Interesting Links for 31-01-2012
Jan. 31st, 2012 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Why teenagers are the way they are (two developing systems, out of sync with each other)
- Font sizes are complicated (and made my head hurt)
- The Department of Homeland Security has no sense of humour.
- The trend away from belief in God is accelerating in the USA.
- Headlines you won’t read today: University applications up this year more than 16%*
- Calling those in favour of drug legalisation - make your voice heard by the home affairs select committee.
- No Devo-Max says Cameron - even if Scots vote for it
- Today is the 20th anniversary of Alt.Fan.Pratchett.
- Stephen Hester turns down shares in unsuccessful bank
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-01 01:30 am (UTC)And OMG -yes- in regards to the problem with Neo-Nazi Homeland security types having utterly no sense of humor.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 11:40 am (UTC)And the counter on the Yes to Independence votes begins to spin upward again...
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-02 05:47 pm (UTC)No (I am, they're not). Conservatives are in favour of a brand of 'localism' that devolves everything to the individual, they're not keen even on strengthening local authorities, let alone regional bodies-one of the first things they scrapped was regional development agencies and similar.
The typical Tory wordlview is that power should either be held by the person, the property owner, or Westminster, and they broadly favour a unitary state-this is taken to the extreme by UKIP whose position on a chunk of this sort of issue is, well, interesting (and in some cases verging on paranoid delusion but that's another topic).
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 12:56 pm (UTC)I think there are a quite a few people (myself included) who will be picking between Devo-Max and Independence. If Cameron takes Devo-Max off the table then I would expect most of them to vote for Indepedence.
Then there are a number of people who will be annoyed enough at Cameron interferring in, what I think many see as, a private matter for Scottish voters to vote for Independence from a sense of wounded pride.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:32 pm (UTC)58% for DevoMax, 39% for Independence according to this.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:58 pm (UTC)Devo-Max is taking the time to check your 'chute's packed properly and all the straps and buckles are done up before jumping out of the plane at 20,00ft rather than just yelling Geronimo and running headlong at the door.
For that reason I'd vote for Devo-Max and not Independence if given the choice. Take Devo-Max away and, to be honest, I'm completely undecided at the mo so I guess I'm one of those making up the difference in your figures.
Of course it would all depend on what Devo-Max entailed as to whether it would actually work as a stepping stone or there would still be a great leap into the unknown at the end. The article says Devo-Max would likely be "all but foreign affairs and defence". Does that mean dealing with the EU on trade and finance as the UK or as Scotland, or is "foreign affairs" just "declaring war on dictator of the week"? I guess there's two years to clarify little things like that :)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 02:55 pm (UTC)Ten years of devolution – not many dead – let’s try Devo-Max for a decade or two. Wash, Rinse, Repeat
It would make sense for him to remove the option if he thought we would win a straight Yes / No referendum and didn’t want to create a slippery slope.
I would be interesed in seeing a table that laid out the varying powers and responsibilities of sub-polities in various states the way the compare and contrast tables work when buying a PC or cable.
Say comparing, Germany, Spain, Australia, Canada.
Just to get a feel for where we might sit in relation to other states that have several layers of government.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 04:40 pm (UTC)But then why should Cameron care? We'd go to Devo-Max, he'd keep the union, and the matter of Scotland breaking away would be another PM's nightmare in several parliamentary terms.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 04:48 pm (UTC)Also, I’m prepared to believe that Cameron cares about the Union both now and in the future and wouldn’t want to do something now that he thought would ultimately lead to the break up of the UK.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 02:38 pm (UTC)On the other hand I could see Devo-Max working in the long term as part of a more federal UK. How likely a more federal UK is, is uncertain.
I think there is a chance that increasing European integration could make the difference between Devo-Max and Indepedence pretty narrow. If Devo-Max were the result of this round of refereda and took say 20 years to bed in with another 3 years for a second Independence referendum to be debated and run I wonder if a majority of people would think the difference worthwhile enough to vote for.
Again, how likely increased European integration is and the UK’s participation in any further integration is a moot point.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 12:42 pm (UTC)I think it will harden the resolve of the SNP and harden the resolve of Scottish voters.
I also think he’s wrong. Devo-Max could work in the UK. Germany and the USA don’t appear to have problems reconciling distributed tax and spend decisions with nationhood.
I’m not sure what happens if the independence vote is close and the SNP run on a manifesto of “So you didn’t quite like that enough, eh? Well how about Devo-Max then?” and win. I struggle to see how the Westminster government could deny Devo-Max without triggering a renewed call for independence.
I can’t help thinking Cameron is either disingenuous about independence (which I don’t believe) or not thinking clearly about the issue. He’s missing something, is blind to something and I can’t work out what.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 03:39 pm (UTC)That's not quite what happened here in Canada when the government ruled out the Parti Quebecois proposal for "sovereignty association"; it did drive the PQ to double-down, but it made the large undecided vote think seriously on the consequences of a vote that could lead to secession... and ultimately it led to last year's crushing defeat of the federal sovereignist party (Bloc Quebecois) at the polls.
-- Steve is not familiar with the terms of Devo-Max, but one factor in ruling out sovereignty association here in Canada was that it was immensely unfavourable to Canadian interests. (For instance, it wanted Quebec to retain some control over Canadian monetary policy as the semi-independant state wanted to retain the Canadian dollar as its currency...)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 03:50 pm (UTC)I think the conventional wisdom here is that any percieved "meddling" by Cameron is good for the pro-independence campaign. This is in part driven by the perception that one of the benefits of indepedence is that Scotland won't have the likes of Cameron meddling in Scotland ever again.
But I'm not actually sure if I've seen any polling that supports the conventional wisdom.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 04:22 pm (UTC)I don't think any of those are present in Scotland... but how prominent those were in the rejection of the sovereignist movement is debatable. So how indicative the Quebec experience is in this case is, well, nigh-on indeterminable.
-- Steve is reluctant to cast the chicken bones in this one.
* the imposition of language laws, talk of "pur lain" (pure wool) Quebeckers over immigrants, PQ leaders complaining about "the ethnic vote", etc
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 04:42 pm (UTC)I think the SNP is occassionally tarred as being anti-English which doesn’t play well with the many (7%) of the population who are from England. They haven’t proposed any anti-English measures and I don’t think ever would although a measure that was anti-foreigner, such as a super tax on second homes would dispropotinately affect English people compared to, say Germans.
It is possible that our equilvalent of the levelisation scheme – the Barnet Formula – provides a subsidy to Scotland. The data is open to interpretation and isn’t complete or easy to access. For example, how much of the payroll taxes that BP pays from its London head office are attributable to it’s Scottish operations is unclear.
Some wag has proposed that Orkney and Shetland, who used to be part of Norway, might in turn succeed taking with them quite a lot of oil and wind and tidal potential.
I think you are wise to keep your chicken bones in hand but your example of how the removal of a middle option helped the status quo campaign rather than the independence campaign is useful when sense checking the conventional wisdom.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 04:56 pm (UTC)-- Steve's English spelling isn't too bad, but alas it seems his French is dismal.
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Date: 2012-01-31 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 02:04 pm (UTC)Modern apprenticeships are now only coming back into fashion because the government is paying for the majority of the cost, including any salary of the individual while they are at the company.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 02:42 pm (UTC)It didn’t surprise me that as soon as I qualified I got a pay rise equal to the annual cost of my exam tuition.
I think the situation is similar for lawyers.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-31 04:37 pm (UTC);)