Scitilop - backwards politics.

And now for a word from the department of amateur political scientists. In a gross over-simplification, two-party politics can be modelled as a game where each party has to position itself on the well known left-right spectrum. Each person has a preference for a position on that spectrum, and will vote for the party that chooses the spot closest to that preference. The rational strategy sees both parties rush towards the centre.

What happens if we postulate some new behaviour: some people, especially those with preferences towards the extremities of the spectrum, may become "rusted-on" voters. A rusted-on voter won't ever vote for the other party. If each party suspects that its rusted-on voters are loyal, but that those opposite could be tempted to change, then we might find that the parties actually cross over. A left party might start to introduce more right-leaning policies, and vice-versa.
I think I've seen this in a number of situations. In the UK, the (left) labour party has decided to remove the lowest tax bracket, meaning that people on lower incomes have to pay more tax. One might suggest that progressive taxation is a left policy, whereas flat tax rates is a right policy. The left government is moving to the right.

In Queensland, the (left) labor government looked at daylight saving - moving the clocks an hour forward in the summer. Its prime constituency is in the highly populated southeast corner of the state, the most populous area, and the part with the most to benefit from daylight saving. But the government has refused, not wanting to alienate the more conservative (right) country areas.

The relatively new leader of the UK conservative party is much more left-wing than others in recent history.

The Australian federal Liberal (conservative, right) party has elected Brendan Nelson as its leader. He was once a member of the Labor (left) party. He has dissociated the party from many (but not all) of the previously right policies, including some in industrial relations, gay rights, and an apology to the Aborigines.

Ok, so it's not clear that on any single one of these positions, the right party is to the left of the left party. And of course the whole left-right spectrum is very artificial, and becoming less useful. But maybe that's the point.

There must be other articles/blogs about this. Maybe someone will send me some interesting links.

A Holiday at Wilson's Farm

It's half term at school, so there's another week off. We decided, along with about 20 million other Britons, that the best place to spend it would be on the M5, near Bristol. I suppose it's not too difficult to believe that a lot of cars can make the traffic slow down, but I do find it very weird that there's so much traffic that it just stops. For up to 10 minutes at a time. And then again, a few minutes later. I remember (with some pleasure) some interesting applied maths lectures in second year studying partial differential equations modelling traffic flow and heat flow. But I don't think the models we used could have described this.

Anyway, after a slower but not particularly unpleasant or frustrating journey, we found ourselves at Killerton House, a National Trust place near Exeter in Devon. It's got rather nice gardens, a nicely done up inside, with a costume museum, and importantly for Devonshire, tea rooms - two sets, even. I enjoyed stitching together these pictures of the girls in the garden. Maybe I should try to tune it up to make that join disappear.



After a quick cream tea (they don't seem to call them Devonshire Teas here), we were on our way to the farm. Depending who you ask, the best feature of this place is either the number of tractors, the lambs, the dogs, or the chickens/ducklings/goslings/egg-hunt.

We did a little exploring of the local area - to the Tarr Steps, and to Dunster/Minehead. We had driving rain, drizzle, low cloud, lots of combinations. The Exmoor Ponies were of great interest too. We had a couple of quite tasty dinners at Exebridge's "The Anchor", which was in a very nice setting.











I made an early departure from the farm, so that I could return to the pleasures of work, while the others stayed on holiday. There's absolutely no truth to the rumour that I can't survive 3 days without Internet connectivity. (We took the laptop to the supermarket because there would be coverage there!)

My train trip home was interesting. My first Taunton - Malvern Link ticket was offered at £51.50, but I explained that I'd seen it for £28 on the Internet. So, I was given a ticket for £28. The penalty for such a cheap ticket was that I wasn't permitted to go through Birmingham. Oddly enough, that didn't make any difference, given the trains I was planning to travel on. I suppose it might almost be reasonable to offer a flexible ticket first, but I don't really think so. Anyway, after the others drove back to the farm, I made it onto my train. Bristol Temple Meads was the first stop. And we waited a little while. There was an announcement explaining that the new Train Manager (conductor) would be a little late, as there were delays on trains coming from Birmingham, due to trees blown onto the tracks. A little while later, it was explained that the new train manager wouldn't be coming after all, and that this train was now terminated. "All change please, all change." We were advised to head over to a different platform, to get the next train in a generally northerly direction - this one was aiming for Manchester Piccadilly. It was only two stops to Cheltenham Spa, where I was to change for a Malvern train. But those two stops took some time, and of course the train was very crowded, having two train-loads of passengers at the end of a bank holiday weekend! When we arrived at Cheltenham, it turned out that we'd just missed the Malvern train, and the next one wouldn't be for two hours. I had hoped that perhaps I were allowed to catch a Birmingham train, I might have been able to connect somehow. But things turned out even better. There were four of us on that train who were now trying to get to Worcester, Malvern Link, Great Malvern, and Ledbury. After some animated (almost heated, from one quarter) discussion, and some consultation to the Fat Controller (by phone - I don't really know if he/she was fat, it's just a stereotype, and I'm not responsible!), the nice people at First Great Western agreed to send the four of us to Worcester and Great Malvern in a taxi. It cost them £72. As it turned out, I was only about 30 minutes later than I would have been by train, so that was quite good.

We'll have more photos and details of the holiday soon. Now that Joanna knows that Australia won the test by 95 runs, I may not hear from her again (the farm house isn't in range). Berenice is off on her Egyptian Escapade tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, which means that I've got to manage 3 nights on my own. This calls for some immediate prioritisation of culinary establishments!

A calm weekend

I managed to get to 2.5 services at Gloucester today - they sang Howells Collegium Regale Jubilate and Te Deum for matins for Pentecost, followed by Darke in F for Eucharist. Then evensong in the middle of the day (3pm, 6 hours before sunset!) had a fancy Magnificat by Swayne, and the Nunc by Holst, with an Elgar anthem. I was disappointed not to hear the plainsong Veni Creator Spiritus - unless it was disguised in the recessional improvisation.

Berenice left today for a week of walking in Wales, with other walkers by the coach-load destined for Criccieth near Cardigan.

The others went to Snowshill Manor in the Cotswolds. Unfortunately, the camera eluded them, so you'll have to make do with the wiki pictures.

The weather this weekend has been like a mild Brisbane summer's day. The only negative is that there's a bit of haze around, otherwise the pictures would be amazing. I saw dozens of people paragliding from the ridge of the hills - the easterly wind (which more often brings the haze) in the heat would have provided some good updrafts over the ridge. While I've not really been tempted to parachute (from an otherwise perfectly good aeroplane), I could easily be tempted to try this. Maybe one day...

Yesterday (Saturday) was our first day with nothing on for some time. Helen had spent Friday night with Lily. The girls did their orienteering (S) and fashion design for first hobbies, followed by horse riding together. The afternoon was spent playing around on the road, the common, and the creek, on bikes & scooters, with Matthew and Tom from up the road. Joanna played with her flower garden, inspired by the previous day's visit to the Spring Flower Show at the Three Counties Showground. It also inspired her to buy a ticket for the Chelsea flower show, later in the month.

And while we're going backwards, we had a lovely dinner at Beau Thai on Friday night to celebrate the birthday and retirement of a Dstl colleague. Peter and others had many interesting stories that kept us going well past the restaurant's advertised closing time. I haven't known him long, but I hope he continues to come to our Friday lunches, which I seem to be running.

Now that things are a bit calmer at home, we're thinking about our next holidays. There's a mid-term farmstay week later this month, and Joanna's sure to write about her imminent Scotland trip, and Berenice is going to Egypt and Iceland. But what I really mean is holidays that I can take! There's a Scandinavia plan for July. My main aim had been to get into the arctic circle to see a long day, but that's looking increasingly difficult - too far to drag everyone. So we'll probably end up visiting places like Esbjerg, Køpenhavn, Bergen, Ålesund, Oslo, and Stockholm. If we've got time, I'd also like to pay some Bach homage at Leipzig. And Mike suggested that since we're in the area, we should head over to St Petersburg - but that seems way too far away. After a northern sojourn, the only option would be to head south, and there's two such adventures on the cards: an adults-only winetasting at Bordeaux (cheap flights from Birmingham direct to Bordeaux) with Géraldine and Bernard (maybe) for a few days, with some touring around the Dordogne; and also a family Riviera extravaganza, including some fraction of Barcelona, Carcassonne, Marseilles, Cannes, Nice, Monaco, Rome, and Pompeii. All in one week?!

Lucky I've got some work to keep me occupied in between the holidays!

One quick photo. I'm glad that Christopher watches out for traffic when he's driving.

Snowed under

It's been so long since I last wrote. Things that I need to report:

• Trips we did with the Grandparents
• Dinner with Helen and Keith
• Trips we did with Glennn and Megan
• French Battlefields tour
• Paris, Champagne, Reims
  
• Trip to Germany to visit my 3rd cousins and the girls' 4th cousins - not to mention Castle Jesberg! (can't resist putting in a picture here)
  
• Grandparents return to Australia
  
• Choir competition coming up (and I have a cold)
• Joanna's upcoming trips to London and the Orkneys.
  

I've been playing around with a Sudoku solver as a hobby programming task. I could rave on about the structure for pages, extolling the virtues of my loosely-coupled event-driven design. I will confess that it wasn't entirely test-driven, but I'm getting better!

The extended daylight at the moment is interesting - I mowed the lawn between 7:30 and 8:00pm. I've had to put up an extra layer of curtain to help the girls sleep - they giggle to see the daylight after 9pm. And there's still about 6 weeks to the solstice...

Did I tell you the one about the airline fares? I rang Qantas to ask about a 1-way economy class trip London-Hawaii-Brisbane. They said that it would be £3300! I know it's not a very obvious route, but that seems crazy. Then they admitted that I could do it as part of a round-the-world ticket for only £1300. It must be fascinating to see all the factors that these people consider when they set their ticket prices & conditions.