albeit with a hugely reduced majority.

Even though the SNP seem confident, I don’t see Labour losing. I think the SNP are making a big mistake by confidently predicting an “earthquake“. This will allow Labour to present a narrow majority (the most likely outcome) as a victory for them when it is anything but.

The fact that Labour’s victory is even in doubt is the real sign that Labour have failed. It shows that just now there is not really such a thing as a safe Labour seat. But the SNP have given them the perfect opportunity to bounce back.

What do I want to happen? Like I say, the choice between the SNP and Labour is a choice between shit and shite. I want neither party to win. I certainly want neither party to convincingly win.

As such, I want the result to be an extremely narrow Labour victory (1,000–500 votes or less). This would maximise the pain to both parties — Labour barely clinging on to what was one of their safest seats, while the SNP lose an election they predicted they would win. Fingers crossed!

(Punchline below the fold — not for those of a weak disposition.)

…because it can’t have been his looks.

What’s so special about 2004? It was the 150^th anniversary of civil registration (which began in 1855, in case your arithmetic isn’t too hot). So the Registrar General took the opportunity to delve into the statistics and produce lots of interesting analysis on this historical trends of Scotland’s population as far back as records go.

While I should have been writing my essay, I found myself perusing the graphs. I’m that sort of person. Obsessed with graphs. I’ll share a few of the most interesting ones with you.

Sorry about the illegibility of some of these. I have to confess that I am stealing the Registrar General’s bandwidth (although this does not vex me because the public is paying for that bandwidth, and something tells me they won’t get me with the goatse treatment). The original images are huge (much bigger than they appear on the PDF), so I have had to crudely reduce them in size to fit in these pages.

Immigration

Immigrants flooding this country! Er, or not.

Literacy

The Registrar General used the number of people signing by mark while marrying as a crude measure of literacy up until 1915.

Marriages in Gretna

They are a much more modern phenomenon than you might imagine.

Divorce

I bet if you got divorced in the nineteenth century it was national news.

Death

My favourite topic! You can see the general long-term decline in the number of deaths. But more interestingly, the peaks a troughs become much less extreme, signifying improved medicinal technology and ability to cope with epidemics.

These are just a few of my favourites, but I could have included twice as many (to be honest, you’re lucky I didn’t). But if you’re interested in Scotland’s modern history and demography I’d definitely take a look at the full document.

I don’t think Emil Kacic is ugliest man in the world. He is certainly not as ugly as some of the people of Newcastle. But is Emil Kacic the least self-aware man in the world? The most socially inept man in the world? Possibly.

I found another story with a bit more information (warning: contains some NSFW images). My Romanian is not too hot, but I reckon it says he has been looking for 30 years. This means that the average length of time he has known each woman before proposing is 2.19 days. No wonder he is getting rejected!

I’ve got to the point where I have even been asking women I am meeting in the streets to marry me, but they always say no.

What a shock! You know, I think if a stranger came up to me and asked me to marry them, I might do a bit more than just say no.

The thing is that when somebody proposes in this manner they are sending a whole variety of signals. He is desperate and rude. The fact that he is 49 years old and has still never married, despite clearly wishing he had, itself provides enough information to anyone who has the question popped in their face. Emil Kacic is a lemon.

It reminded me of another example of somebody approaching relationships in a controversial way. This also hit the internet big time a couple of months back. The “spectacularly beautiful” woman who placed an ad on Craigslist outlining her exasperation that she was failing to date anyone who earned more than $250,000. (Yeah, my heart bleeds.)

The most incredible bit of her ad is the paragraph where she points out that some rich people marry — gasp — plain-looking women!

Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the Upper East Side so plain? I’ve seen really “plain Jane” boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the East Village. What’s the story there?

Both the gold-digging Craigslist advertiser and Emil Kacic are making the same mistake. Both assume that looks alone are good enough. Mr Kacic reckoned that, as long as he was not abnormally ugly, all he would need to do was ask enough people and he would eventually marry. The Craigslist gold-digger (not a nice name, I know, but I don’t have her real name so it will have to do) also implies that the only possible justifiable reason why a man would want to marry someone would be if they were good looking.

For sure, looks must count to a degree. You would be lying if you said otherwise. But it could never be the sole factor, or even the main factor, when making the decision to marry. The reason comes from one of the respondents on Craigslist:

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party, and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub — your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity … in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms, you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset…

In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following: if my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

What I find interesting is something that is kind of skirted around by most people. What the Craigslist gold-digger is doing is little more than a subtle form of prostitution. Yet while the Craigslist gold-digger might attract a few eye-rolls and tsk-tsks, you won’t find her being fined or thrown in the slammer.

In this sense, masses of people sell sex. Countless relationships along the lines of what the Craigslist gold-digger was seeking must be forged. How about also actors who film sex scenes, models, those people on Babestation-style programmes, Page 3 girls, strippers, porn stars, brothel workers, street prostitutes?

My guess would be that many people find some of the activities at the end of that list more unacceptable, but some at the beginning of the list relatively innocuous. But they are all essentially activities that involve people selling their bodies for money.

Perhaps the biggest difference with the later items in the list (besides the case of street prostitution, which happens in a public place and with women in a particularly vulnerable situation) is the socio-economic status of the people involved. Is there a bit of snobbery that comes into play?

It strikes me that selling sex, in its various forms, is a reality of life. And since prostitutes are in an especially dangerous position I would have thought it would be wiser to be trying to help them more rather than increasingly criminalising (and thereby making even more dangerous) their particular brand of this common activity. In a sense, they are being penalised for calling a spade a spade.