Parish elections 2011

The four years is up so those parishes that held elections in 2007 are up for re-election; or perhaps not.

In 2010 I made note that there were some parishes not holding an election because the number of candidates matched the number of seats. The same has happened again as the Shuttle shows.

The unopposed list for 2011 is as follows: Broome, Churchill, Cookley.

The unopposed list for 2007 was: Broome, Churchill, Wolverley.

Of the seven seats in Broome, five will  be retained by the previous incumbents (Don, David, David, Neal, and Nicola); of the three seats in Churchill, two will be retained by the previous incumbents (Pauline and Brian) and of the seven seats in Cookley four will be retained (Dean, Joanne,Carole, and Christopher) with one (Barry) automatically getting a seat after failing in the previous election.

So that's 17 seats in total with 11 incumbents with no election.

Mass Effect 2 tips - things the game doesn't tell you

I'll add to this as I go along, but in essence these are the things that the game doesn't show you in the 'tutorial' section. They may appear in the tips during the loading screens, but those are random; or they'll simply something I noticed while playing the game.

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Libyan rebels attacked by coalition forces

It's not funny, but did anyone else at least raise a wry eyebrow at the news of a UN aircraft attacking rebels who were celebrating by firing guns in the air.

Quick tip - people firing guns in the air at an aircraft and people firing guns in the air in celebration are not that easy to differentiate; might want to find a different celebratory method.

Royal Mail Stamp prices

The price of stamps went up yesterday. If you're looking for a nice wallchart for your business with them all listed; good luck. Three pages link to non-existent pages and the only live link tries to download a PDF from the ftp site and requires a password.

Luckily said login is "anon" for both name and password; at which point it will probably tell you it's exceeded its 250 person login limit.

Try again and you might get lucky.

A normal first class stamp has increased from 41p to 46p, second-class 32p to 36p. For Large Letters of under 100g 66p to 75p, and 51p to 58p. That pays for our one collection a day from the estate's single postbox and one delivery around 12pm.

Safe MPs

During a discussion over the pros and cons of AV and FPTP (and PR) someone made the comment that AV was pointless as "it won't affect most MPs, only about a 100 or so". I replied that I didn't think that sounded right.

But it doesn't matter if it doesn't sound right to me, it only matters what the data shows and as it so happens I have the 2010 election results. The statement posed was that the majority of MPs won't be affected by AV as they've already polled over 50% of the vote; the results below show which didn't:

Party	<50%	=50%	>50%
Speaker	1	0	0
Alliance	1	0	0
Conservative	180	0	126
DUP	8	0	0
Green	1	0	0
Independent	0	0	1
Labour	181	1	76
Liberal Democrat	46	0	11
Plaid Cymru	3	0	0
Scottish National Party	6	0	0
Sinn Fein	3	0	2
Social Democratic and Labour Party	3	0	0
	433	1	216

That's 433 out of a total 650 MPs whose winning position might be affected by AV.

A studio's vision

What is it that would cause a studio to buy the rights to something and then say "Wouldn't this be much better if we removed all the things that made this copyright recognisable and replaced it with something else?"?

Imagine if Warner Brothers had bought the Harry Potter rights and then said "I'm not sure about all this magic and it seems a bit too British. What if we set it in America and made it about training young kids to be cops? What's Steve Guttenberg doing these days?" -

"You're a cop Harry and a thumping good one to I'd wager considering your parents"
"But I can't be a cop Steve"
"Oh no has anything ever strange happened to you that you just can't explain?"
"Well there was that time I tackled that kid who was shoplifting"
"There you go then"

Quite mad who would do something that bizarre? Why hello Warner Brothers is that a shiny Akira licence you're holding in your hand? Would that be the quintessentially Japanese anime that you're turning into a live-action movie set in New York with all the main character being recast as white westerners? It is; are you insane?

Who's that with you? Oh hello Walt Disney Company what's that you've got there? Oo is that the rights to Agatha Christie's Miss Marple character? You know the one she created specifically to prevent adaptations of her work from removing or youthifying the elderly characters she used. Who are you going to get to play the frail octogenarian? Thirty-eight year old Jennifer Garner; well gosh that makes sense.

Another argument for AV

I've sure I've used this analogy elsewhere; but I'm going to expand it here. Imagine our election system is like going out for a meal with a club or other large group of friends. The menu comes around and on offer are:

Chicken
Vegetarian
Fish
Lamb
Pork
Beef

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