Josh's Blog

This is how cool Jen and I are: aged 15 (Jen) and 17 (me), before we’d even decided to go to Durham, let alone arrived and met one another, we both bought identically coloured red guitars of one type and another. She is the acoustic to my bass . To continue the similarities, neither of us can really play them, though she can strum out a few tunes while I’m not even at that level… so, we’ve been learning… or rather I have, Jen wasn’t really in the mood after our excursion yesterday.

I’m ridiculously proud to say that I can sort-of, accurately-ish, play the bass line to Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. Go me! I know it’s ridiculously easy (clearly a song made for n00bs), but even though I’ve owned the guitar for about 6 years, I’m very proud of that *sets himself up for a mocking*

Anywho, enough of that. Last weekend was my housewarming party… only small (7 of us) but it was fantastic – it was nice to be able to be able to have a proper sit down meal with every one (mm, yummy lamb), even if a couple of us were sitting on speakers due to lack of chairs… thank you to everyone who came, it was fabulous to see you all, and my house is feeling metaphorically, if not actually, warm.

Yesterday, we made good use of our matching National Trust memberships (only £21 if you’re under 26, join up, live the dream!) to visit Housesteads Fort on Hadrian’s Wall… it was very cold, though there wasn’t any snow left, which was probably a good thing. I’d never been to the wall before, it was surprising how much was still there really. I still found it  a little difficult to imagine how big it would have been, because it doesn’t look that much more imposing than the surrounding dry stone walls, but the museum bit gave lots of information that made it pretty clear that it was a formidable structure after all – as much because of the defensive ditches and peaks on either side of the wall as of the stone structure itself. Go and see it if you get the chance – Rome’s solution to the ungovernable people!

We had a 20% off day at work recently – while these are common in some retailers, M&S doesn’t usually go in for store-wide discounting as much as the competition. The last time we had a “Spectacular Day” was four years ago, so the store was absolutely rammed with people – mostly on GM, but the deal extended to wine too which meant foods was very busy as well – to the point where ten people filling the section all day couldn’t keep it full (the maximum we could get away with without crowding out customers!) It meant a very long shift for me and the other managers, but I did enjoy it. That was my first real taste of retail at Peak, so it’s a good sign.

A number of others from my intake of grads have recently left the business, where I’m really just beginning to enjoy it properly. I think a lot of that is because I’m happier being up here, and because my competitive nature is kicking in a bit more… I’m not sure how much I need to reign it in, but I’m getting good reviews at the moment, which is nice

I watched the government’s PBR this afternoon. All very interesting, and delivered masterfully by Mr. Darling. I think Osborne came on much too strongly, especially as the Tories don’t have any suggestions for what to do, but we’ll see how the media portrays their debate in the morning.

In terms of the policy, it’s a shame that VAT is effectively being kept on fuel, although with prices dropping anyway I suppose it’s not a big problem. I like the 15% VAT policy generally, especially the speed of implementation, but I’m disappointed that the changes won’t go further in reforming the tax system overall.

That said, without winning a general election with reforms as a manifesto, we probably shouldn’t go for a wholesale overhaul of taxation, however badly it is needed. I do think, though, that the reform of taxation after 2010 is the way to pay for the immediate tax cuts: a 50-60% rate for those earning over £100k, implementing a local income tax to replace the ridiculous council tax, and a freeze or cut of the 20% standard rate. I’m not sure whether the current 40% higher rate should change, but I’m inclined to think that any movement either way should be very modest.

That’s enough for now, I think.

Through all this fuss about whether MPs for Scottish constituencies should be able to vote on devolved matters in Westminster (ie, vote on laws which don’t directly affect Scotland), it’s important to note that contrary to popular belief, when counting only English MPs, Labour does currently have a (slim) overall majority. This has been carefully avoided by the media, who have reported as if England is all Tory, and Labour needs its Scottish seats to hold a majority. In fact, Labour has an overall majority even if you ignore Scotland and Wales (and they don’t field candidates in NI.) Given that English seats comprise a shade under 5/6ths of all parliamentary seats, it would be pretty damn hard to form a majority government if you didn’t have a majority in England! Labour don’t have a majority when you count total English votes, but since we don’t do that and any way of doing it (PR) would come up with completely different numbers anyway, probably pushing the government into a Lib/Lab coalition, it’s pretty irrelevant.

Here’s the numbers: of the 531 English MPs, 286 are currently Labour, 193 Conservative, 49 Liberal Democrat, and 3 of other affiliation/independent. This equates to Labour holding 53.86% of English seats in Westminster; not a large majority, but only slightly smaller than their majority of 55.2% when counting all UK constituencies.

It’s a convenient assumption, with the number of Scottish ministers we have, that Labour’s majority in Westminster only works because of the Scottish constituencies, but at the end of the day that just isn’t true. We also need to remember the fact that there are 646 UK constituencies, meaning that 82.2% of constituencies are English, making it logically impossible for England to be dictated to even by Scotland, Wales, and NI together, let alone just one of the three other nations.

Figures sourced from analysis of election results on wikipedia.com

After all the “will he, won’t he?” that followed conference, Gordon’s decision not to call an election means that I’ve now finished my internship, the wild ride that it was. I’m sure he took my continued service into account when making his decision, but had to go the way he went (and in all seriousness, did exactly the right thing, though he should have decided far earlier).

So, I’m all done, and now fully unemployed and job hunting (and signing on next week…). There is some good news though; I have an interview at UCL on Tuesday, and a possible other interview with a smaller company before too long. It’s just getting to that time when a load of my applications are shortlisting (the UCL one was one of the first I applied to in this slew), so with any luck I’ll get a few more emails soon.

So, wish me luck, and I hope you’re all OK.