A disunited Kingdom
I remember taking part in a debate at Cambridge university in 1984 when the prospects for the union came up. Being in Cambridge was fascinating. It really is a beautiful mediaeval town. The debate was organized by libertarians but there seemed to be mainly English people present. I think I was the only non-English person who spoke. As I am Australian I was in an unusually good position to speak, being both an outsider and someone who is culturally largely British
Debates are often rather jolly affairs and this one was apparently expected to be of that kind -- with a topic on which nothing very controversial would be said.
I however made a strong case that Scotland should be independent. I have always believed that -- perhaps in part because of some Scottish traditions in my mother's family. The fact that I was once married to a fine Scottish wife might also be relevant.
I included mention of the different attitudes in Scotland and England. I actually have papers in print (e.g. here) reporting survey evidence about that so I have some claim to being well-informed on the subject.
At any event I mentioned that the Scots hate the English and that the English find the Scots merely amusing.
That was very poorly received. It was no fun at all. You are not supposed to mention that. Only an "ignorant colonial" like me would mention it. The English have a great tradition of certain important things being left unsaid. And the libertarians present turned out to be English first. So I received considerable hostilty over my talk. I doubt that attitudes have changed much since
I didn't mean to upset the people present but, being a bit autistic, I had not foreseen that possibility
Would the United Kingdom be better off without Scotland and Northern Ireland? This question arises in the light of the demand by the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, for a second referendum on Scottish independence and the victory in the recent Northern Ireland election by Sinn Fein who insist that Northern Ireland become part of the republic of Ireland.
Both provinces have plagued UK administrations with their problems for centuries. King James II said of Scotland to the Duke of Hamilton in 1685: ‘My Lord, I only wish it were a hundred thousand miles off and that you were King of it!’ Great War prime minister Asquith lamented that Ireland was the ‘most perplexing and damnable country’.
Financially, of course, England and Wales would be better off without Scotland and Northern Ireland because both provinces receive significantly larger government funding than they produce in tax revenue. But this ignores the political question of whether and in what circumstances a province should be allowed to secede from an existing nation state. The most costly attempt at – unsuccessful – secession was made by the Confederate states in 1861, resulting in the US Civil War and the loss of 700,000 lives. In more recent times northern Sri Lanka’s Tamils and the Chechens in the Russian Federation both failed in military attempts to achieve independence. And in 2019 leaders of the Catalan separatist movement received lengthy jail terms from Spanish courts after holding a referendum on independence for Catalonia without the consent of the central government in Madrid.
It might be thought that one solution to this problem in the case of Scotland and Northern Ireland is a referendum. But in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence only those resident in Scotland were entitled to vote even though this amounted to only 7 per cent of the UK population. Northern Ireland has less than 3 per cent of the UK population. Why should these small percentages of the overall UK people be able to break up this political entity without the vast majority of those people having a say? In any event, it is only eight years since there was a vote on Scottish independence and, even confined as it was to Scottish residents, the vote was lost. Is there going to be a vote every few years until the Scottish National party finally succeeds in getting approval for its proposal? The British government consented to the 2014 vote and this consent would be required for a second referendum. Sturgeon has threatened to go ahead even without this consent, presumably confident that she would not suffer the fate of the Catalan leaders!
In economic terms there is a distinctly suicidal aspect to the SNP’s obsession with independence. As already noted, there is a significant gap between Scotland’s expenditure and its tax revenue with this deficit being met by the central government at Westminster. The SNP says that an independent Scotland would apply to join the European Union but at present approximately 60 per cent of Scotland’s exports go to other parts of Britain so that these exports would no longer have the same access to their existing market. In the lead-up to the 2014 referendum the SNP proposed using the British pound as its currency if the independence vote succeeded.
This proposal was rejected by the British Treasury which means that there would have to be a separate Scottish currency. And how would an independent Scotland deal with its current share of existing UK government debt which is roughly twice the size of Scotland’s GDP?
The latest problem with Northern Ireland is the British government’s intention to amend the so-called Northern Ireland protocol. This was part of the agreement negotiated between Britain and the EU as to the post-Brexit relations between the two parties. The protocol provides that there will be customs control on British goods when entering Northern Ireland from Britain, seemingly to satisfy the EU’s concern that some small proportion of those products, although apparently destined for Northern Ireland, might leak into the EU member Irish republic. Why any customs control could not be on the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic has never been satisfactorily explained. The notion that this might provoke a return to sectarian violence seems rather fanciful.
At any rate, the protocol has proved to be essentially unworkable and the British government has introduced legislation to amend it. The EU, which fought Brexit’s implementation tooth and nail, has threatened Britain with legal proceedings, presumably in an EU court, and complained that the legislation is a breach of international law. Britain can legitimately be criticised for reneging on one aspect of the post-Brexit agreement but a nation-state cannot be forced in any legal tribunal to honour an agreement if it chooses not to. It is hard to see what international law means in this context but there can certainly be no legal remedy for any breach of the agreement if the British government takes its proposed course.
In the longer term, yet another problem for the British government with Northern Ireland is that, under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement between Britain, then led by Tony Blair, and the Irish republic there must be a referendum, presumably with only residents of Northern Ireland voting, if it ‘appears likely’ to the British government that most people in Northern Ireland would support unity with the republic. Given the victory of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and its prospects of winning the next Irish election, this would entail negotiations with the body that was the political wing of the Irish Republican Army and so supported a program of murder and terrorism over decades. Hardly an attractive prospect for the British government.
Scotland and Ireland have caused considerable angst for Westminster governments over hundreds of years and it seems that there is little prospect of any change to this troubled history in the immediate future.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/07/uk-notes/
**************************************************Hate-fueled violence from Pro-Abortion Extremists
Bellevue, Washington, police officers arrested city resident and pro-abortion activist Maeve Jacqueline Nota on “suspicion [of] a hate crime and assault” on Tuesday. Angry over the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, Nota allegedly smashed two glass doors and spray painted the entrance of the St. Louise Catholic Church and attacked an employee of the church.
In a second Twitter post, the BPD reported: “The graffiti painted on church walls and artifacts was anti-Catholic. According to the RCW [Revised Code of Washington], a hate crime includes acts that ‘Defaces religious real property with words, symbols, or items that are derogatory to persons of the faith associated with the property.'”
In the video below, posted by Seattle-based radio host Jason Rantz, Nota can be seen smashing the doors and spray painting graffiti on the outside wall of the church.
According to Rantz, the BPD alleged that, upon arrest, Nota “busted up a police cruiser.”
Rantz learned from the King County Prosecutor’s Office that Nota “refused to leave her cell and go to court — meaning defense can’t argue for bail.”
Shortly afterward, he reported that “Nota waived the right to appear, but the first appearance judge found probable cause for a hate crime and malicious mischief.” He added that prosecutors were awaiting additional documents from BPD investigators before they could file felony charges.
The left’s reaction to the Roe decision illustrates key differences between liberals and conservatives.
The Supreme Court did not criminalize abortion. It simply returned legal authority over abortion to the states.
The incendiary rhetoric and disinformation that’s come from Democratic politicians has only exacerbated the situation. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Maxine Waters of California come to mind.
After a leaked copy of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in the case was published in early May, the protests began.
Hoping to get one of the Court’s conservative justices to change their preliminary decision, the far-left group “Ruth Sent Us” organized protests in front of their homes. Their website displayed a google map with pins revealing each of their addresses.
Although it is illegal to protest in front of a judge’s home, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the top law enforcement official in the U.S., did nothing to stop it. He refused to do his job.
Weeks later, a man traveled to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home armed with a gun, ammunition and tools to break into the house. This man told police he had planned to assassinate Kavanaugh.
Pro-abortion activists also vandalized pregnancy centers in some states.
Last week’s final ruling on Roe triggered a new round of protests throughout the country, some of which turned violent.
KTLA reported that a protester allegedly attacked a police officer with a “makeshift flamethrower” late Friday night in Los Angeles. He was part of a group that was throwing makeshift weapons, including fireworks, at the officers.
This infantile behavior is something we’ve come to expect from the left.
And sadly, it’s condoned at the top.
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The sad decline of New Zealand under an ineffectual Leftist government
Fine talk and destructive results
For many years, pollsters Roy Morgan and Curia have been asking New Zealanders whether the country is heading in the right direction. Apart from a few months around the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, large majorities of Kiwis have always responded “Yes”.
During the first Covid lockdown, in April 2020, the highest positive value was 77 per cent for ‘right direction’. This figure has now dropped to 36 per cent, while 50 per cent of New Zealanders believe their country is going in the wrong direction.
The biggest contributor to New Zealanders’ grumpiness is the discrepancy between political promises and reality. Without constant promises of world-class performance, even mediocre results would be easier to bear.
With a depressingly high road toll, the government has embarked on a “Road to Zero” campaign. Its ambitious goal: no more deaths or serious injuries by 2050. The promotional awareness campaign will cost $15 million over three years.
Yet, as RNZ found out, since 2018 NZTA has installed less than a fifth of the road-safety barriers due by 2024.
On these numbers, the “Road to Zero” could be a long one.
But it will also be a costly one because the transport bureaucracy has mushroomed in recent years.
As of June 2021, NZTA employed about 2,081 staff. That figure was 1,372 only four years earlier.
Staff growth at NZTA did not mainly take place on the frontline. HR workers went from 57 to 122 full-time equivalents; managers from 214 to 456; accountants from 44 to 66; admin staff from 307 to 485; and communications officers from 32 to 88. None of those mentioned above will ever install a bollard, put up a road sign, or fix a pothole.
NZTA is symptomatic of a much wider problem in New Zealand, even though it is only a small puzzle piece. Faced with a serious problem, the government sets an ambitious long-term goal. It then launches massive public relations campaigns. Following that, it blows up the bureaucracy but fails on deliverables.
It is the same story in practically every major policy area.
Housing was one of the big issues in the 2017 election campaign. At the time, Labour promised to fix the housing market, reduce homelessness, and build 100,000 affordable KiwiBuild homes over the next decade.
The results after five years? New Zealand house prices have grown by almost 8.7 per annum on average. Emergency Housing Grants, which were below $10 million per quarter in 2017, now exceed $100 million. And KiwiBuild, so far, has delivered just over 1,300 homes – with only 98,700 to go.
New Zealanders used to be proud of their education system, which was considered world-class.
Today, the only measure by which New Zealand schools lead the world is in declining standards.
Reading and literacy have dropped dramatically in the OECD’s PISA rankings. The mathematics skills of New Zealand’s 15-year-olds are only as good as those of 13.5-year-olds 20 years ago. Despite an increase in education spending per student, more than 40 per cent of school leavers are functionally illiterate or innumerate.
Aside from such big policy failures, New Zealanders are bombarded with worrying news daily. There are GPs reportedly seeing more than 60 patients per day. Patients are treated in corridors at some hospitals’ A & E departments, where waiting times now often exceed ten hours.
As gang numbers have grown, gun crime has also become a regular feature in news headlines. Ram raids, where youths steal cars and crash them into small shops, have become common.
Rather than dealing with these and many other issues, the government appears determined to add new challenges to doing business. It is about to introduce collective bargaining in the labour market and an extra tax on income to fund unemployment insurance.
And these are just the big-ticket items. Practically every industry can tell its own stories about new complex regulations, usually rushed through with minimal consultation, if any.
Furthermore, there is growing unease about the government’s move towards co-governance. It sounds harmless but it would radically alter how democracy operates in New Zealand and undermine basic principles of democratic participation.
All in all, the picture that emerges is that of a country in precipitous decline. That would be alarming enough. What makes it even more so is a perception that the core private and public institutions lack the understanding of the severity of the crisis or the ability to counteract it.
Some notable exceptions aside, the New Zealand media is underfunded and not performing the functions of the Fourth Estate properly.
Despite the vast expansion in public service numbers, it lacks quality and focuses on trendy issues rather than its core functions. In particular, the Reserve Bank and the Productivity Commission need a reset. And across the political spectrum, again with notable exceptions, the political parties lack parliamentarians with the qualifications and experience necessary for a turnaround job.
New Zealand needs to be careful not to turn into a failed state. That does not mean it should expect civil unrest, but a period of prolonged and seemingly unstoppable decline across all areas of public life.
The only way to reverse this process would be for New Zealand to regain its mojo: its mojo for serious economic and social reform. It has happened before. And it must happen again
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Australia: People would be allowed to change their gender every 12 months, while the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ would be optional, under a proposed radical shake-up of birth certificates
Bureaucrats in Queensland outlined details of what their state’s new birth certificate could look like to two women’s groups earlier this month, in a meeting described as a “high level overview of current thinking”.
A Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General spokesman confirmed they were looking at making changes to “improve recognition for trans and gender diverse people”.
The women who attended the meeting said they understood the government was considering removing sex from the document.
Instead, people would be able to choose any descriptor for their gender as long as it was not obscene, contained offensive language, symbols, numbers, or was too long or “contrary to the public interest”.
While current legislation in Queensland requires people to have undergone surgery to change gender, the women said they were told that might be scrapped.
NSW is the only other state that requires gender-affirming surgery in order to change gender on a birth certificate.
The women said the Queensland proposals would also allow anyone over the age of 16 to self-identify as another gender if they had a supporting statement from someone who had known them for at least 12 months stating the application was being made in good faith.
There would also be opportunities for those aged 12 to 16 to change their gender identity, if they had support from one or both parents. Depending on the case they may need evidence from a child development practitioner and backing from the courts.
Under 12s would need the support of at least both parents to be able to start the process.
“It was really shocking to hear what they want to do,” International Women’s Day Brisbane Meanjin representative Kelly Carr said.
“As a mother, when I heard that using mother on the birth certificate was optional, I nearly fell off my chair.”
She said as far as they understood it, the proposed new certificate would list birthing parent and parent, or parent one and parent two, and the answer could be multiple choice with applicants writing mother, father or parent next to those boxes.
Fellow IWD member Helen Waite, a retired professor, said the fact that there was no lifetime limit to the number of times a person could change their identity made a mockery of the idea that people could be born into the wrong gender.
“We got a shock when we were told you’d be able to change your birth certificate once every 12 months because gender is fluid,” she said.
“This is a core identity document. “How can you be able to continually change it?”
The women said the June 15 meeting included officers from Strategic Policy, the Office for Women and Violence Prevention and the Attorney-General, as part of a consultation process for the Births, Deaths And Marriages Registration Act Legislative Review.
As well as the IWD members, two representatives from Fair Go For Women Queensland were invited.
Biological Reality Founder Stassja Frei said “trans lobbyists have perfected what they wanted” if the Birth, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act Legislative Review passes.
She said other states had already made changes to their birth certificates.
“Tasmania and Victoria are first attempts and (the trans lobbyists) got most of what they wanted,” Ms Frei said. “It seems in Queensland they’ve gone one step further.
“The public service all across Australia is completely captured by this ideology. “It’s a belief system that people can change sex. “It’s a really dangerous belief system for girls and women because it compromises safety.”
A Department of Justice and Attorney-General spokesman said while there was no proposal being considered which would see the removal of the terms ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from the birth certificate, there would be “additional options”.
“Consideration is being given to additional options to allow same sex couples to register as mother/mother or father/father, if they choose to,” the spokesman said.
“If this change was adopted, it would align Queensland with other jurisdictions.”
He said the review aimed to “ensure registration services in Queensland remain relevant, responsive and contemporary”.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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