The Abolition of Parliament Bill

Any time I tell myself that things can't get much worse, they usually do.

Under the guise of removing red tape and streamlining procedures, Tony Blair wants to give himself sweeping powers without precedent in Britain since our constitutional monarchy was established.

The tiny four-page bill now working its way through parliament allows ministers to

• Abolish any law they don't like.
• Change any existing or new law they want to, in almost any way at all.
• Introduce new laws based on proposals by a Law Commission, with almost any changes they feel like.

These sweeping powers are not to be scrutinised or debated by parliament - there will just be a single chance for parliament to notice whatever is in the small print (while the Prime Minister intones "minor procedural changes - nothing to see here") , and veto it - otherwise a set of completely unscrutinised changes, of a scope which is impossible to predict, will suddenly be part of the laws of the United Kingdom.

The so-called safeguards are weak, and don't affect the central fundamental change to the constitution. The government have only to convince themselves that they are being balanced, and that they really need to change the rules this way, rather than through parliament. They can't raise new taxes this way, and there is a maximum sentence for any new crimes they invent. And they can only remove freedom where they think it is "reasonable". But that's about it, for safeguards. And most of these safeguards vanish if they are just "clarifying" existing law, or if a Law Commission thinks it might be a good idea!

There are precedents, of course. Before the power of the Crown was curtailed by Parliament, the King could rule by decree. And Adolf Hitler had an Enabling Act that allowed him to rule like a dictator. But in a modern democracy, to attempt to abolish parliamentary scrutiny is shocking.

No doubt Blair will offer minor concessions and further insignificant "safeguards". This is not enough. The problem is not the dearth of safeguards (though that in itself is horrific).

No - the problem here is the power to rewrite the laws of a democracy on demand.

Its official and innocuous title is the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, but it has been called the Abolition of Parliament Bill (see Hansard) - Quite simply, granting that much power to the current and all future governments could deliver a fatal wound to our democracy.

Speak out now, while there is time - tell your MP though http://theyworkforyou.com/

What sort of madness has seized the mind of Her Majesty's Prime Minister, Anthony Blair, that he even imagines this is a good idea?

Credit to Old Mother Chaos and Martin from the BLUG list for pointing this out.

What, no life?

It's starting to look like I'm giving up my social life for Lent! I have too much work and too little time. The good news is that it'll all be over in a couple of weeks, and I'll be able to sleep again, and have time off and stuff.

At least my parents were passing through this evening, so I got some time off to drop them at the airport, which was nice...

Who said there are no free lunches?

There's an interesting event on in Belfast next week! Two major international figures, Richard Stallman (see Wikipedia article) and Bruce Perens (see his site) are coming to the FOSS Means Business conference on Thursday 16th March, in Spires Conference Centre.

In the software and business worlds, this is big!

The conference is on why business and government can and should use Free / Open Source software to meet their needs and save money, where it might be appropriate, and how they might successfully and profitably do that. It's not a sales event - these speakers are not trying to sell you their products. It's more of an explanation of what this free stuff is, how it has already been widely deployed, and how it can help bring wider success in the real, commercial world.

And it's not just anybody talking about it - two of the main figures in the Open Source community are travelling to Belfast, and their complimentary perspectives on Free and Open Source will make for compelling listening for anyone with a business interest - or an interest in the software itself - or even an interest in the ethical and technical challenges that the Open Source movement presents!

If that's not enough, there are speakers from Google, Oracle, the Free Software Foundation Europe, and the Open Source Academy too, to add their perspectives on how it has worked for them, what they plan to do with Free and Open Source, and some of the range of resources available to help.

But what's that about free lunches? Perhaps it's symbolic of the whole free software movement ("Free, as in Speech!", they sometimes say, and also "Free, as in Beer!"). But for registered attendees, there will be a Free Lunch! And due to the unique way this whole Open Source and Free Software community works, registration is free too!

Get on over there - http://foss-means-business.org

Free, as in Lunch!

Thursday 16th March, Belfast. Be there!

And why was I in Budapest?

No - none of these are of me ;-)

The day was an interesting fusion of traditions from Ireland and Hungary. The excellent translations helped enormously, since I still only have about five words of Hungarian: Hi, Yes, No, Coffee, and I love you (and some of these are more useful than others)!




Allegedly it's a tradition that if the bride holds a baby, she'll have lots of them! I wonder if anyone warned David?



There was food and drink, there were speeches (in which David got off remarkably lightly), and there was music and dancing.




Judging by David's expression, cutting cakes must be much harder than it looks!

David and Zita lasted very well, considering they'd been up late the night before sorting out the seating plan (or so we were told).



All in all, a good trip!

More wanderings in the East

So Zita and David assure me Budapest is Central Europe, but it's still east of here. Anyway, off I went last week, after a mere two days back at work. (Don't ever go back to work for just two days, if you can help it. It's not long enough to get anything useful done, but still long enough to attract lots more work!)





The parliament building is spectacular, and one of the biggest in the world. Like that other large parliament building, the Palace of Westminster, it doesn't have enough office space.




There are still Trabants around. It's nice that they have not been regulated out of existence yet.

Wheeeeeeeee!

It was great to get skiing again - though it's amazing how much you can forget about how to ski ;-) But the scenery was amazing...



You need snow every so often to make the slopes more fun. It's quite interesting skiing while the snow is still falling though!

I'm back!

Just been off for a wee bit of skiing. Great fun! There was a big fall of fresh snow towards the end of the holiday. It was "interesting" skiing through it while it was still falling, but the new snow on the slopes was worth it!

Happy New Year

It's the start of the Year of the Dog. If you're planning 15 days or so of celebrations - best of luck!

All I want for Christmas...

OK. So I only had one tooth stuck back in today. Again!

I think I've lost count...

Emergency Assistance

Thanks to the kind and helpful folk at Tesco!

Toerags!

The Root of All Evil?

Unintentional irony abounds in Richard Dawkins' tirade against faith.

This week and next, the controversial evolutionary biologist and holder of the Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford argues that faith is the root of all evil. There is a struggle, he says, between "reason and science" on one hand, and "faith and unreason" on the other. Faith is apparently "irrational". Not just "not about reason", but actively against reason. Always and fundamentally, it seems.

There is "no good reason" to believe in God, he asserts. To demonstrate the unreasonableness of faith, he points out a couple of Catholicism's odder dogmas. To show that the universe is purely materialistic, he asserts it to be obvious.

Dr Dawkins tells us that science advances testable hypotheses, challenges and tests them, and discards them if they don't fit. Its truth is provisional. On the other hand, he says "Science" has proved Evolution beyond challenge, and only irrational believers could doubt it - although he fails to describe, for example, how "natural selection" is falsifiable.

Faith is a continuum of motivation that includes both harmless-seeming believers and fundamentalist terrorists, so it's dangerous. Dr Dawkins fails to conceive of any continuum that includes both him and Nazi scientists like Dr Mengele or modern germ warfare scientists. So science can't be at all dangerous.

Cut to Jerusalem. Deeply held faith is "responsible" for the conflict in the Middle East - the implication being that faith must be wrong.

Next week: how faith is like a virus, and God is vindictive.

This has nothing to do with reason and logic - it's an emotional outburst against believers and their faith, from Richard Dawkins, Prophet of Scientific Materialism.

The greatest irony is that this piece of rhetoric counts towards Channel 4's Religious Broadcasting and Public Service "quota".

WHAT's in a name?

All the news coverage about Ming the Merciless and his role in Charles Kennedy's downfall made me thing about other examples of the truly pathological spelling of names we have in English. As well as Menzies, pronounced ming-iss (it is actually Scottish, but never mind), we have:

• Featherstonehaugh (fan-shaw)
  
• Cholmondeley (chum-ly)
  
• Beaulieu
  

None of these is pronounced anywhere near the way it's written. And lest we celts get too smug, consider:

• Kirkcudbright
• Boho (Bo)
  
• Boa Island (also Bo)
  

We're all mad!

Take a break

Holidays are great. We all need a break from time to time. The new year seems like a good time to think about what is important, and what is just habit - time to take stock.

Then it's back to work and, if we're not careful, back into the same old routine.

Here goes 2006!