As it was, our trip was a bit of a flying visit. The drive from Bulgaria into Romania was bad enough (car reversing down three-lane highway towards us? Check! Surly border police refusing to believe we could take hire car across the border? Check!) but entering Bucharest itself was possibly the tensest bit of driving I think we’ve ever done abroad. I say we – I was only navigating – but that was bad enough. Driving in Bucharest is like being inside a pin-ball machine as you are variously bounced this way and that by streams of traffic, all with horns blaring incessantly.

So it came as quite a relief to dump the car and get on with exploring on foot. With the exception of the Palace of the Parliament, which I’ll come to, there aren’t actually a whole lot of ‘attractions’ in the conventional sense in Bucharest. There are few ‘must-see’ museums or galleries, and it’s not somewhere you’d go to see ancient ruins, or even to shop. The point of a visit to Bucharest is just to wander down its streets and boulevards, soak up the atmosphere and take in the architecture.

As with a lot of the Eastern European capitals, the city’s political history was never far from my thoughts as we meandered from plaza to boulevard, arcade to lane. There’s the faded glory of the art-nouveau and art deco buildings of the early 20th century, through neo-classical buildings of the Communist era to the brash malls of the 1990s. Unfortunately it seems each era’s legacy is less attractive than that which preceded it.

Perhaps the most interesting of the plazas and squares which perforate Bucharest’s long avenues is Revolution Square, home to the building which housed the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Romania, from the balcony of which Ceauşescu made his final speech, before being whisked from the roof by helicopter the next day. The intimidating Central Committee building, now home to the Thick-Of-It-Esque Ministry of the Interior and Administrative Reform, makes a sobering contrast to the monuments to those who gave their lives in the course of the Revolution, the veracity of which is still under question.

Even Revolution Square, though, pales when set alongside the monstrosity that is the Palace of the Parliament.

Clearly designed to intimidate rather than to welcome, the Palace is incomprehensibly huge. It really beggars belief that such a huge building – second only to the Pentagon in size – was constructed by a country which at the time couldn’t feed its own people.

Ceauşescu intended to have his official apartments there, but also to accommodate his toothless Parliament, a theatre, numerous banqueting halls, the Politburo, etc, etc.  Nowadays, the Romanians seem to have an ‘asset’ for which they’re searching for a purpose.  Parliament is still there, but it’s joined by a clumsy mix of offices, random museums, and a conference centre.  The building’s also rented out to film-makers (it had just completed being used as a substitute Vatican when we were there!).  Basically, the intention seems to be to make the most of a bad lot, but the overall effect is County Hall on steroids.

One feature I did like was the superb Museum National de Arte Contemporana (MNAC) which anywhere else would be considered a really substantial gallery.  As it is, it’s hidden away in one wing right at the back of the Palace, its twin glass elevators the only clues to its existence.  It’s worth the (long) walk though, and its rooftop cafe reminds you just how recently the Palace was constructed, and gives some clues to the destruction Ceauşescu engaged in to create his ‘dream’:

Intrigued, we enrolled on a tour of the Palace itself, and were taken on what we were assured was a 2 kilometre walk through less than 10% of the Palace’s facilities.  The amount of marble and crystal on display is obscene.  The whole thing is quite shocking – just when you think you’ve seen what must be the biggest hall/chandelier/staircase/carving there could possibly be, you turn another corner and see something still more ridiculously opulent. The craftsmanship is extraordinary, but you feel almost guilty admiring it, knowing the circumstances in which it was put together.

Everywhere there are examples of the bizarre lengths to which Ceauşescu’s  paranoia was accommodated -such as the staircase which was remodelled five times before he was happy it didn’t make him seem short, or the holes in the ceiling to allow air to circulate –  he forbade the inclusion of air conditioning, fearing it would be used to poison him.

I’ve never been anywhere quite like it, and doubt I ever will again (unless North Korea ever falls, where I suspect we’ll find numerous examples of this kind of megalomania). It’s really obscene.

Once you tire of the Palace, though, your options are limited.  I really wish the temperature had been slightly more accommodating, as I’d have loved to just wander from street to street and take in the architecture and atmosphere.  As it was, though my paper-like skin wouldn’t really take it, so that will have to wait for another visit, which I actually am really looking forward to.  Won’t take the car next time, though!

When I wrote that post a couple of weeks ago, I had in the back of my mind that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff would do well in the debates, ignite some enthusiasm about his party, and do a bit better than most people were then expecting. I happen to think that for an academic, he’s become a pretty good politician – this video (which I can’t for the life of me get to embed here) is a pretty good example.

But I was wrong.  The debates were a turning point, but to the advantage of Jack Layton, leader of the traditional national third party – the NDP.  Now in the past, I have referred to the New Democrats on this blog.  On January 20th this year, I referred to them as “the socialist/social democrat/Jack Layton personality cult NDP“.  And that just about sums them up – a left-wing party who have done pretty well recently under Layton, a former Toronto councillor.

Layton did particularly well in the French debate, and that did extraordinary things to the party’s polling in Quebec, traditionally one of the more left-leaning provinces, but one in which the NDP have never done well, the centre-left vote there being split between the separatist Bloc Quebecois and the federalist Liberals.  But take a look at this chart from the excellent threehundredeight – the orange line are the NDP numbers.And the rise of the NDP in Quebec has been followed by rising numbers nationally and in other provinces.  In fact, the NDP are now first or second placed in every province except Ontario, where the Liberals continue to run the Conservatives close-ish.  Here are the national numbers (again from threehundredeight) – the grey vertical line shows the debate dates

Debates?  Popular third party leader? Poll surge? It’s all awfully familiar for a UK Lib Dem. So, will Laytonmania go the same way as Cleggmania?  The signals are mixed.

Firstly, the NDP has no ground game outside the 60 or so ridings (constituencies) they’re targeting.  This is particularly true in Quebec, where they have little federal or provincial infrastructure to call on, and many candidates have been exposed as what we in the UK would call ‘paper’ candidates.  The NDP has little hope of matching the two big parties on polling day.  In that respect, Layton faces the problem Charles Kennedy faced in 2005, rather than the one Clegg faced in 2010 (Clegg had plenty of target seats, but lost those, and boy did it hurt for those of us on the ground.  Kennedy surged in places where the Lib Dems didn’t have a strong ground game at the time).

However, Canada does have a history of pretty radical swings between parties.  I’ve written before about how the NDP swept Ontario in 1990, against all expectations.  In 1993, the ruling Progressive Conservatives were reduced to just two seats – even the Prime Minister lost her seat.  Perhaps most significantly, in the Quebec provincial election in 2007, the third placed party, the Action Democratique du Quebec, surged from four seats to 41 – a similar feat to the one Layton’s trying to achieve in the province. These are the kind of wild, radical swings we don’t see here in the UK.  So it’s more conceivable that votes on the ground will follow the polls in Canada than was the case in the UK last year.

It’s not just me who’s confused.  Seat projections for the NDP range from 53 to 104.   I guess we’ll just have to see whether this is Cleggmania v2 or an orange crush.  My gut feeling is that the Tories will end up with a minority government, and the NDP and Liberals will be roughly equal. The drama won’t be over then, though – the aftermath might be even more unpredictable, with talk of uniting the left, or forming coalitions.

And of course, just as Cleggmania was followed by ‘Nick Clegg Ate My Hamster’ type of stories, so a story involving Layton in a massage parlour has emerged.  Nice to know it’s not just our media and politics that’s so immature.

All in all, a significantly more exciting election than our locals.  What happens to the Liberal Party afterwards will be fascinating – another ‘natural governing party’ that’s lost its way badly.

The most likely outcome appears to be another stalemate – a Conservative minority government, but it’s possible the Conservatives could squeak a majority. It appears – at present – that a Liberal minority would be a stretch too far.  The excellent Three Hundred Eight shows the current polling trends:

What might change things?

Well, tomorrow sees the leaders’ debate, and we all know what they can do to polling. The hope for many Liberals is that, a la Clegg, voters like what they see of their new leader in the debates.  To be fair, there’s good reason to think Ignatieff might out perform expectations, which have been set extremely low by a vicious negative advertising campaign by the Conservatives.  If a noted academic and former BBC presenter can’t debate, he may as well pack up and go back to Harvard.  The slow rise in support for the Liberals since the election was called (which is also reflected in Ignatieff’s personal ratings) suggests that voters are very gently warming to the Liberal leader.

Secondly, the Tories are having a pretty rough campaign.  They’ve been pilloried for having students thrown out of rallies by Mounties, and just today a pretty damning Auditor General’s report has been leaked.  It’s not at all smooth, and feeds into the Liberal narrative of a unaccountable government.

Thirdly, that 9 point lead mightn’t be as solid as it looks.  At the last election, the Tories led the Liberals by a full 10%, but because the Liberal vote was more efficiently distributed – mainly around Toronto, Montreal and the Atlantic – it wasn’t reflected in the seats (a fact that saved the Liberals from a 1984 style result).  The same might be true this time – certainly the 64% in Alberta isn’t going to help the Tories, who hold all but one of the province’s seats already.  Conversely, the trends in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia look promising for the Liberals.

In fact, that’s the really fascinating thing about the Canadian election.  It isn’t a national election at all really, more a series of provincial and city-region elections. Different parties are in contention in different parts of the country to an extent that makes a UK election look pretty homogenous.

My own view is that the Liberals will do better than last time (it’d be hard not to) and hold the Tories to a reduced majority.  I can’t see them doing better than that because whilst they have a good deal of attractive policy, they don’t really have an issue. Accountability’s as near as they’ve come, but it doesn’t seem to have legs and doesn’t match with their policy prescriptions, which focus on the family.

Anyway, it’s worth keeping an eye on 308.com , and for more partisan Liberal coverage, warrenkinsella.com or liblogs.ca until May 2nd.  It certainly beats the UK election if you’re liberally-inclined.

‘Lovely people’ was a bit of a recurring theme in Christchurch.  To catch up on our jet lag, we’d booked to stay a night at Eliza’s on Bealey Avenue.  The owner, Ann Zwimpfer, gave us such a warm welcome, with a plate of ANZAC cookies in our room, and lots of hints and tips about what to explore in town.  Eliza’s itself is a beautiful house, with a long history dating back to 1861.  I say ‘is’, as luckily Eliza’s Manor on Bealey has been spared structural damage.  Neighbouring properties weren’t so lucky, and three other houses on the same street have been demolished.

Christchurch itself feels like an English spa town – a kind of New Zealand Harrogate, if that makes sense – quiet, floral, genteel, slightly conservative (with a small ‘c’).  We spent a lovely day in the botanic gardens, and down-town.  Everywhere we went, people were keen to ask where we were from and what our plans in NZ were.

When the time came to leave Elizas and head to Wilderness to pick up our van, Ann presented us with an Eliza teddy bear as a mascot for our trip.  The taxi driver who drove us over to Wilderness warned us to expect the whole world in one country – ‘from Fjords to desert’ – and NZ certainly delivered that (and more!)

The picture above shows me just 15-20 minutes outside Christchurch City Centre, near Lyttleton. The land in the background is the beginning of the Banks Peninsula.  We travelled through Lyttleton using the tunnel from the City.  I understand the tunnel’s now reopened, but Lyttleton itself has been really badly damaged by the quake, as it was even closer to the epicentre than Christchurch City Centre. You can see rocks immediately  behind me, which were typical, and it seems that boulders falling from the hillside have caused a lot of damage.

So, sad stuff – but clearly people in Christchurch are picking up the pieces.  Eliza’s website makes clear that they’ll be closed for some time, but Wilderness are already up and running.  If you’ve got the time and money, I can’t recommend New Zealand highly enough – get over there and help them recover by doing your bit for the tourist economy.  Even if Christchurch itself isn’t ready for visitors, the wider Canterbury region still has lots to offer.  Finally, if anyone doubts that Christchurch can recover, take a look at Napier.  Following an even larger earthquake in the 1930s, Napier recovered and the City now has the world’s largest concentration of art deco buildings – an attraction in itself.

Today at work, I found myself reading about public service reform in New Zealand.  I kind of stumbled onto it after reading lots of references to Sir Roger Douglas in Reform’s 2011 Scorecard.  Google ‘New Zealand Reform’ and one of the first things that comes up is a speech by Don Brash when he was Governor of the NZ Reserve Bank (he later went on to become leader of the NZ Nationals, but that’s not important right now).

So I’m reading through Brash’s speech.  Lots of stuff about growth rates, etc.  And then I get to this:

“[in pre 1984 New Zealand] you needed a doctor’s prescription to buy margarine“

I read it again, and no, I had read correctly.  The NZ govt, in its wisdom, required citizens to obtain a doctor’s prescription in order to buy margarine.  In fact, I’ve since found out this requirement was actually abolished in 1972, but the whole concept is, er, somewhat striking.  Apparently it was a sop to NZ’s powerful dairy lobby, who feared open market sale of margarine would reduce demand for their butter.  Hence, you had to have some medical reason you couldn’t eat butter in order to access margarine.   Was there a black market?  Did ‘marg dealers’ spring up on street corners?  What was the street value?  The mind boggles.

Anyway, lunchtime came round, and I decided this was bizzare enough to merit further investigation.  Did anywhere else restrict their citizen’s access to butter substitutes?

Bizzarely enough, yes!

Margarine was illegal in Canada until 1948, when the Canadian Supreme Court (no less) lifted the ban in the celebrated Margarine Reference.  But don’t worry, even pre-’48,  you could still get an illicit ‘marg fix’ because margarine made from seal, fish and whale oil (yum!) was smuggled in from Newfoundland. Phew!

Australia took a more liberal view.  There, margarine was legal, in any colour you like so long as it wasn’t yellow.  Yup, in perhaps the earliest application of the Nudge theory, yellow margarine was banned to shame people into buying butter.  Similarly, in the US, 8 out of 10 citizens couldn’t buy yellow margarine at the turn of the 20th century.

I bet you’re thinking the Canadians were lucky.  How wrong you’d be.  Because national regulation was replaced by provincial legislation.  Margarine was legal, but yellow marg was banned, and in some provinces it had to be bright orange to distinguish it from butter.  In fact, this nonsense went on for years. Ontario (Canada’s largest province, home to Toronto and the national capital Ottawa) only legalised butter-coloured margarine in 1995, and French-speaking Quebec only legalised coloured margarine as recently as July 2008! Funnily enough, we visited Montreal and Quebec city in August 2008, but I didn’t notice any sign of celebration of this momentous event.

My margarine research has also thrown up the fact that I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter has been on sale in the UK for 20 years this year.  This makes me feel old, as I remember the launch.  I was ten, and went food shopping with my Nan at Food Giant (a short-lived supermarket chain that’s long bitten the dust).  I vividly remember her trying to fathom out what on earth she’d bought that was recorded as  ”ICBINB” on her receipt.

Anyway, thank god most governments don’t see it as their role to interfere in the nation’s fridges any more. Hopefully one day we’ll be marvelling at the ridiculousness of similar restrictions on who can get married.

The one man who’s enlivened the proceedings (and frankly talked a lot of sense) is David Ward MP (or Mr. Bradford as he was described at one point in the proceedings by the Chair, David Amess).

Ward describes himself as a ‘localist fundamentalist’ and frequently draws on his experience on Bradford Council to illustrate the absurdity of various courses of action – both those espoused by the Labour Party and his own side.  The Hansard is well worth a read for his interventions alone, some of which I’ve drawn out below:

On a Labour amendment calling for there to be a duty for Councils who revert to the committee system to retain an overview and scrutiny committtee:

“I find myself in a difficult position considering quite a prescriptive Bill and an even more prescriptive amendment, so I disagree with everybody so far. For consistency, I retain my fundamentalist position, which is that it should be for a local authority to decide how to carry out its own scrutiny. I see nothing wrong, whether it is centralism or not, in ensuring that there is a duty on the local authority to carry out an overview and scrutiny function and a duty to disclose what that is, so that the local electors know. As with the previous group of amendments, I believe that local electors have a right to be badly governed and badly scrutinised locally, but it should be for them to decide.“

On whether there is a need for Government to prescribe that local authorities should have a Code of Standards for elected members:

“I will pursue my consistent theme of claiming that both sides are wrong. I am trying to steer what appears to me—perhaps only to me—to be a consistent course. In general, as I have said, I do not like “musts” for local authorities, except for a “must disclose.””

And then on whether an authority should be forced to publish a pay policy (high, low or otherwise):

“One concern I had about the inclusion of more and more “musts” is that each one reduces the ability of a local authority to be different. At election time, it would be good if we could knock on a door and say, “If I am elected and my party takes over the leadership of the council, we will introduce a low-pay policy,” or—looking at amendments 57 and 58—“We will promote democracy and introduce a right to petition.” We could put that in our leaflets, as opposed to being the party that will not do such things. There would be a difference; there would be a choice….   If I am faced with two political parties, one that offers me transparency in the form of a low-pay policy and one that does not, I will make a choice. That is how it should be. In effect, if someone agrees with what the council is being asked to do, the “musts” remove the possibility of there being bad councils. However, it is the right of electors to elect bad councils if that is what they want.

The Localism Bill seems to me to have a lot to do with replacing one set of prejudices with another.  A ‘localist fundamentalist’ doesn’t believe it’s his role as a national parliamentarian to tell local government what to do.  He’d be happy to let councillors get on with it, with the electorate acting as a watchdog.  In that sense, David Ward actually appears to be the committee’s lone localist voice. In the Committee proceedings, day after day, he’s been like the boy who keeps on pointing out that the Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. More please!

SUNTAN LOTION HEALTH DANGER – It Screens Out Vital Vitamin D screamed the headline.  An EXCLUSIVE by Victoria Fletcher, apparently.  Except it all seemed very reminiscent of this story which I saw on BBC Breakfast on Jan 19th.

At lunchtime, I read on.  I wish I hadn’t:

• Page 2: “Bin collections could be cut to just once a month by council bosses looking to save money“.  Apparently Bolton Council want to reduce their recycling collections from once a fortnight to once a month.  So some truth in that, but presumably residual waste will be collected in intervening weeks, so not quite true..?  Neither the Express nor the wonderfully named Doretta Cocks of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collections made this clear.

• Page 4: “Now a mere 37% of NHS Doctors are white British“.  Apparently, “An influx of foreign doctors means just one in three is now classed as white British, astonishing new figures revealed yesterday”.  So what?!?  I really couldn’t care less.  I’m sure it hasn’t escaped the Express’ notice that not all British people are white.  Could it be, possibly, that some of that 63% of non-white-British doctors are Brits who happen not to define as white British?  I think we should be told.

• Page 7: “EU Silent as Muslims Persecute Christians“.  In a rare example of the Express seeking EU intervention, the paper informed me that “Top Eurocrat Cathy Ashton faced outrage last night after the EU failed to condemn attacks on Christians in the Islamic World.”  Apparently the Italian government got a draft statement on religious persecution in Egypt and Iraq withdrawn because it didn’t explicitly refer to Christians.  Cue outrage from The Express and Alan Craig of the Christian People’s Alliance – a man so lacking in mandate he lost his council seat in Newham last year.  This is enough for the Express to call for Ashton to resign in an editorial on page 12, and to launch a phone poll “Are Christians being treated with contempt?” (0901 020 8344 if you have 26p burning a hole in your pocket)

• Also on page 7: “Inefficient wind farms ‘raise cost of energy‘”.  Dr John Constable of the Renewable Energy Foundation (an august body which boasted no less a personage than House Party favourite and wind-farm sceptic Noel Edmonds as its chair) noted that “Wind power can be highly variable”.  Luckily, today’s Express front-page one word weather forecast is “Windy”, so clearly a good day for bad news.

• Page 9: You may have heard there’s a cyclone in Cairns.  The Express’ take on it?  “Britons trapped by ‘monster’ cyclone“.  A bit of a “Storm in Channel. Contintent Cut Off ” journalism, really.

• Page 15: Probably my favourite article, as my former flatmate and all-round-nice-bloke Alex Folkes is quoted condemning a pretty scandalous £5k trip to New York taken by the Chief Exec of Cornwall Council. They even mentioned Alex is a Lib Dem.  Some sub-editor will surely face the sack for allowing that through.

• Page 17: Now, I wouldn’t want to dismiss Alex’s story, but I’m sure he’d agree that the events in Egypt are slightly more important at present.  Not for the Express, which relegates coverage of the uprising to page 17 (complete with photo of a camel, just to prove it is Egypt we’re talking about)

• Page 29 amused me greatly.  The Express doesn’t seem to have a lot of colour pages, but they spared one to bring us the exciting news that “Denise and Matt to bring you showbiz fun on Channel 5″.   In a story I doubt other papers found room for, the Express salivates over the prospect of Denise Van Outen bringing us OK! TV on Channel 5, as part of a “stellar line up” on the channel, which happens to be controlled by Express owner Richard Desmond.  As is OK!  Not that the Express found room to tell us that – the Murdoch papers look balanced by comparison.

• Finally, page 33 screamed at me “Are your clothes making you ill?” complete with pictures of Katy Perry and Russell Brand, and I decided that, no, my clothes aren’t making me ill, but the Daily Express was.

Overall, probably the most hate-filled, mean-spirited, narrow-minded 33 pages of rubbish I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.  My faith in human nature was restored by learning that the Express is down 8% year-on-year, and sold just 623,389 copies each day in December.

But putting the current election to one side, I’ve come across a fascinating  archive of past election coverage on the RTE website.   There’s some great coverage of elections from 1965 onwards, including the first televised leaders’ debate in 1982.     One of the highlights is coverage of the 1987 General Election, and the high hopes for the new Progressive Democrat party, led by Dessie O’Malley.  Given their strong association with the policies that led to the Celtic Tiger, I guess the PDs wouldn’t be looking forward to this election if they were still around.

Anyway, some fascinating footage – do take a look if you get the chance.

I wrote back in September about the experience of the various liberal/centre parties that had formed a coalition with the modernised Swedish Tories, and how all three had lost votes and seats to their larger coalition partner over the last four years.

I thought it might be interesting to see how they’re fairing four months in to the second Reinfeldt administration.  The trends won’t surprise you, but the figures might:

• Moderates, 35.1% (+4% since the election)
• Centre Party, 3.8% (-3%)
• Christian Democrats, 2.8% (-3%)
• Folkpartiet, 7% (+/- 0%)

The significant thing about those particular figures is that 4% is the threshold for parliamentary representation in Sweden, so two of the coalition parties would be out of the Riksdag on those figures.

I don’t post this to be the voice of doom and gloom – actually precisely the opposite.  These figures show that what the Lib Dems are currently going through is absolutely in-line with the experience of other small(er) parties in coalition elsewhere.  The key thing to remember is that the Swedish coalition bounced back in the last Parliament when the economy weathered the storm.  And that’s what the UK coalition needs to get right.

I’ve written before of some lessons from Canada on wielding power in coalition (or accord).  Canadian politics fascinate me – the Canadians are probably the nation that have least adapted the Westminster model.  Unlike Australia and New Zealand, they haven’t adopted a preferential or proportional voting system, and like the UK they’ve ended up with an appointed upper house.  Canada therefore offers us a lot of lessons from history.

For example, in 2003, the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party of Canada merged to form the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), thus ending an electoral schism on the right that had lasted over 10 years and greatly assisted the Liberal Party rack up landslide majorities in three successive elections.

The result?  In its first electoral outing in 2004, the CPC lost votes compared with its predecessor parties – declining from a combined 37.68% of the vote to 29.63% – a loss of over 8%.  In fact, polling suggested that only 54% of those who voted Progressive Conservative at the 2000 election stuck with the merged party in 2004.  The first-past-the-post system (naturally) ensured that the party won more seats, though – increasing its total to 99 from 78.

Crossing the political spectrum, on the Canadian centre-left, there’s recently been renewed speculation about a coalition, or merger, between the centrist Liberals (led by Michael Ignatieff) and the socialist/social democrat/Jack Layton personality cult NDP.  Polling’s been done, and again, the picture is a party that would be less than the sum of its parts – a ‘Liberal Democrat’ party would poll 36% – 2% less than the Conservatives, despite the combined ratings for the Liberals and NDP outstripping the Conservatives by 8 points at the time the poll was taken, and the fact that the two parties had together racked up 44.4% of the vote at the last General Election.

So, a clear lesson from Canada.  Far from sweeping all before them, merged parties can – and do – poll less than the sum of their parts.  It’s not surprising when you consider the long histories and deep emotional attachment many voters and activists have to their particular party.  I’m pretty much an armchair member of the Lib Dems now, but I couldn’t be a member – and in all probability wouldn’t even vote for – a merged Liberal-Conservative party.

In fact, the drivers identified by proponents of a merger or electoral pact between the UK Coalition partners are actually issues with the archaic UK electoral system.  AV would solve some of them, and full-blooded PR would solve a lot more. But I guess that’s not what some people want to hear.  In the meantime, I’m heartened by the Lib Dem FE’s announcement.