MEPs for England

A fairly common objection to the European Union is that somehow it is trying to "abolish England". The objection seems to rest on the idea that since June 1999 England has been split into regions for European Parliament elections, and that these must be a plan to subdivide England for dark purposes.

There has been a lengthy history of English regions, with the Conservative government creating 10 Government Offices of the Regions in April 1994. At the May 1997 general election, Labour won and was experimenting with further regional devolution, which led to the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998 and defined the boundaries of 9 English regions.

The next significant piece of legislation was the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999, which moved (in Great Britain) from electing Members of the European Parliament by First Past The Post in one-member constituencies to a form of Proportional Representation (d'Hondt using party lists) in multi-member constituencies. And rather than draw up new constituencies, the existing English regions were used. Hence, the first time many people became aware of the English regions was when they were used to elect MEPs.

Currently, England returns 60 MEPs. If England were a single region (and Germany, with 99 MEPs, doesn't subdivide), then the result for the June 2009 election would have been:

• Conservatives - 19 (down 5)
• UK Independence Party - 11 (down 1)
• Labour - 10
• Liberal Democrats - 9 (down 1)
• Greens - 5 (up 3)
• British National Party - 4 (up 2)
• English Democrats - 1 (up 1)
• Christian Party/Christian People's Alliance - 1 (up 1)

There is a middle path. When the Jenkins Commission produced its report into elections for the House of Commons, it recommended a version of the Additional Members System called AV+ - whereas, in elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Greater London Assembly, the constituencies use FPTP, the Commission suggested the use of the Alternative Vote for constituencies in the House of Commons.

But what I want to focus on is the report mentioning:

Our investigations (see Annex A) suggest that a Top-up of between 15% and 20% of MPs would do sufficient justice to the three competing criteria discussed above to be acceptable

So, could we switch to a two-tier election - where there are some English regional MEPs, but also a group of English national MEPs to provide national proportionality? If we take the lower limit of 15%, this gives us 51 regional MEPs and 9 national ones.

The number of MEPs each region has is determined using d'Hondt's close cousin, Sainte-Laguë, and if we allocated 51 MEPs across the 9 English regions it would give:

• South East England - 8 (down 2)
• London - 7 (down 1)
• North West England - 7 (down 1)
• Eastern England - 6 (down 1)
• West Midlands - 6 (down 1)
• South West England - 5 (down 1)
• Yorkshire & Humberside - 5 (down 1)
• East Midlands - 4 (down 1)
• North East England - 3 (unchanged)

Electing 51 regional MEPs this way gives us:

• Conservatives - 21
• UK Independence Party - 11
• Labour - 9
• Liberal Democrats - 8
• Greens - 2

One thing is obvious - the Conservatives get more seats than they would if England was one electoral region, and the UK Independence Party gets exactly the same number of seats as it would if England were one electoral regions. Hence, it is reasonable to assume neither of these parties would get any of the additional national MEPs.

Denmark uses this method to elect its Parliament, or Folketing, with 135 MPs elected using d'Hondt on a regional basis, and a further 40 elected using Sainte-Laguë on a national basis.

If we stuck with d'Hondt for the 9 additional national MEPs, then these would be 4 from the British National Party, 3 from the Greens and 1 from each of the English Democrats and the Christian Party/Christian People's Alliance, to give us:

• Conservatives - 21
• UK Independence Party - 11
• Labour - 9
• Liberal Democrats - 8
• Greens - 5
• British National Party - 4
• English Democrats - 1
• Christian Party/Christian People's Alliance - 1

Alternatively, we could follow the Danish model and use Sainte-Laguë instead, in which case the 9 additional national MEPs would be 3 from the British National Party, 2 from the Greens and 1 from each of the English Democrats, the Christian Party/Christian People's Alliance, Socialist Labour and NO2EU.

Whether we would want some of these to claim to "speak for England" and have an "English mandate" is open to debate. But the major parties could, legitimately, but sneakingly, work around this. Imagine you are a typical Labour voter, in the polling booth, trying to find Labour on the national ballot paper, when you remember something in a leaflet that came through your door advising you to vote Labour in the regional section and for the Co-operative Party in the national section. Conservative Central Office could end up thinking about the old National Liberals and whether it's now time to bring the name back and have some National Liberal MEPs. And your Liberal Democrat activist wondering what if the 1988 merger had never happened and that there were now disagreements between the Liberals and the Social Democrats over which party contests the regional section and which the national section.

An alternative method would be for the election of national MEPs to be parallel to, rather than additional to, the election of regional MEPs, similar to the old system for the Russian Duma. Then the 9 national MEPs would be 3 Conservative, 2 UK Independence Party, 2 Labour, 1 Liberal Democrat and 1 Green.

Another option would be to use a different system for the lower-tier regional MEPs. 51 is 17 times 3, and European law requires each electoral area to return at least 3 MEPs. In the Republic of Ireland, the Single Transferable Vote is used to elect the Dáil Éireann, with each of the 43 constituencies returning between 3 and 5 Teachtaí Dála. Looking at the regions above, the 4 smallest could be single constituencies returning 3 to 5 MEPs, while the 5 largest could be divided into two constituencies. Or a set of 17 three-member constituencies could be drawn up. Or a natural patchwork of 3-to-5-member constituencies could be created roughly following the boundaries of collections of counties.

By George - A Moveable Saint's Day

I remember back in 1999 chatting to a friend's dad, who worked for the Scouts. And he mentioned the problem they would have the following year for the St George's Day parade, as Easter Day would fall on St George's Day.

I corrected him and said that Easter would be on 23 April, and it can never be on St George's Day.

That might seem odd, but have a look at the Church of England's Common Worship which lists how feasts should be transferred.

With Easter being on a luni-solar calendar (and the timing of Lent, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday depending on it), the year not being made of a complete number of weeks, and other festivals (especially Christmas) being fixed, then there are going to be clashes.

Easter is a powerful thing in this respect as it sweeps clear anything else. Anything falling on a Sunday between the First Sunday of Lent (6 weeks before Easter) and Trinty Sunday (8 weeks after Easter) has to be transferred - normally to the Monday. But there is also a 15-day period, from Palm Sunday to the Second Sunday of Easter, where everything not related to Easter is moved.

Given how late Easter can be, it is clear this can include St George's Day.

Common Worship gives the rules as:

When St George's Day or St Mark's Day [25 April] falls between Palm Sunday and the Second Sunday of Easter inclusive, it is transferred to the Monday after the Second Sunday of Easter. If both fall in this period, St George's Day is transferred to the Monday and St Mark's Day to the Tuesday.

So, what do this mean in practice? Easter can fall between 22 March (which it next does in 2285) and 25 April (which it next does in 2038). If 23 April is a Sunday then we have Easter on 26 March, 2 April, 9 April, 16 April or 23 April.

During the period from 2000 to 4000, the most common day for Easter is 10 April (83 times) - although this doesn't happen next until 2039. How often do these Easters occur and what happens to St George's Day?:

• 26 March - 58 times (next is 2062). 23 April is then the Fifth Sunday of Easter and St George's Day is transferred to Monday 24 April
• 2 April - 51 times (next is 2051). 23 April is then the Fourth Sunday of Easter and St George's Day is transferred to Monday 24 April
• 9 April - 74 times (next is 2023). 23 April is then the Third Sunday of Easter and St George's Day is transferred to Monday 24 April
• 16 April - 76 times (next is 2017). 23 April is then the Second Sunday of Easter and St George's Day is transferred to Monday 24 April
• 23 April - 22 times (next is 2079). St George's Day is transferred to Monday 1 May

St George's Day in May raises an interesting issue relating to the idea of a St George's Day Bank Holiday, which I will come to later.

The next set of dates is when 23 April is not a Sunday but is within a week of Easter. Hence Easter falling on or after 17 April:

• 17 April - 63 times (next is 2022). St George's Day is transferred to Monday 25 April or Tueaday 26 April (curiously, the guidance in Common Worship is unclear as St Mark's Day does not fall within a week of Easter Day. Although from memory, in 2011, Easter Day was on 24 April and St Philip's & St James' Day [1 May - which was the Second Sunday of Easter] was moved to Wednesday 4 May not not to Monday 2 May - with St George's Day being 2 May and St Mark's Day 3 May - so I will assume that St George's Day is on 25 April and St Mark's Day is moved to 26 April)
• 18 April - 61 times (next is 2049). St George's Day is transferred to Monday 26 April
• 19 April - 71 times (next is 2071). St George's Day is transferred to Monday 27 April
• 20 April - 78 times (next is 2014). St George's Day is transferred to Monday 28 April
• 21 April - 73 times (next is 2019). St George's Day is transferred to Monday 29 April
• 22 April - 42 times (next is 2057). St George's Day is transferred to Monday 30 April
• 24 April - 36 times (next is 2095). St George's Day is transferred to Monday 2 May
• 25 April - 21 times. St George's Day is transferred to Monday 3 May

So, in this period of 2,001 years, St George's Day is on:

• 23 April - 1,275 times
• 24 April - 259 times
• 25 April - 63 times
• 26 April - 61 times
• 27 April - 71 times
• 28 April - 78 times
• 29 April - 73 times
• 30 April - 42 times
• 1 May - 22 times
• 2 May - 36 times
• 3 May - 21 times

So, just under 64% of the time, St George's Day falls on 23 April.

One thing to note is that 79 times it is in May. Not just any day in May, but the first Monday in May.

The Banking & Financial Dealings Act 1971 sets the current rules for Bank Holidays (the Trades Union Congress has produced a useful guide to the history of Bank Holidays). Some are set in legislation, but others can be declared by the Queen at a meeting of the Privy Council, e.g. for the Diamond Jubilee or the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The "May Day" Bank Holiday - the first Monday in May - falls into this category. This year it's 6 May, as declared at a Privy Council meeting last May. By convention it is the first Monday in May, and hence, some years, it coincides with St George's Day.

There are calls for a St George's Day Bank Holiday, with a campaigning group set up. In the 2010-12 session, there was a St George's Day & St David's Day Bill introduced by Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon, which was discussed in the House of Commons. With regards to St George's Day, the proposals were:

• If 23 April was a working day (i.e. between Monday and Friday, but not Good Friday or Easter Monday) then that would be a Bank Holiday
• If 23 April were a Saturday (but not the day before Easter Day) then Friday 22 April would be a Bank Holiday
• If 23 April were a Sunday (but not Easter Day) then Monday 24 April would be a Bank Holiday
• If 23 April were between Good Friday and Easter Monday then the "Secretary of State" (preumably the Culture, Media & Sport Secretary) would determine the date

There is one objection to this idea, which is that there can be a Bank Holiday overload. If Easter Day is 23 April or later, then we have two Bank Holiday weekends (a 4-day one and a 3-day one) in succession. Throwing St George into the mix increases this.

As St George's Day and May Day are traditional English festivals, I wonder if the solution is to have a single celebration, a Bank Holiday combining them. 27 April is the midpoint, and we have a tradition of Bank Holidays being on a Monday, so the Monday nearest to that could be it. And that would be the last Monday in April.

If that is Easter Monday (which would happen if Easter Day was on 23 April or later) then move the St George's Day & May Day Bank Holiday to the last Tuesday in April.

The 2011 Scottish Election on Westminster Constituencies

One of my interests is analysing electoral statistics, and there is something I've been working on recently.

In May 2011 there was an election to the Scottish Parliament where the Scottish National Party won 53 constituencies, Labour 15, the Conservatives 3 and the Liberal Democrats 2.

Originally, the Scotland Act 1998 ensured that the constituencies for the House of Commons (Westminster) and the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood) were coterminous - with the exception of Orkney & Shetland which is one constituency at Westminster but two at Holyrood.

Hence the first two elections to Holyrood - May 1999 and May 2003 - were on the same constituencies as those used at Westminster for the May 1997 and June 2001 general elections.

From time to time, the Boundary Commission for Scotland produces recommendations for new and amended constituencies for Westminster - which under the Scotland Act 1998 automatically become those for Holyrood. The 5th review was presented to Alistair Darling, then the Transport Secretary and Scottish Secretary, in December 2004, in time for the May 2005 general election.

The Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 required that there be at least 71 Scottish constituencies in the House of Commons, but this was removed by the Scotland Act 1998.

While the review was being conducted, one issue was noticed. The number of Scottish MPs would be reduced from 72 to 59, and according to the Scotland Act 1998, the number of constituencies at Holyrood should therefore be reduced from 73 to 60. For Holyrood, Scotland is split into 8 regions, each returning 7 additional Members of the Scottish Parliament to make the result more proportional.

The Scotland Act 1998 stated that there should be 8 regions still, but the number of additional MSPs to constituency MSPs should be approximately 56:73, as per the origional division. Hence, there should be just 46 additional MSPs, with each region having 5 or 6.

This would have reduced Holyrood from 129 MSPs to 106, and so Westminster passed the Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004 which "decoupled" the constituencies, so that Holyrood would remain with 73 constituencies which would be different to the Westminster ones.

This need not be the only option. Ideas I remember floating around at the time were that each Westminster constituency would return one male and one female MSP (making 118 constituency MSPs - and in the political climate of the time these would be predomninantly Labour) and then 11 additional MSPs. Or grouping Westminster constituencies together to elect Holyrood by Single Transferable Vote - a grouping of 2 constituencies would return 4 or 5 MSPs whilst a group of 3 constituencies would return 6 or 7.

Hence, the May 2007 Holyrood election took place using the constituencies used at the 1997 and 2001 Westminster elections - not the 2005.

By the time of the 2011 Holyrood election, the constituencies were pretty old - they were drawn up over 15 years earlier, and ripe for revision. Hence the Boundary Commission for Scotland drew up new constituencies.

There has been a political drift between Westminster and Holyrood. At the 1999 Holyrood election, only 3 constituencies were won by a different party to the 1997 Westminster one. These were:

• Aberdeen South - held by Labour (who won it from the Conservatives) at Westminster, but won by the Liberal Democrats' Nicol Stephen at Holyrood. Stephen had won Kincardine & Deeside from the Conservatives at a by-election in November 1991 but lost it at the April 1992 general election. In June 2005 he became leader of the Liberal Democrat MSPs and hence Deputy First Minister - a position he held until the Labour/Liberal Democrat administration lost office at the 2007 election.

• Falkirk West - held by Labour's Dennis Canavan at Westminster, and won by him - this time as an Independent - at Holyrood. Canavan had not been placed on Labour's approved list of Holyrood candidates, but decided to stand anyway, and was expelled from Labour in March 1999.

• Inverness East, Nairn & Lochaber - held by Labour (who won it from the Liberal Democrats) at Westminster, but won by the Scottish National Party's Fergus Ewing - now the Scottish Minister for Energy, Enterprise & Tourism - at Holyrood.

One thing to notice about 1999 is that the regional vote is fairly close to the constitunecy one. The Scots were still finding their feet electorally, and I guess there was still a "Westminster mentality" - i.e. you vote for a party and whichever gets the most votes wins - rather than a full appreciation of how the Additional Members System works.

Move on to 2003 and things have changed. In addition to the three constituencies above, there are other constituencies which were represented by different parties at Westminster and Holyrood:

• Aberdeen North - held by Labour at Westminster but gained by the Scottish National Party's Brian Adam at Holyrood
• Ayr - held by Labour at Westminster but gained by the Conservatives' John Scott at Holyrood, who had gained the seat in a by-election in March 2000 following the resignation of Labour MSP Ian Welsh
• Dundee East - held by Labour at Westminster but gained by the Scottish National Party's Shona Robison - now the Scottish Minister for Commonwealth Games & Sport - at Holyrood
• Edinburgh Pentlands - held by Labour at Westminster (where former Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary Malcolm Rifkind failed to reclaim the seat he lost at the 1997 election) but gained by the Conservatives' David McLetchie - at the time the leader of the Conservative MSPs and a frequent taxi passnger - at Holyrood
• Edinburgh South - held by Labour at Westminster but gained by the Liberal Democrats' Mike Pringle at Holyrood. At the time one of my colleagues was a Liberal Democrat activist, and we agreed that Labour would lose it. He believed the Scottish National Party would win, but my view was that if they can't win a seat with Margo MacDonald as their candidate, then it's unwinnable (8 years later I was proved wrong) and that the Liberal Democrats would gain it from third place
• Glasgow Springburn - won by the Speaker from Labour at Westminster (in October 2000 its MP, Michael Martin, had been elected Speaker of the House of Commons), but held by Labour's sitting MSP, his son Paul, at Holyrood
• Ochil - held by Labour at Westminster but won by the Scottish National Party's George Reid - who went on to become the Scottish Parliament's Presiding Officer - at Holyrood
• Strathkelvin & Bearsden - held by Labour at Westminster but gained by Independent Jean Turner at Holyrood

The methodology is basically the Rallings-Thrasher method. Take the constituency results for the Scottish Parliament election and use tables of local election results (I used the ones from Electoral Calculus) to break these results down into ward results (or parts of a ward where a ward is split across two or three constituencies). The next step is to build up a Westminster result using the wards (and often parts of wards) in that constituency. Scottish local government wards can be quite large (over 20,000 electorate) and one assumption is that support for each party is evenly spread across a particular ward. Some of the hyper-marginal constituencies we get in Edinburgh and Glasgow could have gone the other way.

One quick impression is how across much of Scotland the classic two-party system is back. And those two parties are Labour and the Scottish National Party, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats being the rag-tag-and-bobtail candidates. This is the sort of situation where 40% of the vote leads to defeat not victory.

As an overview of the shift from the May 2010 general election:

• The Scottish National Party gains 31 seats from Labour, 9 from the Liberal Democrats and 1 from the Conservatives - a gain of 41 seats, bringing their tally from 6 to 47
• Labour loses 31 seats to the Scottish Natonal Party and 1 to the Conservatives - a loss of 32 seats, bringing their tally from 41 to 9
• The Conservatives gain 1 seat from Labour, 1 from the Liberal Democrats but lose 1 to the Scottish National Party - a net gain of 1 seat, bringing their tally from 1 to 2
• The Liberal Democrats lose 9 seats to the Scottish National Party and 1 to the Conservatives - a loss of 10 seats, bringing their tally from 11 to 1

With 47 out of 59 seats, the Scottish National Party would 80% of the seats. For comparison, Labour's best was 56 out of 72 at the 1997 election - which is 78%.

Another way of looking at it is that a party would need 425 English seats to be doing that well in England.

Labour's 9 seats would be its lowest number since the October 1931 general election.

For the Conservatives, third place and 2 seats would be their best result since the 1992 election(!). And being just 7 seats behind Labour is equal to the combined Scottish Unionist and National Liberal success at the October 1959 general election. The May 1955 general election, where the Scottish Unionists and the National Liberals managed over half the vote and a majority of Scottish seats between them is another era.

For the Liberal Democrats, their sole seat is their worst result since 1959, when they were also just reduced to Orkney & Shetland. The last time they came fourth in terms of the number of seats was at the October 1974 general election.

The seats won by the Scottish National Party would be:

• Banff & Buchan - majority of 51.27% over the Conservatives
• Dundee East - majority of 44.54% over Labour
• Moray - majority of 39.15% over the Conservatives
• Gordon - majority of 38.74% over the Liberal Democrats (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Angus - majority of 37.30% over the Conservatives
• Na h-Eileanan an Iar - majority of 36.68% over Labour
• Perth & North Perthshire - majority of 35.12% over the Conservatives
• Inverness, Nairn, Nadenoch & Strathspey - majority of 32.14% over Labour (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Dundee West - majority of 29.62% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Ochil & South Perthshire - majority of 26.08% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross - majority of 25.04% over the Liberal Democrats (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Argyll & Bute - majority of 23.68% over Labour (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Stirling - majority of 18.60% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Ayrshire North & Arran - majority of 17.38% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Ross, Skye & Lochaber - majority of 17.18% over the Liberal Democrats (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Kilmarnock & Loudoun - majority of 16.66% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Aberdeenshire West & Kincardine - majority of 15.64% over the Conservatives (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Falkirk - majority of 15.63% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Linlithgow & Falkirk East - majority of 15.60% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Livingston - majority of 15.55% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Midlothian - majority of 15.10% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Aberdeen South - majority of 14.10% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Aberdeen North - majority of 12.74% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Ayrshire Central - majority of 12.58% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Fife North East - majority of 11.73% over the Liberal Democrats (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Edinburgh West - majority of 11.66% over Labour (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Glenrothes - majority of 11.21% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Dunbartonshire East - majority of 10.83% over Labour (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East - majority of 10.11% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock - majority of 9.69% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Glasgow South - majority of 8.86% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Edinburgh South West - majority of 8.70% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Dunbartonshire West - majority of 7.18% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow - majority of 7.08% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Airdrie & Shotts - majority of 5.60% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Edinburgh East - majority of 5.49% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Glasgow North - majority of 5.36% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Lanark & Hamilton East - majority of 4.98% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Paisley & Renfrewshire North - majority of 4.47% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Glasgow Central - majority of 3.92% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Glasgow North West - majority of 2.37% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Dunfermline & West Fife - majority of 2.03% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale - majority of 1.90% over Labour (Gain from the Conservatives)
• Rutherglen & Hamilton West - majority of 1.85% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• East Lothian - majority of 1.56% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Edinburgh South - majority of 1.49% over Labour (Gain from Labour)
• Edinburgh North & Leith - majority of 0.06% from Labour (Gain from Labour)

The seats won by Labour would be:

• Renfrewshire East - majority of 12.56% over the Conservatives
• Glasgow North East - majority of 12.45% over the Scottish National Party
• Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill - majority of 8.83% over the Scottish National Party
• Inverclyde - majority of 2.71% over the Scottish National Party
• Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath - majority of 2.62% over the Scottish National Party
• Motherwell & Wishaw - majority of 1.84% over the Scottish National Party
• Paisley & Renfrewshire South - majority of 0.48% over the Scottish National Party
• Glasgow South West - majority of 0.27% over the Scottish National Party
• Glasgow East - majority of 0.15% over the Scottish National Party

The seats won by the Conservatives would be:

• Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk - majority of 6.75% over the Scottish National Party (Gain from the Liberal Democrats)
• Dumfries & Galloway - majority of 0.53% over the Scottish National Party (Gain from Labour)

The seat won by the Liberal Democrats would be:

• Orkney & Shetland - majority of 14.12% over Independent or majority of 23.92% over the Scottish National Party

At the 2011 election, there were Independent candidates coming second to the Liberal Democrats in both Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands whose combined voted was greater than the Scottish National Party's.

Thoughts On Clara Oswin Oswald And The Great Intelligence

Last Saturday saw the return of Doctor Who in The Bells of Saint John, which saw Jenna-Louise Coleman make her debut as new companion Clara Oswald, who does not have a middle name.

Well, it was her third appearance. Last year she appeared as Oswin Oswald, junior entertainments officer on the starship Alaska in Asylum of the Daleks - later revealed to have been turned into a Dalek herself, and later on as Clara Oswin Oswald, Victorian barmaid and governess in The Snowmen, which saw the return of the Great Intelligence - also behind the plot last Saturday.

A few things were noticeable. Firstly, Oswin was a computer whizz, able to hack into the Daleks' path web. And the Doctor tells her that the Daleks converted her because she was a genius, and the Daleks need geniuses.

A genius, eh?

Is the Doctor saying the Daleks wanted her because she has a great intelligence?

And that the Daleks need Great Intelligences?

In last week's episode, Alexei notes that Clara is:

Very clever, but no computer skills.

And Miss Kizlet responds:

Upload her anyway, splice her a computer skills package.

A bit later Kizlet states what they do:

We're preserving living minds, in permanent form, in the data cloud. It's like immortality - only fatal.

Bear in mind, from what we know from The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear, the Great Intelligence is non-corporeal.

After the Doctor manages to download Clara from the data cloud, he explains the situation:

There's something in the Wi-Fi. OK, this whole world is swimming in Wi-Fi. We're living in a Wi-Fi soup. Suppose something got inside it. Suppose there was something living in the Wi-Fi, harvesting human minds, extracting them. Imagine that. Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web, stuck for ever, crying out for help. - which Clara compares to Twitter!

Clara keeps her impressive computer knowledge after being downloaded again. But what if she wasn't fully downloaded? Or what if she were copied in the data cloud? Is that what explains Coleman's two previous experiences?

Losing The Winter Sky

Thursday evening, at about 11, I had just got home from work so popped out to Tesco to buy some milk. And this was the sky (from Heavens Above):

The thing that sticks out is that the winter stars are getting a bit low in the west. Of course, dominating that area of the sky is the planet Jupiter - it entered Taurus on 14 May 2012, and will enter Gemini on 27 June 2013, remaining there until 7 July 2014 (see an earlier post for what Taurus and Gemini look like).

The slower-moving Saturn doesn't reach Taurus until 22 July 2029.

When I looked at the various definitions of the year, I also showed what Pisces looked like. You'll notice that along the bottom of the charts the x-axis is given in hours - these hours give the right ascension of any object in the sky.

When the First Point of Aries is due south, then the siderial time is 0 hours. You'll see to the left of the 0h is 1h - and when that line is due south, the siderial time is 1 hour.

This is siderial time - time by the stars. The First Point of Aries takes 23.9344699 hours to return to due south, and we call this the siderial day. So, one siderial hour is equivalent to 59 minutes 50 seconds.

The sky (ignoring solar system objects for the moment) takes 3 minutes 56 seconds short of a day to return to where it was. So, the sky you see at a certain point is what it will look like about half an hour earlier in a week's time and about 2 hours earlier in a month's time.

Hence the sky I saw was the same as midnight in early March (we were then on Universal Time [UT], now on Central European Time [CET]), 2 am in early February, 4 am in early January and 6 am in early December.

These evening stars are setting about 4 minutes earlier each night - but sunset is getting later, which increases the speed with which they disappear into the evening twilight.

And similarly, morning stars are rising about 4 minutes earlier each night - but sunrise is getting earlier.

We see a reverse effect from late summer to autumn.

The following charts (again from Heavens Above) show this. This is the sky at civil darkness (8.12pm CET) on 1 April:

Compare this with civil darkness (9.05pm CET) on 1 May:

Sirius, Orion and Taurus are now setting, while in the east we are startig to get the summer objects such as Vega and Hercules.

What about the morning? On 1 April, civil twilight is 6.08am CET:

The south-eastern sky is dominated by the "Summer Triangle" of Deneb in Cygnus, Vega in Lyra and Altair in Aquila. Low in the south are the zodiacal constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius, frustratingly low - indeed parts of them are too far south to be seen even from the south coast of England. In June 1998 I was on an observing run using the Isaac Newton Telescope at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma, mainly to observe LO Pegasi. Now, on an observing run you spend most time inside, but one night I was unwell and couldn't use the telescope, but had a look out in the evening from my bedroom window and saw Scorpius in its entirety at a decent altitude and realised what we are missing in this country.

The other thing to note is how low in the east we are starting to get the autumn Square of Pegasus and its neighbour Andromeda (parts of which are always above the horizon).

I mentioned that you should expect the sky (with the exception of solar system objects) to be the same a couple of hours earlier each month. So, this sky is that at about:

4am on 1 May (civil twilight 5.02am)

2am on 1 June (civil twilight 4.13am)

midnight on 1 July (civil twilight 4.10am)

10pm on 1 August (civil darkness 9.31pm)

8pm on 1 September (sunset 7.51pm, civil darkness 8.25pm)

So, this sky is the sky about an hour before civil twilight in early May, and a couple of hours before civil twilight in early June.

Indeed, if we look at the sky at civil twilight on 1 May, then we see not much has changed:

And if we go on to the sky at civil twilight on 1 June:

So, we've lost Leo, Virgo and Scorpius completely, and the autumn constellations are becoming a bit more prominent.

So, what we see in the spring is that we lose the winter constellations quickly into the evening twilight, but sunrise getting earlier means we only slowly gain the late summer and autumn ones.

There is a reverse effect in autumn. When I was able to actively observe (now have a flat and loads of streetlights), this was my favourite time of year. September especially - I recall one September when I had 10 clear evenings in a row.

But there are two other factors that autumn has in its favour. The first is that the evening sky is stable. Firstly, look at the sky at civil darkness on 15 August (9.03pm CET):

One thing to notice is this year we have Venus low in the west - it was at superior conjunction (behind the Sun) on 28 March and is now moving towards greatest eastern elongation (when it is furthest from the Sun in the sky) on 1 November.

You might - correctly - say that 15 August isn't autumn, but this is the point in the year when the nights are starting to draw in, when you might be out in an evening and wish you'd put a jumper on, when you might have an indoor light on by the time you go to bed.

Now move on to civil darkness on 15 September (7.53pm CET):

Spot the difference. Well, not much really - although Venus and Saturn will be nearer each other (they will be at their closest on 20 September).

And now civil darkness on 15 October (6.46pm CET):

With regards to the stars, we have now lost Leo and Virgo - and indeed Saturn is now gone - and the autumn stars are a bit higher in the east. But not all that different to the civil darkness sky from two months previously.

Note that Venus is near the bright red star Antares - they are at their closest on 16 October.

And finally, civil darkness on 15 November (4.55pm UT):

Compared to 3 months earlier, Leo, Virgo and Scorpius are gone. The bright orange star Arcturus is getting lower. In the east Perseus, Andromeda, Triangulum and the Square of Pegasus are higher up, and Aries and Pisces have appeared.

This is the sky as it would be around midnight 3 months earlier - so roughly 3 hours after it got dark.

If the evening sky is stable, the other attraction of autumn is that the morning sky is anything but! Start with the sky at civil twilight on 15 August (5.16am CET):

By then, Jupiter will have moved into Gemini, and you might - after a night of observing the Perseid meteor shower - get your chance to wrap up the observing session by seeing Mercury.

Starting to make their appearance are some of the winter constellations - Orion, Taurus, Gemini, while the Summer Triangle is getting low in the west.

Now move on a month to civil twilight on 15 September (6.08am CET):

And the sky has really moved on. Perseus, Auriga and Taurus are nearly at their best. The winter constellations - with the arrival of the bright stars Sirius and Procyon - are dominating the east and south east. Leo is making its arrival.

And we also get Mars, down in Cancer. It is nearly at its faintest. if you look at Gemini, then there are the two brighter stars at the left end. The lower one is Pollux and the higher one Castor. Mars and Castor should be about the same brightness.

Mars won't be at its best until 8 April 2014, when it will be about as bright as Sirius.

If you look back at that mid-August civil twilight sky, then this will be the sky about 1/4 past 3 mid-September - roughly 3 hours before it gets light.

We now move another month on to civil twilight on 15 October (6.56am CET):

The winter constellations and Jupiter dominate the southern sky. The familiar autumn constellations like Pegasus and Pisces are starting to set. Out of the Summer Triangle, only Deneb is visible, low down in the north/north-west.

Having set in the evening, Arcturus has now risen again and is low in the east. Leo is prominent in the east.

That mid-September civil twilight sky is now the sky at about 1/4 past 4 (about 2 3/4 hours before it gets light) and the mid-August civil twilight sky is now the sky at about 1/4 past 1 (about 5 3/4 hours before it gets light).

And finally, civil twilight on 15 November (6.45am UT):

Even though it is still autumn, the main winter constellations are getting low. In the east, the sky is domiated with the spring constellations, with Vega - like Arcturus - have risen after setting earlier in the night.

Habeas Corpus Christi - The Logic That Led Me To Christ

Today is Easter Day, when we remember the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And this was a major factor in my conversion.

I need to explain the background. I did not grow up in a Christian home. My exposure to Christianity was through a brief membership of the Scouts - so I associated church with the St George's Day and Remembrance Day parades and it was all about looking neat and smart.

At secondary school we did have Religious Education. In my first year our teacher was an evangelical (and also took us for one PE lesson). He seemed different to other teachers, in a positive way, and it was only later that I realised what an influence he had. He gave us all Gideons New Testaments. I would read it, but be confused.

He left - we were told in assembly he was becoming a monk (he was actually becoming a pastor) - and another teacher took over RE. His approach was different. As he would remind us, when we aay "Jesus is alive", we don't mean that Jesus rose from the grave or that even a ghost of Jesus appeared to people. His example was that we might say that George Gershwin is alive, but by that we don't mean you can meet Gershwin, but just that when his music is played, he lives on in that. And in the same way, when Jesus's teachings are followed, he lives on in the teachings. Nothing more than that. Good people might earn their place in Heaven, and Jesus would be there, but just as a good man. Nothing more to Jesus than that.

And after school was sixth form college, where everything happened. I got bullied badly - the worst was what was called the "Ham-hoist"* which involved grabbing my legs unexpectedly and throwing me to the ground. I put my back out being Ham-hoisted once.

[* To annoy me, some people called me "Ham", which I now know is a Biblical name]

Some bullying was - with hindsight - funny. Like the "Wanted: Dead or Alive. Preferably Dead" posters of me that were put up one day.

And the only friends I made were in the CU. I thought they were nice people, even if they believed weird things.

At the same time my great-uncle, whom I was close to, was dying from lung cancer caused by years of exposure to asbestos. And he ended up becoming part of an evangelical Baptist church which was run by the dad of one of the men in the CU. One moment stood out in all this.

My great-uncle was an orchid expert, and built up an impressive collection. One day, he set the heating in his greenhouse wrong and the orchids all died. Years of work gone to waste, with no time to build up a new collection. I was upset by this and mentioned this to the people in the CU.

A few days later, his pastor turned up with an orchid for him!

I also joined Mensa. And there was a little article about how quantum physics can prove life after death. Intrigued - I was into physics after all, and enjoyed reading about quantum physics - I wrote off for details, unaware it was the spiritualists.

I absorbed what I read, encouraged by seeing teachings from beyond the grave by Silver Birch, and moved by the knowledge that everyone lives forever.

Christianity? Pah! As it was explained, the Gospels were written in the fourth century by the Catholic Church to back their teachings.

Something didn't ring true. I inquired about judgment, whether someone like Adolf Hitler would be punished for his actions in his life, and was informed that no, there is no-one to do the judging. No God there to do any judging.

And then there was a thing about spirits coming from beyond the grave, and how they can read the minds of living people. And if a religious person encountered one of these spirits it would tell them what they wanted to hear - that God exists.

Hang on a sec! If a spirit tells a religious person what they want to hear, rather than the truth, what is the evidence that these spirits are telling everyone what they want to hear? Why believe anything they say if they give one message to one person, one to another?

Is that all the world beyond can do? Send us disembodied politicians??!!

And then there was the bit about Jesus' resurrection, which blew it all apart. One of the booklets I received was informing me that Jesus did appear as a spirit, and all that was needed was for one of the disciples to go inside the tomb and see Jesus' body lying there. If only, if only, that had happened then all this stuff about Jesus being physically resurrected would have been knocked on the head, and we would have another moral teacher, but no Church - especially not the Roman Catholic church.

Going to local libraries and reading books in the religion section made me realise that the New Testament was not written in the fourth century but was much older. Something must have happened.

Reading the New Testament accounts I learned that people did find the tomb empty - Peter (Luke 24:12) along with John (John 20:5-8). What had happened?

Maybe they went to the wrong tomb. But Joseph of Arimathea owned the tomb (Luke 23:53-46) and Ms Magdalene observed the location (Mark 15:47). Hmm, but surely she would remember which one? And even if she didn't, she could go to Joseph and say "I can't find the tomb". In addition, wouldn't it be an odd coincidence if you go to the wrong tomb and find it empty with just some linen cloths that had been used for a burial there?

And even then, supposing the disciples did make an awful mix up, considering that Pilate put a guard on the tomb (Matt 27:62-66). Pilate knew where the tomb was, and if the disciples did start going around declaring Jesus had risen from the dead, all he needed to do was produce the body.

Also note that the guards were still there when the Maries went to the tomb (Matt 28:1-4) which made finding the right tomb easy.

Maybe the disciples - who didn't believe Jesus would rise - stole the body. The interesting thing about this is that the Pharisees were aware of Jesus's prediction that He would rise and suspected a ruse by the disciples. Faced with a group of simple peasants, should we really think that a group of tough Roman soldiers would wet their tunics and run away?

The other factor for me was the growth of the church. It is hard to keep a conspiracy secret. I am amazed by those who believe that the Moon landings were a conspiracy. Someone would squeal. And conspiracy theories draw in a cast of thousands who have to act against their best motives.

The Moon landings provide an example. A couple of years ago I chatted with a man who believed they were a hoax. And I noted that Russian craft have observed the landers from lunar orbit. Ah yes, but the Russians were in on it as well.

Really? There was a space race between the USA and the USSR, and the USSR knew that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin never stepped foot on the Moon but - for some unfathomable reason - chose to let the USA take the glory. Why, for crying out loud?

If the disciples had stolen the body, one of them would have spoken out under the persecution that followed. There would be a record of a Jewish sect, and one of them saying "It was all a practical joke that got out of hand" or "It was all Peter's idea. He's the ringleader". If the evidence existed that would have stopped the early Church in its tracks, why wasn't it produced?

While I was coming to my conclusion, my great-uncle died in the week before my 18th birthday, unaware that I was about to be converted. It happens like that. The pastor's son who was such a huge influence on me didn't see me come to faith as we had finished college and it would be 20 years before we met again.

By that October I was about to start at Oxford University - at Corpus Christi College - and knew I had to act on the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. It cannot be just an interesting pub quiz answer. It has to be more. And it was the current Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones', appendicitis which pushed me to my final step of converting.

A Familiar Anglicanism

Today is Easter and I went back to my parents' for the day. And went to church twice.

The first was the 9am service at what is the parish church. A small, historic church, the first one in England to be bombed by the Luftwaffe. And the service used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

I admit to liking the BCP. It's the sense of history. One day Jesus will call me home. And there will come a point when the last person to remember me will be gone. I will be no more than a name. Of course there is the internet so people keep a presence (one man on my Facebook friends list died last year - never sure whether the correct thing is to unfriend now or not, as it hasn't become a memorial site) these days. The only record of my grandmother online is in the list of names on the Stardust spacecraft. For one friend who was killed 20 years ago climbing Mount Taranaki there is no online reference to him at all.

After my health scares of last April and this January I have become more aware of my mortality and I notice ways that has affected me - not necessarily morbid ways.

The thing about the BCP is that awareness of an unbroken chain of believers dating back to when Jesus Christ was in Galilee. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the early church used the BCP or that Jesus spoke Shakespearian English. But the BCP reminds me that I am using the same words that people used 350 years ago (and in some parts, over 450 years ago). One day the 22nd century will begin. And as time passes, we will be seen as the Middle Ages. Then we will be Ancient History. Nations will fall, new nations will rise. There will not "always be an England" - one day that name will be known to historians only.

The Church of God will remain.

The BCP reminds me that the Church is old, rooted in history, and will keep going.

I then went to the Anglican church in my parents' town (a bit complicated as ecclesiastical and civil parishes are not coterminous). This was the 1/2 past 10 service and used Common Worship.

Now, I was converted in the autumn of 1990, and that was the church I went to during vacations. And for me, discussions and remembering of things like Series 1, 2 & 3 went over my head. I was used to the Alternative Service Book. The words in that were familiar.

And I noticed this today - so much of Common Worship comes from the ASB that most of the Communion I knew off by heart. It was familiar, comfortable and comforting.