0
Jul
03
2017
Saying “those who have done nothing to wrong have nothing to hide” is playing with fire
Oh look, the government passed the Digital Economy Act unfinished just before a general election! The key points to note, they have basically agreed that all the contentions bits can be figured out later, but are already law, so they won’t have to get it passed the lords which was their challenge when they tried before. Of course only a legitimate government passes laws to pad out with detail after the fact. https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/03/digital-economy-act-explainer/
I retain that each time voting comes around my biggest challenge is having to decide who I distrust the least instead of the other way around. This has never been more true than it is now.
Brexit looms large over politics at the moment and it has left me with further contempt for our political system. That said, I still believe that voting is a civic duty which I should perform every time, for every time I chose not to vote, others will and I would rather make an active choice than idly watch other choose for me. Unfortunately this still leaves me having to make a choice and my current trust level is giving me a real headache here.
Theresa May has called a snap election having already triggered Article 50. So one way or another we will leave the EU. So far despite campaigning for Remain she seems to be steering a very hard right course in my view.That is simply not something I can vote for. I am and will continue to be an advocate for the EU and I would rather see the closest possible ties with the EU. This hard right turn is not something I can in any way support.
OK, so that’s easy right, I just don’t vote for her… well, maybe. You see, there is a strong possibility that she is being forced into a hard right thanks to her slender majority in the Commons. Her opposition is coming in the form of the Lib Dems, the SNP and a rudderless Labour not to mention her own MP’s who were Remain focused. With all this opposition her majority starts to look wafer thin. It is highly plausible that she has little choice but to appeal to the right of the party if she wants to get anything done.
It could well be that she has called this snap election at a time when opinion polls show her well in the lead. She could come away with a strong majority leaving her less at the behest of her hard right party members and she could steer a more centre ground course.
A more centre ground thing in my opinion would be a good thing. After all, when we had our referendum it’s not like the vote leave campaign won 90% of the vote, but that is what it feels like with the hard Brexit we are being offered. It might be that the hard Brexit deal on the table at the second is all negotiating fluff and bluster, but who can tell. The reality of the situation is we need the have the most amicable deal we can with Europe. Playing hard-ball with them only stands to damage us more than them.
The other by-product of a crushing Labour defeat would be to leave Jeremy Corbyn with no choice but to stand down. His political gamble would be shown to not be paying off and that would leave his position more obviously untenable than it is now. With him out of the picture the Labour party could make a break for the centre ground again and hopefully regain some seats next time around. Or if not seats, at least some of the requisite credibility that half decent opposition needs to actually oppose anything.
Of course, if my gamble on what Theresa May actually wants to do with a large majority is wrong then the last thing I want to do is vote for her. Anyone who isn’t basically a UKip voter should want to push back hard against the self flagellation version of Brexit she seems to be offering at the moment. If she really did want this mess then I would encourage the centre and left grounds in our political landscape to join forces and block her from getting anything like a mandate for this mess.
That said, unless there is a anything but a miracle we would just end up with Theresa May as PM with the self same slender majority she has now and again, a hard Brexit. If that left/centre miracle does happen however we will be left with Corbyn as PM. A man so authoritative his own party won’t follow him. And rightly so, his views on Europe seem to be about as laissez faire as they come.
So for me all of this boils down to what I think Theresa May really wants to do with her time in office. Do I think she wants to move away from the hard right views she is currently steering towards? Her views pre Brexit suggest she isn’t 100% behind her own party line at the moment. Do I think she will do a better job than most around her and dealing with this mess and actually she deep down is fighting for the strongest union that I would like to see? Or do I think this really is what she has settled on, WTO rules and a no compromise deal with us out at all costs?
As things stand the only option I have is to vote and take a chance. Who knows which chance I will end up taking though.
“As a joke following Apollo 13’s successful splashdown, Grumman Aerospace Corporation pilot Sam Greenberg (who had helped with the strategy for re-routing power from the LM to the crippled CM) issued a tongue-in-cheek invoice for $400,540.05 to North American Rockwell, Pratt and Whitney, and Beech Aircraft, prime and subcontractors for the CSM, for “towing” the crippled ship most of the way to the Moon and back. The figure was based on an estimated 400,001 miles (643,739 km) at $1.00 per mile, plus $4.00 for the first mile. An extra $536.05 was included for battery charging, oxygen, and an “additional guest in room” (Swigert). A 20% “commercial discount,” as well as a further 2% discount if North American were to pay in cash, reduced the total to $312,421.24. North American declined payment, noting that it had ferried three previous Grumman LMs to the Moon (Apollo 10, Apollo 11 and Apollo 12) with no such reciprocal charges.”
There is a pile of extra info in here I personally did not know, despite knowing quite a lot about how stills cameras work, seeing examples of how these same principals apply to videography. While this example is about high speed, most of the information is universal.