Some Political Thoughts


With the US Presidential Election coming up, there are some things to think about and some hope.

After Breaker's manifesto, here's mine.

Me. MLP. Rating the New Labour years.

Poll: New Labour's rating?

You may want to review Part 1 and Part 2.

So if I think there is something wrong with British politics, what is it?

So where do we go from here?

Well, there is the question.  But first of all, I'm going to bring it down to a very personal question - the one that set me off writing this (now you know who to blame).  Can I bring myself to vote for Labour again at the next general election?

This is a personal view of the past year, coloured by emotion.  This is from memory, so the timelines may be mixed and confused, and facts may be completely wrong.  I don't care.  This one is about the visceral side of politics, about my emotional response to all this.

A year ago, I wrote a lament for socialism.  Brown had secured the leadership of the Labour Party without an election, and so became Prime Minister.  I predicted he would be the same as Blair, only with different presentation skills.  Well, I suppose he tried to be the same as Blair, but his lack of presentation skills of any sort scuppered that.

This one died in the diary deluge over at dKos but I put too much work into it to let it die so quietly. I'll get more readers here and I bloody well worked hard enough to deserve them.

It's Friday night. I don't have to work but she does. I have a bottle of Absolut Pears and time on my hands. So I'm checking through the usual sites and I have a peek at that Younger than McCain site to see if one of my submissions has been posted. None have, but I notice A Day in the Life of a Middle-Class Republican because, well, my own blog is called A Day in the Life.

Right away I see another tired, forwarded-100-times-through-the-intarwebs parable, except it seems fairly accurate. So I click. And read through. And I'm pretty sure it's accurate. But there are no links and no citations.... until now.

Ah, London. Visiting you in high summer is such sweet sorrow.

Inside: London. Attractive young women.

Me, God, Politics, Web.

As Grigori Perelman was refusing his Fields medal for proving Thurston's geometrization conjecture, the New Yorker released the article "Manifold Destiny". It provides an intriguing perspective into the very human foibles of mathematicians. However, it casts Shing-Tung Yau in the role of a baddie more evil than Dr. Evil himself.

Watching: "The Assassin Tree". Request: what should my Monster Raving Loony name be?

Things could be getting interesting in UK politics. Could be useful to have a voice in Party elections. Plus political disengagement is a bad thing for democracy.

So, I just joined the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party. Comparative reviews will follow as the materiel comes in.

Poll: Which minor party should I join?

Yesterday I went into the city center to play around with my camera and learn how to use some of the more manual functions. Of the 80 or so photos I took, here are my two favorites.

Dublin trip. Reading: Singularity Sky. Politics.

Multipoll.

Hello again boys and girls, ladies and gen... Well. Ladies and people of the male gender, I don't think I could call you gentlemen.

So, what has been going on in the magical world of DullTrev? Has it been thrills and spills, excitement and adventure? Or has it been the usual?

I had a hard time figuring out how to vote in this election; harder than most. It's not that there were no choices to be made -- the Democracy represented by Phil Angelides is somewhat enormously different than the Democracy represented by Steve Westly, for example -- but I could never summon the energy to care enough to investigate those differences, or opine about them. Some of it is that I spent the last two weeks of May working hard, being a bridesmaid, and fighting off the evils of strep throat; but the interest had been small before those weeks, and never revived with my health. Nor was it just me; turnout in this election was the lowest since 1920.

The most boring election in modern times yielded the lowest turnout in modern times.

[Inside: a picture of me in a tux!]

Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief

Inside:
LHuSiBeers
Barbie
MFC: an apology
Footie Threatometer: Metatarsal
Oooh bit of politics!

Poll: You voted?