It seems that our chances of having a televised debate between the party leaders at the forthcoming General Election are somewhere between Zilch and Nada and it’s not because the Greens haven’t been invited.
Western journalists will speak the truth to anyone, (fanatics with a guns perhaps less so).
At least Martin Rowson is honest enough to admit it. Continue reading It caught my attention today
Following on from re-naming the blog (from johnm55 to A Scotsman in Suburbia) I have decided to give it a new look. After spending all morning trying different themes and finding something that I didn’t like with most of them, I finally settled on the Twenty Fourteen theme.
I have spent the rest of the day designing and creating a new header image and tweaking the layout of the side bars. From my end it has a few advantages functionally over my old theme, and I think that from the perspective of a reader it has a cleaner look. I’ll probably make a few tweaks to the layout and may slightly alter the header image as I am only 95% happy with it.
I hope that you like it, and if not please leave me a comment below.
In trying to work out who my ideal reader could be I first had to work out who I was writing for. It turned out to be myself . My blog is not intended to be a commercial operation. I am not blogging to make money from it. I am not even hoping to make money from it. I know there are bloggers out there who do at least supplement their income from blogging, but I’m not one of them.
As I wrote in my introductory post I started this blog (under the name johnm55) in the hope of influencing a few people to vote yes to electoral reform back in 2010. I still hope that what I write will have some influence on my readers but that is no longer why I blog. I blog because I enjoy it. I blog because the act of writing for someone else to read helps me to clarify my thoughts in a way that putting them down in a journal for my consumption does not. That means that I write about what interests me today. It could be a piece about politics but it could equally be a review of an art exhibition or sharing a recipe that I have made and liked. Other subjects that often feature are cycling, especially road racing, but not exclusively, I like all forms of cycling. I also have an occasional feature called “Songs I Love”, where I take a You Tube video of a song that I really love and explain why. Most of the music featured tends to be either Folk or the music that gets listed under the title “Americana”. I also post the occasional photo essay, mainly if I have been off on my travels.
As I said, I think that I am probably my ideal reader. However I bit of interaction on a blog, or even knowing that someone other than your partner is reading it is nice. So the person I am writing for probably shares at least some of my characteristics. They are probably interested in politics but not obsessed. They will read books, listen to music and have opinions on what they read and listen to. They will enjoy food, both eating and probably cooking it. They will probably enjoy traveling and exploring new places, close to home and further afield. They will appreciate that a bicycle is one of the best ways to travel. They will probably also be interested in the sporting aspects of the bicycle even if, like me they don’t race.
If my reader is ultra-interested in any of those topics my blog probably won’t satisfy completely. It will hopefully point him or her towards people whose knowledge of politics, art, music, food or cycling is more extensive than my own.
One characteristic of my ideal reader that I haven’t mentioned yet is this;
My ideal reader brings something to the blog by adding his or her comments. I welcome constructive criticism, but agreeing with me is even better.
This post was prompted, obviously, by yesterday’s murder of the Charlie Hebdo journalists, apparently by Islamist fanatics. Now some people felt that Charlie Hebdo went out of its way to offend Muslims, this is not true. Charlie Hebdo went out of its way to take the Mickey out every one. It didn’t matter whether you are a Catholic, a Jew, a Protestant, a Buddhist or especially a French politician, you will find something in the magazine to offend you. Do a Google Image search for Charlie Hebdo and you will see what I mean.
The attack yesterday was an attack on freedom of speech. It was an attempt by people who believe that their god would approve of wiping out anyone who disagrees with them. It was an attempt to silence all criticism of their fanatical death cult. The sad thing is that it may work after a fashion. Newspaper editors, columnists and cartoonists may think twice before publishing something, though I think that Steve Bell hits exactly the right tone in today’s Guardian:
We need to keep pointing and laughing at these people. I know that what they do is not particularly funny, but it is ridiculous.
The post was also prompted by a couple of things that Billy Bragg said on Facebook.
Yesterday he just left this quote:
I can basically agree with that, though I am not so sure about the word pretends, bastard child possibly, but this sort of fanaticism stems from a particular understanding of religion. Whether its out working is the killing of twelve journalists in Paris, flying an aeroplane into the World Trade Centre or murdering abortion providers in Alabama, the problem is religion and actions that can be justified by a selective reading of a holy book.
A woman called Rekha Kodikara posted this in response;
Just because I believe in God
Does not make me holy
Just because I speak
Does not mean I am right
Just because I am silent
Does not mean I agree
Just because I criticise
Does not mean I hate
Just because you are angry
Does not mean I fear
Just because I think
Does not mean I am free
Just because you pray
Does not mean you are blessed
Just because you kill
Does not mean I will hide
Just because you threaten
Does not mean I will surrender
Just because there is religion
Does not mean we are happy
Just because there is God
Does not mean we live in peace
Hate is ruled by fear
Fear is governed by ignorance
Ignorance can lead to dogma
And Dogma can lead to death
Freedom from Fear
Je suis Charlie
I don’t know if she is Christian, Muslim, Bahai or what ever but it does make a poetic case for good religion.
Today Billy said this;
Multiculturalism means having respect for things that you yourself don’t subscribe to. The killers yesterday were intolerant of those who had different views to their own. In times of outrage, intolerance becomes contagious. We must guard against those who wish to punish all Muslims and people of colour for the crimes committed yesterday.
I have no wish to target people of colour or Muslims in revenge for yesterday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo. Similarly because I do not feel the need to apologise for every white racist attack, I do not necessarily expect every Muslim in the world to apologise for this.
Having said that, all religions are based on a false premiss, some like wooly Anglicanism, Sufi Islam and Zen Buddhism seem to be fairly benign, others like the Salafist form of Islam seem to be anything but. I see no reason why I should be prepared to tolerate this in the name of multiculturalism any more than I should tolerate the racism of Britain First, rampant homophobia or sexism.
Following an extensive and thoroughgoing review with my image consultant, we decided that “johnm55” as a brand name was very 2014 darling. Actually it was probably more 2010. We made what we hope will be major game-changing paradigm-shifting decision and renamed the blog “A Scotsman in Suburbia” however the tag line remains the same; “Random Thoughts, Ramblings and Rants.” because changing the name doesn’t mean that a suburban Scotsman, will be anymore coherent than johnm55.
We do feel that this could drive the page views up into the low teens (per month). We also hope that this Blogging 101 course might improve the content,
As you can see there is still a bit of work to be done on the YB image, I need a new header image for a start. Still the weather forecast for the weekend is not great, so I will try to remember how to use the GIMP* and see what objects of informative beauty I can come up with.
Edit 17/01/15 as you can see the header and a few other aspects have now been tarted up.
*The GIMP is a very powerful free image editing program, which has only one disadvantage, a fairly steep learning curve.
It’s a good question. I sometimes wonder what the answer is. Actually I don’t think that there is one definitive answer. The answer tomorrow will probably be slightly different to the answer today.
The short and easy answer to the first part of the question (who is johnm55 anyway?) is that johnm55 is my online name. I am actually called John Manderson and surprise, surprise, I was born in 1955. I sometimes think that I should think up a snappier name for the blog that sums up what you should expect when you arrive here, but “Middle-aged Male Angst” isn’t any better, or is it?
edit 07/01 I have renamed the blog “A Scotsman in Suburbia”
I am a native of the Scottish Border country, I grew up on sheep farms, my father was a shepherd, in the Border Hills. I loved the Border countryside, but had no desire to work in it. On leaving school I joined the Merchant Navy as an engineering apprentice and set off to see the world, or at least the parts of it than can be reached by a 40000 tonne container ship.
That phase lasted about fifteen years, until I met my wife. I wanted to find a job that didn’t require me to be away for eight or nine months of the year. I found a job lecturing in Marine Engineering in the Solomon Islands. It was an experience, and I probably should write about it some day, before I get too old and senile to remember it. We were there for about two and a half years, until my contact expired and we came home to London (United Kingdom).
Since then, for the past twenty-five years, I have lived in South London (Wallington if you know the area) and worked for a large multinational insurance company as a Pressure Systems Surveyor, which isn’t as boring as it sounds and pays for groceries. I am planning to retire this year and after that who knows.
I originally started the blog back in 2010 because I was in favour of changing the way we vote in the United Kingdom to some form of proportional representation. I naïvely thought that my blog posts could be the difference between victory and defeat for the Yes campaign. If you are really interested all the posts are still there in the archives. I discovered that the process of writing and researching was an excellent way to work out what I actually thought about something, rather than just going on a gut feeling, so I carried on with the blog after the referendum was over and lost.
I don’t really have a theme for my main blog I tend to write about what I fancy or what has caught my attention. There are a few subjects that tend to crop up more often than others. Cycling, art and food feature regularly ( I actually have a second blog which only consists of recipes) as do politics and more occasionally theology. . Politically I am a bit left of centre with greenish tendencies. Theologically I am less sure about how to sum myself up, agnostic Christian, is probably the best short description I can think of.
I decided to do this course (Blogging 101) partly to get myself back into the habit of writing this blog and partly to try to improve my writing. Let’s see how it goes
Edit 07/01 for “johnm55” now read “A Scotsman in Suburbia” except when I am commenting I’ll still be johnm55.
I always start the year with good intentions, recycling last years resolutions – it saves time and makes me feel slightly environmentally friendly. No energy was wasted in the making of these resolutions. I think that I resolved to post at least once per week on the blog last year. I kept it up for about a … week. Though to be fair I did hit a purple patch around the time of the Scottish Referendum.
What do I foresee for the coming year? Well I turn 60 this year, on the 29th of August to be precise. That in itself will cause a few changes. I might have a birthday party this year, a proper one with guests and birthday cake.
Because of the way the way the company pension scheme is set up I have to take my pension at 60 so that means that I will either give up work completely or scale back to two or three days per week. That should be good as long as Mrsjohnm55 doesn’t get fed up of me being around a lot more than she is used to.
We have a general election in May so I am looking forward to a change of government. I am fairly certain that there will be a change, but what it will change to I am a wee bit less certain about. You will get my opinions though.
The featured image has nothing to do with the post. It’s just a photo I took at Wisley a couple of days ago that I happen to like.
Following the Scottish Independence Referendum it is generally agreed that how we govern the United Kingdom needs to be overhauled and dragged into the 21st century.
David Cameron thinks that it can all be stitched up neatly by a Cabinet committee. However it only takes about two seconds of thought to understand that his proposal for “English votes on English Laws” (EVEL) is nothing but a piece of low politics, designed to make it difficult if not impossible for the Labour party to form an effective government.
As Vernon Bogador (Professor of Government at King’s College London) says:
His article on the subject essentially demolishes Cameron’s plans.
Ed Milliband and the Labour party propose a constitutional convention, which if it isn’t used as an excuse to do nothing, is the way forward. With a bit of luck we might even come up with a proper constitution; i.e. a written one, at the end of it
UKIP, I think, wants to re-build Hadrian’s wall. I can’t find any official Liberal Democrat policy, the only thing I can find is this on the Liberal Democrat Voice blog (not an official outlet) which says “Err… not sure…let’s hold our horses”
Here are my ideas on what we need to do about re-ordering the way we govern ourselves. The first draft of my submission to the constitutional convention if you like.
In my opinion we need to move to a federal system of government. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have their own devolved assemblies. Some have proposed that England should have its own assembly as well. England’s population is around fifty million. It is too large and too London-centric to have an effective devolved government covering the whole of the country. In my opinion power needs to be handed down to smaller areas to provide an effective local devolution I would suggest looking at how the German Länder system works, or, if we want to stick to the Anglo-Saxon world the American, Canadian or Australian systems would be suitable starting points.
Some have proposed that power be devolved to the cities, Each of the major cities should have its own assembly, possibly modelled on the London assembly complete with elected mayor. The problem with this is that it leaves those parts of the country that aren’t major cities with a bit of a democratic deficit. Others, have proposed devolving greater powers to the counties and unitary authorities. I feel that they are too small to wield power effectively.
My proposal is this:
The nine regions of England, the North East, North West, Yorkshire and Humberside, East Midlands, West Midlands, East Anglia, London, The South East and the South West, have very roughly similar populations. They should each be given their own regional assembly with powers at least equal to those of the Welsh assembly. They would be funded initially according to the Barnet formula. The members would be elected by proportional representation. I would think that each regional assembly would have between 50 and 80 members.
The Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Assemblies would obviously continue as they are.
The North East rejected a regional assembly in 2004 and some people argue that this shows that there is no desire for regional devolution in England. However what was on offer in 2004 was not devolution but a regional talking shop. As the Newcastle Journal says in an editorial:
What was on offer then was NOT devolved powers, but a talking shop with no authority.
Devolution is not about creating a new class of politician. It’s about bringing powers and control over funding to the region – so that we can set our own priorities for training, education, health services and more, and carry out vital infrastructure projects without going cap in hand to Whitehall.
There needs to be a debate about who would exercise these powers, but there is already a tier of local government involving councils working together in a combined authority.
Our MPs must also play a role – and their voices must be heard at Westminster, too.
But let’s be loud and clear about one thing, so that the message reaches those in the Westminster bubble. The North East did not reject devolved powers in the assembly vote. The powers were never there.
I think that there is an appetite for genuine devolution in the regions of England.
With Regional Assemblies in place doing most of the spade work of governing I would question whether we still need a House of Commons of six-hundred plus members. I think that it could be reduced to around two-hundred and fifty, elected by some form of proportional representation.
Its remit would be to consider the aspects of policy that would remain at national (federal) level. Aspects such as foreign policy, defence and overall fiscal policy. It would also be responsible for aspects of policy devolved to regional level, that need national co-ordination, for example transport.
The House of Lords obviously has to go. It needs to be replaced by an elected assembly which I propose should be known as The Senate. The Senate would be elected from the regions, with each region supplying the same number of Senators. I would suggest six per region giving a total of 72. Again they would be elected by proportional representation, probably on a region wide basis. The Senate would be mainly a revising chamber. It would have the power to amend legislation and send it back to the Other House 1 for further consideration, but would not have the power to block legislation. It could also propose legislation, but such legislation would have to be passed by the Other House
All members of all the various assemblies would be elected by a system of proportional representation . My preferred system is the Single Transferable Vote but we can argue about the details later.
When the SNP decided to lower the voting age to sixteen for the referendum I was sceptical. My thinking was that they hoped to tap into naïve patriotism and that most 16 to 18 year olds would vote yes. This did not prove to be the case. As the campaign went on it became obvious that they were listening to and participating in the discussion on both sides before making their own minds up.
I now think that the franchise should be extended to sixteen year olds in all elections.
If you agree with what I have said here, Unlock Democracy have an E-petition calling for a UK Constitutional Convention. 
I would ask you to think about signing.
1.I haven’t, as yet,thought of a name for what is currently known as The House of Commons
Having just shared a post on why Britain needs more women engineers on Facebook I came across this post by Libby-Anne which may just, at least in part get to the root of the problem.
Britain needs more women engineers
The post on why Britain needs more women engineers says that we need more engineers and if more women could be encouraged to join the profession it would be easier to meet the target.
Industry estimates suggest Britain will need 87,000 graduate-level engineers every year between now and 2020, but only 46,000 young people are likely to be awarded degrees in engineering annually.
There is also likely to be a gap between the number of young people acquiring vocational engineering qualifications and employers’ demand for technicians.
These gaps would be much smaller if more young women opted for careers in engineering. The UK has the lowest proportion of female engineering professionals in Europe.
Later on it tries to analyse why women are not attracted to what is a well paid profession.
However, our report also shows that choices made at the age of 16 are based on attitudes and perceptions about engineering that have been formed over many years. Engineering is seen as a career for ‘brainy boys’. Intervention at the age of 16 is likely to be too late.
The key to getting more women into engineering is to make it an attractive option for girls from an early age. But at present, teachers, careers guidance, work experience and families are not doing enough to counter the view that engineering is for men, not women, and in some cases they are guilty of perpetuating it.
Which leads me to Libby-Anne’s post which she titles “What’s Your Favorite Princess?”.
She is writing from an American perspective but I don’t think that social attitudes are that different here in the UK. I don’t think that her husbands colleague who’s first question to her daughter is “What’s your favourite princess?” is sexist, just trapped by what we think of as gender norms.
She says rightly:
Yes, not every five-year-old has a favorite princess. I know, right? What a novelty! Sally does enjoy princesses, but she has other things on her mind at the moment. Frustrated but trying not to show it, I explained that Sally is more into science. Sally became immediately excited, and spent the next few minutes explaining some of her favorite scientific concepts, using the chalkboard to illustrate. Sean’s colleague quickly lost interest and drifted away before he finished.
As she is leaving she says to her husband’s colleague who is working in a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Maths) field:
“You know, one of the reasons we see a gender disparity in the maths and sciences is that people assume girls will fit into a preconceived stereotype,” I told him. “And princesses are part of that.”
And that is one of the roots of why Britain can’t recruit enough women engineers
Emma Watson delivered an excellent talk at the U.N. the other day. I hope that Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Ron (Rupert Grint) will support her.
I advise you not to read the comments if you watch this on you tube, They only go to prove how correct she is in what she says.
A Scotsman in Suburbia 