Posts Tagged "UK"
What would have happened last night if we’d had proportional representation in the #ukelection?
I thought I’d try my hand at a little number crunching. Based on the
figures from the BBC Election Website, I’ve made a couple of pie charts to show how the
seats in the House of Commons currently stand, and how they would
stand based on the same votes if we had a simple proportional
representation system (assuming percentage of the vote = percentage of
seats in the House).
Click either image to enlarge.
Add your comments!
Note: That this is based on 648 of the 650 constituencies, as the
other two have not declared, and are not expected soon.
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Teach every child about food – Jamie Oliver’s call to action (#TED)
Please, watch this video, and pass it to everyone you know.
Jamie Oliver has been awarded the TED Prize 2010 to help make his mission to re-educate society about the importance of home cooking, fresh food and eating well.
This is a solvable problem, which every one of us can help with. Sign up to help our children and our children’s children – in the USA, the UK and around the world.
Frozen Britain
Wow… Now I’d heard Britain was having the heaviest winter for 30 years, but this picture really puts it into perspective! You can get the full-size hi-res version from NASA.
Awesome new UK plug design
I really hope somebody picks this up and makes it a reality. It’s sheer genius and solves a lot of space problems with UK plugs. And it allows sockets to be reinvented while remaining fully backwards compatible too. Great innovation!
Andrew Marr interviews John Major on the state of UK politics & UK debt
I caught this very interesting interview with former PM John Major talking about how the state of the UK public debt is so much worse than we realise, and about the problems that the next government – whichever party it might be – will face. Government will have to raise taxes or cut spending, he says. He even proposes that government itself should be downsized, and mentions a very interesting idea to ensure that politicians are more in touch with “real life”. They also discuss the problems of the loss of trust in Parliament as a whole following the expenses scandal.
I don’t support Labour or Conservative myself, but I can’t help but see parallels between the media criticism of John Major that led to his downfall and the similar media attacks on Gordon Brown of late. Gordon Brown strikes me as a shrewd economist who somewhat has his hands tied by public and media pressure. I hope he doesn’t suffer the same fate John Major did, and I would like to think the British public could let people like Major and Brown do their job on their own merits. Sadly, with the media being as anti-establishment and influential to public opinion as it is, I’m not sure that can happen.
This YouTube version is viewable anywhere but stops before the end. For UK viewers the full interview is on iPlayer [43:00 minutes in]