MP's diary entries and expenses

I am currently reading the third of the Alan Clark Diaries (Called The Last Diaries) and found an interesting entry early on. It is on p8 of the 2003 paperback edition. It is revealing of Alan Clark's attitudes.

MoD, Thursday, 28 February [1991]

There is now talk of a General Election in June. Just time to claim, massively, some allowances out of 91-92!

[I have removed the rest of the entry, but it doesn't change the meaning.]

I doubt anyone would be surprised by that! Clark's diaries are amazing reading and easily obtained second hand.

Another interesting quote is in Chris Mullin's diary. I think this one shows how easy it is for people to end up becoming part of an institution.

Wednesday, 1 May [2002]

Andrew Mackinlay dropped a little bombshell at this afternoon's meeting of the parliamentary committee. Apparently, under the Freedom of Information Act, by January 2005 MP's expenses will be subject to public scrutiny, retrospectively. Goodness knows what mischief that will cause. 'We are in a jam,' said Robin Cook. 'Few members have yet tumbled to the juggernaut heading their way.' He said he had been advised that we could probably get away with publishing headline figures and it would be desirable to start publishing a year before the deadline so that any fuss would have died down come the general election. It was agreed not to minute the discussion.

[My emphasis and I have removed a second unrelated paragraph from the entry. p284-5 of the hardback first edition. The Parliamntary Committee mentioned is a Labour Party committee to allow backbenchers and the government to stay in touch (see the preface and p226).]

I have a lot of respect for Mullin but this isn't good. I will be careful to note that he doesn't record his view on this, merely reports the committee results, but it is fair to note that he didn't kick off a stink about the decision. It is clear he knew that the claims had issues ("mischief" would result, a "juggernaut", the expectation of "fuss") and agreed to conceal both this (headline only) and the discussion (minutes).

I think what this shows is how easy it is to become loyal to institutions and organisations when you belong to them however honourable and independent you may be.

I am surprised this passage hasn't been picked up on more.

Sympathy for a Tory MP

OK, maybe it is a sign of encroaching Coalition think but... (The symptoms are similar to those members of the Labour party who'd defend everything the last Labour government do, and now accuse LibDems of betraying "progressive" politics.)

Various places ran stories like this one about Dominic Raab. The claim is that he is refusing to take emails from constituents.

The tone is outraged, and they provide his email address as a link to encourage you to share your outrage with him. You are meant to think "how dare he hide from his constituents".

I think I would have ignored the story if it wasn't for childish inclusion of email address in these posts.

The first problem is... it is up to him and his constituents. They elected him and get to kick him out. That is the system. So noting the hypocricy of me commenting on this having observed it is nothing to do with me, we move on.

Secondly it isn't true that you can't contact him. I checked his website, and he provides a way to email him. Albeit an irritating one. There is also a contact email address for his consituency party which I am sure would be bounced to his office. From reading his blog I see the form was added in response to the furore. However this does show he is willing to be contacted.

Third 38 Degrees are just plain rude. They Work For You gave an example of how to do this politely. An MP asked not to get faxes or emails via the site, and they honoured this. People who tried to went to a page that told them the MP had asked for this and gave his postal address. I think the MP in question was wrong to do this, but it was up to his constituents.

Next, reading the quote on LFF Mr Raab didn't say no email from constituents, just no prepackaged email from a pressure group. Another way of saying this is that they twisted the facts. They said his publishing his address was enough to let them off the hook. I disagree, and observe that this is the claim of Spammers throughout the world. The address is not being used for the purpose it was published. But that doesn't matter in the world of twitter: as what has been tweeted world over is the headline.

Fifth the parliamentary email address is for parliamentary business. He needs to be able to see what is urgent in that inbox. I guess Parliamentary IT or Mr Raab are not up to filtering! If the pressure groups are stopping him doing his work, and the nuisance of the fake indignation of bloggers and tweeters.

However, Mr Raab was (at best) naive to do this. It is bad politics, and he should have seen it coming. He assumed that a pressure group wouldn't want to raise publicity for their causes. How does someone as intelligent as Mr Raab clearly is not spot the problem in that.

To be honest the best approach is to publish a casework email address that goes to his office or to filter the email to parliament to send it to the office. (The office can then send replies.) It'd be hard to object to an email saying "please send these to my office address" if that was the approach taken. This is a problem with a trivial technological solution that doesn't have political implications. There should be IT support for new MPs to fix these problems.

If you want a thought through response from an MP send a personal letter/email. Otherwise they will bounce you a standard reply from their party. I am sure the fake indignation brigade will rise to this, but if you put in no effort why should they? A candidate I spoke to in a no-hope seat told me that his email inbox bulged and he could spend all his time responding. In a winable seat it must be even worse.

What I read on my holiday... Riddles in Mathematics

Riddles in Mathematics: A Book of Paradoxes is a popular mathematics book written in 1944, revised in 1961. I purchased a 1975 reprint at Hay, and finally got round to reading it on holiday.

It is good fun, if a little dry and could be accused of being a little like a text book: there is a discussion, and couple of examples and then some paradoxes for you to resolve (or exercises). To get the most out of the book you do need to engage with the maths: you'll need pencil and paper and a willingness to get your algebra out.

The dated bits are in geometry: sadly Euclidean proof has dropped off the school curriculum (in favour of more statistics). I think there is nothing in the section that isn't in GCSE Maths, but probably in a different style. Also the four colour theorem has now been proved, albeit in an aesthetically unsatisfactory way.

The chapter on the infinite is great, and the chapter on probability has provoked me to get Grimmett and Walsh out to revise my probability.

A couple of my favourite paradoxes. Firstly one from p169 that I've put into steps and changed slightly.

1. If something has probability 0 it is impossible.
2. It is known there are an infinite number of primes
3. We only know a finite number of them (the highest known prime has just under thirteen million digits). Call it P.
4. The probability of picking a known prime is P dividied by the number of primes.
5. Any finite number divided by infinity is 0.
6. Therefore the probability that an arbitrary prime is known is 0.
7. Therefore it is impossible that an arbitrary prime is known.
8. Therefore there are no known primes

A round of applause to anyone who can pick the (many) holes in that. It is the same basic construction as Douglas Adam's proof that the population of the universe is 0.

Also worth a look are the geometric probabilities (p172-3).

Some good ol' algebraic sleight of hand is included, like this from p86:

1. Let b and c be two different positive numbers.
2. Let a = b + c. Note a must be greater than b.
3. Multiply by (a-b) to get a^2 - ab = ab - b^2 + ac - bc
4. Take off ac: a^2 - ab - ac = ab - b^2 - bc
5. Factorise: a(a-b-c) = b (a-b-c)
6. Divide by a-b-c to get a = b, but this contradicts a being bigger than c. So any two different numbers are the same (chose to be c=a-b)
7. In fact as b+c=a we have b+c=b, which means c=0.
8. But c was an arbitrary positive numbers, so all arbitrary positive numbers are 0!

Again a round of applause to those who can hit that one into touch. A bit easier I think.

I think you'd need to be a bit odd to enjoy the book: you'd need solid secondary school mathematics, and a willingness to play with the maths. Like me.

Both the Premier League and I am back

Not that half the world cares about the former, and even less care about the latter.

There hasn't been enough downtime between seasons: there were two weekends off between the World Cup final (11 July) and the Emirates cup (31st July), and a glance at Arsenal's fixture list shows they were playing matches against Barnet and had their two games in Austria in that time. Too much footy for me. Am I getting old?

Anyway time for the usual preseason optimism, and a few predictions.

First, my optimism doesn't extend to an Arsenal league win. It does tell me that Arsenal will finish above Spurs for the 16th season in a row. (I do not teach anyone who was alive when Spurs last finished above Arsenal!)

I am also not optimistic about the opening weekend. I'd settle for a draw, but that might be beyond us against a Liverpool team who ought to be fired up for the new manager.

Sticking my neck out: The league will be won by Manchester United. Chelsea will be second. Arsenal will get a champion's league place, but will be out of the championship race by February. They may top the league in early December leading to me starting to think I'm wrong and we can do it.

The game I'm just watching will provide the fourth placed finish team. I hope it will be City and not Spurs. Today I am cheering on City. Also what are Autonomy doing sponsoring Spurs?

Relegation: haven't a clue. Blackpool probably. Two others from the other two up, and the teams who got under 50 points last season.