Epistemocracy

Epistocracy and Epistemocracy don’t appear to have set meanings. In The Black Swan, Nassim Nicolas Taleb uses the latter ― epistemocracy ― to define a trait of leadership where the leader has epistemic humility (i.e. is comfortable with saying I don’t know). That’s not necessarily a system of government, as it’s compatible with democracy and…

The Progressive House

This is my second draft of this post, and that’s not how I normally operate. I normally write one draft with very few revisions (or even spell checking ― you may have noticed). Initially, I wrote a point by point rebuttal to Caroline Smith’s The House Progressives Built. But, in writing that, I noticed there…

Wear Masks

You should wear a mask when visiting a supermarket. The purpose of this post is to outline my position regarding wearing a mask while in public spaces, especially enclosed ones like supermarkets. But, also do deal with some of the push back against this that I have noticed. That is going to involve sharing and…

#StayAlert Announcement: it’s absurd

Last night (Sunday 10th May) Johnson made an announcement to the UK about the plans for the UK lockdown, going forward. Before the announcement, the “Stay Home > Save Lives > Protect the NHS” slogan was swapped out for “Stay Alert > Stay Safe > Control the Virus”, which is why I am calling it…

Cyclists – registration and taxation

On the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 the other day there was a conversation about how we are going to recover from the economic stagnation as a result of lockdown. One of the suggestions was a Registration and Road Tax scheme for cyclists. The random member of the public who proposed this (we…

Coronavirus: the economy and life

Introduction I think it is evident that a conversation is being had around Coronavirus that is attempting to measure the economy against lives. That framing makes it look as if a life can be reduced to a cost; that although it may be acceptable to wipe £1 billion off of the economy to save 1,000…

The Family, Brexit and the Right Wing: George Lakoff’s ‘Moral Politics’ applied to Brexit

Introduction In this post, I want to summarise the key points of the book ‘Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives think’ by George Lakoff (1996). (Don’t worry, I’ll leave enough out to justify you buying the book.) In it, Lakoff explains how differences of perspective on the family can go a long way to explaining…

The State of Brexit: Thoughts following the EU elections

Although The Brexit Party won the greatest number of seats in the UK for the EU election, it’s not accurate to see them as the ‘winners’. It is undoubtedly impressive: a party that has existed for only a few weeks has gotten 32% of the seats. However, the European Parliament isn’t something that is ‘won’,…

The UK: A sovereign EU member state

“Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that.” (UK Government, 2017) Foreword One of the questions I have in my own head is why I don’t deal with the ‘reality’ of Brexit. These would be questions of achievable Withdrawal Agreements, the party politics, and what I…

Why was the 2016 EU Referendum an affront to democracy

Introduction The purpose of this post is to explain how the 2016 EU Referendum didn’t just fail to be democracy at its best, but was democracy delivered so poorly that no democrat should be offering it lip service. Issues of the lies told in the campaigns and breaking of electoral law are both key points…