More Zonkyness

Category: Politics

  • Slavery: Is It About Race?

    The most recent example of mass slavery, and the dominant experience in the Americas (including the USA) has been of black slaves with white slave masters. But if you look at the history of slavery, a different picture emerges – many of the slaves caught up in the Atlantic slave trade were enslaved and sold by black kings.

    And there were white slaves too – Vikings made an industry out of taking slaves. Even the very word slave supposedly has origins in the defeat and enslavement of Slavic peoples.

    Let us scratch the surface of those slave masters, slave traders, and those who enslave people and we find bad people. Those who fought against slavery were good people. There are also those who accept the prevailing conditions of their society and we can label these as neutral people.

    If we judge people on their behaviour, we have good, bad, and neutral people (in their attitude towards slavery) and we don’t have any “but cases” (such as the British West Africa squadron or Mary Faber) to confuse things.

    Doesn’t this make more sense than to use the colour of the dead stuff that keeps the squishy bits on the inside?

    The Bare Family

  • US Traditional Units Aren’t Imperial

    One of the strangest things that comes up in discussions of metrification, is that US traditional units (“feet”, “inches”, etc.) are referred to as Imperial units.

    They’re not the same.

    Correctly speaking Imperial units began with the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824 which essentially rolled up all previous legislation, repealed it, and set up a full set of standards for weights and measures. This was obviously after the US declared independence so had no effect over there.

    The US units were based on traditional English units which were chiefly defined by the Exchequer Standards or the Winchester Standards (technically there were several standards that could be called “Winchester” dating back to Alfred the Great). That is an oversimplification – various “laws” (the earliest ones were simple pronouncements of the monarch) covering weights and measures are within every single century from the 10th century onwards.

    The differences between US traditional units and Imperial units are subtle, but significant in the area of volume – Imperial units of volume don’t distinguish between “wet” and “dry”. A US wet pint is 473mL, a US dry pint is 550mL, and an Imperial pint is 563mL.

    So the old saying “a pint’s a pound the world around,” is complete nonsense.

    To throw more petrol (or gas) on the fire, both US traditional units and Imperial units are defined by legislation in terms of metric units, so as defined today, neither are proper units of measurement.

    No Fun At The Fair

  • A Word To The ULEZ Whiners

    Or perhaps more than just a word given the level of dumbness displayed by the usual ULEZ opponents.

    1. It isn’t solely a Labour policy; the ULEZ zone in central London was first introduced by a Tory major (Boris Johnson) and extended by the current Labour major. The Tory opposition to ULEZ during the Uxbridge by-election was a cheap political stunt to distract from the atrocious record the Tories have in central government. Which seemingly worked on the more gullible.
    2. The penalty charge for the ULEZ zone is only paid by the most polluting vehicles – diesel cars older than 8 years old and petrol cars older than 17 years. Which is a tiny minority of the cars on the road.
    3. This isn’t targeting the poor; the poor in our society can’t afford cars at all. Besides there’s a scrappage scheme which pays people to scrap the smellier cars.
    4. This isn’t about CO2 emissions; it’s about NOx emissions.
    5. And frankly none of the objections (even if real) come close to outweighing the advantages of fewer deaths from pollution.
    Ceci n’est pas une cabane de plage

  • Comparing To 1930s Germany

    There has recently been some controversy regarding a certain football celebrity comparing current events – in particular the treatment of refugees looking to claim asylum – with the events in Germany in the 1930s. The first was just silly – suspending the celebrity for saying something that had nothing to do with his professional life.

    The second is more serious and were objections from Jews comparing current events to the Holocaust. They certainly have a point – too many relatively trivial things get compared to the Holocaust. But in this case, they’re wrong.

    First of all no mention was made of the Holocaust which strictly speaking began in 1942 with the enactment of the Final Solution (although many Jews were killed when Poland was invaded).

    Secondly it specifically compared current events with events in 1930s Germany; not saying they are the same, but have certain similarities. Warning us that those who would daemonize certain groups – Socialist, Communists, Roma, and Jews in the case of 1930s Germany, Refugees (and Roma) in the case of the UK today – can become dangerous if ignored.

    If the UK is sliding into fascism, warning about those signs indicating the slide is not only the responsible thing to do, but the thing every sensible person should be shouting about. And it is indeed the case.

    And silencing such warnings with sensitivity about the Holocaust is very very wrong.

    Tunnel of Arches

  • Do Motorists Pay For The Roads?

    No.

    There is something that certain entitled motorists keep banging on about – “road tax”. There hasn’t been a road tax since 1937; it’s currently called vehicle excise duty and the income (£8 billion) goes into the general taxation fund. It sounds like a lot, but is just a drop in the overall public spending budget. And it isn’t reserved for spending on roads.

    And local roads are mostly paid for out of council tax – in other words the roads that cyclists and pedestrians actually use are paid for out of local taxes.

    Which has an interesting side effect – a motorist on a local road is likely to be a local road user, but a significant proportion will be visitors. Meaning that they haven’t paid for the road. Whereas a cyclist or a pedestrian is more likely to be a local.

    Meaning that on any road that isn’t a motorway, the cyclists and pedestrians pay more for that road than the motorist.

    Posts leading out to the sea.
    Into The Water; Stillness and Motion