Ooh, a chartist!

Magna Carta isn’t a written constitution, though it does contain elements that would later be incorporated into the constitution of the United States and many of their state constitutions.

We don’t have a written constitution. We have several documents and treaties that together form our constitution: magna carta, the acts of settlement, the Act of Union and the parliamentary Bill of Rights, which several of our erstwhile representatives have recently tried to resurrect in order to avoid prosecution for fiddling their expenses. Our constitution is largely statute-based, which is why it’s often referred to as unwritten.

The big problem is that people don’t know about this. Ask the average person on the street what they think about magna carta and they’ll ask if it’s that classical music record label *if you’re lucky*. They might think it’s a spanish football team. Without that knowledge of how our government was established, it is impossible to prevent the government from going beyond the bounds set for it by those documents. The Bill of Rights is a good example, as it guarantees certain things (including the right to own guns as long as you aren’t a catholic, and the limitation on unfair taxation without legislation enacting that taxation – bye bye nearly every non-criminal penalty charge in existence!) that have subsequently been overridden by successive governments. The problem is that the Bill of Rights establishes Parliament, and isn’t an Act of Parliament but a treaty. Overriding it removed the constitutional basis for Parliament to legislate, which means that current moves to use the concept of Parliamentary Privilege as established in the Bill of Rights means that either the Bill of Rights is supreme, in which case nearly every piece of legislation for the past 100-odd years is invalidated, or that the Bill of Rights must be struck down, in which case every piece of legislation since 1668 is invalid.

As for the US Senate, as per their constitution that body was meant to represent the States, not the population as a whole. The house of representatives represents the people. The Senate was meant to act as a brake on populist legislation, a body of oversight similar to the House of Lords (probably the only marginally functional part of our own legislature left) and was meant to consider bills produced by the House and re-write them, or block them, before they went to be signed by the president. This is why their constitution includes a requirement for the senate and house bills on any subject to be worded identically before they can be signed into law.

A constitutional amendment requires two thirds of both the house and the senate, but even that would just call a constitutional convention. Constitutional convention then requires a two-thirds majority of all the states.

You see the constitution governed the Union of the States, not the sun-total of the population, which is why it was originally so small. The individual states governed their own populations as they saw fit, as long as they didn’t breach the articles and amendments of the Bill of Rights, which restricted the state to the smallest possible functional level by intention. The Federal government was meant to function as primarily an arbiter of the collective position of the States towards common problems and international issues and so in the constitution its powers and roll were very strictly limited. The expansion of the role of the federal government since the 1890s has resulted in a situation where the federal government has already broken past its constitutional limits many times, which is why you often hear references to the constitution being a “living document”, not to mention a great deal of resentment amongst the elected representatives of the people and the states that a document written by a bunch of “dead old white guys” still has enough potency to limit their aspirations for absolute power.

Our “unwritten constitution” has lost that potency. Most criticism of the US from our side of the atlantic seems to be blinkered by an inability to understand how little freedom we have left compared to them, or perhaps a profound case of denial at just how restricted our lives are. Yes, their government is moronic these days, and they are pushy and loud, but they still have their constitutionally guaranteed rights. What do we have? Mandelson’s muppetry and Ms Hillier’s ID cards. I personally break the law several times a day doing things that are still considered to be inviolable rights in any functional society, but which have been rendered illegal here simply because the government of the day decided that it could do so. Criticism of America for problems that are even worse here smacks of a little bit of projection, I reckon, especially as we have no mechanism for restricting the activities of the state when it reaches too far. Think about that next time you’re criticising the US. They may not exercise it all the time but they have that option to declare acts of the state unconstitutional. Do we? No. Even the much vaunted human rights act is filled with so many caveats and contradictions to make it useless for anything other than forcing people to comply with whatever positivist “rights” are the current politically correct whim.

Face it. We’re fucked.

I’ve had conversations like this with people before. The most entertaining was when someone insisted that we don’t have “a constitution”, we have “institutions”, which is the most puerile piece of twaddle I’ve ever heard in my life. A “constitution” is whatever “constitutes” the state, whether that be statutes, a group of institutions, a written document, or a set of commonly held ideals.

So, yeah. Rant off.

I need to update the blogroll, hopelessly out of date so it is. Until I get around to that here’s some random blog love.

The Strata Sphere
The Blogmocracy
Ace of Spaces (like he needs any more traffic)
Robert Stacy McCain, who has some interesting advice on what to buy wives for christmas.

I was just looking through the backs of cupboards when I found a tube that claimed to be an Aberlour. It isn’t. Inside there’s a bottle, a 1974 Speyside distilled and bottled by Glenlivet and aged 24 years. It’s bottle number 13 from cask 5533. There’s about two inches left in the bottle and my first thought was “Oh no, it’s oxidised!” and so I did the only thing I could think of and opened it up. Turns out I was wrong and now I’m enjoying it while I have the chance. I’ll have to find a small bottle I can decant it into later to stop it oxidising and turning to crap.

I’m not sure of the significance of 1974 to anyone in the family, except that as a 24 year-old it would have been bottled in 1998. Perhaps I was given it when I left college, who knows? I sure don’t. I don’t care either, I’m just savouring the moment. God this stuff’s good. It’s definitely a glenlivet. I can taste the same basic palate as the 10, though this one is infinitely smoother and much more balanced. Caramel and vanilla with a hint of rosewood and coffee undertones, a strong waft of elderflower and just a bit of liquorice. Tastes peppery, same hints of elderflower and liquorice and a strong, bitter aftertaste like oak with notes of almond. Very sharp on the tongue but smooth toward the back of the mouth.

I’m sure if I were to go looking for this again I’d find it was ridiculously expensive, though not as expensive as the £1200 bottle I saw somewhere once. No whisky is worth that much, no matter how good it tastes.

For now I’m in heaven, but that’s enough. Back to the gin! Oh and that might be the subject of another post at some point. Possibly.

I know I keep banging this drum but it’s not without reason. This cross is older than history. The fact that a few modern groups use it as a stand-in for the swastika doesn’t mean that anyone displaying this cross belongs to one of their groups.

A gravestone bearing the Solar cross

A grave marker bearing a solar cross. The inscription reads 'Memora Voteporix Protecti' - translating as something like 'in memory of Voteporix the protector'

So there you have it. The romans were nazis. And they were also quite fond of those stylised eagles on everything too.

An ultra-powerful laser can turn regular incandescent light bulbs into power-sippers, say optics researchers at the University of Rochester. The process could make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb can.

The laser process creates a unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular tungsten filament—the tiny wire inside a light bulb—and theses structures make the tungsten become far more effective at radiating light.

Regular Light Bulbs Made Super-efficient With Ultra-fast Laser

So we’re using these bloody useless fluorescent bulbs why?

I love this bit.

In addition to increasing the brightness of a bulb, Guo’s process can be used to tune the color of the light as well. In 2008, his team used a similar process to change the color of nearly any metal to blue, golden, and gray, in addition to the black he’d already accomplished. Guo and Vorobeyv used that knowledge of how to control the size and shape of the nanostructures—and thus what colors of light those structures absorb and radiate—to change the amount of each wavelength of light the tungsten filament radiates. Though Guo cannot yet make a simple bulb shine pure blue, for instance, he can change the overall radiated spectrum so that the tungsten, which normally radiates a yellowish light, could radiate a more purely white light.

The conversation was about words that people can’t say and the different words in different languages. It brought home just how pervasive some guilt complexes can be, because the moment she said “we aren’t allowed to say ‘nigger’” I actually felt myself break out into a cold sweat and my heart start thumping, as if someone was going to come in screaming “racist!!!” at me. Just for being there when the word was spoken. What an odd reaction was that? It’s just a word.

It makes me wonder if the sheen of political correctness over Sweden is perhaps thinner than in other countries. Or perhaps it’s becoming harder to cow them with the racism line. I’m not sure. It was an interesting experience though…

The accepted way of answering the phone in English speaking countries is normally a polite “Hello?”, or perhaps a cheery recitation of the last few digits of the phone number to remind people that they’ve just called you. In Sweden, where the lovely wife comes from, the accepted manner of answering the phone is to abruptly scream your last name down the phone. The intent is to be sure that the other person knows they’ve actually called you. After all they might be drunk, and so they might have fallen asleep on the telephone and dialled you by rolling on the quick-dial for your home. (This happens more often than you’d think…)

This rather abrupt manner of speaking seems to be a common feature of Swedish telephone conversations with people you don’t know. And of course, there’s the language difference. A swede speaking in English sounds very dour and a little irritable all the time, whereas Swedish spoken with the exact same inflection is actually animated and joyful conversation. It doesn’t help that she’s having to think about every word she says…

On top of this, Christina’s personality seems to enhance this abruptness in appearance. Her phone manner is intended to be polite but it can come across as stilted and highly formal if you’re not used to it.

Which brings us back to the phoning for jobs. Imagine he scenario, if you will. She calls up an office regarding a position and before she can get a few words out, the man on the other end (who she didn’t actually wnat to speak to) says “Your english isn’t very good, where are you from?” “Sweden” is the reply. And then apparently he told her to go back there in very certain terms.

Now you can imagine how this would impact on a woman who can bury you alive with her language qualifications, and who has a voice so damn beautiful I sometimes break down crying when she says “hello”… she wasn’t very happy, lets put it that way. Anyway this gave me a chance to exercise my little-used masculine “protect the women” mood, which was getting flabby and soft from lack of activity. Unfortunately the phone was answered by the woman Chris had wanted to talk to, but fortunately I got to take revenge in a much more subtle and ingenious way. Rather than wasting my time giving an earful to a man who probably wouldn’t care, I used the hierarchy against him. You see, women in the workplace can be so very vindictive and mean and finding out that one of their own has been mistreated by a man, well…

I have to say, it gave me satisfaction to do that, in the way that killing him in a duel might have done a century or two earlier. Nobody talks to my wife that way and gets away with it.

It just brought to mind the accusations that get thrown in the general direction of people like me, on occasion. I prefer to minimise immigration. I would see a lot of people sent back to the country they came from if they couldn’t prove they were here for a very good reason. Unlike some of he reactionary types I actually have a rational framework for this worked out in my head and unlike the stereotype built up about people like me, I do actually want to be open to the arrival of outside influences into this country – as long as they’re beneficial.

I’ve travelled to several countries. I have a culturally diverse family. Occasionally I attend a church populated mostly by south american immigrants. I’ve taken the time to understand the cultures that are coming here so I can form rational decisions about their influence. Some immigrant groups are acceptable in small amounts, if they bring with them the good aspects of their culture and are willing to jettison the bad. Other groups, based on their behaviour and their cultural values, should not be welcome. The default is, as the saying goes, “trust but verify”. That’s the British way of doing things, to assume the best about people but to not hide away from the possibility of the worst. I find this to be a perfectly rational position to take. The same basic principle of allowing only people I want into my home applies at the national level as well.

Yet for this I’m grouped with the idiot on the phone and called a bigot and a racist by a bunch of white middle-class morons who probably never saw another culture outside of their pro-biotic yoghurt pot.

So who’s the bigot?

His entire campaign has been built around the concept of “change”. Change is what he promises. People latch onto this because they want things to change, but they want things to change on their terms. Some want their mortgage paid off. Some want free money. Some want to never have to work again.

Michelle Obama said that he will bring change, and that it will force people out of their comfortable lives (I’m paraphrasing, I’ve lost the precise quote). They should have listened to her instead of to the pundits promising all sorts of free stuff. He’ll bring change. They won’t like it.

In a few years his most ardent supporters outside the media (and possibly inside) will be his most vociferous critics. The ones expecting “change” will be the ones demanding his head, repeating every accusation I wrote in my first paragraph. The refrain will be “he changed everything”.

Just like he promised he would.