Vote with your gonads!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2726381/JAN-MOIR-Salmond-s-fatal-flaw-We-women-think-s-got-charm-turnip.html

Write the rest of the article yourselves.


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Is your money safe in the bank? - revisited

John Ward reports that some South African bank savers are now having their accounts raided to shore up a different bank, African Bank Investments Ltd. Even more disturbingly, the example he quotes is of a customer whose SA bank is part of the international Barclays group, so the link stretches back to the UK itself.

Almost exactly seven years ago, and over a year before the global banking crisis of 2008/9 hit us, I warned British readers that protection for their savings was limited. At that time (August 2007), you were guaranteed 100% of the first 2,000 in your account, and only 90% of the next £33,000. So the maximum compensation in the case of a bank wipeout, even if you had millions, was £31,700.

Now, and as a result of the crisis (and more importantly, to prevent a system-destroying general run on the banks) the "guarantee" has been increased to 100% of the first £85,000 per person (see FSCS here). That's per bank group, so if you have more than one bank account make sure they're not part of the same group.

But why is a guarantee needed in the first place? Surely the money you have deposited is yours, same as if you'd asked them to look after your house deeds.

Not at all. Here is the law as explained by Toby Baxendale on The Cobden Centre website in 2010:

The Current State of the Law

The key case is Carr v Carr 1811 (reported in Merivale (541 n) 1815 – 17). A testator in making his bequest said “whatever debts might be due to him…at the time of his death”, the key question in this case being whether “a cash balance due to him on his banker’s account” passed by this bequest. The Master of the Rolls, Sir William Grant held that it did. He reasoned that it was not a depositum; a sealed bag of money could be, but this generally deposited money could not possibly have an ‘earmark’. Grant concluded on this point, “when money is paid into a banker’s, he always opens a debtor and creditor account with the payor. The banker employs the money himself, and is liable merely to answer the drafts of his customers to that amount.” For the legal scholars among you, Vaisey v Reynolds 1828 and Parker v Merchant 1843 both affirmed this position.

In Davaynes v Noble 1816 it was argued in front of Grant that a banker is a bailee rather than a debtor. Rejecting that argument, Grant said “money paid into a banker’s becomes immediately a part of his general assets; and he is merely a debtor for the amount.”

In Sims v Bond 1833 the Chief Justice of the Queens Bench Division affirmed in judgement “sums which are paid to the credit of a customer with a banker, though usually called deposits, are, in truth, loans by the customer to the banker.”

The House of Lords, then the highest court in the land, had its say on the matter in Foley v Hill and Others 1848, duly reported in the Clerk’s Reports, House of Lords 1847-66 (pages 28 and 36-7). In summary, the appellant in 1829 opened a bank account with the respondent bankers. Two further deposits we added in 1830 and in 1831 interest was still added. In 1838 the appellant brought proceedings against the respondent bankers seeking recovery of both the principle and interest. The counsel cleverly tried to argue that it was the duty of the respondent bankers to keep all the accounts up to date at all times and thus there was more to this relationship than that of debtor and creditor.

The Lord Chancellor Cottenham said the following in judgement

Money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal; it is by then the money of the banker, who is bound to return an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited with him when he is asked for it. The money paid into a banker’s is money known by the principal to be placed there for the purpose of being under the control of the banker; it is then the banker’s money; he is known to deal with it as his own; he makes what profit of it he can, which profit he retains to himself, paying back only the principal, according to the custom of bankers in some places, or the principal and a small rate of interest, according to the custom of bankers in other places. The money placed in custody of a banker is, to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases; he is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it; he is not answerable to the principal if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in a hazardous speculation; he is not bound to keep it or deal with it as the property of his principal; but he is, of course, answerable for the amount, because he has contracted, having received that money, to repay to the principal, when demanded, a sum equivalent to that paid into his hands.
That has been the subject of discussion in various cases, and that has been established to be the relative situation of banker and customer. That being established to be the relative situations of banker and customer, the banker is not an agent or factor, but he is a debtor.

Thus the settled position of the law is that when you deposit, the bank becomes the owner of the money deposited and you become a creditor to the bank.

We have now established that you shouldn't have more than £85,000 in any group of banks.

Strictly speaking, it's not the government's guarantee, it's the FSCS's: "The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) is backed by government" (my italics). The FSCS runs a fund and pays claims out of money it levies on UK financial institutions. In a bad - not the worst possible - situation it can borrow from the Treasury, and has done so, as this official attempt to reassure us says:

What if a giant goes bust? Is there enough cash?

The FSCS has paid out more than £26bn and helped more than 4.5m people since 2001. We are funded by the industry, but the FSCS can borrow money from the Treasury if the compensation costs of a major failure are more than the industry can meet. That is what happened when banks failed in 2008.

So consumers can be reassured the FSCS will always have the money to pay compensation. No-one has ever lost a penny of protected deposits and no-one ever will.

What about "bail-ins", like the case referred to by John Ward above?

For example, in the event of a building society's insolvency, depositors' claims used to rank below other unsecured creditors and so were more likely than the latter to be required to accept something other than their money back. This is now changing:

"...the BRRD has been agreed and will require us to introduce a slightly different form of depositor preference. It will require a two tier preference, where:

• eligible deposits from natural persons and SMEs have a higher priority ranking in insolvency than the claims of ordinary unsecured creditors
• covered deposits have a higher priority ranking in insolvency than the part of eligible deposits from natural persons and SMEs that exceed the coverage limit

Covered deposits are defined as those that are protected by the FSCS, up to its limit of £85,000. Eligible deposits are defined as those which qualify for FSCS protection, without any limit on the amount (and deposits from such natural persons and SMEs that are made through foreign branches of EU institutions). Following these changes, if an individual had £100,000 deposited at a building society that is a member of the FSCS, £85,000 would be a “covered deposit” and have a higher priority ranking than the remaining £15,000 which in turn would have a higher ranking than ordinary unsecured creditors.

We anticipate that the Directive will come into force by May 2014. The transposition deadline is 1 January 2015."

The Government's general guiding principle is to reassure depositors that they won't be fleeced in a crisis:

"Section 60B [of the Banking Act] requires the Treasury, when making these regulations, to have regard to the desirability of “ensuring that pre-resolution shareholders and creditors of a bank do not receive less favourable treatment than they would have received had the bank entered insolvency immediately before the coming into effect of the initial instrument” (the first instrument made by the Bank in the resolution)."

Why are they doing this? Well, here's Oz comedy pair Clarke and Dawe on the effect of the Cyprus bank bail-in:




Still:

(a) I don't see anything that limits the power of the FSCS and others to alter or suspend their guarantees, if they feel they have to;
(b) a leading barrister has given his views (in 2011 on CityWire) on the potential case against the FSCS's fund-raising powers;
(c) the Emergency Powers Act of 1920 allows the Privy Council to do pretty much whatever it likes in the short run, if it determines that there is an emergency*;
(d) anything can happen, and in a very bad situation some of those things could be beyond the Government's power to control;
(e) theft by inflation is always a threat, and despite a long campaign by me my MP has so far refused to stand up at Prime Minister's Question Time and ask when the Government is going to restore National Savings Index-Linked Certificates.

Where does the Cabinet hold their own families' cash? Be useful to keep that under observation, maybe. It might not just be the Russians or tax-dodgers who want to shift money out of the UK, and Europe in general. And why is the Chinese government encouraging its citizens to hold gold?

_________________________
UPDATE: *I'm a bit behind the curve here - we now have what seems a much further-reaching and potentially sinister provision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Contingencies_Act_2004

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Where's Cameron? Our Camcam guide...

As ISIS tortures and slaughters its way through the Arab Street, where is David Cameron?

Is he still on his beach holiday here (Cascais, Portugal)?

Google Maps

If so, maybe Cam will fleetingly appear on the webcam at Praia do Guincho:

A still taken from the webcam this evening - live feed here

... or will he be taking his second summer holiday soon at Rock (again)?

Google Maps

All the webcams at Rock appear to have been (re)moved or are currently inoperative... weird, huh? And there's not one in Witney, either (the Oxfordshire mansion we're paying for through his MP's expenses, not to mention the 7p for his bulldog clip)...

 

But hey, it's like, so not likely to be 10 Downing Street, though:

Google Maps

- but if it is, you may see him flit through here, past the plebs:

 

Still taken this evening from Google's Downing Street webcam

Do let us know if you catch the Prime Minister at his job - or Parliament at theirs.


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Population density and house size

By Sackerson.

James Higham reproduces a graphic from Amfortas re house size in selected countries:

... which got me thinking.

I looked up the ratio of arable land per person (average of 2009-11), and then added Amfortas' statistics:

As you see, the smaller the amount of arable land per capita, the smaller the house - except for Australia, which is still a young country in terms of immigration and development, and also has limited water resources.

Taking it one step further, I divided the house size by the arable land per person:

 

We now have two outliers, Australia and the UK. The real story here, I think: Britain is far too crowded and dependent on imported food.


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Puritans

Extirpation with fire and sword (pic source)"A woodcut in a broadside of 1643 shows the Puritan nightmare, a body politic mde up of half papist and half cavalier"

As ISIS tears through the Middle East like a virulent disease, we're waking up to the meddling ignorance of our governments who thought they could play chess with pieces they didn't understand. In fact, one way and another they have helped train and fund this terrorist horde, as Washington's Blog explains.

I think of Al-Qaeda and the like as seventeenth-century Puritans: no booze, fags, gambling, music, dancing, sex... there is no escape into ecstasy but through self-righteousness and bloodshed.

Where some people are mistaken is in thinking all Muslims are like this. They're not, any more than all Christians in England were Cromwell's holy thugs.

What we want to watch out for is excitable young men being groomed for testosterone-fuelled massacre. I've seen the tip of that iceberg myself, or rather, heard it.

Working with a project for 15-year-olds years ago, I met one very nice Asian lad (not clever, but much better than me at cleaning the project's fish tank) who wanted to get off his addiction to cannabis, "bud" or "Bud-dha" as he put it. Needing a core in his life to strengthen himself against temptation, he got religion and so started to take his Islam more seriously, praying five times a day.

To help his meditation, he had a bootleg CD of devotional song, which was exquisitely beautiful. A few minutes in, just as we were relaxing and opening our minds, the overlay came: propaganda against the Jews, timing phrases to match the slow, seductive tempo of the prayerful voice still pouring out its hymn.

I told the directors of the project, and got a don't-be-silly response. But there will be, must be, others, sitting in their bedrooms, listening to similar material and starting to surf the Net for more that confirms their world-view and reassures them that they too can have an important role to play in their god's plan for the world.

It can be challenged, and I have done so in a local secondary school where a highly intelligent boy wanted to rag the khuffar male teacher in front of him. But we will have to be strong and firm in the defence of our civilisation.


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Constitutional questions

"The Arrival of William III" by Sir James Thornhill. Original uploader was

Raymond Palmer at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia;

transferred to Commons by User:Magnus Manske using CommonsHelper.

(Original text : South Wall of the Painted Hall, Old Royal Naval College,

Greenwich [1]). Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Email today from myself to Dr Andrew Blick, of the Constitution Society:

"Dear Dr Blick

Would you or anyone else from the Constitution Society be prepared to discuss the proposition that Britain's 1973 entry into the EEC was unconstitutional?

In particular, how do the 1689 Bill of Rights and the Monarch's Oath of Office bear on the issues?

(We leave aside for the moment the complications regarding the subsequent referendum of 1975, itself made questionable by the withholding from the public of intragovernmental legal and constitutional advice, and partisan misrepresentations to the public by the then Government, news media and other parties.)

Was our entry into the EEC in 1973 not ultra vires?

The debate must surely be more urgent as we face the consolidation of power in the EU by the introduction of majority voting in November.

Is there anybody who can provide authoritative comment?

P.S. Further, is it not the case that Magna Carta's significance since 1689 is purely symbolic, without any legal force whatever? King John may have agreed to bind "our heirs in perpetuity" (Clause 1 re the English Church), but did not the Revolution put the monarchy on an entirely new basis? MC may be our Pole Star, but not our pilot."

Dr Blick is on holiday, but I hope for a reply.


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Magna Carta - the tree of freedom is plucked bare

Images adapted from: BBC, Saga's Cottage

 

We think of Magna Carta as a bulwark of English liberty against arbitrary State authority, and it was seen as that at the time:

 

From a list of inscriptions found in Tewkesbury Abbey:

 

309. In the Presbytery (the second brass from the south).
 

(Clare chevrons) Gilbertus de
Clare nomine primus

comes Glocestrie 6s et Hertfordie
5s Obijt 25o Octobris Anno dni 1230.
(pen) Magna carta et lex
caveat deinde rex (scroll).

 

Translation:

 

Gilbert de Clare, the first of that name, 6th Earl of Gloucester and 5th of Hertford, died 25th October A. D. 1230. Magna Carta and law, let the King henceforth beware.

 

That same inscription was quoted by Stanley Baldwin less than 80 years ago:

 

" "Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out."

So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator — let them look out."

• Speech at Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 4

Yet very little of Magna Carta remains in force, as A P Herbert pointed out in his humorous "Misleading Cases" piece from 16 February 1927, "Rex v. Haddock: Is Magna Carta Law?" Albert Haddock is trying to get out of (or have reduced) a parking fine, but the judge says:

 

"... it was argued before me that at least that portion of Chapter 29 still has effect which reads:

 

'Nor will we proceed against a freeman, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.'

 

But it was proved in evidence that in fact this method of condemning the freeman is the exception rather than the rule, and it was suggested that this portion of Magna Carta must be interpreted in the light of recent statutes, so that it reads:

 

'Nor will we proceed against a freeman, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land, or Government Departments, or Marketing Boards, or Impregnable Monopolies, or Trade Unions, or fussy Societies, or Licensing Magistrates, or officious policemen, or foolish regulations by a Clerk in the Home Office made and provided.'

 

The judge in that story also points out that notwithstanding Clause 40, the law is known for its delays - and expense:

 

"... much justice is sold at quite reasonable prices, and ... there are still many citizens who can afford to buy the more expensive brands."

 

What's left?

 

From the BBC:

 

"Only three of the 63 clauses in the Magna Carta are still in law. One defends the freedom and rights of the English Church, another relates to the privileges enjoyed by the City of London and the third - the most famous - is generally held to have etablished the right to trial by jury.

Below are the full translations of the relevant clauses from the 1215 copy of the Magna Carta held at the British Library.

1. Clause 1: The liberties of the English Church

"First, that we have granted to God, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired.

"That we wish this so to be observed, appears from the fact that of our own free will, before the outbreak of the present dispute between us and our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter the freedom of the Church's elections - a right reckoned to be of the greatest necessity and importance to it - and caused this to be confirmed by Pope Innocent III. This freedom we shall observe ourselves, and desire to be observed in good faith by our heirs in perpetuity.

"To all free men of our Kingdom we have also granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs."

2. Clause 13: The privileges of the City of London*

"The city of London shall enjoy all its ancient liberties and free customs, both by land and by water. We also will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall enjoy all their liberties and free customs."

3. Clauses 39 & 40: The right to trial by jury

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

"To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled . nor will we proceed with force against him . except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. "  "

How few leaves are left on the tree of liberty! And if so many have been blown away already, what guarantee do we have that the rest may not fall?

If we love the idea of liberty, we shall have to re-assert it, and there are new aspects that we might wish to address in a modern version, particularly the endless spying by the State on its citizens.

That's if we can call the State to account any more. After all, we are not powerful barons, nor (it seems) is the Crown in Parliament fully sovereign.

The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta falls on 15 June 2015. Should we do something for that day?
__________________________________________________

*See Graham S McBain's "Liberties and Customs of the City of London – Are There any left?" (2013) - www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ilr/article/download/28685/17142


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A horror of being wrong

From Wikipedia

Some people, and I think I’m one of them, have a problem with being wrong. It manifests itself as a certain lack of robustness when it comes to attacking almost any social malaise or political stupidity. Almost always there are caveats. Almost always arguments are less robust than they could be. Note the almost.

I’ve been reading reams of G K Chesterton lately, mainly because I think he illustrates the problem very well. He understood the art of argument, the need to ignore the inevitable weakness of any standpoint and play to its strengths. The need to have a robust standpoint in the first place. Take these three quotes as an example.

Surely, when all is said, the ultimate objection to the English public school is its utterly blatant and indecent disregard of the duty of telling the truth.

But no English school-boy is ever taught to tell the truth, for the very simple reason that he is never taught to desire the truth. From the very first he is taught to be totally careless about whether a fact is a fact; he is taught to care only whether the fact can be used on his “side” when he is engaged in “playing the game.”

England is the country of the Party System, and it has always been chiefly run by public-school men. Is there anyone out of Hanwell who will maintain that the Party System, whatever its conveniences or inconveniences, could have been created by people particularly fond of truth?

G K Chesterton - What's Wrong with the World (1910)

I don't find it easy to write in this robust manner because what Chesterton says isn’t true - there are glaring holes. To begin with, Chesterton himself attended a public school - St Paul's School. So where does that leave his own attitude to truth?

On the other hand, a disproportionate number of our political elite slither out of public schools and adapt to a culture of routine lying like ducks to water. In other words there is at least some connection between habitual lying, carelessness with facts and public schools.

The trouble is, I would not find it easy to ignore the caveats as Chesterton so blithely and persuasively does. The cynic in me says that is because Chesterton is doing exactly that of which he accuses the political classes. Yet it works. The point is made and it lingers - as it is supposed to linger.

But all sorts of things go through our heads, and some seem to linger, and some don’t.

D.H. Lawrence - St Mawr (1925)

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Is the UK a tax haven? For frackers?

The Washington Post lists a host of US companies that have relocated their official headquarters overseas to reduce tax.

Apart from the usual dodgy destinations - Bermuda, the Caymans etc - there are some who have chosen the UK, and three of them are drillers. Is there a story here?

Data from Washington Post.

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Buy land in Baton Rouge!

Fear methane-powered tsunamis on the US East Coast? Want to avoid up to 50 metres of global flooding? Why not grab the opportunities offered by Baton Rouge, with its safer elevation and access to strategically-important inland waterways?

You may not see the full benefit in your lifetime, but your descendants may thank you, sometime within the next thousand years.

At least, that's one implication of the fascinating latest post from John Michael Greer.


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Waterskiing if you haven't got a boat...

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Does inequality lead to "decline and fall"?

Seeking to draw parallels between modern America and decadent Rome, Washington's Blog links to this:

A dwindling middle class, the flight of the rich to safer places (think of the recent Chinese and Russian expatriates)... it's suggestive.

The above arises indirectly from Barry Ritholtz's latest piece, in which he lists many economists and professors who also claim that widening income inequality harms the economy and generates boom-bust cycles.


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A Moral Principle gets wet

Tarr Steps - Exmoor

A Moral Principle met a Material Interest on a bridge wide enough for but one.

“Down, you base thing!” thundered the Moral Principle, “and let me pass over you!” 

The Material Interest merely looked in the other’s eyes without saying anything. 

“Ah,” said the Moral Principle, hesitatingly, “let us draw lots to see which shall retire till the other has crossed.” 

The Material Interest maintained an unbroken silence and an unwavering stare. 

“In order to avoid a conflict,” the Moral Principle resumed, somewhat uneasily, “I shall myself lie down and let you walk over me.” 

Then the Material Interest found a tongue, and by a strange coincidence it was its own tongue. “I don’t think you are very good walking,” it said. “I am a little particular about what I have underfoot. Suppose you get off into the water.” 

It occurred that way.

Ambrose Bierce - Fantastic Fables (1899)

One of Bierce's many word cartoons where the reader supplies their own image. A great alternative for those who can't draw. My mental image for Bierce's two chaps on the bridge is in the style of a Punch cartoon by Sir John Tenniel. For me it maintains the vintage aura.

Mind you, although there is a vintage aspect to Moral Principles fighting Material Interests on a bridge, the outcome is bang up to date.

From Wikipedia

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A smile



A blood-feud in Iceland, a thousand years ago: Halldor and others have just killed Bolli in his dairy, while his wife Gudrun is out...

(From Laxdaele Saga, tr. Muriel Press)

 

(pic source)

 

I've never forgotten it.

 

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A light dies down

It is certain that up to a point in the evolution of Self most people find life quite exciting and thrilling. But when middle age arrives, often prematurely, they forget the thrill and excitements; they become obsessed by certain other lesser things that are deficient in any kind of Cosmic Vitality. The thrill goes out of life: a light dies down and flickers fitfully; existence goes on at a low ebb — something has been lost. From this numbed condition is born much of the blind anguish of life.

G K Chesterton - What's Wrong with the World (1910)

It takes a certain kind of observer to see this kind of social issue, to identify it as an issue and present it cogently. It requires a sceptical cast of mind grounded in what is rather than what ought to be. A degree of detachment from approved social narratives.

Our weird culture has become obsessed with what ought to be as opposed to what simply is. A frantic political correctness is on the march and doesn't know when or where to stop and look around. Our supposedly technical and rational culture has meekly succumbed to swivel-eyed hysterical posturing.

The delicate flowering of each individual human spirit becomes a feared strangeness, unwanted. A thing to be covertly damned from every secular pulpit and quietly rooted out from our fanatically domesticated garden where nothing grows naturally.  

We grow up in our feverish, artificial civilization, believing that the real, satisfying things are complex and difficult to obtain. Our lives become unnaturally stressed and tormented by the pitiless and incessant struggle for social conditions which are, at best, second-rate and ultimately disappointing.

G K Chesterton - What's Wrong with the World (1910)

Chesterton had his allegiances too, his treasured notions none could challenge, his core beliefs of right and wrong. Yet he also had a sceptic's eye, a genial observer's eye unclouded by fashionable enthusiasms. A century later we haven't quite lost his gift, but in spite of his enduring popularity we never learned Chesterton's lessons. And really - it's not as if they were even new.

Yet I think what he didn't foresee was how the evolving world of electronic communication would become a tool of mass propaganda. How the spread of information could so easily we turned into the spread of misinformation.

In his day, the great concern was the power of newspaper proprietors.  What he probably didn't foresee was the kind of large scale collusion we see in mass communication. It isn't merely the narrative-weavers, but our own failure to understand the pitiless and incessant struggle for social conditions which are, at best, second-rate and ultimately disappointing.

Perhaps for most of us, the light dies down too early.

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Election mess

Electoral Calculus is currently predicting a 40-seat majority for Labour in the 2015 General Election:

Layout slightly modified; page accessed 04 August 2014

You'll see from the above that despite polling nearly twice as many voting intentions as either the LibDems or "minority" parties, and nearly five times that of the "nationalists", UKIP stands to get no seat whatever. But if votes translated into seats in an exactly proportional way, then on this showing UKIP would be on course for 88 Parliamentary seats out of the total of 650.

Instead, the boundary system and unevenness of political support result in a heavy bias towards the two major parties and against all others. This is how the above prediction looks in terms of votes to seats gained:

 

EC's analysis of UKIP's chances suggest that the party needs to poll 16% of the national vote to get a single seat, and wouldn't get a fair ratio of votes to seats until it got somewhere around 30%.

Even then, because of the first-past-the-post arrangement, if UKIP gained votes solely at the expense of the Conservatives, the net effect (up to about a 24% vote for UKIP) would be to increase Labour's majority:

http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/Analysis_UKIP.html

This certainly looks like an incentive for Cameron's Chameleons to talk to UKIP, or at least temporarily take on some of the latter's coloration in the hope that you can fool enough people for long enough.

In any case, DC can look forward to a wealth-multiplying post-Parliamentary life of directorships, consultancies and highly-paid dinner talks, just like his hero Blair, for whom he led the Opposition applause* in Parliament when the latter abandoned his constituents to do something more lucrative (and above all, attention-getting):



So really, why should Cameron care anyway? And as the saying goes, he who cares least has all the power.

Where does this power come from? Last week's Spectator leader drew a really thought-provoking contrast between the UN and the EC:

"There is a subtle but enormous difference between the European Convention on Human Rights, on which the Strasbourg court bases its decisions, and on the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The latter states:

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.

 The former states only that:

The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature. 

In other words, the European Convention respects the right to free and fair elections but does not demand that those elected respect the wishes of those who elected them, nor that a country’s legislature should be in ultimate charge."

How will you vote in the General Opinion Poll of 2015?

But maybe, even after the debacle of the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, electoral reform is still possible, particularly in the event that Scotland decides to vote this autumn for secession from the Union. Already the Scottish Parliament has a much fairer system; perhaps the Scots will once again show us the way.

_________________

* I should like to know the names of those few who sat on their hands - they would be part of my first Cabinet if I were "in power".


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A dumb question

 

 



And what will happen next?

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Ayn Rand quote of the day

(Pic source)

 

"A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures."

- http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/trader_principle.html

Discuss, with reference to the banking system.


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Iceland - top country

The Global Peace Index for 2014 ranks Iceland first (htp: Tony Blair Faith Foundation). Here are the top ten:

Source

 

Iceland's come a long way since the time of the Sagas:

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

But then, so has everyone else.

 

The UK is 47th, overall. You can look at our country in detail according to various indices for 2012, here - and the US is here (Vermont looks good).

 

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The challenge of contentment

The good life in ancient China was to be free from work, sit quietly in a house in the mountains, drink wine and contemplate the moon, in the company of your friends and concubine.

Pic source

Thanks to cable TV, there is no need to go elsewhere. Whether on holiday or even unemployed, we can stay at home and have drink, pals, sex and watch nature programmes.

The trick is to become the kind of person that can simply enjoy it.


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