23:21:56 UTC - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 in
Politics I FUCKING LOVE POLITICS.
Wall-to-wall coverage of the budget today. Public sector pay cuts (yay!), dole cuts for 20-24 yr olds (aw), minor cut in child benefit (meh), carbon tax (yay!), not bad news overall. Course, this hasn’t stopped uneducated morons on Twitter saying “WAAHHH THIS AFFECTS THE WORST OFF PEOPLE IN SOCIETY”.
It gets worse, of course:
“BRING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT, LET BLOOD RUN IN THE STREETS!!!!!”
“WE NEED A GENERAL STRIKE, NOT JUST PUBLIC SECTOR!!!!!!!!!”
“I’M LEAVING THE COUNTRY TO LIVE SOMEWHERE BETTER!!!!!!!”
I’ve read an actual conversation between two people saying “No need to wait for unions, just call in tomorrow and say you’re striking!” – “That seems like a reasonable idea”. Yeah, do that tomorrow and you’ll be lucky to have a job come Friday.
Seriously, what did they expect? Raises in social welfare, the same level of spending in the public sector? Good budget I thought. The people complaining would’ve complained no matter what.
Anyway, from the unedited feed:
You can see the hand on the left just passing copies of it along – “Pass it to the end…No I didn’t say keep that one for you, I said pass it on…No, it’s not for you…Don’t make me come over there!”
From the Drivetime webcam, which should be done much more often – om nom nom nom nom!
Finally, that’s Bertie in the top-left corner – talk about being a back bencher!
December 9th, 2009 in
Politics
00:34:35 UTC - Sunday, October 18, 2009 in
Politics Just completed a Pew (pew pew pew!) Research poll (linked to from my new love, Reddit) about (American) political news IQ.
As I fucking love statistics, the results were pretty interesting.
All pretty standard really – smartest (or people who watch/follow political news most) people are college graduates, you score better as you get older, etc.
Don’t look at this next one if you intend to do the poll!
The general percentage correct was fairly standard too (58% not knowing Iran and Israel don’t share a border wasn’t surprising when 88% can’t find Afghanistan on a map of Asia), though people not knowing what “Cap & trade” is is a bit odd. The Fed Chair question was tricky-ish (options included Henry Paulson and Alan Greenspan), as was the Sentate Finance Chair (Dianne Feinstein, Kathleen Sebelius)
Perhaps it’s because I’m liberal communist, but Republicans being more aware than Democrats did surprise me.
What did I get in this whole thing?
Yeah…
Though in fairness, I’d probably score the same on an Irish one – if Enda’s serious about abolishing the Seanad, that’s good enough for me to give FG #3 in the next election (Gooooooooooooooooo Labour! Goooooooooooo Greens!).
October 18th, 2009 in
Politics
10:04:35 UTC - Thursday, August 27, 2009 in
Humour,
Politics Ah yes, there’s nothing more fun than a huge big group of stupid people presenting their views in an easy to read format, such as in the comments of Sarah Palin’s Facebook note on Ted Kennedy’s death.
Sarah’s note itself is fine, if a bit AMERICA FUCK YEAH, but then again, everything she says is.
The comments are brilliant though:
Yup, cos as we know, Pelosi and “Ried” are secret FSB agents that are trying to bring down the US government and install communist overlords (though Russia isn’t really communist anymore).
This guy is a bit confused – “You’re the devil!!! But sorry you died.”
Unfortunately, at this point I was no longer sure if people were being serious or just having the laugh.
This was fairly indicative of the level of knowledge in the comments though, of the ~1000 comments I expanded:
Concerning this incident, where at most Kennedy was involved in the manslaughter (by drunk driving) of a woman. Murder? Ah, no.
August 27th, 2009 in
Humour,
Politics
12:45:57 UTC - Sunday, June 7, 2009 in
Politics Now that I’ve explained proportional representation, I can show how exciting the local (County Council) election in my own constituency is:
The quota’s 1,553, so after the first count, nobody’s elected. IND3 and FF3 will be eliminated on the first and second counts, but then it gets much more interesting!
FG2 will probably be elected, but just 150 votes separate the other six possible candidates (between FF1 and LAB), so then you get lots of lovely political drama – where will the second preferences from FF3 go when he’s eliminated? Will it be enough to pull FF1 out of last place?
So you can see from the final results (though the counts weren’t updated), FF3′s transfers must’ve pushed up FF1 ahead of FG1 and IND1. Fascinating stuff.
June 7th, 2009 in
Politics
12:22:00 UTC - Sunday, June 7, 2009 in
Politics (This even confuses me, so this is the third revision of it)
I’ve already explained the US election, so today it’s the turn of the Irish system, you may know it as proportional representation.
When you vote in Ireland, you place candidates in order of preference – you can rank everyone on the ballot if you so wish – you don’t just vote for one person.
Once everyone’s finished voting (technically, at 9am the following day), the number of ballot papers are counted (this may be done simultaneously with the “first count”, I’m not sure), at which point you get your turnout (number of people who voted as a proportion of all of those eligible to vote). This number, divided by the number of seats to be filled plus one, plus one, is your quota. In order for someone to be elected, the number of votes they get has to exceed this number.
While the ballots are being counted, you have unofficial counters (tallies) making notes of how many votes people get (just by watching the people counting the votes). These are a pretty good early indication of how the first count will go, at least.
So, once you’ve got your quota, you can count the votes. On the first count (so titled as there may be multiple ones), the number of first preference votes (number of times people stuck “1″ beside someone’s name) is established for each candidate, and these results are announced.
At this point, unless someone exceeds quota and only one seat is at stake (which is only the case in a bye-election, and election to replace a single TD, I think), another count is called and someone is eliminated – if someone exceeded quota they’re eliminated, else it’s the person in last place. Technically you can eliminate more than one person per count, but generally it doesn’t happen.
The ballot papers that had the eliminated candidate as first preference are then recounted. If the eliminated candidate passed quota, all of their second preference votes are counted, a percentage established for each candidate (eg candidate B got 40% of candidate A’s second preferences, candidate C got 60% etc), and that candidate’s surplus (the votes they got over the quota) are redistributed based on that percentage. If a candidate is eliminated in last place, all of their votes are reassigned. When all the eliminated candidate’s votes have been reassigned, the numbers are looked at again to see if anyone passed quota.
The process then repeats itself until either all the seats in the constituency are filled (by everyone reaching quota – I think this is a rare occurrence) or enough people are removed from the count to leave only as many people as there are seats.
I’m not entirely sure what happens if two people exceed quota on the same count, but there’s only one seat available – I assume the candidate with the greatest number of votes gets elected.
Example:
Alice, Bob, Carol and Damo are running in the election, there are two seats available.
The poll is 21, so the quota is 8 ((21/2+1)+1) votes.
First count, Alice 7, Bob 6, Carol 5, Damo 3.
Nobody reaches quota, so Damo gets eliminated. Damo’s votes are recounted and the three people who voted for Damo as their first preference voted for Alice as second preference. Alice gets an extra three votes.
Second count, Alice 10, Bob 6, Carol 5.
Bob and Carol’s votes remain the same, but Alice gets three from Damo.
Alice has reached quota and gets elected. Her votes are recounted.
The three votes originally for Damo, with Alice as second preference, have Carol as third preference.
Two of the remaining seven first-preference votes for Alice have Carol as second preference.
The remaining five have Bob as second preference.
Alice’s surplus over quota is therefore redistributed between Alice and Carol (50% – 1 vote – each).
Third count, Bob 7, Carol 6.
Carol is eliminated, so Bob is elected on the third count.
Both seats are now filled.
It may take longer than electronic counting, but it’s far more entertaining.
June 7th, 2009 in
Politics
