Pete's Odyssey - A website and blog.

Home brewed beer

Pete Lewis — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:53:26 +0000

My brother recently bought me a brew-your-own-beer starter kit, since he knows well enough that I'm into both beer and doing stuff like that myself. I've never made beer or any other alcoholic drink before, though my Nan did use to make her own wine from the various berries she found around the park.

So, over the last couple of weeks, I've been brewing. Here's the story.

Beer is basically made by the rather simple process of mixing malted barley with sugar and water, and then adding yeast, which over a period of time converts the sugar to alcohol in a process known as fermentation. The yeast eats the sugar and releases alcohol and carbon dioxide, which is why beer has bubbles in it. Some people add all sorts of other things to the process in order to give it an extra taste, a common example of which is the hops flower. Different types of yeast also apparently alter the flavour.

Arguably one of the most difficult things to do is to malt ones own barley. Malting is the process of taking barley (or other cereal) grains and soaking them so that they begin to sprout, and then stopping the sprouting process by drying the grain. Beer making is very similar to the early part of the whisky making process, so if you've ever visited either a brewery or whisky distillery that does its own malting, you may have seen the malting floor, a very large area above the fire, where the grain is spread out to dry. Many breweries and distilleries actually don't do this process themselves, and a specialist malting houses often provide brewers with "malted barley". If you're interested, the Highland Park distillery on Orkney does do its own malting, whereas Talisker on Skye doesn't. Both are worth a visit.

Anyway, on with the beer making. I may have a go at malting barley one day, but for now it's actually quite easy to get hold of a can of malted barley, with a small amount of sugar and water added to make it into a syrup. This was fine for my purposes now. The first task is therefore to add the malted barley syrup to a 25 litre tub.

The next step is to add hot water to the barley. I boiled this up in a pan, and then added it to the tub.

A kilo of sugar is then added to the mix. I was recommended brewing sugar, which apparently is basically just glucose. The mixture is then topped up with cold water and mixed through, making the whole thing luke warm, which the yeast will like. At this stage it started looking like a giant pint of beer already - though certainly didn't smell like one!

The instructions I was using sensibly called for me to check the temperature before adding the yeast, to make sure it wasn't so hot that the yeast would be killed. I used a small packet of yeast which came with the malted barley.

The lid then goes on the tub to prevent anything extra from getting in there and contaminating the beer, and the it's left to ferment for a week or two!

During the fermentation process, the beer can be checked on using a hydrometer, which looks a bit like a thermometer but floats on top of the beer to tell you what the gravity of the liquid is. Apparently water with sugar in it has a different gravity from the fermented beer, at which point the sugars have turned to alcohol, so this tells you how much the beer has fermented. When the hydrometer readings have dropped a few points and stabilised, the fermentation process is finished. This can also give you a guide as to how alcoholic your beer is, but I don't think it's that exact.

Once it's ready, the beer can by put into bottles or a barrel for storage. I opted for a barrel, since I really didn't fancy the hassle of messing around sterilising and sealing dozens of bottles. Instead it was easy to syphon the beer into the barrel.

Right at the bottom of the tub is a load of sediment, the remains of the barley and yeast. You have to be careful not to get this into the barrel.

And there we have it, a barrel of home made beer, and the first glass to try. It was actually very nice, it tastes most definitely of beer, though is a little watery in taste. But, it's quite drinkable and definitely alcoholic! And, I've got about 40 pints of it!

Sweetcorn Flatbread

Pete Lewis — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 14:28:48 +0000

I love food. I love making it and eating it. So, It's about time that I started writing down more about it. To kick off, here's a very simple recipe I've been playing about with for my own style of fried sweetcorn flatbread. The quantities here make around 6-8 depending on how big you make them. For more, just multiply the ingredients up by the same factor.

Ingredients:

1 cup of plain white flour, plus a bit extra for rolling out;
1 cup of cornmeal;
1-2 dessert spoons of sugar, depending on how sweet you want it;
1 small can of sweetcorn;
1 cup of milk (or water, for a vegan variety);
Some olive oil.

Method:

Put the flour, cornmeal and sugar in a mixing bowl.
Drain the sweetcorn to make sure it's dry, then add that too.
Give it a splash with olive oil, then mix well.
Slowly add the milk, mixing as you go. Once it gets clumpy, get your fingers in there and bring it together to a single ball of dough. If it doesn't need all the milk, that's fine.
Once you have all the mixture in one big ball of dough, take it out of the bowl and put it on a board, sprinkled with flour to stop it sticking.
Play with it a bit to make sure it's all mixed up nicely and not going to fall apart or anything.
Pull off just under a fist sized ball of dough, put aside the bigger ball, and making sure the board is well floured, flatten out the fist sized dough ball under your hand.
Work it with your fingers, spreading it out to form a pancake shape, turning it regularly to make sure it stays floured and none of the sweetcorn escapes. Don't use a rolling pin or spread it too thin as you'll squash the corn. Make sure the final thickness is about the thickness of the corn itself.
Splash some olive oil on a hot pan, and gently lay the pancake shaped dough onto the pan.
Fry for 2-3 minutes each side, until golden brown.
Do the same with the rest of the dough. This should be enough for 6-8 depending on how big you make them.
Enjoy them while they're hot!

New Merrell Goodness

Pete Lewis — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:37:36 +0000

Readers of this blog will remember that back in 2008 I reviewed a pair of Merrell walking boots (the Chameleon Wrap GTX Mid) from FitnessFootwear.com. They were lightweight, waterproof and very comfortable, and I liked them.

Well, now I've been sent the Merrell Chameleon Wrap Slam to try out. As you can tell by the name, these are in the same range as the walking boots, but the Slams don't have the mid-high ankle and as such are more like walking trainers than boots. In fact, they're Merrell walking design in a day to day trainer. There's actually a whole range of men's Merrells around this theme.

First things first, as the picture shows, they've still got the Vibram soles, which though I've not found to be totally indestructable (but what is?), are much more hard wearing than your average day to day shoe soles and provide the best grip I've found so far. Unlike the GTX Mid, the uppers are of a tough fabric construction rather than Gore Tex, but that just reflects that these aren't designed to be totally waterproof, with the low ankle line. Specifically, the upper is a mix of lycra and nylon, with rubber to reinforce in places. The neoprene holding the tongue in place is a nice touch too. So yes, all this doesn't provide the waterproofness of Gore Tex, but does make for great breathability and a very light weight feel. In addition, Merrell actually claim that the shoes are vegan, meaning that no animal products at all were used in making them. Cool, huh?

So, I've been finding that I've been wearing these shoes quite a bit since they arrived. In the main, this is since they're just so comfortable. As I found with the GTX Mids, Merrell do know how to make comfy walking shoes. These are very well cushioned inside, including an air-cushion insole. The neoprene on the tongue works to hold it firmly in place, gripping your foot like a handshake, meaning less movement, and therefore I suspect much less chance of blisters. They really are soft inside and comfortable to wear.

All in all I'm very pleased with the Chameleon Wrap Slam and those looking for a walking boot style trainer should definitely consider them. They're tough where it counts, soft but firm where they meet your foot, and for day to day walking when you're not tackling anything tricky needing ankle support - and it's not that wet - they're great. The lightweight breathable construction more than makes them a good first choice for that type of walking.

Any criticism I have would also have to be levelled at almost all walking shoes. I tend to find that the first thing that goes (after plenty of use) is the inside of the heel. In future shoes, I'd like to see something done to reinforce this area, while remaining soft and smooth enough not to cause blisters. But, I haven't seen this on any shoes yet.

If you're interested in taking a look, FitnessFootwear.com have some Merrell shoes on sale right now.

Submission Complete

Pete Lewis — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:50:41 +0000

Well, on Tuesday of this week I submitted my Ph.D. thesis to be examined. It felt pretty monumental.

It contains 47919 words, 203 pages, 130 references and 8 chapters. I submitted 1346 days after I started, that's three years, eight months and just over a week.

After handing over two copies of the thing to the University, the process now is to wait until I have my viva, which has been set for the 13th September. At that point, they can apparently do any of the following:

Award the degree outright
Award the degree subject to minor corrections. This means that the thesis is acceptable, but corrections, usually typographical, changes in phraseology, corrections of faults in subsidiary arguments, are required.
Award the degree subject to major corrections. This means that the thesis is acceptable, but corrections, such as rewriting sections, correcting calculations or clarifying or amending arguments, are required.
Ask me to revise and resubmit thesis either for the same or a lower qualification. This basically means that I have not have met the requirements for the degree.
Award a lower qualification without corrections. This means that the thesis and/or performance in the viva were not up to standard for a Ph.D., but possibly an MPhil or something else.
Award a lower qualification with corrections or revisions. This is the same as the above case, but subject to corrections or more major revisions.
Reject it without the opportunity for resubmission. It's not good enough and there is no reasonable prospect of me being able, in a reasonable time, to revise the thesis or improve performance in the viva, to merit the award of any qualification.

It has to be said that in the last few years of watching people complete their research degrees in the school, I can't remember ever seeing anyone who made it to submission getting anything other than the second or third option. But, this obviously doesn't mean the others can't happen!

So now I get a bit of a break, and get ready to defend my thesis in September.

Leaving the allotment

Pete Lewis — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:47:11 +0000

Yep, we just didn't have the time to commit to this that regularly. Still, we got a lot of stuff out of it last year.

The power of radio

Pete Lewis — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:29:42 +0000

President Sarkozy of France is in the UK today to commemorate 70 years since Charles De Gaulle made his historic first radio broadcast from the BBC in London, calling on the people of occupied France to resist the Nazis and organise into what became the French Resistance. Arguably this had a huge impact on the course of the second world war. But, listening to De Gaulle, what he offered to the French people in my view more than anything, is hope. Hope is something that I'd imagine would have been in short supply in newly occupied France, and in 1940 the defacto belief must have been that France had fallen to the Germans forever, and the dream of a democratic republic was over. But De Gaulle's radio broadcast changed this. It's now easy to imagine, with perhaps the romanticism of history on your side, the image of French folk secretively huddling round a radio listening to De Gaulle's message of hope.

But the purpose of this post is not just a history lesson, except in that best use of history which is to learn from it for the betterment of the future. Today there are still many other countries where the people are not free and in which hope is denied. I believe that few are more deserving of our attention at the start of the 21st century than Burma.

Burma is currently about to embark on its first election for twenty years, and at this time more than ever it is vital that people are able to discuss and debate what is happening in their country. Unfortunately, the Burmese junta has a habit of locking up journalists and political activists, rather than allow them to get involved in the democratic process. Perhaps even sadder, is that the vast majority of Burmese people have very little knowledge of this, or that there is the possibility of any change. In summary, after decades of military rule, there's little hope amongst the Burmese people.

Amnesty International is currently running a campaign in the run up to the Burmese election to try to get radios into Burma, so that ordinary people can hear for themselves that there is hope for a change. They're asking people to buy a radio (or two, or more) for people in Burma. At £12.50 each, they reckon that they can get them into Burma and delivered to ordinary people.

It's crazy isn't it, that in this 21st centrury world of Twitter and Facebook, blogs, 24 hour news and televised leadership debates, some people in the world don't even have a radio to hear that there's going to be an election. Quite a contrast to recent times in the UK.

Finally, I wonder if like Sarkozy is doing today, the political heir of Aung San Suu Kyi will be standing in London in 2080 thanking those with the ability to help, for the gift of radio.

Yet more bus price hikes

Pete Lewis — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:32:20 +0000

In case you missed it, Travel West Midlands (now part of National Express) have put up the bus fairs in the West Midlands yet again. Here's a letter I dashed off to one of my local councillors, Timothy Huxtable in anger.

Dear Councillor Huxtable,

I'm writing to express my dismay at yet further price hikes on Travel West
Midlands buses as of June 2010. Particularly, I note that there is an 80p rise
in the cost of an evening saver ticket, from £2.20 to £3.00.

From memory, in 2005 the cost of a standard single ticket was just £1. Now it's
£1.70. This is way way above the level of inflation.

Can I ask if the Council or you could comment on this please? Are these fare
hikes to continue as they have done in the last few years? I know that the buses
are now run by a private company, but they are still a public service and this
is atrocious.

Does the Council have a vision for what bus transport should be in Birmingham,
or is the plan just to sit by and wait until it's no longer viable?

I'd also like to point out the irony that this is announced just a few days
before the Birmingham Climate Change Festival. I wonder how much more CO2 will
be chucked out onto Birmingham's streets as a result of people driving more? I
know I certainly will be. This is a real shame.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Lewis

UPDATE: Within two hours of my email, Councillor Huxtable got back to me. Here's his response.

Dear Mr Lewis

Thank you very much for your email regarding bus fares.

As you comment, NXWM are a private company and hold a virtual monopoly in terms of bus travel in the B'ham area.

I am more than happy to raise this issue with representatives of NXWM next time I meet up with them and indeed would be happy to inform you of when the next Transport Users Forum (a public meeting) meets, where NXWM representatives will be present (this meeting rotates around the City).

There has been recent rises in NXWM patronage, but mainly from concessionary passes (over 60's) and season ticket holders, whose prices rises, I understand, have been kept below inflation.

This would appear to be a deliberate policy of NXWM and the losers have been those who purchase tickets on the bus - who have suffered (substantially) above inflation price rises. I would imagine this is a policy decision to "persuade" more people to buy season tickets.

I am also sure NXWM would also state their fuel costs and staff costs have also risen recently.

(Please note I am NOT defending their price rises, merely explaining the reasoning behind their price increases from what they have told me).

The City Council does indeed have a vision for increasing public transport usage but requires partners to work with us (regarding bus fares, bus routes etc). It makes no commercial sense for NXWM to price people off the buses and we have made this point to them on many occasions. I am sure the City Council will continue to make this point to them.

Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding this matter.

Yours sincerely

Timothy Huxtable

I think I might go along to one of these user forums. But as he quite rightly points out, this is largely due to the monopoly held by National Express. Now, who's fault is that and can it be changed?

Why I couldn't vote Labour and became a liberal.

Pete Lewis — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:12:25 +0000

I'll be honest, waking up on the morning of 11th May I felt sick. My vote has been used to put a Conservative Prime Minister in Number 10. Theresa May, someone with one of the most regressive voting records in parliament on issues of gay and women's rights is now Home Secretary and obtusely Minister for Equality. The right-winger-by-Tory-standards Iain Duncan-Smith is now responsible for social security policy. My vote helped do this. I voted for the Liberal Democrats and they got into bed with the Tories. It's my fault.

Why didn't I vote Labour? After all, I had been a member of the Labour Party for around six years, since leaving university, and since well before that I'd always considered myself well and truly a lefty. Why did I abandon them in 2010? Well, the Labour government over the last thirteen years has certainly got a lot to be proud of in terms of outcomes. On gay rights, mentioned earlier, section 28 was repealed and civil partnerships introduced. We've seen record funding for schools and hospitals, devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, damn it we've seen peace in Northern Ireland largely thanks to the efforts of Labour politicians over the last decade. The minimum wage was introduced, despite businesses and those on the right of the political spectrum having tantrums over how it would destroy British business. Of course, no such thing happened. These are all truly wonderful things, and I remember fondly being rightly proud of the party of which I was a member making them happen. Better still, in most of these areas, there's now not even any dissent in mainstream politics on these issues. No Tory MP to my knowledge stands up and argues that the minimum wage should be scrapped and the market be allowed to choose the lowest standard of living for people in this country. The debate has moved, and Labour should be proud of that.

But of course there is so much that I am ashamed of and angry about too. Within a year of taking office the Labour government introduced tuition fees for university students and scrapped maintenance grants. I was in the first year ever to pay fees. At the time, no-one even seemed to understand how the introduction of university fees and the removal of grants fitted in with Labour's aims. Education should be a right, not a privilege, was the mantra for activists at the time. Now, it is almost universally accepted in this country that to have an unsecured personal debt of the order of tens of thousands of pounds at the age of 21 is perfectly normal. Labour's aim was for half of all 21 year olds to be in this position by this year.

In schools and hospitals, many of the new building projects, such as the one which took place at the school I went to myself were privately funded in such a way that the buildings subsequently were privately owned. In my school, this led to the absolute madness of a building that was built only in the mid-1990s being mothballed and subsequently demolished because it didn't fit in with the contract agreed with the private sector partner.

The war in Iraq, in which it's now estimated that around 100,000 civilians died and which cost the British taxpayer £5.3 billion between 2003 and 2007 is now so infamous that even the word Iraq carries with it a connotation of arrogance, disbelief and sheer bloody mindedness. I marched in the biggest public demonstration that our country has ever known, alongside two million other people through London in opposition to the war in Iraq, shoulder to shoulder with such unlikely comrades as bankers, lawyers and headteachers, who themselves joked that they needed to pinch themselves to check if they were really "going on a protest". But the Labour government ignored the people, and went ahead anyway. Now Iraq is a bigger part of the legacy of the last government than any of these other elements.

And it seemed that the people really didn't know best, since on the only occasion I have ever sat in the public gallery in the House of Commons, I watched Jack Straw, the then Home Secretary stand up to defend the Labour government's abolition of the right to trial by jury.

As time progressed, to me one of the most significant policies of all would become the center-piece for the debate on Labour's approach to government: identity cards and a national database of the people. This was immediately unpopular, so the spinners subsequently decided a non-compulsory "entitlement card" was more palatable. This seemed to convince some news organisations that the scheme was being dropped, but meanwhile the Labour government ploughed ahead with plans to link up the database to all elements of life. Anywhere where a person interacted with an arm of the state, or one of its now private-sector contract holders, a terminal would be linked into this giant database of people, where the interaction would be recorded. Perhaps this would have included companies in other jurisdictions, such as the one in California which was tasked with distributing pensions, an arrangement which only became particularly well-known when they messed up the payments.

Many reasonable people questioned the need for such a detailed amount of information on every citizen to be held by the state, but to me the rationale was clear and not at all malicious. In fact, without any intention of analogy, it might quite honestly be described as Labour's "Big Brother" policy, and is fundamental to a modern, effective socialist state. The Labour movement's endpoint, unless its priorities are to be seriously rewritten, is this approach. In the early days of the Labour government, there were quick wins to be had: the minimum wage was introduced, the economy was doing well so the money was put into public services rather than tax cuts, long overdue social reform took place, such as new rights for minorities and new equality legislation. But then attention moved to what next. The policies introduced had helped a lot of the worse off and discriminated against people in society, but there were others, that were slipping through the net. We had the tragedies of Victoria Climbie and Peter Connolly (otherwise known as "Baby P"), there are unnoticed victims of unrecorded crimes and criminals who are undetected. Terrorists coming from both Leeds and Laska-Gar are threatening to undermine everything we hold dear. Young people, despite what the state does, still choose to hang around in bus stops with hoods on. There are victims. There is fear. There's more chance of being blown up by a terrorist than winning the lottery, or something. The answer for Labour was not initially to attempt to remedy these things by forcible control, but it is easy to make the case that it is impossible to rid society of these problems unless they are known to the state. Knowledge became the goal; evidence-based policy requires knowledge, and so knowledge we must amass. Only then could we begin to tackle the hard to reach problems in society.

So despite an horrific track record of being able to implement large computer systems, the state began building databases such as the compulsory National Identity Register, ContactPoint the database of all children in the country, and the DNA Database, for which the government went to court in order to try to block attempts to ensure innocent people's DNA records were removed from the database. The whole project was an attempt to monitor what people were doing, where they were doing it, and for what purpose.

The problem with this of course, is that unless I break a law, I am not accountable to the state for my actions. In fact, quite the reverse. And even if I do break the law, I am accountable to my fellow citizens, and in this regard the state acts as a proxy and mediator on their behalf. The approach that was being taken by the government was not just distasteful, it was a fundamental reordering of society. Instead of the state being accountable to the people, the people found themselves accountable to the state.

Of course, once this social reordering is complete in the minds of ministers and government officials, there is suddenly a wealth of opportunity for new activities to reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim of a terrorist attack (though immensely unlikely), or being grimaced at by a hoodie (probably more a clash of cultures anyway). Restrictions on the right to peaceful protest were introduced, control orders now allow the state to impose virtually unlimited and unquestionable control over individuals in order to protect the public from a perceived risk. Photographers, artists and people who wait for their friends in train stations and town squares are now routinely challenged by police to provide an explanation of the purpose of their presence and activity, or else be searched or even arrested.

I'm not claiming for one instant that these measures haven't in some way reduced the level of risk of terrorism or mugging, but that isn't the point. Consider that Labour has also often been criticised for having a targets-driven culture of public service provision. Indeed, amongst other things, local councils are required to put a target figure for the number of people who will be killed or seriously injured in road accidents (called KSIs) each year. This is of course just a tool, in order that the council might monitor the effectiveness of its measures to bring the number down. But it left me one wondering what an acceptable level of death would be. Zero is the obvious answer, but I doubt that's it. At what point does the level of KSIs become low enough that the council stops monitoring it, or diverts the road safety budget to something else?

As an example from where I live, in Birmingham 430 people were killed or seriously injured in road accidents in 2008, which represents a 17.5% reduction over three years earlier. But still the statistical risk of being killed or seriously injured in Birmingham in a given year is one in 2,365. Assuming the average life expectancy in Birmingham is 80 (which it's probably not), then that's about a one in 30 chance of being killed or seriously injured in a road accident at some point in your life. So, that explains why you almost certainly know or have heard about someone who was. By contrast, 52 people were killed in the terrorist attacks in London in July 2005, making the probability of being one of those unlucky Londoners one in 144,231.

There's a lot been written about relative risks, quantifying the impact of events and expectation, but I don't want to wax on asking why the Labour government (or any other previous administration) didn't do more to help those people in society at the greatest actual risk, or at least put significant effort into reducing the risks associated with everyday living in a normal British city. Instead I'll just pose this simple question: how can the risk of being killed or seriously injured in a road accident in Birmingham be avoided? One answer is actually incredibly simple: ban cars. Any government willing to do this would immediately cut the risk of premature death for almost everybody in this country by a vast amount.

If your reaction at this point is to think that that's rather crazy, ask yourself why. If the government is prepared to intervene into our everyday lives, stopping tourists taking pictures, putting people under house arrest with no trial or right of appeal, preventing people from peacefully protesting outside parliament, why doesn't it go the extra mile and make us all take the train or ride bikes to reduce the greatest risk?

Okay, so the purpose of this discussion is not to argue that the government should actually ban cars, though some might argue that it should, but instead to highlight the continuum in the politics of liberty and control, which at one end is ultra libertarian and at the other has us all put in isolated cocoons at birth. A more sensible approach to the KSI question would be to dramatically reduce speed limits, but even reducing them to 20 miles per hour in front of schools is politically difficult in many areas. When the Labour government began its project of building the database state it changed the game in terms of accountability between citizens and the state, and in doing so unlocked the door to a whole region of the liberty continuum which was hitherto off limits. The politics of fear, the highly spun narratives of the "war on terror", "hoodie culture" and even "we must do everything we can do to protect those at risk" allowed this to happen and the genie is now out of the bottle. We now no longer know where the line is on this liberty continuum; what territory is it forbidden for the state to occupy? For Orwell, a ubiquitous CCTV system, a continuous centrally controlled news narrative and the presumption of having to justify ones movements to the state were enough to write about. If we value our liberty at all, we need to rediscover where the boundary lies, and be honest about the cost.

John Cleese on Proportional Representation

Pete Lewis — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:40:45 +0000

For those not really sure what all this debate about Proportional Representation, STV, AV etc. is all about, this short video presented by John Cleese is excellent! Although originally a party political broadcast by the Alliance (the party which morphed into the Liberal Democrats), and aimed at the election in 1985, it's absolutely bang up to date in terms of the arguments it makes.

A letter to Nick Clegg on electoral reform.

Pete Lewis — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:53:35 +0000

I'm sure many are now following the developments in Westminster after the election resulted in a hung parliament. If you listened to me on the radio earlier you would have heard that this was indeed what I wanted to happen, in order that we could reform the voting system to something more proportional, something more representative of the views of the people in this country.

So, now we know that the Liberal Democrats have an offer from both the Labour Party and the Conservatives. What should they do? Well, here's the email I fired off to Nick Clegg and Chris Fox (Liberal Democrat party Chief Executive) this morning, through the Vote For A Change site. I guess I'm sticking my head above the parapet by giving up my right to an anonymous vote here, but if you agree with any of this, now might be the time to click here and do the same.

Dear Mr Clegg and Mr Fox,

I am writing to you as a first time Liberal Democrat voter; I have always voted Labour in the past, but had decided that a hung parliament was our best chance in a generation to achieve real reform of the voting system, to achieve PR. I also decided that you were the party most able to deliver on this in the event of a hung parliament.

I understand that there is a lot to be considered in the current negotiations, but I urge you in the strongest possible terms to not compromise on the key item of getting a referendum on electoral reform. David Cameron's promise of a committee to investigate options sounds like a line lifted right from Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister, as nothing more than an attempt at delay. Furthermore, it is also clear that electoral reform of the sort we both want is clearly unpalatable to the Conservative party and their supporters, and any talk otherwise by them can only be treated as just that: talk.

I, along with many other Liberal Democrat voters that I know, support you as a progressive party, in the same spirit as the Labour Party but with a the right views on issues around civil liberties, foreign relations, human rights, etc. The one thing that the election made clear is that there is now a clear progressive majority in the country as a whole: over 50% of the electorate. This is the mandate that we have given the politicians, and I implore you to find the way to make this work.

Do not underplay your hand in these negotiations, you can deliver us a referendum on electoral reform, we are all counting on you to do it, and will back you all the way.

Yours in good faith and expectation,

Peter.

Please also let me point out to any Labourites about to accuse me of abandonment and that I deserve what I get etc., that there are many many reasons why I am utterly unhappy with Labour too, but I live in a safe Labour seat and this also informed my vote. Perhaps, depending on the outcome of this whole process I'll write a little more about Labour too.