In the news

I would suggest that the people that *run* the country are the civil servants.

Direction / policy / "leadership" is from the politicians.

Personally (and it's not a popular view with a lot on here I suspect) , I'm of the view that the House of Lords should be where we look to for experts. A second house that can afford to take a more long term view and can focus more on specific areas of expertise.

Obviously the issue is how to pick them. No hereditary peers of course but also not picked on party political lines (maybe by a cross party committee).

I'll pick them.

I think this is what the Economist like to argue from time to time.
Make the Lords into a sort of technocrat think tank. Filled with people more beholden to their field of expertise than to party whips and populist media. I am positive to the idea in principle, but I have no idea how it can be put into practice with all the right checks and balances.

In my view, if you train people to run the country, then you are teaching them what to do, so the trainers dictate how the country is run.

We should be electing people who are experts, experts at understanding evidence, weighing up all the factors, and using all the information to make an informed decision, and people who are experts at making difficult decisions.

Question from me, again not loaded: Do you think we should elect politicians based on their experience or on their goals/plans?

Should the public be deciding on the suitability of one candidate over another based on their ability to do the job or based on what they want to do to the country?

Based on their hair, how they eat and how good they are at dissing someone who disagrees with them.

Should the public be deciding on the suitability of one candidate over another based on their ability to do the job or based on what they want to do to the country?

Both: but accepting that 'ability to do the job' is having the ability to assemble the right team, listen to the right people, make good enough decisions and have the belief and guts to see things through.

And have cool hair. Always cool hair.

The locus classicus of this question is in Plato's Gorgias, really the whole of the first section (dialogue with Gorgias), but particularly around 454-6:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0178%3Atext%3DGorg.%3Apage%3D455

Gorgias is an orator who claims that rhetoric (his art) 'comprises in itself practically all powers at once' (456a), as the orator is able to persuade anyone of anything.

If hair is so important, then how the fuck did we get Boris?

Germany does seem like a successful model of decentralisation though, with no real dominant city

Well, that's really only because of the strange situation that Berlin found itself in after the war. Before the war (and before the Nazis), Berlin was exceedingly dominant, as was Prussia. Berlin is again becoming more dominant by the minute, attracting people from all over the world and obviously because Kohl unwisely moved the capital back there. I also wouldn't say that Germany is very decentralised. There are some small towns which have important industries, e.g. companies that sustain the whole town, but overall, land use is heavily centralised. I'd have to look it up again, but I think Germany has the longest commuting distances of any European country, even longer than much less densely-populated France, because there is virtually nothing going on in weak rural areas. As far as I remember, Britain isn't far behind in these stats--people have to drive/take the train very far away from where they live because there jobs are very badly distributed.

Question from me, again not loaded: Do you think we should elect politicians based on their experience or on their goals/plans?

I agree with Howard, both.

Should the public be deciding on the suitability of one candidate over another based on their ability to do the job or based on what they want to do to the country?

Again, both.

But my question wasn't really meant to lead to normative conclusions on my part. Instead to question the normative claims coming from others that politicians shouldn't be certain things. Which was maybe true, but I wasn't convinced.

"The cultural forces shaping the new conservatism resolve in a particular stereotype: men born between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, with some constellation of expat backgrounds, famous fathers and first careers in the media. All four things apply to Johnson, but a Venn diagram of these various characteristics would also include Michael Gove, Douglas Carswell, Daniel Hannan and Jacob Rees-Mogg. "

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n05/william-davies/what-are-they-after?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4005&utm_content=ukrw_nonsubs

Errm c'mon Gove was adopted

Well surely Berlin's dominance in Germany only began when Germany became Germany. Could the decentralisation of Germany be argued to have earlier roots, in precisely the fact that Germany is so young? As a collection of principalities and city states there was no cause to be centralised. Is the period of dominance from Berlin more of an aberration than the trend of federalism?

I don't think this is a particularly controversial view - mainly because it requires a lot less reform than other suggestions about the Lords.

It's not too far from being a collection of appointed experts- give or take the remaining hereditary peers, bishops and political favour appointments.

Alright, so it is quite far from this, but it's closer to that, and less effort to reform it, than it is to a fully elected and properly bicameral system.

All it would need is a system of appointment with less susceptibility to manipulation, and maybe some term limits, and it actually would be a chamber of experts.

Then MPs could focus more on representation and government leadership.

Also I would dispute the idea that MPs per se are not experienced or skilled. There are 650 of them, and a lot of them are excellent public servants who have had, or still have varied careers and a range of skills.

Maybe the ones in the spotlight aren't always following that rule, but that says more about the media, and as @Dammit says, the people who are electing the government, rather than the role or institution itself who are giving it a bad name and accentuating its negative aspects.

It's like what happened in the wake of Jo Cox's murder- a lot of people suddenly had their eyes opened to what impact a diligent, hard-working MP could have, and saw what MPs out of the public eye were achieving.

Reports of explosion in NE London. Hope nothing sinister & all are ok

Edit: Romford & police say ‘not terror-related’

Here it is - the Dangerous Dogs Act de nos jours:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/04/death-by-dangerous-cycling-offence-to-be-introduced-reports

I would be entirely unsurprised if there ends up being more convictions for death by dangerous cycling than there will be for dangerous driving.

He rode at me with no lights i could see the venom in his eyes shinning off the light on my phone i was looking at !

Indeed, and will there be Careless Cycling? Most 'dangerous driving' gets downgraded to careless since it's easier to prosecute.

Part of me thinks this will be half-arsed on purpose, in order to create a media stink to deflect from the bollocks they are making with everything else at the moment.

"Hey Grayling! How about fixing the roads or sorting the railways or coming up with a cohesive transport strategy?"

"No, that's far too difficult. I'm going to introduce some knee-jerk, rushed-in legislation that will affect hardly anyone and cause a talking point in the media at a time when the government desperately needs something other than Brexit to talk about."

I wonder if the wording will be similar to the dangerous driving charge.

The offence is committed where the standard of cycling falls well below the standard expected of a competent and careful cyclists and, it would be obvious to a careful and competent cyclist that driving in that manner would be dangerous.

perhaps juries will be required to submit their strava miles before there allowed to hear the case. Or more likely it’ll be a jury made up of people who haven’t ridden a bike since they were 5.

The offence is committed where the standard of cycling falls well below the standard expected of a competent and careful cyclists

So in order to establish what competent and careful cycling looks like for the layperson, we need clear cycling standards, like driving standards. These will describe cycling in the middle of the lane, in the primary position as the place to be.

There will have to be accompanying public information films showing competent and careful cycling

Many of you will not remember jeffrey molehusband and the public information film . Perhaps its time for a new one . 1 mtr space safe pass, 1 metre from the gutter is legal . Primary one and why !