Taking Out The Trash

election graphic

This is far better than the Vine's rubbish touch screen on the BBC.
To the point, if not in-depth.

factoid

Just learnt that Florida has two different time zones, thanks to expert on Radio 5.
Interesting.
More interesting that Dimbley's laboured public school quotes about each state. "I think it was John Adams that called Idaho the state which put the eye in potato."

election night part 28

Radio 5 along with Iain Dale and the Daily Kos on the web with BBC on the TV, me increasingly not doing any work as the election results roll in.
I'd like to get more on the senate and congressional races from the BBC (and the Jeremy Vine touch screen stuff is rather poor) coz it was ID that let me know that Liddy Dole might be losing.
Starting to warm up....

All politics is local

Below is my latest post on the Total Politics site. I understand the blogs there are to undergo a revamp so keep an eye on them.

Last week there was quite a detailed discussion in the school playground between parents on how accurate the America polls might be.

Who knew that the Bradley effect could become common currency rather than a psephological speciality?

We'll find out over the next 24 hours (providing there is no re-run of 2000). I’ve invited parents to drop in on the way to and from school on Wednesday morning to have a cookie or bagel and watch the fnial stages of the Presidential election.

Beyond the natural interest of this fascinating race should people in this little Wiltshire village really care?

Actually, it’s the primary school mums and dads who are most likely to be affected.

Half of the children at the village school are from service families. My daughter is used to making friends with children who stay for a year and then suddenly leave as their father is posted elsewhere.

And of course significant numbers have served or are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Whichever of the candidates wins will have an impact on Britain’s role in those countries which will percolate down to our community.

One aspect of having so many service families is that it can play havoc with school budgets.

Every January there is a count of pupil numbers and based on that the school gets its funding. However, the MoD might move significant numbers of personnel around any time.

It could be good for the school if its numbers drop and so it has more funds per head. Or it could work the other way.

If you sign up for the forces then the unexpected is what, well, you expect. However it’s hardly an ideal way for a school to operate when its budget plans are subject to such an arbitrary snapshot.

Should we devise a different forumla for schools with a high proportion of service children?

Hail to the chief

I'm grateful to Utne for this election night drinking game.

It could be a long few hours as I combine some web and TV watching on the vote with catching up on work.

Obama wins (vote in east coast hamlet)

Not enough blogging in the last few days because of having to work for The Man.

I return with news courtesy of the Daily Kos of the first results from the 2008 Presidential election.

The New Hampshire hamlet of Dixville Notch (only in America, right?), population 75 has voted 15-6 in favour of Obama. That's pretty much a straight reverse of the 2004 result.

They also serve

Chris of the Green Bristol Blog rightly reminds me that my summary of some of the key Bristol bloggers holding the city council to account would not be complete without the The Bristol Blogger.

The latest post on how the sale of council land contravened the authorities own green spaces policy is a good example of TBB's quality output.

Chris also highlights the work of Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Bridgwater Tory MP.

I've been following Ian's complaints about Somerset County Council's deal with IBM for a while. He has used his website to set out in full (and in pretty ripe language for an MP) his concerns.

It's not a blog as traditionally thought and I personally find the design off-putting. But it's effective and I am surprised the concerns he has raised haven't surfaced at a wider level.

Deaths in custody

A few years back I wrote a piece for The Big Issue in the North on a film about deaths in custody called Injustice.

The film achieved most of its publicity not because of the shocking facts in it (that hundreds of people have died in custody and no-one has ever been successfully prosecuted) but that the Police Federation's heavy handed lawyers tried to get it banned (thus breaking rule 1 in the PR handbook).

Today there will be a march to Downing Street to remember the 2,533 people known to have died in custody since 1969. There will also be a press conference involving the TUC and United Friends and Families Campaign.

Road campaigners usually say that if all the deaths on our roads took place on one day then people would really sit up and take notice and do something about it.

That figure of 2,533 is only a couple hundred short of the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile there are 1,600 names on the UK police memorial to officers killed in the line of duty and they go back to 1680.

It's not a case that some people are less deserving of remembrance or that a police officer killed stopping a robbery is of more value than a person who chose September 11 to visit the Twin Towers.

But neither should it be true that just because you end up in custody  (wether in a police station, prison or mental institution) you forfeit any rights to life.

Just as we should rightfully honour those police officers and the people killed in 9/11 and bring to book the people responsible - so we should do the same for those in the state's custody. It is the most vulnerable who require the greatest care but who make up a significant proportion of those 2,533.

The fact that 2,533 people can die and barely anything is said about it, no-one is accountable and we're not even sure if that is the final total is, frankly, shameful.

The dog that does not bark

I posted the following on the Total Politics local government blog:

Is some critical mass needed before a community gets a decent online watchdog?

Recently I've started travelling into Bristol a couple of times a week for work. Though just 20 minutes away it's like another country.

You can see that by looking online. I've been checking out Evening Post Watch, Green Bristol Blog, Charlie Bolton's Southville blog and, of course, the daddy - Bristol Indymedia.

They're just coming from a broadly left/green perspective, there are plenty of other political Bristol bloggers out there. They share a delight in poring over what the council (and other civic institutions) are up to.

Just ten minutes down the road and Bath is home to a number of media companies as well as many national reporters who have fled London.

Yet a year ago the local paper went from a daily to a weekly and barely a handful of the city's blogging community takes any forensic interest in what the council is up to. (The Bath Bomb is giving it a go with limited success).

And then on my doorstep in Wiltshire you can see the virtual tumbleweeds blowing across your computer screen.

The local authorities in the county are going through their biggest change in 30 years with millions of pounds at stake in the unitary process. With issues from acadamies, to major regeneration schemes, the changing relationship with the military and serious environmental concerns there is no lack of meat.

Who blogs the most about this? The county council's chief executive and the council leader.

A buyer for Tribune?

There was a flurry of interest in whether the radical magazine Tribune was going under a few weeks back...then nothing.

So put a call in and I understand that there is a preferred buyer, the union owners are in negotiation with him and the deal is "80% certain" of going through.

There's plenty of split twixt cup and lip but that sounds promising.

So who might the "he" be?