Why Susan Foreman Should Never Return To Doctor Who - And Nor Should Several Other Sixties Companions

I read recently that Peter Capaldi would like Carole Ann Ford to return as the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman.

However fan pleasing this would be, I believe this is wrong.

Time-travel can be horribly wibbly-wobbly and timey-wimey and complicated, but there is one principle established in Pyramids of Mars, where Sarah Jane Smith notes that they know that Sutekh didn't destroy the Earth in 1911, and the Doctor responds by taking her to 1980 to see the devastated Earth. Their failure to stop Sutekh would create a new timeline in which Sarah was never born. That wouldn't affect her on one level, as her birth was an event in her personal past, but would no longer be an event in the new timeline. If Sutekh won then she would have to explain to various aliens why she was born in 1950ish despite humanity being wiped out about 40 years before her birth.

One fixed point in time was Adelaide Brooke's death in The Waters of Mars - and she was driven to become an astronaut by the events of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. But in Victory of the Daleks, the Doctor is surprised that Amy Pond cannot remember those events - which implies that there is a new timeline in which the Davros never proceeded with his Reality Bomb plan. In this new timeline:

• Davros wasn't killed in the destruction of the Crucible, as it was never destroyed - he is still out there somewhere.
• Dalek Caan wasn't killed
• The Void didn't collapse, so the events of The Next Doctor - including the Cyberking - never happened
• Adelaide's parents weren't killed
• Adelaide wasn't inspired to become an astronaut
• The future of humanity among the stars which the Doctor told Adelaide about didn't happen

One of the key Doctor Who adventures was Genesis of the Daleks, where the Doctor manages to delay the Daleks' development. That means a new timeline was created in which the previous Dalek adventures - The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Chase, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks - never happened.

Now, from the Doctor's perspective, these are parts of his personal past. But they are no longer events in the current timeline.

Think about that for a moment. Steven Taylor only escaped from the Mechanoids because the Doctor and his companions (Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki) arrived there fleeing the Daleks in The Chase. The Doctor can remember Steven's adventures from there up to The Savages, but in the current timeline these events were altered due to Steven's absence. From the universe's perspective, the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki never arrived and never met Steven. Also note that Ian and Barbara leave for London, 1965, in a Dalek time machine. The Doctor and Vicki see them leave, and from Ian and Barbara's perspective, they arrive in London.

But as far as the universe is concerned....

Well, if the Daleks' development was delayed, then the current timeline is one where the events of The Chase never happened, and - although this contradicts The Day of the Doctor and Sarah's comments in Death of the Doctor - from the universe's perspective, Ian and Barbara never returned and are just a couple of schoolteachers who went missing 52 years ago, with a cold crime squad maybe one day deciding to investigate.

The Daleks' Master Plan - well, from the Doctor's perspective, Katarina was killed (and the same is true from her perspective), but if the current timeline is one where this adventure never happened, then her death is no longer an event in the universe. Doesn't mean she's alive - she just went missing from Troy at the end of The Myth Makers as far as the universe is concerned.

Victoria Waterfield's debut was The Evil of the Daleks. Now, this is where it gets complicated. There is a Victoria who travelled with the Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon, whom he will remember. But if he went back to see Frank and Maggie Harris from Fury of the Deep and asked to see Victoria, they wouldn't have a clue who they were talking about. If The Evil of the Daleks never happened, then the Doctor could travel back to a time after 1866, meet Victoria (who would not know who he was), her father and Theodore Maxtible, and see how their continuing time-travel experiments using mirrors and static electricity were going (or rather, failing to go).

And what about The Dalek Invasion of Earth? What went through the Doctor's mind as the Time Lord on Skaro handed him the Time Ring and sent him on his mission? Did he realise that his mission would necessarily mean that his previous encounters with the Daleks would no longer have happened due to the timeline changing, and the cost to him at a family level?

Due to the rewriting of the timeline, there is no apocalyptic post-invasion 22nd century Earth for the Doctor to travel to to see Susan. The Dalek invasion - and its consequences - were removed from the timeline. From the universe's perspective, Susan no longer exists.

And that is the cost to the Doctor of the Time War - permanent separation from his grand-daughter, getting on with her life in a world that doesn't exist.

The Election Where The SNP Won More Seats Than The Liberal Democrats Despite Having Fewer Votes

Electoral reform seems to be in the air at the moment - and I do agree that Single Member Plurality has had its day - and one common argument is that under SMP (or First Past The Post as it is often called) party X can win more seats that party Y despite having fewer votes.

And indeed, not all that long ago on a May Thursday there was an election where the Scottish National Party won more seats than the Liberal Democrats despite having fewer votes.

I am, of course, referring to the May 2014 elections to the European Parliament conducted on a form of proportional representation (party lists with seats allocated by the d'Hondt system).

The Scottish National Party won 2 seats on 389,503 votes, while the poor Liberal Democrats won just 1 seat on 1,087,633 votes- that is half the SNP's seats on 2.79 times as many votes. And to make things worse, the Greens won 3 seats on 1,255,573 votes - that is thrice the number of seats the Liberal Democrats won but with just 1.15 times the number of votes.

How could this happen under proportional representation, which should do as it says on the tin?

As for European elections we subdivide the United Kingdom into nations (and England is further subdivided into regions) then where a party picks up its votes is important - not just the total number of votes. The SNP's vote is focussed in one part of the UK, not spread around like the Liberal Democrats.

In the discussions over electoral reform in the next few years, bear in mind that in any system, the SNP will be punching above their weight - even in the system of proportional representation we use for the European Parliament.

Jump Around

Today is not going well, thanks to the Migraine Monster clambering in through my bedroom window during the night and putting my head in a clamp.

Living in a block of flats, there is the problem of noise. And the flat above is very noisy.

The boy in the flat is about 8 or 9 and lives with his mum. And from him there is a lot of noise. Running around, shouting...

And the jumping.

Jump

Jump

Jump

I appreciate he has energy to get rid off - so why can't his mum take him to one of the local parks for a runaround?

The jumping is at the right noise frequency to make any headache or migraine worse.

This can go on beyond midnight, which brings me to the real problem.

On many evenings I hear this going on, the running around, jumping and shouting, and I cannot sleep while it goes on, even when wearing earplugs. And the thing is, there doesn't sound like an adult there. OK, one evening this week I did hear his mum yelling at him to stop and go to bed (this was around 1/2 past 11), and I realised how rare this is. He ignored her and carried on.

But I have noticed this pattern - him running around, jumping, shouting, with no sound of any adult there. Then hearing the front door of the block of flats open and shut some point between 1/2 past 11 and 1/2 past midnight. Then the sound of the same with the door of the flat above. A woman's voice and him stopping shortly afterwards. If he is getting to bed that late on a school night, then his education is going to suffer.

Something is clearly not right.

The EU Negotiations & The West Minster Question - Why Can't We Become The EU's Scotland?

It used to be said that Parliament could do anything except turn a man into a woman - a restriction on its powers that Labour removed under the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

However, there are times when Parliament has a self-denying ordinance - and this is thanks to the Scotland Act 1998. When I looked at the West Lothian Question I outlined that sovereignty still resides at Westminster, and that there are procedures where the British Government can prevent Bills passed by the Scottish Parliament from becoming law.

There are 3 stances on devolution:

• If you believe in legislative devolution then you think Scotland's schools system should be overseen by the Scottish Minister for Education answerable to the Scottish Parliament
• If you believe in executive devolution then you think Scotland's schools system should be overseen by the Scottish Secretary answerable to the UK Parliament
• If you believe in integration then you think Scotland's schools system should be overseen by the Education Secretary answerable to the UK Parliament

All major Unionist parties support legislative devolution.

In the UK, devolution is asymmetric - the Scottish Parliament has more powers devolved to it than the Welsh Assembly or the Northern Ireland Assembly, and there is no English Parliament.

Within the European Union, there are ways in which the United Kingdom is distinct, just as Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own distinctive characteristics within the United Kingdom.

To begin with, there is the political centre-right. The British Government is composed of the European Conservatives & Reformists. Now, the ECR has led governments in both Poland (where their main rival is the European People's Party) and the Czech Republic (where it has shared power with the EPP), but the UK is different in having the ECR being able to form Governments on its own.

Mentioning the EPP in the above paragraph brings me to the next distinctiveness. The EPP is the European Union's leading party, producing the Presidents of both the European Commission (Jean-Claude Juncker) and the European Council (Donald Tusk), and in the United Kingdom it is - well, where is it? 0 Members of the European Parliament, 0 MPs, 0 peers, 0 Members of the Scottish Parliament.....

It's as if the Conservatives not only returned 0 MPs from Scottish constituencies but had 0 MSPs and 0 councillors in any of the 32 councils in Scotland.

We accept that Westminster is sovereign, but in certain policy areas it allows its powers to stop at the border. So, why can't we push for the same in the European Union, arguing that we have a system in the United Kingdom that works and allows Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to express their distinctive characteristics?

What I think we should be arguing in any re-negotiations is that the heartland of the European Union - the Benelux countries, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and maybe others - is the European Union's "England". It is the dominant section. But just as there are circumstances where Westminster only legislates for England and Government ministers only have powers in England, then we could push for something similar in Europe. Have policy areas where the European Parliament only legislates - and the European Commission only has executive powers - within that European heartland.

In Scotland, the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats hold that things like transport, health and education should be matters for the Scottish Parliament, not Westminster, to legislate for and have executive authority over - but they are still fully signed up to being in the United Kingdom. And the same way, the Government should emphasise to the other European Union governments that there is no contradiction between the United Kingdom playing a full part in the European Union while - in some policy areas - Brussels' powers stop at the English Channel.

How Christians Disagree Well - Thoughts On The 20th Anniversary Of My Baptism

20 years ago, something happened to me at Central Baptist Church, Leicester (sometimes referred to as "Charles Street Baptist Church".)

Among evangelical Christians there are various stances on baptism. The two main ones are:

• It is OK to baptise the children of Christians - baptism was is the sign of the New Covenant, just as circumcision was the sign of the Old Covenant, and as circumcision was performed on the sons of Israelites, baptism can be performed on the children of Christians. This is called "paedobaptism".
• In the New Testament the call is "repent and be baptised", in that order, so baptism should be restricted to Christians. This is called "believers' baptism"

Then there is also the mode of baptism:

• Some Christians believe it needs to be full immersion in water, symbolising Jesus's death and resurrection.
• Others believe that sprinkling of water is sufficient.

Note that there can be a combination - there will be those who believe in "adult baptism" (even that is a confusing term when used to refer to "believers' baptism") can be done by sprinkling.

To add to the mix, there is also the renewal of baptismal vows (which may include immersion in water, like baptism), with the Church of England's Common Worship having services Affirmation of Baptismal Faith within a service of Holy Communion (which seems to be for a small number of candidates) and A Form for the Corporate Renewal of Baptismal Vows (which seems more focussed on the whole congregation).

Unfortunately, there is also the problem of a quasi-pagan view of baptism, which acts as if the Church of England's service book is the 1662 Book of Common Spells. I recall one lady I knew - she was not too keen on her grandchildren spending time with their other grandparents as they were "religious", yet she pressed for them to be christened, "just in case something happens to them". She didn't want it in the main service as she didn't want her family to have "religion" rammed down their throats. And she felt it had to be done using what she called "the Old Bible". I have no idea where to begin with all that!

The Church of England itself can get confused - Canon B21 states:

It is desirable that every minister having a cure of souls shall normally administer the sacrament of Holy Baptism on Sundays at public worship when the most number of people come together, that the congregation there present may witness the receiving of them that be newly baptized into Christ's Church, and be put in remembrance of their own profession made to God in their baptism.

However, their FAQs are quite fluffy, dealing with the issue of having a baptism outside the main service. Despite was Canon B21 states, the FAQs answer the question:

Can we arrange a Christening at a separate time to the Sunday service?

by:

There may be opportunities to have a service at a different time, again usually on a Sunday, but talk to the vicar and ask their advice about what is possible at your church.

There we are, you can make the baptismal promises without sharing in the corporate worship. The FAQs even tell you:

You do not have to have been a regular churchgoer

Even if the early church practiced infant baptism, what would they have made of people wanting their children baptised as a social event, with no history of - or intention of - being involved in a worshipping community?

Now, my background was having infant baptism in December 1972, when I was 5 months old. My baptismal present from my grandmother was a Book of Common Prayer, which I still have by my bedside. However, I did not have any meaningful Church connection growing up, and didn't become a Christian until I was 18. That was through the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union.

Now, OICCU came across as predominantly Anglican - I assume because the big evangelical churches in Oxford city centre were Anglican. And from my background I wasn't really aware of anything much outside the Church of England - although my great-aunt and great-uncle attended a Baptist church (another great-uncle, my grandmother's and great-aunt's elder brother, whom I never met, was a Church of England vicar). So, baptism never came up as an issue. The first time I saw a believer's baptism was while I was in Oxford, when it was one of my friends at New Road Baptist Church.

After Oxford there was a few months of living an ecumenical life - as a volunteer at Cedar Lawn Methodist Home for the Aged in Stratford-upon-Avon, while worshipping at Stratford-upon-Avon Baptist Church.

After Stratford-upon-Avon it was a move to Leicester, and there I was introduced to a very different form of evangelical world to that I had experienced at Anglican-dominated Oxford or more small-town Stratford.

When I moved to Leicester, just across from the end of my road was Melbourne Hall Evangelical Free Church - the first time I had encountered an evangelical free church. The world of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches was completely new to me.

Melbourne Hall has a positive dominance, as it is the father (or grandfather or even great-grandfather) church of other evangelical free churches in the Leicester area, giving the city and the region around it one aspect of its distinctive evangelical culture. One of the philosophies of the Melbourne Hall strand of evangelicalism is the church plant, where a church grows to the point where it is too big and splits positively (rather than the more sadder faction-driven splitting that occurs in churches) and one/some of the leadership team and some of the congregation form a new church elsewhere.

As well as the conservative evangelical churches, there were also the charismatic ones - again, not something I had come across in any detail. The one I was most aware of was New Trinity Church (now Trinity Life Church) - an Assemblies of God church which was the second closest church to me.

What connected the charismatics and the conservative evangelicals was a focus on believers' baptism. This was the first time I came across an environment where being baptised post-conversion by full immersion was seen as the norm. And this had got me thinking.

At the time, as an Anglican, I was worshipping at Holy Trinity. And one day I mentioned to the vicar that I was thinking of getting baptised by full immersion. I had expected him to, as a good Anglican, inform me that I had been done as a baby. A few weeks later, he wrote to me to tell me that some people from Holy Trinity would be getting baptised at Central Baptist Church and would I like to join them? I did. This was pushing Anglican rules to the limit - after all, no-one holding any formal office in the Church of England would be doing the actual baptising. The vicar would be preaching, but again, this is different - a vicar cannot reasonably be expected to say to a Baptist church that he or she cannot preach a sermon at a service because there will be baptisms.

Those of us wanting to be baptised met the pastor of the Baptist church on the Thursday evening for what we called the "dry run" and then on the Sunday were the actual baptisms.

Since then, as I have - due to moving around - swung between Anglicanism and Evangelical Freeism. And I have had to work out what happened that day. Was I renewing my baptismal vows (as Anglicans would have it) with my real baptism in 1972, or was the 1972 event a sham and 1995 the real baptism? I guess I will never resolve that tension fully. To some extent, as one can only be baptised once, this is the same event from two angles - if we believe that infant baptism is a covenantal matter, then in 1972 God was making His side of a covenant, and in 1995 I was responding.

There is a lot of ink spilled over the waters of baptism, but what I want to focus on are three things when we disagree:

1. We need to find out why someone holds a different viewpoint. I don't mean use the theological equivalent of "pop psychology", but find out what Bible verses they rely on, and accept that they may be correct
2. We also need not to major on minors. We should never place a secondary issue in the position of being a salvation maker-or-breaker. I am happy to discuss my views on the early chapters of Genesis - but not with a person who sees a belief that something happened over a period of 6 days in 4004 BC as something that separates true Christians from heretics.
3. In the Bible, the victory we focus on is Jesus' victory at Calvary. There should be no attitude of wanting a victory over other Christians. We should not seek to "own" (in the very modern sense of the word) other Christians. Driving someone out of a church should not be your ambition. I don't approve of the ordination of women, but what has impressed me about the way that Libby Lane, the Suffragan Bishop of Stockport, has gone about her work is that she has not given any indication that she sees her appointment and consecration as a victory over Christians like me or seeks to make the Church of England a cold house for us

Thanet South and the Local Elections

I guess you've seen something doing the rounds - Nigel Farage, the former ex-leader of the UK Independence Party, failed to win Thanet South, yet UKIP won control of Thanet District Council.

And there is this "proof" from the man made that complaint to the police that the result was rigged - when they have real crimes to solve:

A few things to note:

• That shows 149,034 people voting - 156% of the electorate. Before anyone thinks that is odd, in local elections with multi-member wards, the number of votes cast is much higher than the turnout as people cast more than one vote.
• Hence UKIP vote (and other parties' votes) are going to be higher at local elections (with more votes cast) than at a general election - there is nothing at all suspicious about this for people with a basic grasp of maths
• People vote different ways at local and general elections - otherwise, the Liberal Democrats in New Forest East would be tweeting #newforestrigged every election
• The Thanet constituencies contain more than Thanet - as the official description under the Parliamentary Constituencies (England) Order 2007 shows

So, what was the local election result in Thanet South? It takes 14 wards (Beacon Road, Bradstowe, Central Harbour, Cliffsend & Pegwell, Cliftonville East, Cliftonville West, Eastcliffe, Kingsgate, Nethercourt, Newington, Northwood, Sir Moses Montefiore, St Peters and Viking) from the District of Thanet, as well as 2 wards (Little Stour & Ashton and Sandwich) from the District of Dover.

As most of these are multi-member, we work out each party's vote by taking the candidate from that party with the highest vote in that ward.

So, the local election result for Thanet South is:

• Conservative - 16,811
• UK Independence Party - 14,980
• Labour - 12,487
• Green - 1,652
• Liberal Democrat - 1,385
• We Are The Reality Party - 793
• Independent (Ralph Hoult) - 513
• Independent (Ruth Bailey) - 230
• Independent (Dean McCastree) - 201
• Ramsgate First - 199
• Independent (Peter Cook) - 168
• Independent (Bayo Oyediran) - 104

So, no mystery here. The Conservatives topped the poll at both the local and general elections.

One interesting thing to note is that - in complete reverse to the conspiracy theory - Farage actually won more votes than UKIP's local election votes in the constituency.

Whatever Happened To Multi-Party Marginals?

I had a concern about last week's general election - namely that as the party system fragmented further, there would be an element of randomness in the result, with many seats being won on small (say less than 30%) shares of the votes, and a rise in 3-way and 4-way marginals. I would not have been surprised if a genuine 5-way marginal appeared (my money - if I were a betting person - would have been on Brecon & Radnorshire).

Instead, the opposite has occurred, with these multi-party marginals becoming rare. As the party system fragments it has also solidified into a collection of 2-party systems, with the overwhelming majority of seats falling into one of these categories:

• A safe seat for one party, with the identity of the runner-up being only of interest to political anoraks like myself
• A marginal seat for one party, with another party being the sole clear challenger

There are now only 4 seats with less than 10% of the vote between the first and third parties:

Constituency	Gap between 1st and 3rd	Winner	Runner-up	3rd
Thurrock	1.97%	Conservative	Labour	UK Independence Party
Belfast South	7.32%	Social Democratic & Labour Party	Democratic Unionist Party	Alliance Party of Northern Ireland
Upper Bann	8.13%	Democratic Unionist Party	Ulster Unionist Party	Sinn Féin
Ynys Môn	9.96%	Labour	Plaid Cymru	Conservative

The closest gap between first and fourth place is 10.68% in Belfast South, with Sinn Féin in fourth place. In Great Britain the closest is 14.11% between the Liberal Democrats and UKIP in Southport.

With 15.44% between the SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party, Belfast South has the smallest gap between the first and fifth candidates.