There was great excitement at work yesterday when I updated the University of St Andrews homepage to advertise some exciting news related to economics, which was my chosen subject in a previous guise. A public lecture is being given by Professor Eric Maskin on the subject of how Members of Parliament should be elected. Very […]
How to make Gordon Brown look good: try to make him look bad
I have a horrible feeling inside me that Labour will win the coming general election. The fear has lingered in the back of my head for a while now. Even when Labour were at their lowest, perhaps 18 months ago or thereabouts, the Conservatives’ poll lead was not a great deal to write home about. […]
Where is our referendum on face-slapping?
Last week the SNP set out its legislative plan. The headline grabber was the long-promised independence referendum bill. Today I saw Caron’s post asking, “why bother with a referendum?” She has a good point. It is widely recognised that the result of any referendum would almost certainly reject the SNP’s favoured proposals. “Ah, but!”, say […]
General election night: the distasteful sport of politics
I see there has been a frisson of activity over the suggestion that some councils are looking to hold their counts on a Friday rather than the traditional Thursday night / Friday morning when the General Election comes round. The Sunday Times has reported that the BBC believes that up to a quarter of councils […]
How should politics be reformed?: Part 1
The crisis currently facing politics in the UK is massive. Citizens feel detached from the political process and trust in politicians is rock-bottom. It’s been widely noted that this is a perfect opportunity to reform the rotten system. I only want to briefly cover the main ideas for reform, so I will use The Guardian’s […]
Five disturbing things about democracy
Here it is: that post I’ve been sitting on for upwards of a year. Before I start, I am going to make a few introductory notes about what I do and don’t mean when I call democracy disturbing. I find that all too often debates about this subject are clouded by dogma, which leads to […]
Final thoughts on Glasgow East
Well, I say “final thoughts”, but really I mean “first and only thoughts” because this is the first time I’ve actually managed to find the time and motivation to write about tomorrow’s Glasgow East by-election. It’s difficult to know what I am hoping for. The party I am most sympathetic towards — the Lib Dems […]
Electoral reform: a different answer
A few weeks ago I attended a talk by Eric Maskin, who this year was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory. Eric Maskin seems to be quite an interesting person. He lives in a house that was once occupied by Albert Einstein. I imagine that […]