Meantime, Ah’ve bin thinking (again)

Centre of the Universe, 23 September 2017 – In the words of another song ’I woke up this morning and . . .’ wondered where Treason May has stashed

£20,000,000,000?

In plain English: That represents 20 Billion Pounds! Or, for that matter Euros 20,000,000,000?

Not wanting to labour the point too much, that represents 

£20 billion = 20,000 x £50 million (I think)

Or 2.00E+10 (2.00 x 10¹⁰) if we want to clever about it.

The news this morning that she is willing to part with that amount of cash to smooth the way for UK to remain tied to EU is nothing short of incredible! 

Bless me. When settlers arrived in America, Australia and New Zealand they bought peace with locals by handing out a handful of beads and blankets . . . . and that was when their intention was to move in, not (as she would have us believe) to move out. Makes you wonder, don’t it? 

Putting it in terms that even simple minds like mine can understand – if you could live for 20 billion minutes, you would be 38,052 years old before you keeled over. 

If you could save £100,000/year, it would take you 200,000 years to save 20 billion Pounds. If you could save £10,000 every single day, then it would only take you 5,479 years to save 20 billion.

But, the question is: where is it stashed? Somebody worked out that if we used £50 notes and stacked them, the stack would be somewhere in the region of 250,000 feet high. Could G4S handle that, do you suppose?

Forgive my nonsense but it just goes to show that we are living in an illusion. WAKE UP and smell the coffee.

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Quote of the Day

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared to the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are 25 or 30 years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. 

But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

- John Maynard Keynes

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DEXEU’S DEFENCE PARTNERSHIP PAPER IS A GRAVE MISTAKE AND GIVES THE EU CONTROL

carol Sep 22, 2017

“The paper will talk about a defence relationship ‘closer than any third country’. BUT IN PLAIN WORDS THAT amounts to the UK staying in the recently agreed EU Defence Union agreements just as Norway has agreed to do. Also, just like Norway, it means the UK submitting to EU common defence policy, EU defence directives and European Defence Agency membership, which are all conditions the EU has placed on the UK for this kind of arrangement. This is all dangerous and puts the UK on a trajectory to EU defence union.
“It puts control of our future direction, strategy and even foreign policy squarely into the hands of the EU. This is in any case unnecessary because our defence relationship with EU member states should instead be conducted via NATO. The EU has declared defence autonomy from NATO.

“UK ministers consented to defence union agreements after the Brexit vote and we were told that it was because the UK would have no part in them. Yet the government is now allowing these gradual and erosive commitments to the EU to stand. It means a hollowing out of UK Parliamentary authority over UK defence particularly BY STEALTH where defence procurement and the collective ownership of assets are concerned. 

The EU has put in place policy which dictates that collectively-owned assets on land, air, sea and space are also subject collective policy. The collective nature of defence assets and policy is at present only conceptual but it is agreed and is timetabled to be vast within just a few years.” – Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces, Afghanistan

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I’ve just now seen The Times headline this morning. The front page headline reads: May agrees £40bn bill for Brexit. Good grief! I’ll leave you to do the sums this time. But I have to admit that she takes first prize for audacity. Seemingly, she can’t memorise her lines or speak with internal passion, but she sure is audacious.

The opening paragraph claimed: “Theresa May conceded yesterday that she is prepared to pay up to £40 billion in return for a Brexit transition deal that means Britain will as good as remain in the European Union until 2021.”

Note: The next general election in the United Kingdom is scheduled to be held on 5 May 2022 under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. (Provided the Act isn’t repealed or ignored before that time; and provided Mrs May is still the Prime Minister; and provided HM Queen is still Queen. And there are a number of other provisos that I shan’t mention here that you can think about for yourself. It doesn’t require a great deal of imagination.)  Speaking in the vernacular: ‘I think we are being shafted.’

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The BIG question is: ‘Can UK, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the rest of the World wait that long?’

Oh, I almost forgot. There is also to be another presidential election in the U.S. in 2020. And a German election tomorrow! I can’t bear it.

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I stand by the four secular principles that determine how some of us address our national problems. They are not signs of weakness.

Cause no harm

Be honest

Be peaceful

Be responsible

If you feel as I do, contact me by email on mkcolumn@gmail.com Tell me how you can add your voice and energy to the rising tide of dissatisfaction with the way our parliamentarians (and others) are letting us down, unwittingly or intentionally. It doesn’t matter which.

On the internet, click on www.ukcolumn.org at 1 p.m. for a 5-days-a-week news broadcast about the news that often ISN’T in The Times. 

Or click to www.britishconstitutiongroup.com  to learn how some ordinary men and women are preparing to take action to protect themselves, and you, and the future of your family.

It is Time!

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WE AE NOT ALONE!

WE ARE NOT ALONE!

Democracy is not just for humans

How animals vote to make group decisions

September 18, 2017 2.20pm BST

Author

Jan Hoole Lecturer in Biology, Keele University
Today we opt for ballot boxes but humans have used numerous ways of voting to have their say throughout history. However, we’re not the only ones living (or seeking to live) in a democratic society: a new study has suggested that African wild dogs vote to make group decisions.
A new study has found that these dogs sneeze to decide when to stop resting and start hunting. Researchers found that the rates of sneezing during greeting rallies – which happen after, or sometimes during, a rest period – affect the likelihood of the pack departing to hunt, rather than going back to sleep.
If dominant individuals start the rally it is much more likely to result in a hunt, and only two or three sneezes are required to get the pack started. But if a subordinate individual wishes to start a hunt, they have to sneeze a lot more – around ten times – to get the pack to move off.
The researchers think that this sneezing is the pack members voting on when to start a hunt, since it is often the lower ranking (and therefore the hungriest) dogs who start the rallies.
Communal decisions are essential for social living, and in animals it is rare to find a social system where one individual coerces the rest of the group into performing a particular action. But since animals cannot produce the kind of pre-election propaganda so beloved of human politicians, social groups must have different ways of suggesting and gaining consensus for activities.

1. Baboons: take it or leave it

When members of a baboon troupe set off to forage, several members may move in different directions. Other baboons in the group must decide which one to follow, and social dominance has no effect on the likelihood that the majority of the group will follow. Moving purposefully seems to be an important factor in getting other individuals to follow – another parallel with human behaviour, since people will follow whoever seems to have the most confidence .

2. Meerkat voice voting

In meerkat mobs, social cohesion is vital for survival, and moving from one patch to another must be done together. A meerkat going it alone will very soon be an ex-meerkat. In order to get the group to head quickly to a new patch, an individual will emit a “moving call”. If three or more meerkats make moving calls within a short period of time, the group will speed up its movement, but two or less individuals calling does not affect the speed. In meerkat mobs three is evidently considered a quorum.

3. Capuchin monkeys “trill”

White faced capuchin monkeys at a site in Costa Rica have been heard using “trill” calls to persuade the group to move off in the direction preferred by the caller. However, the callers were not always successful in getting the group to move, and status within the group did not seem to affect the likelihood of persuading the troupe to move. Although the researchers did not consider the possibility that these calls were a form of voting, there are similarities between their use and the sneezes used by the wild dogs.

4. Honey bee scouts vote among themselves

Honey bees have an advanced social system with individual workers having different tasks. When a nest becomes overcrowded and some of the bees need to move out, scout bees go off to find a suitable site for a new nest. Of course, they all find different sites and some may find more than one location.
When they return to the swarm, the scouts each perform a dance that gives directions to their chosen site. As time goes on some of the scouts stop advertising their site, and a few will switch to advertising another scout’s site. The swarm will only move when all the scouts that are still dancing are advertising the same site. This process can take several days to complete, but it is a bit like buying a house without having seen it on the say-so of a few estate agents.

5. Ants vote with their feet

Rock ants, found in the south of England, choose a new nest site based on the quality of the site, with entrance size and darkness among assessed criteria. They appear to use a simple voting system consisting of leaving the nest site if an individual does not perceive the quality to be high enough. When enough ants have accumulated at a site, it is deemed to be of a suitable quality (or perhaps the best that can be found in the area), and the ants move in. If the quality subsequently deteriorates, individuals drift away to another site until enough of the colony have left the original nest and joined the new site. A simple, but apparently effective system.
Voting by animals is not a subject that has been studied to any great extent, although political systems are common among social animals and are quite well documented, but if wild dog, meerkats and ants are doing it, you can bet your bottom dollar that other species are doing it too. (ends)

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AN UNRELATED THOUGHT

"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed" - Adolf Hitler

The article by Jan Hoole is reproduced with permission