Robotics and the EU

I generally find briefings from the European Parliamentary Research Service Blog helpful, but the quotation from Stephen Hawking which prefaces it is more inspiring than this single page pdf.

‘I am an optimist and I believe that we can create AI for the good of the world. That it can work in harmony with us. We simply need to be aware of the dangers, identify them, employ the best possible practice and management, and prepare for the consequences well in advance’

Stephen Hawking, speech at the Web Summit on 6 November 2017.

Dominic Cummings is wrong: MPs can stop ‘no deal’

That was the headline on a rebuttal by InFacts, an organisation set up to counter the lies put out by the master-minds of the Brexit campaigns and their more radical supporters. The logic is appealing, but it does rely on a back-stop of Her Majesty being pro-active in a way which has not been seen since George V blocked the UK's offering asylum to his Romanov cousins.

More importantly, if the Commons wishes to avoid involving Buckingham Palace in a constitutional crisis, it must "pass legislation forcing Johnson to ask for extra time to hold a referendum – and only turn to a no-confidence vote if that fails. If the legislation route works, Cummings’ whole scheme falls apart". However, the Commons has yet shown no sign of intestinal fortitude when it comes to avoiding Brexit as the farcical votes in March, before the last "absolute" deadline, showed.

There is a seductive school of thought that it is not the end of the UK economy if we are forced to leave on 31st October, because it is possible under EU rules to apply to re-join. This idea is probably encouraged by Brexiteers who are well aware that the terms for a new nation joining the EU will be a political anathema. There would be no opt-outs and we might well have to accept the euro and Schengen. Even if a UK government did make the application, it is virtually certain that France at least would block our readmission. (Acceptance of a new member requires unanimity.)

So Leave really does mean Leave. I am fairly confident that the Queen will not allow Johnson and his gang to do anything outright undemocratic but the Palace dare not go further and back one side against the other. It is up to our elected representatives to act decisively for what is best for the nations of the UK. I am not confident.

Just a bit of fun

As my regular reader will know, I treat opinion polls with scepticism. I am with the late Paddy Ashdown: the only poll that counts is actual ballots in actual ballot boxes. However, it seems that the staff of political parties do take them seriously and of course the press find opinion surveys a cheap alternative to real news. So Welsh Labour must be worried by Cardiff University's survey published at the end of last month. This shows Plaid Cymru with a clear lead in both constituency and regional list voting.

The bastardised version of Scotland's electoral system insisted upon by Labour at the time of devolution gives an undue advantage to the strongest party. This is because the element of top-up from the regional lists is not enough to compensate for the bias of first-past-the-post constituency polls. (In Scotland, of course, the balance was more carefully calculated.)  One can see why Labour was so happy with the electoral settlement. The party had been dominant in Wales for as long as their apparatchiks could remember or could foresee. There was no way the Tories, the traditional enemy in Westminster, could mount a serious challenge.

Now they are faced with the possibility of a challenge from a quarter unexpected in 1997. Could Welsh Labour find itself on the wrong end of a skewed electoral system as we Liberal Democrats and, dare I say it, Conservatives have for nearly a score of years? Perhaps it will jolt them into moving on the electoral proposals of the Richard Commission, namely electing all AMs on the same basis under a fair voting system.

Isabel "Chavela" Vargas Lizano

This commemoration of a remarkable woman should have appeared on her centenary on 17th April, but at least we can remember her on the date of her death. Chavela Vargas has been described variously as a pistol-packing, taboo-breaking, tequila drinking, cigar smoking, rabble rouser. I shall certainly pay closer attention when Frida next comes on to our screens.

South Riding

It took me a long time to catch up with Winifred Holtby's novel (though I had heard the occasional radio or TV adaptation) but the authoritative recommendations of Baroness Williams and Sarah Waters could not be resisted forever. The 530 plus pages have been a struggle at times. For me, there are also passages which are over-written and I believe that if Holtby had lived beyond the age of 37 her mature style would have been more restrained. All in all though, it was a rewarding experience.

The characters are beautifully drawn, even the minor players who merit just a chapter or less. There are no out-and-out villains (though Holtby is hard on one particular hypocrite) or heroes without flaws. Yorkshire at a particular time is well captured, and leaving aside the local peculiarities stands for England after the Great War, with its economic and class divides. And we have Shirley Williams' word for it that the novel is still the best mirror on local government in Britain.  Leaving aside the distinction between aldermen and ordinary councillors (something which was abolished only in 1972), this dialogue between an aspiring local journalist and the respected  Alderman Beddows (based in part on the author's own mother) seems familiar even today:

"What's going to happen about the new garden village?"

"I'm not on Town Planning. Ask Alderman Snaith."

"Which site do you favour, Mrs. Beddows?"

"My people want Leame Ferry Waste on the whole; but they aren't unreasonable. They'll put up with whatever's best for the Riding. It doesn't affect us much."

"And do you think Mr Snaith knows what's best for the Riding?"

She paused. She had sat down at the square table with its green baize cover, and was sorting pens in a little tray.

"I'll tell you what Snaith knows," she said, "and you can put this in your paper. He knows that we - all of us, aldermen, councillors, chairmen of committees, we come and go; but the permanent officials stay on. The experts - Mr Smithers, Mr Wytten, Mr Prizethorp and all the rest of them - they are the people who really matter, and in the end they mostly get their own way."

"Isn't that what you call bureaucracy, Mrs Beddows?"

"I don't know what you call it. It seems to me common sense. Those men spend their lives on the job of local government, and have little to gain from any particular vote."

The Final Test

Talking Pictures TV briefly brought into its schedule Terence Rattigan's film based on his own teleplay, his first written directly for the screen. The Final Test stands on its own as more than just a period piece, with a central performance by the underrated Jack Warner and with other stars, both of the screen and cricket field. Sadly, the film seems to have been taken out of the Talking Pictures repertory just as the Test series against the old enemy from Down Under is proceeding, but it will surely be back before too long.

There is, though, a case for a revised version. Two things have happened since the original. Firstly, the distinction between amateur and professional players has disappeared to be replaced by a new distinction between home-grown cricketers and talent imported from the Commonwealth. Not only that, but there are players born here whose immediate ancestry is Caribbean. I would see the latter-day Sam Palmer as a man of Jamaican heritage who qualified for England either by birth or by residence.

Secondly, homosexuality is no longer a criminal offence. The gay Rattigan lived long enough to see the decriminalisation of homosexuality but the Sexual Offences Act was fourteen years away when he wrote The Final Test. It seems to me that the choice of poetry, then the most effete of arts, as the source of conflict between father and son was significant. (Critics have drawn attention to a gay sub-text in many of Rattigan's plays.) A modern version, without being too crude, could be more explicit. Jamaican machismo would be a factor.

The only major criticism of the original Final Test that I can recall was that Jack Warner was rather too old for the part. True, fitness was not pursued so fanatically in the 1950s as now, but Warner was just too portly to be totally convincing. At least that is something that can be redressed in a 21st century version.

Normal Welsh Liberal service is resumed

That devastating break in liberal representation from Wales which occurred in the 2017 general election is at an end. From 1885 until the last general election, when Plaid Cymru won Ceredigion, Wales had always returned a Liberal or Liberal Democrat MP.  BBC describes Jane Dodds' retaking Brecon and Radnorshire as a "narrow" victory. A thousand votes is not narrow in Liberal Democrat terms, it seems to me, but surely the headline figure ought to be the twelve per cent swing from the Conservatives. The full figures (together with those from a couple of council by-elections) are on Liberal Democrat Voice.

There are two other aspects of the B&R win which should be highlighted. Firstly, Jane's success will bring the already healthy female representation on the Liberal Democrat benches up to 42%. With so many women candidates already declared in winnable seats (including Sheffield Hallam, which will produce a by-election in the autumn if a general election does not intervene) the future of a more gender-balanced parliamentary party seems assured.

Secondly, Jane is distinctly on the social liberal wing of the party. She will temper any drift to more conservative politics if, as seems likely, former Conservative MPs defect to the Liberal Democrats. She will carry her fight against the malign effects of Universal Credit, which she observed in her day job, on to the floor of the House and, one hopes, into a Select Committee.

That social conscience must have been a factor in winning back the Labour-inclined voters we lost in 2015 as a reaction to our going into coalition in Westminster. The Corbyn factor sealed Tom Davies' fate. The Labour candidate finished a remote fourth, surely the worst performance in this constituency since the modern Labour party was founded. Welsh Labour may have been consoling themselves that pathetic performances in recent local by-elections would be compensated for by a return to the fold in parliamentary elections. Mark Drakeford and his advisors must now be seriously concerned.

More ominous is the arithmetic on the atavistic side of politics. The sum of Conservative and Brexit votes in B&R was greater than the Liberal Democrats'. The European policies of both Brexit (which describes itself as a party, but is not constituted as such) and the Conservative Party are now practically indistinguishable. The Brexit leader is sure to point out to the current prime minister that an anti-EU alliance at the next  election, combining their two votes, will do better than Conservatism on its own. Conservative leaders have so far resisted such blandishments, which would involve Conservative candidates standing down in some seats, but Boris Johnson is a stranger to scruples and may well yield.

200 years of Herman Melville

Melville was born on the first of August 1819, . He is most famous for writing the classic of whaling with religious overtones, Moby-Dick. He is also responsible for the extraordinary short story, Bartleby the Scrivener, which seems to prefigure so much twentieth century fiction, and the posthumously-published Billy Budd.