Monday 30 April 2012

My Train set

As a Kid I had a train set, it was in my opinion far too small in both size and scale. I have now sought to rectify this by building a new one or more accurately expanding Merseyrail. Apparently crowd sourcing is all the rage these days. So I'm starting a crowding source push for the £1 Billion pounds that my railway will cost. Don't worry it is not just for me you can all ride on it if you pay the fare.
In return for your help funding your name will be immortalised on one of the sleepers.
The full description is here

Wednesday 18 April 2012

A dose of the trots.

Well so much for an open an honest debate about who is going to be Liverpool's first elected lord mayor but a bunch of children have decided to have the debates scrapped, and they are happy about it. Disrupting the political process for your own ends is a very Fascists way to do it. Though it is only one set of fascists they object to  and that is the Fascists of the right. Tony Mulhearn is OK by them despite the fact he is every bit as undemocratic as he demonstrated in his days as militant by subverting the Labour party to his own ends.

So who are these people? Well meet university students Andrew Sharwood and Ruth Brewer
It looks like they have pretty much fallen for the Trotskite/Lennists Vanguard group idea. Where we, the working class cannot be trusted to work stuff out for ourselves but have to be led, having our hands held by these "intellectuals". We can't be trusted to ignore the Fascists Right we need to be looked after by these beneficent masters.
The arrogance of this position is unbelievable and it has failed every time it has tried. The same person who brought you 1984 also wrote animal farm, and while I'm sure these two are well versed in a Police state etc. It's amazing how easily they have become the pigs of Animal Farm.
If you see them in the street cross to the other side.
They don't want a debate because we can't be trusted to agree with them. They are not Marxists as they seem to have forgotten all the bits about when the revolution will come and who will lead it, they are Marx's worst nightmare.

Friday 6 April 2012

Not in my name

The Police bloggers are off again complaining that the various suspensions of officers accused of racism is basically a witch hunt. The idea seems to be that there are racists everywhere so why label the Police racists because of one or two officers.
Firstly people don't get up one morning and become racist, just for the day. They will have a history of it and their mates will know, so why do we have to wait until the the officers get caught by a member of the public and with an overwhelming amount of evidence.
Secondly if someone from Tesco's is caught being racists then I can go to Sainsbury's and while the consequences of racist shop staff cannot be underestimated the chances of them being extremely violent or go unpunished a quite small. See here.
Finally there is the little matter of who's paying the salaries of the people doing the abusing, they represent you and me, they represent Parliament and the Law and when you abuse your office you bring disrespect on not just yourself, not just your fellow officers but to the public that fund you and support the laws that give you power.
So Officers You're not being picked on especially, you decided to represent us, it is our police force not yours and you colleagues bad behaviour reflects on us and you should deal with them before they become a problem.

Sunday 1 April 2012

The stiletto imperative.

It not even the deadline yet for candidates for the elected mayor of Liverpool and already 2 candidates have dropped out. One citing theatres of find skeletons in his cupboard. The other announced it in a comment on a David Bartletts blog, giving the URL he has always used but now this URL is no longer registered. The site may still be up but the URL www.transformliverpool.co.uk no longer points to it, that's a very quick removal, it is therefore going to be difficult to find out why he left.
Who would befit from these dirty tricks? This isn't you normal first past the post election, it has a limited AV element. In theory all these independents could steal some of the big boys 1st preference. Which could have some interesting effects. The victory that the candidates want is 50%+ on first preference. If no one gets that then the top 2 run off, this means that the 2nd pref of everyone who didn't vote for the top 2 are added up and if the 2nd preferences are for the top 2 they are added. The Upper second victory here is 50+% however if neither of the top 2 gets 50% then the one with the highest vote wins. This is a lower Second.
But it's important to note you have to be in the top 2 to go into the second round if you come 3rd you out and in theory you could win from third if 4th and down picked you as 2nd pref. This makes protest votes very dangerous.
Now it is perfectly possible that in the process of sending a message to perhaps Joe the voters could drop him to a 3rd.
Part of the problem is that the political classes hate AV as it would take away there right to pick the candidates, so they deliberately hobble the system, in this case by restricting it to the top 2. Almost guaranteed to cause upset and allow them to show who bad AV is.
So who would Joe go for in order to come up with a strategy to minimise the risk? Alistair Campbell or Malcolm Kennedy.
Watch out for more dirty tricks as Joe doesn't want a 3rd.