Why Prisoners Should Be Given The Vote

My brother was talking about the whole prisoners being allowed to vote thing the other day.  I said I thought they should be allowed the vote.  He said they gave up that right when they committed the crime.  I can’t remember what answer I gave to him, but it was rubbish.  This is what I actually think.

Prisoners do not give up their rights, either at the point they commit a crime or the point they are sentenced.  We, by which I mean society, temporarily withhold certain of their rights for the period of their imprisonment.  But not all.  We do not deny prisoners three square meals a day.  We do not deny them shelter or warmth.  They can see and talk to friends and relatives.  They have access to healthcare and education.  They are able to practice their religion, whatever that may be.

So we are admitting that there are certain human rights so unassailable that they cannot be withheld, regardless of the seriousness of the crime.  So we are now into the grey area between rights which absolutely cannot be restricted and those which absolutely must be restricted, for reasons of punishment and public safety.

The rights that are generally accepted as being the values of democracy and the basic rights of all human beings are remarkably similar to those enjoyed by prisoners.  Access to education and healthcare.  Shelter, food and warmth.  Freedom to practice one’s religion.  And, of course, most importantly, the right to choose (and get rid of) one’s government through one man one vote.

We send our army around the world to fight in the name of defending and spreading democracy and human rights.  If we’re sending young men to die in their hundreds for this thing called democracy, shouldn't we be damned sure that we truly believe in it?  That the democracy we have at home is held so dear that we are willing to sacrifice young men to defend it?

Giving 80,000 prisoners the vote isn't going to swing an election.  It won’t suddenly put a party in power whose sole manifesto promise is to release all prisoners and burn down the jails.  But it may encourage some prisoners to engage with the society that in some way they have tried to destroy.  It may encourage just a small number to take an interest in issues that will affect them when they are released, and that affect their families while they remain inside.  It may encourage some to get involved in local politics or community groups when they’re out, and may discourage one or two from re-offending.

Democracy is imperfect, obviously.  But it is apathy and non-engagement that allows those imperfections to fester and grow.  Communities are better when people are engaged in contributing to, improving and maintaining them.  Countries work the same way.  We should take every opportunity to encourage engagement.  And giving the vote to a captive audience is a good start.

Resolutions - Again

New Year's Resolutions

Well, it's that time of year again (ie, the start of it) to make the same resolutions that I've made for the past gawdknowshowmany years.  So, and in no particular order, here goes:

1. Pay off student loan

It's down to c£2,200 as of 1 Jan and my focus is now on paying it off asap.  I should not still have a student loan aged 30 - no-one should!  It is entirely likely that as soon as I have sufficient cash to pay it off, I will, leaving myself with no rainy day fund and a cashflow crisis that leads to me begging, borrowing or stealing just in order to feed myself.  It will be so worth it.

2. New job, new start

This one's getting silly.  How long have I gone on about getting a new job and going to London?  Too long, that's how long.

I have to battle this feeling of, I don't know what, of being trapped, of it being too difficult.  Of thinking that I have no transferable skills and that I am pigeonholed into not just one industry, but one narrow path within that industry. Of the fact that I've made crap career choices for the past 7 years meaning I have to make crap career choices for the next 7 years too.

I want a job I'm passionate about, working with people my own age and who share my views, my attitudes, my outlook.  I love my team at the moment, but they're older than me, more Conservative than the bloody Conservatives and have little to no desire to improve things, to be better tomorrow than they are today.  But instead of me injecting that into them, I get dragged down to their level, and so end up grumpy because I'm frustrated.  And then I come home and spend the evening on my own, lonely, and miserable.

I have to stop benchmarking myself to my friendship circle, all of whom earn twice as much as me.  I'm in this mindset whereby the only way I can see to earn as much is to plough on in this job in this godforsaken industry, but it's not like that plan's worked out so far.  I need to accept that I can change industry, but that I may need to make financial sacrifices for a few years to do it.

If I loved my job, I might excel at it, and that's the route to financial success, and if it isn't, at least I'd be a bit happier.  Wow, I said it.  And if I don't have the skills to go where I want, I need to bloody well start studying until I get them.

3. Live, don't just talk about living.

I'm quite a moralistic person.  I think people should pay their taxes without groaning, that we should look after the neediest in our society, that we should do things not just for financial gain, and that we should do the right thing even if it's hard (and sometimes especially if it's hard).

I try to do that in my work, I think with some success.  I fight my superiors more than any of my colleagues to be able to do what I think is the right thing for my customers.  Sure, it doesn't always work, but that's no reason not to try.

But elsewhere in my life, I don't always back up my fine words with fine actions.  I will however try better this year.

For starters, this means changing my shopping habits. I think companies should pay tax. What Amazon et al do to minimise their tax bill may be legal, but that doesn't make it right.  They benefit from a stable political environment, a reliable, educated, healthy workforce, the roads that their parcels are delivered on, and a wealthy population to buy their goods.  These things are only possible thanks to the taxes that pay for education, healthcare and infrastructure.  If they (and their shareholders) benefit from it, they should contribute to it.  Amazon had UK sales of £4.2 billion in 2012.  Taking a conservative 10% net profit margin and a 23% rate of corporation tax would give them a tax bill of £96 million.  So why did they only pay £3 million?

I first used Amazon 12 years ago, and in that time have placed 158 orders (thanks Amazon for your meticulous record keeping).  At some point I'll take the time to add up the value of those orders, but it will be several thousand pounds.

In 2014, I am aiming to avoid using Amazon at all costs, as well as other companies that avoid paying their fair share.  This resolution will be tough.  Amazon is, sorry was, my go-to shop, so to speak.  I would rarely compare prices with anyone else.  So I will have to spend more time searching out other retailers (or, heaven forbid, actually go to a shop), and will almost certainly end up paying more.  But hopefully this will mean I think more about what I'm buying, buying only those things I really need, and therefore likely spend less overall.

And yes, I am well aware of the argument that if Amazon doesn't make a profit it doesn't have to pay any tax.  But I have two issues with this: (1) if you don't make a profit, why not be transparent about it?  Why declare UK sales of £320m for tax purposes, then admit that UK turnover was really £4.2bn, but most went through Luxembourg, a well-known tax haven?

And (2) if Amazon cuts prices to the point where they don't make a profit, but their huge buying power means that they can sell things more cheaply than their competitors before they make a loss, where does that leave us?  Their competition (and everybody competes with Amazon now - the supermarkets, the home stores, garden centres, clothes retailers, electronics retailers, my beloved bookshops, everybody) will all go under and Amazon will have achieved what so many before them - Caesar, Genghis Khan, Alexander, Hitler - tried and failed to do.  World domination.

The End

So that's it.  Three resolutions.  1, pay off student loan.  Very do-able.  2, get a job and move to London.  Incredibly difficult but necessary if I'm ever to cheer up.  And 3, live my life to the very highest moral standards, only giving my hard-earned cash to those businesses who can be trusted to do the right thing with it.  Simples.

My Euros Vision

So, I've had an idea.  In an attempt to make both the European Football Championship and the Eurovision Song Contest more appealing, I am suggesting that countries have to enter the same team/act for both.


So, Russia this year would have their granny group squaring up against Poland in the first game of the group stages and England could choose whether to have Engelbert Humperdinck as a one-man football team, or whether to have the England football team performing Three Lions at Eurovision.  Let's face it, the England team couldn't have done much worse than poor old Engelbert in Eurovision; although, to be fair, Engelbert probably has about as much chance of winning the euros as Terry, Ferdinand et al.


And the real genius of my idea?  Finally Wales will have a chance.  Only Boys Aloud, with their 150-odd members, would belt out a bloody good tune and stand a good chance at Eurovision, and could all simply hang around the goal end of the pitch making it impossible for the opposition to get through.


All rights to my idea are reserved by me but can be bought by an enterprising TV company for a very reasonable six-figure sum.


Thank you.

Interesting things what I did learn from reading History of the Present by Timothy Garton Ash:


1. Difficulty in forming democratic governments in central and eastern Europe after the fall of communism.  A single movement united against communism (eg, Solidarity in Poland) suddenly has to almost divide to form a multi-party democracy.  TGA believes the most successful countries needed a strong coalition government to drive the necessary economic changes from a collective to a market economy.


2. Talking of a former Solidarity member who once ran an underground anti-communist newspaper in Warsaw, and who now stands to make millions as the post-communist media conglomerate she helped found is floated on the stock market: "Perhaps this is the last irony of freedom's battle: the compulsory could be defied, but the voluntary may be irresistible".


3.  TGA suggests that states can only be stable with a majority of the same ethnicity, and states of mixed ethnicities - eg, Yugoslavia, Bosnia - are being torn apart through civil war and often end up being divided into smaller nation states.  Czechoslovakia is another example, although its separation in to two countries was managed peacefully.  Suggests that in order for Europe to integrate more fully (ie, through the EU), states may first have to divide into smaller nations in order to achieve peace and stability.


4. Writing in 1999, TGA suggests that Europe should focus on enlarging the EU rather than pushing on with monetary union with some countries which are "not ready for it".  "I fear the resulting strains will make Western Europe a very bad-tempered place - perhaps even worse - at some point in the next ten years".  It's 2012, so he was a few years out, but the current riots in Greece and the problems in Ireland, Portugal, Spain and others, are more than enough to vindicate his argument.

Review of 2011

Wow, didn't 2011 go fast.  It doesn't seem like 5 minutes since I was writing my statistical review of 2010.  Well, after some more geeky data mining, here's the roundup of 2011 in numbers.

Category	2010	2011	What happened dude?
Train (miles)	5,125	4,878	Only a small drop despite a much shorter commute.  Helped by some long distance train travel to far flung cities.  Like London and Manchester.
Driving (miles)	8,000	9,507	One of 2011’s resolutions was to keep the driving to a minimum.  So it looks like that totally didn’t work.  But there are a large number of work miles in there (c2,000), which are fairly unavoidable.
Walking (miles)	-	407	First year tracking this one.  Equates to over one mile a day, which was my target.
Swimming (lengths)	-	418 lengths	Equivalent to just over 10,000 metres.  Not good enough.  Got very lazy in second half of the year.
Cycling (miles)	-	161	Not bad, but was aiming for 365.  Took me a while to sort out punctures etc at start of the year.
Running (miles)	-	9	Gotta get to grips with the fact that I’m not a runner.  I just don’t enjoy it.  Not even gonna bother measuring it in 2012.
Flying (miles)	1,286	26,297	Well, flying halfway round the world to New Zealand and then back again meant this was always gonna be a big number in 2011!
Nights away	80	104	That’s right.  About 3½ months spent not sleeping in my own bed, thanks to muchos holidays and loads of weekends away.
Films	43	62	Wow, 44% more films than last year.  Suggests I am becoming more of a couch potato.  Not sure this is a good thing.
Books	30	24	Less books, but more pages overall (8,431 against 7,722 in 2010).  Reflects getting through a load of the heavy stuff that’s been sitting on my shelves for years and not simply going through PG Wodehouse!
Charity	£70	£145	Much better, but still not the 1% of net income I’m aiming for.  I said last year I would find a charity a month to give money too and obviously promptly forgot all about it.  I will do that this year.

And what would life be without some crazy predictions for the year ahead:

• Train travel up due to travelling to London more often by train
• Driving down due to looking for, applying and getting new job that involves less driving.
• Walking, swimming and cycling all to be up.  I am determined to spend more time outside exercising and to stop the ever-expanding waistline in its tracks.
• Flying: way, way down.  If only I could afford to do New Zealand two years running...
• Nights away - down to about 80 due to moving closer to friends and so spending less weekends away from home.
• Films and books - both will stay pretty much the same.  Aiming to end the year with no more than two unread books on the shelves.
• Charity - aiming for 1% of net income.  Quick fag packet calculation suggests I managed 0.6% in 2011.  Not great, but better than the c0.35% in 2010.

And finally, five aims for 2012:

1. Properly stop biting my nails.  Not even a nibble.
2. Either (i) get job in London, or (ii) failing that, quit current job and travel.
3. Save further £5,000 towards house deposit (less likely to be achieved in conjunction with Option 2 above).
4. Blog more.  At least once a month.
5. Start some sort of further education.  Either history, international relations or something environmental.

Sounds good?  It's so easy to write them down.  Pretty scary having to actually do some of them though.

Wish me luck.

John Stow

John Stow (1525-1605) was a historian best known for his Survey of London.


He is buried in the church of St Andrew Undershaft, where there is also a statue of him holding a quill.  Each year, the Lord Mayor and a distinguished historian place a new quill in Stow's stone hand, a token of the fact that the writing of London's history will never come to an end.

Lusisti satis

"Lubisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti, tempus abire tibi est" - "You have played enough, eaten enough and drunk enough; it's time to leave."


That is so going in my next resignation letter.