And now a quick interlude to watch some Prometheus videos.  The out of story vignettes on Peter Weyland and David are interesting as worldbuilding exercises, making us excited in the Prometheus universe as a place where stories can happen rather than about this specific story – a trend I like better than the trailers for trailers idea the film also seems to have kicked off. Both videos so far have helped create a vision of the near future that's rooted in conventions of the present – either through branding or through aesthetic.

The first video gives us a TED talk by Peter Weyland in the year 2023, the video takes the TED look and feel and draws it into the future taking the trend of larger stages, bigger egos and more grandiose spiels to their logical conclusion -although I suspect that's not how it was sold to the TED people (I also like this much better as an example of modern brands in the future than the awful Nokia appearance in 2009's Star Trek).

The David Promo does something a little different, far more inspired by the past than trying to project into the future. While the graphics aren't period in quite the way the 80's Fringe intro is, the look is straight out of 70's/80's science and technology programs. The blank white walls, cutaways to algorithmic variations on the Weyland logo and the soft synth music are almost exactly the format so well parodied by Look Around You.  Some things change, others go full circle.

During the AV Campaigns evidence for the Scottish Affairs Committee, David Mowat (Conservative MP) brought up in passing the idea that devo-max could involve an element of reduction of Scottish seats in Westminster in exchange for powers, an idea that's appearing in a few places (just a few examples, this speech by John Major and this article in the Scotsman) and I thought it was worth branching off this discussion into a new post.

At one level the position is understandable, reducing seats was how historically devolution used to work with a reduction in Irish seats when home rule was introduced in 1921. The idea that seat allocation was related to national status received more systematic backing at the 1944 Speaker's Convention where the principle was agreed that there was a case for "substantial representation" of a separate nation beyond what mathematical divisions would provide.

However I'd argue that now the principle of electoral equality has now almost completely swept this approach away.

To trace the most official examples, the idea of reducing Scottish and Welsh seats pops up several times in the Justice Committee Report "Devolution: A Decade On" and the most precise formulation is cited from a Constitution Unit Report by Robert Hazell: "Towards a New Constitutional Settlement: An Agenda for Gordon Brown’s First 100 Days and Beyond":

One partial solution Gordon Brown could consider is to harmonise the electoral quotas of the four UK territories, ending English under-representation, or even to reduce the representation of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to two-thirds that of England*.

*This solution has historic precedent in that during the operation of the Northern Ireland Parliament (1922-72) Northern Ireland had 12 MPs,  rather than the 18 its population demanded.

The Justice Committee Report is a little sly in this respect, reframing this as:

The latter approach was taken when the 1922 Parliament of Northern Ireland was created, and Northern Ireland MPs were reduced to twelve. In 2005 the number of Scottish MPs was reduced from 72 to 59. (pp. 61-62)

The implication being that the 2005 reduction is another example of the principle at work in the Northern Ireland example when it's actually just a delayed consequence of the Scotland Act 1998, which I'd argue is working under quite different principles.

Now in a crude way the Act could be seen as being a 'seats for powers' transaction as it both create a devolved body and decreases seats (that link  is made pretty explicitly by that piece in the Scotsman), but the method it uses to do so is significant.

The reduction in seats removes the minimum of 71 seats and a separate Scottish quota, ending over-representation of Scotland – but the method used more represents a principle of electoral equality by syncing the Scottish electoral quota with the English quota, something that was repeated and taken further with the creation of a UK-wide quota by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011.

The trend through these changes has been an effective reduction of seats in devolved regions (or will be if the current boundary proposals are ever passed), but the justifying principle in these cases was "one person, one vote" not "seats for powers". Each successive change has been in favour of greater and stricter stress being giving to mathematical equality on constituency apportionment, so to at this point give Scotland less representation because of greater devolution would be a step backwards.

Although there's historical precedent it's worth considering that how we understand seats and apportionment has undergone enormous shifts since 1921. Today the idea that national representation should be considered is completely lacking from the law governing apportionment. It's also not at all clear it resolves the problems it's supposed to address. Is the West Lothian question really resolved by slightly fewer Scottish MPs voting on English matters? Similarly, on matters like defence and foreign affairs, there's no particular reason why Scottish voices should matter less on the issues they would still return MPs on.

As a compromise to save the union it could be a short-lived one.  In answer to a question on his presentation at the Constitution Unit Alan Trench put forward that devo-max might be an unstable position as foreign policy can often be a wedge issue  - would this situation be better or worse if Scotland had a legitimate grievance of unequal representation in crafting that policy added to it?

But on the practical side assuming an 'English votes on English issues' rule, Scottish MPs would be left with far less to do (especially if their ability to sit on committees is restricted) and their non-voting functions probably could be done by fewer MPs. If so reducing their number would seem to be a good idea not only to avoid waste, but to ensure the job is still active enough to attract good candidates. But how can this be done while still respecting voter equality?

The solution is to separate the idea of an MP's vote from their physical person. Scottish voters are entitled to have their votes weighed the same as those in the other nations – but Scottish MPs don't need to have the same voting power as other MPs. The voting power of Scottish MPs could be increased to allow both a reduction in numbers and also preserve mathematical equality (for a reduction of 2/3 this would give Scottish MPs a vote worth one and a half their current vote, and so on).

Weighted voting isn't a new idea in principle but it's one that's rarely been used in the UK – I think it's a good one to think more about in this case as it allows respect for both voter equality and the fact that more devolution will have practical effects at Westminster.

I've been listening to lots of interesting comments on the Independence Referendum debate recently and thought it was probably worth getting all my notes somewhere in a coherent form. I've shied away from developments on the substance of independence or devolution towards issues relating the process and form of the referendum itself (and the post is large enough just focusing on those questions). The following is based on an event at the Constitution Unit with Prof. Robert Hazell and Alan Trench and two panels before the Scottish Affairs Committee, one quizzing academics (for the purposes of this post, Panel A) and the other quizzing both sides of the AV campaign (Panel B).

Panel A:

Panel B:

I've also included some brief comments from the Electoral Commission evidence, but for the most part the debate has changed enough to make much of that session irrelevant.

Role of the Electoral Commission

The general consensus from Panels A & B that the currently proposed question is unfair, but Curtice points out that Electoral Commission corrections haven't always been completely unobjectionable so wouldn't go as far as to make the commission's comments on questions binding. Along those lines Norton argued it'd be unnecessary as proceeding with a question the Electoral Commission had labelled dodgy would be a gift to the disadvantaged campaign anyway so sufficient political incentives exist without mandating use of the electoral commission formulation.  Kellner made the case that the question doesn't actually make that much difference, something interesting for a pollster to say as question effects can have a large effect on how people answer.  However I can see there being a case for not applying polling logic to referenda as most voters will be exposed to the campaigns long before the ballot and so question-wording effects could be far less strong than in polling.  He argued what was far more important was that the question be perceived to be fair, and the Electoral Commission role in this regard is creating demonstrable justice rather than creating an unproblematic question.

There was a general feeling in panel A however that in the event of referendum where there might be other contentious structural issues other than the question (such as the form of questions and counting system to choose between three or more options) that the commission's advisory role should be expanded to include those issues. In Panel B there was opposition to the idea of the electoral commission producing more material, with both sides pointing out they objected to the neutral material during the AV campaign. Sullivan argued that it probably wasn't cost-effective and the money might be better spent on more broadcasts – which Elliot argued there should be more of, but shorter to fit in better with how people understand adverts.

Does a 'yes/no' format matter?

The former Scottish First Minister Lord McConnell has suggested that votes should select from duelling statements (i.e. something like 'Scotland should be an independent country", 'Scotland should remain part of the UK") rather than answering a yes/no question to deprive the SNP of the advantage of running a 'yes' campaign, but from the AV teams there wasn't an impression that this was hugely important. Elliot argued that actually yes/no isn't hugely important (or at least that slanting is variable on economic conditions and national mood rather than an inherent bias either way) and the debate can still be defined in those terms even if the question isn't, with the example of how the 1997 Scottish referendum was covered by the media as a yes/no campaign despite it a question of duelling statements. Sullivan thought that the big difference was 'change/status quo' which exists however the question is worded, and that the advantage will rest with the status quo. The take away message here being that there probably isn't a lot of point in trying to avoid a 'yes/no' question.

Should there be multiple options?

Kellner said it would be 'perverse' if some kind of devo-max wasn't an option and as Bogdanor nicely put it "it'd be very odd that an instrument designed to discover what Scottish people think should exclude the option that they most favour". Trench argued that most Scots want around 65% change which is closer to independence than not, so it could well in the unionist's interests to put forward a devolution option and that the current Unionist pursuit of a 'jam tomorrow' option where a No vote on independence would be rewarded with further devolution could well run into a credibility problem as the recommendations of Calman Commission have yet to pass into law – giving a bad record for the UK government's ability to proactively manage further devolution.

There's a related point that even if there's only one question on the ballot, there's still a decent case to be made for having multiple referendums on that single question. As it was unlikely that negotiations or consensus on indepedence or even agreement on certain flavours of devolution could be reached before the vote (although Kellner pointed out, a lot of it will become apparent within the campaign) Panel A were quite keen on the need for two referendums, one enabling negotiations and another post-negotiations binding referendum for agreement to terms and Trench similarly supports this. In Panel B, Sullivan indicated that the ERS wasn't wholly supportive of that (or at least, much less than their evidence would suggest).

Panel A raised concerns about the content of Devo-Max, mainly that it's as yet ill-defined and needs to be more so before the referendum (the arrival of devo-plus on the scene may or may not change this situation). Bogdanor put forward that if it's an option it not only needs to be defined but needs to be shown what is on offer is genuinely an option from Westminster. Noton pointed out that the North-East devolution, welsh powers and AV referendums had outcomes that were well-known and thought out before the election. He argues that it's fundamentally a unionist proposal and it's up to the unionist side to define it (which raises the question of who's actually for the status quo, but we'll get to that in a bit).  McLean again argued that it isn't realistic for all the negotiations to happen ahead of time, hence the idea of a second confirming referendum.

Ghose and Sullivan agreed that a three option referendum could probably have three campaigns, which brings up the issue that the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000  (PPERA) has an 'all or nothing' rule for having a designated lead campaign, something that could be interesting in a three-way referendum as it's not at all clear who the groups that would argue for each option would be – you'd expect a common unionist position to emerge and it's not clear if that would be devo-max or the status quo. Depending on the exact details of a devolution option, there might of course be a three-way split but in the event that this doesn't happen it's not clear if any lead campaigns are allowed (Referendum legislation could of course amend PPERA to allow a minimum of two).

How should a multi-question referendum be conducted?

In terms of precedent, the New Zealand electoral system referendum was mentioned by Kelner, Sullivan and Hazell as an example of how a multi-option referedum might be conducted. This is is one sense good precedent being a multi-option referendum from a Westminster style parliamentary democracy, but as it's the example that comes up again and again it does illustrate that this is relatively new ground and the door is open for pretty much anything to happen here and create precedent. Kellner also pointed out the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum was effectively a three option vote, so it's not completely without UK precedent, although in this case all three camps would stronger options. Similarly Norton brought up the North East 2004 referendum as an example but also pointed out as the second question was a subsidiary question, all campaigning focused on the first question.

The SNP's double question (the problems with which I went into here) seems to have mostly gone away at this point and Panel A were divided on the best way to go foward. Kellner has previously written something helpful about the five possible ways of doing this and he and McLean both favoured a ballot that allowed people to rank '1' and '2' which is then counted by the Condorcet method. In the unlikely event of a Condorcet loop, McLean would want something in the referendum legislation to deal with it and suggests defaulting to the status quo. Bogdanor suggested a three option ballot with a later run-off election and Curtice a gateway question approach, with the first question giving a choice for independence and if that fails, question two giving the choice between status quo and devo max.  The ERS favours a different gateway question, with the first being a question about change in principle, the second then being a choice between the two change options.

As Alan Reid called Sullivan on, the problem with the ERS question is it only allows the status quo to a voter's first or last preference and 'Devo Max, status quo, independence' is a perfectly likely ordering (and such a voter could end up empowering their least favoured option by voting in accordance with their most) – a similar problem holds for Curtice (it's the flaw of the gateway question in principle) but in this case it's independence that can only be placed first or last, something that's possibly more in key with actual preferences. McLean and Kellner were opposed to runoffs and AV on the grounds that an option like Devo Max could be the Condorcet winner and the consensus choice but if it came third in the first round it'd be removed. Panel B very briefly ventured onto this territory giving us the memorable moment of a former member of the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign saying  'it wouldn't work' but alas they didn't go further into it. Trench questioned if you could get a mandate from preferential voting, but this would presumably be less of an issue with a run-off referendum.

Election Timing

Bogdanor argues that the referendum should happen sooner rather than later as the issues aren't that complicated and the continued uncertainty could be causing economic damage (a point he'd repeat from the audience at the Con Unit). McLean argued in response that the biggest economic issue is currency for Scotland's large financial industry – and that this is an issue that could be addressed (and there is incentive for both sides to do so) well before the referendum, making timing less of an issue.

Hazell disagreed with Bogdanor that economic grounds were enough to justify Westminster interference in picking a date, and argued that there are two legitimate concerns for the UK government regarding the time – avoiding a day that clashes with another election, and also one that would come close to the next general election as this would create constitutional awkwardness in the event of a vote for independence if a general election occurred between the yes vote and independence – Scottish MPs would be returned and potentially help form a government before disappearing again.

This suggests that a date should be picked with regard to being able to wrap up potential negotiations before May 2015 – however the assumption here is that the fixed parliament will last that long  - over at the LSE Politics and Policy blog Patrick Dunleavy is not at all convinced that the coalition will go the distance, expecting a dissolution and Conservative and Labour agreement on an early election sometime in 2014 – in which case it's probably too late to avoid the problem above. However this exact question and an ongoing referendum through 2014 might actually either reinforce the coalition or at least create disincentives for Labour to agree to dissolve parliament (Keeping Scotland in the union is strongly in the party's interest and may deplete campaigning funds to an extent that they don't want to run a general election the same year) and hence make the coalition more likely to run it's full course – so it's possibly everything cancels out here.

On a related time issue is the length of control period and the campaign in general, which there was a general consensus in panel B that a longer period was better and that the campaign needed at least twelve months.  Norton argued that 10 weeks control period simply wasn't enough time to deal with the practicalities and time taken along the critical path to the free post mailshots – in 2004 his campaign almost missed the deadline and the NotoAV campaign this time around started printing before they were officially the designated campaign. The main problem (that's probably unresolvable) with referenda as opposed to Scottish parliament elections (and now possibly Westminster) is there's no fixed time for the election to work towards and there’s an incentive to do what the SNP are doing and have a long pre-legislation period (still  a year to go before that according to their timetable) where campaign actions can’t be monitored because there’s officially nothing to campaign about going on.

Franchise

Bogdanor thinks the voting age should be 16, but that referenda shouldn't be special and the existing franchise should apply. Curtice argues that changing the francise would be opening a can of worms in terms of ideas about nationality and that  it'd be technically difficult to get people on the register anyway. Andrew Scallan (Director of Electoral Administration at The Electoral Commission) spent a long time not wanting to give a precise answer as to how long the process of expanding the registers would take (more than week, less than a year) but did suggest the best scenario would be legislation in the summer followed by a household canvas in the Autumn, but at other times of year the process might be more difficult/result in a less complete register.

Interestingly as it's a local government francise EU citizens would be able to vote but as typically they're bared from national elections (which elections for a Scottish parliament would become in the event of an independence win) means that they could effectively vote to remove their own representation. Curtice points out however that they're unlikely to vote at all so it's a bit of a moot point.

Reduction of Westminster MPs

Status of rest of UK

The role of the rest of the UK in this decision is variable on outcome, Mclean argues that Scotland could declare independence unilateral but could not declare devo max unilateral, as devolution would be a gift of powers from Westminster. This distinction is less than it seems though as the kind of independence that the SNP describes includes some quite complex inter-dependence that would similarly require UK consent. Trench said that a referendum on devo-max could include the rest of the UK  (I think I'd be correct in describing his view as falling far shorter than 'should'), Hazell was content that it could be negotiated by the government. If the precedent in general has been for referendums to devolve powers, the precedent is also that only the affected region votes.

Will the English bomb Scottish airports?

No one brought up this pressing issue.

While Battlestar Galactica is seen as the sci-fi show that is most clearly a thematic reaction to 9/11 and the 'post 9/11 world' (complaints about how it's ripped from the headlines nature negate it's own ability to world-build notwithstanding), something I've started to noticed is sci-fi shows using the imagery of 9/11 in a distinctive way quite separated from delving into the events themselves.  One of most famous reveals in cinematic sci-fi is from The Planet of the Apes, where Charton Heston finds the Statue of Liberty buried in the beach and realises this place that he thought was an alien wilderness is in fact all too familiar. What’s cropping up in a few places now is the World Trade Center working as the reverse of that, a reveal of a New York landmark that shows you have left the familiar and entered a strange, unsettling place.

In both Fringe and the US-remake of Life on Mars, the presence of the World Trade Center serves this function, solidifying that characters have entered a strange new world. In Life on Mars, Sam Tyler seeing the intact WTC is the crown of the accident sequence, finishing his transition to the alien world of yesterday.

A major feature of Fringe is the presence of an alternate universe that is fundamentally both similar and different to our own.  At the end of the first season of Fringe, Olivia has travelled to meet the enigmatic William Bell only to whisked away to somewhere else – the final shot of the series revealing she has travelled to the other universe and to an office in a still-standing alternate version of the World Trade Center.  While the difference in the events of 9/11 are far from the only feature separating the universes (there’s something interesting about growing numbers of alternate universes with zeppelins but anyway) it’s used as a continuing touchstone for stories involving the other universe; the repeated use of the NY skyline, an architect from ‘Other There’ caught in a fringe event was designing the New Pentagon, Peter’s visit to a possible future has him arriving at the base of a completed Freedom Tower, the ‘amber-blue’ Lincoln Lee on crossing over for the first time doesn't think the other universe seems that different until he gets his first look at the twin towers – showing him even though the place is superficially familiar it is deeply alien.

With their shape they invoke another icon of classic sci-fi: the monolith. When I first thought about this I dismissed it as a bit of a trite comparison between two things that happen to be cuboids – but the way they're used is actually quite similar; they're deployed as a symbol of strangeness beyond understanding, something that couldn't possibly exist and yet does.

That the past is many ways a different planet is part of the fundamental conceit of Life on Mars and for all the discussion of whether 9/11 really did "change everything", it's interesting to see how quickly it's entered the sci-fi repertoire as part of how we describe an utterly alien world.

One thing that's not being appreciated enough (because it's only exciting to a certain kind of wonk) is how the debates about a Scottish Independence referendum are systematically going through every disputed concept in the idea of elections. When is the vote? About what? How will they vote? Especially disputed is the question of who should vote: All affected interests? By geography? By blood? And now there's also the question of if people younger than 18 should be given a say in their national future. If this goes anywhere, it would be the first UK referendum which expands rather than contracts the electorate (and would require the development of a separate voting register for this election which might be interesting).

The one thing still off-limit is the idea that all voters should count equally – a rule I'll argue further down that breaking would actually provide quite a neat solution to the problem of lowering the voting age – but first let's go into the normal arguments for a bit. Here we have Angela Constance making the case for letting 16 -and 17-year-olds vote:

After all, if a 16 year old in Scotland can join the army, get married and pay taxes – surely he or she should be able to have a say in this country’s future? That is why in the consultation Your Scotland, Your Referendum, we are seeking views on extending the right to vote in this referendum to 16 and 17 year olds who are eligible to be included on the electoral register.

This is the usual trio brought up to demonstrate the unfairness of the current voting age. The object here is to show that we are in some way being inconsistent in handling the maturity of 16 year olds without relying on the slippery slope of 'maturity'. In Scotland the marriage thing holds (In England and Wales there's a parental consent requirement below 18) but the army item has gotten more tenuous as although 16 year olds can join the army they're not actually allowed to deploy anywhere till they're 18.

The tax argument is worth going into. The idea that there's a connection between taxation and representation is an old one but not necessarily a particularly good one to demonstrate inconsistency – being consistent on it would require us to do far more than allow 16-year-olds to vote. For a start, we actually let children pay taxes far earlier than 16, any time a child saves up and buys anything with VAT they're tax-payers. True at 16 someone can work full time and pay income tax, but there's no real reason to connect this kind of tax to the franchise and no other. From the other end we don't take away the right to vote from adult unemployed people or those in full-time education who similarly have the potential to be tax-payers but aren't. To be consistent, if it's the ability to pay tax that's important we must enfranchise anyone who can earn and spend anything, or if we are treating income tax as a special case then we need to disenfranchise anyone who is not paying income tax (in which case the Lib Dem policy of raising the personal threshold wouldn't be a way of relieving the tax burden on the poorest but a sneaky way of disenfranchising them).

What this argument is basically getting at is the idea that we have a norm for granting a set of rights at 16 and voting rights should be included in it. This is a helpful argument for advocates of lowering the voting age because it allows an appeal to precedent and doesn't rely directly on the nebulous idea of 'maturity' – a problematic idea because there's inevitably only a small difference between each age cohort making it hard to draw the process to a stop (if we let 18 year olds, why not 17? And if them why not 16? And if them, why not… and so on).

The trouble with this is that it's hard to see why this logic doesn't also apply to any other right gained at 18. The basic challenge of 'we grant right X at 16, how is it just that we grant right Y at 18?' applies to all of them. If children are considered mature enough to have opinions on keeping Trident, why shouldn't they be allowed to buy fireworks? Taken to it's conclusion this is saying is that adulthood begins at 16, not that children should vote.

There's not necessarily anything wrong with this idea, a society based on this would be different but not unthinkable, but accepting this puts an end to the idea of graduated maturity. Andrew Rehfeld argues that the defining feature of childhood maturity isn't that it is or isn't present but that it is 'in development' and I think this chimes with how many people instinctively feel about the subject. Many 16 year olds are on average probably mature enough to be citizens, but 18 year olds are on average more so and 14-year-olds on average less so – hence a structure that grants legal rights at intervals and removes qualifications on rights as a person ages seems to fit nicely into this. So given this, how should voting rights be handled? Highest bundle? Lowest? Rehfeld leans on the idea of California state senator John Vasconcellos, who argued that rather than debate at which point we turn on voting rights, we should do it gradually and give fractional votes to citizens under the age of 18.

Rehfeld actually goes far further than most child voting supporters, not simply arguing that 16-year-olds should have half a vote until they turn 18, but that we should go far lower and each year from 12 a person should gain 1/7 of a vote until they have their full vote at 18 (Vasconcellos's fractions were different but same basic idea). Now I'd actually be happy to go as low as 10, but the basic idea of gradualism I think is a good one because it sidesteps the problem of a 'race to the bottom' above as this approach reflects differences in maturity rather than similarities. Practically the vote count would be different but not unmanageable and could still be done with a hand count – at it's most basic you could use separate registers for each birth year, colour-code the voting slips and then count these votes separate from the main piles. Counting the different cohorts in series would add little difficulty over simply increasing the number of voters.

Now that some people should have greater voting power than others is a commonly-had and commonly-rejected idea. Ultimately that each person has one vote is a compromise, as any other scheme arguing that certain citizens are wiser and so should have greater voting powers would not be generally accepted and so would undermine rather than enrich the democratic process. I think children are a special case in this sense as the fractional vote represents a process rather than permanent division. It's not an argument that a certain race or gender's votes are worth less, or that any particular qualification should give more voting power – simply that children start off immature and progress towards maturity and they should have a voting power that reflects this reality. It allows for what I think is a reasonably common sense view on the maturity of children to be expressed, while at the same time recognizing that children represent real interests (that are distinct from any other group) and should have a say in matters.

Even as a reduced voting block this would still introduce a sizeable number of people to the electorate so the result is far from a token vote, and as a result children would grow and be socialized into citizenship rather than having it thrust on them all at once. This is a more radical approach than votes at 16, but I think it ultimately accomplishes the same aims better and – rather than creating a new voting age with the same justifications waiting in the wings to lower it again – would create a future-proof framework for dealing with child voters. Best case, this gives us a political system more tuned to the needs and concerns of the young (and by proxy, future generations) and more children who enter adulthood as politically aware individuals. Worst case, we add a few more voters to the large number who already have no idea what they're doing.  On the basis of that highly slanted weighing up of the facts, it'd be silly not to think about it.

Little bit of site business, talking with the other contributors this has never really taken off as a group blog so from this point on it's pretty much going to be a solo ship, old posts will stay up and there may or may not the occasional guest appearances. Mostly as that's what's been happening anyway there's no real chance in focus, it's all elections and Doctor Who from this point out (as well as all the other stuff).

Last week, this video emerged on the Internet of Boris Johnson being chased outside City Hall by a man in a chicken suit:

As it turns out this chicken isn't even chasing the actual Boris, giving us a man wearing a chicken suit chasing a man dressed a man with a fake blonde wig, being filmed with a shaky camera for authenticity. It's a strange world we live in, but stranger still is that following politicians while wearing chicken-suits has a long and proud history.  As far as I can tell, it started in America when Gerald Ford addressed the chicken mascot of a local radio station while on campaign – a New York Times reporter then promptly bought the costume off the station and showed up to a press event in it as a prank (video here).

The chicken then went dormant for a while, reappearing in 1992 working for Clinton (great illustration in that article) as 'Chicken George', but this time around the chicken had a political objective. The job of this chicken was hound George H. W. Bush for stonewalling debate negotiations and this has been a recurring use of chicken suits since. This version of the chicken I'm assuming is the inspiration for events in season 6 of the West Wing where Josh Lyman similarly deploys volunteers in chicken suits to hound opponents who wouldn't debate his candidate.

The Chicken crossed the Atlantic for the 1997 election, giving us the 'Tory Chicken', who followed Tony Blair to highlight that he had declined to debate John Major. For some reason this triggered a previously unknown British capacity for animal-suit politics, spawning a fox to chase the chicken off and a rhinoceros opposed to the idea of animal suits entirely:

The chicken was to follow the Labour leader, who was campaigning in the marginal Tory seat held by Michael Forsyth, the Scottish Secretary. However, his efforts to henpeck Mr Blair were hampered by a man from the Scottish Daily Mirror dressed as Freddy the Fox, who blocked his path during a 15-minute walkabout.

As Mr Blair approached, the chicken was seen to stumble and was pushed to the back of the crowd surrounding the Labour leader, where it waved a placard before skulking off. A jubilant Freddy observed: "I had him for dinner. I stopped him getting anywhere near Tony. Tony shook my hand and thanked me for it."

However, Mr Blair's guardian refused to identify himself, saying: "The whole thing is embarrassing enough as it is." The incident came at the end of a traumatic day for the Tory chicken. Earlier, he got into a nasty fight with a rival chicken with a detachable head, sent by the Mirror newspaper, as he strutted across College Green in Westminster. He was also pursued across London by another fox, two teddy bears and a plastic rhinoceros.

That whole article is worth a read if only for the full description of the Chicken's fight with the Mirror Chicken (the Mirror would go on to send another chicken after Cameron, Clegg and probably others in the 2010 election). Daniel Finkelstein has a good story about having to keep the Chicken motivated during the campaign, but it's sadly now lost behind the Times paywall. In happier news, here's the story of it's visit to Edinburgh.

Chickens have also popped up in Canadian provincial elections so there's a fair chance I've missed several chicken sightings but the idea of using chickens to draw attention to lack of debates (and assign blame) seem to be a recurring thing here. Given this back story, what do we make of this latest chicken?  That the real Boris doesn't even appear in Ken's chicken's videos so far (and that it's not explained in video why there's a chicken) is interesting as the chicken usually tries to muscle in on it's target's event and steal the focus. Is chasing fake Boris a sign of laziness or a sign that the media landscape is changing and our use of chicken suits with it?  Do we now understanding a chicken suit as short-hand for dodging debates? Or does the lack of context of the clip reflect the changing face of media, that it's now better to get a short and intriguing video on the internet and draw people to your site than to try and worm in at your opponent's own media events?

For entirely unrelated reasons, you can't vote in a chicken-suit in Nevada.

(Warning: This is a long post about a mostly theoretical problem with the Oscars selection process. Viewer discretion advised.)

The Oscars are now only about a month away and the nominations are out, with 9 films nominated for Best Picture rather than 10. Being far more an elections nerd than film nerd, the change in the rules that allows this is more interesting to me than the actual results. The view of the academy that led to the change is  that it’s not necessarily the only job of the nomination process to do a good job of aggregating the preferences of it’s members but also that any film nominated should have some claim to be an outstanding film worthy of the honour (and in any given year there might be a different number of films that qualify). Given this we get a new Rule 2 for the Best Picture Nominations:

The BBC reports that Westminster is claiming a Scottish independence referendum wouldn't be able to use the full electoral roll, which seems a bit strange:

Scotland Office Minister David Mundell said: "The UK government has set out very clearly that the Scottish government cannot legislate lawfully for a referendum with its current powers.

"The full electoral register can only be used for specific purposes such as the general or Holyrood elections.

"The legal position is clear – if the SNP attempts to go ahead with its own referendum then it will be nothing more than an opinion poll, with a million Scots unable to be asked for their view."

If true this means many potential voters could be excluded as they're not on the publicly available (reduced) register. As a layman I've had a quick skim of some of the acts related to the electoral register and according to the explanatory note of the Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2002:

A copy of the full version of the register may not be supplied by a registration officer otherwise than in accordance with an enactment (which, by virtue of the definition in inserted regulation 92(2), includes subordinate legislation) including the principal Regulations (inserted regulation 94(3)).

The effect of which includes an enactment to be  'any provision of, or of any instrument made under, an Act of the Scottish Parliament' via the Representation of the People Act 2000.  Which, again I might be misreading, I take to mean the Scottish Parliament can in principle have referenda using the electoral roll. If they can use it for even a non-binding question about a reserved power is contested.

As Matt Qvortrup sort of argues in the Scotsman, the international recognition of self-determination (which I think is less strong than he suggests, but going with it) would likely mean in the event that Scotland holds a democratically legitimate but illegal referendum, it would likely have to be recognised by Westminster – which is why moves to de-legitimize the potential vote by arguing people will be excluded make sense, and as I've said before the SNP should be careful to avoid ambiguous questions that give rise to these kinds of challenges.

Update: Ah, clearer copy of SNP statement that seems to support my point.

However a spokesperson for the Scottish government rejected Mr Mundell's and noted that the referendum would be carried out after the appropriate legislation was passed at Holyrood, ensuring full access to the register.

Building blocks and displacement

Public Hearings and political effects

As boundary matters are decided in the UK by the apolitical Boundary Commission, what happens is whenever we have a debate about apportionment it rapidly becomes a debate about competing metrics of fairness, where each side just so happens to align with the position that's seen to result in a better deal for them. Natural population movement tends to lead to more boundaries that favour Labour over time and so in general Labour has been opposed both to frequent redistributions and now, very clearly, stricter equalisation. It's not a coincidence that it's the same party that postponed the acceptance of new boundaries until after the election in 1969 is now dragging it's feet in the Lords but equally the Conservative position isn't much deeper, if situations were reversed I've no doubt we'd see the same in the other direction. However, that a position has political advantages doesn't stop it being a correct one.

…

It's interesting that one of concessions given in the Lords seems to be the return of public inquiries as I thought that removing them was one of the more interesting elements of the plan. Public inquiries have a number of issues, they make the process very time consuming (which is an issue if we're going to have to have a review every parliament), tend to increase deviations from the quota size, but most importantly public inquires are one of the few ways for political parties to influence the decision of the Boundary Commission. What you sometimes get is that political parties will show up at the Inquiry with alternate plans, which as long as they fulfil the commission's criteria better than the Commission's own plan it has no grounds to reject on the basis that it's more partisan¹ . Being apolitical means it can't consider the political consequences of it's work, this is far from saying there are none. Given the inherent political nature of their work, Richard Morill makes the interesting argument that political ends should be directly considered by apportionment bodies and that they should set out to create certain numbers of safe and marginal seats rather than pretending it's work has no impact on these questions, but it's hard to see this view gaining much currency in British circles.

Relationship to electoral system