This led me to recall the existence of an “Espresso Book Machine”, an easy way for aspiring authors and others to obtain a printed version of a book, be it their own or one that is out of publication (but still with a digital presence). This machine can be found in Blackwell, on Charing Cross Road in London.

On 25 August 2010, I was in London to hand in a paper copy of my dissertation for my LLM, and I took advantage of the trip to London to order one copy of my book. When I receive the copy by post, I’ll be able to let you Londoners know whether you should consider ordering a little sci-fi novel from there – they currently charge 5p a page, which given the size of my novel amounts to £30… Definitely the most expensive novel I’ve bought!

I’m going to work on making the novel available in ePub and other formats (note: ePub now available), perhaps also on online e-book catalogues (if possible for free) and on other self-publishing print-on-demand platforms (hopefully not too expensively).

In the meantime, though, why not take a look at the Arpia novel page, and read through the first chapters or the entire book?

Here’s the non-legal intro to show you what it’s all about. Or you can omit reading it here, and read it in the document itself: Legal Implications of Internet Filtering.

Introduction:

Alexander turns on his computer, smiling as he hears the familiar chime. Colours fill the screen, a feast for his eyes, and he clicks on an icon, his gateway to the Internet. As he submits two words to a search engine and chooses the first result, as if advised by an old friend, Alexander is unaware of the underlying processes.

His computer converses with a network provider and asks whether Alexander may access the website.The network provider turns to a domain name server, to find out on which server the website is located, before finally connecting to the hosting provider to obtain transmission of the website data. Meanwhile, Alexander blinks. The Internet must be unhappy with him: he is denied access to the website. Alexander sighs, and goes back to the search results. He does not pause to consider whether access was blocked rightfully or whether this limits his freedom; he does not even contemplate complaining to anyone. After all, it’s the Internet, and he doesn’t understand it. How could he, a normal web user?

In this simplified tale of daily Internet use, Alexander is confronted with access denial to a website that appeared in search results. As he shares the general population’s lack of understanding of the technology underlying the Internet and the World Wide Web, he does not know why the information embodied in the website is not being transmitted to him. He is unable to assess whether the problem lies with the website owner or with any of the intermediaries between him and the website.

One possible explanation may, however, spring to the mind of an observer with some degree of technical knowledge: this access denial may come from a filter.

Once again, here’s the link to the dissertation: Legal Implications of Internet Filtering. Happy reading…

If you use Aquaffic or Josh’s mod, download the updates (and let me know if they work for you) on the iTunesque page.

Anyway, feel free to post your thoughts on Why Does the Wind Never Falter, the latest song to join the club.

If you have any interest in the questions of why countries filter the Internet, of why speed bumps are preferred to simple car speeding laws, of how Alex in A Clockwork Orange may be our future, I heartily recommend that you take a look at lawcode.net, a place where a few friends and myself will attempt to bring these questions into the open, with the hope that as time goes by, people from all over will contribute articles or short columns.

You don’t need to be a lawyer and you don’t need to be a technologist. All you need is an interest, however remote, in the questions that will appear there. So why not take a look and see what you think?

Law Code: choice is but a memory.

When I was twenty-two,
It was a very good year,
It was a very good year for independent life,
And nights in London town,
We rarely felt down,
And had great things to do,
When I was twenty-two

Thus Ervin Drake’s song (popularised by Frank Sinatra) would have gone, had the composer of “It Was A Very Good Year” benefited from my support as lyricist.
The academic year of 2009-2010 has now come and gone, and I believe my time in London was not only well spent but also great fun.
Between work and play, squirrels and pigeons, Irish and Indian, cuisine and grub, it was a wonderful blend of smiles and tears (well, not quite) from mid-September to end of June.

As an LLM student, I enjoyed lectures that qualified, in my view, as classes worthy of the degree of “Master of Laws”. Those who shared their knowledge and wisdom with us did so (overall) in a positive, instructive and interactive manner. I shall remember many a discussion about the implications of regulation by/of technology, about the reach of intellectual property, et cetera. Hopefully, I shall be able to put this acquired knowledge to good use in the near future; in any event, I know that the valuable teachings of my professors shall not have been wasted.

I encountered in London the same administrative frustration I found in my previous universities, but I am starting to think that this is inevitable (although it should not be so). Many of my fellow students had unacceptable problems regarding course or even exam timetables, even when they revolved around courses of one common specialism and would thus inevitably attract the same students. I have of late encountered much reluctance from my Faculty to allow me to communicate the creation of a new web board to all Law students (KCL-Law.net), and this is a form of censorship I sought to evade for the sake of all students by creating the web board.

As a London resident, I was able to take advantage of the wealth of cultural events that London has to offer, from musicals to museums, although my impression at the end of my stay was that I had not achieved all I set out to achieve. I bathed in the melting-pot of cultures that nourishes London, and had access to an array of sources of entertainment and, of course, plenty of shopping opportunities.

I was also, rather unfortunately, forced to deal with the inadequacies of London transport, from the frequent Tube closures to the incessant traffic congestion problems (especially around Oxford Street). Most annoying, or so I found, was the fact that London seems not to have been designed with pedestrians in mind: zebra crossings with traffic lights are few and far in between, and road names are for all intents and purposes absent outside of the main junctions, which made London navigation in my first months rather difficult.

Of course, living in Hampstead gave me ready access to wonderful scenery, beautiful houses and stunning vehicles. With all the green around, I felt relaxed, at ease. The worries of daily commuting and of the intensity of crowds were easily brushed aside by pleasurable walks in the neighbourhood.

Most of all, I met during this year many people who left their mark on my stay. Some were floor mates, some were course mates and some I knew from beforehand; all were friends. These are the people who made this year what it was, and it was both a privilege and a pleasure to share my year in London with them. As the world is a small place after all, I do not doubt that I shall see or keep in touch with some of them in the future. Regardless of what shall happen, I wish each and every one of them all the best for the years to come.

It was a learning experience. It was a living experience.
Truth be told, I do not regret it.

The existence of the Order of the Two Magpies was unknown to most of the world for many centuries, but on 3 June 2010, P.C. discovered an anomaly in a number of paintings exhibited at the National Gallery, London: there appeared to be a motif common to art of different eras, namely a constant depiction of two birds, generally resembling magpies. Their significance, at first deemed to be a mere coincidence, soon led to the unraveling of the greatest mystery known to man.

Clues left behind by Rubens

It was the examination of several paintings by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens that piqued P.C.’s interest: in A Shepherd with his Flock in a Woody Landscape (link to the painting’s page on the National Gallery’s website), in The Watering Place (link) and in A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (link), Rubens includes two birds flying together. While the birds may appear to be of different species according to the painting, it was a sufficiently puzzling inclusion to intrigue the art historian.

Pursuing the search

After this discovery, the mystery increased as P.C. examined other paintings in the National Gallery.

Thus, the two birds could also be found in the painting Tobias and the Archangel Raphael (link – author unknown, said to be based on a composition by Adam Elsheimer).
Furthermore, there are two such birds in Saint Catherine of Alexandria with a Donor (link), a much earlier work, by Bernardino di Betto, otherwise known as Pintoricchio.
[Other paintings portraying the two birds have been omitted from this list due to lack of notes on them]

A number of other works include more than two birds, but feature two of them more prominently.
Thus, in A Castle on a Hill by a River by a Dutch imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael (link), four birds are visible in the sky, though two of them fly together. The same is true of A Deerhound with Dead Game and Implements of the Chase by Jan Weenix (link) and of The Watering Place by Thomas Gainsborough, which echoes the painting by Rubens (link).
In A Boy holding a Grey Horse, attributed to Abraham van Calraet (link), two birds are flying together, with four other birds in the distance. A similar pattern can be found in A Herdsman with Seven Cows by a River, by an imitator of Aelbert Cuyp (link), and in A Scene on the Ice, by Andries Vermeulen (link).

Understanding the clues

Are the two birds significant? Most sceptics would dismiss such a claim. Indeed, it may be mere coincidence, as such sceptics would have us believe.
There is, however, one fact that the sceptics do not take into account. As cultural critic N.B. stressed, “it is so crazy an idea that it might be true”.

If we approach the mystery from this angle, more questions ensue, but none are without an answer:

Why did the painters leave clues?

Much like any secret organisation, many members of the Order of the Two Magpies felt pride in being part of this exclusive group. We may presume that a debate followed Pintoricchio’s depiction of the two birds, if this is indeed the first such depiction, with the possible result that only obscure references were tolerated. Such a result is likely, as Pintoricchio’s popularity did not falter after Saint Catherine of Alexandria with a Donor was made; rather, it grew as Pintoricchio was summoned to work in the Vatican.

When was the Order of the Two Magpies founded?

Current findings do not provide a definite answer to this question, but the lack of known depictions of the two birds suggests that Pintoricchio was among the earliest members. Further research is required to ascertain the truth of this assumption.

What was the purpose of the Order of the Two Magpies?

The most fundamental question that P.C. faced was that of the purpose of said Order.

After examining the paintings depicting the two birds, P.C. stumbled upon Raphael’s painting entitled The Mond Crucifixion (The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saints and Angels, named “Mond Crucifixion” after its former owner – link), which shows two angels in the air around the crucified Christ, holding chalices to gather Christ’s blood.

Could this be relevant? This work was made after Pintoricchio’s Saint Catherine, and when putting the two together, P.C. made an astonishing discovery: P.C.’s findings suggest that the Order of the Two Magpies held the key to one of the greatest mysteries of our existence, namely how we humans came to exist.

Indeed, the following reinterpretation puts our entire existence into perspective: in Raphael’s painting, the two angels behave like magpies and take life (blood) from a dying divinity. The angels/magpies are analogies for we, as humans, as Adam and Eve, who came to consciousness only by taking from our superior guardians.

P.C. notes that this theory was coincidentally embodied in a recent work of great cultural value, the tale of Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Desmond Miles, Assassin’s Creed II. That work, however, is slightly more violent than P.C.’s theory.

Disclaimer: the author of this article does not believe a single word of P.C.’s theory. This was merely an aftermath of the examination period.

Epicaricacy (also “epicharikaky”) is a little-used word, often replaced with the German “Schadenfreude”, that describes the pleasure one feels at the misfortune of others, and the term perfectly encompasses what was going through my mind as I saw the film. As I watched a scene where one of the main characters accidentally blows up both himself and a sheep, I could not help but think of the many times where I laughed at other people suffering/dying (such as the many deaths of Kenny in South Park, or the famous accident scene in Meet Joe Black). There seem to be many, many instances in which the gravest misfortune befalls a character in a story with comic effect. Yet why does this make us laugh?

While I understand the link between epicaricacy and envy or resentment when faced with an opponent (see e.g. Smith, Powell, Combs & Schurtz, Exploring the When and Why of Schadenfreude [2009]; Takahashi, Kato, Matsuura, Mobbs, Suhara & Okubo, When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude [2009]), I have some trouble understanding why one feels pleasure at the misfortune of someone else, who is not a competitor but someone with whom we sympathise.

What theories might one suggest?

One could imagine that comedy is achieved because the viewer does not wish the same thing to happen to him/her.

While this may be true in part, I realise that it is often a dose of absurdity and unexpectedness that makes the difference between a tragic and a comic accident.

Are absurdity and abruptness therefore the cause of the comic effect?

I’m not entirely satisfied with that, either, because I’m sure that there are instances in which the comic effect only appears later – I have often realised that something was both absurd and funny only after the moment had passed. Furthermore, there is not necessarily a direct causal effect: I can imagine that should a UFO crash in front of me, flattening a few pedestrians, I would find it absurd but not amusing (whereas Kenny dies in such a manner in one South Park episode, with great comic effect).

Does our involvement in the situation play a role?

Being able to distance oneself from the situation allows one to look at the situation from a wholly different angle. I’m sure it helps, but that doesn’t remove the amusing character of a situation in which one is involved. To illustrate, a few weeks back, a friend stumbled in front of me in a most acrobatic manner. It was sudden and absurd, and it was hilarious, despite the fact that we were worried about him (he was perfectly all right).

There seem to be many factors, but none of them seems to have a sure role. As I’m running out of ideas for theories, and as I’m in the middle of exams, which has impaired my ability to think of non-legal stuff, I must temporarily surrender to the absence of definite knowledge.

May I ask for your thoughts on the matter?

“This is a nice place,” he said with a hesitant smile.

Look me in the eye, the girl wanted to reply as his eyes returned from examining the surroundings to staring at her lips. Instead, she nodded. Why had she accepted his invitation?

“And it’s nice that they allow you to take your pet with you.”

The girl’s thoughts went straight to Artemis, the animal nested on her lap. She felt Artemis stiffen, and she stroked her on the neck to soothe her. It was inevitable that people would mistake a firnex for an unintelligent pet, probably thinking it was a simple fennec fox, but speaking with so little tact and by repeating a bland adjective demonstrated stupidity.

“She gets special treatment throughout Yubenia,” the girl said. It was true, too: many restaurants in the city of Yubenia knew to tolerate Artemis’s presence. Orders from above. The girl looked at Artemis and smiled. She wanted to see if the boy had any wit. “After all, she is more intelligent than most humans, including you.”

The boy chuckled uneasily.

“So how do you know this restaurant?”

He was either mentally deficient, without humour or a combination of those elements. Pity, he had shown so much potential in that club the other day. Perhaps he was only good at dancing.

She glanced at Artemis, who was scratching her jaw with her paw. Boring indeed. She stopped stroking Artemis and reached for a button on her belt.

“My mum had a fling with this guy –”

She stopped upon hearing the tone on her intercom.

“Oh, speak of the devil. Sorry, I have to take this.”

The boy nodded, and she put her hand to her ear.

“Hey Mum!”

“What is it, darling? You want a way out of a date again?”

“What? That’s awful! How did you do that? I’ll be there right away. Which hospital?”

“Do you want a lift back home?”

“I’ll pull over a transport, don’t argue.”

“All right, I’ll be there in five minutes maximum. Same place?”

“Okay, stay put! I love you!”

She turned back to the boy, hoping that distress was plain to see on her face.

“I’m really, really sorry, but my mum just had an accident.”

She let Artemis hop on the floor before taking her coat.

“That’s terrible,” said the boy.

“I know, but I guess that’s life. Thanks for the invitation, though.” She rushed to the door of the restaurant, and waved back at him. “Call me, all right?”

She stepped out into the cool evening breeze of February as the door cut the boy’s inevitable reply from her hearing. No, he did not have her number, nor would he ever be able to find any means of making contact.

As the girl walked away from the restaurant in the empty street, she smiled. She liked being elusive, a stunning whirlwind without a name. It had been so since the age of fourteen. Nearly four years later, she still enjoyed this game.

Artemis barked a few times, and the girl laughed.

“If I took you to clubs, I’d never dance for fear of losing you in the crowd.”

Artemis uttered a low growl amidst higher pitched barks.

“Are you crazy? I’m antisocial enough as it stands. If I didn’t go to any parties, no one would even know I exist. No one would care.”

Artemis stopped walking, and a soft growl came from her canine mouth.

The girl smiled and brushed a stray lock of her dark hair behind her cold ears.

“I know you do. I’m sorry, I’m being foolish again. I’ll make it up to you, but first, let’s go find Mum. We don’t want this poor guy to see us loitering out here, do we?”

Artemis shook her head, and a keen-eyed observer might have noticed a smile appear on her face.

As they walked briskly towards the usual meeting place, the girl sighed inside. Despite how close she was to Artemis, she still felt human at times, and had her own desires. More so than her mum, it seemed, though Parmil Szarnu didn’t freely talk of her experiences with men, especially given that Borreli, her best friend and possibly the closest she had ever had to true love, died half the galaxy away some eight years ago. Here on planet Culuria, however, there didn’t seem to be a single young man capable of creating any kind of lasting spark within the girl. She wanted to be inspired. Her eyes drifted to the stars. She hoped that she would find a way to leave this planet with Artemis before too long.

They came to a junction opening on a park, the Bardrien Memorial Park. Why she always wanted to use that park as meeting point, she didn’t know. She certainly didn’t want to hurt her adoptive mum’s feelings, but there was something deeply refreshing about coming to a place that honoured her birth parents, even a dozen years after their respective deaths.

The girl read the plaque on one bench in the park, despite knowing it off by heart: ‘To Kristala, who dedicated her life to her husband, to her daughter and to scientific progress on Culuria. You shall always be remembered’. At the opposite side of the park was a similar plaque for Ernie Bardrien.

This park had been inaugurated less than a year after the separate deaths of Ernie and Kristala, of whom the girl had few memories nowadays. She was still young when they died. Kristala would indeed always be remembered on Culuria, but not necessarily by her own daughter.

Artemis hopped onto the bench and shivered. She barked. To anyone else, the barks would have been meaningless, but the girl knew that Artemis had advised her not to sit on the icy bench.

“Girls!”

It was the one human voice that the girl trusted and loved unconditionally. A smile growing on her face, she turned to see a vehicle hovering ten metres away.

“We’re coming,” she shouted before putting her arms level with the bench, her palms upward. Artemis accepted the offer and nestled her golden fur in the girl’s arms.

A caring face looked at them from the vehicle, still as beautiful as ever, looking much the same at the age of thirty-eight as it had ten years beforehand, back when they first met.

A door opened, and the girl walked inside the vehicle, settling down comfortably into a seat.

Artemis jumped onto the adjacent seat and barked. The girl knew the meaning, although her mother had to check a translation device. It had been several years since they found Artemis, but Parmil still had trouble with a number of the newer words Artemis had created to adapt her language. The words appeared on the device.

“Do the rules allow me to drive?”

“Sorry Artemis,” said Parmil. “Although we can bend many rules for you, I don’t think they would allow you to have a licence.”

“Then I am afraid that you must wait before this dating nonsense no longer bothers you.”

Parmil laughed, and the girl blushed.

“I’m sorry, Mum.”

“I know, darling. It’s all right.”

The girl bit her lip.

“Did I disturb you in the middle of something?”

Parmil smiled.

“So now you ask?”

The girl felt her cheeks redden.

“No, darling, it was nothing important. I was just chatting with Ekrid.”

The girl smiled.

“How is he?”

“He says that he misses his goddaughter, but he’ll be back on Culuria in two weeks.”

“Good. Since he took up his new interplanetary advisory job, the government on Culuria has lost some of its quality.”

The girl saw her mother raise an eyebrow.

“Since when are you interested in politics?”

“We have discussed it often, for years.”

Parmil seemed surprised.

“Sorry Mum, we didn’t want to bore you with that.”

“A wise choice,” Parmil said, nodding. “Well, if you like it, girls, then so be it. Do you have any other surprises stored away for today?”

The girl laughed.

“Mum, who do you take me for? A magician?”

“No, the devil. Worse: Wadina Szarnu. Now activate your seatbelt, and let’s go home. I’ve got a kettle boiling.”

The following week seemed to last for ever, the days dragging along as Wadina thought about the prospect of speaking to Ekrid again, for the first time in over eight months.

Wadina looked forward to seeing her godfather for one reason in particular: he was her primary source of political knowledge, and through him she had learnt much of what happened behind the scenes in governments throughout the galaxy. For the longest time, Ekrid Malrow was a permanent member of the government of Culuria, a title bestowed upon him for his services to the planet’s population, but his influence went far beyond the confines of this small planet and the Residio star system. Now, he was a special advisor to each of the three major interstellar governments: the Yolniun, the Absolem Constitutor and the Azzurdi Empire. All because of Arpia, a little group of idealists fighting piracy who had become both the government of an independent planet and a household name.

Was Wadina part of Arpia? She had it in her blood, but she became a teenager only after Arpia’s glory days, when the actions of a few changed the face of the universe. If anything, the Wadina of today was ‘post-Arpia’, a product of an era in which the old crowd could only recount the past and not work towards the future.

“Artemis, we’ll have adventures of our own,” she said, looking out the window of her room at the two setting suns of the Residio system.

“If you say so, young one.”

Wadina grimaced.

“Ugly expressions suit you well, too. Where do you want to go? You have explored half the galaxy already.”

“I don’t want to explore. I want something to happen, something big. A radical change in the universe, like what happened when we met.”

Wadina did her best not to react to the laugh that Artemis made.

“I remember days when you looked for stability in your life, but those days are long gone. You want adventures? We have had this discussion before, and I have already told you to be patient, little cub. It will come soon.”

Artemis licked Wadina’s hand after speaking, but Wadina frowned.

“You definitely seem more confident than last time. What do you know?”

“I have observed that space is moving differently recently. Something is stirring. What it is, I don’t know, but maybe Ekrid will have answers.”

Here is my analysis of the situation, based on the BBC’s “Where they stand” articles, the Conservative Manifesto, the Labour Manifesto and the Liberal Democrats’ Manifesto.
I also went through the Green Party’s Manifesto, but found it to have very few elements of general policy, so I won’t analyse it here.

Britain and the European Union

On EU-related topics, the Conservative Party is a clear loser. It states in its manifesto that it’s opposed to the Lisbon Treaty but will not reverse it, and that it will enact a law to ensure that “any proposed future treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum”. They will “introduce a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country, in our Parliament”.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives, I am very pro-Europe.

The Liberal Democrats, in their Manifesto, say that they “believe that European co-operation is the best way for Britain to be strong, safe and influential in the future”. They wish to “continue to campaign for improved accountability, efficiency and effectiveness”. They say that they would opt in to pan-European justice policies and encourage greater European security and defence co-operation.

Labour are on a similar wavelength, stating that “Britain is stronger in the world when the European Union is strong, and that Britain succeeds when it leads in Europe and sets the agenda for change”. They have an interesting take on Turkey’s membership to the EU: “Turkey’s future membership is a key test of Europe’s potential to become a bridge between religions and regions”.

Overall, so far: Tory (Conservatives) = 0; Labour = 1; LibDem = 1.

Civil Liberties

In the land of Big Brother, with enough CCTV in operation for people to be filmed 300 times a day in London, the brandishing of civil liberties by parties may be somewhat perplexing. It is nevertheless good to see that some of them still care a little about all of this “freedom” nonsense (“privacy”, “rights”, …).

There are two issues about which I have a strong opinion: the National DNA Database, which is supposed to help “quickly identify offenders, make earlier arrests, secure more convictions, provide critical investigative leads for police investigations” (I quote the website), and libel laws.

The former is a database of DNA samples and profiles that came under fire from the European Court of Human Rights in the Marper v UK case. To cut a long story short, the DNA database was meant to fight crime, but held information about people who were held to be innocent, and this was a problem.

Where libel is concerned, the 2-year libel case against Simon Singh was dropped a few days ago, and suddenly all the parties are talking about an issue to which they rarely gave thought beforehand. If you want to know what the problem is with the English laws on libel, I suggest taking a look at the (not so neutral, but very informative) LibelReform website.

The Conservative Party support the DNA database, but would ensure DNA from innocent people is removed: they will “legislate to make sure that our DNA database is used primarily to store information about those who are guilty of committing crimes rather than those who are innocent”. Regarding libel, they will “review and reform libel laws to protect freedom of speech, reduce costs and discourage libel tourism”.

Labour is surprisingly brief, both on the topic of the DNA database, where they state that they will “continue to make full use of CCTV and DNA technology”, and on libel, where they wish to “bring forward new legislation on libel to protect the right of defendants to speak freely”.

The Liberal Democrats don’t say much about the DNA database, only that they want to “remove innocent people from the police DNA database and stop storing DNA from innocent people and children in the future, too”, but have more to say on libel than the others: they wish to “protect free speech, investigative journalism and academic peer-reviewed publishing through reform of the English and Welsh libel laws – including by requiring corporations to show damage and prove malice or recklessness, and by providing a robust responsible journalism defence”.

Here, the loser is definitely Labour, as I do not adhere to their full support of the DNA database.

Education

Education has been a problematic aspect of the UK, and England in particular, for some time now: English universities are renowned worldwide, but tuition fees are far higher than those at other European universities, without necessarily guaranteeing a higher standard of quality of teaching. To take an example based on personal experience, a year studying postgraduate law in Belgium costs about 1000 Euros in tuition fees, where a year studying postgraduate law in London costs at least 8000 Euros in tuition fees. It’s not half as costly as education across the Atlantic Ocean, but it’s still scary.

To address concerns of both universities, who don’t receive much funding from the government, and students, who seem to pay more and more, a review was commissioned, the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance, called the “Browne Review” as it is being led by Lord Browne. The Browne Review has yet to publish its findings, as it has just launched a “call for proposals”.

Both the Conservatives and Labour state that they will consider the forthcoming findings of the Browne Review, although Labour states that it has “eliminated up-front fees paid by parents and students”, which I must admit I don’t understand.

The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, have a radical idea: to “scrap unfair university tuition fees for all students taking their first degree, including those studying part-time, saving them over £10,000 each”, and to “immediately scrap fees for final year students”. They say that they “have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over six years, so that the change is affordable even in these difficult economic times, and without cutting university income”. This seems to be a likely way of gaining support among students, and I must admit that this plays in their favour where I’m concerned.

Family and Pensions

Coming from a Belgian political background, I find Britain to be very anti-socialist in many ways, but this does not preclude social issues from finding their way into the parties’ manifestos. Two such issues are very interesting, in my opinion: parental leave, and retirement age.

Parental leave is still mostly “maternity leave” in most countries, a remnant of the sexist society from which we are attempting to depart, and I tend to admire the Scandinavians for their focus on equality in that respect.

Retirement age is also an issue today, as our population lives longer. When pensions were born in the late 19th century, under Otto von Bismarck, the age of 65 was picked because few people lived beyond that age. Today, many people can expect to enjoy 30 years of pension, for an average of 40 years of work. While this is nice in theory, it means that the people who work are supporting an ever-growing number of retired persons, which causes issues of funding (among others).

The Conservatives state that they will “introduce a new system of flexible parental leave which lets parents share maternity leave between them, while ensuring that parents on leave can stay in touch with their employer”. On retirement, they will “look at how to abolish the default retirement age, as many older people want to carry on working”.

Labour prove to be more conservative than the Conservatives here, stating that they will “introduce more flexibility to the nine months’ paid leave that mothers currently enjoy – allowing them to share this entitlement with fathers after a minimum of six months”. On retirement, their views are similar: they will “proceed to end default retirement at 65, with a review to establish the right way in which to support more people to work longer should they choose to do so”.

The Liberal Democrats propose a parental leave system similar to the Conservatives, allowing “parents to share the allocation of maternity and paternity leave between them in whatever way suits them best”, although they go beyond the standard term: they wish to “extend the period of shared parental leave up to 18 months when resources and economic circumstances allow”. Regarding retirement age, they state the same thing as the other two parties: they aim to “scrap compulsory retirement ages, allowing those who wish to continue in work to do so”.

Here, once again, Labour seems to lose, proposing a parental leave system that unfortunately stays locked in the past.

Overall…

It seems rather clear to me that, of the three main parties, the Liberal Democrats are closest to my views. I was surprised to see how many Conservative views resembled my own in issues important to me. This is, however, just one election. Perhaps in the next one (when I will most probably be back in Belgium), the responses to issues will be wholly different. In the meantime, on the 6th of May, I guess I know for whom I am voting.

There is, however, one great absent (in my opinion) from these manifestos: intellectual property. Labour has one line on it, taking sides with the industry (“We will update the intellectual property framework that is crucial to the creative industries – and take further action to tackle online piracy”), and the Conservatives only mention its fiscal aspect, while the Liberal Democrats don’t mention it at all. Now, if one of these three parties had proposed any in-depth plan regarding intellectual property reform, I may have been inclined to give it some thought. Especially if it happened to strike a balance between users and the industry.