Some thoughts after the election aftermath: prologue

Well, that was unexpected. The 2015 general election turned out to have a more surprising result than even the famed 1992 election, where the Conservatives also won a surprise victory over Labour. I, like many other people, believed the opinion polls even as I wondered why the twin effects of Miliband's low popularity and a recovering economy were not helping the Conservatives.

The mistake was probably understandable. The odds were against the Conservatives winning a majority: no party in power has actually increased its number of seats for nearly a century, so I had more-or-less discounted that option. That was a mistake on my part: unprecedented can easily become precedented.

Also the mood music in the media was against it. Nearly everyone seemed to agree that a coalition would be the end-result; nearly everyone got it very wrong. Group-think prevented too many people from seeing the reality.

So why did the Conservatives win?

There was a difference between the way the two main parties canvassed. Labour went in for a traditional scheme where people canvassed locally, with ministers and celebrities performing high-profile visits to marginals. The Conservatives did some of this, but also had what they called 'Team 2015'; a team of over 40,000 young, enthusiastic supporters who were bussed into target constituencies to canvas. This approach was trialled and honed at the Newark by-election in the last parliament, and seems to have worked wonders. Labour got TV time as Eddie Izzard pranced around the country, whilst the Conservatives got votes.

If 2015 proves anything, it is that celebrities do not sway votes. That must hurt some celebrities who seem to have rather over-developed sense of their own importance.

The 2015 election was also a massive success for the leadership team David Cameron assembled. Both main parties hired advisers who had helped Obama to power. Whilst Labour had David Alxerod who managed to spell Miliband's name incorrectly, the Conservatives had Axelrod's friend, Jim Messina, who seemed to work well with the Conservative's campaign chief Lynton Crosby.

The differing approaches of the two campaigns can be seen online. A glance at Facebook or Twitter in early May would have led you to think that Labour were going to get 125% of the vote. My timeline was half-filled with Labour supporters throwing disdain on the Conservatives, whereas the only posts I received from the Conservatives were from the official campaign.

That was part of the problem: some of the Labour supporters were so strident, so nasty, that it was actually a turn-off. Meanwhile, the Conservatives used Facebook and Twitter in the way customers are supposed to use them: allegedly they spent £100,000 a month on Facebook alone. That did not just go on adverts to push in front of people, it also went on gathering demographic data on individuals.

This data allowed them to target the seats they needed to get a majority whilst Labour supporters talked (and sometimes shouted) amongst themselves. This work allowed Messina and Crosby to confidently state a week before the election that the Conservatives would win, whilst Miliband was polishing his victory speech a few minutes before the devastating election poll was released.

To a large extent it was Facebook and Twitter wot won it, although not in the way Labour supporters expected.

So what about the polling?

Candidate websites

Sencan recently attempted to look at who to vote for in the general election, which is now just five or six weeks away. We live in the South Cambridgeshire constituency, whose current MP, the Conservative Andrew Lansley, is stepping down. It is a fairly safe seat; the Lib Dems were nearly 8,000 votes behind in 2010, with Labour a very distant third. Therefore there will have to be severe ructions for the Conservative not to win.

There have been a couple of changes in the candidate list over the last six months: Sue Birtles, the Labour candidate, stood down after an apparent argument with the local party, although ridiculously the main Labour party website still lists her as candidate.

The other change is much more sombre. Lister Wilson, UKIP's candidate, sadly died earlier this year. I listened to him speak at a hustings last year and whilst I am not a natural UKIP voter, he was an impressive candidate.

So far we have had one leaflet through the door. This was a few months ago, and was from Heidi Allen, who will be standing as Lansley's replacement for the Conservatives. We have had nothing from any of the other parties.

Sencan wanted to find out more. I pointed her at a few sources on the 'web, and soon we were at yournextmp.com. It lists five candidates, and we thought we would go through to see what their personal manifestos were. It was a very disappointing and disheartening experience.

Heidi Allen, Conservative. Heidi has a personal website detailing her diary, campaigns and local news. It looks fairly swish and professional, and it is easy to see her views on some important topics within the constituency. The website layout does share similarities with those of other Conservative candidates, although the content appears to be specific to this constituency. She is also active on twitter.

Dan Greef, Labour. Dan has a personal website, but sadly this seems to contain nothing other than a large picture of himself along with his phone number, and email and twitter addresses. There appears to be no way of discovering his personal views on topics within the constituency.

Sebastian Kindersley, Liberal Democrats. Sebastian has a personal webpage, but it is fairly shallow in depth and appears to contain nothing pertaining to the constituency. In fact, it is a template, and he has not removed the 'sample page' link that goes to, as expected, a pro forma sample page. He has a personal Facebook page, which again mentions little about the constituency, but does imply he goes to the same gym as Sencan! He is also on Twitter, but has sadly been inactive since January. This is particularly disappointing as the Liberal Democrats came second in this constituency last time out.

Marion Mason, UKIP. Marion has a webpage on a UKIP website, but this does not seem to mention topics important to the constituency. She has a personal Facebook page, but I cannot access it as I am not friends with her. Which is fair enough, but it also makes it irrelevant to voters. She is on twitter, but appears not to have tweeted since August.

Simon Saggers, Greens. Simon has a website that thankfully contains some information on some local issues. He is also active on Twitter.

It makes for is a very depressing list, with too many candidates who do not care enough to inform voters on their views.

Here is a message to all prospective parliamentary candidates: if you want my vote, develop a good website. Twitter is pointless as a means of expressing complex views, and especially if it is just used for meaningless soundbites or parroting party tweets (I'm looking at you, Dan Greef).

Dartford Crossing

We've just spent an enjoyable weekend with friends in the south of London. This involves using the Dartford Crossing - the magnificent cable-stayed Queen Elizabth II bridge on the way out, and the adjacent twin-bore tunnels on the return.

Last time we did the journey, towards the end of last year, we paid tolls in each direction. Yesterday we crossed the bridge to find the road bypassing the toll booths as the old toll system has now been replaced with electronic payment.

This peeved me for the following reasons:
*) In what is obviously a cost-cutting move (they do not need the staff), the tolls have increased from £2.00 to £2.50

*) The prices were not displayed on the motorway on the run-up to the bridge - it would be good for people to know how much it cost, so that they could make a choice about whether to use it or not (even if most would not have a choice).

*) Although you can pre-pay, they give you up until midnight the day after to pay - not particularly good if you are away on a long trip. And the penalties are £70 if you miss that midnight-the-next-day deadline (halved if you pay within fourteen days).

*) Under the original PFI scheme, the tolls should have been removed in 2003, twelve years after the QEII bridge opened. Instead, they were converted to a 'charge', for which the company would widen parts of the M25 (using the cheap and not-so-cheerful active hard shoulder scheme) and renovate the Hatfield tunnel.

*) Even though I managed to get Internet access within the time period, this might not always be the case, and I really don't want to give my card details out on the Internet too much.

*) The signs state something like 'Go online to pay' without giving the URL. If I was an Internet scammer then I would copy the official site and give it a similar URL with SEO to get people in.

This seems a really poor and user-unfriendly move to me, with little advantage to the end-user over the old scheme. Or do you disagree?

It's out there, somewhere... and it's going to get us

As any devote of science fiction knows (or anyone who has seen the ludicrous films Deep Impact or Armageddon), life as we know it stands at risk from impact from celestial bodies such as asteroids or meteors.

Some people say that we should be taking this risk more seriously: whilst a major event may be very unlikely on a year-by-year basis, the results would be utterly catastrophic and should be guarded against.

Fortunately some people listened, and there is a global search for objects that could hit our tiny, insignificant (yet utterly wonderful) planet. Most of us would have heard of Halley's Comet, which deigns to visit us every 76 years, but there is so much more out there.

And we are finding more all the time.

The wonderful uber-geek-gamer-astronomer Scott Manley has produced a video showing all the asteroids discovered between 1980 and 2014. And there are a lot. A heck of a lot:

The three white objects rotating around the centre at speed are the innermost planets, Mercury, Venus and Earth. Mars is further out, and beyond that, at the edge of the video, can be seen Jupiter. The arcs of white dots are newly-discovered asteroids; green dots are already-discovered asteroids, whilst the red ones are the ones that are closest to, and most threatening to, Earth.

One day, one of these objects will be nudged from its orbit by collision, gravitational effects or even by forces with unpronounceable names. Fortunately Jupiter acts as a massive gravitational hooker that will attract many of these flirtatious objects, but some will make it into the inner solar system. Space is big and most will miss us, but one will occasionally get through.

The work to find and map these objects is relatively cheap (less, allegedly, than the production cost of either of the two aforementioned films), and knowing that they are there and their orbits are significant parts of the battle. Although the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor evaded detection until it hit, scientists are getting better all the time at detecting them.

All we need now is training of Bruce Willis-types to go up to nuke the blighters if they get too close.

Or perhaps not...

Politics and cowardice

There has been much talk recently about the forthcoming general election debates. David Cameron said he wanted the Green Party to take part in the debates, his thinking being that their presence would harm Labour in the same way that UKIP's presence harms his party.

In response, some people have accused Cameron of cowardice. I find this rather strange.

Firstly, I would not necessarily accuse any politician of cowardice. They have been willing to put themselves in the line of the media's fire, to be subjected to the most intrusive, unfair (and sometimes hideous) attention from the media. The moment you become a PPC, yet alone an MP or PM, you have a big, bright target painted on your back. It is not something I would ever do, and neither have most of the people throwing the cowardice accusations about.

Secondly, there are many different forms of cowardice. Yesterday I was talking to a woman whose newborn baby started coughing up blood in his cot at night (*). Her husband, a usually reliable man, fainted whilst she prepared the car to take the baby to hospital. Some people cope admirably with some events, yet fail with others.

Thirdly, strategic manoeuvring should not be confused with cowardice. Are people in the army who retreat to a more favourable position cowards? Cameron appears to have won this particular battle, with the broadcasters inviting several other parties that will probably split the debatre's left-wing representation. He probably thinks that is worth a few blunt hits from his opponents.

When it comes to politics, Cameron is not a coward. Neither is Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg or Nigel Farage. They've all knowingly put themselves in a position that I would find intolerable, knowing what they and their families would face.

They may not run into burning buildings to rescue people, or go fully-armed into a hopeless battle. But they're not being asked to. They are dealing with a massive amount of pressure, much of it unfair. They did this knowingly, and it is something that I could never do.

In that way I am a big custardly coward.

(*) The baby was fine; the blood came from a rather bad case of mastitis.  Ouch.

Another coastal walker

Last year was perhaps a record for coastal walkers, with several people walking the coast in one go or in sections.

However the last couple of months have been fairly quiet. David Higgins finished his walk in July, meaning Peter Hill was left attempting the coast in one go.

Luckily last week I received an email about another coastal walker, Alexander Ellis-Roswell. He started walking the coast on the third of August, and is raising money for the RNLI. He is camping out as much as possible, and is currently in Bognor Regis.

He can be followed on Facebook, twitter, and he has a fundraising page.

He is expecting to take around two years to walk 6,500 miles.

The best of luck to him.

Arrrghhh!

I love the North Norfolk Coast Path. I have walked it, or parts of it, on countless occasions. I even like its less-regarded partner, the Roman Road-following Peddar's Way, which heads arrow-like to the coast from near Thetford.

Thanks to Griffmonster's blog, I've now learnt that the trail has been extended for 21 miles southeast as far as Sea Palling. Even better, the section between Sheringham and Cromer has been rerouted to follow the coast rather then heading through the hills inland. Having said that, I hope the old route remains an official loop as it was an enjoyable stroll to Norfolk's highest point.

I have had some complaints in the past about Natural England's over-engineered, expensive and wasteful English Coastal Path scheme, but increased access along this section is to be welcomed.

Additionally, a long-standing access argument near the western end of the trail has been resolved, and walkers can now legally walk past Snettisham. This now only leaves a few section of coast in Norfolk (King's Lynn to Snettisham and Sea Pallling south towards Great Yarmouth) without official coastal access.

All in all, it is good news. So why the 'Arrrghhh!' ?

You see, I really want to walk (and in some cases re-walk) these new sections of path. But the arrival of my wonderful new son has somewhat put the dampener on any further walking plans.

Although perhaps I could take him with me...