Interesting Links for 04-05-2013

• Tories not sufficiently unhinged, concedes Cameron
  Need I add that I am finding the current council election results, and their effect on British politics _fascinating_?
  (tags: politics uk )
• Thoughts After a Week with Google Glass
  (tags: googleglass )
• After Checking Your Bank Account, Remember To Log Out, Close The Web Browser, And Throw Your Computer Into The Ocean
  (tags: computers banking security )
• The world’s first entirely 3D-printed gun has been made
  (tags: guns technology 3dprinting )
• One candidate in the May elections won with under 20% of the vote.
  (tags: uk elections voting )
• Some gorgeous photos from this year's Beltane fire festival (some NSFW)
  (tags: beltane photography )
• International Clitoris Week Is Just Around the Corner
  (tags: viasupergee clitoris )
• The incredible over-acting of William Shatner
  (tags: william_shatner AndrewHickey )
• We now have injectable oxygen
  (tags: medicine )
• Robot Finds Mysterious Spheres in Ancient Temple
  (tags: religion robots archeology )

A bet with steer

steer just published this on his journal:

"I bet Andrew Ducker that before May 4th 2033 the UK (or that part of the UK which stays with London after any devolution) will retain First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) for general elections. Further, no English county council/unitrary authority elections (of the type described in [1]) will switch system away from FPTP.

The person who loses will buy the winner a drink of their choice (within reason -- pints of champagne or bottles of aged whiskey are out) in a bar in the winner's home city... presence over video accepted if distance precludes attendance in person.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_local_elections,_2013"

I agree with some of his reasoning, but believe that self-interest in supporting the good of individual parties will overcome worries about hypocrisy, and that having a fourth* party with a large chunk of popular support will make it even more obvious to people how broken the system is - and that having 40-odd percent of people voting for parties that are disadvantaged by the voting system is not sustainable over the long-term (i.e. 20 years).

Of course, if UKIP support crumbles by the time of the next election then this becomes much less likely. We shall see - and I shall try to remain optimistic.

*As I've discussed elsewhere, I'd love the Greens to get enough mainstream support to make this five. I don't see it any time soon though.

A further thought about the UKIP

Plenty of stuff I've seen recently talks about the UKIP and how most of their supporters aren't actually focussed on Europe. UKIP have successfully positioned themselves in the "Modern life is rubbish" slot, with Europe, gay marriage, political correctness gone mad, health & safety gone mad, immigration, and various other things that the Daily Mail vent about all lumped in together as "stuff which we should not put up with".

But I wonder what the thing which pushed most of them over the edge was. We've seen a massive surge in popularity over the last couple of years, and I wonder if it's poverty that's done it (plenty of studies show that poor people tend to be more small-c conservative, focussed on the in-group and generally selfish, for understandable reasons), or if this is happening because a bunch of previous Conservative supporters have simply given up on the Conservatives ever going back to being Their Kind of People (my understanding is that the first 15% of the UKIP in any area are Conservative supporters, and after that they're equally Conservative, Labour, and protest-voters-who-used-to-vote-Lib-Dem).

Of the latter, I strongly suspect that it will have been gay marriage that pushed them over the edge. It seems unlikely to have been fiscal policy/taxes, and I can't think what else they'd have been depending on the Conservatives doing that they haven't lived up to. Any thoughts?

Edit: Just to make it entirely clear, I am _not_ saying "All UKIP supporters hate gay people.", nor do I believe any such thing.