Chris Whiteside's Blog

Yes, it is unfair that the vote which spread over Scotland gave the SNP all but three of the 59 MPs for Scotland was barely a third of the vote which, spread over the entire UK, gave UKIP one seat, significantly less than the vote which gave the Lib/Dems eight seats, and only slightly more than the vote which gave the Greens one seat. Unfortunately there is no perfect and completely fair election system. I personally believe that one of the most important criteria for an election system is how easy it makes it for the electorate to "throw the rascals out." E.g. if a party has seriously offended the electorate it important that the electorate can remove them, as they removed the Conservatives in 1997, Labour in 2010 and the Lib/Dems this year. I am not saying I am necessarily agree with how the voters used that power, but it is critical to democracy that voters have it and all the parties know they can use it. "First Past the Post" is a "crunchy" ...

"The ghastly experiment of a core vote strategy didn't even deliver the core vote." (Alan Milburn on the BBC this week.) Funny thing, I seem to recall the same thing happened to us when we tried it!

According to tomorrow's Whitehaven News the Labour group intend to turn down an offer from the newly elected Independent Mayor of Copeland to take up places on his Executive, even though he wanted to invite them to take seats in proportion to their status as a majority group on the council. Instead they are reportedly expected to choose to go into majority opposition. If true, this is a disappointment but no surprise. You would think they might have learned that playing this kind of sectarian party-political game is what has seen their majority in the parliamentary elections in Copeland cut in each of the last two general elections, and is what cost them the Mayoralty this time. But no, it appears that like the Bourbons, Copeland Labour Party has forgotten nothing and learned nothing. I cannot possibly put this better than the Whitehaven News leader does, so I will simply quote it: " PARTY GAMES "So much for a fresh start!  Mike Starkie's tenure as Copel...

Unemployment figures published today were 35,000 lower than the previous quarter, falling to 1.83 million, which is a seven year low. 80% of the two million jobs created in the UK since 2010 have been full time and both youth unemployment and joblessness among older workers are falling. The extra jobs are not confined to the South: unemployment has also fallen in Cumbria over the past five years. By comparison unemployment rose over Labour's time in office. Today's Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures also record that the total number in work rose to 31.1 million. Average pay for employees, excluding bonuses, rose by 2.2% in the first quarter of 2015 compared with a year earlier. Including bonus payments, average pay rose by 1.9% over the same period. The figures mean that regular pay is now growing at its fastest rate for nearly four years. It is also the seventh month in a row that the rate of regular pay increases has outstripped the prevailing annual ...

It is strange how much human perceptions of the rate at which time passes can vary so much both for an individual and between individuals. I was told when I was twenty-one by an individual who was then 28 that from this point my perception of the passage of time would get faster and faster. In my case this was wrong but I have conversations about this with dozens if not hundreds of friends and almost everyone else agreed that her comment matched their own experience. Apparently it is a common part of the aging process for the "body clock" to change speed and with it our perception of the rate at which time passes. Maybe mine just got stuck. Albert Einstein once illustrated relativity with the following comment about perceived passage of time: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.” Yesterday evening I had to check how much time had passed since an...

"Polly Toynbee, what went wrong?" (Andrew Neil) "Just about everything" (Polly Toynbee)

Over the few days since the election one part of the left, and nearly all the intelligentsia, have been beating their breasts and asking "how did we get this so wrong?" Meanwhile another part of the left has been giving a working demonstration of exactly how, by going on protests, occasionally violent, against the election results, attempting to charge Conservative voters extra in coffee shops and garden centres, complaining vocally about how stupid or greedy millions of voters are, and thus illustrating why no Conservative-inclined person with any sense would reveal those views. The Sun put it very well here: But it is really important that Conservatives in general (and Conservative MPs in particular) recognise that we are in no way magically immune from making the same kind of mistake the Left has made and which is rightly being skewered in this Sun Editorial. In fact the last time far too many Tories made just this sort of mistake was immediately after an ele...

A most amusing two minute clip about the way the polls got it wrong and the election was reported can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBKu13_MBBU

One of the major problems that all parties have to watch - and having just won the election we Conservatives may now have to be much more careful of this - is the lethal temptation to listen only to those who agree with you. Of course, the extreme conviction of some left wingers, like the garden shop owner in Lewes who put a note outside his shop asking Conservatives to identify themselves so he can charge them 10% extra and asking UKIP voters to shop elsewhere, or the coffee shop owner in Hackney who did something similar, that people who are on their side of the argument have a monopoly of virtue and anyone who disagrees with their "progressive" views is evil or stupid, does at least make it that much harder for us to ignore the fact that not everyone agrees with us. But it also guarantees that the individuals who do this sort of thing will get a very skewed idea of what people think. About 49% of those who voted in Lewes went Tory or UKIP. So nearly half the pote...

Some very amusing responses to the election and aftermath on the "NewsThump" parody site. My favourites are " Sooty to run for leadership of labour party " and " New Indiana Jones film to feature search for the missing labour pledge stone " A quote from the former is “Sooty and I have spoken about this at great length and he is convinced that as a small, mute, soft hand puppet he will still be a stronger, more credible leader than Ed Miliband.” And an infinitely better candidate for the leadership of any party than Copeland MP Jamie Reed ... A quote from the spoof about the new Indiana Jones film featuring the search for the "Edstone" “The Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, flying saucers and the Labour party’s credibility. They’re of a muchness, really.” “We were going to have a scene where Indy and Short Round find Ed Miliband’s charisma, but realised that would be too far-fetched.”

"Humour is mankind's greatest blessing" (Mark Twain)

Very amusing post on Andrew Kennedy's blog which used to be called  "Voting and Boating " and still has that URL but is now called "Diary of a Tory agent." You can read the post at http://votingandboating.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/disgusted-of-tunbridge-wells.html When two "Vote UKIP" posters appeared in a genteel part of Tunbridge Wells ...  ... one local resident responded with devastating courtesy (I love the use of the word "please" ...) And by the way, #SupportOption1

Posted here so I can come back and watch again if I am ever tempted to doubt the good sense and judgement of the British voter

And don't forget, #SupportOption1

"Try explaining this election to an American. Even the tiny number who follow British politics are baffled. "So what happened in the English election?" "You mean the election in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Well, the Conservatives won in England, but the Scottish nationalists won in Scotland. Nothing much changed in Wales and Northern Ireland." "Wait, but didn't the SNP just lose that referendum on Independence?" "Yes, but this time the Scots were voting for people to represent them in London, so they naturally voted against being governed from London." "Got it. So now does there have to be a UK referendum on membership of the European Union? "Yes" "I guess the Scottish nationalists want out of Europe, too." "No, they would ideally like to leave the UK but stay in the EU." "They'd rather be governed from Brussels than London?" "Somethin...

This weekend Britain has been commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis - one of the most evil and dangerous enemies faced by civilization in modern times. The sacrifice of all the brave men and women who fought in World War Two, particularly those who lost their lives, saved us from, in the words of Winston Churchill "A new Dark Age made all the more sinister by the lights of perverted science." Those sacrifices, and how much we owe to the people who made them, must never, ever be forgotten.

All the parties must learn lessons from the election campaign we have just had - and that includes the two parties, Conservative and SNP, who were successful. The Labour party ran on a programme more out of touch with the needs of modern Britain than any that they had offered since 1983, when their manifesto was called "The longest suicide note in history." Labour received, and very richly deserved, their biggest humiliation at the ballot box since 1983. But however vital for Britain I may think the rejection of that Labour programme was, it appears to have been practically at the very last minute, often in the very voting booth itself, that the British electorate could bring itself to reject that programme by voting Conservative. This in turn suggests that many of those who voted Conservative on Thursday did so reluctantly on the basis that the alternatives were much worse, and that we need to listen more and build a much better rapport with people if w...

Britain's re-elected Prime Minister David Cameron writes "Firstly, thank you so much for your support - not just during the election campaign, but over the past five years.   Together we have laid the foundations for a better future - and now, with a Conservative majority government, we must build on them.   We are on the brink of something special in our country.   We can make Britain a place where a good life is in reach for everyone who is willing to work and do the right thing. Our manifesto is a manifesto for working people. 3 million apprenticeships. More help with childcare. Cutting taxes for 30 million people. Building more homes. Creating millions more jobs. And an in-out referendum on our future in Europe. And as we conduct this vital work, we must ensure that we bring our country together. So we will govern as a party of one nation. One United Kingdom. That means ensuring the recovery reaches all parts of our country; giving everyone a chance...

"The British people are not stupid, then. Everyone else, however, is." ( Rod Liddle , writing in the Sunday Times today on how the vast majority of pundits, commentators and supposed experts, and all the polling companies, were utterly wrong about what would happen in the UK General Election last week.) "Nothing is more fickle than people in a crowd, nothing harder to discover than how men intend to vote, nothing trickier than the whole way in which elections work." ( Marcus Tullius Cicero , from "Pro Murena," on how hard it was to predict election results in the late Roman Republic more than two thousand years ago.)

And the battle for our hospital goes on.  Support Option One and all other hospital services at West Cumberland Hospital and FGH.

Labour have a greatly reduced majority on Copeland Borough Council, well short of the two-thirds majority needed to over-rule the new directly-elected Mayor. A simple majority on CBC is 26 councillors, and the Labour group now have 29. There are 17 Conservatives (up two) and five Independents (up three from the 2011 election.) Conservative Keith Hitchin was elected unopposed in Bootle ward: election results in the other wards produced the following results: Millom Newtown: Ray Cole (Con) - 756 - ELECTED Bob Kelly (Lab) - 650 - ELECTED Ged McGrath (Con) - 568 Sally Millar (Green) - 202 Felicity Wilson (Con) - 755 - ELECTED Con hold two seats, Lab hold one, no change St Bees Les Abrahams (LibDem) - 94 Alan Alexander (Lab) - 221 Ian Hill (Con) - 610 - ELECTED Con hold one Seascale David Moore (Con) - 1016 - ELECTED Andy Pratt (Con) - 946 - ELECTED Wendy Skillicorn (Lab) - 372 Con hold two seats. Mirehouse George Higgins (Con) - 336 Mark Holliday (Lab)...

VOTES CAST at the first preference stage, as adjusted after a recount: Steve Gibbons, (Labour): 12,867 Mike Starkie, (Independent): 9,836 Chris Whiteside, (Conservative): 9,509 Spoilt papers: 1,351. Very close, with a respectable performance by all three candidates. Another 328 votes would have put me into the final stage. There was a "bundle check" (the quickest type of recount) on the first stage result. As no candidate had the 50% required for an outright win on the first stage, the top two candidates then went forward to the final stage, in which the second preferences for all other candidates are counted, and second preference votes from eliminated candidates for either of the top two are added to their totals. I had encouraged people who were voting for me to give the Independent candidate their second preference, and the majority of them did so. This determined the election result. When my transfers were taken into account the final total...

"We will govern as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom. "That means ensuring this recovery reaches all parts of our country, from north to south, to east to west." (David Cameron speaking after his re-election) He also said he would press ahead with devolution of powers to all nations as well as referendum on the UK's EU membership.

First of all, thanks to everyone who took part yesterday in the first ever direct election for a mayor of Copeland, and an especial thanks to those who voted for me. The election for MP for Copeland was very close indeed - the Labour majority fell from just under 4,000 when I last stood five years ago to about two and a half thousand. It was obvious at the verification last night of the four elections which took place in Copeland yesterday that each of the three candidates to be the first directly elected mayor of Copeland has substantial support. I really don't know how this is going to go, and could come anywhere from third place to winning. After about an hour's sleep following the parliamentary result I shall be going down to the mayoral count shortly: it starts at 10am.

During the election campaign while I was posting "music to relax after campaigning" I included the "Hallelujah Chorus" from the Messiah, purely because I love it as a piece of music. Jim King, one of my regular commentators (who has been predicting a small Conservative majority and looks likely to have been proved right) suggested jokingly that I had put this up a few days early, and I replied that I would re-post it if the results justified doing so. Since it is clear that David Cameron has been re-elected ... And although the election is over, the battle to keep consultant-led maternity services and WCH and FGH is not, so I am still saying every day: #SupportOption1

My final "Music to relax after campaigning" as the polls close and before going to the count is Bach's Cantata 51 (the title means "Praise God in All Lands") And of course we need consultant led maternity at WCH and FGH so #SupportOption1

Polling stations open today at 7am and close at 10pm in the UK General Election and in various local elections. In Copeland there are elections for the first directly-elected mayor, for Copeland Borough Councillors, and for Town/Parish councillors. Four sets of elections in all !

The Mail has an excellent piece which you can read at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3069452/The-40-genuine-Tory-triumphs-d-mad-ignore-20-Labour-disasters-WON-T-Ed-s-stone.html which lists forty Conservative achievements as positive reasons to vote Conservative and also gives twenty reasons not to vote Labour. There have been two other endorsements for the continuation of the Conservative/LibDem coalition which I found particularly interesting. Despite being generally a pro-free-market publication, the Economist's support for centre-right parties is never guaranteed: the paper backed Blair in 2001 and 2005. As they are pro-Europe they are not happy that the Conservatives are promising an EU membership referendum, but they reluctantly accept that, quote, "such is the suspicion many Britons feel towards Brussels that a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU is probably inevitable at some point." Regular readers of this blog will know of my...

A patriotic aria from Arne's Opera "Alfred" which as I mentioned previously is best remembered today for its' finale, "Rule Britannia." I did not pick this piece today because the first line was meant to be any reference to tomorrow's election, but if there is any vengeance to be taken by the electorate, I hope it is on the Labour party for leaving the massive debt and deficit which were the primary cause of so many of the tough decisions which had to be taken over the past five years. And don't forget, #SupportOption1