November 2014

More crumbs for Scotland

 Steven Kellow    Politics  

The much-heralded Smith Commission report into further devolution for Scotland was published today, with the results of a two-month five-party investigation on what powers to give the Scottish Parliament finally being set out. While the Smith Commission’s recommendations are definitely a step in the right direction, and definitely give Scotland more power than it has ever had within the Union, it does miss some vital opportunities to give real and meaningful devolution to the Scottish Parliament. Let’s start off with the good parts of the — Read more →

The National launches to support independence

 Steven Kellow    Miscellaneous  

Newspaper launches might be rare nowadays, but yesterday saw The National‘s first issue as it attempts to give a pro-independence voice in the print media.  It’s not quite got the esteem and weight of the bigger papers that dominate print journalism yet, but as a start it’s been more than promising. It’s now over two months since the referendum that encapsulated Scotland; but even though the result was a No vote by a margin of 55-45 percent, the Yes campaigners have not backed down in their — Read more →

The latest chapter in FIFA corruption saga

 Steven Kellow    Football

The FIFA circus continued last week as the much-awaited internal report into strongly alleged corruption within the organisation, specifically relating to the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, was published.  FIFA was found innocent of any corruption and the only party admonished in the investigation was England, for their “disruption” of the bidding process by alleging that there was impropriety afoot on behalf of some of the bidders. The thing is though that the actual report wasn’t published, just a summary of it — Read more →

Excel D’Hondt Proportional Representation Calculator

 Steven Kellow    Politics  

Download Looking for a Sainte-Laguë calculator? Try here. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which allows you to share and adapt the material for non-commercial purposes as long as attribution is provided and that the same license applies to your work.   Proportional representation is a great thing, because it allows political parties to have a fairer share of seats in a parliament/assembly/council in relation to their share of the vote rather than the rather unfair share of seats usually — Read more →

Interstellar: Review

 Steven Kellow    TV & Film  

Some movies add up to more than the sum of their parts, with good all-round qualities that come together in such a way to make a film that’s not just good, but great.  Christopher Nolan’s latest film, the space epic Interstellar is one of them. Although the premise of the film’s action is from the realm of science-fiction, the story itself is an intensely human one.  Earth has become a more hostile place to live, with crops dying and food a scarce resource.  Former fighter — Read more →

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