Vox cani

So how much will this cost? At least they're being oh so robust about the Ukraine... Maybe the behind-the-scenes stuff on restoring the power-sharing assembly is going better.

I'm not generally one to be optimistic about the Tory party, but surely it is a
sign of desperation when David Davis calls
for "an independent judge-led inquiry" to find out whether David Blunkett
expedited what would have been an uncontroversial visa application, for
someone's nanny. Time was when sleaze was sleaze, this seems just like the sort
of thing that people often do at work, doing the bit of it that applies to their
friends quicker than the rest. It may not be right, but it's not incredibly
wrong. People who get annoyed at the barperson's friends getting served first do
not have a case.

Why start a blog? Start a blog because some things really can't be said well in
other media. I write to record that Diet Coke Vanilla, with a Sainsbury's
effervescent High Strength Vitamin C tablet (about 1g of actual Vitamin C), is
really really nice. It suggests that it would be even better with a little
whisky, but it's a bit early in the day for that experiment. Still, the
loveliness of these effervescent pills could well be a source of many lovely
(though insignificant) innovations in the realm of drinks in general, and
cocktails in particular.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Boris Johnson, although only briefly,
as he was not on form, and was in competition with some other very interesting
people, who were. He seemed to fit his caricature pretty much exactly, which was
reassuring in a certain way. One might easily accuse him of pretension, but, so
far as I could tell, he lives it.

In many respects, he is amongst the most popular Tories in Britain, drawing
rather unique crowds (some with tributary t-shirts) and cheers, when I saw him.
We've often imagined wistfully quite how much fun it would be were he to lead
the Tories. So now they've
sacked him: would this be an opportune time for a leadership challenge? The
obvious answer seems no, but it would be so much fun.

The Tory website gives only this
in response to a search for "Johnson", which is a cute headline to be the
confirmation of their non-coverage of what isn't a non-story. The official
reason is that he's lied about having an affair: his response is classic,
"piffle". There are a number of comments over at his blog, at the end of the
last post. This is rather good, from Stuart L (bizarre blog): "People
don't mind when politicians have affairs. But they hate it when hosts of 'Have I
Got News For You' having affairs."

I heard some rumours recently about him having a brief fling hereabouts,
which were confirmed as rubbish, and with that in mind, I would guess that this
really is piffle. Do look at the article, mainly for the attempt, down to the
right, to imply that it is unusual for him to have crumpled clothes.

The other alleged party to it won't talk to them and Johnson says it's
not true; the sources for the prosecution are her mother, who apparently used to
write for the NOTW, and the usual anonymous and ever so faithful "friends".
Shame.

Abbu Ammar, Yasser Arafat, that evil guy with whom we can't deal, or the hero of
the Palestinian cause, is
dead. I'm almost optimistic about Palestine now; it will be hard for Israel
and the US to reject a new guy, the way they rejected him, unless he (Suha? I
think not) is universally acknowledged as a terrorist. The drawn-out death
should have given the contenders sufficient time to get together a strategy that
will produce someone acceptable. If they didn't then the Palestinians really are
let down by their leaders; much as it is nasty to Palestinian democracy for
Israeli and American acceptance of their choice as a negotiating partner to be
conditional, rather than automatic. Hopefully international sympathy over Arafat
will ameliorate the negotiating position. They've been screwed for a long time,
and accepting that they have to act within bounds in leadership choice is
perhaps humiliating, but in the long run, nothing else is remotely sensible.

So briefly: obviously this result sucks, but this post isn't about that.
While I didn't blog them, my predictions were in terms of probabilities: -which
were more ranked and relative than they were absolute- thusly, legal action,
70%; Bush to win popular vote, 65%; Bush to win electoral vote, 50.01%.

The surprise was in the very small extent of legal action: there have been
rumblings in a couple of places, but this prediction, as everyone else's
similar, has to be said to have failed. I figure that this is self-ablating
prophecy in two main ways. Everyone predicted legal chaos over the vote, and so
it was scrutinised to a much larger degree than usual, with armies of lawyers on
both sides. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, as observation of problems is
correlated with intensity of observation, in a way which could over-ride a low
occurence of problems: there is sentiment. John Kerry conceded pretty quickly,
all things considered, and I think that concern for American democracy, and
desire not to be Al Gore, were important. A fiasco where no one expects one is
powerful; one where everyone expects one is not; there not being one where
everyone expects one is powerful in the opposite direction. I have more to say
later on corruption: which it is hard to believe that there wasn't.

The popular vote then: Kerry's campaign was very focussed on the electoral
college. While both candidates ignored the safe states, Bush did seem to make a
more national effort on TV, and with his message. Apparently his campaign also
advertised on lots of specialist networks to reach certain types of voters: i.e.
motoring channels to reach beer-swilling jocks (or "lads" as we'd call them: who
may or may not predominate in the audience of motoring channels: I guess rather
than judging) or whatever: using channels with specialist demographics to tailor
one's demographic reach. Bush's message was about terrorism, religion, and
tax cuts. The first and last aren't that favourable or disfavourable by state,
while Kerry's appeals on manufacturing jobs very much were.

The other big point on the popular vote is that apparently 4 million
Evangelicals stayed at home last time, when Bush lost by 0.5 million votes. This
time, banning gay marriage was on the ballot in 11 states, abortion is an issue
due to the likelihood of new Supreme Court appointments, and there have been 4
years of Bush using huge amounts of religious rhetoric, etc. I think that it
would be worthwhile trying to test the popular vote swing from last time,
according to those 11 states, and I'm on the lookout for a state by state tally
of votes, but something scary is immediately apparent: Bush won this time by 3.5
million votes, i.e. - 0.5 million + 4 million. Anyhow, he got the biggest
popular vote ever, which amounted to around 52%, so I was hella right.

The electoral college vote is explicable by the state-targeting reasons
above: Kerry lost the electoral college by about 150 000 Ohians (<-- is that
the word?). That is close, although the statistical margin of error of the
election was around 10 000: so it's nothing like last time's absurdity. I think
that here, I was again hella right, unlike some
people...

For comfort, I've been offered this. It is excellent.

Everything except for Tesco's does close absurdly in this country, but was I
not justified in thinking that my bank might just manage to be open until 1700?
What the hell is with half-past four? It's absurd.

It works: now I will also work; later I'll clear out the local cobwebs.

I don't know if this will work, but Abilon,
which I have used these past weeks for the daily Electoral College Vote Predictor
updates, that underlined just how close we were to a US President not hated by
half the world, has a built-in blogging tool. If this does work, then the
interface I'm using now is so superior, that blogging will be easy, and I'll do
it much more often. Here goes then...