In Northern Ireland, the Eleventh Night or 11th Night refers to the night before the Twelfth of July, a yearly Ulster Protestant celebration. On this night, large towering bonfires are lit in many Protestant/loyalist neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland and are often accompanied by street parties.[1]
The bonfires are mostly made up of wooden pallets and tyres, with some reaching over 100 ft tall.[2]The event has been condemned for displays of sectarian or ethnic hatred, anti-social behaviour, and for the damage and pollution caused by the fires. The flag of Ireland, Irish nationalist/republican symbols, Catholic symbols, and effigies, are burnt on many bonfires.
So says Wikipedia.
It seems that their building skills leave something to be desired.
These things can be devilishly dangerous.
I’d not care for that too close to my home.
Must smell pretty unpleasant too.
But most of all… today of all days does it remind you of anything?
++++++++++
In other news, the man that broke the English Health Service is now the Foreign Secretary. I suppose that’s good news for users of their Health Service…well unless Esther McVey gets his job in which case they should probably all write their wills.
Talking Heads , Burning Down the House has suddenly popped into my head . Jeremy Hunt the man who collects enemies with every waking breath and whose incompetence is so bad he can’t be allowed out in public , is now representing the UK abroad …………….Oh hell .
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Like I say, pending the appointment, the patients and staff of NHS England must be breathing a sigh of intense relief.
On the other hand… we’ll probably be at war with Monaco by tea time tomorrow.
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Or shortly, they’ll convince Hair Twitler to join them in attacking the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
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LOL
I’m sure the Grand Duchess Gloriana XII will see them off…
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/margaret-rutherford-in-costume-as-grand-duchess-gloriana-xii-ruler-of-picture-id514699114
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Matt Hancock is Health Secretary for England.
I’m sure I’ve heard of him.. Or maybe that was Tony Hancock.
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Hancock’s half hour is about how long Matt Hancock’s job will last if today is anything to go by .
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Oh good lord!
Matt Hancock … the guy whose previous job covered things like … erm … BROADBAND who kept insisting it was up to the Scottish government to roll out this Broadband thingy despite it actually being a RETAINED power of … erm … WESTMINSTER!
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He sounds like he’s got a grasp of his brief! Or maybe his briefs.
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You mean, omnitalented Douglas Ross (Feel Dougie) of Moray isn’t England’s latest Health Minister?
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He’d be perfect for the job.
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Think he was in the running for the job Iain but he was unavailable to answer his phone.
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What a vile bunch of scary clowns. BoJo said it himself: “Like polishing a turd” – maybe he meant something else, but it will do for his party just as well. And now BoJo’s gone, who steps in to replace him? Hunt. Jeremy bloody Hunt. One turd follows another. The ars*eholery of the Toley party knows no bounds.
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Ed, that’s why this sort of farce is often called a shitstorm.
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https://www.change.org/p/glasgow-call-time-on-the-orange-walk?recruiter=160873869&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial.OeZwVSukQ4uHvgFPW1LGRQ.0
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We are lucky in Edinburgh, they’re a rare occurrence here.
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Don’t think I remember one in Dundee either.
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I remember reading that there was one – when? I can’t remember, in the past 5 years or so, anyway – and that it amounted to about half a dozen people, including one very big lad with the big drum, and a dug.
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Awww poor dug!
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Signed it a wee while ago, but it’s up to 48,829 now (15:40, 10 July).
I just today came across an article from Wikipedia entitled “Collective narcissism” which I found helpful in understanding the psychological underdrawers of British Nationalism and Exceptionalism, as well as Orange Ludgery. It also reminded me just how important the distinction is between our civic Scottish nationalism and the ethnonationalism of BritNats, Brexiters and “Scottish but” Yoons (all stereotypical and demeaning terms quite deliberate and intentional). Anyway, we can safely assume that the barkinger, the narcissisticker. http://tinyurl.com/yachs2rj
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Now at 50,000 🙂
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I think it was Mary Robinson who said that some Irish people are very proud of their bigotry and go to great lengths to ensure that it is handed down from generation to generation.
Without bigotry and hatred,their lives have no meaning.
Sad,and wasteful.
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Mary Robinson is a very smart lady. That reflective and wry comment rather shows it.
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Well, President Robinson knows a few things 🙂
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Tris
There was an Orange March in Dundee years ago, very small and they have never tried again as the SNP council put on a lot of conditions that makes it very difficult to hold I am led to believe plus there is no appetite for one in Dundee, they got dogs abuse the last time from passers by telling them to get to f out of Dundee. Dundee has had no real problems with sectarianism other than some silly crap that goes with primary schools when kids are young but even that is less and less now even the Catholic schools are pretty much multi denominational. I think a lot of places could learn from Dundee. Hunt lol.
Bruce
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Aye that seems to be the way of it Bruce.
I’m glad to see the new schools coming together.
I have no idea why people think that it is somehow following Christ’s teachings to be so full of hate.
That said, May keeps reminding us what a good Christian she is. I suppose that this is because we might forget if we she didn’t. Y’know, given how actions speak louder than words.
Then you have the Windsors… Great, isn’t it that Prince Harry gave Prince Louis an £8,000 book for his christening?
Very Christian of him. Top the child who has everything, some more.
Just think how an £8,000 donation to a food bank would have gone down.
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Perhaps we could send him one of our combustable baby boxes.
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And a blow lamp?
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No, because you never know how a child is going to turn out.
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Aye, but Trump is hardly likely to change much now… 🙂
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Was gonna post a brilliant
(Natch) comment about bojo
Resigning But they are coming
So thick And fast .
Thought best wait till it slows
Down and see who is left.
Oops another one just fell past me Window .
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Hope you see Mundell flying past, Niko. Maybe May’ll replace him with one of the Rosses, as you have to be an idiotic wee man to be a Tory SoS for Scotland.
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Defo don’t put out a net for Muddle… It would simply be a waste of a perfectly good net.
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Maybe you should put out a net to catch them, before they fall on the floor… or on the other hand… pffff, waste of a good net.
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So glad about those boys being saved today 👍
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Hear hear.
What incredibly brave people went to rescue them, and the kids themselves must have been so brave.
It’s a real boost to hear a good story with a very very happy ending.
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May is beginning to remind me of the knight in Python and The Holy Grail, who keeps up the fighting talk as successive limbs and body parts are hacked off, though with the difference being May’s unchanging “speaking clock” delivery.
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LOL… Strong and stable delivery, that’s called.
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On the subject of another (far more important and long-term) appointment – Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court.
PLEASE tell me that I’m not the only one who has seen the photo (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/10/brett-kavanaugh-nomination-victory-originalists) and thought the eldest girl isn’t thinking :
“But Mommy this is exactly the sort of man you told me to beware of” 🙂
Savillesque or what?
Oh and apologies about tomato photos for Munguin – wife ate them. In retrospect I should probably have mentioned to her that I was going to photo them first 🙂
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Link isn’t there – someone will find it. Its where he’s meeting the family. All it needs is a cigar and a big seat….
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Oh… like that is it?
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LOL… Naughty Mrs Vestas!!
Did she enjoy them?
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She said they were a little sharp – not surprising given the fruit was set on 3 May when it went outside. Plenty of nights below 12C in May (sugars turning to starches).
Actually wondering whether the sees on two plants are what they said.
Photos will be incoming – hopefully with some bee vs butterfly “fuck off I was here first” action on the pink Escalonia. Gave up counting at 45 bees and 11 butterflies. Don’t think phone is up to this which means remembering how to use daughters GoPro4 😦
That reminds me, there’s about 100GB of HD video/photos from her Camps International visit to Ecuador/Galapagos a couple of years ago. Bound to be some Sunday material in there.
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Good good, Vestas… 🙂
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Oh and on Hunt as Foreign Secretary – well he’s Charterhouse and Oxford, like (IIRC) the Blonde Buffoon so its not what you know etc. No real change, one facile trougher replaces another
I think Hunts daddy is Admiral Sir/Lord something. Probably commanded a yacht sometime.
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Yeah. To paraphrase BoJo, one turd follows another.
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Admiral Sir Nicholas Hunt.
That’s the story in the Tory Party.
Remember both Cameron and Osborne are cousins (removed) of the queen.
Hunt maybe isn’t quite as much of a buffoon as Johnson, but he’s certainly as much of an idiot.
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Out of the country at present and not been keeping up with things so apologies if this has been discussed already or is so glaringly obvious it hasn’t been mentioned.
It seems to me that all these so called high powered resignations and light weight replacements is your standard rats deserting the sinking ship scenario. They know brexits impossible and don’t want to be in the vicinity when the blames getting dished out. Ok the poor will get blamed ultimately but there may be a wee witchhunt initially. BoJo et al certainly don’t want to be around for that and theyve ust avoided all culpability by resigning.
It all stinks.
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Who knows what motivates them?
They really aren’t like other people.
I maintain that May is safe till April next year, at which time it is anyone’s guess what will happen.
I doubt she will get the deal that she has put forward. From day 1 the EU has said that the four freedoms are indivisible.
She wants to divide them.
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Tris,
I am interested in your idea that it will be April next year before she becomes ‘unsafe’. Maybe I am missing something about the timetable but is all hell not going to break out when the EU, presumably, tell the UK that their proposal is unacceptable? And that could be quite soon?
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Yes, Douglas.
But I maintain, as I have all along, that no one else wants to be in charge till she has made the mess that she is going to make. The mess that, in fairness, it was destined to be, pretty much whoever did it.
After March 29, 2019, the UK will have left the EU. The damage will have been done.
Someone with an enormous ego will come along promising to make it better.
They’ll probably fail too though.
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Tris,
Thanks for the reply.
You say:
“But I maintain, as I have all along, that no one else wants to be in charge till she has made the mess that she is going to make. The mess that, in fairness, it was destined to be, pretty much whoever did it.”
Interesting.
Personally, I think that the politics will move a lot faster on the UK and the Scottish levels than you anticipate.
Would be ‘interesting’ to continue this in, say three months?
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I’m often wrong, Douglas, so you could well be right.
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The Scottish Press appears to have utterly diametric views:
The National:
“May in crisis after Johnson quits over ‘suffocated’ Brexit”
or, The Herald:
“Tory threat to Theresa May’s leadership lifts as Boris Johnson says ‘Brexit dream is dying”
Y’know what? There seems to be an idea by newspapers that you and I, and our friends around here and elsewhere, allow them to do our thinking for us. I am, kind of happy, that this is becoming an unsustainable concept. Newspapers are owned by rich oligarchs who use them for their own purposes.
There are sites such as your’s, that allow free debate.
It is like a drug treatment facility. You talk folk down and hope and trust that that’ll work.
With added squirrels.
🙂
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The news about Boris reached these shores in the early morning hours. So could this become one of those weird English things where a vote by a single political party for a new leader changes the head of government of an entire nation without a vote of the people of said nation……..who are NOT in general members of the said party? Have I ever mentioned that the British are demonstrably incapable of rationally governing themselves? America has shown you the constitutional republican way. Copies of the constitution available from the National Archives of the United States. Just sayin!
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Well, Danny, at least in the UK the Prime Minister cannot pack the highest court in the land with their political henchmen. Also, your constitutional republican way looks to be in a fair way of removing many of the freedoms that the USA took so long to achieve. Just sayin’! 🇺🇸 🙂
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Yes Andi…….Trumpy certainly takes a lot of fun out of having an elected heard of state.
It’s VERY important BTW, to recognize the difference between a lower case republican and an upper case Republican. It would be awful to get that mixed up!
I note that the orange faced wonder is in Europe now, all ready to whip the NATO allies into line about greater military spending; even as he enjoys a private tete-a-tete with his best buddy Putin. And he’s soon scheduled to take tea with the Queen. I do hope that you have an appropriate reception planned for him. 😉
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We sure do here in Scotland.
They are already changing his plans so that he will avoid the demonstrations.
But he’ll know about them, even if he doesn’t see them
There are apparently demonstrations in Belgium (or wherever he is) No one, it seems, likes him.
Awwwwwww
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Here, Danny, maybe you will find this heartening – from BellaCaledonia, 10 July, “Give Trump the Welcome He Deserves”: http://tinyurl.com/y7udday9
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Ed……Nice to know that suitable preparations are in progress. 😉
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PS: Speaking of people who govern (and media which reports,) I noted this article in the Daily Mail about the way the Duchess of Sussex positions her legs while sitting.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/royals/is-this-the-sussex-sit-meghan-is-spotted-crossing-her-legs-again-during-a-service-to-mark-raf-centenary-while-kate-perfects-the-duchess-slant/ar-AAzQe5F?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
I should also note that orange people are inherently obnoxious and stupid.
The bonfire pictures remind me of the Texas Aggie bonfires and the tragedy in 1999. Even as they were counting the dead, alumni of Texas A&M University were yammering about the university “tradition” that must continue. Says a lot about Texans……and maybe also about alumni of universities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggie_Bonfire
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And… whilst not disagreeing with you on the first part, am inclined to say just one word, Danny, mate… T R U M P!
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Yep Tris…….thank God he’s the Europeans’ problem for the next few days. 😉
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Don’t get any ideas about leaving him on our continent, buddy!
He’s your garbage to dispose of. Not ours. 🙂
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😉
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Well, he seems to be insulting everyone over here. He’s even angry at Dr Merkel for buying gas from the Russians. I think he wants to rule the world.
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Andi: “Well, Danny, at least in the UK the Prime Minister cannot pack the highest court in the land with their political henchmen.”
I feel really bad. I let this comment go by unchallenged.
I went to Wikipedia to find out how the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom are chosen. Turns out it apparently involves lots fewer people and is a lot less democratic than the way it’s done in the USA. Appointed by the Queen (OF COURSE !……WHAT ELSE?) on the advice of the PM based on the input of a “Commission.” A more or less anonymous Commission (politically speaking) ensures that no single person can be blamed for the results.
AND……notably…….a vote of parliament is apparently not required.
On the other hand, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court must be ratified by a majority vote of the 100 members of the United states Senate. A system imminently more democratic and transparent than that of the UK.
Sorry I was tardy in my devastating rejoinder. 😉
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Ah, but appearances can be deceptive, Danny. As you know, I am no fan of the Westminster regime but – the committee / commission that appoints judges is formed from within the legal profession. Quite a few changes have been made over the years, thanks to the Europeans, to tighten up the process and make it more resistant to and independent of the infamous British Establishment old boys’ network.
It is also principle that the legal profession is NOT subject to election on a democratic basis – it seems a bonkers way of selecting legal experts, frankly – and it means that judges can spend all their time judging and not being worried about re-election, and opening themselves up to all the influence-peddling and financial corruption that that could so easily entail.
Do not be confused by the involvement of the Prime Minister either – she gets her nasty, sweaty, grubby and sticky little hands on the list from the judges, and then she curtsies deeply, hands it straight to Her Maj, and Her Maj signs off on it. That last bit is all Great British constitutional flummery: the executive branch MAY NOT intervene in the selection process of judges, but the PM – as the head of Her Majesty’s Government – is charged with presenting the list of new judges to Her Maj, so that she does not meet with the judges themselves, so is kept at a sufficient distance that the Monarch cannot interfere in the selection of judges either, but they are still Her Majesty’s judiciary, so when you get banged up for bumping off grannies on your afternoon off, you may be detained “at Her Majesty’s pleasure”, which means for however long the judges think you should be banged up for.
Judges who produce bonkers decisions or who go too obviously gaga get quietly put out to pasture; I simply don’t recall any public scandals over judges who offended too terribly against good sense and the general public mood – except among the more conservative members of the public who are never content with just locking people up, they want them to hanged, drawn and quartered – after being flogged – and their heads stuck on top of Traitors’ Gate or something. But yes, English judges do tend to be overwhelmingly drawn from the posh end of the social swimming pool, and have backgrounds at English public schools, and Oxbridge. Very establishment, but in effect fairly impartial, though certainly not activist.
The flummery has to do, of course, with the bonkers English concept of sovereignty and makes no real sense at all; thanks to the Europeans, though, we do have a judiciary that is sufficiently immune from public pressure, political pressure from the Executive, and also pressure from the Monarch – who has NO executive power herself any more, but would enjoy quite a bully pulpit if she ever used it – but that is contrary to custom.
In Scotland, our different legal system doesn’t work like that, but we too had to make some adjustments after our arrangements were found to be less than ideal when the Europeans took a look at them. Not nearly as bad as the English one, though: the House of Lords used to function also as the highest court in the UK: in other words, the pinnacle of the legislature also served as the pinnacle of the judicial system. Not permissible in this modern age of the early 20th century!
Next test of the relatively new UK Supreme Court – the Continuity Bill of the Scottish Parliament that the Westminster regime wants thrown out. I am looking forward to seeing how that plays out against the background of the recent acceptance by the Westminster Parliament of Scotland’s Claim of Right – by acclamation, forsooth – despite jeers from the Tory peanut gallery.
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Ed…I’m pleased to learn that the system is insulated from political corruption in the appointment of judges, although I suspect that it simply replaces political corruption with the institutional corruption of the legal profession.
Given the English love of turning every public function into a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta complete with costumes, I wondered what sort of robes and wigs the Supreme Court judges wear. I find that while they do have the usual bizarre robes for special occasions, they do not wear wigs and court dress. How VERY un-English, particularly since the people appointed are mostly the usual English assortment of titled aristocracy.
The real downside of the job compared with the American version would be that since the English have no constitution, they don’t have the fun of striking down as “unconstitutional” laws passed by the rabble in Commons. 😉
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It is not possible to go to the European court (ECHR) to appeal your human rights case unless you have exhausted all legal remedies in your home State, and in the UK, that means the Supreme Court. The UK is bound by a slew of international, multilateral treaties, but frequently fails to abide by them because of (a) its generally cavalier attitude to such things, and (b) its imperfect arrangements for putting them into domestic law. If it doesn’t make Them money, They – the British Establishment – will be against it – that is as good rule of thumb as you will get for predicting their attitudes and behaviour in relation to their treaty obligations.
This is exacerbated when we have a regime like the one we have at Westminster now, which is already fascistic; they quite evidently believe that human rights are far too precious to be wasted on ordinary people, who are far too poor to afford them, and far too uneducated to know what to do with them if they had them, not having been to Eton or Harrow or Oxbridge.
There is also a lack of people specializing in constitutional law in the UK, because there is no written constitution for them to get their teeth into; perhaps some of m’learned friends may disagree with that, but that’s my opinion as an outside observer of such things.
Constitutions… that is an area where the US and the UK, both common law States (as opposed to civil law), could not be more different. My analysis is that if you hew to the bonkers idea that the sovereignty of the State is embodied by the Queen in Parliament, and that ultimate and unrestricted sovereignty resides with the Parliament, then any limitation on its freedom of manoeuvre is intolerable. It is a very strange worldview, when you come down to it; everyone sane realizes that our freedom as individuals is constrained by the nature of the universe, in the first place, and by just how willing everyone else is to tolerate your bad behaviour – and the same applies to us en masse as well.
After a period of relative international civility from the UK that lasted from – let’s see – from Suez in 1956 to the Falklands / Malvinas war in 1982, so about 26 years, about a generation, until Margaret Thatcher manoeuvred herself into the position of the new Britannia, focus and figurehead of “patriotic” British jingoistic, gung-ho, flag-waving military adventurism, and successfully boosting the extremely low popularity which she enjoyed because of her appalling domestic policies.
That was when the UK really started to become (once again) the rogue State that it is today, in rather the same way the the USA has; American exceptionalism, however, is a well-known phenomenon, and has stood the test of time so well that it is taken to be a law of nature. Elsewhere, national exceptionalism is a warning sign of ethnonationalism, and is an enemy of the inclusive kind of (civic) nationalism that we Scottish independentistas are after.
Coupled with that exceptionalism, there has been throughout my lifetime of 60 years a disturbing tendency in US foreign policy to assume that might makes right, which is distressing to anyone who realizes that that’s what all totalitarian regimes say as they operate their nasty kratocracies in the domestic arena, and rattle sabres and engage in vainglorious and costly military adventures abroad. In that, as in other respects, America is very much heir to the distasteful legacy of Imperial Britain.
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Interesting piece Ed. 🙂
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Very interesting analysis Ed!
I’m always surprised that American constitutional law works as well as it does given how little poorly educated Americans on the subject understand it. James Madison (the so-called “father of the constitution”) was no fan of the democratic rabble and had some differences with his friend and fellow Virginian Tom Jefferson on the matter. Madison felt that no guarantee of individual human rights was necessary in the constitution, since he felt they were implied in the text of the document. (Sort of one of those English unwritten things…..LOL.) Jefferson was minister to France when the constitution was written, and communicated to the group by letters. He insisted that you have to write down your rights or you can’t be sure of having any. So Hamilton (then in Congress) wrote down (17 I think) amendments to the document (of which 12….I think…… were passed by Congress and submitted to the states) for consideration in the ratification process. Those initial amendments…….preferable to redrafting the document Hamilton figured……..of which the first 10 came to be known as the Bill of Rights……..were instrumental in assuring ratification by the states, and were part of the federal constitution at its birth. Once again we can thank Tom Jefferson.
Tris has previously pointed out to me that the Human Rights picture (given the authority of the UK Supreme Court and the ECHR) is not as bleak in the UK as one might otherwise think, given that the English have convinced themselves that they DO have a constitution, but it’s just not written down. (The English also have a bridge in Brooklyn they’d like to sell you, but Tom Jefferson would never have bought it.) The British really do seem satisfied with (as you say) the “bonkers” idea that the sovereignty of the State is embodied by the Queen in Parliament.
So under a system of Parliamentary Sovereignty, there is no aspect of the State that is so important, so fundamental, so precious and eternal, that it cannot be changed by a whim of the people expressed by a vote in parliament. Surely if Scotland had had a suitably drafted constitution at the time, the Parliament of Scotland could not have voted to surrender national sovereignty to England in 1707. It is positively DANGEROUS not to have a constitution. Americans can be reasonably assured that when a cunning pandering self-serving demagogue like Trump meets privately with a murdering Russian thug like Putin, he at least can’t give away the farm……even if he has every member of Congress supporting him. At some fundamental level, I’m not terribly unhappy when conservative traditionalists……..a bit out of touch with the current passions of the people……are appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Those guys do after all interpret the meaning of the words of the constitution.
I do wonder at people who complain that the Bill of Rights grants rights to (often disagreeable and unpopular) individuals at the expense of the will of a democratic majority. Well……DUH!……YEA! That’s rather the point. The “rights” of the majority are taken care of automatically by the democratic process. Only the rights of individuals require special protection. Nevertheless, I suppose that the British Parliament writes human rights into legal statutes, and then figure that all is well. (Until the next session of Commons has another idea.)
I always get a good feeling when I visit the National Archives, suitably situated at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol. Funny how many people, in the dim light among tall marble columns, approach with a certain reverence the four faded yellowed pages of the constitution, from which flows all sovereign political authority in the American republic.
Some Americans yammer on about “The People” being sovereign in America. Maybe they are thinking about the chilling idea of Parliamentary Sovereignty, but more likely they’re not thinking very much at all. This is an article I found interesting about the sovereignty of national constitutions, and talks about the fact that the EU does not have a constitution, while incorporating sovereign States which do. Seems like the EU makes it up as they go along……just like the British.
“Consider the European Union. The process that led to what we see today in the EU began when six countries in 1957 signed a treaty agreeing that they would cooperate on certain economic matters. They established a court in Luxembourg—the European Court of Justice—which was to interpret disputes about the treaty. To make its interpretations authoritative, the Court decreed in the early 1960s that if the treaty came into conflict with previous acts of national parliaments, the treaty would take precedence. Shortly thereafter it declared that the treaty would also take precedence over subsequent statutes. And in the 1970s it said that even in case of conflicts between the treaty and national constitutions, the treaty would take precedence. Of course, judges can say whatever they want. What is more remarkable is that all the nations in the EU have more or less grudgingly accepted this idea that a treaty is superior to their constitutions…..”
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-constitution-and-american-sovereignty/
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Ah. Thank you for that explanation, Ed.
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Thanks, Tris. No guarantees that I’m right, of course.
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LOL. You can guarantee the British system won’t be democratic. It will just pretend to be.
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