Re: Damning...
"Couple of MPs tweeted pics of themselves in the chamber already."
Eye eye. The CPS take a very dim view of that sort of toilet fetish you know.
9611 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2009
You aren't allowed to impersonate the Queen for the purposes of personal gain of the perpetration of a fraud or deception for other pecuniary gain.
But you are quite right... it isn't illegal to declare that you are the Queen, a queen, half a Queen on alternate weekdays, or even Brian May, but it is unlawful because it is without a lawful backing. Unless you actually ARE Brian May.
Did he lie, or just give her BAD advice?
Bo Jo no show, pro ro no go, co ho properpappajabber. Mo fo.
On the whole, I agree. Self-suspension of parliament is a progressive move.
The danger is that recourse to the judiciary becomes a new political tool. Once you've seen the sledgehammer at work, it gets turned to as an instrument of first choice. It has the power to define the limits of political tools used for centuries. The Houses of the Parliament operate with a certain amount of legal freedom, and this is rightly so for many good reasons. It's one reason why there's so much archaic pomp and ways of doing things in the houses - the judiciary, the LAW is a reflection of current moral opinion and society - it has to be so in order that the population subscribes willingly to the rule of law - basic theories of jurisprudence. Just look where you get dissent and protest - the law is incredibly fluid.
Obviously when Parliamentary privilege gets taken too far, then you get this situation, but you don't want the judiciary getting involved in everything.
Looking forwards to that!
The shortest PM is 2 days in 1746 as he couldn't get anyone to accept a cabinet post under him.
Next shortest PM is 4 days in 1757 but the official post was First Lord of the Treasury, which is a sub-title of the Prime Minister, and he also failed to form a government.
Third (or first proper PM who formed a government) is 119 days in 1827
A contender is #44 on the list, serving 478 days, but split into two terms of 382 days in 1795/76 and only 96 days in 1782.
The referendum was not legally binding, and was so badly drafted that it left us in this crisis situation. Not a surprise as we all know the current batch of politicians are not great thinkers. May especially (given the changes she made as Home Secretary) is poor at writing things. Should have given the task to a coder / computer scientist - they know how to think through noisy input data.
e.g. 2/3 majority either way is binding, a simple majority or parity result triggers a repeat of the referendum every year until the first condition is satisfied or we take a best-of-five result.
I disagree. The current state of Westminster is reflecting EXACTLY the results of the referendum, namely knife edge opinion, opinion which transcends party allegiances, a lack of understanding or knowledge of the consequences, a disregard for the future relationship with the EU and other nations. The national mood reflected in microcosm in the hallowed halls of the Palace of Westminster.
Yay politics! It works.
There is a danger in this that once this precedent has been set, that it will be cited for some other prorogation in future, where the actual circumstances are far less constitutionally significant than the current Brexit fuck up situation. For example, in 10 years time Parliament is unexpectedly prorogued for 6 weeks, mid-session, during the trial of a retiring former PM who has allegedly embezzled millions through backhand deals, and to save the government/senior party the embarrassment of answering questions on the matter in the house, it is suspended without challenge. A public interest matter effectively silenced in the house for reasons of party politics which may have gone unchallenged in the courts in the past, due to other routes where the public interest could be served, is now presented to the Supreme Court again for a ruling.
The Supreme Court decision could not be challenged, as it is not an appeal concerning EU law. A few years ago, the appeal would have been heard in the House of Lords, which would have been interesting.
Most of the MPs have jetted off to foreign climes for a late season holiday, free and gratis, courtesy of the PM who got very good bulk purchase savings on package deals from Thomas Cook a couple of weeks ago.*
*I made this all up, but it _is_ bordering on credible at the moment.
Oh, I enjoy the Rickster. I just don't understand how anyone can derive entertainment from Rickrolling - it's almost as if there was something inherently bad or unpleasant about a surprise dose of Never Going To Give You Up.
The BBC has always had a social charter and their R&D department has been involved for many years in technologies that advance communications. Was it out-of-scope for them to work on DVB? NICAM? Teletext? DAB? Freeview? Loudspeakers used in OB? Videotape? Measurement references for sound, vision etc?
One wonders if business and workers will come up with a strategy to help UK Government take advantage of automation and robotics?
I reckon they could do with a helping hand - they're totally stuck over this Brexit thing, it seems. I'm sure there's an AI solution... hang on... scratch that; intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is not a requirement for MPs.
I suppose I could really piss you off and repeat the same post on the article about robots being employed to do everything now. Followed by the entire text of the "Demarcation mate – That's the problem." / "Philosoper's strike" speech.
Ah, good old DNA. His works are as relevant today as they've ever been. Except the bit about the price of beer - that REALLY makes me feel old.
;-)
I emboldened the relevant part. I know it's long, but I felt that just mentioning a "new multi-tasking Negative Capability feature", it would lack context. Same as just suggesting "maybe they have an electric monk plus running the website"... the reference would be lost.
So I just let Douglas's words say it. It really is one of his greatest works, and I couldn't improve on it. I guess I could have cut out the bit about the horse, but I like horses.
like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City. It had never heard of Salt Lake City, of course. Nor had it ever heard of a quingigillion, which was roughly the number of miles between this valley and the Great Salt Lake of Utah.
The problem with the valley was this. The Monk currently believed that the valley and everything in the valley and around it, including the Monk itself and the Monk's horse, was a uniform shade of pale pink.
This made for a certain difficulty in distinguishing any one thing from any other thing, and therefore made doing anything or going anywhere impossible, or at least difficult and dangerous. Hence the immobility of the Monk and the boredom of the horse, which had had to put up with a lot of silly things in its time but was secretly of the opinion that this was one of the silliest.
How long did the Monk believe these things?
Well, as far as the Monk was concerned, forever. The faith which moves mountains, or at least believes them against all the available evidence to be pink, was a solid and abiding faith, a great rock against which the world could hurl whatever it would, yet it would not be shaken. In practice, the horse knew, twenty-four hours was usually about its lot.
So what of this horse, then, that actually held opinions, and was sceptical about things? Unusual behaviour for a horse, wasn't it? An unusual horse perhaps?
No. Although it was certainly a handsome and well-built example of its species, it was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.
When the early models of these Monks were built, it was felt to be important that they be instantly recognisable as artificial objects.
There must be no danger of their looking at all like real people. You wouldn't want your video recorder lounging around on the sofa all day while it was watching TV. You wouldn't want it picking its nose, drinking beer and sending out for pizzas.
So the Monks were built with an eye for originality of design and also for practical horse-riding ability. This was important. People, and indeed things, looked more sincere on a horse. So two legs were held to be both more suitable and cheaper than the more normal primes of seventeen, nineteen or twenty-three; the skin the Monks were given was pinkish-looking instead of purple, soft and smooth instead of crenellated. They were also restricted to just one mouth and nose, but were given instead an additional eye, making for a grand total of two.
A strange-looking creature indeed. But truly excellent at believing the most preposterous things.
This Monk had first gone wrong when it was simply given too much to believe in one day. It was, by mistake, cross-connected to a video recorder that was watching eleven TV channels simultaneously, and this caused it to blow a bank of illogic circuits. The video recorder only had to watch them, of course. It didn't have to believe them all as well. This is why instruction manuals are so important.
So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that thirty-five percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. The man from the Monk shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that the new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-tasking Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating system errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of the old model.
That was it. Done.
The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
For a number of days and nights, which it variously believed to be three, forty-three, and five hundred and ninety-eight thousand seven hundred and three, it roamed the desert, putting its simple Electric trust in rocks, birds, clouds and a form of non-existent elephantasparagus, until at last it fetched up here, on this high rock, overlooking a valley that was not, despite the deep fervour of the Monk's belief, pink. Not even a little bit.
Time passed.