Steve talks politics - shock

Reading London Lifer the other day (6-Nov-03) I spotted a reference to the Political Compass test to locate you on a left/right vs authoritarian/libertarian scattergram; and a collection that is plotting such a scattergram for the blogosphere.

I plotted out as just about centre on the left/right axis (+0.38), and weakly libertarian (-2.1). On another such quiz I saw some years back, which cut off the corners of the Political Compass diagram to give a diamond, I came out about 1/4 the way from the libertarian pole towards left. I think it was this one, or something a lot like it.

Participatory democracy for me is a bit of a non-event. Save for the heady years of the mid-80s where I lived in a 3-way marginal constituency in Stevenage, my vote has been in one solid Tory seat after another - the current one is, to first approximation, 50% Tory, 25% Liberal, 25% Labour. Only in local council elections has my vote ever counted towards anything that might be considered as "voting the bastards out".