Forgive me for a moment: for the first time I can think of in this blog I’m going to be political. I’ll try to be brief.
It’s not especially a secret that I’m a leftie. I’ve not talked about it much here, but I suspect you could decode it from my posts, and especially via Twitter. So it won’t come as much of a surprise that in the upcoming general election I’m backing Labour.
As the election looms it’s looking increasingly likely from the opinion polls that the UK will get a hung parliament on Thursday. Accordingly the Queen would invite Gordon Brown, as the incumbent Prime Minister, to form the next government. It’s likely that Mr Brown would then approach the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in an attempt to form some kind of anti-Tory coalition government. For a moment I’m going to assume this happens — that the Liberal Democrats would rather form a coalition with the Labour Party than the Conservative party.
It struck me the other day while listening to Andrew Pierce and Kevin Maguire talking about the Labour leadership on the radi0, that there’s still a way the Labour Party can come out of this election (for a definition of “this” see below) with a strong mandate to run the country for another 5 years. Let me explain. [read more]
The following essay was written as part of my AS-Level politics course at Halifax New College (which I’m concerned doesn’t exist any more — I can’t find mention of it on the Calderdale College website any more!). It dates back to October 2002 and discusses how Politics can be defined. It’s released here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.
How can politics be defined?
Politics has not one meaning, but rather a number of different ones depending on how different perspectives analyse it, however, all different descriptions agree – politics is a social animal, one born out of the interactions between different indeviduals and groups, and how decitions are made. Politics can be seen to be one of two categorys: conflict resolution or control of power. The former being that politics is a process of removing conflict to produce harmony, and the latter being the ability to control and direct authority. [read more]
With the recent upgrade of my computer I had reason to copy a lot of data from an old hard disk to my new computer. While doing this I came across some of my old school work, both from GCSE and A-level. [read more]
Hmm, I had my last lolly today. They lasted longer than I thought they would actually. It was the first few days that I managed not to eat them and just look at them all lined up nicely, but then when I got stuck into them I couldn’t do anything about it, and they were gone one a night, lol.
Hmm, anyway, what did I want to talk about? Ooh, I know – the firemen. Well, they are on strike now for the second day (its a 48 hour strike, and they have had 24 hours of it (well, about 30 hours now)), and I’m not sure if I am on their side or not. Actually, I think I am sort of half and half in favour – I think they do deserve more, but I also think that what they are asking for it just a silly amount (for those who don’t know, they are wanting a 40% pay rise). The army are covering while the fire service are away on strike with their old ‘Green Goddesses’, which are quite obviously not up to the job (it looks like they are just loaded up with garden hoses…). Some people have talked about the army getting the red fire engines which are sitting not doing anything in the fire stations, but I have to admit that I don’t agree with that – it would mean crossing the picket lines, and I don’t agree with that, just on principle (still I do see a problem with public safety…difficult one, I think). Just on the same subject, I get the impression the firemen aren’t very good at keeping to their strike – I read in the paper about how they left the picket when they saw some of the Green Goddesses passing them, and went to help…part of me wonders what the point of being on strike is if they are not going to stick to it, but then again, I do see why they want to help…hmmm, oh well. And finally, on this – my prediction is that there will not be an 8 day strike in the next few weeks, but we will see…just my prediction 😉
Seeing as I was talking about the Army there a bit, I may as well mention that they were in college today trying to get people to join up. They were supposed to have paintballing on the lawn at the front of our college, but I’m not sure how well that will have gone down in the pouring rain. I didn’t stay to find out – I went to see Natalie. I rang her last night, and she wasn’t well and said she wouldn’t be in college today, so I decided that I would go and pay her a visit by surprise. I got soaked though getting there, but it was worth it I think…I got to see her, and cuddle her a bit. I hope it made her feel a bit better at least…and she was dead sweet in her dressing gown, awww poor little thing. While I’m on the subject of Natalie, she is coming here to stay over on Saturday night, which will be nice. My mum wanted to see us actually (we usually stay at her house, and my parents wanted to see us, because they like her, and like seeing us, hehe).
Well, I’m going to clean my teeth now and go to bed, ready for college tomorrow, and what will no doubt be another great physics lesson (ooh, is that boring at the moment, lol). Never mind…has to be done 🙂