Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

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There’s a 10-minute section of The Expendables in which the above is pretty much the entire script, with barely a word uttered shouted during a thoroughly intense action scene. The screen is practically shaking with the amount of explosions and gunfire, and everywhere you look something is either burning or blowing up (or both!).

And it’s not as if I expected anything different. Expendables is an action film in the truest sense of the word. Very few scenes are wasted on such niceties as plot or character development. Why, when you can have another explosion/fight/car chase (delete as necessary)?!

The action is over the top, tongue in cheek, almost comically gory, but pretty bloody amazing to watch. These aren’t the biggest action stars in the world for no reason, and they know how to make things look good on camera.

Whether they’re engaged in hand-to-hand fighting (complete with nasty bone-breaking), or shooting the fuck out of a bunch of soldiers (including heads and bodies literally being blown apart), they’re doing so in style. The physical combat scenes are fantastic, particularly those involving Jet Li and Jason Statham.

Stallone is a half-decent writer/director, and isn’t afraid to tackle some pretty nasty material. The torture scene here is brutally realistic, and you can’t help but remember that these techniques were used on hundreds of prisoners by the CIA. It’s uncomfortable viewing, that’s for sure.

Mickey Rourke’s character comes the closest to expressing some kind of depth, whereas the rest rely on chirpy one-liners to give them the merest hint of being something other than an automaton. It’s all banter between the boys, with plenty of piss-taking and gratuitous swearing.

The subplot with Statham’s character and his ex seemed entirely unnecessary, as if it were planted to give him some more screen time? This is sort of acknowledged with Jet Li’s character talking about a family that he has and everyone else asking when he managed to find the time to find one.

Thanks to the trailer, we all know that Bruce Willis and Arnie have cameo roles, but thankfully the best line of their scene wasn’t spoiled. It’s a genuinely funny tongue-in-cheek moment, and played joyously straight by all three of the action film superstars.

I walked out of the film with a massive, massive grin on my face. It was ridiculous, of course it was, but it was entertaining. Sometimes you just need to see 90 minutes of shit getting blown up, of the good guys going after the bad guys with a ridiculous combination of weaponry and fists, of the token inclusion of a female character.

It’s better than any action film I’ve seen for a long time, and it shows that you don’t always need a convoluted plot to be a good film. Or any plot, really.

Disengage your brain, engage your love of explosions, and go see The Expendables.

I finished reading Cocaine Nights by JG Ballard the other day, and whilst it was a good read, I couldn’t help but feel that it was very, very similar to a few of his other books that I’ve read over the years.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, as I have done all of Ballard’s books. With the exception of Empire of the Sun, which was essentially an autobiography of his childhood in Shanghai, Ballard explores some very interesting themes, usually concerning the potential for society to eat itself. He is very good at finding a dark underbelly to a seemingly innocuous situation, and showing how easily passions can be inflamed to destroy or alter what exists before.

In Cocaine Nights, for example, a journalist travels to the Spanish coast because his brother has been arrested for murdering five people in a house fire in their gated community. As he stays there, trying to prove his brother’s innocence, he gets drawn into a world which is very different from that which he sees at first glance. Essentially, the book boils down to forcing people out of the monotony of their lives and into something more interesting or rewarding. The catalyst for this is crime and violence, naturally.

As I said, this is all good material, and it’s nicely plotted too. Ballard is a very good writer, although his writing of sex is a touch iffy. It’s odd, because he can write eroticism particularly well, but the sex itself comes across as very mechanical. He’s more than capable of granting a character a huge charge of eroticism, or inserting a huge amount of it into a scene, but it then goes a bit dry (so to speak) as soon as they’re actually getting down to it. Odd.

Anyway, what I realised is that the character interactions are somewhat formulaic across a number of his books. In all four that I have read which tackle dystopian themes (Cocaine Nights, Crash, Millennium People, and Kingdom Come), the main character or narrator is taken from his comfort zone into the seedy underbelly of society by a charismatic newcomer to his life. He is cajoled and prodded into exploring the new experiences by someone else, rather than on his own accord.

And it always seems to be male to male as well. The central characters are male (if memory serves), as are the newcomers. I detect a certain air of weakness on the part of the central character every time, and he is always looking for someone to provide him with excitement, rather than seeking it out for himself. The newcomer is always welcoming, and swiftly takes the main character under his wing, making him a protege and imparting his wisdom.

Yes, the methods differ slightly, but essentially it’s the same character journey each time. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but in Cocaine Nights the newcomer’s “charisma” is mentioned so often that it’s just drilled into you. It reminded me massively of the TV spokesmodel in Kingdom Come who is the face of the shopping mall, and also of the driver in Crash who introduces the narrator to the sexual violence of car crashes.

What it also vaguely reminded me of was a theory I came across at university: Max Weber’s charismatic leader. OK, so I remembered the theory if not the philosopher, but it was up there in my head somewhere. University was evidently good for something!

Weber says that charismatic authority is one of the three possible bases for legitimising power in a society (the others being traditional authority, which is patriarchy, monarchy and so on, and rational-legal authority, which is more of a rules-based system), and that it comes about when a leader arises who can command obedience through nothing more than his own personal appearance.

He does not have legitimacy through being elected, nor from being an heir to the throne. His power derives from commanding others and having those orders obeyed because the populace believes him to be better than them, and so are loyal to him. A very simple explanation, and no doubt glossing over some subtleties, but that’s the basics.

In Ballard’s books, these charismatic newcomers fit that mould exactly: Cocaine Nights’ is a tennis coach, for example. It is only through relentless application of their charisma and forcing the other characters to believe in them that they gain their power, and their legitimacy.

For me, the characters which are attracted to these charismatic leaders are all the same: weak, searching for something a little different, and then surprised at just how far down the rabbit hole goes. Too often, they eventually want out, and try to rebel against their new leaders, sometimes too late to avoid the inevitable deaths and destruction.

I really do enjoy reading Ballard’s books, but if I find the next one to be following the same kind of structure, with the same basic characters, I think I’ll have to look elsewhere.

Does anyone have any recommendations for that kind of modern-day sociological dystopian novel?

I read Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon a few weeks ago, and it’s taken me a little while to pull together some thoughts on it. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, and exposes so much that is right and wrong with police work in particular, and American society in general.

Simon’s name will be familiar for anyone who watched The Wire as obsessively as I did, as he’s the creator, executive producer and head writer for that series. If you know The Wire, you’ll also recognise a number of similar storylines and characters from this book. Hell, the guy on the front cover of my copy even looks a bit like McNulty.

That’s not to say that this is The Wire in book form. For a start, it’s only shown from the homicide police’s perspective. Simon spent a year (1988) embedded in the Baltimore homicide department, accompanying the detectives at crime scenes, arresting suspects, in court, and in general just being with them for every waking moment of their shift each day.

And he wrote it all down, painting each person in a good or a bad light based purely on their actions and words. It’s non-fiction, and although he himself (in the afterword) questions whether he got too close to the detectives to truly call it journalism, it’s a stunning portrait of how murder police work.

Structurally, it’s pretty much chronologically ordered, introducing the various members of the squad quite early on, and following them from body to body, investigation to investigation. Occasionally, Simon will pull in other cases from earlier or later in the year because thematically they relate to the case in question, but roughly it’s in order as each body is found and investigated.

There are a couple of big cases which form the main plotlines of the book, including one which ultimately remains unsolved to this day, but it’s surprising how many homicides are solved or cleared relatively easily (“dunkers”, in the parlance).

Worryingly, though, are the number of cases which are “stone cold whodunnits”, most often drug-related shootings where every witness denies seeing anything at all. The detectives must do battle with a culturally ingrained distrust of the police, and it’s incredible how they manage to get any information out of some people at all.

One of the areas which really concerned me as a member of society, and a believer in the justice system as a whole (it comes with having done a law degree. You have to believe!), was all of the back-room deals done as part of the prosecution process. Countless plea bargains were made, with certain 1st-degree murders reduced to 2nd-degree and so heavily reduced jail sentences.

This was usually because the state’s attorneys were unwilling to take a case to court which had any kind of shaky evidence whatsoever, no matter how small. As Simon points out, it was often that a white lawyer would find it difficult to convince a mostly black jury that a black defendant was guilty if any kind of doubt whatsoever (even false doubt) was placed on some evidence. Attorneys just wouldn’t take that risk, and so would agree to a guilty plea of a lesser charge, with the end result of a much shorter period in prison.

Race is a big issue in a city like Baltimore, and was keenly felt within the homicide department. Black detectives inevitably gained a little more co-operation from witnesses and informants, but I don’t remember any glaring instances of racism from the white detectives. It was the same in The Wire, with people like Greggs, Major Colvin and Carver having more success than McNulty on the streets.

It’s very easy to see the heavy influence that this book has had on The Wire, with some scenes lifted almost in their entirety, and in particular the very dark humour prevalent within the homicide office and detectives. But Homicide has a much keener focus on bodies and the investigations, rather than the wider-ranging scope of why these murders were occurring.

I understand that The Corner tells the tale of the war on drugs from the drug dealers’ perspective, and that these two opposing viewpoints are pulled together in The Wire, so I’ll be picking up that book soon enough.

Homicide is a fantastic book, and if you’re at all interested in police work, the justice system, or just a group of highly intelligent men doing their very best to make the world a slightly better place, it’s worth reading.

WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR INCEPTION

Even though I’m trying not to spoil anything at all, inevitably there will be a couple of things revealed that could spoil the film if you haven’t seen it already. Please stop reading and go see the film instead.

What I want to look at here is the names of the characters within the film, because in the kind of film which is so rich in symbolism and detail, characters will be named for a particular reason. I’ve no idea if I’m correct for each one, but it makes sense in my interpretation of the film.

Seriously, PROBABLE SPOILERS AHEAD. SEE THE FILM FIRST!!!.

Here’s who I think each character is named after, and why:

• Cobb: Probably named after Stanley Cobb, a neurologist and one of the proponents of “biological psychiatry”, recognising a link between the physical make-up of the brain and the consciousness it creates. According to Wikipedia, Cobb rejected the distinction between mind and body, with higher levels of complexity dealt with by psychiatry, rather than physiologists. In the film,

• Arthur: This is the one I’m not sure about. My knowledge of Arthurian legend isn’t too strong, and I don’t really see any other Arthurs that could fit. There’s one interesting line on the King Arthur Wikipedia page, which says that in Welsh legends he “launches assaults on Otherworldly fortresses in search of treasure and frees their prisoners”, which could fit nicely. There’s also the element of chivalry, and representing a moral good, which Arthur does more than any other character in Inception.

• Ariadne: Ariadne is a character in Greek mythology who gives Theseus a ball of string so that he can find his way out of the minotaur’s labyrinth after slaying the beast. It’s clear in the film that she’s trying to help him, and meshes with her designing the various labyrinths in Fischer’s mind. It also fits with one of the more outlandish theories behind Inception, in that it’s all in Cobb’s mind and that Ariadne is a psychiatrist trying to pull him out of his madness back into the real world one level above that we see in the film.

• Eames: My best guess is here is Rebecca Eames, a defendant in the Salem Witch Trials. She was convicted of being a witch, and sentenced to death, but lived until she was 80 years old. Witches were commonly was accused of some kind of shape-shifting, which would be a clear link with the film Eames, but whether she in particular was so accused is something I’ve not been able to establish.

• Yusuf: In Islam, Yusuf is one of the main prophets before Muhammad, and exists in the Old Testament as Joseph. Yes, Joseph of the Technicolour Dreamcoat, and he who interprets the dreams of the Pharoah to predict seven years of feast before seven years of famine.

• Saito: There’s a warrior monk in Japanese history by the name of Saito Musashibo Benkei, who more commonly goes by the name of Benkei. He entered into lore because he was a formidable warrior who defeated 999 consecutive opponents before losing to the 1000th, whereupon he became one of that man’s best soldiers. His master was subsequently cast into exile, and eventually surrounded. His master went into his castle to commit suicide, and Benkei once more defended the bridge until his own death. He’s famous for his loyalty and honour, which is a massive link to the film character, as well as the “exile” of being in limbo for so long.

• Mal: The prefix “mal-” comes from the latin word for bad or evil. Whilst it’s not clear that Mal was intrinsically evil in real life, her memory within Cobb’s mind has become something which is eating away at him, and is destructive in the sense of intruding on other people’s subconscious. Also, in the theory above where Ariadne is trying to save an insane Cobb, Mal could be a representation of a split personality, the dangerous part that Cobb needs to destroy before he can become a normal member of society once more.

• Browning: My first thoughts on this was the Browning machine gun, but that seems a little awkward to make fit. A better fit could be Robert Browning, a Victorian poet whose works were often voiced by an unreliable narrator, seeking to defend him- or herself. Again, this could tie in with the theory of the film taking place within Cobb’s mind.

Of course, this is a very incomplete list, and only from about half an hour’s research. I don’t claim to have interpreted the film correctly, but it was interesting for me to explore the meaning behind the names, and see how many references there are to dreams throughout. It’s amazing just how frequently dreams and the subconscious crop up in so many histories and cultures across the world.

I walked out of Inception last night with a sudden urge to watch eXistenZ again, which is about as high a compliment that I can pay to the new release. eXistenz is an exquisitely crafted, gorgeously visualised, and well acted headfuck of a film, and I can say the exact same things about Inception.

Both are films whose plots almost defy description, or at least require some dexterity in terms of making sound coherent, but they make perfect sense whilst you’re watching. There are so many layers and sub-layers of reality in both that you end up questioning exactly where and how each film is taking place.

Of course, there are differences: eXistenZ uses a virtual reality setting, whereas Inception takes place in people’s dreams, their subconscious. But there are similarities too: both require the participants to be plugged in and networked, and even the “go” button on the Inception device is squishy and reminiscent of the glowing blobs that eXistenZ uses to jack into the other world.

The basic plot of Inception, as much as I can describe it, concerns surreptitiously entering into another person’s head to either steal information (relatively easy), or to insert an idea and make that person believe that they came up with the idea themselves. The latter is the Inception of the title, and makes up the majority of the plot, with the protagonists having to delve ever deeper into the subconscious to plant the idea.

There are going to be obvious comparisons made with The Matrix, as well as eXistenZ, with regards to the question of what is real, but also for the special effects. We all saw that brief shot in the trailer the city of Paris folding in on itself, which looked fucking awesome (and in the longer sequence that actually features in the film it looks even better), as well as a brief shot of some flying martial arts (again, truly stunning in the film itself).

For me, there isn’t much of a comparison to be made to The Matrix in terms of the plot and settings. Yes, there’s some philosophical undertones in there, but Inception is more about a person coming to terms with their own mind and their own consciousness than fighting against any great evil. It’s very much internal, whilst The Matrix externalises the threat somewhat.

I have to say a quick word of praise for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is probably the best thing in the film. Well, that and whoever did his wardrobe, because the man looks fucking sharp. His action sequences are brilliant, especially the zero-gravity stuff, and he carries off his role with a gravitas beyond his years.

Di Caprio continues a good recent run of character exploration and internal combustion, and Marion Cotillard sizzles as a malevolent ghost in the machine. I’m also a big fan of Cillian Murphy, and felt he was a little under-used. It was still a pretty stellar performance all round from the cast, though.

The visuals, as you would expect from a Christopher Nolan film, were nothing short of spectacular, with worlds collapsing in on themselves and the people within them. There was plenty of action too, including the obligatory car chase. For me, some of this went on a touch too long, and could’ve been trimmed without too much detriment to the film as a whole.

One minor criticism is the sheer inability of any of the extraction protectors to be able to shoot straight. They were almost Bond-villain’s henchmen in their accuracy. And yes, I suppose this could be put down to an inexpert training strategy being implemented within the subconscious, but it was almost comical at times that so many bullets were being expended without hitting a target.

I’ve tried my damnedest to avoid spoilers here, because it genuinely is a film that is going to leave every viewer with a different take on it as they walk out of the cinema, and I don’t want to give anything away or influence anyone before they see it.

It made me think, made me question a lot of things that I take for granted, and I can guarantee that it’s going to stick in my head for a long, long time. A truly memorable film, and well worth seeing.

And this is why we shouldn’t let media outrage and fear-mongering dictate such sensitive issues as government drug policy:

A few months ago, there was a whole flurry of hand-wringing in the media after a few people died after allegedly taking mephedrone, a legal high drug. In particular, two teenagers were among those deaths, and their parents were amongst the most vehement in calling for a ban on the drug.

Despite the lack of real scientific evidence as to the dangers of the drug, the government swiftly banned it, with immediate effect. A number of arrests followed for those continuing to sell it from websites and in clubs, and talk has risen of further bans on other legal high products.

The government basically took a completely kneejerk reaction to some fearmongering headlines, and now we have another drug added to the extensive list of illegal substances that really don’t have as much of a lethal effect as alcohol and cigarettes.

Oh, and the reason why reacting in this fashion is wrong? They didn’t have all the facts.

The toxicology reports released today for the two teenagers above have shown that in fact they had not taken any of that drug prior to their deaths.

This reminds me so much of the panic around swine flu, when a few people died at the start of that outbreak. There was a ridiculous amount of coverage, with screaming frontpage headlines proclaiming the apocalypse, for each death, but when those deaths were later shown to be entirely non-flu related, that news was relegated to page 94.

The fear had been put into the populace, and to be honest many won’t even have noticed the corrections or follow-ups. The media’s view of the story thus becomes the one which the public believes to have actually happened, despite that not being true.

And we’re seeing the same again now with mephedrone: a couple of scary headlines, and things change. The government’s reaction to swine flu cost us millions in buying Tamiflu and staffing a swine flu hotline. The new drugs policy has instantly criminalised thousands of people.

And this is why we shouldn’t let the media dictate government policy.

kapi asked: What are your thoughts on Lady Gaga?

(I'm gonna need a long reply to this.)

You know, I don’t really listen to the radio, and I don’t have too many music channels nowadays, so by the time I hear of a pop artist or a particular song, it’s already pretty ubiquitous. This can mean it’s already reached annoyance level for most people, whereas for me it’s new.

But usually still crap.

When it comes to the genres I enjoy, then I’m absolutely always trying to hear something new, or eagerly awaiting a new album, looking out for it all the time.

With pop, it’s just not my thing. The only time I’ll hear that kind of music is in a bar or something, or on the car radio if the girlfriend is giving me a lift to the station. Even then, I usually have no idea who sings a particular song, nor their usual ouevre.

When it comes to Lady Gaga, it wasn’t really until last autumn that I really became aware of her, or realised that a couple of songs were hers. I remember being in a bar in Newcastle last year and seeing it go mental when Poker Face came on, and that was my first realisation that she was something big.

Musically, I guess I can understand the appeal. It’s fairly nonsensical, standard pop fare, ranging from the dancey stuff to the slower (yet still upbeat) ballads. It’s not really my thing, but as pop music goes it’s not bad. Better than the middle-of-the-road crap that we get from X-Factor and the like, but still pretty formulaic.

I wouldn’t say that she’s particularly turning the pop world on its head musically. Compare her stuff to Britney’s earlyish material: it’s basically the same style. I’ll grant that Gaga’s lyrics have a little more to them, but they’re still all about sex, love, relationships and fame.

Away from the music, and onto her image. It’s pretty clear that she fancies herself as a performance artist more than a music artist. And it does take a certain amount of confidence to wear some most of her outfits, so I’ll give her credit for that.

But there’s a fine line between being noticed for being outlandish, being on the bleeding edge of fashion, and just plain being ridiculous. She’s crossed it, for me.

Yes, I realise that she’s trying to make some sort of commentary on the public obsession with musicians’ looks and images, but she just looks like an idiot. I just don’t get the need to dress up loke that on a daily basis, or to go that far overboard with it all.

A coat made of Kermits? Really?

She’s canny and media-savvy in terms of milking publicity and infamy wherever she can (that video with Beyonce, for example), but too often she’s becoming what she’s in theory supposed to be satirising: she’s relying on her raunchiness and sex appeal to sell music, just like Britney, Christina, et al, before her.

Her videos are without doubt aimed to titillate as much as to entertain, as are most of her outfits and her stage shows. Take, for example, the crotch-tastic green thing she wore at the Brits. My eyes water at the memory of how tight that was downstairs, and I ain’t female.

It amuses me that so much of the media is in thrall to her, covering her every move whilst trying to say that they aren’t really obsessed with her. Gawker is particularly guilty of this.

Maybe the best thing I can say about her is that she really has made an impact on the public consciousness. I don’t listen to her music, nor the genres she operates in, and I don’t read celebrity magazines/websites, yet I still know a decent amount about her.

It’s a sign of her ubiquity, perhaps, that even people like myself are able to have an opinion about her, and in a fame-obsessed world, you have to applaud the amount of self-promotion that it’s taken for her to get to that level.

So yes, I’ve finally voted in this year’s general election, choosing the Liberal Democrats. It was probably pretty evident from my posts over the last month or so that I was leaning in that direction, but I tried to refrain from being too party-political or biased. Hopefully that came across.

I’d like to explain the reasoning behind my choice, in what will probably be a long post. For edited highlights, try reading the Guardian and Observer’s endorsements of the Lib Dems. They sum up most of the points I’ll be making below, with a few discrepancies here and there.

When I’ve thought about it over the last week or so, there are three main policy areas in which I find myself agreeing with the Lib Dems more than the other two parties, and which for me are vitally important.

Firstly, Europe. I’m one of the most pro-EU people I know, and the Lib Dems are the most similarly aligned of the three largest parties. In fact, only the Greens come anywhere close in being as continental in outlook, with Labour resolutely undecided about Europe, and the Tories too nailed to a eurosceptic point of view.

Maybe it’s because I have first-hand experience and knowledge of how the EU has improved and benefited our country that I am such a big fan. I spent a year living in Germany as part of my degree, and I also studied EU law too. This combination has given me a massive insight into just how much we need and should want the EU in our lives.

I appreciate that it has a bit of democratic deficit, but if more people paid attention to what it actually does, rather than believing the crap they read in their newspapers, they’d engage with it more. The EU is vitally important, but we Brits seem to want to keep it at arms length.

The Lib Dems embrace Europe (it helps that their leader, Nick Clegg, was an MEP, but that’s not always a good thing, since the leaders of both the BNP and UKIP are also MEPs nowadays…), and for that I support them. I’m not certain as to whether we should be joining the Euro just yet, but in the long term I think it would also be to our benefit.

The second major factor for me is electoral reform. Again, I consider my experiences influenced by Germany, which to my mind has a better electoral system than us. They use proportional representation (PR) with a link to local constituencies, and it seems so much fairer than our elections.

For too long our elections have favoured the big two parties at the expense of all others, and this is systemically unfair. The Tories and Labour want to maintain this system, because they are the biggest winners. The Lib Dems have campaigned for many years to change it, especially in the light of a changing Britain which is more pluralistic in its views.

And, as the two old parties have moved towards the centre ground, becoming so alike that our politics is one of managerialism rather than ideologies nowadays, there is room for different views, and for different voices to be heard.

Maintaining the status quo that first-past-the-post gives us is simply not enough. Change is absolutely necessary on this, and only the Lib Dems are calling for it.

The third major point for me is immigration. I’m not one of these people that believes immigration is inherently a bad thing, nor that our Englishness is something necessarily worth protecting at all costs. I definitely don’t believe the thinly-veiled racism that passes for media coverage of the topic, and I don’t think we need to be hardline on it.

People come to this country because our standard of living is so high. Even doing menial jobs here is a thousand times better than many of the homelands of our immigrants. And those jobs are available because the British public seems to view them as below their status in life, for want of a better way of putting it.

“We’re supposed to be a relatively rich, advanced society, so why does someone need to flip burgers at McDonalds, or clean floors?”, so the line of thinking goes. And yet these people complain when someone comes to the country, willing to do those crappy jobs and theoretically freeing up a Brit to do a better-paid job in a more fulfilling role.

It’s not that all immigrants come to do those kind of jobs, of course. Doctors, nurses, and so on: many of them come from abroad to fill a gap where our education system is lacking. Yes, it’d be great to fill all those posts domestically, but in some respects it’s just not possible right now. With more money pumped into training and education, it will be, but those jobs need to be filled now.

The Lib Dems’ policy of an amnesty of sorts for those long-term residents here who were born abroad, but contribute massively to our society is a welcome position, and in stark contrast to fear-mongering elsewhere. I could point to plenty of studies which show that immigrants in fact contribute much more to our tax system than they get out of it, but those aren’t really ever frontpage news…

Those are my three main reasons for choosing the Lib Dems this year, but there are others:

I support their opposition to renewing the Trident nuclear programme, which is a £100 billion relic of yesteryear. We don’t need nukes, and to be honest I think Britain is trying to maintain the glory days of punching above its weight in world politics. We should embrace the new world order, and take our relevant position at the table. A pointless nuclear show of force won’t help that.

Scrapping ID cards is both a cost-saver and a step in the right direction in terms of restoring civil liberties which were taken away under the post-9/11 regime. Likewise the plans to do away with police DNA storage from innocent citizens, and attempts to regulate CCTV better. We’ve sleepwalked into a time when the state has far too much power in this realm, and this needs to be stopped.

The proposal to scrap tuition fees will probably never see the light of day, but it’s a good one. There must be room in the budget to subsidise further each university student to the tune of £3,000 per year, surely?! Even with tuition fees in place, the government pays the lion’s share of the cost of educating that student at university. Ending tuition fees would ensure students graduate debt-free, and enable more poorer students to attend university.

Raising the minimum threshold of income tax to £10,000 is another good move to help the poorest people in society. If this has to be paid for by increasing taxes at the top end, so be it. I probably fall into the top tax bracket, but I’ll pay more tax if it means those at the bottom of the income scale fare better. It’s all relative anyway: an extra £700 a year to someone earning £10,000 means so much more than say £2,000 missing from my pocket.

I’m pretty left on the issue of taxation, and I’m a fan of the state in certain areas, like health and education. The state should be the one providing everyone with a minimum standard of health and education. Those standards should be high, obviously, but the market is there to create even higher standards, and charge for them too, should people want them.

The Lib Dems are pretty green too, although I don’t agree with them on their firm opposition to nuclear power. Although I’d love to see much more renewable energy used (wind farms all round our coastline? Yes please!), nuclear power is cleaner than other fossil fuels, and safe nowadays. We shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.

Whilst the other parties also had policies that I liked, I feel that the Lib Dems have come the closest to being the complete package for me. Yes, I’ve probably missed out a few areas here and there, but these are the things that I deem important, and on which I’m basing my vote.

I’ve voted Liberal Democrat this year, and I hope the above explains why.

One of the signs that this election will be the first one genuinely fought between three parties rather than two is that the swingometer is out of date.

This device is one of the institutions of election-night TV coverage, with pundits showing how a swing of X% from one party to another nationwide would affect the number of seats won. It’s a bit of a rough-and-ready measuring tool, but it’s a great visual aid to show how there needs to be quite a big swing to really affect the make-up of parliament.

The early versions were genuine moving devices (like the one above from the late 1970s), and not exactly the most thrilling things ever seen on TV. As technology improved, they became a little more intricate, but still followed the same basic principle.

This video wall from 2001 included a representation of how many seats would theoretically be won/lost for each percentage swing. You can see that it’s still just red and blue though.

Now, with the Liberal Democrats much more of a credible force, the simple two-way swingometer is hopelessly inadequate and out of date. New visual guides will be needed to help viewers. The BBC’s website has a cool little device that allows you to shift votes from one party to another, including the Lib Dems and minority parties, rather than just Labour and Conservative.

Today, ITV announced how they’d be using a three-way swingometer (above) in their studio on election night, as part of their flashy all-holographic, all-the-time, coverage. It looks odd, to say the least, but I can see what they’re trying to do: showing how particular parties are siphoning off the votes of others. The “326” label on each beaker is the number of seats required for an absolute majority in parliament.

I doubt that we’ll see Will I Am appearing via hologram, but election night should prove an opportunity for the various broadcasters to showcase their creative teams. The girlfriend’s working as a stringer at one of the election counts, so I’ll be home alone, and I’ll probably be flicking between all the channels, media butterfly that I am.

So, will this election see the death not just of our first-past-the-post electoral system, but also of the swingometer? The latter’s more likely than the former, unfortunately.

Ever since I studied the German electoral system a few years back, and saw how fairly their parliamentary seats were allocated according to the national vote, whilst still maintaining local constituency links, I’ve been of the opinion that our system is inherently unfair.

Just re-reading that wiki page now, it strikes me as being a fantastic electoral system. The minimum votes/seats thresholds can be fiddled with a little to ensure even greater representation for smaller parties, and you still very much have a local MP too. I struggle to see weakness in that system, especially compared to our own first-past-the-post, which this year has the distinct possibility of awarding the most seats to the party with only the third most votes.

I spent a bit of time today number-crunching previous election results to show just how unfair the first-past-the-post system is, and why it needs to be replaced. For each of the last six elections, I’ve put together the percentages of votes gained by the two big parties (Labour and the Conservatives), and the percentage of parliamentary seats this earned them in total:

• 2005: 67.6% of votes; 85.8% of seats.

• 2001: 72.4% of votes; 90.3% of seats.

• 1997: 73.9% of votes; 88.5% of seats.

• 1992: 76.5% of votes; 93.2% of seats.

• 1987: 73.1% of votes; 92.9% of seats.

• 1983: 70.0% of votes; 93.2% of seats.

Now, how can anyone say that this system is fair?

It’s clear that these two parties get between 14.6 and 23.2% more seats than they’re entitled to under a fully proportionally representative system, to the detriment of smaller parties. In fact, it’s got worse in recent years, even as their percentage of votes decreases: the difference between seats and votes rose from 1997 to 2005.

It’s a travesty that so many voices go unrepresented in parliament, it really is.