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Four heads that defined the world

Martin Turner — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:21:35 +0000

Sokrates, Antisthenes, Chrysippos, Epikouros, four philosophers who defined the world

In the British Museum, London, the curators have placed four remarkable sculptured heads together. They are not remarkable as sculptures — they are all Roman copies of lost Greek originals. They remarkable by juxtaposition — the four great schools of Greek philosophy represented either by their founders or principal exponents. Sokrates, 469-399 BC, of course, needs no introduction. Antisthenes, 450-370, his pupil, was the founder of the Cynic school. Chrysippos, 281-208, was one of the principal exponents of the Stoic school, founded around 280 BC by Zeno. Epikouros, 342-271, founded the Epicurean school.

Sokrates: the pursuit of knowledge at personal expense
Antisthenes, Cynicism: virtue through the rejection of conventional desires
Chrysippos, Stoicism: moral and intellectual perfection by rising above emotions
Epikouros, Epicurianism: the greatest good through seeking modest pleasures and the absence of pain

The British museum has many treasures, but this is an adventure in curating which is to me one of the most thrilling. Rather than considering the philosophers themselves, which, seriously, you can better do through their writings or even Wikipedia, consider the artistic journey by which these heads reached us. First, at some point either during their lives or soon enough afterwards for people to still remember them, four different sculptors created the heads. Based on what we know about Greek sculpting, they created them because they had been commissioned to. Then, two centuries or more later, some four other wealthy persons commissioned four other sculptors to make copies of the heads. These heads survived the depredations that ended the Roman empire in the west, which almost certainly meant that they passed through the hands of preservers or collectors, until they were each, finally, separately, collected in the 19th century and donated to the British Museum collection, about a hundred years after its founding. Finally, a curator chose to exhibit them together.

Looking at the sculptures themselves, the wealth of Greek culture is at once revealed. If you wander a few rooms to the North, South, East or West, you can review the colossal, majestic but inhuman statues of the Egyptians, the flattened reliefs of the Babylonians, repeating the same figures again and again as they emphasise the greatness of the kings who defeated them, the grotesque, stylised representations of the Incas, and the noble, but largely lifeless representations of medieval Europe before the Renaissance. These, by contrast, are filled with life and character, even down to hair and cloth which seem to flow, though they are stone. Like the Socrates of Plato’s writing, they appear to be at the point of moving and speaking. With the possible exception of Epikouros, these are not ennobled heads.

Blurred by time, and second generation copies as they are, these are sculptures that speak. If you will let them.

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After every election, the public sector is reorganised. It never seems to save any money.

Martin Turner — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:19:45 +0000

BBC News – Radical police shake-up outlined.

After every election, vast swathes of the public sector are reorganised. And yet, within four years, the opposition — whoever they are — is able to point to a litany of inefficiency, bureaucracy gone mad, pointless red tape and wasteful duplication. Today, the police are being told they will be reorganised. A couple of weeks ago it was the health service. Other public sector bodies should expect the same.

We recognise that there have to be cuts. We are carrying a public sector sized for the economy in the hey-day of Tony Blair. We clearly cannot afford to carry on doing everything that we were doing, or, at least, not to the same extent. Lest we forget, it was not the public sector that got us into the economic trouble we found ourselves in. If Blair et al had had the Vince Cable-like foresight to take steps to avoid the crisis, they could have done it by dealing with our under-regulated financial sector, not by cutting public services.

But we are where we are, and we can’t simply go back. Cuts of some kind are inevitable.

But reorganisation? I’m not so sure.

Politicians, I feel, like reorganisation for two reasons. First, it gives them a feeling of being in charge — they can make their mark on history, leaving a legacy that will endure long after they are gone. Second, it makes them feel like they are running the nation like a business. Businesses reorganise, so should government. And, since businesses are driven by a profit motive, it is self-evident that reorganisation will deliver savings to the public purse, which can either go into more public services, lower taxes, or paying off debt.

Except, except.

First, since every government reorganises, even when the party in power stays the same, no reorganisation is permanent, and therefore no one gets to leave a mark in the history books. Or, if they do leave a mark, it is in pencil, to be rubbed out by the next owner of the book and replaced with their own mark. Nothing is more transitory than public sector reorganisation.

Second, businesses rarely reorganise successfully to reduce costs. Business reorganisations are as fraught with spiralling costs and new inefficiencies as public sector ones, although the losers are conveniently forgotten about. This is to some extent inevitable: public sector organisations tend to continue whether they are successful or not, and the ones which are axed are often not the ones which were inefficient. Private sector organisations that are unprofitable go under and vanish from our memory.

Business reorganisation, when it works, is done to meet new challenges and opportunities in the market place, which, under the now (in)famous BCG matrix, helps them develop the new rising stars which become cash-cows. A proportion of reorganisations can fail, as long as the business keeps its cash cows going, and creates its next generation from somewhere. The reorganisation itself is a costly process which creates duplication. But it is often out of this duplication and time of tension that new, creative, solutions to old problems emerge.

In the public sector this dynamic is not at work. First, there is no market place. The NHS cannot suddenly come up with an idea to beat crime, and move into police work. The Fire Service cannot muscle in on Education’s territory. Public services exist because we need them to exist, not because it is profitable that they exist. If the police spend their time trying to replace the fire service, then they are not catching criminals. Second, there is no profit. Any public sector organisation which underspends its budget faces having that budget subsequently reduced. It can reinvest its money in better services, but it cannot use that reinvestment to give bonuses to its staff — encouraging more efficient working — nor to develop new products for its future diversification.

Perhaps there is a case for a matrix working, self-diversifying set of public sector organisations without portfolio. A sort of generalised charity or trust, which moves to find holes in the public sector market place and fill them. Perhaps not — it would be another reorganisation.

We now face a very real possibility of the entire savings from the cuts being ploughed back into the costs of reorganisation, or, worse, real cuts which are not 25% but 50% in order to pay for the reorganisations. But our problem was not that the public sector was incorrectly organised, but because it was more than we could currently afford.

If we must cut, let us cut. But no more of this rearrangement of the pieces into another, no-more-efficient, and no-more-permanent solution which will be in turn abolished by the subsequent administration.

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Toxic dumping banged to rights

Martin Turner — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:38:06 +0000

The case alleging that British/Dutch/Swiss firm Trafigura dumped its toxic waste in Ivory Coast, overloading capital Abidjan’s health system and injuring thousands of people, reads like something from a John Le Carré novel. Yesterday, a Dutch court found the multinational guilty of illegally exporting toxic waste from Amsterdam and concealing the nature of the cargo. Trafigura continues to deny wrongdoing and claims that the ruling is “incorrect”.

The fine amounts to €1 million, substantially more than it would have cost to have the waste dealt with correctly at the time, and it’s the first time Trafigura has faced criminal charges since the scandal struck in 2006.

This judgement is a genuine blow for justice. But it begs the question: how much more of this is going on?

Over the last thirty years we have seen (quite rightly) the growth of the FairTrade movement, aimed at giving growers and producers a price which reflects the value of their goods, rather than their weak negotiating position. But there is no FairTrade on waste. As EU laws (again, rightly) tighten up on disposal of waste on this continent, there are surely many more companies than Trafigura who eye the rubbish dumps of Africa or even Latin America as convenient places to leave their pollution, far from Western courts or the eyes of Western journalists.

Indeed, it was down to Greenpeace to bring the case, although Trafigura has paid out £104 million to the government of Ivory Coast and £32 million to individuals.

What is especially alarming in all of this is that an Ivory Coast court found two non-Trafigura employees guilty in 2008, sentencing one to 20 years in jail and the other to five years. I am not questioning their guilt — but two non-European nationals have borne the personal criminal liability with jail sentences for a crime for which they were by no means the main beneficiaries.

Here in the West, we bemoan the fact that while we put minor drug-traffickers away, we allow the big bosses to get off scot-free. The fact that no Trafigura employees are facing personal criminal convictions shows that, from the point of view of Africa, Western multi-nationals can behave exactly like those drug-traffickers.

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The strange world of Amazon reviews

Martin Turner — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:58:28 +0000

Last night my Amazon reviewer ranking jumped from 9th to 6th. I’ve been in the top ten for a while now, since they changed how the rankings are calculated. But other people are obviously better at making their ranking stick, because I’d declined from 3rd to 9th, and was hovering between 9th and 10th. Of course, I posted a few reviews recently, but it seems the real reason is that a highly ranked reviewer has been summarily deleted by Amazon.

Chunky Wilberforce, who until last night was #2 reviewer, is no longer on the rankings. Many reviewers have found that they’ve shed a significant number of negative votes against them. This was accompanied by various odd effects on the Amazon site – more likely evidence that they were having a spring-clean rather than Macbeth-style signs and portents.

Amazon reviews are user-contributed views on any of the wide range of products that Amazon.co.uk offers (the American and other sites have a similar system, but the reviews themselves have to be posted on the relevant site — they aren’t just shipped across). They range from the virtually useless one-liners, such as “This is a great product” or “Arrived 4 days late. Rubbish” to short essays which are as good as anything you’d find in a commercial magazine. Anyone who is registered and logged into Amazon can review, and, if you’ve made at least one purchase, you can vote on other people’s reviews, either negative or positive. You can also leave comments, but more on that anon.

This highly democratic citizen-reviewer system, though, has long been open to abuse by ‘shilling’, where a company, trader, or even the author and their family, register multiple accounts in order to vote up the reviews that favour their products, and vote down the negatives, and to leave their own 5-star reviews to bump up the averages. Shillers tend to be quite unsophisticated: their reviews are generally short, and the language and content is little altered from one review to the next. Every so often Amazon detects these, and reviews silently vanish.

The other day I found what appears to be ‘black-hat’ shilling, where a number of reviewers all with (suspiciously) no other reviews on Amazon, or at the most one or two, decided to give a particular product one star. All the reviews are short, and the content is fairly identical. Amazon has been informed, and we may see some movement.

But manipulation of the voting to promote a particular reviewer (and, of course, this has not been announced by Amazon as what has happened) is rather harder to detect and deal with. A few months ago Amazon USA introduced a new ranking system designed to combat this, and Amazon UK followed suit afterwards. If you’re interested, this was the point at which I jumped from Reviewer #96 to #3. Amazon doesn’t disclose exactly how the rankings are calculated — this would encourage the shillers — but it’s understood that any more than 10 votes on your account by the same person mean that none of the votes from that person are counted. So too bad if your mum hangs on your every word and always votes for you. Some people shed hundreds of negative votes, while others were dumped down the rankings in some cases by 10,000s of levels.

Evidently, though, Amazon still believe that manipulation is taking place, and are taking action. Or maybe it’s just a computer glitch.

The other thing is comments. It’s always nice to have someone write a few words telling you how they enjoyed the review. But not all commentators are benign. I learned a long time ago that there is absolutely no point reviewing books on controversial topics or where there is a cult following. Books by Richard Dawkins garner only 1-star and 5-star reviews, and the comments on the reviews are generally diatribes against the reviewer.

I was a bit surprised, though, to get a string of increasingly abusive comments after reviewing the Nikon 35mm f2 AF-D lens. I mentioned that this is a relatively unusual lens, as the normal lens is 50mm, and the standard ‘wide’ lens is 28mm or even 24mm. Stay with me on this one. I didn’t say that the lens was ‘rare’, ‘unobtainable’ or anything more than that. But there were howls of protest from people insisting this was the commonest lens after the 110mm, that it was an absolute standard for street photography, and that my comments about the disappointing aperture (no f1.4) were completely out of court. The truth is, very few cameras these days are sold with non-zoom lenses at all, and if you’ve ever tried to buy one of these, then you’ll know they are actually quite hard to get hold of. Quite hard. Not very hard, nor ridiculously hard, nor unobtainable hard. Just quite hard.

For some reason, qualifications like ‘quite’ and ‘relatively’ bring out the worst in these kind of commentators, who immediately — in their comments — represent the review as taking up an extremist position.

Eventually, after the latest comment, I just deleted the review. It had gathered 46 positive votes out of 56, and I think that pretty much everyone who had voted negatively had left a comment. But the abusive language was getting a bit much.

Others have fared worse — a couple of my colleagues in Amazon Vine, a specialist review programme, have been cyber-stalked after they angered a commentator, discovering that one by one all of their reviews were attacked by the person. In one case, the stalker went as far as to contact the reviewer off Amazon. Potentially nasty stuff.

Amazon does not announce judgements from its own internal review process, so we may never know what has happened to ‘Chunky’. But, for them at the very least, it appears they recognise the dangers of manipulated voting getting out of hand.

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“Stupid” goes to ethics committee

Martin Turner — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:07:04 +0000

Lib Dem Cardiff Councillor John Dixon must have been surprised to be called to book over declaring that Scientology was “stupid”. The fact that he did it on Twitter was probably enough to raise this to a national news story. But it is disturbing that a councillor can face censure for a remark like this.

What Dixon actually tweeted was: “I didn’t know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.”

Harmless, one would think, albeit not especially amusing. But this kind of thing is really very mild compared to the polemic which has done Richard Dawkins very nicely in his books, and far less hurtful than the daily knockabout on the subject of religion that takes place on countless websites across the net.

Lest we forget, Scientology is not an officially recognised religion in the UK. But even if it were, most faith groups take a certain amount of ribald criticism within their stride. Dixon was not putting up satirical cartoons of the Prophet, nor was he running an ad campaign mocking the crucifixion. Sacred symbols were not being abused, sacred texts were not being criticised: no deities, real or imagined, were hurt during the making of his tweet.

If he is indeed censured for this (though, if they have any sense, the ethics committee will recognise this as a legitimate comment and let it go, before they themselves become a laughing stock) then we have gone far too far down a path of political correctness over freedom of speech. Was John Dixon inciting religious hatred? Hardly, since Scientology is not officially a recognised religion under UK law. But even if it were, would he be inciting it? I doubt that the term would constitute incitement.

During the General Election, the leader of Stratford on Avon’s ruling Conservative group labelled me and my views ‘stupid’ four times in less than thirty seconds, live on BBC Radio. I thought it was a bit rude. But why, as a recognised British citizen, should I enjoy less protection than an imported American organisation which is not even recognised for what it claims to be?

In a world where our every off-hand comment is now tabulated and Googled, we need to come to a new understanding of what is acceptable and what is not. There has to be an understanding that there is a hierarchy of off-handedness. A statement published in a book for which money is paid is of a different level from a remark in live interview broadcast on local radio, and this is again different from a brief Tweet or a FaceBook one-liner.

Dixon would not have faced this kind of censure if he had written an opinion piece in a published newspaper attacking Scientology.

He should not face it for a Tweet.

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Fire: Bidford saved, Studley lost

Martin Turner — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:06:45 +0000

Bidford Young Firefighters, Martin Turner, Cllrs Peter Barnes and Daren Pemberton during the campaign.

After months of delay — with no explanation — the county council finally voted on the future of the fire service across Warwickshire. An independent report commissioned by the council on their consultation highlighted many of the concerns I’ve previously expressed on this site: much of the consultation document was incomprehensible, the choice of a tabulated questionnaire prevented people from expressing their views, and the way the consultation was handled did more to promote opposition than to create consensus. The report also pointed out that, whatever mitigating factors might be asserted, the vast majority of people opposed the cuts.

In the event, Conservative portfolio holder Richard Hobbs recommended what he termed ‘Option B’ – closure of Studley but a reprieve for Bidford. We had suspected all along that the original proposal was put forward in order to make the real proposal seem more palatable.

Although everyone in the Bidford campaign must be pleased with the assurance of a future for our fire station, Studley residents will be bitterly disappointed. Questions raised in the consultation were never answered, and it is hard to see to what extent the Conservative cabinet changed its view in response to constructive proposals by the campaigners.

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A surprise victory

Martin Turner — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:53:48 +0000

Daniel Elliker (left) and Martin Turner prior to the final of the Warwickshire Fencing Competition

Having not fenced between August 2009 and May 2010, I took a flyer on the Warwickshire County Championships, 26 June, after just two training sessions. I’d expected to be soundly thrashed in one of the early rounds, and wasn’t surprised to lose in the pool round 0:5 to Daniel Elliker of Birmingham Fencing Club. I still managed to be seeded fourth, pitting me against Richard Morris, first seed, in the semi-finals, after relatively straightforward fights in the last sixteen and the last eight. Reigning West Midlands champion, Morris has had a good year on the national competition circuit, making the last eight at the Slough Open.

Morris went almost immediately 4:1 up, exploiting a powerful fleche attack. I was fairly weary from the pool and the first two rounds — the eight fights within an hour were as much as I had done in the previous nine months. The most I could do was hold him off and attempt either to twist out of the way or to parry and riposte. By the end of the first time period, I had managed to work it up to 5:6 behind. After the one minute break, I realised that the psychological pressure was beginning to tell. Making my only attack of the fight, I was fortunate enough to step-balestra-lung, going straight past his parry to score a hit on the shoulder. This was perhaps not quite what he bargained for, and pushed him to attack repeatedly. Unfortunately for him, I had picked up the rhythm of his attack, and was able to draw him to attack with increasing speed, but decreasing effectiveness, until I was 11:7 up at the end of the second time period. In the final period he held back his attack, but, with time against him, was forced back into attacking mode, and eventually lost 15:8.

In the other semi-final, Matt Powell made an impressive come-back after being 7:11 down in a fight more characterised by the guts and determination of the fencers than by the technical superiority of one over the other. He reached 11:11 all to get back into contention, but Daniel Elliker managed to get a glancing hit which unnerved Powell, and pushed strongly to eventually win 15:12.

In the final, Daniel Elliker pushed quickly through, delivering attack after attack as I did little more than watch him. He reached 11:7 by the end of the second time period without any particular difficulty. But when he took off his mask, I saw the energy drain from his face — the exertions of the previous fight were catching up with him. Recognising that if I carried on defending as I had done in the previous fight I would be certain to lose, I took the fight to him. Regrettably my technique was nowhere near what it was a year before, and I was reduced to little better than walking up to him quickly and jabbing in a hit.

I pulled back to 13:14 behind, and I could see his reactions slowing. With about a minute left, I managed to get in a double-step-lunge. Daniel is very lithe and quick, and has long practised twisting away from the hit or doubling up to avoid the point. His counter-attack almost did for me as he pulled himself away to avoid my point, but I managed to get perhaps centimetre more than I was getting in the pool round when he beat me 5:0, and, with both lights coming on simultaneously, was awarded the point to go 14:14. Having not expected to get anywhere near this stage of the competition, I was now mortally tired, bone-weary and aching. With more or less my last strength, I fleched down his left side, landing on the piste and hitting him almost simultaneously and at the last allowable moment. There was just one light, and, for the first time, I was Warwickshire Champion.

It was almost ten minutes before I had the strength to get up again after saluting and shaking hands. Daniel had to go on to get medical attention, as he was in an extreme state of exhaustion.

What happens next?

Martin Turner — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:14:07 +0000

Martin Turner, Nick Lane and supporters launch the General Election campaign in Stratford on Avon

The election is done, the coalition — for better or for worse — is bedding in. Nobody got exactly what they wanted, but what they are getting is a lot better than it might otherwise have been. The economy is in growth, the markets are beginning to stabilise.

Many people have been asking me about my future as a candidate, so let me explain exactly what the process is within the Liberal Democrats. I remain the candidate for Stratford on Avon until the end of December. On the first of January 2011, all Lib Dem parliamentary candidates cease to be candidates. There will then be a period of about two years in which key seats advertise for candidates, and select on the basis of applicants. Seats which are held by sitting MPs don’t go through this process, but all other seats, no matter how established the candidate, do this. All local members are entitled to vote, and, in most cases, a two week selection campaign is concluded with a hustings.

In the mean time, we are continuing to enjoy living here in Marlcliff, and I continue to be involved in district affairs, such as the Fire Service, noise abatement, and the local Lib Dems.

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In the nation’s interests

Martin Turner — Wed, 12 May 2010 07:41:37 +0000

I have received howls of protest over the last few days from Lib Dem members, people who voted Lib Dem but usually vote Labour, and people who have never voted Lib Dem and never intend to. Some have demanded that Nick Clegg immediately fall into line behind Cameron and stop negotiating for ‘party advantage’. Some have insisted that for Clegg to co-ally would be a betrayal of all that is most sacred. Some have told me that talking to Labour was equivalent to state treachery, and Clegg can never be trusted again. By email, phone, Facebook, txt, tweet and even visits to my door, and, bizarrest of all, an email sent from Australia by someone I had never heard of directed to all Lib Dem candidates who contested the election, it’s been made clear to me that whatever Nick Clegg did, not everyone would be happy.

I have to confess I’ve struggled to get quite as emotionally caught up in this as some people. Those of us who stand for parliament do so with an underlying notion of public service. Of course we want our party to win. And there is always personal ambition: we want to be in there, making the decisions, with our fingers on the turning of the world. But nobody would go through the five weeks of gruelling punishment, preceded by four years of selection and campaigning, preceded in turn by how ever many years of becoming involved and going through a candidate approval process, unless there was more than simply the desire for our team to win.

Nick Clegg was always honour-bound to make his decision in the nation’s best interests. Anything less would have simply ruled him unfit to be a party leader.

The only question was: what decision would be in the nation’s best interests?

I will put my cards on the table: after last year’s expenses debacle, and this year’s scandal over the Ashcroft million, electoral reform seems to me to be one of the nation’s most important and pressing concerns. The result of the General Election — no clear majority in parliament, nothing like a majority in the popular vote (Tories polled only 12% more than Lib Dems, lest we forget, but gained more than five times as many seats) — demonstrates very clearly that the public are not satisfied.

But, although pressing, electoral reform is not the most pressing concern. I do not accept the view of the scaremongerers that Britain is about to go the way of Greece. David Cameron has already had to eat his words that a hung parliament would spell economic disaster. But it is true that the economy is right at the top of the list of things that need to be fixed now, and fixed right.

A coalition with Labour was always a long-shot, and Clegg was right to honour his election pledge and talk first to the party with the most votes. But he was also right to at least attempt a deal with Labour. This was not treachery, as some of the Tory press and some of my own correspondents have suggested, but a necessary and entirely honourable step: Clegg was duty bound to explore both feasible possibilities as he decided for the United Kingdom who should be the next prime minister.

For the record, I think it would have been possible to do it. (I do not say that it would have necessarily been the best thing, but I do say that it would have been possible). Those who argued that this was undemocratic forget the very shaky ground on which they stand: Labour and the Lib Dems between them gained more than 50% of the popular vote, although, because of our misrepresentative system, this was not quite 50% of the seats in parliament. Labour certainly seemed ready to promise a much swifter, much surer route to electoral reform. And Gordon Brown nobly was willing to accept Nick Clegg’s other election promise — that, whatever happened, Brown would not continue as Prime Minister.

But it was Labour MPs themselves who made it quite clear that they had no real interest in staying in government. From the point that (then, still) government ministers went on the record in public stating this, the chances of a deal with Labour were over.

Many Lib Dem voters find the coalition with the Conservatives distasteful. I personally remained on good terms with all the candidates in the Stratford election, except for the BNP who never attended any of the debates and with whom I never spoke. But there have been instances where Tory attacks were brutal and unfounded. And we have endured the jeers and scorn of the Tory press barons for more than a generation.

It is certainly true that very few will have voted Lib Dem with the aim of putting David Cameron in government.

But Nick Clegg still had to put the nation’s interest ahead of his own. The choice between a Conservative minority government which would be almost certain to fall in recriminations within six months, in which time it would have made little real progress in tackling the economic crisis, and none at all in electoral reform, or a true Lib Dem Con coalition, was one that simply could not be made in any other way from the way it has been made.

The solution is not perfect. David Cameron could have divested himself of the lacklustre George Osborne. If having Vince Cable as chancellor was too much to swallow (though it would have pleased the nation, and the markets), Ken Clarke was waiting in the wings, the only member of Cameron’s team who had ever served in a senior role in a government. There could have been (and should have) a commitment to a referendum on true electoral reform, not merely the disproportional Alternative Vote (AV) system. If the Conservatives believe that the public has no appetite for electoral reform, then they should have agreed to a referendum on the real issue. If they were willing to accept a grudging compromise and no more, they should have offered a simple bill on AV as Labour did, and left it at that. The nation is to be put to the trouble and expense of a referendum without being allowed to vote on the real topic of discussion.

Nonetheless, the prospect of an autumn election has receded to the horizon. Cameron’s lightweight team will be strongly bolstered by 5 Lib Dem cabinet ministers, and a total of 20 Lib Dems across his ministries.

Lib Dem fortunes at the next election will almost certainly suffer, and there will equally certainly be a spate of recriminations and even member-resignations. And this is the true mark of Nick Clegg’s leadership: at personal cost, he has put the interests of the nation first.

End is begin

Martin Turner — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:06:07 +0000

Apologies if you are looking for the earlier version of this article — there was a server glitch and we had to roll back to an earlier version.

In Stratford on Avon the Lib Dem vote rose by 1.7% — higher than the national rise of 1%. Two weeks ago, our poll figures were putting us in contention to win this seat, but the change in the national mood — largely fuelled by the ‘only Cameron can get Brown out’ message pedalled by national newspapers, and now shown to be vacuous — meant that we got none of the 16% boost that we were looking at.

My congratulations to Nadhim Zahawi, who fought a good campaign.

To the 29% of the electorate here who voted for me: Thank you. We have not won this time, but that does not mean we will not win next time. Thank you for the confidence you placed in me. As I promised in my campaign literature, I will continue to live here and work here, and continue to press for all the issues which were so important during the campaign.

We may well see another General Election in the next six months… so don’t settle back down to ‘business as usual’.

For now, we wait the outcome of the discussions between leaders. All must surely recognised that for the Lib Dems nationally to gain 1% and yet lose 5 seats, and to get almost 1/4 of the votes and substantially less than 10% of the seats, demonstrates clearly that our election system is now desperately in need of reform.

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