I could never vote for David Cameron…

…because his constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire is 190 miles away down three motorways. That and he’s a tool. But the first reason is the main one.

I may have only managed a D in A-Level Politics but if there was one thing I did learn, it’s that when you vote in a General Election you’re voting for the person who will represent you and on average 68,499 of your neighbours in the House of Commons. Who becomes prime minister is just a consequence of which party ends up with the most MPs. Even that isn’t strictly true in the event of a hung parliament.

As Gordon Brown proved when he took over from Tony Blair, we do not elect our prime minister in this country.

Yet if you watch the news, you would be forgiven for thinking Gordon, Dave and the other fella are battling it out for the newly-created post of President of the UK of GB and NI. The forthcoming leaders’ debates/slanging matches will only worsen the Americanisation of our system and distortion in people’s minds of what we’re actually voting for.

I’ve decided to look beyond this and learn about the people who want to represent me at Westminster, so when the day comes I can make an informed choice.

I started at www.theyworkforyou.com. We’ve only lived in this house since late 2008 so I didn’t even know the constituency. A quick tap of the postcode and I got the constituency, current MP, his majority and voting record.

I now know my constituency is Shipley. MP Philip Davies has a majority of just 422 votes. Only 15 MPs have a lower majority. At least that means if I don’t like him I have a chance of getting rid. Mr Davies doesn’t want to reform the House of Lords, voted against the smoking ban, thinks it’s OK to discriminate against gay people and has voted against climate change legislation. Way to go Phil.

Armed with the name of the constituency, I then headed off to find out who I could vote for instead of Phil.

• The Conservatives site lists all their candidates by constituency, and confirmed Phil definitely fancies another crack at it this year.
• The Lib Dems have a similar search where I came face to face with John Harris, a retired teacher and Mensa member who is into woodwork, archaeology and classical music. Not exactly appealing to the young hip and happening constituents such as my good self, but he is a member of Amnesty International though which gives him some kudos in my book.
• Not to be outdone you can also find your Labour candidate on their site as well. They just lash them all on one page – no fancy search or A to Z for Labour as they’re too busy running the country to be concerned with such trivialities. Clicking on Susan Hinchcliffe’s link reveals a truly awful photo and a quick bio of the former Bradford recruitment consultant and all-round good egg.

So there you have it. Phil’s not getting my vote but as far as the other two are concerned I am up for grabs. Let’s see how it pans out and how persuasive the gumph that comes through my letterbox is over the next few weeks.

A question of statistics

According to the Guardian today, 37% of Africans have a mobile phone, but only 25% have electricity. So how do they charge their mobiles?

Rafa talking crap as usual

‘They have quality, especially the quality on the bench… Against us they had Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Dimitar Berbatov on the bench. When they can change players of this value, these players can make the difference… So they have these kind of players, we have less of these… When you pay £20-£30million for each of these players, it is easier.’ – Rafa Benitez
Daily Mail, 18th May 2009, http://tinyurl.com/obg2ro

Uefa have branded as “ridiculous” the number of players on the payroll of the Premier League’s Big Four clubs. Liverpool, who under Rafa Benítez have stockpiled a 62-man squad, the biggest in the league and enough for more than five full teams, have come in for particular criticism.

Uefa limit clubs to 25 players each for the Champions league and their general secretary, David Taylor, speaking exclusively to Observer Sport, said: “Ridiculous. 62? You could have two full-size practice games. You can only field 11 at one time. It’s an open question as to how many you actually need. Is it 20, 25?”
Observer, 29th March 2009, http://tinyurl.com/d7epns

A dose of realism to cheer you up for the weekend

Arsenal, for all their travails – they’ve been fucked by United and Chelsea, probably the two strongest teams in the world – will still finish around ten points above us. That’s some gap to make up, and we are not going to do it unless we sign fellas who are the finished article – who walk into the first team and significantly ramp up the average level of ability there already. And those sort of chaps tend to cost proper money.

Good stuff as always from WSAG. Anyway it could be worse.

Afternoon TV

Watching Deal or No Deal at the mo. Have you got a system? Yes, I’m a big Liverpool fan Noel – so I’ll be opening the boxes in the order of the Istanbul penalty takers. First up, number 9, Djibril Cisse. £100k. Oh dear. Second number 16, Did Hamann. £50k. Ah, I didn’t know this show could be so entertaining.

Pancakes

Jen’s just phoned me to get me to pick up some milk and chocolate for pancakes on the way home. Aren’t you meant to use up food you already have before giving it up for lent? Jesus would turn in his grave – if he hadn’t resurrected himself of course.

It’s about emotion, respect, loyalty – and real love

Arsenal accounts reveal it took £10m (£5m wages, plus a private £5m one-off fee) to keep Thierry Henry for one more season. “I stayed for love,” said Thierry in 2006, before the accounts were made public. “I simply could not face leaving the fans. I’ve never played in Spain and now I never will. This is where my heart is. And my decision to stay or leave was never going to be based on economic considerations. People want to give you a label as a footballer where it’s all about money, money, money – they should stop talking about that. It’s not. It’s about emotion, respect, loyalty – and real love.”

via Football: Said and Done | Football | The Observer.

So… which details CAN I change?

Dear Glen Wells,

Your Dell Order is scheduled to arrive between 08:00 and 18:00 on the 12/01/2009. Please arrange for someone to be there
throughout this time – as we cannot be more specific about the time of delivery.

As your order is already on its way we regret it’s too late to change the following details:

1. delivery date
2. delivery address
3. order details

Sack the headline writer

The first sentence of the article: Everton’s progress to the fourth round of the FA Cup – after round-three KO’s in the past two seasons – was accomplished with relative ease. The headline: Everton squeeze past Macclesfield thanks to James Osman strike.

The man at the match says it was easy; the headline writer decides it was a squeeze. And who is James Osman?

Micro, more or less.

“Microsite” is a word that kinda bugs me. The “micro” means that its content is about a subset of the parent company’s overall product range. There’s the Ford site, with a bit of info about all the cars, and the Fiesta microsite, with stuff just about one car. The Fiesta has its own brand, image and target audience that differs from the Mondeo or the Focus, so they give it its own microsite. But it still has a homepage, content pages, and all the other stuff, and it’s much more sparkly and exciting in its own right than the boring dull old parent site. It’s “micro” in name only.

More recently, it’s become one of those must-have things for keen web-trend followers. We’re doing this event or that campaign so it needs a microsite. Unfortunately, there is a common misconception amongst some that have approached us on the subject, that because what they are going to write on the site is going to be about fewer things, we should charge fewer pounds to build the site for them. It’s a bit like saying the Racing Post should be cheaper than the Daily Mirror because it’s only about horses.

The fact is, just like printing a paper is printing a paper regardless of the words, it still needs the same effort in graphics work, CSS, flash, design and implementation. In fact, sometimes it needs more effort because it’s allowed to stray from brand guidelines or be more creative or adventurous. It may only have 10 pages on it when it goes live but with the CMS the customer adds those themselves anyway, so that makes no difference. It’s a bit of a customer-service conundrum: some marketing geezer decided to make up a word, people expect the price to be lower, and we get grumpy customers unhappy with the numbers on their quotes.