Morning music
Tweets seen
I find myself turning back to Nietzsche, particularly Also Sprach Zarathustra, not read for many years.
The nanny state…again.
About 22-23 years ago, I was en route from a social call in Hereford to the South Coast when the police stopped me in Wiltshire in the middle of the night. I had expected to overnight in or near Hereford, but in the end decided to drive through the night, starting after midnight.
I had had a couple of pints of cider during the (hot summer) day, and a couple of pints of Guinness in the evening. I was not intoxicated in the slightest.
The drive back was devoid of traffic. I scarcely saw any other vehicle, though I had to brake urgently when a black deer ran in front of my car before scrambling into woodland on the road that follows the course of the river Wye.
Sometime around 2 in the morning, I crossed an empty roundabout in Wiltshire and, not long after that, I noticed in the rear-view mirror a car a distance behind me. That car, a police vehicle, then blasted my car with bright headlights, so bright that they were shocking. Irresponsible. They then applied their blue lights.
I pulled over, and one of the two police approached. He asked me where I was headed, from where I had come, and why was I out so late. They probably had already checked the car’s registration (it was not my car), and so asked for no licence or insurance details. Just as well. I had a foreign licence at the time, and I find talking/explaining to the police rather boring.
The policeman had a perfunctory look and rummage in the back of the car, and then decided (on my admission that I had had a Guinness) to breathalyze me. Zero reading.
Turned out that a police camera operator had seen me cross that empty roundabout “erratically”. I was probably tired.
Anyway, the policeman was polite and friendly enough and, above all, let me go!
Still, how long before one has to blow into devices even in the car to test both sobriety and wakefulness?
True, sleepiness, like intoxication, can be dangerous to both a driver and to others, but sometimes these State control measures go too far, and destroy all freedom and pleasure in life.
Incidentally, that was both the first and the last time that I was breathalyzed. I rarely have even one drink now if driving (and drink little generally in any case). The only time in my life when I would have been driving actually intoxicated on a regular basis would have been when living in the Caribbean for a while, nearly a quarter-century ago. A few mojitos and a few daiquiris can seriously impair your driving ability…
More music
From the newspapers
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/10/west-opportunity-risk-ukraine-counteroffensive.
Written by Timothy Garton Ash [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Garton_Ash], someone whom I have always thought a rather sinister individual (from a distance— I have never met or seen him).
I am at least assuming (for now) that what we read there, in that Guardian piece, is effectively the sort of judgment (about aid and assistance to the Kiev regime) being channeled to Downing Street by SIS.
I shall believe it when I see it, but Proportional Representation is the only way to restore, to some extent, the credibility of the pseudo-democratic circus in the UK.
More tweets seen
An army, however huge, well-motivated, and well-equipped, against a nuclear power, even one which may not be ideologically-motivated or efficient, is little more than a display of strength which may become a field of cinders.
The sections of that Ukrainian-language graphic are, from top, Black Sea, Sea of Azov, and Mediterranean Sea. Presumably all or most ships etc are from the Black Sea Fleet.
Good to see young people on the right track. That tweeter now has over 89,000 Twitter “followers”.
See my assessment from a few years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.
Looks similar to the village of Dunsford, not far away, where I once stayed for about a third of each month when on “kommandirovka” (i.e. work journeys, as a barrister based in Exeter) from my then home in Brittany.
Seems long ago now. I was last there in 2008.
Clever idea. BTW, I have no financial interest in the product!
The “trans” nonsense has just become absolutely ridiculous in the UK and USA.
Leaving “Madame Hatchet” aside, that is quite right, but what is not said in the tweet is that any visionaries are frozen out by the System, and also attacked relentlessly by, mostly, the Jew-Zionist element and its “antifa” “useful idiots”…
Not so sure that the graph does show that, but I cannot think of many people or types of people, who would go out and vote Conservative Party at present, certainly not from active approbation of Conservative Party policy or actual rule. The most the Con Party can hope for is that there are enough people who actively oppose the Labour Party to mitigate the losses.
Even the “stop the migration-invasion” policy (re the cross-Channel invasion) has been proven to be pretty much hot air. The invaders still flood in, aided and abetted by those who could be called many things but “traitor” is closest, albeit in the “non-legal” sense.
It is very doubtful that Starmer-Labour will do any better in any area than the present bunch of idiots but, as a plea to the voters, that is not much to say…
Once again, a battle based not on which party is most popular but which party is least popular. Not very inspiring.
Good grief. I wonder whether that always works. After all, you only get one chance.
Might be useful sometime.
Various UK institutions such as the civil service, police, CPS, legal professions, judiciary, RNLI, even the National Trust are, so to speak, “riddled with traitors“.
Lost Doggerland
I have written about Doggerland and, also, large engineering projects, previously on the blog: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2020/05/19/lost-doggerland-some-historical-changes-and-some-large-scale-projects/.
Late tweets seen
Isn’t that a Masonic distress signal?
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
There is also the question of WHAT form of Proportional Representation this country should have as there are important differences between the three basic versions. The Lib Dems have always been obsessed by the silly Irish form called the Single Transferable Vote which tends to work quite well in the Republic even though it is only semi PR so not particularly proportional as the ROI is a small country so the necessary multi member seats can be kept reasonably small.
STV wouldn’t work in this country for the House of Commons because the seats would have to be too large geographically and due to our far larger population than the Republic contain too many voters thus weakening the local constituency link.
How could you use STV for the various island seats like the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Anglesey or the seat in Cornwall that contains the Isles of Scilly? You would either have to use single member seats in which case they would be voting using the 2011 REJECTED and NON PR Alternative Vote or they would have to be joined to multi member STV semi proportional seats on the mainland.
In the sparsely populated Scottish Highlands, the seats would have to be vast (the former Lib Dem seat that has the Isle of Skye in it is the country’s largest already) is one reason a commission in Scotland said STV was not suitable to be used as a future electoral system for the Scottish Parliament.
Then, you have to take account of the fact that STV HAS to use RANKED ballots to work and the country rather turned its nose up at that concept in the AV referendum in 2011.
If the Lib Dems and others really do wish to see this country have fair votes and PR I would suggest they campaign for the system we designed for postwar Germany and which works pretty well there called Mixed Member Proportional Representation though we could and should upgrade it to using open lists and not closed ones as they have.
Otherwise, the Danish system of open party list PR with levelling seats would be a good model to look at.
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John:
Whatever system is used must have the merit of simplicity. All or virtually all adults must be able to understand it easily.
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I agree AND not just be simple to use but ALSO be simple to understand how people have come to be elected.
Look at German, Danish and Irish election results on Wikipedia and any remotely intelligent person can very easily see how people have been elected in Germany or Denmark whereas Irish STV constituency results are certainly not easily understood even by election experts let alone the more important voters.
The stand alone FPTP system we have is utterly archaic and has many serious faults but two virtues it does have are that in a heavily populated country the sizes of constituencies can be relatively small both in geographic terms and in numbers of voters in them and that the results can be quite easily understood albeit that comes at the severe cost of fairness.
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The Lib Dems too easily dismiss one virtue having a single MP for a single seat can have namely that a single MP per seat has a more clear line of accountability for the local electorate to its MP.
In a multi member seat which STV HAS to use an MP can palm off a constituency problem onto another MP for the same seat and say that problem isn’t anything to do with me.
Germany’s Mixed Member PR preserves the constituency link in the same way as we have albeit the seats are a bit larger in geographical and numbers of voters terms.
Germany’s system is rated NUMBER ONE by electoral system experts on the Wikipedia page on electoral systems.
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STV is used for lower house parliament elections in JUST TWO COUNTRIES in the world ie the Republic of Ireland and Malta ( a European micro state) and both of them are small countries geographically and jn electorate terms. Basically, both have it for historical reasons and it was IMPOSED by us. In the Republic’s case we imposed it to try and ensure the interests of the small ( at the time 10%) Protestant population interests could be represented.
The Republic has had two referendums since the 1950’s to either keep or get rid of it. The single alternative in both votes was our FPTP system and in the first referendum FPTP was only narrowly rejected.
New Zealand had a referendum to change from our FPTP system to a new electoral system in 1993. STV received just 17% of the vote which was not much more than straight up and down preference voting in single member constituencies ie the Alternative Vote (AV) which got 6%.
Germany’s Mixed Member PR (MMP) got a huge 70% endorsement in that referendum which meant that is the system NZ uses today.
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Traitors they most certainly are in that they are actively aiding the genocide of a nation.
In my humble opinion these people should swing for their crimes. It is always a good day for a hanging as in the ‘Hang ’em High’ city state of Singapore otherwise famously described by an author as ‘Disneyland with the Death Penalty’.
I really must visit that remarkable country one day though if I were to do so I would have to make sure I kept hold of my luggage in Changi Airport.
Perhaps death penalty fan Lee Anderson MP can join me on my trip?
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John:
I see your point. Perhaps take no luggage and buy clothes there…
I was irritated years ago (I think in 2008) when I had to change planes at Dubai and everyone was being “asked” (told) to remove their shoes for some kind of anti-terror or drug inspection in a machine. Fortunately, my shoes had not (it seems) had any contact with explosives or drugs, so I was allowed to fly on to somewhere or other.
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STV is a candidate orientated form of PR rather than a party oriented form. The Lib Dems and others really need to get their heads around the fact that in 2023 modern politics IS party politics at least when you are talking about lower house elections ie general elections to the House of Commons.
STV would be fine for general elections in a small place that , to my knowledge, doesn’t have organised political parties ie the millionaires tax havens of Jersey and the Isle of Man not that they have it there either.
It is probably best used for an elected Upper House ie the House of Lords particularly if it was kept as it is at present as a revising chamber.
Indeed, most of the relatively few countries which have it use it only for the Upper House eg Australia with its Senate though it is worth pointing that legislative chamber is a powerful one in contrast to most upper houses.
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If the Tories had any brains or honesty they would put blatantly illegal immigrants onto planes at Heathrow , Gatwick and fly them back to whence they came. This needs to happen on a 24 hour a day seven days a week basis from now until the next election.
Hard evidence is needed to demonstrate immigration control is working.
Let the pathetic anti-British woke element on Twitter cry their tears for illegals and show themselves up for the scummy Labour supporters they so often are.
Time for Suella to EARN her Cruella Twitter tag in REALITY. Why can’t Lee Anderson be made a minister at the Home Office or fellow death penalty supporter, Sir John Hayes ( holder of the safest Tory seat in the country of South Holland and The Deepings)?
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The last time immigration was under any real form of control was when Mrs Thatcher was PM and pro capital punishment supporter, David Waddington, was Home Secretary in 1990.
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I have donated money in the past to their Neptune appeal to save Britain’s coastline. These charities rely upon the donations of many supporters to fund their good work so it is a bit silly of them to potentially alienate donors put off by their increasing levels of wokeness.
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One thing the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Greens should stop campaigning for is to extend the franchise to people as young as 16.
Britain currently sets it at 18 and in this aspect of of our present electoral arrangements we are NOT out of line with most other countries.
Until very recently, Japan set its voting age at 20 years old and has now reduced it to the world standard of 18.
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John:
I would favour minimum voting age to be 28, or at least 21, but of course that is politically impossible.
Be wary of any politician who wants a 16-y-o electorate. Such a politician (eg Alex Salmond) is a charlatan. If 16, why not 15, 14, or whatever?
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I believe I am correct in stating that Switzerland used to only allow people to vote from the age of 21 and may have had a voting age even higher than that (it could have been as high as your ideal age) as recently as the 1960’s.
I wonder if one reason that country is so successful and ultra-rich along with a sensible foreign policy of neutrality and not entering wars with nothing to do with them is because they restricted the franchise to older people with more experience of life/employment/responsibilities?
Anyone with a brain can work out why Labour in particular but also the Lib Dems and the Greens want to lower the voting age to such a ridiculous early age and that is because ethnics are more prevalent in the younger age groups and very young people tend to be more woke and PC.
18 is perfectly young enough and we are NOT out of line with the practices of most other countries in this respect.
The ONLY reason to lower it to 16 was to have had the franchise extended to that age as a special ONE OFF measure when we had the EU referendum as people of that age will have to live with the decision for longer.
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Yes, why not lower it to 14 year olds? Where does this leftist insanity stop?
What is the point anyway since even if you do lower it to 16 those teenagers due to the unfair effects of stand alone FPTP STILL won’t have a vote of EQUAL value to another depending upon a random factor like what parliamentary constituency they live in.
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I think 21 can be argued for as I believe it is in conservative minded Singapore or raise it to 19 as I think the age of the franchise is currently in very successful and wealthy South Korea but 28 is too high in this day and age.
16 is ridiculous though and no sensible case can be made for it. Even 17 would still be too low.
As I said, Britain in this respect at least is NOT out of line with the majority of the world’s countries so what sensible reason is there for this proposed change? There is none as far as I can see.
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Something good and positive is being made in Great Britain by a large group of craftsmen restoring decrepit properties of architectural and-or historical value.
https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/about-us/restoring-historic-buildings/
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