Pretty much as I expected
I found this through
Daily Referendum and thought I would give it a go and see where it put me. I've always considered myself to be naturally conservative but I see myself now as a Cameronite.
| Your Political Profile: |
| Overall: 60% Conservative, 40% Liberal |
| Social Issues: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal |
| Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal |
| Fiscal Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal |
| Ethics: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal |
| Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal |
24 hours to live
No, not me. I'm talking about Saddam Hussein.
I've just heard that the ex-Iraqi dictator has been handed over to the Iraqi authorities and will be executed either later today or tomorrow. I'm not saying that this will make Iraq a better place free from the insurgents but the citizens of Iraq can be happy that Saddam will not be returning.
2007 - hopes and predictions
With another year about to begin, I have made a list of things I would like to see and expect to see in the next twelve months.
I've missed the political activism over my holidays but hope to get back into it soon. Term 2 will most likely see many campaigning days with my CF branch in the run up to the local elections next May.
The first big event of 2007 for me will not be my return to uni in January or my much dreaded analysis exam. I was talking to some friends in November and they only went and suggested that I stand for Union officer next year. I thought they meant next academic year but they meant next calendar year. I've taken their advice and decided to stand so I guess it's fingers crossed between now and February.
Another thing that it is normal to do at the end of term 2 of year 1 is to get onto society execs. I definitely plan to stand for UWCA but have a couple of others that I am considering.
My Easter holidays will be a spiritual time for me. I have booked a week on the island of Iona and am really looking forward to going.
Term 3 will start at the end of April and will be the time that I start thinking about exams.
A couple of news events now. I've had my fingers crossed for some friends for a while now who are standing in the local elections next year in Leamington. I have my money on the next day, May 4th, being the day that Tony Blair resigns. I'm expecting Gordon Brown to be the next PM and think it is quite likely that John Reid will be the deputy.
As a non-smoker I am really looking forward to July 1st as that is when the smoke ban in England will start. I really can't wait for when I can go out and not come back smelling of other people's smoke.
Sadly, however, it is not all going to be good in 2007. I'm not expecting an end to reality TV and actually think that we will yet again see the X Factor winner as Christmas number one.
I'm hoping that next year will be another good year for the Conservatives in the opinion polls and I am expecting more of the same from Labour. I mean that there will be more re-announcing policies from years ago as new ideas, more promising the same money three times over, and yet more scandals. It could be a really interesting year politically, not to mention the possibility of there being a general election as early as next October.
Last but not least, if I have got my dates right, sometime in the first half of 2007 will see there only being ten years left in which to do all the things on the list I made in December 2006. I have a rough idea of what order I need to do them in but I'm hoping that 2007 is when I start doing the stuff that doesn't need a huge amount of commitment. Sometimes I wonder if I have enough time to fit it all in but I am definitely looking forward to the challenge.
Here's to 2007 being a really good year for all!
2006 for me
It was October that I will remember the most out of 2006. It was mostly an uneventful year but October was when I went to uni. This was one of the most important events in 2006 - the other happened in November but more information on that will follow later.
January saw my baptism and confirmation. After 3 years as a Christian, I was now ready to make a lifelong commitment. The service was really good and I will hopefully never forget the day.
As happens pretty much every year, February was a bit of a non-event. However, I already have plans for February 2007 that will follow later in the week.
March was also a non-event (apart from my birthday) so nothing to report here.
I guess April was when I started the countdown to when I went to uni. I remember being so bogged down with paperwork. I hope never to see another student finance form ever again - though it would be advisable for me to avoid applying online after the issues I had in October with online voting!
May was another non-event. It was, however, when I really started to think about spiritual stuff (which actually became the theme for my gap year).
June was the end of the paperwork madness - thankfully. Seriously, I hate filling in forms so much!
July was really when I started to come to an end with all the spiritual stuff. It is still going on, even now, but has been winding down since summer.
I think that August was the most random month of 2006. I attempted to start writing a book but didn't really get anywhere. All I have now regarding the plot is there is a twenty-something dropout who was in debt.
September was my last month at home before going to uni. I discovered that the ultimate cure for insomnia is the data protection act - I think next year I am not going to read all the small print as I am sure it will all be the same. I also discovered that students living away from home
do have the right to vote (having believed the opposite during most of my gap year). This was also when I became a Cameronite and when I started blogging.
This leads us into October, the month I had been looking forward to for so long. It was the month I went to uni. In addition to this, I turned up at a non-existent lecture on my first day, went mad at the freshers' fair, spread my diseases to everyone one weekend, stood for the student council and got elected, and double booked myself whilst leaving the decision out of my hands. This was also when I discovered I had a passion for politics. If that wasn't enough, I managed to fulfil 2 of my lifelong ambitions in the same day. They were going on a protest and appearing on TV.
The biggest and most important event of November will be covered in more detail later but I will say for now that irony is definitely not dead. It may have been 3 months early but I started thinking about whether or not to increase my involvement in student politics by standing to be a Union officer for 2007-2008. I also lost the right to vote in the Union referenda because of rather dodgy circumstances.
In December I managed to get my vote back for the referendum motions - I never thought I would say this but thank goodness for student apathy (though I do not actually mean that). I also came up with a rather unusual list of things to do before I'm 30 that I will go into more detail about soon and I came home for Christmas. I'm now desperate to go back to uni, even if I do have an analysis exam on the first day.
2006 in the world
I can't believe it is nearly 2007. I have decided to list the highlights of 2006 in the news and provide my analysis where appropriate.
January saw Charles Kennedy's resignation as leader of the Lib Dems. I liked him but thought that it was not a good idea to have a drunk in a position where there was a possibility (albeit very small) he could run our country.
Since then, the Lib Dems seem to have disappeared off the map. This takes me on to May and the local elections. I was happy to see gains for the Conservatives and losses for Labour - of course I hope to see the same in 2007.
The next day Charles Clarke was sacked following the foreign prisoners scandal in the Home Office. John Prescott lost his job without losing his title or salary following an affair with his secretary.
If I remember rightly, it was either April or May when Patricia Hewitt said that the NHS was having its best ever year. Hmmm, not quite!
An ongoing news story for 2006 was the cash for peerages investigation. Lord Levy was arrested and Tony Blair was questioned by police (though not under caution). You can see my analysis of this
here.
In other news, the education bill was only approved thanks to Tory votes, the House of Commons rejected calls for an inquiry into the Iraq war, Princess Diana died in a car crash, Tessa Jowell left her family to spend more time with the cabinet, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death, Russian spy Alexander Litvenyenko (is that how you spell his name?) died from radiation poisoning, and the Hungarian prime minister admitted to lying about the economy during an election campaign.
Finally, Tony Blair announced in September that he would resign within the year. My metaphorical money (I don't believe in gambling) is on May 4th 2007.
Merry Christmas
I can't believe how quickly 2006 has gone. It will be Christmas in only 2 days. Therefore, this will most likely be my last blog entry before Christmas.
After Christmas I will be needing to revise for the much hated maths module they call analysis but will most likely want to spend more time procrastinating. I can't be bothered right now to spend my free time watching the
Parliament Channel (as I do quite a bit at uni in between lectures) so expect the following blog entries between Christmas and new year.
- I will be providing my analysis of world events of 2006 and giving my predictions for 2007.
- I will also be doing the same for personal events, the highs and the lows. This will include my hopes and predictions for 2007.
In 2007, I plan to continue blogging. It will continue to be mainly about politics but there will be the odd entry about me and my plans. In November 2006, I made a very important decision which lead me, in December 2006, to make a list of things I need to do before I'm 30. Watch this space for more information (it is not the average list and does not include anywhere anything about bungee jumping or backpacking in the Far East).
All that remains now is to wish you all a very happy Christmas.
Election next year?
Reading the BBC News website this morning, I found this article about the possibility of Gordon Brown calling a snap election when he becomes prime minister. The Lib Dems have reshuffled their front bench in preparation. The election could be as soon as next October.
Labour's rivals are eyeing the possibility of a snap general election, when Tony Blair steps down next year.
The Liberal Democrats have reshuffled their front bench, and appointed a manifesto chairman, to put them on an election footing.
They believe there could be an election as early as October 2007.
October 2007 is only 10 months away. I, however, will have my own issues to deal with. I would have just started my second year at uni. I probably would not have got round to getting my postal vote sent to the right address yet.
Over on Conservative Home, commenters on this article are thinking about the possibility of the election being as early as May (to coincide with the local elections?). This is even more of a dodgy situation for me to be in as that will be just before my exams. I will be far more concerned with revising (this year does actually count towards my degree, even if it is only 10%) than I will with voting. No doubt also that there will be many opportunities to go campaigning with my CF branch.
Either way, this next year could be a very interesting one politically. I'm predicting a small majority (single figures) to the Conservatives - or is this just wishful thinking?
Commitments at uni aside now, maybe I should rethink my 11 year plan I came up with last Saturday in Battersea on the grounds that I got the dates wrong. I think it should be the 13 year plan now.
Lunatics running the asylum
Well they have been for a few years now, but I've just read
this (and the comments) at it made me want to rant.
A while ago, there was a case brought to the European Court of Human Rights by ex-prisoner
John Hirst about prisoners getting the right to vote. I remember being very much against any such idea at the time and my views have not changed in the slightest since then.
Yesterday, I posted a comment on
Iain Dale's blog stating my opinion regarding the issue. This is what I said:
I can't believe anyone has come up with such a ludicrous idea (in my opinion). Other than the most basic human rights that keep them alive, prisoners should have no rights. If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime (but reintroduce "innocent until proven guilty").
I would like to emphasise again how I think that prisoners should have
no rights. If you have committed a crime then you should have to pay your debt to society. In my opinion, this includes losing all the rights you would enjoy as a law abiding citizen. This includes the right to vote.
I know that opinions on both sides of this debate are controversial. People may think that I support the idea of political prisoners having no rights. I don't. I think of prisoners (in this country, and any other democracy) as those who have been sent to prison because they have committed a crime serious enough to warrant their removal from society. It is very important that the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is upheld at all times.
I would like to end by quoting another commenter (going by the name of RK) on Iain Dale's blog, who put it far better than I ever could.
You may have won a round in court but the majority of people in this country will find this ruling intolerable and ultimately democracy is rule by the people and not rule by court order.
Hear, hear!
The rise of student apathy
I'm procrastinating. What could be more appropriate?
This, however, is a far more serious subject. I mentioned
the other day that the Union referenda had their lowest turnout since 2004. I blogged about this in detail
here. I want to go into more detail about the wider problem here.
I remember watching the news during April 2005 and a theme running through the news back then was why it was the 18-25 age group who were least likely to vote. I could connect with this as I had only recently turned 18 and really did not want to vote. I had better things to do, such as revising for my upcoming exams and even watching paint dry.
I came up with every excuse I could think of, but there seemed to be something wrong with everything I said.
I could just be 17 again.Not quite. This is probably the most rediculous excuse I've ever come up with to get out of anything. It lasted less than a day.
I don't get home before 5:30pm on Tuesday.It would have helped if I got the day right! I still get confused between Tuesday and Thursday. The time, also completely wrong, was just made up on the spot when my friend asked me why I wasn't going to vote. It sounded sensible at the time. I actually did get home on time so this excuse went out of the window after about a week.
Well, I just can't be bothered.Great excuse but I had to do better if I wanted to spend the next 4 or 5 years bitching about how I didn't like the government.
Actually, I'm not even entitled to vote. I'm only the average guy on the street.And so is everyone else! For anyone who was wondering, this is where my display name came from. I have never felt so stupid. This excuse lasted all of about 5 minutes (thank goodness).
This is the example I regularly use when it comes to my own apathy. I have been there. I therefore consider myself more than entitled to criticise everyone else. For information, I did vote in the end. I had taken an interest in current affairs by accident (I was trying to get out of doing homework one night), became really involved in the debate and decided I couldn't wait to see the back end of this government.
Back now to the
Union referenda. So few people bothered to vote that the motions could not be passed and will be discussed in the next council meeting. I find it hard to believe that most students would rather leave it to 70 or so people (average turnout at a council meeting) in a room, who are not exactly representative of everyone else, than make the most of their one chance to have their say on Union policy and vote.
The jist that I have been getting from most people I have spoken to this week is that nobody cares. It is true that none of the motions were particularly exciting this time but only 1426 people needed to vote (why 1426 as opposed to a more round number, I do not know - it was not me who made the rules).
I am not trying to take the moral high ground here. In fact, I went down with a really bad sickness bug and spent all of referenda week in bed so didn't vote. I get my vote next term though shouldn't really as more people should have voted last week.
Just to add a small point of irony, there was a motion called "Lack of Confidence in the Students' Union" stating that we had no confidence in anything to do with the Union. It included drinks prices, Union events, services provided by the Union, the democratic structures, and such issues as a smoking ban that was passed in a referendum last year only to not be implemented on economic grounds. The irony is that not only was this motion inquorate (not enough people voted) but it also received the least number of votes.
A case of
I have no confidence in the Students' Union so I am going to show this by not voting in the referenda.
David Cameron - first year analysis
I have been known many times to say that this is the kind of analysis that I like to spend my time doing. No epsilons, no sequences tending to infinity, no natural numbers, and - best of all - no really annoying maths symbols that nobody can understand. Sorry for the maths joke but I'm doing a module called analysis at the moment that is hated by the vast majority of maths students.
I'd far rather think of analysis as something that sums up my opinions on a particular subject. That today being David Cameron's first year as Tory leader.
I remember last year not being too bothered who was leader, as long as there was someone who I could vote for at the next election. In fact, at the time, I didn't even realise that I would be entitled to vote in 2009 because I knew I would be at uni.
I didn't have much of an opinion when I heard Cameron was elected, though I was pleased the Tories finally had a leader. I was more concerned about policies and actually thought 2013 was too far into the future for me to be worrying about in 2005.
Not much changed concerning my opinion in the beginning of 2006. I had what I then considered to be far more important issues on my mind. In all honesty, I didn't really care about politics. I was interested in what was happening but didn't need loads of opinions on who I thought should run the country. I still thought I wouldn't be able to vote until after I graduated in 2010.
I wasn't particularly bothered about the environment in April/May 2006 when Cameron launched his "Vote blue, Go green" campaign shortly before the local elections. It was at about this time that I decided that I was a "true blue" and that I didn't like what I saw as wishy-washy liberalism from the Tories. This is not what I remember voting for 12 months earlier. I was becoming concerned that I wouldn't have anyone to vote for. I was wanting this to change by 2013.
Over summer I took an interest in politics again. I was still a little concerned with the wishy-washyness. I still considered myself a "true blue". I was by then getting rather frustrated at the lack of policies.
Then, all of a sudden, sometime in September, something happened. I had been sceptical of Cameron's leadership for 9 months but I started to support him almost overnight. I became passionate about the environment. I wanted to see economic stability before tax cuts. I was now well and truly a Cameronite. I still believe that he wasn't right to support top-up fees (£3,000 is far too much debt to get into when you're 18 in my opinion) but I agree with him on a lot of things. I now had someone to vote for. This was really good as it was around the same time that I found out I would not lose my right to vote if I went to uni.
More passionate than ever and more in favour of Cameron's leadership than ever, I decided at the societies fair at uni in the beginning of October to join
UWCA. The time was right for me. I knew where I stood politically and wanted to get a bit more involved.
Now, in December, I am glad that Cameron is trying to bring the party into the 21st century. Thatcher may be an inspiration to me but I can say with complete honesty now that Thatcher was the right leader in 1979 and Cameron will be the right leader in 2009.
Long time, no blog
I've just got a few minutes as I'm about to go out for a Christmas dinner with my CF branch but I just want to post what to expect here over the next few days and let you know that I haven't forgotten this blog.
It is a year today since David Cameron became leader of the Conservative party so I will be posting my views on his first year hopefully tomorrow.
Also the Union referendums at Warwick saw their lowest turnout since 2004. I will be bringing up my perspective on the rise of student apathy very soon.
Watch this space!
