Next month London will elect its next mayor, and candidates from the three largest parties are identical to the last time round.  Since its a runoff election most people will be putting either their first or second preference votes for either Ken Livingstone, or Boris Johnson.  I'm considering my choice.

Style

Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone are both polarising figures, I always find it hard to identify whether this is due to political background,  his style or just a combination of both.  The thing is that there's quite a few things in common between Boris and Ken. They both speak their minds, they don't have time for people who they disagree with,  they've both gotten themsleves into trouble over speaking their minds and they both stick to their principles. I'm wary of saying that they're the last of their kind, due to the fundamentally fraught nature of long term predictions, but there really is a difference between their approach and the media managed Blairite style of Cameron, Clegg and even Milliband (he doesn't media manage well, but he does try).

I've heard numerous people criticise his laidback style, bluster and describe him as stupid, this is a vast misestimation of his abilities.  I'm not convinced that Boris thinks things through thoroughly, as wittnessed by his statements over Liverpool.  I'm not convinced that he's a details guy.  He is a very smart guy though, with excellent oratory abilities.  Simultaneously Ken Livingstone frequently gives off quite a rude impression, looking down on his opponent.

I'm frankly willing to live with either style and perceive these differences to be mainly an irrelevant matter when it comes to my voting motivation.

Public and Voter Finances

Both candidates have a key element of their campaign being a financial saving to the voter.  Boris Johnson has been keeping the mayoral share of council tax flat, even reducing it this year and plans to continue to do so in future.  He claims that amounts to a 16% reduction in real terms, of course this relies on inflation continuing at its exorbitant rate which is unlikely given that we're back in recession.  His campaign points out that council tax was rising under Ken Livingstone.  The Livingstone campaign offers a 5.6% transport fare cut this year, keeping it flat the following year and only increasing inline with inflation after that.  Technically they claim a 7% fee reduction but this is ignoring the planned cut in fees anyway.  They also point out that tube fares are up 20% under Johnson and bus fares up 50%.

The difference of focus is probably a relevant issue for voters, essentially Livingstone is planning on using council tax funds to increase the subsidy of public transport, whilst Boris is planning on cutting council taxes at the expexpense of public transport subsidy.  Probably for many people, myself included, Livingstone's approach will be more beneficial over time.  It's quite hard to say exactly though, since I believe the financial planning in his campaign material to be mistaken, due to its poor correlation with funding requirements for existing fee changes.

Whilst I agree with Johnson's focus on reducing City Hall waste, of his proposed £3.5 billion of 'savings' £1.6 billion is closing down the London Development Agency.  Well at least on the pages on his website where its referenced, on other pages they include savings from the past to hit the £3.5 billion figure.  I'm estimating £1.6 billion based upon a £400 million budget over 4 years.

Policy & Legislative Agenda

I don't agree with Livingstone's attempts to involve the NHS Bill in the race, even though I can see strategically why he tried to.  Its not really a mayoral issue, and I think the issues facing London are important enough to be the focus of this election, not attempting to punish the government for a policy that the winner of the race has no control over.  It's fairly obvious it would be irrelevant.

I don't believe in continuing EMA and would rather the money was spent on improving educational provision, people need to motivate themselves to learn and I'm skeptical that best results can achieved under other circumstances.  At least that was my experience both when studying in school and the brief teaching I undertook at university level.

On the other hand a non-profit lettings agency and a living rent could potentially be a great success. I'm not sure it will be successfully implemented, but its a good idea to try and address this problem.  I'm not sure that the interest free loans for families with children will help that much or that this is a problem that is best addressed at a London level, however, I'm not fundamentally opposed.

I also have no idea how these policies are being funded, except with a council tax increase.

Restoring green space and spending in parks is a good thing for Boris to mention, its just a shame there's so little money allocated from the alleged £3.5 billion of savings.

Period in Office

During their respective periods in office both Livingstone and Johnson broadly achieved their goals.  Livingstone pushed through the congestion charge, whilst Johnson implemented his Cycle hire scheme, both have been largely successful programs.

Controversies

I agree with both Livingstone's position on Israel's illegal occupation, and Johnson's that people don't need to be told what to eat and don't blame him for the Liverpool statements.  I think Livingstone is guilty of huge hypocrisy by complaining about Tax Avoidance and then funneling income via a limited company, however, I think he's not only legal but entirely right to do it. So I'm not put off by either candidate due to these past incidents.

About a year ago I predicted the wrestlemania 2011 results, but got about 1/2 of them right, and 1/2 of them wrong.  Time to have another go!

Maria Menounos & Kelly Kelly vs Beth Phoenix & Eve Torres

Donald Trump, Snooki, Lawrence Taylor, Mr. T. - the celebrity guest or their surrogate always wins.  No matter how bad that makes the wrestlers look.  Thankfully they've put the celebrity in the women's match which is usually terrible and short.

Winner: Menounos & Kelly

Team Teddy vs Team Johnny

Well, previously this match had Christian in, and there were rumours of Del Rio being added which would have been John Laurinitis' team much stronger.  Then they chose the Miz to be added, despite jobbing him every week consistently for 5 weeks.  Teddy Long's team is so weak by comparison - Santino, Ryder and Truth are all comedy geeks and don't look like serious competitors, Khali can barely walk.  I do still like Booker T as a wrestler, and his feud with Cody Rhodes last year demonstrated he can still work a solid match even in his 40s.  Nonetheless, I'm really not enthused by watching this match.  Laurinitis' team is far stronger on paper - 4 world champions - although with Drew McIntyre they've got a guy ready to get pinned.  The match is loaded with a dog and pony show, with Hornswaggle and Guerrero on each side as well as the team managers.  Frankly I think WWE are planning on putting the geeks over with some ridiculous comedy, just because its mania and they love the twist.  Besides they can always have Booker T pin McIntyre and it looks fine.  Santino will probably make this watchable, and the heel team has some really good workers on it.

Winner: Team Teddy

Randy Orton vs Kane

I suppose this could be an ongoing feud after mania, with Kane getting the win in their first PPV match in order to setup an Orton comeback.  Or there could be a runin by someone like Del Rio. Other than those scenarios I'd expect Orton to win, he's fairly low on the card for such a big star and isn't really looking like he's the number 2 guy in the company as he was a year ago.

Winner: Randy Orton

Cody Rhodes (c) vs Big Show for the Intercontinental Championship

The build to this match suggest that Big Show will win - with Rhodes getting the upper hand consistently in their feud.  Furthermore Rhodes has been IC champion for so long now, that he's into the top 10 longest runs of all time.  The only thing is that I don't see the point in the Big Show winning the title.  Since he's very over and a former World & WWE Champion its not really giving him anything.

Winner: Big Show

Daniel Bryan (c) vs Sheamus for the World Heavyweight Championship

Daniel Bryan has been carrying Smackdown recently, great interviews, great in-ring work, being a role mode and a Vegan.  If I were booking I'd keep him as champion throughout the summer and give him some wins.  I don't think WWE will do this since they've given Bryan a clean pin over Sheamus on raw this week.  Also pretty usual for the rumble winner to take the title, though far from a guarantee.  I think this could be a really good match if given the time.

Winner: Sheamus

CM Punk (c) vs Chris Jericho for the WWE Championship

Another potential show stealing match, my only concern is that they won't get given enough time on the card in order to work their match properly - this really needs at least 20 minutes.  I think this is quite hard to call though, since I expect their feud will continue on past mania so it doesn't necessaily matter who wins.  Punk has been really good as champion and I'd hope that if they're going to make him, "the man" that they need to keep the belt on him.  Jericho came back, failed to win the rumble, failed to win at elimination chamber and would be really helped by having the belt.  He has been winning the feud though, by insulting Punk's family - really good raw segments and done well.

Winner: Chris Jericho

HHH vs Undertaker

Could be a good match, though I'd stil rather that some of their time was allocated to the Punk or Bryan matches.  Shawn Michaels is always great as well, though a bit limited in his capacity as a referee.  I'd expect HHH to get screwed by Michaels leading to Undertaker winning.

Winner: Undertaker

John Cena vs The Rock

Cena really does need to win.  The thing is that you have the returning hero going over Cena then it just makes the entire current roster look like shit.  On the other hand in Miami Cena is getting boo'd heavily, even though he's a popular start.  It might send the fans home sad, and in the mania main event the face always wins.  I kind of see this as a passing of the torch type match so in that context Cena also has to win.  The only scenario which I forsee Rock winning in is if there's a rematch at next year's mania.  The build for this match was going quite well for a while, and Cena vs Rock is a match that I would like to see and I think many others would to.  Sadly the build really peaked two weeks ago and their final segment on this week's RAW was a bit lackluster.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a runin here and there should be plenty of false finishes.  No matter who wins, they'll really push the other guy as a near-winner and a close matchup.

Winner: John Cena

The Buyrate

Last year's mania did 1,175,000 buys total.  That was hugely up from the previous year primarily due to The Rock's appearance on the show.  Now he's in a match it should, in theory, be up again.  Sadly WWE's overall PPV business is in decline, and the final RAW show had ratings that were 25% lower than the previous year and the build for the main event was alright, but not as good as it could be.

I've heard a load of online predictions, a lot of fans seem to be expecting sub 1,000,000 buyrates, and some as low as 800k.  At 800k one really has to question at what point in time WWE's business can turn around.  I appreciate that wrestling is cyclical, and they're still profitable but they've had a pretty serious ongoing year-on-year buyrate decline for all but 2 of the last 10 years. They've spent big to bring back The Rock for a few guest appearances and last year it worked in terms of the mania buyrate.  But you'd expect a continued decline after he leaves again, and if with him they could only draw 800k then you're looking at WWE being back down at their early 1990s levels of interest without The Rock.

Conversely behind the scenes WWE were expecting 1.2 million and thought it could hit 1.3 million - a new record for them.  I think this is a optimistic given the low ratings that they've been getting and the general level of anticipation not being as high as expected.

Prediction: 1.1 million - 1.2 million buys

I just read an interesting article by Aditya Chakrabortty [0] in which he chooses to blame economists as a group for attempting to legitimise executive pay.  It's primarily of interest due to the author's decision, conscious or otherwise, to ignore any kind of basis in reality or apply reasonable judgement when criticising a group of people for ignoring any kind of basis in reality and lack of applicable judgement.

He throws his accusations around incredibly easily.  One of them, and this is an oft-repeated classic myth is here referenced in the phrase, "the same discipline that spoke all that nonsense about markets always being efficient."  The nature of free market efficiency is an incredibly interesting issue that has been the subject of much debate over the years.  In the popular press this is characterised by people who are either claiming that markets are efficient or that they never are.  As usual in the case of two diametrically opposed viewpoints neither are subtle enough to convey even a whimsy of truth.  A whimsy is a measure of truth that I just invented, its definition is as follows: any statement by Sarah Palin contains exactly one whimsy of truth. That's how much the discourse has been distorted.

One of the most interesting areas of economic research in this regard is Joseph Stiglitz's work on asymmetric information, in which he proves that "whenever markets are incomplete and/or information is imperfect (which are true in virtually all economies), even competitive market allocation is not constrained Pareto efficient." [1] In other words, the situations where free markets are genuinely efficient rarely happen in real life.

Regardless there exists not only some vague argument that somewhat disagrees with Chakrabortty's claims but an actual mathematical proof stating inefficiency exists in cases which the author's claim are incredibly common.  The assumptions of the model have developed enough consensus in order for it to be the subject of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics[2].  He's wrong about the economic facts, and he's wrong about where he claims academic economic consensus lies.  He is also "economics leader writer for the Guardian" [3] - a sad state of affairs.

Instead of looking at the work of world leading economists and evaluating whether their publications support his false claims Chakrabortty instead cites the film Inside Job and a list of 'most downloaded academic papers'.  Not citations, not readership, nothing related to the common occurrence of economists writing for popular newspapers or magazines but paper downloads.

He claims that "toeing the mainstream economic line" brings you financial rewards.  Ignoring several books by Stiglitz that sold well, his well paid position at the World Bank, and on President Clinton's Economic Advisory council, numerous speaking engagements and consulting work.  It's not like Stiglitz is the only economist with opinions that falsify Chakrabortty's claims about needing "mainstream economics" in order to get work.  Take for example New Keynesian Economist Paul Krugman's position at the New York Times.  Even Alan Greenspan - the most famous free marketeer of our era - in a famous speech in the late 1990s described the market overvaluation of the dot com bubble to be an "Irrational exuberance" [4]  That was five years before that bubble burst.

In fact its hard to even think of an economist who is in a position of power and influence because of their economic reputation. Diatribes about how amazingly efficient the free market is in recent months have been near monopolised by wannabe Republican Presidential nominees.

Chakrabortty also claims that economists failed to spot the financial crisis.  This is another bizarre claim that gets thrown around repeatedly despite the wealth of scholarly articles pointing out the problems inherent in the banking system.  He chooses to ignore the consistent warnings from the writing of both Stiglitz and Krugman.  No mention of the 2nd edition of 'Irrational Exuberance' written by Yale Professor Robert Schiller in 2005 in which he describes how the house market bubble could lead to, "a decline in consumer and business confidence, and another, possibly worldwide, recession."  The Economist magazine claimed that "The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history," in an article two years before the crash. [5]

Of course me writing this blog post is entirely irrelevant, it's nearly impossibly unlikely that the author in question will read it.  Even if he does, his history of ignoring fact in the face of angry polemic will make it impossible for him to agree with its conclusions.  Even if he chose to think about it, he could easily provide an easily accessible ad-hominem attack to dismiss me.  I'm a fat guy, who likes pro-wrestling and used to have a mullet talking about economics on his blog that nobody except his friends read.  My opinion on the subject is about as politically relevant as a Polish Jew's opinion on human rights in the early 1940s.

In that case why write?  Well that's partially because I like to lay out and structure my thoughts properly and writing forces you to do that.  It's also partially because I feel that as a population we're done a genuine disservice by editorials such as this.  People who are in a position of influence and yet who choose to produce poorly researched and intellectually bankrupt articles such as Chakrabortty's.  It's not as though he's limited by working at a Tabloid newspaper - The Guardian doesn't need to compact its economics editorials down in order to make space for semi-nude pictures of well endowed women.  Despite this he chooses a hit piece on economists. The only way around this mentality is to work out where the truth lies yourself and try to identify both the good points and the flaws in arguments around political issues without the easy crutch of relying on a newspaper to explain things.

Chakrabortty's twitter bio [6] claims "I am gainfully employed by a newspaper. Future generations will not be able to say that."  On that issue I can't but hope that he is correct.

[0] http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/30/excessive-pay-not-bankers-acad...

[1] http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/download/papers/1986_Externali...

[2] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2001/press.html

[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/adityachakrabortty

[4] http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/1996/19961205.htm

[5] http://www.economist.com/node/4079027?story_id=4079027

[6] https://twitter.com/#!/chakrabortty

Chael Sonnen - UFC on FOX 2, 2012

Superstar Billy Graham, WWWF, 1975

Since the early 1980s NBC has running a block of comedy programming on Thursday nights.  This quickly became a ratings boon for the network, with shows such as The Cosby Show, Cheers, Seinfeld, ER and Friends actually being the #1 most watched TV show for their season. There's an inherent synergy between scheduling programs like this in a block, because you get a viewership boost from the previous show.  That's right, people are actually too lazy to change the channel if there's something similar on.

At its mid 90s peak the 'Must see TV' block regularly had 2 or 3 of the top 5 rated programs on television.  In the late 90s and early 2000s however, the strategy began to fail somewhat - Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends all finished their runs.  Joey was a major flop and many of the shows launched during 2004/5 failed to catch on.  Fortunately for NBC they turned things around as the noughties wore on, launching acclaimed comedy shows such as 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Community and, ignoring season 1, The US Office.

The Office was the linchpin of this comedy block, with the highest ratings and Steve Carell being one of the most visible stars on US TV.  Unfortunately he quit the series at the end of the last season.  I was interested in figuring out what the impact of this would be on ratings, so I've calculated the difference in average ratings between the last full season of a show before steve Carell left, and the 1/2 season shown so far.  Since 30 Rock has only had 1 episode since its return, I've chosen the equivalently placed episode (first spring season episode) from the previous season.  The viewing figures are listed in millions.

As you can see there's a pretty significant drop in ratings across all four shows.  What's interesting is that P&R has a larger drop than the Office itself, whether that's due to other factors, or simply because P&R had less viewers to begin with is open to debate.  I have no data either way.

This is somewhat relevant because Community has already been put on hiatus, with an assumption by its fanbase that it will lead to cancellation.  Parks and Recreation has very similar viewing figures, leading to concerns that it might be cancelled as well.  I'd have thought 30 Rock's acclaim being higher than the other two would lead to it continuing a little longer, but it is approaching dangerous territory ratings wise as well.

There are no longer any Thursday night NBC comedy shows within the top 50 most popular US TV Shows.

"You shouldn't be booing me - you should be booing yourselves!"

 - R-Truth (Professional Wrestler)

"Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself."

- Herman Cain (Leading Republican Presidential Candidate)

I can't help but hope that President Obama's re-election slogan is, "The best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be."

I previously posted some wrestlemania predictions, where I got some right, some wrong.  Not a great performance.  Time to have another go with the forthcoming Money in the Bank.

1. Raw MitB - Rey Mysterio vs. Alberto Del Rio vs. Kofi Kingston vs. Alex Riley vs. R-Truth vs. The Miz vs. Evan Bourne vs. Jack Swagger
Mysterio, Kofi, Riley and Bourne are faces who aren't really in line for a title shot soon.  Well maybe Kofi is, but I imagine they'd push him in some other way if they were to make him a main eventer.  I doubt R-Truth will ever really get the opportunity to be pushed to the main event at his age, and given the lack of confidence they've shown in him.  Remember this is a guy who lost his only WWE Championship match because a Little Jimmy threw water in his face.  Swagger's previous run with the belt was abruptly ended and very little has been done with him since, I'd have thought he would receive more build up if he were to win.  The Miz is a possible winner, but is currently mid-feud with Riley and probably doesn't need another MitB win.  Which leave one name ... Alberto Del Rio.  He's been talking about destiny for a while and he is the number one contender.  It makes sense and he deserves it.  PS bring back Ricardo Rodriguez (with a neck brace).

2. Smackdown MitB - Kane vs. Sin Cara vs. Daniel Bryan vs. Wade Barrett vs. Cody Rhodes vs. Justin Gabriel vs. Heath Slater vs. Sheamus

There's a lot of possibilities here.  Slater and Gabriel are basically in this match to get them on the PPV.  I wouldn't be surprised if they took each other out, leading to a feud between them, or stopped Barrett from winning, leading to a triple-threat at Summerslam.  Cody Rhodes has been performing excellently on Smackdown recently, and he's annoying enough to carry a MitB briefcase.  I'm not sure I could really see him as a viable threat to someone like Randy Orton though.  Sheamus is a former world champion, and looks and acts the part.  I don't think Kane will take it again, his run last year was a bit boring and it seemed like somewhat of a thankyou and build-up to his Undertaker feud.  Daniel Bryan hasn't really been pushed enough to become a viable main event contender.  Sin Cara has only lost one match so far in his WWE run and is clearly popular with the fans and beloved by the WWE higher echelons, but its harder for a babyface to cash in the MitB than a heal.  So I'd say there's 4 viable contenders here - Sheamus, Sin Cara, Wade Barrett and Cody Rhodes and I'd probably narrow down to Sheamus.

3.Kelly Kelly (c) vs. Brie Bella

KK retains in a boring match.  Why is this even on the pay per view?  If Brie wins, it'll be due to twin-magic.

4. Big Show vs Mark Henry

Hard match to predict.  Mark Henry has been on a role recently and looked strong.  I'd be tempted to say Big Show but he's been off tv for a bit recently and doesn't really need the win.  He came back wearing a hoodie though, so he clearly means business!  I'm expecting Mark Henry to be Orton's next challenger, see below, so he needs to go over here to be a real contender.

5. Randy Orton (c) vs Christian for the World Championship

I don't see the point in Christian winning here, and he hasn't really looked like a contender for Randy Orton so far so its no real lose for Orton to retain.  It'll be another good match from a wrestling point of view, and Christian will get a load of near falls but fail to win.

6. John Cena (c) vs CM Punk for the WWE Championship

CM Punk is leaving (allegedly).  Cena is fired if he leaves with the championship.  There's already been one Cena firing within the last year, during which he was off tv for 0 weeks.  They also ran a firing angle with several people around the Rumble.  So I'm not expecting yet another firing.  I'd also be hugely disappointed if Punk was just beaten clean by Cena, killing a promising angle dead.  So there's really two possible routes for this to take, both of which involve Vince McMahon.

Vince comes to ringside and screws CM Punk.  If this happens he'll be interviewed the following Monday and it'll involve the line "Vince McMahon didn't screw CM Punk, Punk screwed Punk."  Thats right - another Montreal Screwjob reference, and its not even survivor series or Montreal. So Vince calls for the bell to be rung with Punk in the STF, but without him tapping out.

The other option involves a MitB winner.  Punk wins, and Vince McMahon walks out with Alberto Del Rio who wins the title off Punk instantly.  A variant on this idea would be the Smackdown winner coming down to try and win the belt first, failing and then ADR coming out.  If this happens, I'd expect Cody Rhodes to win the Smackdown MitB.

With some good options, and hard to predict matches all round this should be a good PPV.

Finally today most mainstream UK newspapers started publicising that Ryan Giggs was the footballer who had obtained a super injunction and was being referred to in the media as CBT.  It is hard to know what practical effect a super injunction has, though several other people who have obtained super injunctions don't seem to be as widely known, so it has presumably worked out for them so far.  The final public disclosure has come about as a result of a disclosure in parliament, where the discloser is covered from prosecution by Parliamentary privilege.

What has been far more interesting, however, is the way that the Streisand Effect has influenced the process here.  This is when an attempt to hide information, frequently through legal means, results in it being more publicly available than it would have been before.  Over 75,000 people on Twitter have revealed the fact before it was published in the newspapers.  It is thoroughly unclear how an injunction can possibly regulate the flow of information online, and the jurisdiction when information is hosted in different countries becomes complex.  Over the last decade prosecutors have been unable, in practice, to uphold the law when it comes to copyright infringement for software and music.  Torrent sites abound, and faster consumer broadband has fueled usage.  Its even harder to stop the spread of simple textual information like this.

The week before this scandal broke, Max Mosley lost a court bid to require people be warned when a newspaper is going to reveal information about them.  This doesn't stop newspapers from publishing information, but would give people forewarning of when the information is being revealed.  This would allow the person whose privacy is being compromised to file an injunction.

People aren't the only publicly visible entities who are leaking information like a sieve - The Playstation Network (PSN) has been hacked several times over the last month.  Its an interesting ongoing issue that as people transfer more information to the cloud their ability to control the privacy of their own data is no longer their own.  Whilst I'm sure that the procedures put in place by companies in this area are, in many ways, stronger than those that individuals undertake the risk might still be increased by the nature of the target.  A private computer in someone's home may well not be serving any public data whilst organisations like Facebook and Google have many potential points of attack.  Not only this but they are a more interesting or rewarding target for any potential attacker.  This is before one even considers the potential transitive security dependencies that exist - which organisations that hold information about you store data on some cloud based service?

The past few years have seen Government organisations open up much information about their operations to the public eye as well.  Do you want to know how much your neighbour paid for their house?  Take a gander at the mashup of land registry and Bing maps that is mouseprice.com. Senior civil servant salaries?  Published.  The freedom of information act opened up more potentially sensitive information for any business that worked on a Government contract.

I'm sure some people will agree of the words of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the matter; "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."  I'm not convinced that I entirely agree with this perspective on matters. Your behaviour may be legal, publically acceptable and harmless but you may not want to have to explain to people about this behaviour.  A relevant example here is David Laws - a man who breached commons rules whilst trying to not disclose his homosexuality.  Its a tragedy that a 45 year old man feels uncomfortable admitting his sexuality to his family, but the press threatening to announce it publicly and forcing him to reveal it against his will only makes this situation worse.

That isn't to say that even the private lives of public officials necessarily have no public interest.  The Profumo affair is a notorious incident from 1963 when the Secretary of State for War was sleeping with the mistress of a Russian Spy.  Then lied to Parliament when questioned about it.  Its important to recognise though, that what the public is interested in is not the same thing as, 'The Public Interest'.  Whilst lying to Parliament about a potentially dangerous source of leaks is very definitely a wrongdoing against The Public, its hard to justify the interest in two celebrities sleeping together.

I'm yet to see a justification of why this must become public that went any further than claiming it was unfair that newspapers were unable to profit from the scandal, whilst twitter was.  If the organisations reporting this incident weren't so financially incentivised towards this line of reasoning they would rebuke it.  There was no request for twitter to be regulated of course, merely that newspapers were allowed to satiate their appetite for gossip.  The reporting hasn't been motivated by the public interest for information, but by newspaper interest for a profitable story.

When it comes to credit card information, or personal information stored in the cloud, the dividing line is even more clear.  There's little justifiable in the security breach and theft of personal information.  Sites that have been condemned for their privacy policies, such as Facebook, have been forced to change tack and allow users to lock down their information.  Despite this, the process is in no way complete, advertisers can build up an effective catalogue of information about you from your visits, and user tracking via cookies is both ubiquitous and effective.  For example I was recently visiting a Wrestling news site and being presented with adverts about programming tools!  This is before one considers the illegal and unscrupulous aspects of cloud based data storage.  What policies do Facebook put in place to limit internal spying?  Does the data protection act protect me against information stored in foreign countries?

Popular vote share for parties benefiting from First Past The Post in the last General Election:

65.1%

Vote share for First Past The Post in the referendum:

68.61%

Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention ... which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action.

- Ayn Rand

Cardiff North is a particularly interesting constitutency to live in.  At the 2005 and 2010 General Elections it was the most marginal constituency in Wales, and was taken in 2010 by the Conservatives by a margin of a mere 194 votes.  The last time that Cardiff North voted in a general election in the direction of a party who didn't win an electoral plurality was October 1974.  In a Welsh Context, however, Cardiff North is considerably less representative, with a comparatively low Plaid share of the vote, and above average wealth and Conservative voter strength.    The Voting system used for the Welsh Assembly is combines first-past-the-post directly elected members with additional members elected from a regional system.  This is an attempt to provide more proportional representation than FPTP whilst still retaining local representatives. Consequently the local assembly votes here aren't the only things to consider, there is also a Plaid candidate who I won't waste time on describing.  I hope to get round to writing some analysis of the campaign literature before the election is over, also Caveat these descriptions as being mildly tongue in cheek.

Conservative

Jonathon Morgan

Jonathon Morgan took this seat in the 2007 Assembly elections and is the incumbent, before this he was a regionally elected AM, being the youngest elected AM at the age of 24 in 1999.  Its interesting to note that regional and european government offers an alternative early route into politics comparable to a SPAD.  His campaign literature does subtley point out that he is a local resident, however this is quite subtley played and I doubt many people will realise that the Labour candidate Julie Morgan isn't.  More importantly it also offers testimonials of specific cases where he helped local people, in contrast to the bland promises of the other candidates.  All three candidates offer support for the continued green space around Llanishen Reservoir (see below) however Mr. Morgan is the only candidate of the three to tie his support to a political issue, by pointing out that the Labour-led Assembly have pushed for a requirement to build on greenfield allocated sites which Cardiff Council oppose.

Labour

Julie Morgan

Julie Morgan is the former Labour MP for Cardiff North, first elected as part of the 1997 'Blair Babes' intake. She took 50% of the vote in a previously Conservative seat at that election, and was eventually unseated in 2010 by Johna. Her parliamentary Voting Record suggests that she is domestically a Blairite, but has opposed the Iraq war and is therefore willing to contravene the leadership on a matter of principle.  I'm unclear what specific contribution she has made during her 13 years in parliament, but she has written a private members bill on Sun beds that passed through the commons!  Julie is also the wife of former First Minister for Wales Rhodri Morgan.  Despite serving this constituency as an MP and now being an AM Candidate Julie Morgan actually lives in Dinas Powys.  Her Campaign literature mentions specifically that she is 'Independent-Minded' however in the column of text below it talks about how feels the Assembly has been making steady improvements, under its Labour leadership, and that it should be continued. She is also a member of the Unite union.

Liberal Democrat

Matt Smith

It is an obviously lacklustre and underfunded Campaign that has a website full of picture, with very few (possibly only one) of the Candidate himself and that doesn't even both sending the constituents a leaflet. He also promotes the Yes! referendum campaign, a cause I strongly agree with, which suggests that he isn't really focussed on his own campaign.  He mentions several local policies, a couple of which I'm somewhat skeptical about.  Firstly I don't really see how you can viably improve disabled access to Heath High Level - its up an incredibly steep slope, and is terrible to clime by foot in winter.  Whilst the current state of Llanishen Reservoir is terrible I'm high skeptical of the ability of any of the candidates to improve the matter.  That is based on the fact that both the last two sitting MPs have opposed the development in Parliament and failed to win sufficient support, and Cardiff Council losing a Court Case on the development.  The Environment Agency have already granted a discharge license for the redevelopment to proceed. I'm all in favour of lost causes simply because they're 'The right thing to do' but surely someone seeking to be elected to a regional parliament should allocate such policies a lower level of priority on the grounds that they are speculative.  Given that there's been the loss of a High Court appeal, and the Reservoir is already drained this seems somewhat equitable to a Parliamentary Manifesto including 'Peace in the Middle East' as a key policy.

Miscellanea and Irrelevances

An easy headline for local newspapers has involved observing that both the leading candidates have the surname Morgan.  The Conservative candidate for neighbouring Cardiff Central is also called Matt Smith. Matt Smith is incredibly short.