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.

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.

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.

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'être: 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.

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.

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.

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.

Could Do Better

I spoke on the most recent episode of my podcast about the recent collapse of HMV and other high street retailers. I didn't really speak at length about it because I figure my podcast is more for jokes rather than for me dissecting the problems faced by the British economy. But that’s the nice thing about having a blog, if you don’t want to read about the economy you could just skip this post. Don’t though because I assure you that it’s going to be well interesting.

See also: every shop in Britain

The media narrative of the collapse of HMV, Jessops, Game, et al. (and indeed the narrative coming from those companies themselves) is that they have been crippled by the growth of online retailing and by rising rents on their stores. According to this view falling sales and rising costs were squeezing their profits. This view is easy to understand, which is probably why it is being pedalled. It is also false. HMV stores were all cash profitable, that is to say they were taking in more cash than they were spending because there are a lot of people (myself included) who still prefer to buy things in shops than over the internet. So why have they actually gone bust?

Unintended Consequences

As you are well aware, Dear Reader, everything in Britain is now made of horse. It’s interesting to note that whereas in English most animals have one word for the living animal and one for its meat (cow: beef, pig: pork, sheep: mutton) horses do not. It’s interesting but it doesn't really have to do with what I'm going to talk about today which are unintended consequences.

I've always enjoyed this sort of thing, where someone makes a choice which ends up affecting something which is apparently entirely unrelated. It’s a thing that always seems to have fascinated people, just think of how many books and plays and movies that you have read and seen featured unintended consequences as a plot point. It’s a whole bunch I bet. But the current horse crisis is a prime example, because did you know that the 100% horse lasagne can be traced all the way back to Romanian traffic regulations?

It's All in the Music

As I write this I am watching The Wrath of Khan. I'd hope, Dear Reader, that you'd agree with me when I say that it is a fantastic movie, for a whole range of reasons which I'm not going to go into because that's not the point of what I'm writing. But there is one thing which is very important in making it a brilliant movie which is often overlooked in comparison to so many over aspects: it's music. Listen to the main theme of the film and tell me that it isn't great (actually don't because I don't like it when you lie to me.

Ian's Car

The first artificial intelligence wasn't a NASA supercomputer, it wasn't deep in a bunker in CERN, or in the head of some robot in a high-tech Japanese factory. The first artificial intelligence was an Audi in a driveway in Sutton Coldfield.

It was one of those mild sunny afternoons and Ian Warrett was going to the pub to watch the football. He pressed the start button on the car and a message appeared on the screen, the one that usually telling you what radio show is on.

I DON’T THINK YOU SHOULD DO THIS

Tedious End of Year Music Post 2012

End of year music retrospectives always freak me out. Every year I think “oh hey I seem pretty good at this knowing-about-people-what-do-music business” and then I am bombarded by everyone’s top 10 songs, top 10 bands, top 10 thing people have said about music and bands, etc., of the year and I realise I have no idea what people are talking about. Earlier today all round awesome dude and good music knower JoeSparrow posted his end of year post and I realised I had no idea who Alt J is/are. I mean I have heard about Alt J and have heard the words muttered breathlessly on Radio 6 but I couldn’t actually tell you if I had listened to any music by them.

This is really what stops me talking about music on this blog. If you remember when I started this thing I was going to post some new music every week and then I was like “FUCK I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT MUSIC AND THEY WILL FINALLY FOUND OUT” so I just brushed it away and pretended it had never happened. I also started doing a podcast which has allowed me to make fun of bad music and be all “listen to this thing I like” which has somewhat filled the hole. But I’m not doing a podcast episode for a week or so and I’ve lost my outlet.

Anyway enough of this rambling introduction the point is I’m going to post some of my music highlights for the year. JOIN ME.

Why We Broke Up

A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend about relationships and I mentioned my feeling that the reasons I had for breaking up with people were often pretty ridiculous. She wanted some examples but I struggled to come up with them at the time and, as ever with these things, only started to remember some of the better ones on the way home. As is the way of the modern world I felt a compulsive desire to share them with strangers on the internet. But the obvious problem was that a lot of them made me look like a jerk, or made other people look like jerks and I like to think that I'm not that sort of guy. How could I deal with this? Well the solution was obvious: lying. So here are the reasons why we broke up; some of them are mine, some came from friends, some I made up:

Discover your Ancestors

Margaret Smith has become unstuck in time. Finding out about her ancestors seemed fun at first, a hobby to while away the time now that the kids had moved out and started families of her own. A chance to unearth some long lost family scandal, perhaps to discover an illustrious ancestor, and to finally work out how exactly she was related to all the half remembered aunts of her childhood.

An advert on ITV 7 had pointed her in the direction of Ancestor-Discoverer dot com, a site which promised to make easy all the hard work of searching through archives and records and take her directly to the business of nosing around the private business of her forebears. She made a cup of tea and got her laptop ready, entering all the information the site needed: her name, her date of birth, the details of any known relatives. She then pressed enter and set the machine whirring away.

Thoughts on the Death of Oscar Niemeyer

Today’s blog will be written as an account of a fictional conversation between my flatmate Steve and I. The story you are about to read is fake, only the names are real to incriminate the innocent.

Even though the heating has been on for hours our living room remains freezing cold. My porridge is cooling much too rapidly and that is sapping what slim enjoyment I can derive from it. This morning I had to make it with water instead of milk because we are out of milk. Apparently Scottish people make porridge with water instead of milk but this sounds crazy to me.

“Oscar Niemeyer died”

Gaza: Who Gains?

In the light of Barack Obama’s trip to Burma I had planned to write an article on the American government’s attempts to fend of China’s growing influence by shifting its foreign policy focus towards the Far-East and in doing so extract itself from the Middle-East. I may still write that, but in the context of the resumed hostilities in Gaza talk of American dis-engagement from the region would appear ridiculous. So I've decided to bite the bullet and write something about Israel-Palestine.

The Fiscal Cliff is Coming and it Doesn’t Exist

You may have heard recent talk about the “Fiscal Cliff”, and if you haven’t then trust me you will over the next few weeks. For those of you confused about what the fiscal cliff is don’t worry; everyone is confused by it and I'm about to tell you some things that might make it a bit less scary.  Essentially, over the next few months a lot of temporary laws in the United States are going to expire. These are laws which were brought in saying that taxes would be reduced for certain people for a number of years, or that certain government programmes would be guaranteed funding for a certain number of years. As the time limit on these all finish at roughly the same time that means that quite suddenly government spending will go down and taxes will rise. This has made people worry that the recession will start up again as suddenly a lot of money will be taken out of the economy. Trying to fix this is an even bigger problem as Republicans who control the House of Representatives want to cut spending and keep the tax cuts, whereas Democrats who control the Senate and the Presidency want to increase spending and get rid of the tax cuts. Either way this means increasing the deficit, which is the government’s debt.

What's Your Prediction Now?

I've had a few people make references to my earlier post in the last few days, asking me who is going to the President of the United States in 2016. Now first off I have to point out that my system of “gut feelings” obviously doesn't work as Mitt Romney isn't the President (see also my previous post about facts and whatnot). Having said that I am more than happy to give you some incredibly vague references to people you should be paying more attention to over the next 4 years if you want to impress your friends by possibly guessing who might be president next. I’ll probably hold off making any firm prophesies until the Mid-term elections in 2014 but in the meantime here are three democrats and three republicans to look out for.

American “Conservativism” and the Strange Issue of Faith

So the American election happened and I stayed up to watch it. I stayed up till 8am and my sleep patterns have been horribly messed up for the last few days because of it so that I am now living in UK time but sleeping on American time. Much like that little girl we all saw crying because she was so tired of hearing about the election a lot of people were thinking “thank god it’s over! Now we can go back to living out lives!” but politics is never over and it is continuing to mess everything up. After Fox News’ on air meltdown the debate has now switched to Facts vs Faith, or Nate Silver vs Conservatives which is funny and depressing for a whole range of reasons, and as such it is now time for me to stick my oar in.

The Lost Lighthouses of Siberia

This afternoon I visited the always fantastic Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, a slightly oddly put together gallery attached to Manchester University and making up one corner of the much maligned Whitworth Park. At the moment there is a fantastic exhibition by Jane and Louise Wilson titled The Toxic Camera detailing some of the after effects of Chernobyl. Chernobyl has always fascinated me: in particular because of the abandoned buildings, slowly decaying relics of a lost time and place. I have always loved abandoned buildings and wondering what stories they contained, what events happened there which are now perhaps lost forever.