Comments for Paul Johnston

Comment on Captaining England by Martin De Kauwe

Martin De Kauwe — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:30:07 +0000

I prefer institutionalised – I get weird reactions in my mind when people walk down the “wrong” side of the corridor. That cannot be healthy!

I’ll save my dissection of Boris for one of your blog entries ;p

Comment on Captaining England by pauljohnston

pauljohnston — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:07:31 +0000

The famous quote could also have contained ‘Bilge, eyewash and twaddle’! It’s good to have one’s teaching remembered with such accuracy!
Ken had to go and, for all his faults, Boris is an improvement. Less of a dictator, for instance, and less of a spendthrift. But I’m not that keen on any of the institutions Blair has saddled us with, and you know me too well to think that’s a party political dislike. It isn’t; his constitutional tinkering has done irreparable damage to this country and it was undertaken with no thought beyond immediate political advantage. It’s the historian and constitutionalist in me that’s affronted.

I stopped teaching at LOS eight years ago. Others have gone too: John McIntosh, Penny Franks, Alex Ressort to name but a few! The old order changeth. I go back there from time to time and used to help out with interviews for the First Form intake while this atrocious government still allowed them. Entering the premises I morphed so quickly back into my old self that it scared me. You know, seeing boy with tie slightly akimbo or shirt outside trousers I told him to do his tie up and tuck his shirt in without pausing to think twice about it – a conditioned reflex!……..And he did it too!

Glad you’re still playing cricket – but look after your knees! I didn’t – which is why I now have a walking stick.

Comment on Captaining England by Martin De Kauwe

Martin De Kauwe — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:45:37 +0000

Indeed. There weren’t a great deal of obvious captains, Cook is perhaps too young. He did well to unite a team and perhaps you would say he was a lucky captain at times. Much as I like Collingwood I think he is now on the downward trend (I am still free if needed ;P).

The blog is brilliant by the way. So are you not teaching at the Oratory anymore? This is a sad day. I think you will always be synonymous with history for me.

Im good thanks. Strangely I think my life took a few odd turns. After my first degree, I did a masters in environmental modelling and then a PhD at UCL in remote sensing, trying to understand the earths surface from space in short. I am now working as a climate scientist out in oxfordshire. Apart from the low pay things are great and I still have lots of time to play cricket (I get worse with every passing year!).

I just wanted to extend a thanks for everything you did for me over the years. And wish you all the best.

Though Back Boris? In the words of a famous teacher I once knew “Piffle, poppycock and balderdash”.

Martin

Comment on Captaining England by pauljohnston

pauljohnston — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:52:54 +0000

Good to hear from you Martin and to read what you’ve been up to since last we met.
In your comment, are you talking about Collingwood or Cameron – or both? The England captaincy seems to have resolved itself in the person of Strauss, though I still think he has something to learn about aggressive field placing especially to spinners like Swann and swingers like Anderson (who should never bowl without at least one slip in any class of cricket!)
GB is still hanging on hoping against hope to stop a DC takeover. There are some questions too about DC’s team selection and field setting abilities. But, on the whole, I’m prepared to think him gutsy – even a little decorative – and, hopefully, willing to learn.
All the very best to you and yours.

Comment on Captaining England by Martin De Kauwe

Martin De Kauwe — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:53:27 +0000

Sadly…gutsy he may be, aesthetically pleasing he isn’t!

Comment on Euro-elections 2009 Part IV: Conservatives by pauljohnston

pauljohnston — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:20:37 +0000

Thanks for the comment. I haven’t read the leaflet in question but I have read your critique of it and find, from what you say yourself, that your criticisms are somewhat exaggerated. I do have some sympathy, however, with your criticisms of the Mail, though it’s support of Mosley was some 70 years ago. It makes me very sad to say that I have some sympathy with what you say about the Telegraph, which has been my paper of choice for 45 years.

Comment on Euro-elections 2009 Part IV: Conservatives by futiledemocracy

futiledemocracy — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:44:42 +0000

Our local Tory leaflet may have just read “lie, lie, exaggeration, lie, hypocrisy, lie lie”

Comment on The last refuge…………. by pauljohnston

pauljohnston — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:04:50 +0000

Thanks for a very thoughtful response.

I did quite a study on PR systems some years back. The first thing is that PR isn’t A system, it’s a term which can be applied to a variety of systems, each of which will produce different results. Mainly there are two ‘pure’ PR systems, Single Transferable Vote and the List system. STV is used in Ireland to elect the Dail and involves voters ranking candidates in order of preference in multi-member constituencies. It requires about 5 to make each constituency produce some form of proportionality. Counting is lengthy and it often takes several days before the outcome of a GE is known in its entirety. The Irish electorate is much smaller than the British one and constituencies would therefore be much larger – in the region of 350,000 voters plus.

You would get proportionality of representation but you wouldn’t kill the safe seat phenomenon as a politician of a leading party who held a high profile job in Government would be much better known than his colleagues on the same ballot paper and might well, thus, attract more first preferences as a result. Governments would always be coalitions, sometimes of more than two parties.

The List system we use for the Euro-elections is much favoured by Socialist parties on the continent, notably in Italy, France (3rd and 4th Republics) and Weimar Germany. Here you vote for a list of candidates and election depends largely on position on the list. Party control is enhanced, the safe seat phenomenon is entrenched as leaders can pretty well guarantee election regardless. It becomes more worth while to set up multiple little parties around charismatic personalities and it helped Mussolini to power in Italy and Hitler to power in Germany in consequence. Parliamentary business tends to revolve around making and unmaking coalitions rather than grappling with real problems facing people.

Germany under the Bonn constitution and Scotland and Wales under devolution and the GLA use a hybrid of first past the post and the list system, where voters vote twice. It means that some MPs have constituency responsibilities and others don’t. This militates against splinter parties
and the list system has been, let’s face it, beneficial to the Conservatives in Scotland and Wales, where they suffered seriously in the 1997 debacle.

It also produces coalitions, but mainly of two parties. The objection to this is that the smaller parties often get disproportional power. The German FDP was in office as a coalition partner of either the CDU-CSU or the SPD almost continuously for the first 40 years of the Bonn Republic while it won only one FPTP constituency once in all that time – or Grand Coalitions of the two biggest parties as at present, which freezes out the smaller ones altogether.

So Alan, there isn’t a single PR system. As with so much else, you pays your money – you takes your choice!