• A different look at the 2014 local election results
  
  Countering the media narrative with facts.
  (tags: ukpolitics )
• ‘Chocolate King’ Poroshenko wins Ukraine presidency: exit polls
  
  The other election.
  (tags: ukraine )
• Turkish Cypriots denied vote in Cyprus
  
  Cockup? Hmmm…
  (tags: eu cyprus elections )
• EU citizens stopped from voting in UK after confusion over registration forms
  
  Cockup? Hmmm, again.
  (tags: ukpolitics eu elections )

• Re-examining Somaliland’s relations with neighboring states
  
  A former foreign minister writes.
  (tags: somaliland )
• Statistical detection of systemic election irregularities
  
  …especially in Russia and Uganda.
  (tags: elections mathematics )
• What the 1960s Got Right—and Wrong—about Today’s Tech
  
  Arthur C. Clarke scores best.
  (tags: sf history videos )
• Two Andrew Wilsons elected in Antrim
  
  The people have spoken. Or something.
  (tags: northernireland )

This is an election with few dramatic changes. The major parties have pretty much stayed as they were, as far as we can tell given the changed boundaries. The DUP, SF and Alliance have perhaps slipped back a little, and the UUP moved forward a bit, but that impression based on yesterday’s counts is slight enough to be reversible today. (My first take from Mid Ulster early yesterday afternoon was that the SDLP and UUP were in trouble; this was not really borne out by later data.)

The smaller parties have had a good poll. TUV have done best, with at least half a dozen seats in the bag, and UKIP and the PUP have also made gains in places where they had not previously had representation. The People Before Profit Alliance took a seat in West Belfast and the Greens are likely to double their representation in North Down. But NI21 are nowhere to be seen (I hear rumours that they may get some small comfort from Lisburn today).

The list below is of those DEAs where all seats have been filled; my comments on the notional change from the 2011 local elections must be taken with a huge pinch of salt. I am particularly uneasy about the Lisburn/Castlereagh projections, but include them here for completeness.

I’ll be on the box again at 2pm: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045g9h7

Completed DEAs

Antrim and Newtownabbey
Airport (5): 2 UUP, 1 SF, 1 SDLP, 1 DUP – notional UUP gain from Alliance.
Antrim (6): 2 DUP, 2 UUP, 1 SDLP, 1 Alliance – notional SDLP gain from SF.
Macedon (6): 3 DUP, 1 Alliance, 1 TUV, 1 UUP – notional TUV gain from DUP
Three Mile Water (6): 3 DUP, 2 UUP, 1 Alliance – no notional change.

Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon
Craigavon (5): 2 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 SF, 1 SDLP – notional DUP gain from SF
Cusher (5): 2 UUP, 1 Ind, 1 DUP, 1 SDLP – no notional change
Lagan River (5): 3 DUP, 2 UUP – no notional change
Portadown (6): 2 DUP, 2 UUP, 1 SF, 1 UKIP – notional UUP and UKIP gains from DUP

Belfast
Balmoral (5): 1 SF, 1 SDLP, 1 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 Alliance – no notional change
Black Mountain (7): 5 SF, 1 People Before Profit, 1 SDLP – notional PBP gain from SF
Castle (6): 2 DUP, 1 SF, 1 SDLP, 1 UUP, 1 Alliance – notional Alliance gain from SF
Lisnasharragh (6): 2 DUP, 2 Alliance, 1 SDLP, 1 UUP – no notional change

Causeway Coast and Glens
Ballymoney (7): 3 DUP, 2 UUP, 1 SF, 1 TUV – no notional change
Causeway (7): 2 DUP, 2 UUP, 1 Alliance, 1 SDLP, 1 TUV – notional DUP gain from independent
Coleraine (6): 2 DUP, 2 UUP, 1 PUP, 1 SDLP – notional PUP and UUP gain from DUP and Ind

Derry and Strabane
Ballyarnett (6): 3 SF, 2 SDLP, 1 Ind – notional Ind gain from SDLP
Waterside (7): 3 DUP, 2 SDLP, 1 SF, 1 UUP – no notional change

Fermanagh and Omagh
Erne North (5): 2 UUP, 1 SF, 1 SDLP, 1 DUP – no notional change
Erne West (5): 2 SF, 1 Ind, 1 UUP, 1 SDLP – no notional change
Mid Tyrone (6): 4 SF, 1 UUP, 1 SDLP – no notional change
West Tyrone (6): 3 SF, 1 UUP, 1 DUP, 1 SDLP – no notional change

Lisburn and Castlereagh
Castlereagh East (6): 3 DUP, 1 TUV, 1 UUP, 1 Alliance – notional UUP and TUV gains from DUP and Alliance
Downshire East (5): 3 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 Alliance – no notional change
Downshire West (5): 2 DUP, 2 UUP, 1 Alliance – notional UUP gain from DUP
Killultagh (5): 3 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 SDLP – notional DUP gain from SF

Mid and East Antrim
Bannside (6): 2 TUV, 2 DUP, 1 SF, 1 UUP – notional TUV gain from DUP
Carrick Castle (5): 2 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 Ind, 1 UKIP – notional UKIP gain from Alliance

Mid Ulster (complete)
Carntoghter (5): 3 SF, 1 SDLP, 1 DUP – no notional change
Clogher Valley (6): 2 SF, 2 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 SDLP – no notional change
Cookstown (7): 3 SF, 2 UUP, 1 DUP, 1 SDLP – notional UUP gain from DUP
Dungannon (6): 2 DUP, 1 Ind, 1 UUP, 1 SF, 1 SDLP – notional SDLP gain from SF
Magherafelt (5): 2 SF, 1 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 SDLP – no notional change
Moyola (5): 3 SF, 1 DUP, 1 UUP – notional UUP gain from SDLP
Torrent (6): 4 SF, 1 UUP, 1 SDLP – notional SF gain from Ind

Newry Mourne and Down
Downpatrick (5): 3 SDLP, 1 SF, 1 Ind – notional Ind gain from SF
Rowallane (5): 2 DUP, 1 SDLP, 1 UUP, 1 Alliance – notional Alliance gain from UUP
The Mournes (7): 2 SDLP, 2 SF, 1 UKIP, 1 UUP, 1 DUP – no notional change

North Down and Ards
Ards Peninsula (6): 3 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 SDLP, 1 Alliance – no notional change
Comber (5): 2 DUP, 1 UUP, 1 TUV, 1 Alliance – notional TUV gain from DUP
Holywood and Clandeboye (5): 2 DUP, 1 Green, 1 Alliance, 1 UUP – notional DUP gain from Alliance

• J.R.R. Tolkien Reveals TRUE Meaning Of ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ In Unearthed Audio Recording
  
  Fantastic!
  (tags: tolkien )

• Why we should all be worried about complacency in Madrid
  
  Typically lucid from Edward Hugh.
  (tags: catalonia )
• NI21 implodes amid allegations against Basil McCrea
  
  Crumbs.
  (tags: northernireland )
• Court Slams Azerbaijan for Rights Abuses
  
  Latest on Ilgar Mammadov’s case.
  (tags: azerbaijan )
• Death at 19,000 feet
  
  The human cost of the Everest industry.
  (tags: everest )

If the travel gods are kind I shall be on BBC Northern Ireland this evening to discuss today’s elections starting 2235 UK time:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04403dh

edited to add: The travel gods have not been kind, and it looks like I won’t make it. Bah! But…

I should certainly be on the Friday evening show from 2200:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b044mh9r
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b044mh9t

And Saturday from 1405:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b045g9h7

If you are watching, I’ll give you a wee wave!

• Morland-Jones and Morland-Jones v Taerk and Taerk
  
  See esp para 23.
  (tags: funny law )

Current
Het Verdriet van België, by Hugo Claus
The Road To Middle-Earth, by Tom Shippey
The Eleventh Hour, ed. Andrew O’Day

Last books finished
[Doctor Who] The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell
Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood
Out Of The Silent Planet, by C.S. Lewis
Carson of Venus, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Cyberabad Days, by Ian McDonald
[Doctor Who] Anachrophobia, by Jonathan Morris
The Sword In The Stone, by T.H. White
Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, by Mary and Bryan Talbot

Last week’s audios
Charlotte Pollard Series 1, by Jonathan Barnes and Matt Fitton

Next books
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
Green Living for Dummies, by Michael Grosvenor
Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau S. Wilce

Books acquired in last week
The Girl who Loved Doctor Who, by Paul Cornell
(and for Anne’s birthday:)
The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri
When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson
The Road to Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead
Selected Prose, by Charles Lamb

This is the pilot episode for a new (well, new-ish now) Big Finish range featuring Chase Masterson as interstellar bounty-hunter Vienna Salvatore, who ruthlessly kills anyone who discovers her name and previously featured in the last story of the Drashani trilogy. It’s rather good. Masterson takes her character and turns her into a classic BF performance; the story has the brilliant concept of memories that can be locked in a “memory box” and released if the correct passphrase is invoked, which leads to a brilliantly complex plot with overtones of Phil Dick paranoia. I have a huge backlog of BF audios at the moment but I shall get onto the other Vienna stories at some point, with enthusiasm.

• 10 Phrases Great Speakers Never Say
  
  *wince*
  (tags: lifehacking )
• What has the EU ever done for us?
  
  @captain_europe speaks!
  (tags: eu )
• Millennium Development Goal 4: Accelerated declines in child deaths
  
  Child mortality has almost halved since 1990 – in absolute terms.
  (tags: health )
• Far-right, far apart
  
  May do well in the election, won’t do much when they get in.
  (tags: eu )

A brief book about language change, which again must have been recommended to me in Facebook comments as I can't find another source; dates back to 1997 but I don't know how fast the field moves. The author has two main points to make. First off, he compares the evolution of language to Steven Jay Gould's concept of punctuated equilibrium in biology: long periods of steady development with little change, interspersed with periods when the environment changes rapidly and organisms, or languages, must adapt equally rapidly to survive. The impact of Western colonialism is the most recent and largest such traumatic change to have hit the world's language groups and ddiversity.

His other main point is to propose an alternative to the "family tree" model of language relationships. It works well for Indeo-European (within limits) and also for the Austronesian languages of the Pacific; but he is sceptical, to put it politely, of Greenblatt's claims to have constructed family trees for the African and Amerindian languages, let alone the pretensions of Nostratic. Surely in most cases where different language groups exist side by side for centuries, it makes at least as much sense to consider a "linguistic area" where neighbouring speakers may steal vocabulary and grammar from each other. His example is Australia, the area he knows best, but I can see relevance for the Albanian / Macedonian / Bulgarian / Romanian relationship which I've always found fascinating. He makes the point that even Proto-Indo-European doesn't appear to have been homogenous – did the instrumental plural end with *-bhis or *-mis ?

Anyway, I found this rather more digestible than dear old C.-J. Bailey's essay collection. Must look out for more on this topic..

I am one of those who has been hoping that we would some day get a story telling us what happened to Steven Taylor after he was left behind to rule the planet of the Savages, and Simon Guerrier, who has done well in First Doctor stories for Big Finish, has finally provided us with one – though this is only the framing narrative, as Steven, long since overthrown by his former subjects, tells a visitor of a previous adventure on a planet where the time travellers were conscripted into a long-entrenched war between two factions. There is basically one idea here but it is done awfully well and fills the time very nicely, driven by Peter Purves’ performance in his old role (and doing a decent take on the First Doctor and Dodo as well). And there’s a fairly mind-blowing twist at the end; this was apparently the very last of the Companion Chronicles to be recorded, so I hope that Big Finish will come back to resolve it in their new range.

• Hungary and the End of Politics
  
  A grim read.
  (tags: hungary )
• Life and death in Chernobyl’s ghost forest
  
  No bacteria!
  (tags: science ukraine )
• Stalinism on the Installment Plan
  
  Paying for injustice.
  (tags: usa humanrights )

This was nominated for the Hugos as the result of a campaign by the author, which also brought several other controversial nominees to the ballot. I’ll have more to say about that when I do my Best Novel category roundup, but for now I’ll report that this is not quite as awful a book as Correia’s Monster Hunter International. However, it’s the last book of a trilogy set in an alternate 1930s where many people have psychic/magical powers and the good ol’ US of A gets a gang of misfits together on an airship to smite the Asian foe (the Germans having already been dealt with by a zombie outbreak). I’m not moved to find the first two books.

Barry Letts’ last novel, published in 2005 just after New Who began, but taking the Third Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier to investigate a strange cult based around a mind-altering drug and rescuing Sarah’s gormless assistant Jeremy (from The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space). It’s not great, to be honest; the story rambles and characters make rather arbitrarily stupid decisions in order to prolong the plot. But we should take it as what it is, a farewell note to the series from one of its veteran producers.

• The 2014 Election Is the Least Important in Years
  
  Sometimes it’s good for us commentators to admit that it doesn’t matter much!
  (tags: uspolitics )

A relative got this for me, having spotted that it was being described as a great Japanese sf novel – in fact, it was ranked in a 2006 poll of Japanese readers as the greatest Japanese sf novel of all time. I was a little baffled at first, as we moved from Plato to Buddha to Jesus as incarnations of non-human entities; was this a Shaggy God story? Though I'll admit that it was very interesting to see a non-Christian writer's take on the New Testament, and in the end the Buddha and sf do seem to find a harmonious coexistence after exciting and occasionally confusing conflicts. I finished it rather puzzled; the book seemed to owe a lot to Childhood's End, and a little to the New Wave, but not much to more recent genre developments.

The mystery was resolved when I realised that 百億の昼と千億の夜 was published in 1967, so it's not very surprising that it reflects the concerns of that decade. It is the only one of Mitsuse's 20-odd novels to have been published in English; while the Japanese graphic story-telling tradition has a huge English-language following, this seems to be less true of unillustrated prose. While I regret not having better access to this particular tradition, I do hope that it's moved on a bit from 1967.

Oh dear. There are some nice ideas in this Fifth Doctor / Nyssa audio; a country-house story in the same style as Black Orchid and The Unicorn and the Wasp, an alien which turns out to be a bit different from what we might have expected. But the guest characters are total cliches, including in particular Silver Crow, a mystical Native American played by a white English actor – that’s the worst, though the doomed lesbian is pretty facepalming as well. The cast give it their best, but this should have been looked at more carefully before it was made.

• Iain Duncan Smith used false statistics to justify disability benefit cuts
  
  British govt’s war on the disabled, justified by lies.
  (tags: ukpolitics disability )
• Don’t Diss Cheap Smartphones. They’re About to Change Everything
  
  The next stage of the revolution.
  (tags: technology )

The first of this year’s Hugo nominees which I got after nominations had been announced. It’s set in the same universe as Saturn’s Children but that really doesn’t matter, as it’s a very different book – unusually for SF (though much less unusually for Stross) one of the central themes is future economics, specifically the issue of currency and cash flow between worlds which are separated by light years and where information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light. On top of a decent plot, there is an excellent underwater city, priests, pirates (who may or may not be insurers), and reflections on the complex family dynamics of bespoke clone sisters. I will still rank Ancillary Justice higher, but this gets a good Hugo vote from me.

The Magnificent Four, by Simon Guerrier
False Positive, by Eddie Robson
Wolf, by Nigel Fairs

The second season of Blake’s 7 audios, again similar in format to the earlier Companion Chronicles, with one or two actors from the original series with maybe a guest performer telling a story as it happened to them. Released in 2012.

The Magnificent Four has a brilliant concept: Avon and Cally, played as ever by Paul Darrow and Jan Chappell, find themselves on a ship very like the Liberator with a crew that is a weird echo of their own. It’s a very interesting exploration of how the set-up for the show might look from a different angle, decently executed.

I was a bit less sure about False Positive, by Eddie Robson, which relies on Gareth Thomas and a dubious doctor played by Beth Chalmers, and a plot line where reality may or may not be being bent; is Blake on drugs? Or just pretending? Or really Blake at all? The resolution was satisfactory but not so sure about the journey.

Finally, Wolf, by Nigel Fairs, brings Jacqueline Pearce back as Servalan, along witgh Jan Chappell as Cally and Anthony Howell’s Auron scientist Gustav Nyrron, in a story of loyalty and treachery, which lost a little from not having a bigger cast. But Jan Chappell has really found her pace with Cally, perhaps a little more so than she ever did on TV.

• What do Europeans call a platypus?
  
  Because you really needed to know.
  (tags: languages )
• The London Evolution Animation
  
  The Streets of London (historical) – let me show you something!
  (tags: history maps )
• The Google, the Bad and the Ugly
  
  I need to make a point of watching @brusselsgeek on Fridays.
  (tags: eu )
• Trouble in Western Sahara
  
  Some excellent mythbusting.
  (tags: westernsahara )

I don’t know how I heard of this – possibly through a Facebook recommendation, since I can’t find it in emails – but it was a good recommendation. McGuinness’s mother comes from Bouillon in southern Belgium, and it is basically his second home despite his British upbringng (Irish grandparents, diplomat father from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Welsh-speaking children). It’s a lovely exploration of the historic town and its people, and the author’s own background, through very short snippets of narrative, occasional poetry, and the auithor’s own photographs. you don’t have to be Belgian or even like Belgium much to appreciate it (though it will make more sense if you have enough French to understand why it’s funny that Kevin Keegan should be known to locals as Kevin Qui Gagne). A lovely book.

So, apparently lots of people wrote letters to John A.T. Robinson about their understanding of faith; and years later this sociologist read through them all to see if he could find any common threads. The answers were actually quite interesting – he finds basically five strands of belief among the correspondents, who presumably would all have positioned themselves within or close to 1970s British Anglicanism. Some (“exemplarism”) want to follow Jesus Christ as a model for humanity on an emotional level; some (“conversionism”) are deeply invested in the experience of being born again and how to share that with others; some (“theism” are interested more intellectually ni the nature of God; some (“Gnosticism”) are much more into a spiritual connection with the unknowable, whatever it is; and some (“traditionalism”) like the Church because it’s there. Obviously there would be overlaps between these in the experience of any particular person.

I have always found it striking that the Church of England was able to embrace such diversity of doctrine and approach. But I did find slightly frustrating this (admittedly very short) study’s omission to enquire as to whether these five strands (or their equivalents) could be found within other religious traditions, both Christian and non-Christian, or indeed within other non-religious belief systems. I wouldn’t be vastly surprised to find that they are replicated, in different stengths, in any majority religious tradition in a given country. (I would expect minorities to have a more homogenous approach; but it would be interesting to test that too.)

• EU secret revealed: Rome Treaty was signed on blank sheet
  
  Hidden history!
  (tags: eu )
• UK support for staying in the EU at its highest level since before the 1992 ERM crisis
  
  Interesting!
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• A Forgotten Front Line
  
  Hundreds killed during the 20-year”ceasefire”.
  (tags: armenia azerbaijan nagornokarabakh )
• Belgium Gets Hacked… Again
  
  So that’s why they aren’t answering my emails!!
  (tags: russia belgium )
• My one conversation with Jean-Luc Dehaene, who has died aged 73
  
  “The big mistake was when federal elections got out of step with regional votes.”
  (tags: belgium )
• Northern Ireland Elections site
  
  Now updated with info about local and European elections next week.
  (tags: northernireland )

Last volume of the huge epic Farsser Trilogy (at 848 pages it’s the longest book I’ve read so far this year, more than 100 pages longer than either Buddenbrooks or Dominion which are both in the low 700s, and so is Het Verdriet van België which I’ve just started). It is pretty much a satisfactory conclusion to the epic, though we do seem to take a long time getting to the retrieval of the lost king and climax of the story, and then the ending felt, well, not rushed, but at a pace I could have coped with the rest of the book being written at. It’s been interesting to read these more or less at the same time as Patrick Rothfuss, who takes quite a similar situation, a slightly less attractive central character, but does perhaps more interesting things with it.

• Loss of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Unstoppable, Posing Long-Term Risks from Rising Seas to Millions
  
  Live near the coast? Move!
  (tags: climatechange )
• Language map: What’s the most popular language in your state?
  
  Other than English. (Or Spanish.)
  (tags: usa maps )
• Autism’s early child
  
  Half a century on. (Piece from 2011)
  (tags: autism )
• No, Sanctions Didn’t Force Iran to Make a Deal
  
  Busting the myth.
  (tags: usa iran )
• Game of Thrones hides secret Monty Python reference in new episode
  
  Now, *that* shows commitment!
  (tags: sf humour languages )

One of the Great Belgian Novels which you may not have heard of, it’s a fairly short parable about a middle-class senior clerk in Antwerp who gets ideas above his station and takes an assignment as representative for Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg of a major Dutch cheese company. He hopes to show his neighbours and rivals that he is made of sterner stuff than they imagined, which I guess sums up Belgian national aspirations of the 1930s (and perhaps not only then). Of course it all goes wrong, and he has to return to his previous job, pretending that none of this ever happened. I bought and read it in English, but the Dutch original is here (warning: annoying pop-up asking you to participate in a survey).

Current
Cyberabad Days, by Ian McDonald
Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood

Last books finished
Warbound, by Larry Correia 
The Empress of Mars, by Kage Baker
The Rise and Fall of Languages, by R.M.W. Dixon
Mr Norris Changes Trains, by Christopher Isherwood
[Doctor Who] The Death of Art by Simon Bucher-Jones
Parasite, by Mira Grant

Last week’s audios
[Doctor Who] Dark Eyes, by Nicholas Briggs
[Charlotte Pollard] The Lamentation Cipher, by Jonathan Morris

Next books
Het Verdriet van België, by Hugo Claus
The Road To Middle-Earth, by Tom Shippey
Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, by Mary and Bryan Talbot
[Doctor Who] Anachrophobia by Jonathan Morris

Books acquired in last week 
The Blazing World, by Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle
Betelgeuse #1: La planète, by Leo