Generalising

From the Guardian yesterday, a letter from Kettering:

As chair of Kettering’s Muslim Association and incumbent of the largest Anglican parish in the town centre, we were struck by the irony of our MP’s plans to refuse to meet any of his constituents who wear a veil. Such a form of dress is not, to our knowledge, worn by anyone in the local community. Not a single Muslim female has visited Mr Hollobone, veiled or unveiled, since he was elected. Our town has its share of social challenges, but it is plain to us that none of them relate to problems that can be linked to any religious issues. In the past Mr Hollobone has expended great energy on issues that genuinely affect his constituents. It is our hope that he might refocus his priorities to the benefit of those whom he has been elected to serve.

Dominic Barrington Priest-in-charge, Ss Peter & Paul, Kettering
Inam Khan Chair, Muslim Community Association, Kettering

OpenOffice has an autocorrect function – so, if you type shcool, it will silently fix it to “school”. No big deal, there.

It also has an option to select local language variant – so you can autocorrect honour to honor or vice versa.

It then turns out it does it with vocabulary. Um.

Set it to UK English, start writing in an American register, and “sidewalk” becomes “pavement”. “Zip code” becomes “postcode”. Thankfully these are the only two examples I’ve found, but – really. Who on earth though that was a sensible idea to implement? If someone’s writing with American vocabulary as opposed to simply spellings, despite having a different dictionary set, they probably mean to do so…

The lowest vote share a party has taken in a general election and still held a majority is 38% – the Conservatives in 1923. Labour formed a minority government in 1929 on the back of 37.1% of the vote share; and a minority government again in February 1974 on the back of 37.2% of the vote. …35.3%, in 2005. Goodness, do I feel a bit silly for missing that one – thanks cim for spotting it.

It’s likely that whatever result we get on Thursday, we’re going to break that record; barring a sudden Conservative surge, a hypothetical narrow-majority government will have the lowest share of the electorate’s support any majority government has ever had. A minority Conservative government – if the Lib Dems pass up coalition – would quite possibly, again, have the lowest level of support recorded for a sole party in power.

Reassessing: on current polling, it’s likely the Conservatives will either form a majority government on slightly above the 2005 vote-share, or potentially a minority government – if a Lib-Lab coalition fails – on slightly below it. Not the best of omens for making sweeping changes, but it’s remarkable to see the dramatic difference – in seat numbers and in general perceptions of strength – between what the Conservatives would get with 36% tomorrow, and what Labout got with 36% half a decade ago.