Numbers and habits...

My grasp of higher mathematics is appalling, I lost the plot at integration (I see it a bit like Wizardry - you just seem to conjure numbers from other numbers... rather like in chemistry... when they started to pull Moles out of test-tubes...). However, having grown up on a diet of F1, Cricket and Top Trumps, I do understand the basic principle that seems to pervade most of reality... which is that bigger numbers win... It is, after all, a fundamentally accepted base-supposition of the universe that if my card bearing SpongeBob Squarepants has a giggle factor of 6, and your Squidward Tentacles card only has a giggle factor of 2... I get the right to prance about you like an oaf, making an 'L' shape on my forehead.


Similarly, numbers that are the same, mean a dead heat... We go to the pub. You drink 4 beers and I drink 4 beers, then between us we've drunk 8 beers, half each... the same... el mismo... la même... Neither of us is a loooooser (unless you can't stand up anymore)... both of us are quite drunk... neither of us can drive... pertinent words here are 'neither' and 'both'...

Dead heats can be rather boring (except in Cricket) unless they lead to a re-match... or sudden-death overtime - this doesn't always apply in a pub situation although it can - an option that most students willingly explore.

I digress.

So, today is election day... and I can't help but notice something slightly perplexing... according to the figures proposed... if the Red party get 27% of the vote, and the Yellow party get the same 27% of the vote... then the Red party will get 218 seats in parliament... and the Yellow party will get... wait for it... 82.

218... 82... *making a seesawing action with my hand*... Even using the magic of 'integration' and a few handy moles, I can't make this add up.

OK... now I know that there are very complex political reasons why this happens... but I'm not really interested. I'm all for working up to the complex from the most simplistic... and in simple terms... IT DOESN'T MAKE MUCH SENSE...

So why do we accept it...? Because we're powerless to change it? Because we don't think we understand it... Or because it's just a habit that we've got into?

So here's another habit...

In 2002, the Church of England spent £93m on maintaining church buildings in use... that's without adding all the wages and infrastructure costs that also come with administering an annual spend like that... and all the other money that goes into 'running church'.

Now, I'm sorry to pick on the C of E, but they're the only ones that I could find figures for... And I know that there are complex arguments - many of them economic - why the churches and cathedrals thus maintained actually generate more money in tourist income than they cost... And I know that they are pearls of historical architecture and need to be preserved... and that people need vicars to preach to them, and organs to sing to... etc.

But... extend that across the UK to other churches, and reduce it to its most simplistic... and that's a lot of money, and time, and effort... to preserve some, frankly, pretty windy buildings, and maintain some, frankly, pretty windy authorities...

As I said, I'm being simplistic for the sake of it... so I'll duck all the complexity of how important and useful some of those structures and things are... but for me, it's like seeing the Bride of Christ trying to dance at her own wedding with the 2007 'extended version' of Diego Maradona riding piggyback (sorry Diego). No dainty quick-stepping with the 'Lord of the Dance'... no light-tripped 'come away with Me'... no fleet-footed dancing to the beat of the Divine Heartbeat of the Universe... more a sloooooow manoeuvring that has to plan shifts-in-balance years in advance to avoid being crushed under the collapse of centuries of institutional scaffolding.

Does it only makes sense because it's a habit?