Politics I: What to vote for

Given that both in the country where I live and in the country where I get to vote in the national elections, there are national elections coming up, it's no wonder that much of my news consumption and informal conversations currently concern said national elections. There's a couple of things I've been thinking about in the past few weeks, and they may be worth putting out in the open. It's too much to put into a single blog post, and I don't have much time tonight, so I'm going to split it up into three parts:

- How do you decide what party to vote for?
- Should everyone be allowed to vote in the first place anyway?
- What is the ideal electoral system?

This post is about the first topic: how on Earth do you decide what party you vote for? I'm going to assume that you actually have a full choice -- this may not necessarily be the case in all electoral systems, but we'll get to that at some point -- so that your choice isn't restricted a priori.

I suppose a major part of what party to vote for is to do with what party your parents vote. Not necessarily because they have indoctrinated you to any significant extent, but because you've been brought up with certain values and behaviours that match those of your parents, and therefore the party that best matches their ideas is probably the party that best matches yours.

I witnessed (and not really participated in) a discussion between NG and SK, and the gist of their conversation was that it's more sensible to vote for parties' moral stances than for any economic plans. In general, government has relatively little influence over the internationalised economy. If anything, it's the other way around. Unless the vast majority of the electorate vote communist, the economy is run by big business, and any tax incentive is probably only going to help increase bonuses, not employment. Also, whatever happens to the United States economy is infinitely more important to the UK economy than who's currently living in Number 10. (This goes to an even larger extent for the Dutch economy and 't Torentje.)

So, voting for moral issues. In most of the Dutch elections I have been able to vote in, I have voted D66. The reasons for this are actually much more moral than economical: they are to do with D66 being the driving force behind the legislation of same-sex marriage, them realising the importance of education, them opposing Artikel 23 (supporting educational integration rather than segregation); and in general trying to find a balance between individual responsibility and opportunity, and taking care of the weaker groups in society. (And there's a cute picture on page 11 of their manifesto.)

Trying to translate this to the UK situation, the obvious place to look is D66's sister party, the Liberal Democrats (UK & Local). Which is what I have voted for in the elections that I have been eligible to vote for here (Council and Holyrood). Partly, this was simply a translation of my Dutch vote to the new context, but also it seems to have been the best choice out of the parties that it is worth voting for in the British constituency system. If I'd have got to vote for Westminster as well, I would probably vote LibDem too. This is a Labour/LibDem marginal constituency. No matter what the Tories say, vet boy doesn't stand a chance -- and I wouldn't vote Tory anyway given they go against pretty much everything I've said I would vote D66 for. An added bonus of a good LibDem result on Thursday would be good data on the language of proficient semi-speakers (and -- Easter egg -- on the confusion between voiced and voiceless velar stops).

Obviously the ideas here need more work, but the 'vote for ethics, not economics' idea is worth putting up, even if ineloquently.

The Poking Reel

I'm going to give this whole blogging thing another go. If I have enough time to waste on watching online television, I should have enough time to publish a blog post a bit more frequently than three times a year. I am going to start with a boring dancing post, though...

Last Thursday was the New Scotland AGM, at which XO finished his second term as New Scotland president. To commemorate, SÖ had organised me to write a dance, and SF to write a tune. I wrote a reel (The Poking Reel) but the music turned out to be a jig (The Poking Jig). Doesn't matter for the dance, and we kept the name because in XO's world, things don't always have to make sense.

The Poking Reel (J 8x32)
1-8: 1C cross down to start a Reel of 3 on opposite sides (2C out and up, 3C in and up). When 1C reach the bottom, they cross back to continue the Reel of 3 on their own sides (i.e. Inveran reels). Finish with 2C in 1st place and 1C facing 1st corners.
9-16: 1C turn 1st corners RH, pass each other RS, turn 2nd corners RH to 2nd place on opposite sides. All set.
17-24: All advance and retire (4 bars). 1C turn RH 1 1/2 to own sides.
25-32: All dance circle, pivot and chase.

X:1
T:The Poking Jig
C:S. Ferguson
L:1/8
M:6/8
K:Dmaj
|: A | ddd ABc | ddd fed | efe Bcd | cec A2A |
ddd ABc | ddd fed | eee ABc | dAF D2 :|
|: f/2g/2 | a2f dfa | gbg e2g | fed Bcd | cec A2A |
ddd ABc | ddd fed | eee ABc | dAF D2 :|

The dance was presented to XO on a fluorescent orange hoodie. Because the whole iron-on printing thing didn't work, SÖ had to write it all out by hand, including 32 bars of sheet music!

Marking done

I finished my marking today, having given out one the lowest marks I've ever given – a 7 out of 100 – to a paper that consisted of a few marginally correct answers in addition to a lot of "No chance" and "Fuck". (I have given out zeroes before, but that was only for cases of plagiarism or non-submission; and at some point someone managed to score a 4.5, but was also given a 10-point penalty for being two days late.)

Because it's against all sorts of regulations (mostly Health and Safety, I think) and also vaguely unethical to post a collection of interesting answers, here's a key to my marking comments as a sorry replacement. I should probably give this out to my students at some point around essay time so that they know what they have to do...

✓ - correct, this is something you get a point for.
✗ - not correct, this is something you would have got a point for if it had been right.
REF - REFERENCE THIS, YOU TOOL!
? - I have no idea what this says or I have no idea what you mean.
?? - I have no idea what you mean, and I'm quite sure you don't either.
! - How many times did I tell you not to write this?
OK - (read: oooo-kay....) This argument is flawed, but there's enough correctness in it that you're getting the point anyway because I'm nice like that.
Hmm - I'm not entirely convinced.
meh - I'm not entirely convinced, but it isn't relevant to the point anyway.
awk - (from awkward) There are better ways of phrasing this.
sp - This isn't spelled correctly.
:) - This is funny, but you probably didn't intend it that way.
:( - I am very disappointed in you.
good - This bit stands out i.e. The rest of your essay is not ____.

I do also write real words.

Wordle

This is fun.

My Ph.D. is about...



My M.Sc. was about...



And my M.A. was about...


Guess what I want to do next...

Dan(c)e

After trying his luck in Edinburgh for about a year — can't quite remember when he randomly turned up out of the blue — HSC will be moving back to Denmark tomorrow. Apparently there's many jobs for him there, and he has an interview in Copenhagen next week. With a bit of luck, and I'll know about that in two to three weeks, I might be joining him there in a little under a year's time, but until then, it's goodbye to the little drunken Dane.

Trip to Aalborg (R 8x32)

1-8 1C cross down RH to 2nd place on the wrong sides, set, and turn RH 1 1/4 times to end 1M between the 3s facing 3M, and 1L between the 2s facing 2L.
9-16 Reels of 3 across the dance; 1C end these in 2nd place on the wrong sides.
17-24 Meanwhile. 1C set, turn RH 3/4 (putting 1M at the top of the set, 1L at the bottom), set, and petronella home to 2nd place. This last petronella is more like a dodge, as supporting couples do: cross RH, set, change places on the side RH, cross LH — ending in the order 312, all on the correct side.
25-32 All circle 6H round and back.

This dance is confusing because (a) it's a 312 progression, which I never do on purpose but most of the dances I write end up with one anyway, and (b) the meanwhile bit is not J.B. Milne. Also, I might not get to dance it tonight. Grump.

Stufi

According to ANP:

The European Commission have brought the Netherlands to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg over discrimination with regard to student grants. According to Dutch law, students who want to qualify for student grants to study abroad, need to have been legally resident in the Netherlands for at least three of the previous six years. According to the European Commission, this residency requirement is in breach of EU rules about free movement of labour.

AHRC, ESRC, and friends – please take note. Thank you.

More politics (unstructured thoughts)

Three interesting Op/Ed pieces from the Dutch press:

Martin Sommer in De Volkskrant continues the Irish EU referendum theme. Kees Aerts in Trouw discusses the apparent demise of social-democracy in Europe. And Hans Goslinga, also in Trouw talks about difference between old and new people's parties, and why it's important to stick to politics rather than settle on a cross-party business cabinet.

Points that they (more or less) make that I agree with:

• As there is very little that can be done against whatever comes from Brussels, opposition politicians that run on an anti-Europe ticket are misleading the electorate. European integration is at a point where opting in or out of individual treaties and rules and regulations makes very little difference indeed. Empty words, then, all of it.


• One of the old values of social-democracy was cultural enlightenment. Aerts is right that this was probably a top-down process. The idea is levelling upwards, raising the level of the masses, rather than levelling downwards, lowering the level of the elite down to the gross common denominator. Of course you can ask whether this is actually true, seeing as even news and discussion programmes on tv have been turned into "infotainment".


• The masses see Europe as a case of "their rights versus our interests", and are no longer interested in the left-wing intellectual elite's messages about how cool international cooperation is. They feel threatened by globalisation, sometimes rightly so, and put more faith in messages about cultural conservatism, regardless of whether these messages come from traditionally right-wing or traditionally left-wing parties.


• It's probably better to keep talking rather than sidelining politics and give power to a cross-party cabinet of successful academics and businessmen. That idea is probably not even that bad in theory, but in practice, it won't be accepted by the masses who have lost their faith in people with a different outlook in life. Recall the PVV's hate speech against intellectuals with university degrees and designer glasses.

Final question: is this really a question of a change from politics of left versus right to politics of intellectuals versus non-intellectuals? Are they all that different? And should we care?

Politics

I was reading up on some of the issues around last week's referendum in Ireland about whether or not to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon. The quickest way to get to some relevant links of course is to look up the referendum on Wikipedia, which was made even easier by there being a link to the article on the Wikipedia front page. (Which for me functioned as a reminder that I was meaning to read some more about it.)

Two things.

I was amazed and slightly appalled that one of the people active in the "NO to Lisbon" campaign was Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party. This is not an Irish party that is rallying for Irish independence from the UK – of course, they managed to kick out the Brits somewhere between 1916 and 1949, depending on how you define independence. No, it is a British party (in fact, mostly an English party) rallying for the European Union to stay out of British politics. But apparently it is alright for UKIP themselves to butt into Irish politics. I can understand that UKIP are evangelical about their "No to EU" message, fair enough, but if you want other countries to stay out of your politics, maybe you shouldn't get actively involved in another country's politics either.

The other thing is that the same Nigel Farage has said that the referendum was like a corrupt election in Zimbabwe or Afghanistan. Part of this is probably sour grapes, but it is a bit awkward to just disregard the outcome of the previous referendum (2008) and try again just because you didn't like the result. This reminds me of a talk at the Sociolinguistics Symposium in Amsterdam, where one of the keynote speakers pulled off exactly the same trick: the first set of experiments didn't show what we wanted it to show, so we re-did them, and then we liked the results better. Maybe the Irish should have waited with a new referendum – at least the two EU referenda in Norway were twenty years apart and there was enough change in both the electorate and the political situation in Europe to warrant trying again.

I also have thoughts about referenda, the provision and processing of relevant information, and the political landscape in general, but they are for some other time.