Fifth Gradient Warfare – And Fox’s desire to keep DfID a mess.

Defence Secretary Fox is getting his knickers in a twist over the coalition commitment to enshrine in British Law the requirement to spend 0.7% of GNP in official development assistance. This blog is quite certain that he is, and not just because doing so poses the potential for a myriad of legal challenges. Enshrining in law a specific commitment requires a detailed accounting process, that will list achievements against specific criteria, and throw up endless potential to challenge the justification of a given project, requiring detailed and public response in defence of actions taken.

In short, it threatens to make official development assistance comprehensible, succinct, and verifiable.

AV In Flames – A vanity project that will taste of ashes.

This blog is amused by the latest polls for the AV referendum, especially as aggregated by political betting. We have been regaled with tales of dogs and cats, along with wonderful explanations of why it is not a good idea to let representative government to fall to the former. Its all very entertaining but it is a fantastic example of exactly why the “yes” vote is destined to lose; because it panders to the idea of a progressive-majority and ignores the fact that their are multiple ‘dog’ candidates too.

This presumption of ‘virtue’ has prevented the “yes” campaign from communicating with, and persuading, those people for whom the principle of proportionality or ‘vote-power’ simply is not a significant priority.