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> Salmond seems to think the referendum is bout electing him Scotland's president.

It's not just him, it's Labour too: this survey asks if participants will be voting for Salmond on September 18th. Personally, I'm not because I'll be too busy voting Yes in a referendum that only offers "Yes" or "No" as the options. Never voted SNP, never voted for Salmond, never plan to. Mind you, I do intend to ignore the thinly-veiled propaganda trying to make this about the current First Minister - from whatever side it comes.

Police can be bought at any of these fine websites:

http://www.conservatives.com/
http://www.labour.org.uk/
http://www.libdems.org.uk/

Committed a crime against humanity and could use some support? Are you a mass murderer willing to pay for some publicity whore of a soulless cunt to shake your hand while telling the world of your indefatigability? Are you sickened by discrimination against people who want to kill jews in a hail of shrapnel on a crowded bus?

Yes to any of the above? You need George Galloway. Mr Galloway has over 10 years experience of representing his interests in elected office. Remember our catchy jingle! "If the cheque clears and you're not a Jew, there's no end of things George can do for you!"

http://www.votegeorgegalloway.com/

Controllable in the sense of voting either democrat or republican to maintain the status quo

The people in the country where the detention took place don't have that choice. They do have the choice of voting either Conservative or Labour or Liberal Democrat to, I suspect, maintain the status quo, or voting for various minor parties.

Maybe not to you, but it isn't a typically easy thing to get

Au contraire

So Australia, you voted in a Labour government, thinking you were going to get a moderate, left of centre government? A change from the Neo-Liberal (see Thatcher and Reagan) fiscal policies of the right.

But what you got is a bunch of socially right-wing, authoritarian cock-wads, who think the solution to any social problem is making new laws. As a Brit, I have to say this sounds disturbingly familiar.

If it's not Stephane Dion declaring that he's "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime," Australians electing a Tony Blair clone, or the Canadian Prime Minister ripping-off speeches from John Howard; it continues to amaze me how the Commonwealth leaders copy each other.

Sounds like a good idea to me. People with unhealthy lifestyles cost communities and bigger units (states, federal govt) a lot of money in emergency services, medicare costs, etc. I welcome the idea that those with healthy lifestyles shouldn't be subsidizing those with unhealthy lifestyles.

This seems facially reasonable, but is related to why I will never support government funded healthcare :

It allows the government (and by extension, a majority vote) to dictate what you do with your life by making it incredibly hard to live otherwise. For example, the British Conservative party wants to bar people with "Unhealthy Lifestyles" from getting NHS care. You know, the care they pay for. Furthermore, this never has any sane relation to the cost of the activity - In the UK, smoking costs 1.7 billion and raises 8 billion in excise taxes, another $2 billion in VAT. I find it unlikely that the same isn't true in the US. Plus, obesity is at least partly biological - apparently you want to punish people for things they have no control over.

Health has a great deal to do with dumb luck and actions we have no control over, even for "lifestyle diseases" that are more common with obesity, alcohol, or smoking. And getting one bad card in health can prevent you from living a healthy lifestyle. There's the surveillance implications - government is watching what you eat, how you live. There are some things that simply aren't the government's business, even if they might theoretically make emergency services more expensive. Front end taxes (on cigarettes, alcohol) are fine, if probably too high since they're an easy political sell; lifestyle monitoring is not. The government is here to serve us, not the other way around.

Actually most of the European policital forces usually mislabeled as 'Socialists' or even 'Communists' by US right wingers are actually modern Social Democrats who have become moderate to the point where they generally do not see a conflict between a democratic society with a capitalist market economy and their own goals which in turn means they have very little in common with Marxism, Communism or classical Socialism.

Maybe, it could be that, for example, the UK's labor party describes themselves as socialist on their website: http://www.labour.org.uk/aboutlabour

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party....The Labour Party was set up in 1900 to fight for representation for the Labour movement - trade unions and socialist societies

Now you might not think they are "hardcore" socialists or "true" socialists, but you can't blame crazy right-wingers for labelling them socialists when they use that term themselves.

Umm, independance for the Bank of England? That seems fairly good.

Here's a list of some other bits and bobs they're quite happy about.

Labour's top 50 achievements

BTW, considered a job writing for the Daily Mail?

Check out this Labour Party survey about terrorism. The Labour Party are the ones pushing this draconian Terrorism Bill, for which they claim popular support. It is so biased that one of their ministers has actually apologised for it.

Information for non UK readers.

This could be considered off-topic but it looks at the Machiavellian [Niccolò Machiavelli] practice closely associated with Mandelson and the party he serves (UK Labour Party), that of being a spin doctor.

The term spin doctor could be interpreted politely as one who is "responsible for ensuring that others interpret an event from a particular point of view." But the term has grown to cover many dirty tricks.

Now I know that the link between Paul Allen and Microsoft today is at best tenuous, but one does smile over the dreamed of connection between the UK's once King of Spin and the dastardly Microsoft.

Now witness a spin doctor, attached to the same party as Mandelson, in action. This is taken from Britain's Independent newspaper. It has a delicious ending.


While others watched the horrific television pictures from New York and Washington on 11 September last year [2001], Jo Moore, personal spin doctor to the Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers, sent an email saying that it would be a good day to "bury bad news". Obviously, it did not occur to her that emails can be stored on computers - and passed on to journalists. Ms Moore lost her job.


Spin is dreadful practise and sadly its not confined to Politics. For those wishing to pursue further reading on the matter check out SpinWatch

Note to the Slashdot staff. You should ask for readers to write in sometime of their experiences of spin in the companies they work for. Should make for some enlightening reading on a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning for that matter.

More information for non UK readers

This could be considered off-topic but it looks at the interesting practices closely associated with Mandelson and the party he serves UK Labour Party, that of spin doctor

The term spin doctor could be interpreted politely as one who is "responsible for ensuring that others interpret an event from a particular point of view." Does the company 'Microsoft" employ such practioners????

Now witness a spin doctor, attached to the same party as Mandelson, in action. This is taken from Britain's Independent newspaper. It has a delicious ending.

While others watched the horrific television pictures from New York and Washington on 11 September last year [2001], Jo Moore, personal spin doctor to the Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers, sent an email saying that it would be a good day to "bury bad news". Obviously, it did not occur to her that emails can be stored on computers - and passed on to journalists. Ms Moore lost her job.

Spin is dreadful practise and sadly its not confined to Politics. For those wishing to pursue further reading on the matter check out the link SpinWatch (http://spinwatch.server101.com/index.php")

Note to the Slashdot staff. You should ask for readers to write in sometime of their experiences of spin in the companies they work for. Should make for some enlightening reading.

PS. I figured that out from the way you misspelled "Labor."

Yeah, go tell the prime minister of britain that his party bought the wrong domain:
http://www.labour.org.uk/home

Let me ask you one thing - when you voted did you think of the starving?

Actually, yes I did, the party I voted for had a manifesto commitment to fight world poverty. Of course, I don't think here is necessarily the best place to argue over how much they have achieved on this.

When you bought your computer did you looked a the performance price ration or to the power used/performance/your needs/price?

I have a Celeron 850, so I'll let you decide.

Do you care about the water you waste? Or is the price that makes you think about it?

Actually, yes I do care about the water I waste. The money isn't really an issue, here in the UK technology jobs still pay well enough that I don't need to worry about the few extra pence wasted water might cost. Nevertheless, I take showers rather than baths, try to never fill the kettle more than I need, etc etc.

Do your job as best as you can and you'll save the earth.

I'm really not sure if I'm being trolled here or if you actually believe this. Of course, taken literally you're right - no matter how much we screw it up, we're very unlikely to destroy the earth. But we could make it uninhabitable for life as we know it.

The UK is thankfully not as skewed as the US party system, but it is still pretty depressing.

There is so little to choose between New Labour and the Conservatives, simply because people don't care or understand politics, nor believe that their vote will have any impact.

You recommend voting for the Lib Dems. They will replace the Tories in about 15 years (when the last remaining Tory voters have died of old age), and then we're back in the same shit situation.

You shouldn't vote for someone because they're not the main two. People need to get off their collective arses, and read about what each party believes in and then make an informed decision.

I'd much rather they released John Prescott and put us all out of our misery.

This is a result of previous government directives to start looking at Linux solutions in the government. This is something that has not trickled down all the officials to get as far as being a policy announcement in the left wing press here (of which the Observer is just one example.

Obviously this is a better situation than before, when government directives insisted that Microsoft solutions be looked at first, so far as anyone can tell simply because Tony Blair did not understand computers but did enjoy Bill Gates' company when they met - they are a similar age, and see themselves as similar global figures, and I personally think they have a similar contemptable attitude to people who are ultimately their paymasters. Now Tony Blair is politically weaker, following the recent Gulf war not being popular within the Labour Party, but really it would be better if this was happening according to other reasons.

Is it just me, or is tending towards the facist and totalitarian a pre-requisite of being a British Home Secretary? I'm 29 and spent most of my life growing up under the Tories. They weren't any better. The trouble is, it's swings and roundabouts and not enough people will ever vote Lib Dem. Even if they got in, I'm sure they'd end up being just like New Labour or old Tory.

Or am I just too cynical?

Liberty

Get your telescreens at any high street store in association with
Big Blunkett plc. You may also like to visit the anti-sex league ,the Ministry of Peace and the Ministry of Truth.

That's what I did when this unholy bill was first announced asking why any of the listed groups could have access to emails, mobile phone and ISP logs without so much as a warrant. Read that list - it's beyond belief what they're trying to get away with. The only one I can see a justification for is the Home Office as they deal with crime and internal security.

Within two days I received a reply signed by the man himself which suggested that he agreed that there were privacy concerns here and he has forwarded my concerns to the home secretary. So I await Blunkett's justification for all this with baited breath.

It's nice to see that they have delayed the debate but the House of Commons is so stuffed with New Labour drones that they will be able to whip whatever fascist legislation they want through there. Still if this proposed legislation does concern you write to your MP and let your views be known. Who knows maybe even New Labour will deign to listen to the electorate if enough people kick up a fuss.

Following a little research of my own:

• The site www.conservatives.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98. [NETCRAFT]
• The site www.labour.org.uk is running Oracle_Web_Listener/4.0.8.2EnterpriseEdition on Linux. [NETCRAFT]

Says it all to me...

It's not the people, but the Prime Minister who can dissolve Parliament and thus cause a general election (in fact, it's theoretically the Queen).

I'm not sure what you mean by "proper credibility" for political parties-- AFAIK whether Members belong to a given party is not taken into account in the original design (any more than it is under the US electoral college system), though there are organisations that keep tabs on what parties are doing.

You might have meant that the people respect political parties in the UK more than they do in the US, and since I haven't lived in the US, it's difficult to say. Anyone know? Do bear in mind that we're still not under a multi-party system, though; even though the centre party have grown in the last few decades, we're still in a first-past the post system, mainly a race between the other two.

he strikes me as the poster boy of moderate liberals, ie. just left of centre

Depends on the position. I suspect that

let no one think the Socialist Party has abandoned the goal of social ownership of the commanding heights of industry, combined with democratic control, and decentralization and community involvement

would be considered more than "just left of centre" even in many of the European social democracies - didn't the British Labour Party "abandon that goal" (although I have the impression not all members approved of that) in the past couple of years or so? (I'd check out their Web site, but it appears to have been designed by Yet Another Damn Javascript Rules OK Web designer - I select "Our policies" under "What are you looking for?", but see no sign of a "Go" button, so my suspicion is that it expects you to be running Javascript so that the page's code can take you there as soon as you select it; sorry, I'm running Netscape on a UNIX-flavored OS, and the main function of Javascript on those platforms appears to be to create files in your current directory with "core" in the name. BTW, the page in question has "Build and powered by Oracle", etc., on it; I'm not sure whether Oracle counts as one of the "commanding heights of industry" or not.)

I suspect the "maximum wage" proposal of no more than a 4x difference between minimum and maximum wages might be considered more than "just left of centre" in at least some of those countries as well; they have lower wage differences than the US, some significantly lower as far as I know, but I don't know how many of them have only a 4x difference.

On the other hand, more stringent gun control, a universal health plan, and a drug policy other than "fill up the prisons" would, I suspect, not even be considered left of center in most other industrialized countries. Various of those have, in the past, been proposed in the US by politicans other than those from the Socialist Party.

Yes, the center, in US politics, is significantly further to the right than the center in other countries (not that the centers in other countries are necessarily clustered closely together; I have the impression that the center in the UK would be to the right of the center in France, for example). I'm not sure that McReynolds would be only slightly to the left of center in other countries, however; I think that's a bit of an exaggeration of the situation.

(Personally, I wish the center in the US were further to the left. I suspect there are other "geeks" in the US who'd like to see it further to the left, some who'd like to see it further to the right, and some who think it's fine where it is. If you move from a one-dimensional scale to a multi-dimensional scale, to account for the fact that there isn't a 100% correlation between views on government health insurance and views on the minimum wage and views on free trade and views on teaching evolution in the schools and views on homosexuality and views on feminism and..., I suspect, as others have indicated, that the "geek community" wouldn't cluster narrowly in a small region of that space, although they might be less widely distributed than the population as a whole.

BTW, I'm not saying there's no correlation between views on various issues, I'm saying it's not 100%, and it's probably not 99%, either.)