Obsidian Wings

The English patient

by liberal japonicus

A lot of interesting reading about how the left lost in the UK. Here are some graphs for Irving Welsh's take

That the Conservatives, as Lord Forsyth admits, are now overtly abandoning Scotland in order to shore up core support in the south, should surprise nobody.

One of the biggest myths is that those “unionists” actually care about the union. If they can’t have it on their own terms, it’s little more than an inconvenience to them.

Bottom line: they want to win elections. If you are a Scottish Tory the news that you do not matter to your party ought to have registered years ago. But the Conservatives now have nothing to lose by alienating their remaining Scottish voters; for Labour, who opted to follow suit by hanging Jim Murphy out to dry, with Miliband, Balls and Umunna literally queuing up to publicly humiliate him, it’s much more serious.

Of course, Labour had already made the massive tactical error of standing shoulder to shoulder with the Conservatives in Better Together, during the seismic referendum campaign. This greatly hastened a secular decline, giving generations of Scottish leftists the excuse to jump ship. For many Scots, publicly supporting the SNP even last year would have felt like taking your secret lover to your long-term partner’s funeral. Once it was confirmed that this partner had been screwing around with your much hated, corpulent boss for years, that outing turned from one of shame into a joyous party. With the devo max ship probably having sailed, Scottish Labour are now in the position of fighting the Tories to be unionism’s top dogs north of the border.

and this one by Nick Cohen

The biggest failure of understanding is the most paradoxical. Labour and the left do not take the right seriously. They dismiss its leaders as greedy fat cats and public school toffs, and do not grasp how formidable they have become. A friend made the point when he told me that at 8.30am on Friday, when Ed Balls lost his seat, the trading floor at Credit Suisse at Canary Wharf erupted with cheers. I don’t doubt there were similar yelps of delight on every other trading floor in the City.

In other words, the power of one of the world’s great trading centres is behind the Tory party. The power is manifest not just in campaign donations, but in the arrogance of financial capitalists, who never allow any number of market failures to dent their self-confidence or the self-confidence of their political allies. If you are going to take them on, you need to be good. In fact, you need to be brilliant.

Feel free to add links and your own take in the comments.

Bridges Too Far

by Doctor Science

I took a rather exhausting road trip Wednesday through Friday. I was already supposed to pick Sprog the Younger up at her Boston Area Liberal Arts College on Thursday morning, which involves driving up to my parents' place in northeastern CT on Wednesday, picking up Sprog on Thursday, staying overnight with the folks, then driving back to NJ on Friday. The trip is spread out like this to give time with the folks, and also because by shortening each day's travel I can manage to (a) not have to drive after dark, while (b) not hitting any rush hours along the way.

But last Sunday night a dear friend's mother dropped dead of a heart attack. They live toward the end of the North Fork of Long Island, so I changed my route but not my schedule. I still left on Wednesday, but I drove from NJ to Hellandgone, LI, attended the wake, then took the Orient Point Ferry to CT and so to home.

UGH. For those of you who aren't familiar with the region, here's the Google Traffic Map right now, late on a Sunday morning:

The problem is to figure out the best way to get from the left side of the map to the right. Essentially, there are two routes: northern, taking the George Washington Bridge -> Cross-Bronx Expressway -> Throgs Neck Bridge -> Long Island Expressway; or southern, across Staten Island -> Verrazano-Narrows Bridge -> the southern shore of Brooklyn -> Long Island.

I looked at the traffic map on Wednesday morning, and the two routes seemed roughly comparable. But then I thought about the bridges.

I have a bit of acrophobia, enough to make driving (or walking) across bridges a very anxious experience. The best I can do is to try never to be in an outside lane, focus on the vehicle ahead of me, concentrate on keeping a good following distance, while doing conscious yoga-style breathing -- and never, *ever*, looking off to the sides. I've been over the Tappan Zee Bridge enough to be somewhat acclimated -- but I'm not used to either the George Washington or the Verrazano. (I've never driven over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and I don't know if I could. This is what marriage is for, kids: someone to drive over the bridges.)

My mother, BTW, tells me that she's never driven over a major bridge. "Even as a passenger -- my eyes are closed the whole time, so it didn't happen." One of her favorite technological innovations (she just turned 90) is completely enclosed elevators.

It turns out that both the GWB and the Verrazano are 65-70m above the water (half again as high as the Tappan Zee), and have a center (suspension) span just over a km in length (3 times as long as the TZB). But overall, the Verrazano is much longer -- 4km, as opposed to the GWB's 1.5km. That's a lot more yoga breathing, so I decided to go with the GWB.

As I came up to the bridge, I realized I could choose to be on the lower deck, which has the double advantage of making going over the bridge feel more like going through a nice, comforting tunnel, and also: no trucks. So the crossing wasn't as bad as I feared, and the rest of the trip out to Hellandgone was not bad for the territory: few slowdowns, not too much construction, traffic moving smoothly. It seems to me, in fact, that NYC-area superhighway driving is less traumatizing than in the Philadelphia area -- fewer people suddenly deciding to move across three lanes without signaling, for instance. But maybe it's just that I wasn't driving at rush hour.

I've never been out to the North Fork before, and holy libations, Batman! there are a lot of vineyards. I should visit my friend more often ...

Speaking of whom, if you're a less-young woman and you want to frighten the pants off yourself, look for info on "heart attacks in women". The symptoms are distressingly vague and often involve no chest pain. No wonder at least one study found

some of the women ignored their symptoms whereas others repeatedly sought medical care only to have their doctors minimize, misdiagnose or ignore their symptoms.

So, surprise surprise:

women are more apt than men to die shortly after a heart attack

and

Since 1984, more women than men have died each year from heart disease.

I didn't know that. Maybe participating in the Go Red Heart Health Study wouldn't be a bad idea ...

When I go looking for artistic pictures of bridges, they're overwhelmingly romantic: low on traffic, high on beautiful lighting. For me, though, bridges are scenes of terror -- I have a fair number of bridge-related dreams, and they are *not* the soothing kind. Bridges are about *fear*, don't people know that?!?

This photo actual conveys a little bit of what bridges mean to me. It's by Oleg Samorez, of the October bridge over the Volga at Cherepovets.

Kitchen Sink - Friday Open Thread

by wj

Obviously past time for a new one of these again.

Blogroll spring cleaning

by liberal japonicus
Time for a little cleaning. I'm going to go through the blogroll and delete any blogs that aren't being regularly updated. Now's your chance to recommend some blogs or suggest some to be pruned.

Totally Texas Takeover Thread!

by Ugh

I have here in my hand* a list of military units that are known to the Secretary of Defense as being involved in the upcoming annexation of Texas and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the invasion inside the Defense Department.

Pay no attention to the Defense Department officials standing in front of the curtain!  Amerika!

I mean, a "military takeover of Texas"?  In what world does this have any purchase at all, much less have a couple senators, the Governor of Texas, and muthafncking Chuck Norris join in?  Don't answer that!

But how about this:  can anyone point to a left-wing equivalent of something similar?  There must be something.  Or treat this as an open thread and have a margarita.

*He even looks like McCarthy, no?

Your UK election thread

by liberal japonicus
Commentariat regular sanbikinoraion, despite his Japanese handle (it means 3-CLASSIFIER-lion) requested a UK election thread, which is a brilliant idea.

It's a pretty exciting contest, with not only Labour and the Conservatives (who currently have a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats and whose leader, Nick Clegg, may lose his seat in Parliament, as was observed in a question at a special BBC question time for the three) (here at the 1:38), but also the Scottish National Party, the Greens and the United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP), which I'd say to be the rough equivalent of the US Tea Party playing a smaller role but potentially holding the key.

Election is 7 May. Predictions?