Do Elections Matter for Economic Performance?

Do they? do you feel lucky punk? go on, elect your leaders in a corrupt election, make my day

In mature democracies, elections discipline leaders to deliver good economic performance. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, most developing countries also hold elections, but these are often marred by illicit tactics. Using a new global data set, this article investigates whether these illicit tactics are merely blemishes or substantially undermine the economic efficacy of elections. We show that illicit tactics are widespread, and that they reduce the incentive for governments to deliver good economic performance. Our analysis also suggests that in societies with regular free and fair elections, leaders do not matter for economic growth.

that’s the key thing which so many people don't understand, they put their faith in single charismatic leaders and forget about institutions. While leaders do matter to some extent, but if you have regular free and fair elections where leaders are held to account, the leaders tend to focus on making their people better via economic growth. Look at India, the development story always helps. In the UK, the morons in the Labour govt starting with that blithering nincompoop Gordon Brown was thrown out when they screwed up the economy something bad.

good paper.

Are human rights and economic well-being substitutes? The evidence from migration patterns across the Indian states

This was a very interesting paper. But the highlights and abstract first

Highlights

• Intra-national migration as a tool to measure revealed preferences for human rights protection and economic well-being

• Economic well-being can serve as a substitute for bad protection of human rights

• Results are not driven by discrimination against particular ethnic or religious groups or type of human rights violations considered

• Human rights complaints are interpreted in the opposite way by migrants to states with high and low trust into the government

• The effect is driven by states with high TV penetration

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Abstract

The objective of this paper is to study the relationship between the demand for human rights and the demand for economic prosperity from the “exit” perspective, looking at migration patterns. We investigate intra-national migration in India, which is a federation of various states that feature significant economic and political differences. The paper finds that the quality of human rights protection and the economic well-being in the target state are substitutes with respect to determining patterns of migration. These results depend on framing effects; human rights complaints appear to be interpreted differently by migrants, depending on the trust in the government in the target state.

First. Here’s the regression model

for all i ≠ j

where Migr_ij denotes the number of migrants from state i to state j; Inc_i and Inc_j represent the income per capita in states i and j, respectively; HR_i and HR_j indicate the number of human rights violations complaints in states i and j, respectively; Dist_ij is the highway distance between the capitals of these two states;CommonLang_ij is a dummy that is equal to 1 if both states belong to the same linguistic zone; and Controls_iand Controls_j represent the set of control variables for states i and j, respectively. Thus, the estimated equation is essentially a gravity model in which we regress the number of migrants from one state to another state on the income per capita in the target state and the origin state, the human rights violations complaints in these two states, and interaction terms between human rights violations complaints and income.

I really really like this formulation. Fascinating, very well done indeed. Simple but very intuitive.

But with the elections coming up, people need to think through how states approach their twin goals of security (as per human rights maintenance and enhancement versus economic growth. The news isn't as clear cut. When you are poor as a state, people will take off from your state if you are bad at human rights. But people can go to a state with higher economic growth but with potentially lower levels of human rights.

Fascinating.

Why are women less democratic than men?

Curious, whilst I had heard that there is a clear and statistically significant difference in women versus men voters, I never really delved deeper into it. This paper gave some interesting learning points for me

1. in developing countries women tend to exhibit less support for democracy than men
2. the two sexes behave differently in politics, as they vote differently and do not implement the same policies
3. The evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa indicates that, on average, 73 percent of men believe that democracy is preferable to any other kind of government, while only 65 percent of women agree with this statement
4. It is well established that men and women vote differently, with women tending to support more left-wing parties;
5. Three reasons have been put forward as explanations of gender differences in preferences for parties and policies: women’s greater risk aversion and the consequent desire for insurance; women’s lower incomes or expected incomes, for example following a prospective divorce, leading to support for redistribution; and a preference for social expenditures such as basic infrastructure (e.g. water supplies), health and education that impact the production of household goods, including children, on which women tend to specialize;
6. Evidence for India shows that the type of public goods provided depends strongly on the gender of the local political leader, with female leaders investing more in goods linked to their own concerns, such as drinking water, and spending more in public health provision
7. the work on corruption and gender has highlighted that females are less likely to be involved in corruption and in bribes and that increasing the share of females in the political arena and, more generally, social equality between men and women reduces the degree of corruption
8. in countries with a sufficiently high level of the Human Development Index and political rights there is no significant difference in the replies of the two sexes. Such evidence implies that the observed gender gap in democratic support does not capture intrinsic differences in the preferences of men and women but rather that it is highly dependent on the economic and institutional climate in which women live
9. An alternative hypothesis is that women’s lower support for democracy comes from the fact that democratic transitions are often associated with civil conflict. If women have a higher cost of conflict than men, then they are less likely to support democracy. Our analysis seems to point in this direction. When asked whether the country’s leader should be chosen through open elections, women respond yes as often as men. However, they are less likely to support party plurality and limits on re-election. It is possible that these two aspects are seen by women as sources of potential conflict and hence as the ’down side of democracy’, which would explain their replies to the broader question of whether they think democracy is the best possible regime

Very interesting results indeed. Not much to say other than transitions can really be challenging but it takes a long time for women to recover from transitions like this….something that can actually make their lives better – democracy – has lower support because of high transition costs..

Pimp My Ride

Kannu

I forgot to say that I like your new haircut. But I still think I can give you a better haircut than those poxy hairdressers. One day you will realise the benefits of cutting your own hair, its liberating, it saves a heck of a lot of time, it saves money and best of all, it will manage to upset a whole bunch of women in your life and that's fun. But at this moment, when you are in teenagerhood, hair has a vastly bigger significance. The fate of the world depends upon the hair style. That is fine, that's what the teenaged girls are also looking for. But then when you realise that hair is nothing but a holdover artefact from our evolutionary times to keep us warm (its fur after all), the importance level reduces. What actually matters is what's below the hair rather than the hair itself. Thankfully, you are a smart fellow so I am also happy with that. Remember what I keep on saying, everything evens out, if you have less hair to comb, you have more face to wash.

But that's not the point of this missive, this is about libertarianism. This is the operating philosophy that I follow. There are literally thousands of philosophies out there, and you can judge them on several basis. Here is a very short survey you can do to find out what your operating philosophy is all about.
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz

Here's what this website defines libertarianism as: Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

I know you are still young, but I hope to raise you and Diya by those principles. We make you take responsibility over your own career and choices, there isnt much bureaucracy other than few things like having to water the garden and to empty the dishwasher, no taxes, you are trained on how to manage your own money and are doing well on your investments, not doing much on the charity side for some strange reason, but we will work on that, we are happy with what you want to do with your lifestyle - girls, whatever, you have had the choice to imbibe in alcoholic drinks (but not ciggies) etc. etc.

Anyway, here is a story about a presidential candidate in the USA and how he is a pure libertarian. Interesting views. Obviously he doesnt have a hope in hell's chance of becoming the president, but those views exist and hopefully the huge overhang of debt that we have will be removed.

Check out the austrian school of economics here, its an interesting read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School
One thing which bothers me is the ability of running this giant ponzi scheme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme) of using debt to pay for today's spending while future generations pick up the bill. At this moment, the amount of debt being racked up by all the bloody governments means that YOU and DIYA will be paying for our mistakes for couple of generations. Learn from our mistakes, son. Never let governments become too big, they steal your money and they steal your liberty. Friedman said this, "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.". Some more great quotes from him here. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/milton_friedman.html

Happy reading son.

Love

baba

 

Pimp My Ride
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/representative-ron-paul-2008-republican-primary-president

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The first thing I learned from driving around Nevada with Ron Paul for a couple of days: People really hate the Federal Reserve. This became clear midway through a speech Paul was giving to a group of Republicans at a community center in Pahrump, a dusty town about 60 miles west of Las Vegas. Pahrump is known for its legal brothels (Heidi Fleiss lives there), but most of the people in the audience looked more like ranchers than swingers. They stood five deep at the back of the room and listened politely as the candidate spoke.

Until Paul got to the part about the Fed. “We need a much better monetary system,” he said, a system based on “sound money, money that’s backed by something.” Paul, who is small and delicate and has a high voice, spoke in a near monotone, making no effort to excite the audience. They cheered anyway. Then he said this: “The Constitution gives no authority for a central bank.” The crowd went wild, or as wild as a group of sober Republicans can on a Monday night. They hooted and yelled and stomped their feet. Paul stopped speaking for a moment, his words drowned out. Then he continued on about monetary policy.

Wow, I thought. The constitutionality of a central bank is not an issue you see on many lists of voter concerns. (How many pollsters would think to ask about it? How many voters would understand the question?) Yet a room full of non-economists had just responded feverishly when Paul brought it up. Hoping for some context, I went outside and found a Paul staffer. He didn’t sound surprised when I told him about the speech. “It’s our biggest applause line,” he said.

Our biggest applause line? There are two ways to interpret a fact like that: Either the Ron Paul movement is more sophisticated than most journalists understand, or a lot of Paul supporters are eccentric bordering on bonkers.

One thing you can say for certain: The crowds at Ron Paul rallies aren’t coming to be entertained. Stylistically, a Paul speech is about as colorful as a tax return. He is the only politician I’ve ever seen who doesn’t draw energy from the audience; his tone is as flat at the conclusion as it was at the beginning. There are no jokes. There’s no warm-up, no shout-out to local luminaries in the room, no inspiring vignettes about ordinary Americans doing their best in the face of this or that bad thing. In fact, there are virtually none of the usual political clichés in a Paul speech. Children may be our future, but Ron Paul isn’t admitting it in public.

Paul is no demagogue, and probably couldn’t be if he tried. He’s too libertarian. He can’t stand to tell other people what to do, even people who’ve shown up looking for instructions. On board the campaign’s tiny chartered jet one night (the plane was so small my legs were intertwined with the candidate’s for the entire flight), Paul and his staff engaged in an unintentionally hilarious exchange about the cabin lights. The staff wanted to know whether Paul preferred the lights on or off. Not wanting to be bossy, Paul wouldn’t say. Ultimately, the staff had to guess. It was a long three minutes.

Being at the center of attention clearly bothers Paul. “I like to be unnoticed,” he says, a claim not typically made by presidential candidates. “That’s my personality. I see all the excitement and sometimes I say to myself, ‘Why do they do that?’ I don’t see myself as a big deal.” Ordinarily you’d have to dismiss a line like that out of hand—if he’s so humble, why is he running for president?—but, in Paul’s case, it might be true. In fact, it might be the key to his relative success. His fans don’t read his awkwardness as a social phobia, but as a sign of authenticity. Paul never outshines his message, which is unchanging: Let adults make their own choices; liberty works. For a unified theory of everything, it’s pretty simple. And Paul sincerely believes it.

Most Republicans, of course, profess to believe it too. But only Paul has introduced a bill to legalize unpasteurized milk. Give yourself five minutes and see if you can think of a more countercultural idea than that. Most people assume that the whole reason we have a government is to make sure the milk gets pasteurized. It takes some stones to argue otherwise, especially if nobody’s paying you to do it. (The raw-milk lobby basically consists of about eight goat-cheese enthusiasts in Manhattan, and possibly the Amish.) Paul is pro-choice on pasteurization entirely for reasons of principle. “I support the right of people to drink whatever they want,” he says. He mocks the idea that “only government can make sure we’re safe, so we need the government to protect us. I don’t think we’d all die of unsafe food if we didn’t have the FDA. Someone else would do it.” If you know Ron Paul primarily from watching the Republican debates, you probably assume he spends most of his time ranting about September 11 and the Iraq invasion. In fact, his real passion is Austrian economics. More even than the war, Paul despises paper currency, which he considers a hoax, “fiat money.” He can become emotional talking about it. Caught in traffic in downtown Vegas on the way to an event, Paul looked out the window at the casinos and mused aloud: “Can you imagine when all those slot machines used real silver dollars? All that silver … ” His words trailed off, as in a pleasant daydream.

Paul trusts coins, and he has bought them all his life, first as a childhood collector, then as an investor. During the 1980s, as he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate and the White House, he became involved in a coin business, Ron Paul Coins. Numismatics, he says, is a labor of love. “You only make five or ten dollars a coin. You’ve got to sell a lot of coins to get rich. I was just promoting something I believe in.” It’s a rare person who admits something like this. Everybody knows the gold standard is for cranks. It’s complicated, unwieldy, and basically incompatible with the modern world. Worse, it’s boring. Paul doesn’t care. “It’s been over one hundred years since that issue has been talked about in a presidential election,” he told me with apparent pride.

Over dinner at the coffee shop in the Saddle West Hotel, Casino, and RV Resort, Paul and his staff talked about little else. There were eight or nine of us at the table, with the 72-year-old obstetrician-congressman at the head in a gray suit, working over a chicken platter and discussing hard money. It had the feel of a familiar conversation, a dialogue that doesn’t really end but that never diminishes in intensity. At one point, Paul’s assistant checked his BlackBerry for the latest gold and silver prices and read them aloud to the table.

For Paul, the original sin in monetary policy took place in 1933, when FDR uncoupled the currency from gold. This removed limits from federal spending, allowing Congress an endless supply of money it could print at will, while leaving citizens vulnerable to the inflation that inevitably resulted. But, worst of all from Paul’s point of view, it was compulsory. Private currencies are forbidden, so Americans had no choice but to participate. The whole system is a mandatory Ponzi scheme, built on faith in the government. Except that, now that the bottom has dropped out of the dollar, it’s clear there’s no reason to have faith in the government or its money.

That’s Paul’s essential argument. His solution: allow competing currencies.

If individuals want to circulate gold or silver coins (or scrip backed by metal reserves), let them. Give citizens the chance to decide which money they trust.

The owners of NORFED, an Indiana coin company, gave it a shot. The company minted and sold thousands of silver Ron Paul dollars, complete with the candidate’s face in profile, before federal agents showed up in November and confiscated their entire remaining inventory. In its affidavit for a search warrant, the FBI accused NORFED of trying to “undermine the United States government’s financial systems by the issuance of a non-governmental competing currency for the purpose of repealing the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code.” That may be a crime, but it’s also pretty close to Ron Paul’s stump speech.

It’s hard to think of a presidential candidate who’s ever drawn a coalition as broad as Ron Paul’s. At any Paul event, you’re likely to run into self-described anarcho-capitalists, 9/11-deniers, antiwar lefties, objectivists, paleocons, hemp activists, and geeky high school kids, along with tax resisters, conspiracy nuts, and acolytes of Murray Rothbard. And those are just the ones it’s possible to categorize. It’s hard to say what they all have in common, except that every one is an ideological minority—or, as one of them put it to me, “open-minded people.” To these supporters, Paul is a folk hero, the one person in national politics who doesn’t judge them, who understands what it’s like to be considered a freak by straight society.

Which is odd, because, in person, Paul doesn’t seem like a freak. He seems like someone’s grandfather. I first met up with Paul after a rally at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He apparently hadn’t known I was coming but accepted my arrival with Zen-like calm, welcoming me into the seat next to him in the minivan and offering me baked goods from a plate on his lap. We were both finishing our brownies when he mentioned they’d been baked by a supporter. I stopped chewing. Where I work, this is a major taboo (Rule One: Never eat food sent by viewers), and my concern must have shown. Paul grinned. “Maybe they’re spiked with marijuana,” he said.

If so, it would have been his first experience with illegal drugs. Though Paul argues passionately for liberalizing marijuana laws and is beloved by potheads (Timothy Leary once held a fund-raiser for him), he has never smoked pot himself. He sounded shocked when I asked him. “I have never seen anyone smoke marijuana,” he said. “I don’t think I’d be open to using it.” For some people, libertarianism is the philosophical justification for a zany personal life. Paul, by contrast, describes his hobbies as gardening (roses and organic tomatoes) and “riding my bicycle.” He has never had a cigarette. He doesn’t swear. He limits his drinking to an occasional glass of wine and goes to church regularly. He has been married to the same woman for 50 years. Three of their five children are physicians.

Ron Paul is deeply square, and every bit as deeply committed to your right not to be. “I don’t gamble, but I’m the gambler’s best friend,” he says, boasting of his support for online casinos. He is a Second Amendment absolutist who doesn’t own a gun. “I’ve only fired one a couple of times in my life. I’ve never gotten around to killing anything.” It’s an impressively, charmingly principled world view, though sometimes you’ve got to wonder how much Paul has in common with many of the people who support him.

Before we left the speech in Pahrump and headed across the state, I’d called a friend of mine in Carson City named Dennis Hof. Dennis owns the Moonlite BunnyRanch, probably the most famous legal brothel in the country and the setting for an HBO series called “Cathouse.” Dennis isn’t very political, but he’s smart, and I suspected he might lean libertarian. I told him Ron Paul was speaking the next morning in Reno. He said he’d drive down to see it.

I wasn’t planning on showing up at Paul’s press conference with a bordello owner and two hookers, but unexpected things happen on the road.

I’d arrived with the campaign at the Best Western Airport Plaza Hotel in Reno at two in the morning the night before, and, at some point while I was sleeping, the power in the hotel went out, disabling my alarm. By the time I woke up, Paul and his staff had left. So I called Dennis for a ride. He was there in ten minutes, in an enormous stretch limo with a BunnyRanch logo on the side. He’d brought two of his girls, Brooke and Air Force Amy, as well as his driver, a middle-aged man in a cowboy hat and Western wear. It was a conspicuous group.

Probably because they didn’t fully understand who I was coming with, the Paul people waved the limo through a roadblock outside the auditorium and brought us in through the loading dock. A Paul aide informed us that press conferences are for press only. That’s us, said the girls, and we walked right in.

The other, actual journalists looked confused. Dennis is built like a linebacker and was dressed entirely in black. Brooke and Air Force Amy looked like hookers because they are. All three slapped on Ron Paul stickers (“we could use these as pasties,” Air Force Amy said, giggling) and sat near the front. Pretty soon, Paul showed up and did his 15 minutes on liberty and Austrian economics. If he noticed there were prostitutes present, he didn’t show it.

The first time I heard Paul talk about monetary policy, I’d felt like a hostage, the only person in the room who didn’t buy into the program. Then, slowly, like so many hostages, I started to open my mind and listen. By the time we got to Reno, unfamiliar thoughts were beginning to occur: Why shouldn’t we worry about the soundness of the currency? What exactly is the dollar backed by anyway? And, if the gold standard is crazy, is it really any crazier than hedge funds? I’d become Patty Hearst, ready to take up arms for the cause, or at least call my accountant and tell him to buy Krugerrands. I looked over at Dennis and the girls. They looked like they might be having the same thoughts.

Once the press conference ended, Paul left to do interviews with local TV reporters. Dennis and the girls stood at the podium and had their pictures taken under the Ron Paul sign. Air Force Amy hammed it up. What I really want more than anything, she told me, is to get my picture taken with Dr. Paul. She meant it.

I considered trying to explain to her that I was not actually affiliated with Ron Paul, merely writing about him for a political magazine back in Washington. But I didn’t. Instead, I led all three of them into the back room where Paul was doing his interviews.

Paul was talking on camera and never saw us. But his staff was on high alert. They looked more uncomfortable than I have ever seen a campaign staff look. Air Force Amy didn’t appear to notice. Dressed in red, her Dolly Parton hairdo and 36DDs at full attention, she sidled up to Lew Moore, Paul’s campaign manager, and made her pitch. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Air Force Amy, and I’d like a picture with Ron Paul.” I knew right away it wasn’t going to happen. “I’ve got a concern, I’ve got to be honest,” Moore said, tense but trying to be nice. “If that picture surfaces, it could be very damaging to him politically.” Dennis stepped in to take up Air Force Amy’s cause, but Moore wasn’t budging. “The mainstream in the early primary states is not moving in that direction,” he said.

I really thought Air Force Amy was going to cry. She looked crushed. Like a child of alcoholic parents, she immediately started to rationalize away the pain. “It wasn’t Ron’s decision,” she told Moore. “It was yours. So I can’t take it personally.” But it was obvious that she did. It was awful. There wasn’t much left to say, so Dennis and the girls and I left and went downtown to a casino for pancakes. There were no hard feelings. They wore their Ron Paul stickers all through breakfast. If I’d had one, I would have worn it too.

Tucker Carlson is an anchor on MSNBC.

This article originally ran in the December 31, 2007 issue of the magazine.

Bribe people and they will vote. In USA

This was amazing to read besides the funny description of how Political Science Conferences work. I quote:

Damon M. Cann of Utah State University detailed how he knocked on doors in River Heights, Utah, and to one group made a distinctly rhetorical plea to vote in an upcoming election, for the sake of democracy. To another group, he randomly offered discount coupons for fried chicken, French fries, a Mexican meal and rock climbing if they went to the polls. If later inspection of the rolls confirmed you had indeed voted, you'd got a coupon for, in the case of the fried chicken, two buckets worth at KFC.

Cann's initial numbers crunching determined that oral persuasion hiked turnout by four percent but blatant economic lures jacked it up a further nine percent. As panel moderator Brian Gaines of the University of Illinois suggested to me later, Cann's gambit would probably be illegal if offered as a swap for backing a specific candidate. But the yet-to-be-published work may prove a provocative addition to an explosion of studies on voting, Gaines said, especially given what tend to be dismal U.S turnouts compared to other industrialized nations.

These Americans should take a leaf out of the world’s largest democracy, India, where economic incentives are quite common. Money, Sari’s, TV’s, you name it, they get it. So any country which is moaning about lack of voter participation, just hand out KFC vouchers and they will turn out in droves.

Sound bites in the UK election and what they really mean #ge2010 #ge10

From here.

 

“I’m not a racist, but . . . ” – I am a racist and I’m voting for the BNP.

“Nick Clegg was good in the TV debates” – I haven’t read the Lib Dem manifesto.

“Gordon Brown doesn’t come across well on TV” – Gordon Brown is a walking, talking political disaster zone. He is the Deepwater Horizon of British politics.

“I don’t follow politics” – I’m poor, and I’ll stay poor, whoever gets in.

“I’ve always voted Labour in the past” – Voting Tory will make me feel dirty, but sexy too.

“I’m worried that the recovery could stall” – I’m worried about losing my overpaid public sector job.

“I’m worried about the deficit” – I envy my neighbour’s generous public sector pension.

“It’s time for a change” – I want to pay less tax.

“I’m undecided” – A plague on all your houses, I’m staying in bed on polling day.

More on Zimbabwe

That situation in Zimbabwe is turning more and more surreal by the day. Here's some surreal bits from just 1 story.

1. The leaders wife is clearly telling everybody that she doesnt believe in democracy.
2. She thinks that Mugabe only believes in one party rule
3. They think that MDC burnt down a homestead.
4. She says, with a straight face, that they are humans. How amusing
5. She thinks that MDC is responsible for the violence
6. Mugabe thinks that the problems with food shortage is because of drought
7. Mugabe thinks that the food production problem is again due to drought

What a bunch of ignorant stupid moronic clowns. And these are the people who are being supported by the other African Leaders. Sod them.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe,Nigeria,South Africa,Elections,Democracy

Nigerian thug in chief defends Zimbabwean thug in chief

Typically, these crooks hang together. Have you noticed that? All these African leaders, by and large, are basically thieves and crooks. This man, Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, came to power in one of the most blatantly rigged elections recently. So a man who comes to power with fraud will obviously stick up to a man who rules by fraud, no?

So when this man says,

"We do not support violence. We ask for caution and restraint. Whatever crisis there is, there must be restraint to resolve it according to law," said Yar’Adua in his first public statement on the crisis.

"We cannot behave like the Western countries in respect to the Zimbabwean crisis... We cannot come out and start making judgments on the internal problems" of Zimbabwe, he said.

I was sneering cynically at him. What a hypocrite. This man is at the same level as that other man, Thabo Mbeki, who talk utter and total bullshit. What is clear is that these leaders have no idea about what the rule of law is and have no, absolutely no care about their citizens. Which is why whenever they say stuff like this, their image falls even further. Esphoks.

Technorati Tags: Nigeria,Zimbabwe,Elections,Corruption

Ken Livingstone explains his defeat

Quite an interesting story, and some things I completely agree with. Now where was this reasonable man? All we ended up seeing was a megalomaniac, anti semitic, dour, boring man who was stupid in his foreign policy orientation towards the end.

But, Boris should read this article, specially about what Londoners need and want, leave the personalities aside, think of the city.

Technorati Tags: London,Elections,Urbanisation

Gordon Brown is done for...

I was chuckling when I read this on Adam Boulton's blog. I quote:

the Prime Minister now lives in a Liberal Democrat constituency in a country run by the Scottish National Party and works in a city run by the Conservatives.

Is Labour stiffed or is it stiffed? Actually, putting my citizen journalist hat on, I want the Conservatives to come to power, they are much more fun to poke and prod, these Labour guys are so boring and dour. Its more fun poking and prodding hypocrisy on morals rather than economic incompetence. In the former case, nobody gets hurt, in the latter case, everybody gets hurt.

Technorati Tags: Elections,United Kingdom,Humour

More thoughts on why Ken lost

I saw this link from Sunny's Page. I read this in the fullness and the comments as well. I have to admit that I did not read this before, seems to be published when I was travelling and in any case, had bigger issues (like the most gigantically complex PMI in the infrastructure world to manage, hehehehe) to worry about.

Well, my first impression is that each and every of these leaders have lost their senses. I am deeply and bitterly disappointed in them. And look at the great and good, even Tariq Ramadan has signed this. You know what I think of him and these other people did exactly the same mistake as Tariq did. This is a secular country and they played the religious card. What does that make them? confused and stupid at best and frankly Neanderthal and stupid at the worst.

And you know what? this perhaps represents the cream of British Muslim Society. And we are relying on these muppets to address the problems of British Muslim extremism? These chaps ARE part of the problem. One good thing is that Soumaya Ghannoushi is going to leave the city now that Boris is going to run the city, hehehehe. Oooooo, the fun times of promising something in print, she will never live it down, lol. I presume she will go and live in that liberal heartland of Saudi Arabia in the Nadz region? She got hauled over the coals in the comments. Poor girl. But a clear example of never letting facts get in the way of her opinions, hehehehe.

My second impression is, what on earth is Labour doing with a bunch of idiots like this supporting them? Do they not see the damage they have done? I mean, forget about the country and normal citizens, its very clear that their interests in that direction are near about zero. But look at the damage pandering to these religious buffoons and morons has done to the party, the party that ostensibly supports social liberalism is in bed with a bunch of reactionary right wing religious buffoons who do not understand modern life, liberalism nor secularism if it bit their nose. But they will not junk them, they will not clarify them, and they will go quietly into the night.

As for this group, get a clue, get a life and most importantly, get some good brain cells which can help you get some good PR help, spectacular own goals like this increase not decrease problems for us. No, election of Ken is NOT good for Londoners, so its good that he will piss off, I want a mayor of London, not a foreign minister of UK. He has done many good things, but no, enough is enough, pandering to minorities is wrong. But thankfully, these leaders are basically blowhards, let me quote a comment from the CiF page.

The Muslim Council of Britain has the highest approval rating of any Muslim organisation in Britain, and only 6% of Muslims though it represented their views. (It's telling that the MCB haven't endorsed this letter, evidently the shooting of Charles Demenez still rankles, and it's hard to argue that you are the "new Jews" if you are campaigning for the local Gauleiter)

In the same poll the Muslim Association of Britain managed a 1% rating. The rest of these outfits are political plankton that would struggle to be recognised through a microscope.

Indeed, many of them are the same small group people, a fact they've tried to disguise by using all their nameplates at once. The UK Islamic Mission (UKIM), Dawatul Islam, Islamic Society of Britain, and Islamic Forum Europe are the same thing - a little Maudidist clique (yeah, the theologian who argued it was Islamic to enslave and rape women).

The British Muslim Initiative refuses to detail its membership due to its small size, but Ismail Patel and Ghannoushi both write for it, yet appear here in separate capacities to try and inflate the numbers. IslamExpo is a creature of the Muslim Association of Britain and Ghannoushi is a former director or research for it.

The Cordoba Foundation has Anas Al Tikriti as its chief executive and apparently only member (its website is "relaunching" sometime never) who was formerly a leading light in the Muslim Association of Britain. Azzam Al Tamini's Institute of Islamic Political Thought is another one-man band, but it comes in handy when you need the appearance of numbers. Azzam is also an official spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain.

This is the problem, the media give these bunch of clown the oxygen of publicity, they dont do sweet sod all for the Muslim minority but they sure as hell as increase the Islamophobia coefficient in British Society. Oh! lets not forget that these groups, by and large, are howling bigots, specially against the gay and lesbian community. And they violated the charity commission's guidelines that any charity cannot take political positions.

I voted for Ken both times before. The first time because I wanted London to be out of the clutches of those pathologically centralising gits in Whitehall and Labour Party Headquarters. The second time, he spoke the language of improving the transport system. But this time? no, thank you. And guess what, Ken? It is such a telling that that a so called Buffoon got elected instead of you. What does that tell you about you, your policies, your supporters and the ordinary electorate? That a majority of voters actually felt not that good...

Technorati Tags: Islam,Muslims,United Kingdom,London,Elections,Secularism

Are political election manifesto's legally binding?

Besides the fact that Labour has basically lied to the electorate (dont all political parties lie?) this raises a curious question in my mind. Labour promised to have a referendum (page 84 in its 2005 manifesto) on the that piece of rubbish called as the EU Constitution. The Constitution was rejected. So the EU politicians, thinking that we are all stupid, shifted some words around, renamed it and stuck it in front of the politicians who signed up with alacrity and promptly forgot all about the referendum. This Labour Government wriggled out of that promise.

The Conservatives have promised to hold one or whatever, but they are even less trustworthy than Labour going by past performance (I hope they have improved since then..). But here's the thing, somebody has taken the Government to court over this issue and the Honourable Judge agreed! This promises to be an interesting fight, but beyond this crucial issue of Europe, lies a more conceptual issue.

If a Government says something, does it become something that you can impose legally? I quote:

His lawyer, Rabinder Singh QC, said the application for judicial review was based on "the underlying fundamental principles of good administration, fair play and straight dealing with the public".

One way of looking at that statement is, The Government lied to us, My Lordship Judge, and we need justice. The other way is what the defending QC said and I quote:

But Philip Sales QC, for the office of the prime minister, denied that Gordon Brown or Foreign Secretary David Miliband had made any unambiguous and unqualified representation amounting to a promise to hold a referendum. He also said the claim was "misconceived" as a ratification of an international treaty was not open to challenge in the High Court and would breach Parliamentary privilege.

So, the government's defence is, Sorry, My Lord, we didnt lie and in any case, even if we did lie, you cannot do anything about it as we are Parliament, you cannot judge us.

I think the results of this case if successful will impact the world far and wide (British legal judgements, by dint of history, commercial arbitration presence in the UK, etc. etc.). Politicians have to think very carefully about what they promise voters because if they do not fulfil those promises, they can be forced to do so by the court. So?

Well, two things can happen. (1) It might happen that political parties do not promise anything that is concrete. Which is a tragedy. (2) Populist single issue or extremist parties will emerge who can promise the world and then do it. In Government, the wild and wooly promises are generally toned down (like you saw with both US Democratic candidates who said one thing publicly about Canadian imports but their staff members said something else in private - to the effect, that was only for public consumption, once in power, nothing will be done..). But in this case, they will be forced to do so...

Worrying, what?

Technorati Tags: Politics,Elections,United Kingdom,Legal System

Legislation and Gordon Brown

I am absolutely gobsmacked at what Gordon Brown is planning now. Do you know what he is now asking for? He is asking for more legislative ideas. I quote:

Gordon Brown yesterday urged cabinet colleagues to come up with fresh legislative ideas to give his government new momentum, after what are expected to be dismal local election results tomorrow.

The party is losing so to recover it, he wants to go and put on more laws. Why? what on earth for?  See what these buggers (and I include those muppets in the Conservative camps as well) have done to us. I quote:

A new version of the definitive guide to every law in England has more than doubled in size to over 100 volumes since the last edition was published 20 years ago. Campaigners said the scale of the size increase of the latest edition of Halsbury's Laws of England shows that Britain is now one of the most overly regulated countries in the world.....

Mr Hetherington said he had to make room for 900 new Acts of Parliament and 30,000 extra pieces of legislation in the new edition.

Dont you see what you are doing to the country and society, Gordon Brown? (and learn from this, David Cameron), do not burden the country with all these laws. Where is the sunset of the laws? remove laws, set the people free, set the companies free. Why do you want to imprison all of us? Do you not like freedom? And your controlling tendency leads you to disaster, all the time. It is very clear that you are unable to learn, but this is rather worrying.

I voted for Boris. Not because what he was bringing to the city. Actually, the Mayor cant do much anyway because you, Gordon, have centralised too much into the government. But electing Boris will mean that it will push you to either learn or leave. It will mean that people no longer trust Labour. And frankly, I dont. I do not trust you at all. I do not trust my MP, even though he is doing good or not doing bad at least. That's why I have voted for conservative in my local city elections as well.

When the going gets tough, you either hide or you legislate. In both cases, what do I need you for a prime minister? Any muppet can hide or legislate. What's the new thing that you are bringing? And most importantly, you aren't listening to me. David Cameron at least is providing me with an impression that he listens.

And my second vote went to the Lib Dems. Not to Labour. You know why? not because what policies they provide. I think the LibDems are a bunch of the biggest illogical incoherent bunch of time wasters. But I put in the second vote for them because they were NOT labour. That's where you have landed, mate. And your solution is to put more laws on me? Great idea, that will really make me think well of you.

"I will defend your right to speak" does not seem to apply to BBC and ITV

While I think this chap is a loony, but surely his right to speak and say what he stands for is violated?

See here for the video and the election site. These media outlets do not help themselves, and then moan about them being pushed around by extremists, well, d'oh, sure they will when you dont stand up for free speech, you doofus..

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Zimbabwe Embassy Prank

Bloody brilliant, loved the joke! DONT PRESS 1!!!!

 

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe,Elections,Humour

Why most of the world is worried about Democrats?

This is an interesting column on why most of the world (at least the Asian bit) is worried about the fact that Democrats might come into power.

The Musharraf Strategy

Besides the fact that that clown Mugabe is still in power after ruining his country, I found it amusing that now there is a political strategy called as the Musharraf Strategy. I am sure he (and Pakistan?) would be so proud of being associated with that! :)

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

UK is still a banana republic

Here we go again, we still have postal fraud in this day and age. Now its the turn of the conservatives to show how to commit fraud in elections in the UK. I quote:

A Tory councillor was found guilty of using bogus postal votes to ensure he was voted into office in Slough. Eshaq Khan beat Lydia Simmons, a former mayor of Slough, by 119 votes to win the council's Central ward in last year's local elections.
Election commissioner Mr Richard Mawry QC said: "The only reasons they came to light at all were the incompetence of the fraudsters and the blatant nature of the frauds.
"It would have been pleasant to conclude this judgment by saying that this had now all changed. "But I cannot. Despite the 2006 Act, the opportunities for easy and effective electoral fraud remain substantially as they were on 4 April, 2005."

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

The Swiss are now climbing on the racism, islamophobic bandwagon!

The NYTimes has a full article on how the Swiss are working themselves up on foreigner hatred, racism and Islamophobia. Again, I am very worried indeed. This is not good. I quote:

“Our political enemies think the poster is racist, but it just gives a simple message,” Bruno Walliser, a local chimney sweep running for Parliament on the party ticket, said at the rally, held on a Schwerzenbach farm outside Zurich. “The black sheep is not any black sheep that doesn’t fit into the family. It’s the foreign criminal who doesn’t belong here, the one that doesn’t obey Swiss law. We don’t want him.”
More than 20 percent of Swiss inhabitants are foreign nationals, and the SVP argues that a disproportionate number are lawbreakers. Many drug dealers are foreign, and according to federal statistics, about 70 percent of the prison population is non-Swiss.
Human rights advocates warn that the initiative is reminiscent of the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft, or kin liability, under which relatives of criminals were held responsible and punished for their crimes.
For Nelly Schneider, a 49-year-old secretary, the party’s approach is “a little bit crass,” but appealing nevertheless. “These foreigners abuse the system,” she said after Mr. Walliser’s presentation. “They don’t speak any German. They go to prostitution and do drugs and drive fancy cars and work on the black market. They don’t want to work.”

While going on welfare, asking to be treated differently, refusing to treat women when you are a doctor, or refusing to sell contraceptive pills is disgusting. That's not what you signed up for when you became a citizen or continue to be a citizen. See here for my comments to Tariq Ramadan, the author of what it means to be an European Muslim.

But that's on the citizen's side. On the other side, we have seen so many times as to how Europeans lead inexorably towards genocide and killings. This is simply another step towards it. Perhaps the Council of Europe can take up this matter? I think that's the only body in Europe who can conceivably make a difference in this frankly extremely dangerous matter. I know Muslims think the worst of the Jews for complaining about the Genocide and Holocaust, but remember this, what happened to them can and will happen to the Muslims as well.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Spainish Elections and Terrorism, the links

Elections ARE influenced by terrorism. The death of Rajiv Gandhi and so many others in terrorist attacks have influenced the elections directly in India. The 9/11 terrorist attacks impacted the election of President Bush in his second term directly. The Bali Bombings impacted the elections in Indonesia and Australia. And perhaps the closest impact was the Madrid Bombings and the Spanish General Elections.

So what was the connection? How much was the impact? Did it change voter behaviour? By how much? Did it change voter turnout?

Now here's a paper on this

Valentina A. Bali, Terror and elections: Lessons from Spain, Electoral Studies, Volume 26,
Issue 3, September 2007, Pages 669-687.

Abstract: The present paper explores the ways a terrorist event can
influence electoral outcomes by examining the Madrid bombing terrorist attack
immediately before Spain's 2004 national elections. Uncharacteristically, rather
than "rally" public support towards the incumbent leadership this terrorist
incident contributed to the electoral upset. Based on individual level survey
data, the analyses suggest the terrorist attack mobilized citizens who are
traditionally less likely to participate in politics as well as center and
leftist voters, and encouraged some of these voters to switch to the opposition.
Quite critically, the incumbent government's unpopular foreign policies and
handling of the attacks had substantial and independent effects on their party's
defeat. Overall, this study highlights the key roles of timing of attacks and
priming of issues when understanding the effects of terrorism on
elections.

I further quote the introduction

The Spanish elections of 2004 were marked by two extraordinary yet possibly
related events: a large-scale terrorist attack shortly before the election and
an unexpected electoral upset for the incumbent party. On March 11th 2004, only
3 days before the national elections to the Spanish parliament were to take
place, Spain endured a large-scale terrorist attack at the hands of Islamic
militants, as later established. In the early morning, during the commuter rush,
several bombs exploded at three railway stations in Madrid resulting in almost
200 casualties and close to 2000 injured. Days later, the ruling Popular Party
(PP), led by José-Maria Aznar, lost in a surprising upset to the main opposition
Socialist Party (PSOE), led by José-Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who then became the
new Prime Minister. Thereafter, pundits and academics alike were left to
determine whether the terrorist event had actually derailed in a matter of days
what some polls suggested was up to a 4% points advantage for the incumbent
government's party.

And the conclusion

There are several key lessons that the Madrid attacks can impart. First,
citizens' evaluations of the government's performance in the policy areas
related to the attack are clearly critical. If the citizenship generally
approves of the government's performance in those areas, a terrorist attack
close to an election may result in a rally of support or at least not hurt the
incumbent government. If, on the other hand, the government is vulnerable on
those policies, the attack may very well result in an anti-rally. According to
this logic, the incumbent parties in the Australian 2004 and British 2005
elections would have been quite challenged by a terrorist attack close to the
election, given the strong popular discontent with each government's foreign
policies at those times. On the other hand, a terrorist attack right before the
United States 2004 elections may have proved much less deleterious.

Another implication from the present research is the importance of the
timing of the terrorist act in relation to the elections. A terrorist attack,
distant from election times, should trigger, in principle, the mechanisms
associated with rally events. In such cases, an immediate focus on the
government's performance is not likely. In contrast, if the terrorist event
occurs close to election times, because of the political race and the media's
incentives, a speedy zeroing in on a discussion of the government's performance
becomes harder to avoid. Had the Madrid bombings occurred 3 months before the
elections, the time it took Spanish citizens to approximately return to “normal”
levels of concern with terrorism, the electoral outcomes may have been
different. Finally, the present research also highlights the importance of where
the terrorist event takes place. We might expect more forceful effects on
elections from one-shot terrorist attacks in societies with lower levels of
political participation and attachments.

I have to add that given this history, I would be very careful from a security perspective before any election as it is clearly possible to change the behaviour of the electorate via bombing! Secondly, a note to the political parties, do not be too far away from the general populace. Whether in Spain where the right got slated, or in Australia where the left got slated, be in touch with general opinion.

But will go back to my point, elections are a bigger way of changing your enemy's foreign policy, so if I was a terrorist, targeting the populace just before an election would be good!


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!