How the Labour Party Lost My Vote

I've always been a bit of an old lefty. I figure the world is a better place to live in when the the minimum standard of living is a bit higher than a cardboard box and a blind eye turned. So imagine my disgust when I saw the latest bit of direct marketing by the Labour Party.

"Lib Dem Leader: Thatcher was right!" declares the headline. Although it doesn't actually stoop to telling us why he thought that, or what about. Don't you love a lack of context? But wait! They've helpfully expanded this with an alleged newpaper headline - "My admiriation for Thatcher; by Clegg". Even more lack of context. It could have been admiration for her hair, or standing up to critics, or even suceeding in a mans world.

"But which newspaper is this from?" you ask, so you can have an informed opinion. Why, the Daily Mail of course. *head-desk*

If you trust this gutter rag to report fairly, and accurately, then I have a bridge you might like to buy.

The soon-to-be-recyling then goes on to say how the Lib Dems are more in line with the old Tories, than the new Conservative party is. I suppose that's because the new Conservatives are too busy trying to emulate the New Labour party policy of "Say what will get most votes from Middle England" rather than having some firm ideals or values?

After I'd torn the leaflet up I dicovered a wonderful nugget of scare-mongery on the back - "Only Labour can beat the Tories," it claims. "A vote for the Lib Dems or any other party wll let the Tories win!" If a party is reduced to advocating tactical voting, I think they've already lost.

I still can't forgive the Conservatives for snatching school milk, the miners strikes, and the Poll Tax, but if the opposition has sunk to this level (remember when the Consevatives created the New Labour - New Danger posters?) then we have nothing left to lose.

Personally I will be voting for the party I want to win*, not the one I hate less.

*=Certainly not the Conservatives or one of those single policy parties like UKIP or the BNP either!

“Nuclear Wessels”

Serious blog posting here today. Sorry.

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the Trident nuclear-submarine defence system. Many people are saying we should update it because we need to have a nuclear deterrent. Some people are saying we should not update and spend the £20bn on hospitals, schools, infrastructure and the environment.

The pro-nuke argument points to rogue second- and third-world countries who are trying to develop nukes (and some cynics suggest we might need to defend ourselves from America one day).

The anti-nuke argument says we have America to defend us, and we’ve never needed to use the Trident system, why would we need it now.

As a budding game-theorist I’ve been looking at the nuclear ‘game’ and have spotted a flaw in the pro-British nuclear deterrent argument.

The basic form of the nuclear deterrent is this: If we both have nukes each of us knows that we cannot launch a strike without retaliation. And where nukes are concerned retaliation means we both end up sitting in a radioactive crater with leukaemia.

The problem with this is that it assumes both sides realise the consequences, and aren’t willing to die to harm their opponent.

This falls down when you consider the rogue states that the politicians point to as a threat. Most of these countries haven’t played the cold-war games, and some contain zealots who are willing to die for their cause if it will harm their enemies. If this is the case, no matter how many nukes we have, we could still be targeted by these countries.

We might have nukes, but no-one is being deterred. Spend the money on something useful.