Nick Gotts (I don't know why my name doesn't appear, as it generally does when I sign in with my Google account.)
]]>And now also suggesting that, for example, Belgium is not a sovereign state because it has borders with France and Germany? Maybe we could use this argument to say that France isn't a sovereign state because it has a common border with Spain? ;-)
]]>http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1416262/Court-refuses-trial-by-combat.html?...
" A court has rejected a 60-year-old man's attempt to invoke the ancient right to trial by combat, rather than pay a £25 fine for a minor motoring offence.
Leon Humphreys remained adamant yesterday that his right to fight a champion nominated by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) was still valid under European human rights legislation. He said it would have been a "reasonable" way to settle the matter.
Magistrates sitting at Bury St Edmunds on Friday had disagreed and instead of accepting his offer to take on a clerk from Swansea with "samurai swords, Ghurka knives or heavy hammers", fined him £200 with £100 costs.
Humphreys, an unemployed mechanic, was taken to court after refusing to pay the original £25 fixed penalty for failing to notify the DVLA that his Suzuki motorcycle was off the road.
After entering a not guilty plea, he threw down his unconventional challenge. Humphreys, from Bury St Edmunds, said: "I was willing to fight a champion put up by the DVLA, but it would have been a fight to the death."
This would be entirly appropriate, since, after all Belgium has oft been described as being the 'Cockpit Of Eurpope ' ..
" Belgium is so called because it has been the site of more European battles than any other country; for example, Oudenarde, Ramillies, Fontenoy, Fleurus, Jemmapes, Ligny, Quatre Bras, Waterloo.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894 "
And various other conflicts since 1894 not inc the political conflicts within the E.E.C.
]]>They key bit is under the photo: "Alex Salmond and David Cameron sign the referendum agreement in Edinburgh on 15 October 2012 which will enable a vote on Scottish independence to take place in 2014."
What if Cameron (or another PM) refuses to sign a second time?
]]>In any case, you're making the assumption that the parties' positions are fixed, and they do better or worse depending on changes in the electorate - that's not how it works, if the electorate moves rightwards, over time the major parties will both shift rightwards in response, and elections will be about the new centre ground.
]]>Regardless, we're still waiting for you to show, based on UK law rather than pretty pictures in a newspaper, why you believe that Scotland does not have the right to conduct an independence referendum every other Thursday if the people of Scotland choose to do so.
]]>Possible hereditary mental instability - his father was institutionalized when Lovecraft was three and spent the rest of his life in an asylum. His mother died at the end of a lifetime of hysteria and depression -- probably bipolar.
Almost his entire childhood was spent in isolation due to an overbearing mother's concern for various real and imaginary illnesses.
He had a lifelong sleep disorder, night terrors.
All of that pales in comparison to the Astrophysical Journal?
BTW, singularity authors, Lovecraftian or otherwise, are not something that interests me because they are misguided. Belief in an approaching singularity depends on the recurrent human mistake that growth which is approximately exponential in its early stages will continue to be exponential until the end of time, despite the fact that this has never panned out. It never pans out because belief in exponential growth ignores the existence of resource constraints.
There are always resource constraints.
]]>Lots of gory details in the slides linked to at the end of the article, but the article itself already has plenty of meat on its bones, including some man-in-the-middle scenarios.
]]>The current Scottish parliament is not the legal successor of the pre 1707 Scottish parliament Westminster is, the current Scottish Parliament is legally speaking a local government body. For example this means any EU citizen resident has the right to vote in Scottish Parliamentary elections while national elections (i.e. Wesminster) can be limited to UK citizens.
The Scottish parliament has authority to conduct an advisory referendum authorising it to attempt negotiations on independence. It doesn't have the power to actually declare independence, it could pass legislation to do so but as that is a reserved power it would not be of effect without Westminster's agreement. It is hard to imagine a situation where this would be withheld following a free and fair referendum.
If Scotland were to secede then I don't think Scotland would have any real difficultly joining the UN, EU, NATO, CoE, OECD, IMF, WTO, Commonwealth &c. I would expect the UK would be quite happy to support it as we would want good relations with the Scots like we try to have with all the other countries we used to rule.
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