Robbo,

How did you get that fly on the wall documentary of the Labour cabinet?

When NZ changed its election system there were two major issues with the new system;

1. You could never actually get rid of unpopular politicians as they would be high up on the party list anyway.
2. You'd get generations of MP's with no particular affiliation with any particular seat. They would owe their allegiance to the Party and not the voters.

Now that Im older (the system changed in NZ when I was an impressionable 20 year old) only now do I realise that it actually makes f99k all difference as its clear politicians feel the voters OWE them fealty (instead of the other way around) and its clear that you can never actually get rid of any politician as they are like cancer, they just spread and never go away.

UK election got quite a bit of excited coverage on the ABC over the weekend. Only a brief mention of the French election. Hardly the first time I've noticed the anti-colonialist, anti monarchy ABC having stronger ties to the UK than might have been expected. Perhaps there was some news value in an election matching the polling.

To put a perversely optimistic spin on the result, your expectations are now so low that even Labour is likely to surprise on the upside now and then. That might turn out more satisfactory than the Tories who, having set high expectations, proceeded to make pretty much every bad decision they could.

Remake of Yes Minister would be welcome. While waiting for it you can get an antipodean cousin, Utopia. That's just snippets, last two minutes the best. ABC allows viewing the full shows through iview, but I don't know if that's available from the UK.

tomo,
That Renault side-mirror thing: the everyday nightmare of modern vehilces for mechanics and their customers. My usual talking point for people who think the "diagnostic port" takes all the guesswork out of diagnosis is "what's the error code for: a rat has been eating the wiring loom?" but that mirror is a nice concrete example.

With elections coming and going, I thought this article linked in a Jo Nova comment was fairly interesting. It describes various voting systems and evaluates them on three rather subjective scales. I didn't see the 1950's Rhodesian one among them, where various items of social participation (pay tax, own a property, have finished primary, finished secondary, earned a tertiary qualification, and others which I don't recall) each earn you an extra vote. I think the votes were ultimately counted first past the post. Do you use your extra votes to have a second preference, or just go all-in on your preferred candidate? Probably not very politically correct, but it's an interesting idea.

DaveS,

Paddle to France and then paddle back, claim refugee status, and be given a house and benefits. Major win for you! ;)

The combination of large majority and low proportion of the vote does suggest instability ahead. The only hope I can see is that Labour implode before they get to do too much damage. But quite who will be there to pick up the pieces is anyone's guess. My plan B is to buy a dinghy, paddle across to France and claim asylum - it would be an interesting test to see if the border is as permeable in that direction as it is in this.