Another coastal walker

It has been some time since I last updated my page on coastal walkers, so here are the latest additions:

Adam Short set off from Southampton in 2014, and is doing what must be a first: not only is he camping wild whilst walking the coast, but he is also using a pack raft to cross rivers. He has a website at http://uk-coastal-trek.com/aboutadam.asp, with regular updates taking place on his Facebook page

On the 1st May 2015 Steve Cook set off from East Grinstead, walking down to the coast at Brighton to start his anti-clockwise walk around the coast. So far he has reached Dunbar in Scotland. He has a blog at http://www.walkthekingdom.co.uk/the-walk-in-detail/, and is walking in aid of the Drug Free Kids program.

A lady named Melita is currently walking the coast in sections. She set off from London Bridge in January 2013 and has walked the south coast as far as Plymouth in Devon, and the east coast as far as Hedon. She has a blog at http://mgctblog.com/ .

Jimmy Hudson is currently walking the coastline of Scotland in sections; he started from Brewick-on-Tweed on the 3rd August 2011, and he is currently in Drimnin. He has a blog at http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/jimmyhudson/1/tpod.html.

Rosemary Fretwell and another person are walking the coast in sections. They set off from Bognor in 1998 and are currently on the west coast of England. Their blog is at http://leftatbognor.blogspot.co.uk/.

A group of men are walking Scotland's coast in sections: details of their endeavour can be seen at http://www.walkingscotlandscoast.com. They have currently reached Armadale.

If you know of anyone else who has done, or is doing, the walk, please let me know.

Railway planning chaos

So the much-vaunted plans to upgrade many of Britain's railway lines have hit the buffers hard. What has happened?

Background:

Network Rail (NR) divides its agreed work into five-year control periods. The current period is known as CP5, which runs from April 2014 to March 2019. NR has been told it can spend £38.5 billion on its work during that period, a figure which includes: (1)

• capital expenditure (£13 billion); this covers improvements to lines and stations, and new lines such as Crossrail or Thameslink.
• replacing and renewing older parts of the network (£12 billion)
• day-to-day maintenance and operating costs (£13 billion). 

It should be noted that three-fifths of this money comes from the government's Network Grant, whilst most of the rest comes from the passengers and freight operators who use the railways. (2)

Much of the work to keep the existing network running is self-financed by NR itself, using money it receives from the train operators in the form of Track Access Charges; last year NR actually made a profit. However new projects - such as electrification - costs more than NR can afford, and the government loans them the money as part of a Network Grant. As such, this work needs to be agreed with the government. In 2013-14, the Network Grant was £3.7 billion (1).

The program to electrify these lines came not from the government, but from Network Rail and the train operating companies, who persuaded the Department for Transport and the Treasury that it was the right thing to do.

The decision:

Yesterday it was announced that some of the capital expenditure on the Midland Main Line (MML) and Trans-Pennine Express (TPE) electrifications were to be postponed. This does not necessarily mean NR is spending less; they will still be spending £38.5 billion during CP5, just on fewer projects. In the autumn a review will state what should happen to these other projects.

What went wrong:

The first stage of the work on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) has turned out to be much more expensive than planned, and is behind schedule. Rather than progress work on the other schemes, the pause may allow NR to work out what went wrong and apply lessons learned to the other schemes. Alternatively, such recalculations might push the cost-benefit ratio to such a level that the schemes are not worth continuing.

Worse is the fact that NR is also failing on their bread-and-butter work: the track renewals and resignalling schemes that are done all the time as systems age. According to Rail magazine, in the first year of CP5, they have overspent by £230 million and are 77% behind schedule on overhead line renewals (that is replacing exiting lines, not creating new ones), 63% behind in signalling renewals, and 7% in track renewals. These are no-brainer schemes that they have wide experience of and should be getting correct.

It is clear that there is little chance of getting the other new work done within NR's £38.5 billion budget over the five years, and therefore a pause, whilst unfortunate, is probably wise.

Whose fault is it?

Network Rail's. They decide on the work that needs to be done, and produce a budget for that work that gets approval from the government. They have singularly failed to meet the monetary or temporal budgets they set, even if those were somewhat woolly in the first place (as mentioned by the Transport Select Committee in January (2) ).

Network Rail have some valid excuses. The sustained, vast increase in traffic (67.3 million more journey over the past year alone) has put pressure on the network and reduced the time available for maintenance works. But this cannot fully explain the delays.

The problem is that it is very difficult to work on lines that are in operation. An example of this was the vastly expensive WCML upgrade; planned at about £1 billion, it came out at £10 billion, over time and did not deliver everything planned. Often they only have lines between one in the morning and six the next morning; in those five hours they need to make the worksite safe, move equipment in and out, and do the work. Often this means that only two or three hours is work done a night, whilst the staff are paid time-and-a-half or double-time for the full shift. It is a very uneconomical way of working, and is getting more expensive as manpower and equipment costs increase, and the netwrok gets busier.

There is also a little fault on the part of the government, who from experience should not have trusted Network Rail's costings and should perhaps have slowed some of the work into CP6 (2019 to 2024) or later

The politics:

This is a major embarrassment for the government. Since they went into the election less than two months ago proclaiming these projects, they should answer when they knew this decision was a possibility, especially as there have been signs that the GWML upgrade has not been going well. However the ORR's report into the first year of CP5 which highlighted these failures was only released on June 12th, so alternatively the government might be congratulated for reacting quickly and trying to get things back in order.

There is another issue: rolling stock orders have been placed for new trains to run on the upgraded lines, and some of these may have nowhere to run. Whilst orders can be cancelled or postponed, perhaps at a cost, there is also a problem in that many of the trains that were due to be replaced were going to be cascaded down to other lines. This entire process will have to be rethought, and will leave people in old, out-dated trains for longer.

It has left a great number of unhappy MPs, mostly Conservatives, who were looking forward to upgrades to existing lines as much as other Conservative MPs opposed HS2. This may well have long-term knock-on effects for the government.

What about HS2? Politically, it makes the project harder; already anti-HS2 groups are using it as a sign that the project's costs will not be kept under control. But as detailed above, building a new line is in many ways simpler than updating an existing one that carries trains. As the disastrous £10 billion WCML upgrade shows, it is very hard to get a handle on the costs of such upgrades. So if you believe that more capacity is needed, this news strengthens the case for HS2, even if politically it is weakened.

Notes:

As a side issue, the TPE is being paused for another reason: some of the work might be replicated by HS3, which is part of George Osborne's plans for a 'Northern Powerhouse'. Whilst it makes sense to ensure that work is not wasted, passengers in the north deserve help now.

For another view, see Paul Bigland's excellent blog.

(1): http://orr.gov.uk/publications/reports/gb-rail-industry-financial-information/gb-rail-industry-financial-information-2013-14
(2): http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmtran/257/257.pdf

Some thoughts after the election aftermath: final thoughts

So that is my view of the current situation. The impetus lies with the Conservatives and the SNP, and politics over the next five years may well be defined by the relationship between those two parties.

I expected the result of this election to be a mess, and even considered another election in November as being likely. I was wrong, and I take little condolence from the fact that nearly everyone else was wrong as well.

This is how I rate the position of the political parties:

• Conservatives are undoubtedly in the best position.
• SNP have done a stellar job, and are in a prime position for the negotiation about the future of the UK.
• UKIP have built a very firm base, but must be slightly disappointed they did not get more MPs.
• Greens have made solid progress, but again they deserved more MPs.
• Labour have lost an election they should have won, and also lost much of their intellectual heart.
• Liberal Democrats are suffering. There is a way back for them, but it will be a long process.

One last note of warning about the leadership elections that face Labour, the Liberal Democrats and possibly UKIP. An orderly changeover to a competent person can play wonders for a party. A disorderly, argumentative changeover to a competent person can irrecoverably harm the new leader. As an example, Ed Miliband never fully recovered from his somewhat disruptive election as leader. The candidates would be wise to remember that as they fight amongst themselves.

Another last note: it is odd to think that the leaders of the main UK parties - Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and perhaps UKIP - might well all be different at the 2020 general election when compared to this one. I've a good feeling that that is (yes, you've guessed) unprecedented.

Some thoughts after the election aftermath: the Conservatives

Finally there are the Conservatives. What happened last week was unprecedented (yes, that word again), and it will be hard to repeat it in 2020, especially in the face of further unpopular austerity. But the are lucky in their enemies: Labour and the Lib Dems are in chaos, both in terms of leadership and strategic direction. UKIP are a threat, but they are currently riven by infighting and may not be able to keep facing both left and right for much longer.

A key issue for the Conservatives is that Cameron has admitted that he will not contest a third general election. This means that some time in the next five years there will be a new Conservative leader. I'm guessing that this changeover will occur after the 2017 EU referendum, whether he wins or loses. Therefore their success in the 2020 general election will depend on who is appointed as Cameron's successor. Boris Johnson is the media's favourite, and someone like Michael Gove is also likely to throw his hat into the ring. However my favourite is currently Rory Stewart, the MP for Penrith and the Border since 2010. He has a true boy's own backstory, including helping to run two Iraqi provinces. Even better, he is young and his constituency is in the north, a factor I will address below.

The party's positioning will be vital. Some of the elements that led them to be labelled 'the nasty party' have moved over to UKIP. Despite this, the Conservative vote share remained more or less static: those voters who moved to UKIP were offset by new Conservative voters from the Lib Dems and elsewhere. As such, Cameron's centrist approach has been vindicated. If the new Labour leader lurches to the left, as is entirely possible, then  the political centre ground may be left to the Conservatives. If Labour tries to be centrist, they will find the Conservatives already there.

There can be little doubt that the thin Conservative majority will decrease over this term through natural wastage: by-elections are always difficult for sitting governments to win. For this reason the Conservatives need to take an aggressive approach to 2020 and try to take more marginal seats. Experts were expecting them to take a defensive approach this year but they did the opposite, and actually attacked Labour marginals, of which they won enough to more than compensate for those they lost to Labour.

A key factor for the Conservatives will be the boundary changes they tried to pass in the last parliament, and which were somewhat controversially blocked by the Liberal Democrats. The changes were of two types: the equalisation of seat sizes in terms of populations, and the reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600. Combined, these moves would reduce Labour's built-in electoral advantage which means the Conservatives need to get a significantly greater vote to win the same number of seats as Labour. This is true if they keep the seat equalisation measures and remove the more controversial reduction in the number of seats. Expect this measure to be back in parliament this term.

If you look at the electoral map, it is clear the Conservatives powerbase is in the south and rural areas. Where they lack seats is in London, the urban north, and Scotland. London will prove a hard nut for them to crack, especially in the face of demographic changes and the mayoral elections which are almost certain to go to Labour. Scotland would also be difficult, but it would be sensible for them to target the seven second-places they achieved in Scotland this time. They might even gain one or two.

The real opportunity for the Conservatives lie in the urban north. It is telling that the third tweet George Osborne sent out after the election victory was about the 'northern powerhouse'. There can be little doubt that successive governments have treated the urban north poorly; the powerhouse of London has attracted more than its fair share of both government attention and finance.

There are many northern constituencies that might turn blue if the Conservatives gave them a little love; there can be little doubt that such attention would also be to the advantage of the country's finances as well: north versus south does not have to be a zero-sum gain. It would be easy to give the northern towns (and the north in general) some love whilst not spurning the south. The key to a third Conservative term in power may just lie in Osborne's 'northern powerhouse'. And he knows it.

Some thoughts after the election aftermath: the SNP

The SNP had a great election, but the result was not quite what they would have wanted. They are now a large minority party, whilst they would have been hoping to gain more power in Westminster by supporting (whether by coalition or confidence and supply) the Labour party.

The next big test facing the SNP is the 2016 Scottish elections, where they would be hoping to maintain the impetus gained in this general election. For various reasons, not least the electoral system in Scotland, this will prove more difficult than it did at this general election. After this there will be the 2017 EU referendum, and then the 2020 general election where they will be defending many seats that Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives will be coveting.

There may also be an issue with the quality of their new MPs. Many would never have expected to be elected when they were selected to stand in what were safe seats for other parties, and many are very politically inexperienced. The SNP will have to carefully manage their new MPs to ensure that they do not do anything too naive.

They will also need to be careful not to be too strident in their opposition to the government. Support for independence has not particularly shifted since the independence referendum, which means that a proportion of the SNP's support comes from people who are against independence. This may seem odd, but given Scottish Labour's longstanding contempt for the Scottish electorate - as best seen by the Falkirk shenanigans of a couple of years ago - I can understand why even a unionist might vote for them. They will need to maintain this broad support if they want to keep many of their Scottish seats, some of which have small majorities. On the other hand, the Conservatives suffered a prolonged decline in Scotland over the decades and are left with one MP; they have not managed to recover. It is perfectly plausible that Scottish Labour will not recover either.

Even the SNP voters who are in favour of independence may not have that aim as their foremost objective: for many the NHS, education, jobs or wages may be the most important factor. If the SNP threaten those, people vaguely in favour of independence might swap their vote. No party should ever forget the bread-and-butter issues.

One thing I do not see as an issue is Salmond versus Sturgeon. Salmond stood down as party leader after he failed to win the independence referendum; since then Sturgeon has taken the party to a new level. Salmond won a seat in Westminster at this election, and some foresee problems between the two of them. I do not; both are brilliant political operators who have different approaches: Salmond will be in Westminster issues whilst Sturgeon leads the party in Scotland. It may be an unbeatable combination.

But the SNP's main aim is independence. They can choose to oppose the government and exploit the fractures in the union in the hope that more of the Scottish population will become pro-independence, or work with the government to move to a halfway house within the union: for instance Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA), with English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) in return. There are hazards for them in either option.

The SNP are on a high. Whether they remain there depends on how they use their power over the next couple of years.

Some thoughts after the election aftermath: UKIP

UKIP had an excellent general election, although the aftermath has been distinctly interesting. Whilst they only got one MP and their leader failed to gain a seat (for the seventh time of asking, which must be some form of record), their vote increased manyfold, with some candidates very close to winning. They also gained many more councillors and now control their first council. But they have turned victory into defeat very rapidly.

Their first big issue is Farage: he immediately stood down as leader after the election, as he said he would if he failed to be elected. However he did not rule out standing again. Only a few days later came the controversial meeting of the party's leadership, where his resignation was declined. Reports vary about what went on in that meeting, but whatever the truth it led to open warfare within the party. The main combatants are Farage himself and the party's only MP, Douglas Carswell.

The perceived wisdom was that UKIP would hurt the Conservatives; however at the election they took more votes from Labour. But UKIP cannot maintain this position for long, and the new leader will need to work out whether they are going to face to the left or right in the future.

UKIP seem to have gained the Liberal Democrats' 'None of the above' position as a protest party. Whilst many UKIP supporters are very supportive (as web forums show), they undoubtedly gained many votes from people who disliked the other main parties. This was exactly the same position that the Liberal Democrats formerly held, albeit the individual voters would mostly be different. Such voters could easily shift back again. Therefore UKIP will have to continue to position themselves in voters' minds as being 'different' to the other parties. That position may be hard to maintain if they become more successful, or the if the infighting continues for too long.

A 2017 referendum on EU membership may shoot one of UKIP's most precious foxes. However it may also play straight into their hands. It would be good if the party could decide on how a UK outside the EU would work, but that currently seems beyond them. Will they support or oppose the referendum? The hatred and distrust that many members show for David Cameron shows that they may well oppose anything he proposes.

I am unsure what UKIP should do with their immigration calls. On one hand mass immigration has caused social problems; on the other, UKIP have problems with racists within their ranks. Farage (or whoever leads the party) will have to try to clear out the more extreme elements and work out a position ready for the 2017 EU referendum.

They are largely a protest party, and there has been plenty to protest about. In particular the sexual abuse of children by gangs of men in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and elsewhere has understandably got many people angry. These scandals have been widely ignored, especially by Labour. But they need to be careful not to concentrate on cases where the abusers are ethnic minorities and the victims white, as opposed to the many cases where the abusers are white and/or the victims ethnic. Sexual abuse should not be made solely into a racial issue.

In addition, UKIP have rallied against what they term as 'LibLabCon' and 'the establishment' - the latter of which Farage mentioned in his non-concession speech. Leaving aside the fact that Dulwich-educated ex-city trader and MEP Farage is as 'establishment' as it gets, the more power they have, the less effective that call will become.

However great opportunities for UKIP stand in the large swathes of constituencies where they came second. It is easy to see the party throwing resources into these areas. However there is the caveat that what people on the east coast want may be anathema to their urban supporters.

The wild card is Douglas Carswell. The Essex MP had a reputation as a deep thinker before he moved from the Conservatives to UKIP last year, and the fact that his move was not criticised more says a great deal for the way he is regarded (this contrasts with the other Conservative MP who made the same move, Mark Reckless, who was roundly pilloried and lost his seat last week). Carswell is an unashamed right-winger who must be concerned by any move of UKIP to the left, and as UKIP's sole MP he will have a great deal of power and influence over the party's direction.

I see it as unlikely that Carswell would stand for leader; instead I think he will be content as acting as the power behind the throne, particularly if his wisdom will affect the views of his many friends that remain within the Conservative party. But the events of the last week makes it possible that Farage will not remain in UKIP for ling: the party seems to small for both him and Farage.

UKIP need to be careful that they do not turn their victory at the Euro and General elections into a massive defeat. But that might mean they need someone other than Farage at the helm.

Some thoughts after the election aftermath: the Greens

The Greens had a mixed election. They stood in many more seats than ever before, but did not manage to increase their number of MPs, with Caroline Lucas remaining their sole representative at Westminster. The Green party leader, Natalie Bennett, failed to get elected in her seat of Holborn and St Pancras.

But they did well in the popular vote, getting over 1.1 million votes and 3.8% of the total, an increase of 2.8% over 2010. Like UKIP, the fact they only got one seat is down to the vagaries of the FPTP electoral system.

The council elections were less positive. The Greens ran Brighton and Hove council as a minority administration, but this year they lost seats and control over the council. In England they gained a paltry 9 councillors (compared to the Conservatives 497).

The question is what proportion of their new support comes from people who are now genuine Green supporters, and what proportion supported them because they found they could not vote for Labour or the Liberal Democrats. The former are more likely to stick with the party than the latter.

The EU referendum in 2015 has to be an opportunity for the Greens. Much depends on Cameron's renegotiation with the EU; but there is a place for an unashamedly pro-EU party. Ordinarily that would be filled by the Liberal Democrats, but they are currently a party in decline. It would be easy for the Greens to accept that torch and run with it.

Some thoughts after the election aftermath: the Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats find themselves in a hideous position. In my view they did the right thing going into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010, and they generally behaved well whilst in power. Their record in government is one they should be proud of. But it came at a hideous cost. It turns out that much of their vote came from the 'none of the above' voter, and going into government destroyed that sector. The red liberals also shifted in numbers to the Labour party, although in nowhere near the numbers the latter were expecting, As a result the Liberal Democrat base, both in terms of members, councillors and MPs, is tiny.

So what can they do? The answer is not much before 2020. They need to elect a leader who can find them a new position in politics, and for that reason if I was them, I would delay choosing a new leader until after Labour. But whoever gets the job has a hard task ahead of them.

They need someone who can engage with the media and sell whatever policy position and vision they develop. Sadly, none of their eight remaining MPs really seems to fit that bill if you exclude Clegg.

They also need to rebuild their political base. The last five years have been rough for them, both in terms of MPs and councillors. Yet they still have a large base of committed activists who can help them rebuild. A promising sign is that membership numbers have been increasing in the days since the election.

There is not much else that can be said about the Liberal Democrats. That is part of their problem: with the rise of UKIP and the SNP they are approaching irrelevance. They need a leader who can reverse that trend, even if full recovery takes several elections.

Some thoughts after the election aftermath: Labour

Any Labour supporter must be really hurting after what was a terrible general election. So what happens now?

Labour need to analyse what went wrong and try to elect a leader who can correct those faults, a process they singularly failed to do after their defeat in 2010. Sadly, the immediate aftermath of the election has seen many Labour supporters, including some past and current politicians, refuse to face up to the problems that  the party faces.

Choosing a new party leader will be made more difficult by the pull from the left and the more centrist segments of the party. If they are not careful it will become 'Brownites versus Blairites part three', although long after the major players have departed the scene. A new leader might be best looking for another route - a fourth way after Blair's third way. Some have even started calling it 'Now Labour'.

I have no particular favourite candidate for the leadership, and it is still early days. Initially the media seemed to be concentrating on ex-soldier Dan Jarvis, whose backstory is certainly compelling. However backstory does not of itself make a good party leader, and I have never heard him make a speech to judge his ability. He has also come out to say that he will not stand for personal reasons.

The timing of the leadership election is an issue. In 2010 Labour waited until the autumn conference to choose their leader; this gave the coalition months in which they could pull themselves together and set the agenda. For this reason many are calling for a snap election. This would favour the old guard, people such as Andy Burnham who stood in 2010. A later election would favour someone less well known within the party. It currently looks as though the latter argument has won, with a leadership election possibly being held in mid-September.

Ed Miliband was only elected because of the union vote (including one union who sent out ballot papers to members along with literature favouring him; a strange thing to do in a democratic election). The leadership selection process was altered last year after the Collins Review to a One Man, One Vote system, This will reduce the unions' influence over the election. However the new leader will still have to maintain good relations with the unions who donate massive sums to the party.

Once elected, the next Labour leader will have to decide what to do about Scotland. Their unprecedented (yes, that word again) rout of Scottish Labour has helped the Conservatives to a limited majority. But some of the SNP majorities over Labour are small, and Labour will be eyeing those constituencies covetously come 2020. Their problem is that Scotland is more left-wing than England. If the new leader moves Labour to the left then he risks alienating English voters; if he moves to the right he does the same for Scottish voters.

That is not to say the correct positioning is impossible: someone with the political skills of Blair could satisfy these seemingly different electorates (even if 'Now Labour' seems rather hackneyed). The problem is that I cannot see Blair Mk II anywhere on Labour's benches. However Blair was not exactly a household name before he was made Labour leader after John Smith's death in 1994, and yet he changed Labour forever.

The new leader needs to address the main reasons they lost: strategy. Miliband put in place a '35% strategy', which meant gaining 35% of the vote. Strangely, this would have been barely enough to win a majority; a seemingly modest ambition. As it happens, they failed in even that. In my view, the problem was that Labour espoused no true vision.

Most of Labour's campaign was worthy, but the disparate points were only connected by a vague hatred of the Conservatives. Whilst that was enough to fire up the Labour core vote, it did nothing to attract the general population. Sadly for Miliband, the core vote of both main parties is only about 30%. The new Labour leader needs to develop a vision for the country that embraces people outside their core vote. Blair managed this; Foot, Kinnock, Brown and Miliband did not.

There is also the need to sort out, and preferably widen, the party's finances. Currently they are too reliant on income from the unions, who are all too willing to use the influence their cash gives them. That union influence can have positive outcomes; however at times, such as when the unions essentially elected Miliband to the leadership, it can be positively malign.

Labour need an 8% swing to get an overall majority. Add in the boundary changes that the Conservatives are keen to push through, and it may be nearer 12%. This will be a difficult task: in 2010 Cameron got a 5% swing, whilst Blair got 10.3% in 1997. So the new leader may well need a shift larger than Blair achieved. For this reason, Labour's recovery may be a two-term task, and they may want to select a leader who can see them through that process.

The near-wipeout of Scottish Labour has also has ripped out much of the intellectual heart of the party. From Keir Hardie to Gordon Brown, much of Labour's political philosophy has come from Scotland. In this election they lost a large number of the party's deepest thinkers. That may hurt them more than is currently obvious.

Labour faces deep problems on all sides. Hopefully they can find a leader that will be able to solve them.

Some thoughts after the election aftermath: polling

There can be no defence: the opinion polls got the 2015 general election disastrously wrong.

In my view this error was not due to a late swing to the Conservatives as many are saying; in fact, during the last week of the campaign some of the phone pollsters converged with the online polls to show Labour and the Conservatives on level pegging. This is embarrassing for those phone pollsters as it turned out that they had been more accurate than the online pollsters.

The odds are that the polls, and especially the online pollsters, had been underestimating the Conservatives and overestimating Labour for many months, perhaps years. If this is the case, then any pollsters who try to 'fix' the problem of late swings will miss the real problem.

Another problem was the sheer number of polls. Yougov did at least five online polls a week in the run-up to the election. This data swamped the other pollster's efforts and thoroughly skewed the narrative. As online polls performed the worst, the inaccurate Yougov polls incorrectly influenced the political mood.

Labour are even saying that it may have altered the result of the election; if broadcasters had known the Conservatives were ahead, they would have been given a harder time. Whilst this seems a rather self-serving, silly argument, there may be some truth in it.

The Conservative's adviser Jim Messina has cast scorn on the public pollsters.

"I think most public polling is garbage and is wrong," he said. "Almost every public poll had this race tied the night before the election. We had us winning 315 seats … I think that most public polling should be shot. It's ridiculous."

From the pollster's dire performance, he is right. His own data seemed much more accurate. It was apparently gathered from varying sources, including online. That may well turn out to be the future for polling.

The Labour party have also said that their internal polling showed a very different picture to that of the public pollsters, and again this puts the accuracy of the public polling further in doubt.

It is easy to see several pollsters pulling out of UK political polling, or even going out of business altogether.

If they stay in, they need to ask themselves the following questions:

1. Why were the final polls so inaccurate?
2. Why did they all seem to converge on the same, incorrect, answer? We it just down to methodological changes, or were there deeper structural problems in the way polling is performed? 

They also need to stop tinkering with their methodologies. Altering weightings and other factors a few weeks before a major election makes comparisons with other polls impossible. Such changes also tend to be hidden from the casual layperson reading the polls, meaning that shifts caused by methodological changes appear to be changes in support for the parties.

But that is in the past. What are the challenges facing the parties?

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.