Submitted by Captain Qahn on
How to make a pigs ear of democracy?
Of interest: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/22/bernardi-says-no-...
"..he believed people were pressured by political correctness and were saying they voted “yes”, even if they had voted “no”. “I’m not even conceding defeat quite frankly,”"
Whilst the subject matter may be of interest to some... the fact remains that voting in the UK is a private matter, between you & the ballot box. There are records available of who voted & how they voted is enshrined in dark matter.
"People do occasionally sign their ballots but these votes do not count. They are considered rejected ballots because the voter has revealed their identity and breached the rules of a secret ballot. Signing your ballot paper was fairly common in the 19th Century when candidates would pay people to vote for them. Under that corrupt system it was possible for the candidate to check up later who had voted for them by looking for signatures, and pay out accordingly. Today, however innocent the motive, a signature renders a ballot "rejected".
Actions speak louder than words. Electronic Voting (2014) "It may come as a surprise but electronic voting is not the prevailing choice among the world's democracies, though most forward-looking nations are aspiring to go electronic to cast ballots. Today, only about a two dozen nations have adopted electronic voting. Yet, on this landscape India is undoubtedly a world leader. In 2014, more than half a billion people cast their votes on electronic voting machines, a world record! A whopping 1.4 million individual electronic voting machines were used in 930,000 polling stations spread across the country in the 2014 parliamentary poll..."
"Today, electronic voting machines (EVMs) are under an intense scanner. At least 24 countries have dabbled with some form of electronic voting or the other. There were, at the last count, about 120 democracies in the world. These include tiny countries like Estonia to the oldest democracy -- the United States of America. But India stands out as being the largest democracy of the world that has one hundred per cent electronic voting. There are countries like Germany that adopted electronic voting and were then forced to go back to a paper balloting system."
http://www.firstpost.com/india/evm-tampering-why-india-stands-out-as-a-g...
Hand on heart I voted Remain ... but did I ? I most certainly did not vote for Jeremy Corbyn.
"Polling place electronic voting or Internet voting examples have taken place in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Namibia, the Netherlands (Rijnland Internet Election System), Norway, Peru, Romania, Switzerland, the UK, Venezuela, and the Philippines."
Hmmm ...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/21/keir-starmer-tory-rebel...
In other words Labour will support May on Brexit subject to them throwing their weight around.
"Writing in the Sunday Times, Starmer demanded:
- MPs get the “final say on whether to approve the withdrawal agreement and how best to implement it”.
- The transition period requested by the prime minister is added into the legislation.
- A “completely different approach” to the use of so-called Henry VIII powers which the government argues it needs to make technical changes to regulations repatriated from Brussels, but which Starmer described as “silencing parliament and handing sweeping powers” to ministers.
- A guarantee that workers’ and consumer rights, as well as environmental standards, are not watered down after Brexit.
- A concession to devolved administrations which want repatriated powers that would normally fall under their remit to go straight to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, rather than first being taken over by the Westminster government.
- Putting the EU charter of fundamental rights into UK law."
All MP's votes are recorded.... and so are the voting publics. X marks the spot. Should electronic voting become the norm, who has access to that information?
Policy makers: Round em up? http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/nfu-publishes-clearer-vision-for-bre...
Digital trails or trials.
On the one hand digital & electronic voting would allow for more localised referendums not only as per Switzerland but here in North Yorkshire : http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/first-ever-referendum-for-north-york...
Meanwhile:
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/crime/public-don-t-mind-who-governs-...
Oh. I wonder what Sir Keir Starmer makes of this?
"There will be a hearing on January 11 to decide legal issues relating to the trials. A group of supporters from the protestors’ camp outside the fracking site accompanied the six to court where they appeared before district judge Adrian Lower. Helen Marie Chuntso, 40, of Grove Crescent, Sowerby Bridge, and Louise Hammond, 54, who gave her address as a caravan at the camp, denied a charge of obstructing the highway on September 20. James Ashley Mason, 23, who gave his address as a tent at the camp, with an address for post in York, denied obstructing the highway in a separate incident on September 20. Nicola Jane Elson, 44, of Trafalgar Street, Scarborough, denied a charge of obstructing the highway on September 21. Eddie Charles Timothy Thornton, 34, who gave his address as a tent at the camp with a postal address in Little Barugh, Malton, and Vanda Gillett, 40, who gave her address as a caravan at the camp, both made applications relating to their bail conditions."
http://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/news/15609304.Six_appear_in_court_in_conn...
The Retro Getaway? The measly effect ... 
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/homes-gardens/caravan-of-love-w...
Looks like some ready made fracking pads to me..
Moving swiftly on ...
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/841970/moon-earth-nasa-asteroid
Clearly they had a referendum...
A reality check:
http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/who-is-jacinda-ardern-new-ze...
http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/horrifying-cctv-video-shows-every-trai...
On the clock:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/21/catalonai-crisis-spain-raj...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/22/shinzo-abes-ruling-coaliti...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/xi-jinping-china-president...
Oh, OK: Seriously :
Should democracy be digitised? : Would this lead to compulsory Voting?
Wot of the Digitally excluded? : How would you exclude yourself?
Personally I don't believe for one minute that Jeremy Corbyn voted to remain in the EU Referendum. How would I prove that? Or, for that matter how would he? That is my view.
The Silent Majority : The Invisibles
None of the Above.
More to the point wtf is The EU Charter of Human Rights?
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/what-are-human-rights/how-are-you...
Oh.
3 Comments
Trawler Alert
Submitted by Captain Black on
Ah, so ... found it ;-0
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/analysis/is-britain-s-answer-to-atla...
It is Britain’s answer to Atlantis and now scientists are one step nearer uncovering the underwater secrets of Doggerland. Sarah Freeman reports
Given the current political climate, Vincent Gaffney admits the title of one of his latest projects now comes with an added helping of irony. Europe’s Lost Frontiers was so named years before anyone had heard of Brexit and its aim is not to chart the crumbling borders of the EU, but a lost world that lays deep beneath the North Sea.
Before the last Ice Age, Britain was connected to North West Europe by a vast area now known as Doggerland. Once brimming with plants, wildlife and humans it has long been submerged, but Professor Gaffney, who is based at Bradford University, is confident that he and a team of global researchers will soon be able to reveal the secrets which lie beneath the waves.
Thanks to a £2.5m Advanced Research Grant from the European Research Council, ships have recently been sent into the zone to drill core samples into the sea bed. Containing vital DNA and pollen data, once analysed, they will allow a 3D picture of the lost watery world to be created.
“Eighty of a planned 100 cores have now been drilled and we have about three quarters of a kilometre of soil just waiting to be looked at,” says Prof Gaffney, whose enthusiasm is infectious. “We spent 10 years mapping the landscape that lies under the North Sea, but this next step will allow us to lay environmental details on top. It will be quite incredible.
“We should be able to pin down the plants which thrived there, the animals which made their home there and finally the human settlers who called Doggerland home.
“We have already identified 20 major estuaries, countless rivers and 300sq kilometre of salt marsh, all in an area bigger than Holland. You have to remember that before the Ice Age that Britain was little more than a range of hills on the edge of Europe. Doggerland by contrast was perfect for hunter gatherer communities and we are now confident that we can shed more light on what this part of the world was like in 10,000BC.”
Doggerland was first identified as a lost landscape more than a century ago, with trawlers occasionally netting archaeological remains, including a woolly mammoth skull, and the author HG Wells also alluded to the area in one of his short stories.
Organised by PLACE, a charity set up to promote Yorkshire’s natural and cultural heritage and making academic research publicly accessible, the latest developments will be officially unveiled at a confrence this weekend in York.
“The only populated lands on earth that have not yet been explored in any depth are those which have been lost underneath the sea,” says Prof Gaffney, who is also part of a project looking at the landscape surrounding Stonehenge.
“Although archaeologists have known for a long time that ancient climatic change and sea level rise must mean that Doggerland holds unique and important information about early human life in Europe, until now we have lacked the tools to investigate this area properly.”
The Lost Frontiers Project still has another three years to run, but even then Prof Gaffney suspects that it will just be the first chapter in a much longer research project.
“It does feel that we are on the brink of something really exciting, but it is just the start. The loss of Doggerland seems all the more pertinent at a time when Britain and the world is faced with present and future climate change, migration and the consequences of immense social change.
“It feels the right time to stop and consider the historic impact of traumatic events of the not-so-distant past and the wider European context of Britain within a world which is changing rapidly and fundamentally.”
"jayne-dowle-payday-delayed-welcome-to-the-world-of-the-self-employed"
Leprechaun Economics
Submitted by Captain Black on
"...let me make a different point: GDP is actually the wrong measure. If you’re going to be pulling in foreign capital, you’re going to be paying more investment income to foreigners; so gross national income – income accruing to domestic residents – is going to go up by less. And surely that’s the measure we care about.
In fact, when you bear in mind the reduced taxes collected on foreign investors who are already here, GNI could actually go down, not up.... Ireland, famously, is a country where GDP vastly exceeds national income, by a growing margin...The reason is a low corporate tax rate, which attracts both real foreign investment in capital-intensive sectors – investment that raises GDP but does little for workers – and also creates an incentive to use transfer pricing to make profits appear in Ireland even though they have nothing much to do with Irish activity."
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/leprechaun-economics-and-ne...
"That leap in GDP was underpinned by the relocation of €300 billion in capital assets to Ireland by multinationals – mainly in the form of intellectual property.
The massive transfer of assets here came amid a global clampdown on multinational tax avoidance."
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/cso-to-remove-leprechaun-fro...
Paradise Lost.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/buy/forget-shepherd-hut-ultimate-gar...
Hmmm ...
"The new higher stamp duty rates only apply to additional residential property. The following types of property, and land, are therefore exempt and would not be considered when determing ownership of additional property for stamp duty purposes.
Mobile homes, caravans and houseboats are not classed as residential so these are also exempt when considering ownership of an additional property."
P6: https://www.revenue.wi.gov/DOR%20Publications/pb075.pdf
The Golden Ocean. Empire of the Seas.
Cashew Nut Crisis
Submitted by Capt. 'Bob' on
Bored with Brexit?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-46166985
"Tanzanian President John Magufuli has sacked both the agriculture and trade ministers, and threatened to deploy the military over a cashew nut crisis.
Traders have been given a Monday deadline to buy crops from famers at an approved price, and not below.
If this does not happen, Mr Magufuli said he will send dozens of military trucks to collect the entire crop.
Cashew nut exports are a major foreign-currency earner for Tanzania.
Farmers have for weeks been refusing to sell their harvests, arguing that the private traders' offers are too low.
On Saturday, Mr Magufuli accused traders of attempting rip off thousands of farmers and ordered them to increase their price offers to around $1.3 (£1; €1.15) per kilogram (2.2 pounds).
The president says he is working to ensure thousands of farmers get a fair price for their cashew nuts and also so that the country does not miss out on vital export earnings.
He added that if he is forced to deploy the army to round up the supplies of cashew nuts, his government will buy them..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBR4EOz4Tq4
Oh,OK :
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46168194
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zUPNqSHXNI
"Voting against the deal would mean leaving the EU without any agreement at all, the government has warned.
But Sir Keir said the Prime Minister's attempts to "threaten rather than persuade" would not work and Labour is prepared to reject the government's plans.
"Labour will stick to its guns. Supporting a bad deal is not in the national interest," he said.
Instead, he said that MPs would be able to table motions, press amendments and trigger a no-confidence vote in order to prevent the UK leaving without a deal.
Sir Keir said: "I remain as convinced as ever that the consequences of no deal would be so severe that it cannot be allowed to happen."
As Good As It Gets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObqIfuDNu3Y
Chews not Pews.
"India imports over 60per cent of the raw cashew nut required for processing. The raw nut prices escalated last year forcing importers to cut down on shipments. “The raw nut prices have dropped by 30-35per cent globally in tandem with the fall in cashew kernel prices,’’ said Pankaj N Sampat, director of Samson Traders..."
Commodoties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PtzY8ezZgs
tis not a Comedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Cx5_A8MFc
Brexit is Bollox.
Where's my head at?
Pathological Avoidence.
"When your going thru Hell keep going"
Someone said that once.
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
Handbags at Dawn?