I don't iron shirts because the look of unironed shirts bothers me, but because society expects me to do so and (particularly when, for example, I'm in front of a Parliamentary committee or similar).
]]>I would post a link to the article - which I found a rather moving insight into what it is like to find all one's certainties washed away - even if his certainties may be my definition of outmoded or even bigoted thinking - but I can't seem to find it.
]]>"And what is a lizard?" "Someone whom people vote for..."
]]>I'm pretty sure that the existence of the internet has changed the experience of growing up quite significantly: talking to people in their late teens/early 20s now, their experience made me realise how in various ways, the existence of social networking seems to have changed the way the young socialise. And then there's changes to attitudes to same-sex relationships. I can still remember thinking, at the age of 15 or so, that I couldn't see what people thought was wrong with being gay, but I'd better not say so too loudly, because it would cause no end of trouble at school (and an English teacher in 1991, whom I don't think was a nasty person, just rather unworldly, told us in all seriousness that 'homosexual men are child molesters'... And then there's been the political changes. From 1994, did an independence referendum in Scotland look remotely on the cards? And would the Labour party of 2014 look recognisable to a union man from 1994?
]]>I'm a bit sceptical about the 'beige dictatorship' concept. I can't help thinking it's a political radical's explanation of why policies which he or she personally supports and wants to see more widely adopted aren't being proposed by any party with a serious shot at winning elections. It might simply be that his or her views aren't nearly so widely shared as s/he'd like to think. I suspect the similarity between the two big parties is more an illustration of Hotelling's Law. The fact that both parties support certain policies which have no widespread support among the populace at large is to some extent maybe a groupthink thing, but in part simply an illustration of the fact that the public want contradictory things: Scandinavian public services and US taxation. And because we notice changes in taxation immediately, and only slowly realise when public services are being run down, the direction of politics has been heading US-wards. How do the Scandinavians manage it? Well, for starters, I'm not sure that they will continue to, but there's an element of "well, I wouldn't start from here".
Of course, there will be changes - but quite what these will be I find rather hard to guess at. I think that the civil service will remain powerful (insofar as it is at present) but it will be a procurer of services rather than a provider of them. The Tories (and to a lesser extent, Labour) appear to believe that getting into a position of buying in services from private contractors will make them better than doing everything in-house. I think they're falling for what Chris Dillow would call the fallacy of managerialism - that any issue can be solved by throwing better managers at it, and that management is something the private sector is better at.
Absent the environmental collapse, I don't see any revolutionary movement getting far. The latest recession didn't even see the usual increase in crime rates. In part, I suspect that this is because 2014 is a better time to be young and poor than 1981. There's more to entertain ourselves with for free than once there was.
That said, I wouldn't be too surprised if the UK had broken up. Not the way I'd bet, but I wouldn't place too much on either outcome. The SNP might go back into its box - might be essentially the Alex Salmond show - but it's not looking like that. And at some point a future Tory UK government might decide it's no longer worth buying the Scots off with the Barnett formula (it's a fact nobody on either side likes to acknowledge, but Scotland gets more money per head than any other part of the UK, and it's really hard to see quite why this should be) and they'd rather see us go. Probably when the oil drys up. And when it does happen, we'll find that the UK's problems are really much more about the intrinsic limitations of government, and not the particular failings of Westminster, I think. But it would be nice to be proven wrong.
]]>Immortality Fail.
Or "Here lies... which wasn't part of the plan."
No lessons, age thus far at least, has brought me no great wisdom.
]]>As a late 20th Century migrant myself, I'd say yes, it pretty much has. Even in the last 20 years, I'd say it's changed for the better. The dying embers of the old Protestant/Catholic divide haven't quite entirely cooled, but I think they're heading that way. And most people would look blankly if asked what clan they're from. Scotland is not Albania. The clan feud thing is pretty much an 18th Century thing, though there might be one or two places up north I wouldn't let people know if I was a Campbell...
]]>In part I think it's because I have an exactly opposite view to you on the merits of small vs. large states. There are problems facing the world over the next few decades - in terms of climate change, energy shortages, for example, that I think a small number of large states are more likely to stand a chance of solving than an enormous mosaic of little ones.
Sadly, I think there's a real possibility - given for example, the rise of Marine Le Pen in France, who is currently polling better than either the UPM or Hollande's Socialists, that the EU may not hold together in the next couple of decades, and in the event that this comes to pass, I think larger countries will have a much better chance of weathering the storm than small ones.
And then there's my gut reaction that I'd rather be a citizen of my whole country than just the part of it that is north (or south) of the Solway Firth and the Tweed. One can find oneself at a disadvantage working in a country that one is not a citizen of and while I would probably retain dual nationality, that wouldn't be true of the next generation. Set against that, I accept that the agreement between the UK and Ireland has meant that this has not thus far been a major issue but a messy divorce between mutually antipathetic SNP-led and Tory-led Governments may not end well... And the negative effects may go beyond the short term.
]]>All this might be worth it if I genuinely believed that the Yes Scotland campaigners are right - that an independent Scotland would be more social-democratic, less likely to pursue the sort of policies that the current Tory government in Westminster are pursuing. But I don't believe it. A race to the bottom on taxation and welfare - particularly a Dutch auction on corporation tax - seems more likely. - I accept I'll only find out if my side lose the vote.
]]>That said, 3 weeks of football every 4 years is about the right dose for me. I rather enjoyed the Spain/Netherlands game. I prefer it if none of the home nations qualify so we can avoid the nationalistic nonsense that accompanies it.
]]>I would have thought that sex with someone who has been subjected to coercion is illegal regardless of their age. Isn't that, um, rape?
(This might be a purely idiolectal thing, but I've always thought 'consent' carried slightly worrying undertones in this context- the sentence 'he/she consented, though he/she had been subject to some coercion' doesn't sound oxymoronic in quite the same way that 'he/she freely agreed, though he/she had been subject to some coercion).
]]>By the by, look at what the section number of the extreme pornography offence in Scotland in the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill as introduced was: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/S3_Bills/Criminal%20Justice%20and%20Licensing%20(Scotland)%20Bill/b24s3-introd.pdf
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