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  • Why The Supreme Court Decision On Proroguing Parliament Isn’t Anything To Do With Brexit

    There are those (amongst the lunatic fringe of the Bexiteers – see this) who believe that the Supreme Court decision this week on Boris the Bodger proroguing parliament was an anti-Brexit move and undemocratic.

    Nothing could be further than the truth; indeed it is possibly more important than Brexit. To quite from the Supreme Court summary of the judgement :-

    It is important, once again, to emphasise that these cases are not about when and on what terms the United Kingdom is to leave the European Union …

    https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-summary.pdf

    It was about the so-called “unwritten” constitution (which is actually far too many bit of paper all over the place), and ensuring that Britain’s governance (not government) was in accordance with constitutional law.

    Britain’s governance consists of three parts :-

    1. The executive (the Prime Minister and the government they appoint) who is appointed by Parliament.
    2. Parliament (the only part of governance that is democratically elected) which creates legislation and supervises the executive.
    3. Finally the Judiciary (and the Supreme Court) that judges whether actions are legal, illegal, or unlawful.

    The Supreme Court by declaring that the proroguing of parliament was unlawful, decided that the purpose of proroguing parliament was for the government to make Brexit arrangements without the supervision of parliament. Brexit can and must be delivered with Parliament’s blessing – anything else is undemocratic.

    But more importantly, this was about a prime minister ignoring the will of parliament and using an instrument of state in a way that was never intended. This was effectively an attempt at dictatorship.

    So in the end the Supreme Court decision was not about stopping Brexit but stopping a dictatorship now (which admittedly would have been a particularly limited dictatorship) and in the future.

  • Winchester

    Winchester Cathedral
    Nature Fighting Back
    The Red Door
    Tunnel of Arches
    The Door To The Light

  • Should the Queen Have Stopped Proroguing Parliament?

    Today Boris the Bodger called the privy council up to prorogue parliament to stop those ever so inconvenient representatives of the people from causing more trouble for his agenda. There are those who go so far as to call this a cout d’état – not entirely unreasonably although it is probably legal.

    There are those who are disappointed that the Queen agreed to the proroguing of parliament, but why should she? Disregarding the ‘advice’ of the Prime Minister would go against what she has spent her entire reign doing – being a symbolic head of state in a parliamentary democracy.

    Because it’s a lifetime ago, it is all too easy to forget that the Queen ascended the throne with the monarchy in crisis – her uncle had abdicated in 1936 and her father reigned for a relatively short time. She has spent her long reign rebuilding trust in the monarchy.

    There are those who will say what happened was not democratic (and I’m inclined to agree with them) but the Queen can quite reasonably point out that she acted in a democratic way – she assented to the request of the Prime Minister elected by parliament.

    If anything undemocratic went on, it was done by Boris the Bodger, and parliament has a duty to take care of that.

    Surfing The Sky

  • Passenger Shaming Foot Exposure

    There is a quite amusing social media feed shaming the poor behaviour of airline passengers which is fair enough – some of the behaviour is quite nasty and shaming it is quite reasonable.

    But they also seem to have a foot phobia – naked feet are themselves considered sufficient to be worthy of public shaming. Why?

    Now I am not talking about sticking your naked feet in someone’s ear, or anywhere else that closer to someone’s nose than necessary. But on the floor? Why not?

    Well there are those who are horrified by the sight of naked feet, and without a good reason there is no harm in not horrifying them.

    But there are sometimes good reasons – I have psoriasis and wearing socks and shoes in a warm environment results in sweaty feet. Which in turn results in socks feeling like a cheese grater on my suppurating sores on my feet.

    So screw your anti-foot fetish; I’m getting my feet naked whenever I feel the need for it.

    The Window

  • Surfing The Sky

    Surfing The Sky

    Yes I was in Worthing yesterday; and yes the sea-front was shut because of a mysterious chemical causing stinging eyes, etc.