Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

I know I shouldn't read the comments on the BBC blogs (especially Robert Peston's), but there's a certain car-crash fascination with watching logical fallacies colliding with the real world. I keep my mouth shut, laugh a little and move on to the rest of the internet.

However there's one big howler that keeps recurring and that I'm starting to find (a) annoying and (b) extremely worrying.

The main thrust of this so-called argument is that Gordon Brown was never voted for as Prime Minister, and so has no mandate for governing the country. I'm really astounded by this, as it implies a complete lack of understanding of the British political system, and of just how the country is governed. Of course this basic ignorance might explain why a sizeable number of them believe that one BBC journalist's reports are responsible for much the current economic morass...

This then leads me to ask the obvious question: do these people know how a parliamentary representative democracy like Britain (and much of the Commonwealth) actually works? It also leads on to the sadder question: if they don't, how did they get to voting age without knowing anything about the political system that governs their day-to-day lives?

Britain isn't a presidential state like the USA or Eire or France. We don't vote for a President on top of our elected local representative. Instead we vote for a Member of Parliament, and the leader of the majority grouping in Parliament becomes the Prime Minister. We don't vote for a party slate or for a party leader - we vote for the person we believe will do the best for our constituency. If you voted for your MP believing that you were voting for Tony Blair or David Cameron or whoever, well, your mistake. But just because you don't know how the world works isn't an excuse for it not working the way you want it to.

If the majority party changes leader, well, they just go on to become Prime Minister, with no need for a general election. We may even get the rare situation where minority parties go into coalition and completely replace the majority government. Again, there's no need for an election. While these changes may mean a new person at the top, the person you voted for is still in Parliament - and still answerable to you for their actions.

I suspect it's time for a mass civics lesson, and a pointer to They Work For You.

It's enough to make me want to scream.

However I have a blog, so I'll just rant there instead.

A couple of days ago I found a link to this (whether it was from BoingBoing or Making Light I'm not sure...). It was originally titled "Principles Of The American Cargo Cult".

The following section neatly describes what I go so annoyed about to inspire my previous post:

Ignorance is innocence

Complicated explanations are suspect

The world is simple, and there must be a simple explanation for everything.

Certainty is strength, doubt is weakness

Admitting alternatives is undermining one's own belief.
Changing one's mind means one has wasted the time spent holding the prior opinion.

Your opinion matters as much as anyone else's

When a person has studied a topic, he has no more real knowledge than you do, just a hidden agenda.

The herd should be followed

The contemplative lemming gets trampled
Popular beliefs must be true.
No bad idea can survive.
People are generally smart.
Even if a popular belief doesn't pan out, at least you'll be in the same boat as everyone else.

Thinking about it, that rant is really is about all of us, not just America, and about how people have adjusted their world-views to cope with living in an information dense society where they have been disempowered and demeaned by those in control. Acquiescing isn't enough - we have to convince ourselves that we're doing it of our own free will.

We're living in Zimbardo's prison experiment and we haven't even noticed.

The southern Utah stretch of US-191 is a spectacular road.

The long run from Monticello to Moab runs past two major mountain ranges, and across plains ridged with eroded red sandstone ridges. In winter the bright sun reflects off the snow, sharply defining the horizon and outlining the peaks of the La Sal mountains.

It's hard to keep to the speed limit as you glide down the long hill to the plain.



The straight road runs past the lone monolith of Church Rock, a giant stone beehive - straight off the state's road signs - that dominates the plain.



There's nothing to tell us what the mysterious cave at its foot contains.

A few miles further and you're threading through gorges and over rolling hills. Suddenly a red rock bridge is at the side of the road, with a waiting turn off. This is Wilson Arch, a sign of the erosion that's shaped the land over millions of years.



US 191, Utah
January 2009