Blogger Down - House of Lords linkdump

A year ago, I wrote this post. This year, I have a political blog to write such stuff on. Unfortunately, Bloggers "down for maintainence" announcements always give their time solely in Pacific time. Who cares about pacific time/ Mr Google, put your times in UST as well please? Bastards.

So, anyway. Elect the Lords. I promised I'd write about it, then some bastards got arrested and my mood shifted, but a pledge is a pledge. We need an effective House of Lords, preferably elected by a mixture of indirect election (for US readers, the 17th amendment was a mistake, m'kay?), sortition (that's posh for election by lot) and interest group representation. With a small number of "the great and the good", because I do think that the voice of experience can be useful, but not a whole chamber full of them.

Direct election, especially direct election by STV, would be a mistake, we need STV for the Commons not the Lords. Democracy doesn't necessarily require election, it requires citizens tob e involved and that Parliament should be representative. Billy Bragg is pushing his ludicrous Secondary Mandate idea, which, amongst other things, assumes that party preference as stated in a FPTP Commons election is our expressive preference,a nd that rational voting doesn't exist. It also goes into great lengths to excuse closed lists. No thanks Billy. Jack Straw's an arse, but we knew that anyway, right? I'll write my proper artilce on NLE tomorrow, need to sleep now.

ETA: forgot, link round up is here for those interested, there are some good posts linked already.

Airport security and safety

Via flemco, this is worth a look. I've mentioned "security" stupidities at airports before (I think), but this is just genius:

Sir, I'm going to have to take this bottle of water away from you since it might be a liquid explosive, and I'm going to have to mix it with all of these other bottles of possibly liquid explosive, and I'm going to have to dump them all in this trash can... together. Nevermind that the plot specifically mentions mixing chemicals and/or nitroglycerin... which explodes if handled too roughly.

The pictures add tot eh story a little as well.

Also. Bunny.

Scary isn't it. In the name of airline security, they're making airports a lot less safe. Wonderful.

grrm makes a point

For some reason, I'd managed to remove grrm from all my viewing filters. Fortunately, cleolinda linked me back there. grrm you ask? Yes, we are talking that George R R Martin.

Reasons to add him to your Friends list? Here's one. Here's another:

What's next, I wonder? Anal probes, x-rays, body cavity searches? Have we become such a nation of sheep that we will line up and swallow all this meekly? If so, let's change the words in our national anthem. Instead of "land of the free and home of the brave," maybe "land of the safe and home of the scared" would do.

He's not too happy with the ID card promoting scaremongering governments either. Is his most recent out in paperback yet (asks the still reasonably skint matgb).