A Little Bit of Politics

I'm not a political animal. I'm interested in politics and I have my own political preference, but like many, I'm reluctant to get too involved, because I've seen too many people get eaten up by frustration and disappointment. Better to stand on the sidelines and offer a critique on the passing parade. So, I'm writing this more as a bookmark, to put together some thoughts this evening.

For the Labour Party to win a third term in office was a historic moment for British politics. The likelihood of them securing a fourth term in 2010 was unlikely at best. More, a Conservative win was pretty much inevitable. But a majority win was not.

Even before the election was announced, most statisticians would have reminded us that massive swings tend not to go beyond about 4%. All of those polls predicting 20-point leads for David Cameron, frankly, might as well have been held in Narnia for their resemblance to reality. If the best the Conservatives could hope for was a 4% swing, the very best they could have hoped for was a hung parliament.

This is what the Liberal Democrats knew, and they knew that whoever secured the bigger share of seats, the centre party would have the casting decision in whether or not they got to govern or not.

We can ignore all of those Tories bleating about Brown not having a moral right to govern in these last few days. He every right to govern, as set out in the constitution. Cameron did not, however, have a right to demand to be given the first opportunity to set in motion a coalition.

Opposition tends not to win elections - the sitting government tends to lose them, and inheriting the damage caused by the Iraq war and the global recession, it was unlikely that Labour's successes in looking after our pensioners would win them many votes. As (of all people) Lembit Opik pointed out today, the Conservatives didn't win this election. In an 800-metre dash, they fell at 700 metres; they got further along than everyone else, but didn't complete the course. it could be argued that many of the new votes they attracted this time were the result of negative voting - people who've had enough of Brown and want to see the back of him, rather than positively voting for Cameron. Likewise, most people in this election voted for someone other than the Conservatives, and many of those votes would have been a negative vote away from the Conservatives rather than specifically a vote for Labour or the Lib Dems.

The Conservatives need to remain humble here. They didn't receive a vote of confidence from the public and they'll need to negotiate at every turn. If they don't, they'll lose the ability to govern at all. Similarly, the Liberal Democrats have secured their greatest opportunity to govern since 1918. I hope they don't waste it by punching above their weight or not picking their battles wisely.

As a Labour voter, obviously I believe Labour are better for people like me and my family. I'm not blind to their faults - I still believe tuition fees to be a betrayal of their core values. But I know many people cannot get past the Iraq issue and it's meaningless to try to debate that, because minds are closed and set, and nothing I might say can open them. The Conservatives also supported the move to war - their track record in both the Falklands and the first Gulf War meant they couldn't very well not support it. At the time, the Lib Dems opposed it, but then it's easy having principals when you'll never have to make the decision yourselves. Now though, they might.

Many people have attacked Nick Clegg for considering an alliance with the Conservatives. Politics isn't about only working with your friends. You have to be able to work with your enemies too.

Believe it or not, I think Clegg's being very brave here. If the Tories are as bad as some of us suspect them of being, with any luck, they'll be restrained to some extent by their their new allies. If they get out of hand, the Lib Dems can pull their support at any point. Whoever's in power, they've got some tough choices to face. Had they won a majority, I suspect we'd have been in a terrifying position as the Tories could have been insufferable and spiteful, as they were post-1979 (if that's not your view of that time, you probably didn't live in Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle or any of the mining communities which, for some people, felt like they were being targeted for their opposition to the Tories in the mid-1970s). Now, we might be able to benefit from Conservative economics tempered by liberalism. It's not what I voted for, just as I'm sure it's not what Conservative or Lib Dem voters wanted either. It's what we've got, though, and I'm just hoping that with so many people awakened to politics this year, perhaps this coalition will create a new generation of activists, which should be a good thing.

One thing that I've loved from today though is the generally good natured banter on BBC News. While Sky reveal their true colours with pit-bull after pit-pull losing their cool and revealing their political bias, the BBC approach has been respectful, honest about the confusion and genuinely entertaining. One German journalist was asked how his home country had coped with their own coalition, which had taken 40 days to arrange. Was it, he was asked, a time of panic for Germany? 'No,' he laughed. 'As in your country, Germany's really run by the Civil Service. It made no difference at all.'

- Brown's final speech as PM

- Cameron's first speech as PM

The Lost Hitchcock

The word 'rare' is overused. 'Rare' photographs, 'rare' outtakes'... whenever people talk about archive material, it seems they love it to be akin to a lightly bruised steak.

There can't surely be such a thing as a rare film by the single more famous film-maker ever, but even the silent ones are at least commercially available. Yet, there's one film that, currently, qualified as rare. Waltzes from Vienna was made by Hitchcock under some duress - it really wasn't his kind of picture at all and he later told Francois Truffaut that he made it during his 'lowest ebb'.

When I was commissioned to co-write a book about Hitch, I wanted to make sure that I'd actually seen the films. This might sound obvious, but I know of a couple of authors who've written extensively about material that they'd not bothered to watch, which is why certain errors get passed on from book to book. One film, The Mountain Eagle, is lost - the last remaining print of it disintegrated decades ago (Hitchcock pragmatically didn't seen too upset by this development, describing the film as 'awful').

A trip to the USA gave me the opportunity to pick up almost all of his silent films and a few early talkies, but after five months one film eluded me. Waltzes from Vienna has, to date, never been released commercially and as far as I'm aware has never been shown on television. The only way I could see it was to rent time with a stack of film reels and a moviola.

It's by no means a great Hitchcock film; there are few of the directorial flourishes we associate with him even in this early period. But it's entertaining enough, telling the story of how Strauss the younger finally won the respect and admiration of his father.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, and thanks to various differences in American copyright law, you can actually watch the film at Archive.Org. But if you've managed to collect all of his other works, you'll find a hole where Waltzes from Vienna should be.

Today, I made the first approach to someone who might be in a position to rectify this. Let's see how far this campaign goes.

Revisionism

So, after a conversation with an experienced blogger last night, I've just made a few deletions from this thing. Funnily enough, the entries where I was most open and revealing about my life are the ones that were badly written and completely lacking in any real insight.

So - bye bye bad story about getting drunk and boorish. Bye bye an entry about someone else's embarrassing goodbye email to people she'd worked with for two weeks (cruel to mock and it'd be relatively easy to piece back who I was writing about) and bye bye that one entry that, two years down the line I have no idea what I was on about.

Now... what should I write about today?

Waiting for the Inevitable

Just flicking through the TV channels and caught the episode of tonight's episode of The Bill - 'Suffer in Silence'.

I'm guessing we'll be seeing other episodes over the next few months called 'Prolonging the Agony', 'Treading Water' and 'Someone Remember to Cancel the Milk'.

In other news, my journey home was delayed tonight. The train driver announced: 'Sorry for he delays here this evening, but one of those new trains is further up the track. It's broken down and they're trying to get it into the sidings. Once again, the NEW TRAIN has broken down and we're waiting for it to get out of the way.'

Had the carriage been less congested, I'm sure his mintiness would have been accompanied by a mass raising of handbags. As it was, we all rolled our eyes, clutched the handrail and prayed it wouldn't last much longer.

Oh look - special guest star on The Bill this week is Lee Ross. Looks like his character is a child abuse victim who's suffered in silence for some ti- oh... that might be the meaning of the title.

Suddenly life's that tiny bit less ironic. Damn....

Pertwee Tardis

And a slight reworking of my Hartell Tardis control room sees the addition of a new console for Pertwee.

UNIT Lab!

I always wanted this - a set for my Doctor Who dollies - and what better set than the UNIT lab?

I'd originally wanted to do the lab as it appeared in season eight, but the spiral staircase put me off. That and pressure from my chums made me go for the later lab, as it appeared in season 11. I could have gone for the lab from 'The Three Doctors', but it had too many windows. So I adapted the printouts that my pal Phil had made for his ActionFigureTheatre site to make it look like it did for Pertwee's final year.

Also included in this set are my custom Sarah Jane, in her 'Monster of Peladon' outfit, and my custom Master, in his grey suit and gold tie. You might also be able to make out the welding device from 'Terror of the Autons'. Oh, and the Tardis is a customised moneybox, repainted. That'll be replaced once I get the forthcoming classic Tardis from Character.

More Monsters

I haven't done this for a while, but prompted by Paul Cornell's blog, here's a few more monsters I've made recently.

This one's a Blatherine from The Sarah Jane Adventures, which was a present for the author for the episode that they first appeared in. It's customised from a Slitheen figure, with shorter claws, a remolded face and a paint job.




Next up, a Mutt from the Doctor Who story 'The Mutants' (1972). It's pictured in the UNIT lab set that I made. Ooh, there's a thought - I haven't put any pics of that up. That'll be in the next entry then.




Inspired by the brilliant Babyjelly from OutpostWho / GallifreyBase fame, here's a muto from 'Genesis of the Daleks'.




I decided I wanted to make a Navarino from 'Delta and the Bannermen', and then realised it had to be a present for my pal Neil, who always wanted to write a story called 'The Guns of Navarino'. Next to it are two Haemovores from 'The Curse of Fenric'.





And finally, in my quest to make more and more figures that will probably never be made by Character Options for the official range, here's the Keller Machine from 'The Mind of Evil'. It lights up an' evreefink!