Alan's Green Thoughts

Byron Criddle, whose work on profiles on MPs particularly within the context of the British Election Studies, passed away last weekend. A politics lecturer at Aberdeen University, Byron Criddle will be best remembered for his collection of profiles of MPs, which were accurate, informative, and gave interesting information yet were impartial and thus a crucial contribution to psephology. He also contributed to the British Election Studies from 1974 onwards, giving detailed and meticulous accounts of the political effects of boundary changes, selection battles, the changing profiles of Parliament as a whole, and much, much more.  Farewell, Dr Criddle. Your detailed analyses were an inspiration to my own analyses of general elections, both quantiative and qualitative, and helped spark my passion for psephology. In memory of Byron Criddle, psephologist and lecturer, born 1942, who departed this life on 22 January 2021, aged 78 years.

Yesterday, the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force after more than 50 member states of the UN ratified it (Britain was not amongst the states voting to ratify the Treaty, unfortunately), with Cambodia being the 52nd country to ratify it that day. So far the only European UN member states to have ratified the treaty are the Republic of Ireland and Austria, neither of which are members of NATO (the Vatican, which has UN observer status, has also ratified it). This is one of the most important UN treaties ever created, and here is why: 1. Nuclear weapons could end up destroying the entire world. Therefore, for the sake of all humanity, they must be banned worldwide in the way biological and chemical weapons already are banned by the Geneva Convention.  2. Nuclear weapons are fundamentally a threat to peace. Spending on nuclear weapons ties in with spending on unnecessary and dangerous arms races, at a time when peace and cooperation are crucial to the surviva...

Readers, welcome to 2021, and let it be a much better year than 2020; so many of us are living under strict coronavirus restrictions at this time of writing but the vaccines are being rolled out across the world. Furthermore, the Brexit transition period has ended and Britain now enters a new era in that respect. In political and electoral terms, here is what to watch out for in Britain and elsewhere: 1. A huge combination of district and county council elections in Britain (and also unitary authority elections), due to the former having been delayed by a year due to coronavirus. 2. The first elections to West and North Northamptonshire councils respectively-we say goodbye to Northamptonshire County Council; the new unitarised Buckinghamshire Council will also have its first elections (originally scheduled for May 2020). 3. The next Boundary Review for British parliamentary constituencies begins, and it will be the biggest constituency shake-up since 1983, especially with the requireme...