Voting TaKtiX

So, the Law Commission is investigating the status of marriage. Jonny Nexus:

Why? As far as I’m concerned, any relationship that I’m in is purely the business of me and the other person concerned. If we want the government to get involved in our relationship, then we will go to an office of that government (i.e. a “registry office”) and formally register our relationship with the state, with all the rights, responsibilities and limitations that this implies (i.e. “marriage”).

Now there might be a case for allowing an alternative type of registration for those who have a problem with the word/concept of marriage. But I really think there is a very important principle here:

The right to get married must also include the right to not get married.

Is he right? Is this just another nannying intervention to help those who refuse to help themselves (or are too stupid, and believe in that “common law marriage” myth)?

On the one hand, I utterly do not care about Melanie Phillips’s “undermine marriage” objection, but on the other, I really don’t like the idea that it’s automatic. The whole thing brought to mined an excellent post on a similar subject by Natalie from awhileback, Why modern marriage is unrealistic, and what should replace it:

I’d suggest that instead, “marriages” should be five-year rolling contracts, to be renewed or adapted at the expiration of each period, by mutual negotiation between the parties. They might allow for periods of living apart (say if one person wants to travel for a year and the other doesn’t; they might allow for someone setting up their own space in the house to be restricted to them for a certain times … whatever works for the couple.)

The terms of what happens at the end of the period should be agreed at the start.

Personally, I much prefer this idea. Let’s get the state out of regulating our personal lives, and let us determine how, and who, we want to give the legal status of “next of kin”, with all that entails.

Any thoughts?

Bishop Hill has followed up on my post from Friday about the need for reform of how England is governed:

I reckon in fact that the advent of an English Parliament would be good not only for the English but also for the Celtic fringe, in that the loss of their subsidies will force them to embrace business in the way that their brethren in Ireland have done.

How then to square this with the ideas that I have put forward here and at Liberty Central (and that MatGB seems to share) for devolution of power down to the lowest practicable levels? What is the point of an English Parliament if all the power resides at community level? It’s hard to think of many areas of policy which would sit naturally at an England level were this kind of constitution to be enforced

He follows up with a discussion of Bondwoman’s excellent post at the Sharpener and concludes:

The answer then appears to me to be that there may in fact be no need for an English Parliament, because the constitutional imbalance can be righted and more local government delivered, without it.

This is, essentially, my position; we need to localise power. That it is, as Stuart observed in the comments, “for the English to decide how their country is governed, not the Scots, not the Welsh and not the Northern Irish” is unarguable. Where I disagree with him is his desire to see an English Parliament first. I want a Convention that will discuss how we are governed, followed by a preferendum to the people asking them how they wish to be governed. That has to be an essential cause that all reformers can agree on, regardless of what actual outcome we want, right?

I’m not closing comments on this post, but I’d like to keep them all together either here where I asked the questions or on Bishop’s post here if possible? Danke.

Was just prompted by a friend to pick up my copy of the Complete Works, hadn’t looked at it for a few years. I was looking for Macbeth, but there was a page marked. Most certainly not a bookmark, just an envelope addressed to my address before last, keeping a page for reference. Which page?
Richard II:

John of Gaunt:
Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

So, England has a problem that needs solving. It’s come up (again) in the comments on the previous post, so I thought I’d open a question for debate.

Squaring the circle. How do you bring power as close as possible to the people, recognise the existence of England as a unit, and ensure that a Parliament of 80% of the population does not destabilise or undermine the British parliament?

How is the need to take power away from the centre helped by creating a new administrative unit that is as big as England? How does this improve the way I am governed?

I ask this in the attempt to have a reasoned debate - can “nationalism” be removed from this discussion? Does “England”, in and of itself, matter? England is nearly as big as Britain. If Britain is to continue to exist as an administrative unit, what will the England govt do? I’ve said before that a medium term objective of all disparate reformers has to be a constitutional convention, and in that, nothing can be ruled out or ruled in. I’m convinced that a Parliament for England is an irrelevence for as long as Britain exists, too distant and remote.

However, can we devolve power from the center into units big enough to be effective but local enough to be responsive? And can such a system also include an “English dimension” in some way?

Right, I think I’ve sorted the template, thanks Pete for the analysis, the wrapper was itself the cause of the problem, and it looks better without it.

More importantly though, to the right (on the front page only) is a recent comments box. This is cool and something I was rather keen on when looking at Wordpress options. But, perhaps more usefully, from the same site, I also found a way to have a ‘comment’ box at the bottom of each post page. It’s even got some formatting and link insertion options. Only works if you’re running javascript enabled browser, but that’s 98% of the readers. I’ve turned off the letter recognition thing to get it to work properly, but it’s pretty cool even with that on; can, um, people test it out and see what they think?

Must pay more attention. James, who I read regularly, also it seems writes at the New Politics Network blog, which I must have missed despite looking at the site a few times. Got there via Make my Vote Count (which I read at least once a week), and find this excellent article on the merits of multi-member constituencies: (more…)

Yesterday:

“I’m almost always defending the indefensible here. I do not think I have been given a fact or a figure in the past fortnight that has not been revised quickly in a very short space of time.”

Today:

Home Secretary John Reid is said to be furious after he had to apologise to MPs for giving them the wrong figures on foreign prisoners

Well, yes John. It’s crap. The whole thing is crap. You’ve inherited a job that may or may not have been

“fit for purpose when I left it in 1997″
-former Home Secretary Michael Howard

but it’s most certainly falling to bits now. The more I learn, the more I’m convinced. When I linked to this before, it was with caveats. Now, I agree completely. The Home Office is an all-consuming monster^*, it needs to be broken up.

^*Yes, I am proposing that as a Google Bomb. Because it really needs it.

So, hidden down in recesses of the BBC front page, is the news that Brian Haw was raided this morning and has had most of his placards alongside much of his personal possessions removed and “dumped in a container”.

Cllr Ayling is, rightly, outraged, not just at the action itself, but also that the coverage it has been given puts it so far down the headlines that you could blink and miss it (I did until a friend pointed it out to me). I’m not sure I agree, completely, with his take, but it does cause me some concern. Peter Black does, however, pose a much more important question:

If they did not want to give the impression of a Police state why did they not execute this act in broad daylight when we could all see what they were doing?

He’s right, this was an ongoing dispute, Mr Haw was not a direct threat to anyone. He lost his case to remain untouched, and now has a very restricted protest allowed to continue. As much as we dislike these restrictions, the police are tasked with upholding the law. So how do they choose to do it? During the day, in daylight, peaceably and with an attempt to keep it amicable? No.

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said officers removed the placards at 0235 BST

I’ll just say that again

0235 BST

Nice one to the boys in blue there, really making it hard for those of us who want to think that you’re doing your job despite concerns over the powers this government has been giving you. 2.35am? For a peaceful, non-violent protest?

Disgraceful.

Updates:

Tim has more on the fiasco, including picture of the confiscation of his bell last week. Spyblog reports it was 25 police officers sent (at 2.35am mind, think of the overtime payments) to do the dirty deed. Tomorrow am, given that Brian has had his bell removed, it seems timed to make sure he can’t annoy Tony, there will be a protest as Blair turns up for PM questions, aiming to make as much noise as possible. A little far for me to drive, but if you’re in the area?

Scottish electoral mechanics are always interesting to watch. South of the border, most seats are either safe or two-way marginals. Three-way marginals are rare, and tend to disappear over the course of a few elections, the third party squeeze / ratchet effect caused by Duverger’s Law means that it becomes “irrational” as the economists put it to vote for the third place or below candidate. Yet in Scotland? They not only still have three way marginals, they also have some 4 way marginals. (more…)

Blogger playing up?

Since yesterday, I’ve had no edit icons on my compose window, no preview, and the keyboard shortcuts aren’t working. I use the plain text editor, not the WYSIWYG composer. Anyone else having similar? No image upload option either. I thought at first it was a problem with my other id, but it isn’t. Also, I’m seeing a new favicon, the ‘B’ has been replaced by some pink effect blobs. Anyone else?

New site layout

OK, I’ve been aware for some time that the three column coding I tried didn’t work properly in Internet Explorer at lower screen resolutions. I hope I’ve now fixed it (as requested and promised). Gaaaahhh! I hate hate hate Microsoft. Not only is it just as bad, but the fonts are all wrong as well. When is IE 7 coming out? Plan ‘b’. Tomorrow night.

I’d been planning to use this template for awhile, but I hadn’t finished it, it’s a mix of three different templates and a lot of my own tweaking. Given I don’t really know what I’m doing, trial and error is fun. So, firstly, Internet Explorer users, is it better?

Second, colour scheme; yellow headers better that that green that was there before? Sidebar boxes look better? There’s a few things I need to finish off; the text padding seems to vary and I’ve tried to find them all. Also, following Duncan’s lead, the vont should now be completely Verdana. I’ve probably missed something.

Admin point

I’ve added a new ‘user’, called TaKtiX. That’s actually me, it’s the admin account for my new site, and I keep forgetting what I’m logged in as, so posts from me using that are still me. The things we do.