Is marriage state business?

Yes, marriage is a matter for government, though many libertarians would argue against that.

To me it's less a question of if the state has any business in the relationships between individuals, but how much.

Does the state have any real business in the day-to-day emotional aspects of my marriage? No, not really. Should the state tell me to pick up my clothes from the bedroom floor or tell my husband to clean the toothpaste splatter off the bathroom mirror? (A definite no to the former and a grudging principled no to the latter.)

But the state does have a role in establishing reasonable terms for a marriage contract and enforcing that contract should either of us become unreasonable.

In most marriages, the state gets no more involved than at the beginning - ensuring it's a valid, exclusive contract, and at the end - establishing probate on the death of one of the partners. The state oversees privileges (state pensions, etc) and enforces responsibilities. In case of divorce, the state steps in to enforce common law principles of equity where parties cannot agree over the dissolution of the partnership contract.

People enter into contracts all the time. Where parties are reasonable, the state doesn't get involved, e.g. I hire somebody to do some work, they do it, I pay them, that's it. Where we can't agree, we turn to the state in the form of the courts to seek resolution.

Now some would say that's an intrusion of the state. Maybe. But how else would you like to enforce contracts? Do we reward the sneaky, the corrupt or the brutal by allowing them to enforce or break their own contracts? Should the distribution of property after a marriage ends rely on who's willing to act the worst, hiding or taking assets, threatening physical violence? Clearly, it's better if people behave reasonably, but we have evolved institutions such as marriage, the law or the courts because we recognise that people don't always behave reasonably and don't always keep their word.
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Hierarchy of allegiances

The great thing about the World Cup is that you can support more than one team. To be sure, there's one you pull for more than the rest, but you can form a hierarchy of allegiances. This keeps your interest focused after your real team gets knocked out.

ENG-ER-LAND

I support England above all. Most English people are pleasantly, but deeply, surprised by this. There's an automatic assumption that if you're an immigrant in your hierarchy of allegiance you'll support first your home country team and then maybe England as well. (Unless of course you're Scottish, but I'll come on to that later). Many want to know the source and path to my fandom. It's like this:

I first arrived in this country in the middle of the European tournament Euro 96. It was hosted in England and it was hard not to get caught up a little. England did well, but got knocked out by Germany in a penalty shoot-out in the semi-finals. I happened to be in Scotland for that, and wanted to watch that game in a bar. But when my then boyfriend (now the Vol-in-Law) and I hit the streets of Edinburgh in search of a suitable venue all the bar crowds were pulling for Germany, quite demonstrably. They have a "I support Scotland and whoever's playing England attitude" that I find unsportsmanlike*. So we ended up watching it at his parents' as I favored England.

I think that sealed it for me right then, and my passion has only grown. It's not as if I've jumped on a winning bandwagon either. Oh no, England will always break your heart in the end.

I like all the hoopla that goes with supporting England, the bunting, the flags, the t-shirts, the chanting and even the pop record releases. England goes nuts...though it's not a tenth of Knoxville level support for the Vols even post-season, even post a losing season.

Plus, for a long time supporting England has been seen as oikish (Britspeak for trashy) and flying the St George's cross as pandering to unpleasant nationalism at best and vaguely racist at worst. There's nothing I like more than wallowing in the slightly un-PC gutter and getting up the noses of whinging killjoys.

USA

Of course I want the US soccer team to do well. But like many expats over here, I'm sort of "Why should I waste my passion on this team when y'all back home hardly care?". It's a bit sad really. And I think it's a sign of increasing US isolationism when not only do Americans not care about the World Cup - which everyone else in the world gets in a frenzy over, but increasingly y'all seem to care less about the Olympics, too. (I always cheer on US athletes).

The Americas

After the US, I'll root for any American team. It's part of my pan-American hemispheric solidarity. Mexico first, then just about any of those little countries, then Argentina, then Brazil, then Columbia, then Canada.

Europe

This is where it all gets a bit murky. I'd support Finland out of ancestral solidarity, if they were any good. I'm generally going to pull for a European team over an Asian or Middle Eastern team but there are plenty I don't like (e.g. Germany, France). I am quite liking the Australian soccer-roos in this World Cup, if for the nickname alone, and I'll pull for them when they meet Brazil. Thus violating my earlier general rule.

Preferences between European teams will generally depend on whether I've had a fun, good value vacation in that country. So I'm particularly looking forward to seeing England smash Sweden.

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*Although I dislike the Scottish attitude of "any team but England". I do fondly remember the bumper stickers that said "I'm for the Tennessee Volunteers...and whoever's playing Alabama"
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Granddad blogging: ghost story

Last week in granddad blogging, my grandfather described how his family began to get out of hard times by raising tobacco. This week he recounts a ghost story that he told us grandchildren when we were little.

Uncle Ben used to set out there under the shade tree in a swing with that sharp knife and a cedar stick and he had a lot of ‘em, and he’d whittle and whittle and whittle, shavings would pile up all around him. People riding up and down all around the road would stop and say “Ben, what in the world you doing?” “Cuttin’ timber.” That was the stock answer that he gave him. And that tree was right beside my grandmother’s house where Uncle Ben and daddy were raised. And that’s where the ghost story came in.

[Uncle Ben occasionally actually whittled some thing. I have a child sized rolling pin in cedar that he made me. It's a crude rendering, but one of my prized posessions.]

Daddy had gone somewhere, I don’t know where to see a girl somewhere I guess. I don’t know where he’d gone. But it was along in August, September. Moon was full. And he was coming back home and it was getting late and there was a fence row that had grown up on one side of the road. And it was on the east side, ‘cause he was looking up at the moon, and when he looked up he saw something white floatin on top of that fence row.

Well, it scared him, he didn’t know what it was. So, he decided that he’d kick his horse up and move a little faster on down the road. Well this thing on top of the fence row, it moved up faster, too and kept right up with him. And he thought, well, I’ll slow down and see what happens.

So he slowed down and this ball of a thing up on top of the fence row it continued to slow down and go right along with him. And he decided well I’m gonna get home, so he kicked his horse and kicked off and here that thing was floatin’ on top of the fence row right along beside him.

Finally, the fence row ran out and an old grey mule trotted out. And with its head throwed up in the air it was just the right height for that fence row to make it look like there was something floatin’ on top of it. And that’s the story of the old mule.

Go to the granddad blogging main page for more including WWII oral history
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T-tags: oral history, Tennessee, Wilson County, mules, whittling, ghost

This really bites

Beautiful, beautiful goal by Czech Republic's Rosicky. See my previous post.
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This bites

I tried to get away early. I was 20 minutes late leaving, but could stilll catch the kickoff in USA v Czech Republic World Cup match if everything worked my way in Transport for London land.

The commuter gods conspired against me and I had a hellish journey - and got home in the middle of half time commentary and a 2 -O score in favor of the Czechs.

There's 20 minutes left and team USA looks outclassed and they still have Italy to face.

Good thing, I support England. (Or maybe not)

In positive news, Australia's socceroos defeat Japan 3-1. Congrats to them!
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Another day of Cup

I didn't watch a whole match yesterday, but saw a bit of Netherlands v. Serbia & Montenegro (Holland wins), a bit of Mexico v Iran and a bit of Portugal v. Angola (Portugal wins, 1-0)

Mexico v Iran was the game was most interested in, was the most exciting, and was the one I saw the least of, dashing in and out while grilling some burgers and talking to my mom on the phone while it was on.

But the result was what I wanted, Mexico won 3-1 over Iran. Que bueno.

Tonight the US team gets its first outing in a match against the Czech Republic. The US has a tough group, with Italy, Czech Republic and Ghana to beat to get through to the knock-out stage.

White like me

I used to do a little internet genealogy research, and from time to time I'd get an email from someone claiming to be a long lost relative wanting to know if there was any Indian ancestry in some surname line.

My research was taken off what my grandparents did and nothing they found, and nothing I subsequently found indicated any Indian ancestry. It doesn't mean it isn't there. There are a few lines we can't trace back. No records...the provenance of my ancestors simply vanishes into the mists of time. That's the way it is.

To my view, genealogy is a bit of pot luck. You might as well be proud of what you get, 'cause you certainly can't change it. But for some reason the frequentish emails about Indian ancestry used to get up my nose. I never got a request for evidence of being descendant from Black or Chinese or anything else. I replied to one respondent that I'd found no evidence, but that one should be careful about claims for Native American ancestry because often progenitors who were rumored Indian may well have been part African - and that, either way, at the time, these ancestors may have actually taken steps to conceal their own parentage which would make it hard to know for sure. Sad as it is, that's the way it was.

Bring it up to modern times and we have DNA testing to supplement handwritten entries in the family Bible. My Dad just took one of those tests (from a place like this, if not this company) and phoned with the results yesterday. I didn't speak to him myself, but the Vol-in-Law took the message. My father is 91% European, 5% East Asian and 4% African. The East Asian is not a surprise, his mother was Finnish - and there's a lot of Asian admixture. And to be fair the African is not really a surprise either. My family has been in America for a long time.

Playing politics: Soccer and Iran

Mexico meets Iran today in a World Cup fixture in Nuremburg. But media attention will be focused as much outside of the stadium as on the pitch.

Jewish groups are planning a protest in response to Iranian president Ahmadinejad's holocaust-denying remarks. Via the BBC:

One of the biggest fears the Germans have for the World Cup is that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come here to watch his team play. His comments casting doubt on the Holocaust caused outrage in Germany.

This match is serving as a focus for protests against him, even though he is only sent his deputy, Vice-President Mohammed Aliabadi.

Iranian expats will also be putting on a separate protest outside the game.

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Mexican football, so I would be rooting them on anyway.

-0-

In other axis-of-evil soccer news, a new Iranian film called Offside directed by Jafar Panahi tells the story of Iranian girls and women who are caught trying to sneak into a World Cup qualifier in contravention of a ban on female attendance at matches.

From a review in the New Statesman:

...anyone who watches Iran in the World Cup, and also sees Offside, may find it difficult not to imagine the persecuted female fans, just out of view, just off-camera. With this quiet, profound film, Panahi shows that divisions between the personal and political are as vulnerable as a striker's metatarsal.

One more reason to pull for Mexico.

T-tags: soccer, Football, World Cup 2006, germany, Iran, World Cup, Offside, Mexico, axis-of-evil

They did it - just

We watched the England-Paraguay match on television yesterday afternoon after we went grocery shopping (we had no beer and no food).

You would have thought everyone in Asda ( a supermarket chain owned by WalMart) was on their way to the match grounds. I think 85% of shoppers were wearing some kind of England gear, including red and white wigs, goofy hats and face paint.

The game itself was not the most enjoyable I've ever watched. England scored early with an own goal header by Paraguay captain Gamarra. It sounds as if it were a lucky accident, but it follwed a superb free kick by David Beckham.

Actually, I shouldn't say it wasn't enjoyable. Football, after all, is a game of two halves. In the first half England was agressive, playing a pressing game, taking advantage of the Paraguay's bad luck and shattered nerves. After the half, Paraguay was a team re-born (fortunately reborn a little lame) and England was back to its shrinking, defensive style playing in its own half. Coach Sven blamed it on the heat exhausting the players. I blame it on the fact that he removed Michael Owen (which I think is fair enough - he has had an injury plagued season), but failed to put anyone back in front. Beckham was crossing, but there was only a lonely, but hardworking, Peter Crouch to receive. He just couldn't make the most of it without support. But still, England win, 1-0, and look set to finish at the top of their group. We also watched a bit of the Trinidad & Tobago v Sweden game, the other teams in England's group. The Trinidadians played with a little bit of heart, the Swedes definitely seemed lacklustre - and didn't even manage to score after T&T went one man down. It was a nil-nil draw in a yawn inducing match - and bodes well for rest of the group stage.

After the game we took a walk in the local graveyard, just to shake out the tension. It looks like absolutely everyone has Cup Fever. Many, many graves were decorated with England flags instead of flowers this week.





T-tags: soccer, Football, World Cup 2006, germany, England, World Cup, Paraguay, Sweden, Trinidad

Cup fever

I am absolutely beside myself with World Cup fever. England's first match is today - against Paraguay - and I'm as jittery as a bride.

Speaking of weddings and World Cup, the morning radio news did a piece asking us to spare a thought for the rather silly English brides who scheduled their weddings for today. Since English weddings are never in the evening always in the early afternoon, most receptions (in England eternally long boring affairs cluttered with poor public speakers - usually groom, best man, bride's father) will be scheduled right during the match. The commentator defending the brides who scheduled their match over England's match said they spent months planning it and it should take precedence over a silly football game. Yeah, right. Don't be stupid. This is the World Cup. It's only once every four years, whereas Saturdays in June are usually cluttered with weddings. Believe me, had I been invited to a wedding today, I would have gone, signed the book and then slipped off to the nearest pub with a tv, only to return after England victorious.

England's games are all pretty much at convenient times, but US games will require some very clever shifting of my work schedule. I'm already feeling a migraine coming on for Monday afternoon and the afternoon of Thursday the 22nd. I'm actually speaking at an event on the 22nd, but I'm keynoting, so should be able to get away in time.



Update: on second thought - if someone had scheduled their wedding a long time before England's fixtures were announced, then the only choice would be to run with it. Do the wedding, themed with red and white flowers, show the game on big screen in the reception hall, with beer on tap instead of champagne. It would have been a wedding no one would forget in a long time.

T-tags: soccer, Football, World Cup 2006, germany, England, World Cup

Let the games begin

Opening day of the World Cup, England's first game tomorrow

Blair busted in hosepipe ban

Tony Blair recently came afoul of the hosepipe ban snitchers. The gardens of Number 10 Downing street were being watered with a "hosepipe like" instrument.

Number 10 defended itself saying that they were in fact directly observing the hosepipe ban - by using a "bowser with a dowser" - a portable container with a hoselike ending. I'd never heard this term - and in a quick internet search - these seem to be the industrial sized, but portable tanks. Once again Number 10 spins larger than life, what they have holds the equivalent of about six watering cans. Something more like this, than this.

See what we've come to, arguing over water? Actually, Number 10 is completely right. They are not in contravention of the hosepipe ban, it's perfectly legal - and I use a similar contraption myself (a pressure sprayer). You can water more efficiently, sending the precious liquid closer to the roots.

The Vol-in-Law's mosquito farm

The Vol-in-Law pretty much keeps out of the garden. That's not to say he doesn't sit in the lawn chair and soak up the sun (when we have it), but he doesn't tend the soil. That's my area. I have very specific ideas about gardening and I don't really need him messing with my plans.

Last year, pre-blog (I now find it difficult when I can't hyperlink back to a previous episode in my life), we created a frog pond. It's really just a hole in the ground lined with the remnants of a kiddy wading pool. But we stocked it with spawn collected from the ruts in the road left by logging trucks in the Highlands of Scotland. The Vol-in-Law brought the frog eggs back in a jam jar, past the security of Aberdeen airport and we set them up in our little London garden.

The spawn became tadpoles, the tadpoles became tiny perfectly-formed frogs. And then batch by batch, after heavy rains, they all left. Never to be seen again. I was very disappointed since I wanted them in the garden to eat slugs.

They didn't return to spawn this year. (I reckon they became tiny, perfectly-formed, dried-out frog skins on the railroad track which runs behind our house). But we still have the little pond. The Vol-in-Law checks the level regularly and fiddles around the with the moss that grows around the edges. But I'm worried it's going to become a mosquito breeding paradise, and since our cats don't catch mosquitos, we've got nothing to keep them down.

I know London's no tropics, but I worry about malaria and Nile fever and icky-looking, itchy mosquito bites. On the upside, I'm not preferred mosquito food. If there's anyone else around I won't be bitten much*, so perhaps the Vol-in-Law will reap what he's sowed and dig over the pond.

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*this has been true everywhere I've been except in the murky oxbows around Memphis where I was eaten alive.

Stockholm syndrome?

Yvonne Ridley was a British tabloid journalist who travelled to Afghanistan during the fighting there. She was captured by the Taliban, who after some time freed her when she promised she would read the Koran.

She admits that she would have promised just about anything to get out, but anyway, she claims she kept her promise. She then duly and publicly converted to Islam.

Conversion has been good for Yvonne, she was lambasted for the ill-advised adventure in Afghanistan, but upon conversion she has her own tv show (dreary though it is) and is able to keep herself in the public eye more regularly than in her days as a member of the Church of England.

Last night (actually two days ago now - I couldn't post because of stupid Blogger outages) we watched a bit of her show on the Islam channel - way up in the nosebleed section of the cable channels (where you can also find Christian Evangelical offerings such as the God channel).

The show itself was not terribly exciting. She was interviewing a Palestinian farmer who was a little difficult to understand - I really only got "to exist you must resist". And apparently, you can resist by buying his brand of olive oil. Although Yvonne did her best to enliven the proceedings by asking the farmer if those in Egypt and beyond were following the example of the "heroic resistance in Palestine". He admitted he really didn't know much about that.

What was much, much more interesting was the ticker at the bottom of the screen, apparently based on viewers' text messages. It constantly scrolled three texts, which I paraphrase:

1. when will we stopped being fooled by the lies of America and Israel?
2. Umma, when will we rise up and establish an Islamic state?
3. It seems that some members of the community are trying to stir up trouble.

Well-spotted, Viewer Number Three! Yes, call for the establishment of an Islamic state in the UK does smack of stirring up trouble.

Yvonne herself was stirring it up last night. Probably at the same time we were watching the pre-recorded show, she was at meeting of George Galloway's Respect party exhorting Muslims not to cooperate with the police, following a recent terror raid in East London.

Now we all know that the Met are hardly infallible. And maybe this raid was a colossal error following a malicious tip-off. But what are the police supposed to do? Yvonne Ridley seems to be encouraging both revolution with the ticker of terror and for an entire community to choose to become accessories before the fact.

Quick hits

I've been quite busy with work, plus with the hose pipe ban and unprecented four or five days of unbroken sunshine, I've been quite busy hauling buckets in the garden, too. But a couple of things have caught my eye:

1. The Kennedy article in Rolling Stone on electoral fraud in Ohio. I'm worried.
2. It's been 40 years since the beginning of the cultural revolution in China (or it was in May, I'm late noticing this story). What a terrible time - a true reign of terror, only one view of the way to live was acceptable. You could do worse than reading Jung Chang's Wild Swans to get an appreciation of what the cultural revoluton was like.
3. George Bush is dusting off the cover on the anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment (shoot that was a link to the last time he feared GOP losses - here's a new one). It must be another election year. (See item 1).

Granddad blogging: the wages of sin

Last week my grandfather described hard times raising hogs, this week they begin to get out of their financial difficulties by raising the evil weed.

But we weren’t doing any good, and my daddy decided he had to do something else, other than this hog business. Now, we did raise some wheat, but normally just enough wheat to make our flour and swap some of it for meal and some of it for chicken feed, but we never did sell any wheat that I recall. Might have sold a little.

So, Daddy thought about raising sweet potatoes, he thought about raising cotton, he thought about raising peanuts, he thought about raising soy beans and finally for some reason, for a cash crop, he would try tobacco. None of us had ever seen tobacco stalk around there then. There was a man that went to church with us about six miles from us. We were three miles one side and he was three miles the other side. He’d been raisin’ tobacco a little. He was my mother’s first cousin, I guess, they were some kinda kin anyway. And Daddy went to talk to him and we decided we’d raise tobacco.

Back then you had to pile up big brush piles and burn ‘em to kill all the seed in the ground. And then you had to break up those ashes in the ground and then you seed in that and raise your own plants, and set ‘em out.

We raised an acre of tobacco that year. We put it on the best ground we had and put the most cow fertilizer on it we had and grew it on richest spot there was on the farm. It made a fine crop and we carried that stuff to Gallatin, which was about 25 miles from our home. No, the first year he hired somebody to carry it, on a truck. They brought it back, and it had brought four hundred and thirty somethin’ dollars. There had never been that much money in our house at one time ever. And he took that check from the tobacco barn and put it up on the mantle over the fireplace and let that check set up there where we could look at it and see.

Well, the next year Uncle Ben [granddad's paternal uncle], he decided he’d raise tobacco. We had an acre and he and Robert [Ben's son] put out 5 acres, but my daddy he never would expand that big. That year the trucks were gonna charge too much to carry it to Gallatin, so they got wagons and teams and loaded the tobacco on those wagons and took old quilts and tied over it and tied it down, ‘cause it was rainin’ and they drove that 25 miles. They left about 4 o’clock in the morning and they got there about 8 o’clock that night. They slept on the tobacco floor that night in what they call the bull pen. It was just a room, there was stove in it and benches around and people could sit there and sleep and this that and the other. And the next morning they got up and drove back home.

I don’t know when it sold, it didn’t sell then, but ‘bout a week or so later. And we went in a car when it sold. So we began coming out of the kinks a little bit then. It was pretty hard for me to be against tobacco. I would have never gone to college if it hadn’t been for tobacco. I don’t guess Virginia [my granddad's sister] would have either.

I remember one story about it when we were raising it. We had what they called protracted meetings. Protracted means going on a long time at church. And then they’d usually have church in the morning or the afternoon one and again that night. The preacher that we had that time, he was against tobacco and he preached several times about how nasty chewing tobacco was and how bad on you it might be, smokin, we didn’t know. Anyway he was against it.

I remember we were down at my grandmother’s one afternoon after dinner. The preacher always stayed with my grandmother. We were sitting out there under the shade tree. And Uncle Ben said “Well Brother ????, I don’t guess we’ll be able to pay you for holdin’ this meeting.” And the preacher wanted to know why. Uncle Ben said “Well, the only money that we have comes from raising tobacco. All the people round here raise tobacco,” and said “That’s our cash crop. You against tobacco so, we just don’t feel like you want the money.”

He didn’t preach about tobacco anymore.

______
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T-tags: oral history, Tennessee, WilsonCounty, hogs, tobacco, farming , revival

What I've been reading...

I haven't been reading that much lately, at least nothing worth mentioning. A lot of work stuff.

But in the last week or so, I've read A Patchwork Planet, by Anne Tyler. What can I say? I'm not much of a reviewer of fiction...I'm more of a "yeah, I read it, it was good" kind of person. And yeah, I read it and it was good, but not the best one I've read. If I were making recommendations - I'd say, don't start with this one if you haven't read Tyler before. Ann Tyler's books, mostly, are absorbing in a way that few authors really achieve...I really enter the Universe of the character. Anyway it certainly beat the book I'm currently reading...a Spanish murder mystery, where as yet I can't distinguish between the characters and in the first chapter the author used the voice of a rat eating on the corpse of the first of what promises to be several more murder victims. Yuck. I may have to give up on that one fairly soon.

The other book I finished recently was George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant. I picked it up because I thought it might teach me, in 5 easy steps, to frame arguments. I wanted it as much to be convincing at work (where I spew half-truths for money) as in my personal political life.

Of course, Lakoff didn't promise to do this on the dust jacket, so I can't blame the author for failing to teach me some critical debate skills. But still my hopes were dashed. Here's what was promised:

In this book Lakoff explains how conservatives think, and how to counter their arguments. He outlines in detail the traditional American values that progressives hold, but are often unable to articulate. Lakoff also breaks down the ways in which conservatives have framed the issues, and provides examples of how progressives can reframe the debate.

Lakoff's premise was that American Right are framing all the current policy debates, by setting the semantic frame in which ideas are discussed. For example: tax relief. You can't argue with tax relief, can you? So Lakoff says don't argue against it. Re-frame the debate by saying "investment for the future" or something like that. And somewhere in between lies the truth - some people probably are paying too much tax (e.g. the aspirant lower middle-classes) and taxes do make sense in that we club our money to invest in our future through building things like roads, tackling public health issues, or providing for the common defense.

George Lakoff also talks about the key differences between conservatives and progressives. And it's down to the whole approach to life and particularly parenting. Conservatives favor the "strict father model", whereas progressives favor the "nurturant parent". Lakoff frames this debate by avoiding feminising the progressive approach (sadly feminising is still seen as a dismissal.) But I'd seen this argument before in the framed "Republicans are the daddy party and Democrats are the mommy party." And it's true that Republicans do try to paint the Democrats with the "worst" aspects of "femininity" - e.g. shrill, emotional, vascillating, soft, weak, etc.

How about Bad Dad? Repressive, authoritarian dad. The dad who throws you out of the house for getting pregnant or coming out? How about Bad Dad? Daddy drank up all the money in a wild testosterone fueled spree in Iraq. Now there's no money for a prom dress. Irresponsible dad who fixes everything with duct tape (if at all), and when the pipes burst (or the levee's breached) the rest of the family is left to mop up the mess.

His assessment certainly does tie up with what seems to me like just plain meanness by many Republicans. How many times have you seen in editorials blogs "doesn't deserve any sympathy" or "have made their choice" or "must live with the consequences". I don't for a second think that this is the way that all Republicans think, but too many have left empathy behind. Leaving behind empathy and understanding for the way real human beings behave and are motivated makes for bad public policy.

Anyway, despite the book's many problems, I would still recommend it, it's cheap, it's short and it's a fast read - even if my main complaint with the book it's repetitive in places and certainly could have used some shorting editing. Oh yeah, and it would have been helpful if it had had some quick and easy tips to help me win all my arguments and write more persuasively.

blue sky, sunny day

First blue sky, first sunny day in a while. Hurray!

ViL: Staying the Course

We just lost Larry the Fish, within a few days of Darrell & Darrell. He wasn't seen yesterday and today at feeding time there was just Darrell & Smokey.

This is no time to be disheartened. Darrell & Smokey remain resilient and look forward to peace and stability in the fish pond. Comments from certain parties like "Omigod they're killing them off one by one, Oh well I'm tired of the pond" give aid and succour to our enemies. This is no time to cut and run.

Update: I just saw Larry, safe and well. The Vol points out that this proves the naysayers wrong.

To form a more perfect neighborhood

The Vol-in-Law has been working on a constitution for a community crime reduction panel. It's kind of like a jumped-up neighbourhood watch. It's supposed to advise the local unit of the Metropolitan Police about neighborhood priorities and conduct "visual audits" (i.e. walking around, being nosy and spotting eyesores and potential troublespots).

It hasn't done, as far as I can see, a lot of visual auditing or advising. This is mostly because the panel has been spending a large part of the last year drafting a constitution. In my view, they should have spent almost zip time on this - a constitution should have been provided for them and they could tinker around the edges, discuss it for 45 minutes and ratify the sucker. But no - in their wisdom, the Home Office squivel servants have asked panels to come up with their own constitution, thus creating a nice space for largely unqualified locals to squabble and waffle and do absolutely nothing and thus cause the police little actual trouble by holding them to account for neighborhood needs and wants.

Of course, the Vol-in-Law is a lawyer, and after his first attendance at the panel, he has drafted a constitution. And I advised him (being something of an authority on public sector governance matters, if I do say so myself). He's quite proud of it - and asked me last night if he should add a preamble. Let's not overstuff the pillow, I think - but we get on the Internets and Google the preamble to the US Constitution. The Founding Fathers, after all, were clever chaps with a nice turn of phrase.

And in our research we discovered a bit of constitutional construction I was completely unaware of.

In 1789, an amendment was proposed:

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

Now that's a good one - I think. I'm not sure why it needs a Constitutional amendment, but it makes sense. It just means that if you vote for your own pay raise, you can't get it until after the next election. So you just might be voting for more money for your opponent, and hopefully this means our reps will be a little more hesitant to vote for raises.

As any constitutional scholar will know, amendments have to ratified by X percent of the states (see I'm not a constitutional scholar). And this one duly was - exactly 203 years after its introduction. Two hundred and three years. Yep. You can look it up - the 27th amendment.

Taking a year to draft the neighbourhood panel's constitution simply pales in comparison.

We the People of the Tooting, in Order to form a more perfect Neighbourhood, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Safer Neighbourhoods Panel.

And for my British readers, as Citizen Smith would say, Freedom for Tooting!