Don't Hurry Love

I grew up in Africa where the mail system is somewhat different to the UK.  If I wanted to post a letter from one town to another, I would have expected it to take a week or two.

No, that wasn't a typo: I did say a week or two, even if the distance involved was perhaps 20 miles.  That's how mail worked and what seemed normal to me.  It was therefore a revelation when I came to the UK and found that most mail should be delivered overnight.  And that you could be confident that it would arrive.

However, recently I had to send some important papers to South Africa and so I thought I had better use a courier, both for security and speed.  I will not say which courier, but the clue is in the title.

The pickup was ordered on Tuesday for Wednesday collection. 

The picture above is taken from the web site and shows that in two days the parcel has got as far as Heathrow Airport.  According to Google Maps, this is a journey of under 30 miles.  Google Maps also has a cute feature that estimates how long it would take to walk that distance.  Here's what they say

Yes, that's right: If the courier had walked it would take less than seven hours.

At this rate, I calculate the parcel will be delivered in a bit over a year. 

Consequently I feel a little aggrieved at being charged £45 for "courier delivery".

It takes me back to my childhood, where post was a "hit and miss" matter and I have to say I have noo feelings of nostalgia for this kind of service.

Don't Hurry, Love.

UPDATE

The bloggers code of ethics compels me to add the following update to this fast-moving story (and parcel).

As shown above, the parcel has now arrived in Cape Town.  This journey of about 6,000 miles, was apparently done in 3 hours, or approximately at an average speed of 2,000 mph.  That's 50% faster than Concorde.  I can only think that the courier company, in response to my original blog, purchased an SR-71 Blackbird to peform the delivery.

I am impressed!

Referendum Myths and Irrelevancies

I am annoyed at the pathetic levels to which both campaigns have stooped and - in something of a rush - I've picked out some of the worst arguments from both sides.  Anyone want to add to these?

FPTP is Fairer / AV is Fairer

An argument can be made for both systems on the basis of fairness.  FPTP does select the single most popular candidate.  AV does select the candidate that has the broadest appeal. 

What neither campaign is saying is that a lot of the time, AV and FPTP will select the same candidate:

•  When one candidate gets 50% + 1 vote on the first round
• When the leading candidate on the first round manages to get to 50% + 1 vote after votes have been redistributed in subsequent rounds.

I don’t know and I haven’t done the analysis, but I expect that most MPs elected at the last election under FPTP would have been elected under AV.

AV is complicated

Oh, it so is.  Especially if you struggled to get past junior school.  However, for anyone who manages something as simple as working out what to serve at a dinner party (“Stephen doesn’t like curry and Amy is lactose intolerant so let’s serve chicken and vegetables”) it’s a breeze.

Really.

The No Campaigners are Bullies

Life is hard.  Get over it.

AV is Expensive

First off, the No2AV campaign count the cost of the referendum itself: that's outright misleading.  Second, they make some big assumptions about the costs of AV.

AV probably will be a bit more expensive to run than FPTP.  But in terms of government expenditure, the amount is tiny: a fraction of 1% of the education budget, for example; a miniscule fraction of a fraction of 1% of the overall government budget.

Hardly Anyone Uses AV

A challenging point for two reasons.

Firstly, if we are to look at which is the most popular system of government in the world today, we’d probably come up with repressive dictatorships.

Second, one of the few governments using AV is Australia and their economy is doing very well, thank you.  If that’s what AV delivers, I’ll have it now, please.

Under AV, MPs will have to work harder

Oh yes, this is a lovely one to play to the angry voters after last year’s scandal.  Unfortunately, it’s not true.  There would still be plenty of safe seats (although some of them would change hands).  More importantly, there would still be plenty of hard working MPs.  My own MP has one of the safest seats in the land and yet remains immensely hard-working and never complacent.

…

That’s said, how will I be voting?

I’m not 100% set one way or the other.  However, I am leaning towards AV: it seems to me that  a system designed to get the approval of the broadest number of voters has a lot to recommend it.