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Democracy 2 is half price today. People who aren’t in the UK may not be sure why, but it’s the UK general election today and we are all pretty excited about it. Here is a very simple digest for anyone outside the UK.

Our current Prime Minister is Gordon Brown, leader of the left of center ‘Labour’ party. he was chancellor for years under that party (the current party has been in power 13 years) and then suceeded the last leader virtually unopposed. he was never won a general election as leader and was not elected to his current position. He recently got caught with his microphone on insulting  a voter.

Generally speaking, we have a two party system pitching Labour (left) vs Conservative (right). The specifics of our first-past-the-post electoral system have kept it a two horse race for decades. This is the first election in my lifetime where a third party is a major contender.

The third party (Liberal Democrats) have suddenly rushed to high popularity due to two factors. Firstly, there was a major scandal about MP’s expenses which affected the two main parties worse than any other. Secondly, the relatively weak PM was forced into accepting live TV debates for the first time in UK history, and the leader of the libdems (nick clegg) got equal billing in those debates.

Because the way our elections work, the liberal democrats have always been under-represented in parliament, relative to their popularity, as have all the other smaller parties. For a long time, the Liberal party and later the merged lib-dems would insist on electoral reform being the ‘price’ of their support in any electoral coalition.

For the first time in aggggessssss it looks like no party will win an overall majority, so a coalition may be needed. The Labour and Conservative parties will likely *not* work together, making the libdem leader ‘kingmaker’. It’s likely he will extract electoral reform as the price of co-operation.

Finally, this happens against a backdrop of severe economic problems in the UK. If an election had not been looming, our credit rating may already have fallen, and pretty rapid action will be needed. Simply put, we spend more than we earn, and big tax rises or public spending cuts are needed. Regardless of makeup, the next government may be unpopular.

Nevertheless, this is all historic. We have no idea which party will form a government tomorrow, or even next week. And this may be the last time in our history that we have a screwed up electoral system. I’m 40 years old and my vote has never counted, as I’ve only ever lived in safe seats. It would be great to see that change.

Finally, if only the current government (and previous ones) had taken me up on my offer for free copies of Democracy 2 (50% off today!), they would have seen that a public spending deficit has to be fixed in the medium term to avoid long term disaster. Why oh why won’t our politicians learn the lessons of games?

For american readers, two facts that may make you grind your teeth:

1) We don’t use voting machines. Its all done on paper, the old fashioned (and harder to cheat or hack) way.

2) There are never any queues at UK polling stations. It takes under a minute to vote.

I got thinking on this topic whilst watching voyager recently. Here is my list.

1. The Borg

The idea: A group of cybernetic beings that have shared thoughts and one collective mind. They have no leaders, no command structure, no need to consult each other or communicate as they act as a cohesive, unified deadly enemy. Turns the idea of a typical sci-fi bad guy around by doing away with the concept of individuality entirely.

The Mistake: The borg queen destroyed the entire concept on which the borg was based. Then came Hugh, Then Seven of nine. Then borg children, then “we’ll always have uni-matrix zero’. It’s easy to forget that the borg were supposed to be a collective at all. And The borg ship design became less cube-obsessed, and more like a kids set of building blocks. Bah.

2. The Ewoks:

The Idea: A group of primitive, tribal aliens who do not use modern technology can, despite this disadvantage, bring a technologically superior foe to it’s knees using ingenuity and determination. A long-cherised idea of George Lucas’s, based on his love of anthropology and his feelings about the Vietnam War. Originally planned as wookies at the end of Star Wars Epiosde IV, later shelved.

The Mistake: Making them look like cuddly toys.

3. The Daleks:

The Idea: race of highly mutated aliens who can only exist within their metallic cases, after a long running nuclear and biological war which left their ‘parent’ race destroyed and their homeworld an irradiated wasteland. Genetically designed to consider pity and compassion as weaknesses, so as to be the ultimate weapon.

The Mistake: They Can’t climb stairs. Universal conquest ends here

4. Star Trek: Enterprise:

The idea: Go back to pre-kirk days to discover the early years of starfleet. Throw away all the conventions of later trek series and put humans and the federation on the back foot. Bridge the gap between the present day and the original series of star trek to tell the story of how it all started.

The Mistake: Basically ditching the idea within minutes. There is little to distinguish Enterprise from TOS or Next Gen. Ships have phasers, artificial gravity, and familiarity with tons of aliens. Did nothing to show a weak, technologically early federation. Suspiciously sexy vulcan strips off in very first episode. Sad….

5. The Matrix:

The Idea: The world as we know it is a simulation. A war rages between machines that mankind created and the last few free humans alive. These human freedom fighters jump between the real and virtual world battling against virtual opponents with awesome powers.

The Mistake: The sequels. Some bullshit about keys. Endless car chases. Inability to realise the mistakes made when doing a sequel to Highlander. (Don’t).

What’s on your list?

If you are aged 35-42ish (rough guess) and from the UK, and a geek, you may well have just yelled Gronda Gronda Rangdo, or made a spluttering sound with your bottom lip and fingers, which of course is how the Grand Rangdo of arg would communicate.

For people who think I’m on drugs, I’m referring to The Adventure Game, a BBC2 TV series broadcast in the early 1980s. In theory, this was for kids, but it was a show you wouldn’t get for kids any more, because it made the kids think.

In simple form, TAG was a puzzle gameshow with celebrities, but unlike current fare, it wasn’t about making the celebs look stupid or them suffering, or about encouraging them to sleep with each other or shout abuse at each other. In TAG, the celebrities were given logic puzzles, and had to co-operate to solve them.

They were given logic puzzles and had to co-operate to solve them.

Imagine that now? It sounds very quaint doesn’t it? but the Adventure Game wasn’t the only TV show of my youth seemed designed to make me think. There was, of course stuff like Think Of A Number, all about science and maths and so-on. Then there was How! explaining how things work or get made. Then we had shows like The Great Egg Race and Now Get Out Of That.

The TV of my youth was great (it was doogy yrev!). It trained me to think logically, to embrace stuff like science and maths, and to be creative and critical. TV today seems to be designed to make you buy lip gloss and laugh at peoples suffering. I’m hazarding that the former is better for society than the latter.

What went wrong?

Or am I remembering it too fondly? Dismissing too easily stuff like Bang Goes the Theory, and forgetting mindless stuff from the same era, entertaining though it was.

Do you? (others)

It was an april fools joke clearly. Annoyingly I don’t have the trek license :(

As compensation, here is a video of a robot folding a towel. This is how it starts, with folding towells. It ends with laser-armed mechs as our masters and humanity their slaves…

Robot towel folding