The ThunderDragon

The Labour Party, and thus the British government itself, is currently massively in debt to the trade unions. Not just purely financially either.

This is, of course, massively hypocritical considering Labour’s attacks on Lord Ashcroft for targeting money into key Tory marginals. But it also shows that Labour rely on the trade unions to a frighteningly high degree, both financially and organisationally.

That the trade unions can say that it is them “wot won it” for Labour in 2005 gives them a very strong hold over Labour during their third - and hopefully last - term, considering that Labour’s position in the polls will just decline in the long run and as such Trade Union support may well be essential for them. That a British government is so indebted to such a small interest group is wrong, and scary, in so many ways.

Organic fruit and veg is now “officially” better for you because they have

Yes, it might be better for you but, really, is organic possible in the long-term? To start with it has significantly lower yields, and thus takes up far more space and labour for the amount of food it produces. As the human race continues to expand, will it ever be possible to simply provide enough space for organic produce to be farmed to feed us all? Unlikely.

Also, with the extra cost of buying organic produce it simply isn’t financially possible for many - if not most - to do it. Especially since the profit supermarkets make on organic produce - as much as 25% on some products. Having all fruit and veg as organic is impossible, physically as well as economically. “Standard” fruit and veg can give us all the vitamins and minerals we need - I for one have never knowingly eaten organic fruit and veg - so why pay extra?

Organic may be “better” but is it really better? I don’t think so.

Source: The Times

The idea of an English Grand Committee is a good one. It will reduce the currently enormous democratic deficit currently enforced upon England and its people.

But this is only acceptable and appropriate as a short-time solution. This will only reduce the democratic deficit, not remove it. If a grand committee is acceptable for England, why is it not also acceptable for Scotland and Wales? There should be equal - truly equal - democratic representation for all four parts of the United Kingdom.

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should all have Parliaments with the same powers, and an equal level of centrally-raised finance per head. Extra money can then be granted for specific reasons or for specific projects, and any extra wanted can be raised for taxes from their own taxpayers.

The reason that it is the money which gets the English “so cross” is because that is a tangible thing that can be seen and quantified. It can be directly compared. Political power, on the other hand, isn’t obvious in the same way - and Scottish MPs have not yet been used to push through a policy that only effects England that is of wide enough interest.

An English grand committee is the minimum that should happen - and it should happen now. And then we can start on the discussion on how devolution should be properly organised in order to remove the democratic deficit that currently exists within the UK.

Sources: BBC, The Telegraph, The Times, The Observer

It’s a step up from speed dating…

Five days ago I blogged about something that was supposed to happen well, yesterday. But it appears that it simply hasn’t. CF Diary has nothing. The YouTube account has no new videos… so what happened? It’s not like this was just a YouTube video - it has been appearing everyone on MessageSpace ads too [which have an annoying habit of playing sounds without being asked to], so it must have been paid for.

Which means that there are two alternatives:

1. Nothing happened, or
2. No-one noticed.

Neither of which are really very good adverts for the individual(s) involved.

If, as seems extremely likely considering the video, this was supposed to be a launch of a CF election bid, so far they have proven that they don’t deserve my vote. Which, for Chairman, is currently going to Michael David Rock [it helps that I have met him], who has a kind of pseudo-blog, which I would strongly suggest that he upgrades to proper blog.

UPDATE: It seems it did happen, but no-one really noticed [via Mike Rouse]. They didn’t take the opportunity to update their YouTube account, and CF Diary still hasn’t got it up…

The SNP conference has voted to support lowering the voting age to 16. I don’t think that this is a good idea at all. Eighteen is the right age for the franchise to be bestowed. Sixteen is simply too young. At sixteen you are usually still in compulsory schooling, so you certainly can’t be claimed to have reached maturity or adulthood.

As Andrew Allison points out, the law is confused. The legal age at which you can buy cigarettes was recently raised to 18, for one thing. You have to be 18 to be able to legally drink alcohol. You can’t marry without the consent of your parent or guardian until 18. You can’t drive until you are 17. Pretty much the only thing that you can do at 16 that you couldn’t before is have sex.

If the voting age was to be lowered to 16, it would make a mockery of every single age-restricting law that prevented sixteen year-olds from doing anything. How is it possible to claim that sixteen year olds are mature enough to vote, yet not to drink or smoke? if you support lowering the voting age to sixteen, you must also support lowering of every other age restriction to sixteen. Otherwise you simply are a hypocrite.

Source: BBC

Or so claims a French philosopher. Jean-Claude Milner says:

What a load of complete and utter bollocks.

I can also point out that Harry spends most of his time constantly breaking the rules of the school, about a clear allusion to the State as that Harry’s aunt is named Marge means that she is a reference to Margaret Thatcher, means that he - and thus Rowling - is opposed to the large centralised State that socialists so desire. Especially when this is added to by the absolute ineffectiveness of the Ministry of Magic, with an incompetent Minister, who yet is convinced of the correctness of his own opinion. Also, add in the constant references to the free-market, through the Weasley twins, and the way that the rule-fanatic Hermione becomes less and less straight-laced about obeying the rules throughout the seven books. Thus I can conclude that Harry Potter is in fact a right-winger.

Yet all of that is utter rubbish. My paragraph as well as the passage by Jean-Claude Milner. Harry Potter is a fictional character, the Harry Potter books are a fictional series. They are set inside a fictional world. And, most importantly, they are written primarily for children. They are no more politically motivated than any fiction series. They all follow the same basic patterns, with any political motivation of the author absolutely subsumed by the necessities of telling the story.

You can read anything you like into most fiction books. For example, now that it has been revealed that Dumbledore is gay, there is bound to be people who will read entire levels of gay sub-text into it. You can read anything you like into these sorts of books if you cherry-pick the bits and pieces which support your hypothesis. Harry Potter is neither a left-winger or a right-winger - or at all political. You can only possibly read these things into most fiction books, especially those primarily aimed at children, with much effort and by ignoring anything which does not support your hypothesis.

Harry Potter is not “deeply political”, but absolutely a-political.

Source: The Telegraph

There are complaints about the World Cup-winning South African rugby team. They are said to be “too white”, because only two of the fifteen members of the first team are black.

Maybe, just maybe, that is because the white players were better? Since they won the Rugby World Cup, they certainly can’t have compromised that much on player quality!

There is probably more that can be done to increase diversity in the sport - but after all there is always something that can, and some claim should, “be done” about almost anything.

Source: BBC

Purnell-isation.

XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.