Thoughts for the day

It seems that back in 2009 the sign left was posted on the front of a store in Houston, and it seems that at least some people got rather cross because they thought it a celebration of the terrorist attacks on that day. As far as one can make out, there was no such intention on the part of the store, who were actually celebrating the martydom of a very important Muslim some 1,500 years ago. The sort of thing that Catholics do in respect of their martyrs.

Nevertheless, I do think it a bit dim of the store not to have made this a bit clearer for the benefit of infidels. The good news is that I think the date is something lunar and rotates, so will not have caused this particular problem since and will not do so for a while.

Looking to another minority, I have been pondering on the wisdom of allowing the Scots to escape their English servitude on the basis of a simple majority vote. I have not checked the small print, but that is the impression given by media coverage of the impending vote, and assuming that that is the story, we have another example of tyranny by a majority The tyranny which means that a possibly small majority can coerce a possible a large minority; the sort of thing that happened with fox hunters and smokers. That a possibly small majority can interfere in an unreasonable way with the affairs of a large minority.

In some places one cannot make important moves of this sort without, say, a two thirds majority. In most places there are all kinds of procedural hurdles to precipitate action - like needing to get the chairman to put the item in question on the agenda for it to be discussable. Or needing to make time in the busy schedule of our Members of Parliament.

Which led me back to yesterday. Suppose we were all wired up so that we could take instant votes on things. Someone could make a proposition like 'any person found to have knowingly boarded a cross channel ferry without proper papers and convicted of same by the captain of the ferry after summary trial, may be chucked over the side'. It would be put to the vote and on getting an instant majority would become an instant law. A sort of speeded up version of the referendums which I had thought wreaked havoc in California, with all kinds of unworkable or unpleasant wheezes making it to the statute book, but which http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/referenda.htm suggests do not do much at all.

But the point remains. Giving the people instant and direct access to the statute book is not a good plan, while indirect, slowed-down democracy, of the sort practiced in respectable western countries, presumed by some quirk of geography to include Japan but not China, is. The trick being to get a system which works, in which the people do feel that what they think and what they want is getting a fair hearing by their politicians.