The minister for the Cabinet Office has been seen discarding documents into park bins while working outdoors. Not a good look but I'll reserve judgement on how serious it actually is. This line in the Guardian article made me laugh though:

Letwin is a polymath who has some idiosyncrasies. He talks openly about being an early riser [...]
(Emphasis ( Read more... )

The kitchen hand towels from the HEMA are overdue for replacement but it's hard to find new ones here. What is everyone doing, drying their hands on their tea towels? I decided to check my towel vocab in case I'd fallen into a language trap, but fell into the larger Wikipedia trap instead. So now I have no time to rant about towels or, as a follow ( Read more... )

The Yes to AV crowd got a right drubbing in Thursday's referendum. I didn't hold out much hope for electoral reform but didn't expect such a poor result. I should have, considering the poor campaign for this poor version of proportional representation. My support for the Liberal Democrats had already waned and this pretty much finishes it, I don't ( Read more... )

Today there's a vote on whether to keep the First Past the Post system or to change to the Alternative Vote proportional (sort of) system. There are other elections happening in the UK but London only gets the referendum. In stark contrast to the previous elections, the first I saw of either campaign was outside Bethnal Green tube station today ( Read more... )

A nursery teacher told me that her small son had learned his large vocabulary from the many songs she sang to him. It's led to some interesting associations for him. Whenever he sees a horse, he shouts "Banbury Cross ( Read more... )

A reader from Australia expressed surprise that, as a politically aware person, I hadn't covered the student riots in London last week. He wanted to know if it was hooliganism or a sign of the Brits standing up for themselves ( Read more... )

This morning as I made my way down the stairs out the building, I was unexpectedly confronted with a picture of Pope Ratzinger over the noticeboard. Someone had put up a tabloid's poster celebrating his tour of the UK. I contemplated taking it down, but then thought, "free speech". The back of my brain then exercised its rights and called me an ( Read more... )

Apologies to those who've been confused by the politics posts recently, in my haste, I neglected to cover the basics.

So, here's what's happening today:

1. UK parliamentary election. Each eligible voter gets one vote in their constituency (Dutch: kiesdistrict). Whichever constituency candidate has the most votes, becomes the Member of Parliament ( Read more... )

Stephen Fry recently wrote a post on voting. I read it, thought "that was pretty good," and then realised there was another 6 pages to go. The man does waffle. But rather wonderfully.

If this election does matter then surely my ignoring it would put me in the position of one of those rather silly people who is content to jeer from the sidelines, ‘ ( Read more... )

As I learned during the last local elections, politics in this area can get fairly toxic. However, here's one good thing about the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates for Bethnal Green & Bow: the candidate list guarantees that someone from an ethnic minority background will win. It's not only the two frontrunners either, it's 8 out of 11 ( Read more... )