If you weren’t aware, let me inform you that there was a general election in the UK yesterday. I kid ye not. After weeks of tedious bickering, debates which didn’t include a single punch, one hurled egg, insulting of bigoted pensioners and kissing of babies, it all culminated in a result which wasn’t really a proper result. Yes, we now have a hung parliament. What’s a hung parliament? Let me explain… no, actually, just read this. Or if this is already too boring, here’s some funny pictures of cute animals.

Okay, so the Conservative Party, also known as the Tories, gained the most votes and (more importantly) the most seats of elected Members of Parliament (306, which will most likely rise to 307 once the delayed election in Thirsk & Malton goes ahead). However, because there are 650 seats in the House of Commons, Dashing Dave Cameron and his cronies were 20 (soon to be 19) seats shy of a majority… hence the hung parliament situation. A government likes to think it can vote on a bill and win, which is a bit tricky when the combined force of the other major parties and minnow contingents outnumber you.

Here in Surrey Heath we sit among the Tory heartland. Our local MP, Michael Gove, was re-elected without breaking into a sweat and increased his share of the votes from 51.5% to 57.6% – not bad for someone who didn’t even turn up to a local debate (because he was bag-carrying for Mr Cameron that evening). And not bad for someone who trousered £7,000 of tax payers’ money to furnish his Kensington home, even if he did pay it back after the finger of suspicion pointed in his direction. To be honest, here in the sprawling metropolis of Camberley I didn’t see much (or any) campaigning… just a few signs. I presume the Tories didn’t think they needed to bother, assuming themselves to be a shoo-in on election night. As for the rest, they probably thought it wasn’t even worth the effort of trying to win. And looking at the results, it wasn’t.

Let’s spare a thought or two for Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats. Nick’s ratings soared during the live television debates, and it seemed that after years of distant third places and a risk of being beaten by the Loonies that the Lib Dems may have been getting closer to the big two. Even the embarrassment of claiming £2.49 for cake tin wasn’t going to dent Nick’s confidence. But then we discovered why for so many years the Lib Dems have been advocates of proportional representation. The basic premise of proportional representation is that the elected government seats should closely correlate with the number of votes received. So why are the Lib Dems so keen on this? It’s best illustrated with two graphs based on the 2010 results:

On the left, we see the number of votes received in millions (Liberal Democrat = yellow, Labour = red, Conservative = blue). On the right we seat the number of seats in the House of Commons taken up by the three parties. While Labour and Conservative have a fairly consistent ratio between votes and seats, the Lib Dems don’t. Some basic maths tells us that for every seat won, the Conservatives received just under 35,000 votes… for Labour it was around 33,300 votes. But for the Lib Dems it was a ratio of just under 120,000 votes per seat. Why the big difference?

This has nothing to do with the Lib Dems winning seats in the most populous constituencies… quite the opposite actually. It was all about coming second in too many places. And what do you get for coming second in a contest for one MP seat? Nothing. Look at Surrey Heath… the Lib Dems were a clear second with 14,037 votes to Labour’s 5,552. Then look at Guildford where the Lib Dems netted 19,000 more votes than Labour. It’s a similar story almost everywhere the Conservatives won a seat… the Lib Dems came second with no reward.

Proportional representation would help the Lib Dems gain a greater standing in our democracy, but wouldn’t it also make a hung parliament more likely?

I must say, I found the Turner Prize very disappointing this year. In previous years it’s been all-to-easy to poke fun at the preposterous and pretentious rubbish that these so-called artists pride themselves on… people dressed as bears, flashing lights, planks of wood on the floor, mannequins on toilets and old sheds. But this year it seems that there are a few pieces I would describe as art and actually demonstrate some artistic talent. Okay, I say this as someone who is a bit of a philistine and was utterly hopeless at art during my school years. But look at Enrico David’s Harlequin-style pictures and sculptures… I wouldn’t pay 50p to see them, but unlike laying a piece of wood or a half-eaten bowl of porridge on the floor I’d have to admit I couldn’t create anything like that.

Roger Hiorns created some sculptures (or do we call them ‘installations’?) and they look fairly boring. One is called IBM and looks like something from the inside of a futuristic toilet cistern. Another of his installations is a fire in a grate, which I’m sure is something we’ve never seen before. But Roger did see fit to encrust an abandoned London flat with liquid copper sulphate, so he’s a worthy nominee in the Turner Prize tradition. Could I have done that? I don’t know – I don’t think it ever would have occurred to me to try it. Roger clearly has too much time on his hands.

Lucy Skaer created some sculptures and pictures, and quite frankly they’re not wacky or pointless enough for me to take the p*ss out of. They’re just a bit boring. Don’t feel too bad Lucy, I’m a philistine and I looked at the pictures of your works for about 2.7 seconds. My opinion is worth nothing.

Now we come to Richard Wright. Not the late Pink Floyd legend. I’m referring to the man who “combines graphic imagery and intricate patterning from sources as varied as medieval painting, graphics and typography”. And also exhibits some shelves as art. Often you place your art on shelves, but this piece of art is actually shelves. This is what most of us call ‘furniture’.

But to give Richard his dues, I actually find one of his pieces (using “gouache and enamel on paper”) quite impressive to look at. I like the shapes and the symmetry, and the way it reminds me of a pre-historic cave painting with an organic feel. No, I’m not being sarcastic, I actually genuinely do like it. Maybe it’s a bit too busy to be a Windows backdrop though. At least I now know what gouache paint is, so I’ve expanded my knowledge of the world, thanks to the Turner Prize.

So who won? It was Richard Wright, which was the right (no pun intended) decision. What is happening here? Come on artists… let’s see a ventriloquist’s doll dressed as Hitler on a unicycle carrying a bottle of bile next year please.

I have just one thought about this kerfuffle over British hacker Gary McKinnon finding his way into some (supposedly) ultra-secure US Government systems… don’t put the guy in jail. Instead the US Government should fly him over the pond first class and grill him on how he did it. That way they can learn about how to make the systems more secure. And then they should give him a job working in the UFO lab that we saw in Independence Day.

Of course, regular watchers of 1980s movies will already know how easy hacking is. Watching Beverly Hills Cop II we learn that even in the late 80s you could have accessed any computer from any other computer, as Eddie Murphy pops into Gilbert Gottfried’s office and accesses the Police HQ system. In Weird Science we learn that to hack into a secure government system all you had to do was type in ‘override’. Unfortunately that doesn’t work any more as security experts removed all override back-doors after the movie was released on VHS. The new back-door is ‘pa55w0rd’ – this is what McKinnon used, but if the US Government interview him and discover this, they’ll change it to something like ‘l4tme1n’.

So, here we are… Summer has officially ended, the first X-Factor live show is just over a week away, and Christmas merchandise is quickly taking over the local garden centres. There are two other important things I noted this morning, both on GMTV.

Firstly, the weather forecast from Kirsty McCabe. Earlier this week she speculated that we would have a mild Winter with no chance of a white Christmas – a pretty safe bet, given the last one was thirty-nine years ago. This morning she said that October and November would be mild with temperatures slightly above average (I suppose that’s what mild means). Given that the forecast for today now differs from what she said it would be on Monday, how much faith do we have in her ability (or that of any weather forecaster) to tell us what the weather will be like in eight weeks time? As Paul Daniels used to say, ‘not a lot’.

And then we have the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. You have to applaud Gordon Brown and his gang for not treating it like an early wake, and for keeping up the pretence that they’ll still be in power this time next year. Mrs Brown, there’s no point in looking at the interior of 10 Downing Street and thinking “we could do with new curtains”. Mrs Cameron will take care of that next year. So I was amused by the comments of the sprightly little political bunny David Miliband who this morning said something to the effect of…

Britain loves an underdog, and sometimes Britain wants the underdog to win.

Let’s put this into context Mr Miliband… Britain loves an underdog when Luxembourg are playing Germany in a World Cup qualifier. We love the underdog when a British player other than Andy Murray reaches the third day of Wimbledon. We’ll cheer for the British guy who turns up for a skiing competition and stands alongside Swiss and Austrian competitors. Labour’s position is rather different – the reason that they’re the underdogs in the polls is that hardly anyone thinks they’re doing a good job or intends to vote for them. So come the general election next year, we’re hardly likely to cheer them past the finishing post like some marathon runner dressed as a smurf who’s taken seven hours but has raised £2 million for a cancer charity. Being an underdog, trying your best and valiantly failing with respect and dignity in a sport is one thing… making a hash of running a country is another.

Travelling from Heathrow to Copenhagen on the world’s favourite airline allowed me to pick up a copy of the Daily Mail, a newspaper well-known for it’s traditional values. I guess it depends which historical figures you judge to be traditional… Adolf Hitler maybe? Anyway, there was an amazing picture of a 25 foot great white shark on page 3, and while coming into land I had to turn off the Archos and my eye caught a reader’s letter. This wasn’t the usual old guff from people who still believe Britain has an empire and that National Service will cure homosexuality… oh no, this is, shall we say, priceless and involves the sweet wrapper seen here.

Taking a glance at the picture, you have to ask “what is the green chap doing”? I can’t really come up with any good explanation, but I do know it’s not half as questionable as the cherry version (don’t take my word for it, Google it). Even if I was to believe the worst, I wouldn’t be bothered to write an enraged letter to the Daily Mail. But that’s okay because Mr Simpkins from Pontefract has done it for us.

Angry Mr Simpkins describes the illustration as appalling and says that the lime (he’s not actually a lime, he’s just a green character) wears a “lurid and distasteful expression”. By the point I was so appalled I was laughing. The letter goes on to describe a heated exchange of words with the shop manager (yep, like it’s his fault) which resulted in Mrs Simpkins becoming so distressed she had to sit down in the car park. Mr Simpkins was glad he prevented his children from seeing the image – like most normal children I’m sure they study sweet wrappers intensely, checking the sugar and E-number levels before deciding whether or not to consume them.

After writing to the manufacturer, Haribo, Mr Simpkins received an unsatisfactory reply denying any intention of naughtiness, and he is now urging members of his church to boycott Haribo products. There was no further indication as to whether Mrs Simpkins was still in the car park in a sitting or standing position. I’m sure that if she saw the cherry flavour wrapper she’d need a lie-down.

Incidentally, Mr Simpkins isn’t the first to complain about the Maoam wrappers. Back in 2004 the Blasien Jesuit College claimed that “the sweets wrapped in bright yellow, red and green colours show lemons, limes, strawberries, cherries and oranges romping with each other”. This is clearly an inaccurate statement, as the green chap is clearly not a lime. But it’s a good job Haribo decided against the banana flavour.

What you see above is the result of entering ping /? at a DOS / Windows command prompt. From the available parameters you’ll see that there’s actually no way to ping someone via IBM Lotus Sametime or ‘ping a note over’ to someone.

Please see here for more details, and please stop using the term ‘ping’ incorrectly.

A few years ago, when various people met round a table to discuss ambitious plans to put Camberley on the map, they couldn’t have foreseen that the completion of said plans would coincide with the worst time for the retail sector in living memory.

Apart from a couple of eating establishments in the final stages, Camberley 2.0 is now complete. We have a Vue cinema, a bowling alley, a Nandos,  a Starbucks (yeah, now we’re on the map), a host of other eateries, and a new parade of shop units. Ah, the shop units… this is where it starts to go a bit wrong. So far, only four have been occupied – Laura Ashley, Next, a sports shop and Zavvi.

Next moved out of the Main Square mall and into a bigger brighter unit in the now pedestrianised Park Street. Good move I think. Zavvi, as we now know, are unfortunately under administration  – so this leaves one of the occupied new units under threat. Zavvi also moved out of a unit in the Main Square mall. USC took one of the units vacated by either Next or Zavvi (can’t remember which), but they are also now under adminstration. JJB Sports are also in the Main Square mall and according to their web site they’re still there, but for how long? JJB, I think, are next to Adams Kids clothing (who are now under administration) and opposite The Officers’ Club (closed down). First Choice Holidays have already closed the Camberley branch, which was quite close to Woolworths (and we all know the story there).

I can understand Zavvi’s plight. Quite simply, they operate in the market which now seems to be best-served by Internet retailers such as Play and Amazon. That’s a factor that was no doubt part of Woolworth’s downfall.

Curiously, you’d think Game would be in the same boat. However, for the past two Saturdays the queue has stretched the entire length of the store, and not because they’re having a closing down cheapo clearout sale. They were very busy before Christmas so nice to see they’re bucking the trend. Maybe it’s because they have a loyalty points card scheme – that one factor could prompt customers to buy from them rather than an on-line competitor. Maybe it’s because (and this is a rare thing to say these days) they offer very good customer service and advice. Or maybe it’s because the thought of getting Guitar Hero World Tour delivered to your door (and having to wait in all day for a courier who will probably never arrive) is too miserable to contemplate.

Finally, just for a bit of fun, I’ve included (above) a picture of the artist’s impression of the interior of ‘The Atrium’ where the cinema, restaurants and bowling alley are situated. It doesn’t look exactly like this. The escalator is there, but you’d have to stand in the middle of the road to make it appear that far in the distance.

Remember when people used to let fireworks off on Guy Fawkes Night and on that night alone? I do… vaguely. These days it’s like living in Baghdad for a two-week period while one set of neighbours tries to out-do another with aerial incendiary devices that endanger commercial aircraft. As much as I miss my late pooch Molly, it wasn’t fun enduring a fortnight of barking every time there was a bang.

On a different note, and just because I happen to have the blog editor open, the race for the White House is really hotting up. The world’s media have only been banging on about it for eleven months. History will be made… either the first black president or the first female vice-president, and in either situation the most famous loser. The BBC news site have a scoreboard tracking the number of states won so far, and it’s exciting stuff.

Back in the good old HTML days of dadams.co.uk there was a page called ‘Hall of Shame’ which featured such things as junk mail, orange juice, onions, roadworks, cigars, unnecessarily large 4-wheel drive vehicles, cricket, wasps, fox hunting and people who pay for £2′s worth of item in a supermarket using a credit or debit card. Oh, and the one that people used to e-mail me to agree about – shop assistants who put the receipt in your hand and then place the change on top of it.

Today I have been driven to consider resurrecting the Hall of Shame, but instead I’ve decided to just highlight this item on it’s own. I’m a Lotus Notes user (and proud of it), most of the offenders are Lotus Notes users, but the problem has nothing to do with Notes – it’s all down to people. My calendar is pristine and organised. I am known to edit calendar appointments sent by other people if I don’t like the wording of the subject or the location (several times a day). Yes, that’s anal. With that in mind, let’s run through a few dos and don’ts. Actually, the dont’s…

1. Don’t put the date of the meeting in the subject field. There’s no need to. When I look at the appointment I can see what date it falls on due to the unique design of the calendar which displays the month and the day of the month.
2. Don’t put the location in the subject field. There’s a special field for that. It’s called ‘Location’. The clue is in the title of said field.
3. Don’t put the location in the subject field. I know I just said that. Let me explain further… if you insist on putting the location in the subject field, when the location changes I’ll get a reschedule telling me the subject has changed. So don’t blame me if I turn up at the wrong place.
4. When you invite me to a conference call, I don’t need every phone number on the entire planet. If you’re based in England, I’m based in England and the rest of the attendees are based in England, we don’t need the dial-in details for Venezuela.
5. Don’t put every phone number on the entire planet in the location field.
6. When you invite me to a meeting, it’s rather selfish if the subject is ‘Meeting with Darren’. For you it might be a meeting with Darren, but for me it’s a meeting with you (whatever your name is).

With businesses going to the wall, people stuffing what remains of their meagre savings under their mattresses, and a Winter full of fuel price rises approaching, trust GMTV to cheer us up. I’m always amused by the way they shove their reporters out in the elements to a location connected with the story but not actually interacting with the story. For example, veteran news-hound John Staplegun (sorry, Stapleton) was talking about woes in the City, so they plonked him on the opposite side of the Thames among the carrier bags and dog poo – the visual effect being that the City was visible in the background. But for all the difference it made, he might as well have done the report standing outside Tesco in Rotherham.

This morning, after the daily doom-and-gloom report, GMTV saw fit to wheel in Coleen Rooney, wife of gargoyle-like footballer Wayne. I’m sure she’s a very nice young lady, and she’s now positioning herself as a style guru. Wise move, given that her one and only skill seems to be shopping… but according to the merchants of doom, we in the UK aren’t going to do much of this because we’ll all be skint for years to come. So how nice to hear from a young lady to whom the credit crunch means nothing and can probably afford to wade waist-deep in gold around her mansion.

Tune in tomorrow for more news of people being made redundant as Christmas approaches, followed by a tour round the Beckhams’ new yacht.