The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Discovered about this lot via the Socialists who had seen them on the 4th plinth. Their views are distinctly odd in places and I disagree with them on a number of points, but their views are broadly socialist and they do have a some interesting ways of looking at things.

The video below, as with all political propaganda is very one sided and makes a lot of broad sweeping statements without backing them up. It's also just over 2 hours long (just to warn you if you were thinking of watching it quickly in your coffee break), but worth watching though as it does have some interesting points as long as you take it with a small mountain of salt.

(direct link & download)

The first part analyses the current capitalist system. They do this paraphrasing a document released by the US Federal Reserve. It's all entirely based on that one document and is a massive simplification of the banking system, but it's an interesting way of looking at it and even putting aside the spin they put on it, there are interesting points underneath about the levels of debt and inequality inherent in the system.

It's after that that they go really weird with their conspiracy theories. OK, I would not be at all surprised if the conflict in Iraq was heavily influenced by the oil, just because of how much power it gives the holder within society. However, I would like to see a lot more evidence before saying that it was all a conspiracy by the capitalist system. More likely, I would suspect the case to be more along the lines of US getting touchy about the level of power Sadam was gaining and jumping at spurious evidence of WMDs that would otherwise have been ignored. However, even at that extent Capitalism would have been the key motivator behind the conflict, so their criticism would still hold to an extent.

I'm also fairly unconvinced that we can fixed society with technology. Yes, profit is at odds with sustainability and efficiency and as such the development of technology outside of capitalist society may benefit society more, but I very much doubt it will magically solve all our problems.

Then there's the religion bit at the end, which I find really odd even as an atheist. Yes, ok, there have been a lot of wars based on religion, but there are also a lot of very religious people who are highly tolerant of other beliefs. I would say the separation of cultures is more of the issue causing these conflicts rather than the beliefs themselves. All people have beliefs that cannot be back up by hard evidence, that's human nature, you can't rid society of those.

OK, it would be nice if we could move away from a society based almost entirely on the movements of numbers, but this idea seems a little too sterile. Work, beliefs and everything along those lines are part of what makes us human and generally add interest to our lives. Yes, it would be good to automate tasks especially repetative work to reduce labour hours, but we all need purpose and to gain that we need to be able to do our bit for society.

I like this idea, even if the chances of it ever happening are slim to none.



The map represents a collaboration between beer tycoon Freederick Heineken and 2 historians to split Europe into states of fairly small population size (approx 5-10 million each) with the idea that larger number of smaller states would be easier to govern within a European Union. The states each have some historical basis and are generally ethnically homogeneous.

A full key to the states is given here

As far as I can see the main issue the EU faces is countries defensively promoting their own self-identity causing other countries to act similarly with the fear that the larger countries will have the loudest voices. Splitting these down somewhat may certainly help, although I can't see that it would eliminate the issue altogether and some of the splits will be controversial. One of the major ones I notice from the map above is that Ireland has been unified, which although it would please some, would be less welcome by others.

All in all, I'd be curious to see this happen, but don't think it ever would.

(via strangemaps)

Something really bizarre occured this morning. I was listening to the radio and found myself agreeing with something Anne Widdecombe said. I'm hoping I'm going to recover soon.

There's been a lot of coverage about the MPs second housing thing lately, and it seems clear that some of them have manipulated the system. Not really surprising as people do that whatever the system is.

However, the point made this morning was that this system is there for a very good reason. MPs clearly need to reside both in their constituency and near parlament. In a lot of cases, this is clearly going to require a second house, which needs to be paid for somehow.

From what I gather of the situation, a certain amount of money has been put in a big pot to cover this. How it gets distributed doesn't then effect how much the tax payers have paid, so they're not really steeling tax payers money instead they're cheating their colleagues out of it by not letting it be distributed fairly. OK, still not ideal, but not quite what the torygraph seem to be making it out to be.

OK, people like David Cameron may have lots of money and may not actually technically need anything additional to fund a second home, but it's important that this isn't a pre-requisite for being an MP. It needs to be feasible for people to stand for parliament no matter what their financial background, otherwise we risk a situation of the government being entirely represented by the rich.

There needs to be some system in place for this therefore and however much anamosity we may feel towards them at times MPs are people and need to have the freedom to live the way they choose.

It seems very silly to waste more money going back through all the transactions that have been made over the past 4 years to see which are valid and which aren't. Why not just draw a line over it, say "what's done is done" and then work out a new system that can be implemented more fairly.

To me, the most sensible thing is to say that any MP who's consistuency is over x miles from London and therefore clearly can't commute should get an allowance of £y to cover a second home to spend as they wish.

Therefore, Mr Cyril Sneer MP for somewhere a long long way from London, would get his £y and if he wanted to spend it on filling his current house floor to ceiling with sofas, that would be up to him, but that would be all he would get to fund a second home.

This is impressive:



(The RSA Opening Minds project)

One of the things I feel quite strongly about in terms of education, is that it should be more skills-based rather than fact-based and that children should be given more responsibility for their own learning.

I was quite impressed to hear about this therefore, especially where it's used in breaking down the traditional subject divides and, at least according to the RSA's own reports, seems to be being fairly successful in terms of motivating students.

I would be fascinated to see how the huge team-taught lessons at Bemrose (seen towards the end of the film) work. I wonder what they have been able to teach that way.

PM and Palace 'discussed reform'

To say that I'm not the countries biggest royalist, would be a bit of an understatement, but neither have I seen any strong argument to abolish them.

They don't have a lot of power anymore (quite rightly in my view) and what powers they do have generally seem to be being phased out as we reform old laws. This bizarrely leaves them with very little purpose other than to be the Royal Family. As such, they're now more like a living cultural artifact or piece of artwork based which we like to show off to foreign nationals and they seem to relish it.

They are a big part of our history and hence our culture, but given this they should in some way reflect modern culture as well as the traditional.

It seems therefore sensible that as we are now in the 21st century these rules should be updated to include modern thoughts on equality and remove any issues regarding sex, religion, etc.