Divide and Rule

Apart from the obvious defeat here in West Dorset how did this happen and why did we not see it coming?  Here is a breakdown of the results, 2015 compared with 2010.

Chart 1. General election votes compared. Colours represent parties; blue -Conservative, yellow - Lib Dem, purple - UKIP, red - Labour, green - Greens, white - Didn't vote.

The chart above shows where the Lib Dem vote went.  First note that the reason the charts were drawn this way is to illustrate that more people voted against Oliver Letwin than for him, which has been the case since 1997, but no more. The Conservatives totalled 200 votes more than all the rest put together.

The Lib Dem vote collapsed as the electorate switched away from tactical voting, all the other parties increasing their vote share. Note that the electoral roll increased by ~1,545 (final 2015 data not in yet) but the Abstainers increased by 2,424 (the white column).  It would be surprising for people to newly register then not vote, so Oliver Letwin picked up 1,042 extra votes and the other parties all increase their share taking 550 new votes between them, but all the rest, 11,165 votes, came from the Lib Dems.  I have shown this with the  yellow and colour hatching with previous election tally shown in a solid colour.

The assumption that 4,859 Lib Dems switched to UKIP is of course bizarre but however it was done; Lib Dem voter switches to Labour while Labour voter switches to UKIP or Lib Dem voter switches to Tory while Tory switches to UKIP the net result is the same.  The Conservatives held firm and added a little (+1.8%) while the Lib Dem vote halved to bring  UKIP up 320%, Labour up 147% and the Greens a whopping 480%.  All stunning increases but the whole opposition tally decreased by 1,921 to give Letwin a lead over all the rest by 200 votes.  Unfortunately his majority is not counted that way and increased from 3,923 to 16,130 making West Dorset a safe seat.

UKIP fit much more snugly on the right of the Conservative party though UKIPpers presumably didn't vote for them as they were too progressive, but it is really surprising that they appeared out of nowhere, not taking any votes from the Tories.  If there is one thing that the Tories understand is divide and rule, they don't divide and end up ruling. This election shows exactly what happens when voters do not vote tactically.

Though it is profoundly depressing to have a Conservative majority they only increased their voter numbers by 600,000 to ~ 11 million, Labour added 700,000 to reach ~ 9 million, UKIP are the most cheated adding 3 million votes to come third nationally but ending up with one seat.  The Lib Dems were decimated losing ~ 4.5 million votes out of ~ 7million and the BNP were also wiped out from fifth place last time with 560,000 votes now polling 1,667 behind Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol, The Monster Raving Loonies and the Workers Party.  No surprises there as the much bigger party scoops up the fascist vote.

Traffic lights out - no chaos

While taking my daughter to school today the traffic lights that we cross were not working due to a power cut.  The junction is reasonably busy with parents dropping off their children and shoppers driving into the supermarket car park which are both close.

I stayed to watch the traffic as I know that traffic lights are not very effective or efficient at managing traffic.  The fact that we all take them for granted is the principle reason that they are still in use.  There are cases where traffic lights have been removed but this is because there has been great public opposition when people can clearly see how things were before and after traffic lights are introduced.  This happened at the Cabstand junction in Portishead near Bristol where it was shown that the £800,000 lights doubled the congestion.

Here in West Dorset traffic management is very backward and there is no strategy other than more robotic management, the fact that it doesn't work or that other more enlightened councils are taking the opposite approach does not trouble us.

But today a power cut has given us the opportunity to see what happens when the lights do not work.  It must be remembered that there were no warning signs, nobody directing traffic, no substitute system such as a rounderbout, just driver awareness and common sense.    This junction has one other feature; it has a very narrow road to the west so that in normal operation it is treated as contraflow - one way traffic in turns.  This is generally the reason that the lights are thought to be there, to manage this long narrow approach to the junction.

 

   I took some video of what happened but to summarize; traffic slowed down as drivers were unsure of who had priority as the lights were not working.  The drivers looked more carefully before moving and negotiated with other drivers in the usual way with hand gestures, there was no horn blowing, no arguments and no jam.

The different temperaments of drivers was evident, from the overcautious to a few that didn't notice that there was no light and carried on regardless - the most dangerous situation.  Most drivers used the junction in a safe and timely fashion and got through quicker than usual.

As usual pedestrians and cyclists were treated as secondary, and lost out the most.  Drivers seem not to realise that these unmotorised travellers may want to follow a journey of their own, but there was enough space for them to use the junction. 

All in all the lights going off made everybody's journey quicker, the only wait was when someone else was in the way, which everybody coped with.