Life, the universe and everything. Politics, geekery and adapting to life in Yorkshire. With occasional outbursts of intelligence.
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There are still some things about the settings on this laptop that confuse me. To save a PSD from ImageReady as a Gif, if the source file was a jpg, I have to edit it with photoshop. But then when saving it from photoshop it says "saved using ImageReady" in the dialogue. But I can't find that dialogue in ImageReady. Not an issue at all, just weird. Anyway, made a new icon (some might recognise it from one of my old forum sigs, back when silly kids used to complain I wasn't nice enough when answering their idiot rules questions), and also updated a few already existing but not very good icons.

Keywords: Citizen, Gentleman
Words from Dr Who, idea by calapine, with a background by anabel_icons—I liked this when I first saw it, but she'd messed up the spelling, I animated it but messed up. I was said by Hartnell in The Daleks' Master Plan (reviewed here by nhw, a fairly high google result for the phrase), and is thus cool.

Keywords: Goth, Goth Rome
Animated by me, original art by SJGames—I've just always liked it, but the old version was a bit too fast and fairly static, now I've figured out how to do more frames, why not? NB, when I use it from now on I'll use the 'Goth' keyword, the 'Goth Rome' is merely there for backwards compatibility...

Keywords: Think
Russian intellectual catechism, from a t-shirt by New Statesman magazine—This comes back to my hatred of the UK libel laws, John Major, then Prime Minister, sued the New Statesman for printing an article asserting he wasn't having an affair with his caterer. The suit was spurious, and it was eventually dropped, but not until after the distributors and printers (because they can get sued to, as can a paperboy) settled out of court, and the Staggers indemnity insurance wasn't good enough.

A few more still to do, but I think I like animating quote icons like this, need to sort the timing out a little on these but overall I'm happy. Opinions?
ETA: Above images are updated versions after feedback, they'll probably get messed around with again.

This is a little to weird. "Internet expert" and Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps has been caught in an attempt at astroturfing. He claims in an email to Tim at bloggerheads that his YouTube password was 1234, which even Guido isn't buying. Hmm, guessing there's no time to watch Space Balls in Cameron's Conservatives.

Given that he's the guy running the Ealing Southall campaign, we have it in fairly convincing evidence that he's either an idiot or a duplicitous liar. Either way, not going to do Tony Lit's campaign any good.

I promise to leave off the politics for a bit. Maybe. Possibly. But dude! Tory MP with YouTube account messes things up royally, how could I resist?

Right then, while I digest me lunch, brief bit on yesterday. I actually managed to drag myself out of the house before noon on a Sunday, went into Wimbledon to meet the local Lib Dem chair and others, and went of to Ealing Southall for a bit of by-election campaigning.

( Canvassing and leafletting )

( Envelope stuffing and meeting people ) In fact, specifically, there's a picture of me on a top rated Lib Dem politics blog; here on Pink Dog! Look, I'm clearly there, I'm the bloke in black behind the dog and Millennium Dome, Elephant, definitely the starring role for sure. ( Got to meet others too )

Overall, a good day, came back utterly exhausted but I'd finally put some names to faces and got back involved in partisan campaigning on the ground; still not really my thing but I ought to do more than I do. Very difficult to read the likely results, the local Labour party appears to be split with internecine strife, the Tories selected a non-member as a candidate and had a few defections both ways, and there seem to be a lot of undecided swing voters. A by-election in which all three main parties are in with a chance, but the Lib Dems are the only ones not (yet) hit by some sort of scandal. Interesting times...

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Pink Dog is pink_dog_fd, Millenium Elephant is elephantfeed and Alex is alexwilcock. I especially recommend Millenium's recent series of articles on Doctor Who, in which he gets a bit of help from his daddy Richard...

OK then, I've taken a screenshot of the final state of play in our predictions poll and compared it to El Gordo's new team
( What we got right )
( What we got wrong )
( What we couldn't decide )

So, overall, 11 correct predictions, 5 wrong, 2 undecideds.  Given that this has been described as "Night of the long knives II" by some, and is definitely the biggest reshuffle in my memory, that's not at all bad.

So, tell me LJ brain trust, what do we want to decide next?

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Which reminds me, mapp? Don't suppose by any chane you could update the icon for me?

I said:

I hope for Johnson, but think Harman has a strong chance, and she made a blatent play for Cruddas's second prefs near the end,

And after the results are called, we see that:

Electoral college results

Candidate	1st round	2nd round	3rd round	4th round	5th round
Hilary Benn	16.40%	18.22%	22.33%
Hazel Blears	11.77%
Jon Cruddas	19.39%	20.39%	23.89%	30.06%
Peter Hain	15.32%	16.42%
Harriet Harman	18.93%	21.23%	25.88%	33.58%	50.43%	ELECTED
Alan Johnson	18.16%	23.74%	27.90%	36.35%	49.56%

Her blatant grab for his support worked like a charm. Cruddas won the first round, but barely picked up any second preferences, Johnson was picking up more until close to the end, when Harman then jumped ahead with Jon's votes. Interesting times it seems. Lots of people on the Labour blogs bitching about the voting system, one even said it was "stalinist". To me it remains the best way of determining a result acceptable to all, allows for multiple candidates rather than requiring a stitch up before the actual vote and is invaluable in a close contest, as this undoubtedly was. It also shows that Harman knew to play for second and third preferences a lot more than others, apparently internal canvassing wasn't asking for preferences at wll--and the media constantly referring to it as a "complicated" system was really annoying me throughout.

But most important aspect: Blears last place on barely 11% of the vote. Labour members renew my faith in humanity a little with that one, word has it there was a massive cheer when her elimination was announced.

Loads of politics posts in a row. Time for some frivolity methinks...

Tim at bloggerheads was working on this one for a bit, thought I'd already posted it but must've forgotten. His breakdown of the dramatis personae is rather good as well. The basic theme we could've been anything that we wanted to be pretty much does sum up this Govt; so many lost opportunities, broken promises, half hearted efforts and poorly thought through responses. Ah well. Enjoy:

The ever excellent paul_linford_fd sums it ups nicely:

But with all his talent - and public goodwill - Tony Blair really could have been anything that he wanted to be, really could have been up there with Clem, Sir Winnie and the Iron Lady.

ETA: andrewrilstone I thought I had better say it before someone else does:

There's is an awkward clash on the TV schedules tonight. On one channel at 7PM there's a programme about an evil meglomaniac who gets himself elected prime minister for his own nefarious purposes, while at the same time on the other side it's "Doctor Who".

Very droll.

Righty ho--I said I was going to do this, but, y'know, life got in the way. So, of the current Cabinet, Blair and Prescott are retiring, and Reid says he doesn't want another cabinet job. Leaving a huge list of other people, of varying degrees of talent. Some of them I have a grudging respsct for, some I think are crap, some inspire intense loathing on site and a few, well, I'd not even heard of them--if I've not heard of a Cabinet level minister, let's hear it for Nonentities R Us, right? Following on from Paul Linford's list of a real "government of all the talents?", I give you a poll^[1].

Remember you can not tick a box for someone if you've never actually heard of them or have no real opinion, and this is a question of who's likely to be there, not who we want in/out. For example, I suspect Blears has secured herself a plum job, despite the visceral hatred many of us have for her, and I'm guessing Ruth Kelly will survive despite obvious unsuitability for her various recent roles--I really hope Brown moves her to a job without a clear conflict of interest though:
( Gordon Brown's Cabinet- who'll be in it? )

I'll pimp this poll about a bit, let's see how good LJ is at predicting El Gordo's actions...

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[1] If you don't have a livejournal account but blog elsewhere, you can log in to LJ using any OpenID, including your technorati or typekey profile or your wordpress.com account and still vote in polls &c--not a bad little trick

Watched Question Time last night with SB for the Labour Deputy Leadership contest. Took many notes, might try to write some coherent thoughts up on the whole debate, was very interesting. Following Sue's statement of preferences:

1. Jon, 2. Peter, 3. Alan, 4. Harriet, 5. Hilary, 6. Hazel
I did it based on the following, and in this order: (1) my opinion of how little they were likely to toe Gordon's line, (2) excessive toadying under Tony (3) voting record (4) school and (5) amount of union support.

I thought I'd summarise my thoughts. I don't have a vote, but some of you might (I know at least two do).

Biggest issue is how the Dep Leader will affect Labour's prospect at the next General Election. Unless things change drastically, I currently predict a Tory landslide; that has to be stopped. My personal ideal vote would, fairly obviously as already stated, be a hung Parliament resulting in a Labour/Lib Dem coalition prepared to actually carry out the necessary fundamental constitutional reforms we were promised in '97 and that Brown is hinting might actually now happen. On top of there's a personal factor, who comes across well and would be someone I (and other left-leaning liberals) could possibly work with. So, given I don't have a huge amount of time: ( My reactions to the candidates and some thoughts )
Will possibly transfer more thoughts as to the positioning elements, but really, if you are in position of a Labour vote; think carefully, as this one will make a huge difference to electoral chances, and I really really can't stand the idea of a Cameron landslide, which I think is what someone like Blears will help lead to.

Off now, Bradford and Soylent Green beckon...

By Beau Bo D'or (beau_bo_d_or_fd) who provides more context on this interesting speech.

Those of you that read either Not Little England or voting_taktix will recall that I mentioned Maurice Duverger a few times, and I also referred to him in my I should write about politics more post in, um, February. He is, undoubtedly

one of the more famous political scientists of the twentieth century, and pretty much the founding father of modern electoral systems study

And to commemorate his birthday, baseballchica03 explains why. Go read and discuss a bit, definitely something worth understanding more about, especially if you're involved in electoral politics on either side of the pond.