Whatever is not reserved, is devolved
Whatever is not reserved, is devolved
There's a core principle in the Scotland Act that 'whatever is not reserved, is devolved'. I think that's an important principle. It's an important principle for the Scottish Parliament — without it, the powers of Holyrood would be eroded very quickly.
There's another important principle which long predates the Scotland Act, one which may be expressed many ways. One popular expression of it is 'do as you would be done by;' another it 'sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander'. It says that similar things — where 'things' includes relationships — should be similar; and implicitly, that they should be similar across scales.
Feeding the one billion
This essay is unfinished: come back later to see a better draft.
These problems are very hard to solve: it's very hard to see how we can get from where we are, economically and politically, to a stable and satisfactory society. But they have to be solved, or else there isn't a future.
Just ignoring the problems of a billion people isn't going to work. Creating a 'fortress Europe' with impenetrable borders and watching complacently as the bodies pile up outside the fence, even if that were possible, would be hugely corrosive on our own societies. And it isn't possible. Even without weapons, people whose only alternative is death will fight to overcome our barriers.
Hanging out in the gorge
I've known the gorge on the Hill of Screen Burn since my twenties, but it's not a place I visit often. It's not, in itself, a spectacular gorge: short, narrow, and with a lot of trees which make it difficult to walk through, and although there is a waterfall at the upper end it's not a very big one.
I went up there in September of last year with a party of friends, and found that the gorge had changed in a significant and, to me, very exciting way: a mature oak tree had fallen into the gorge and ended up wedged across it, much broken but still living, about two and a half metres above the deep pool at the foot of the waterfall.
On representative democracy, and citizens' assemblies
This is not one of my finest essays; it's a response to an email on a local climate group which objected to Extinction Rebellion's proposal for a citizen's assembly on climate policy saying, in part:
I find the thought of randomly selecting people from the general population and giving them what amounts to legislative power quite frightening. Given the level to which ßthe UK is dumbed down, the poor standards of education, general ignorance of science etc etc, I can't see how the majority of the members of a Citizens' Assembly would be in any way competent to be given the powers that XR proposes to give them.
Challenged on this (not by me), the original poster went on to quote Churchill:
What's so good about Kenshi?
What's so good about Kenshi?
I've been writing for literally fifteen years about the game I'd like to build, but assumed I couldn't because one person can't possibly build all the systems and assets required for a full scale open world game. And while I have been messing about and producing literally only tiny scraps of code, one person — Chris Hunt — has actually done it.
The game he has created — largely working alone — has many of the features, and much of the richness, of the game I've been writing about. The difference is, his is finished, it works, and it's being played.