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Is the UK 2015 General Election the Most Boring Ever?
English: Graph of Ipsos MORI UK general election opinion polls, created from data at Opinion_polling_in_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I'd intended to follow the General Election coverage, opinion polls and party manifestos and the comment in them to the extent that I am allowed to given the political restrictions on my job. I haven't done this because frankly there is almost nothing to say. None of the main UK parties appear to want to be elected given the way they are campaigning. The stars of the show are the SNP, who at best will only represent the views of 45% of Scotland, about million people. Related articles General Election 2015: New poll shows increasing gap between SNP and Labour Expect Vote Rigging An #indyref2 on the back of a big SNP election win is inconceivable UK party leaders campaign hard in…
Author Interview – Timothy Bateson
This week's author interview is with Timothy Bateson, an East London boy who has made his home in Alaska and writes lupine adventures. He's also a keen gamer and role-player (like me). How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I've been writing on and off for about twenty years, but it wasn't until the last three years that I started getting serious about it. I've been taking part in NaNoWriMo since 2010, but haven't always been successful in meeting the 50,000 word goal, or ever actually completed the stories I've started during those events. However, those months of endless writing have produced a lot of ideas that I've used elsewhere. My wife's writing was what actually got me serious about getting back into some of my own projects. She's been working on two book…
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It’s the Economy Stupid
It never ceases to amaze me how bad a grasp politicians have on how national economies ; I think it is deliberate rather than ignorance. Or rather they think that we are too stupid to understand how a national economy differs from a household economy. They may even be correct about that Received wisdom on the economy (according to politics) - growth needs to be sustainable - the deficit should be reduced - austerity is necessary Most commonly our main political parties use a household analogy to explain their economic policies. This is a very wrong thing to do. It sort of ignores the interdependency of national economies, and it over simplifies things. That said it is something that most voters can relate to. A better, but still flawed, analogy would be a multi person multi income household. Imagine a…
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B203 Revision
I went to the last OU day school for this module on Saturday. TMA6 is due on Thursday and then the exam is five weeks after that. So it was a timely session, all the more so because I ended up with a copy of all the past papers for the B203 exams. If you are doing this course and missed the tutorial then here are some specific things I picked up. Part 1 is a cross functional question. You need to open with an explanatory paragraph about the organisation that you will use to answer the questions. You can practice this in advance and them just write it down as an intro before reading the question. That para needs to include - the name and function of the organisation; - where it is based; - why you have selected…
Author Interview – Gahan Hanmer
Gahan Hanmer This week's interview is with Gahan Hanmer, the author of The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality. Gahan comes from a family of actors and has himself acted and directed, as well as working as a carpenter. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I still have some very short detective stories that I wrote as a young child, the sort of thing a mother would save. They say I could read when I was three years old. I wrote some poetry as I was growing up. I wrote a novella in college featuring animal characters in an artist colony. It was quite talented but very immature and I discarded it at some point. After I outgrew my career in the theater and started living a more normal life, keeping a home…