Sunday, 3 July 2016

Neither Messiah nor Antichrist

Britain 2016
Say what you will about the ongoing destruction of our country, it has got my creative juices flowing. A lot has been happening it's fair to say, the collapse of our currency has led to the FTSE keeping itself afloat as quality save version of a stock market (a subject for another post I think), Michael Gove unveiled himself as a real life Francis Urquhart (not Underwood please, we're British), and Lord Rannoch suggested we hold EU nationals resident in this country hostage while simultaneously revealing that at some point Britain had colonised a planet fromthe Mass Effect video game series. What I'm going to talk about today though is the endless Labour party coup which continues it's endeavour to make itself the most farcical part of our absurd country.

Thursday, 30 June 2016

Aquatic Lizards

James Great-great-granddad
James' family had been ichthyosaurs as far back as anyone could remember, his Nan even had an old photo of his great great granddad being an ichthyosaur. It had been solid dependable work, not as glamorous as being a long necked plesiosaur maybe, but if you were going be an enormous aquatic lizard then you could do worse than getting a position as an icthyosaur. It was a job for life.

But times changed, icthyosaurs were going an extinct, not that James' family understood.
Jane
"Jane up the street got a position as a kronosaurus at that new company in town, why can't you do something like that?"
"It's not the same thing mum, kronosaurs are better adapted to the lower oceanic oxygen content of the late cretaceous. I just don't have those sort of qualifications."
Every morning it was like this and James couldn't deal with it anymore, he knew what he had to do.

"A MOSASAUR?" Dad was apoplectic. "Jimmy this is a step too far! You know they closed your uncle's factory down because of competition from mosasaurs!"
"If it is a choice between being out of work or being a mosasaur I'm going to take my chances dad, the world has changed, and mosasaurs are better at catching bony fish and those new aquatic birds which are all the rage."
Dad stuck his head into his newspaper "it's just a fad, you'll see."
"Won't that mean you have to go onto the land? I don't like the though of that, all sorts of weirdos up there!"
"No mum, mosasaurs are fully aquatic. You're thinking of aigosaurs. Honestly you're so narrow minded!"

An Herring
The first few weeks as a mosasaur were fantastic, herring has just been invented and James' team had won the contract to eat them. He was making new friends at work, and saving up some money so that he could move out on his own. He knew from the way dad looked at him that he wasn't welcome anymore, no matter how much mum pretended otherwise.


Then a massive comet hit the gulf of mexico and he and everyone he knew died.

Tuesday, 28 June 2016

Satellites

Susan was surprised to find a crater where her home should have been. According to her neighbours the satellite had hit the street just a few minutes earlier. She gazed into the smouldering hole and thought about all her things, the jewelry in her bedside cabinet that was now probably a molten pool of metal, the brand new TV which had been converted into a fine powder at the bottom of the hole which used to be her house.

At first the insurance company claimed that the collision was an act of God which they could not cover, though eventually she convinced the bloke in the call centre that satellites were created by men rather than deities.

“Do you have the vehicle’s registration number?” asked the man in the call centre (it crossed her mind that he had mentioned his name, was it Neil? Susan decided to avoid using his name in case she had it wrong.) She did not have the vehicle’s registration number. “Well then I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do” said Neil “You should have taken the other party’s details before they left the scene of the accident”

She tried calling NASA but they weren’t much help either, they claimed they didn’t have any missing satellites and certainly couldn’t help if she didn’t know what model or even what colour the satellite had been. “I’ll have to check with one of my colleagues” said the lady from NASA “let me put you on hold.”

“Shit” said Susan, checking her watch. At this rate she would miss her husband’s funeral.

Saturday, 25 June 2016

The Collapse of the Constitution

Over the last few weeks, and especially the last couple of days in the wake of the referendum, I have been hearing a lot about parliamentary sovereignty. First the leavers were arguing that we needed to abandon the EU so that we could restore parliamentary sovereignty, now some remainers are saying that parliament should exercise its sovereignty to keep us in. Beyond a slogan parliament sovereignty is the cornerstone, or perhaps even the entirety, of the British constitution and I've been finding myself thinking a lot about this terminally un-sexy subject as we move into probably the biggest constitutional crisis the nation has faced in centuries.

The more romantic among us tend to see parliamentary sovereignty beginning with Magna Carta, but it only asserted itself in its modern form after the glorious revolution. The standard telling of glorious revolution is as the time we invited the Dutch king to become our king as well to keep the Catholics out of power, which is
The Bill of Rights - 1689
partially true (the Dutch didn't have a king for one thing) but misses the important point that the revolution was in fact an end to a period political chaos which has engulfed the British isles since the start of the civil war over 40 years earlier.

The conflicts that beset Britain and Ireland during the 17th century were many-fold; religious, economic, political, and many others beside. Over this period the country had experienced despotism and tyranny that led to nepotism, corruption, and popular discontent, and (for the time) unbridled democracy that had bred anarchy, religious extremism, and ultimately military dictatorship. The glorious revolution ended this period with a compromise between the two conflicting ideals of how to distribute power. No one individual would be able to rule, but neither would the people be given too much power. Instead absolute power would be passed to the many headed instruction of parliament.

In vesting sovereignty in parliament Britain had eschewed both monarchy and democracy, and in essence become a republic or "commonwealth" again, with some major tweeks from the commonwealth that had briefly existed during the civil wars, and without the actual name to avoid upsetting anyone's sensibilities. Neither the word republic nor commonwealth imply democracy, instead the words imply common ownership and common duty. Indeed it would be hard to describe Britain as democratic in any meaningful way until at most the middle of the nineteenth century, and possible not even today.

Our constitution means that we elect several hundred minor dictators in the hopes that they will act in our best interest, and a few years later we get to remove them if we feel they have failed or are getting a bit to big for their boots. It isn't a perfect system of running things, but it works as long as they remember their duty as best summed up by the words of the philosopher and MP Edmund Burke:

                "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

and in return for serving us, we get to kick him out of a job if he sacrifices too much or not enough. The crux of the constitution is that the citizens aren't in charge on any day but election day, for the duration of a parliament it is the MPs who have the final say no matter what we may think and we are simply parliament's subjects.

So what are we to do about our EU referendum? We have had referenda before but the government has either been clear that they are purely advisory, or set quorums and targets to limit the power we are granted. With this referendum it has been made clear that it was binding and that all that was required a simple majority. Now it has occurred all but a few MPs have been explicit in agreeing to its terms.

JMW Turner - The Burning of the
 Houses of  Lords and Commons
In this referendum the people have been given unbridled power and parliament has shirked its constitutional duty, its very raison d'ĂȘtre: to limit the impulses of the people and provide sober reflection and judgement on complex issues that an ordinary person has neither the time nor often the inclination for.  To quote Burke again:

" If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member [of parliament]  for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect."

The consequences of this dereliction of duty on the part of our MPs are becoming more obvious daily, the economy is at risk, the unity of the British nation is crumbling, and many people are regretting the way they have voted because they could not possibly hope to inform themselves of all the possible outcomes.

Although I support remain I honestly do not feel that parliament can go back on this referendum. Out of fear of the people and naked ambition they have opened Pandora's box and in doing so they may have destroyed both our nation and its constitution. Britain has never been as conservative as its stereotype suggests, it has always been a country bursting with radical ideas and riven by deep seated divisions. For better or worse these forces have been unleashed, it is impossible to say what the outcome will be.

Monday, 25 November 2013

How to Listen to Errand of Mercy

As you may know I am one half of the podcast Errand of Mercy, and as you may also know we have recently been having a few troubles with iTunes (see Episode 65: The Harrison Fordcast for details). This has unfortunately meant that some people haven't been able to listen to the show which is a terrible situation that cannot be allowed to continue.


Friday, 15 November 2013

Lilly's Legs

Everything was ready. Just hit the button and the device would activate and at the very same moment a call would go through to the emergency services. There was a tiny risk involved of course, there always was with something like this. A tiny risk that it could all go wrong, but if it was so tiny why had Lilly been sat here for the last 4 hours and 27 minutes with her finger hovering over the button? Sat here doing nothing while every minute she waited her window of opportunity became smaller and smaller.

Friday, 31 May 2013

The Four Keiths

Keith 4

The rain thundered against the palm fronds Keith had erected as a cover over his balcony. Every evening when he got home from the plant he followed the same routine: he made a large daiquiri and watched the pelicans grab frogs and fishes from the Pomona swamp. Some people hated the swamp, complained it smelled, but Keith loved the rich warmth of it. To him the swamp, which had been dug out to absorb the tropical rains, represented Manchester’s ability to adapt as much as his job at the rum distillery did.