Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

"Normally, the inability for Parliament to act in this situation would result in an election has been the historical solution."

Elections have been known to give rise directly to the current situation*, namely a Parliament without an overall majority. In those circumstances an immediate further election is the last resort; normally there's an attempt to form a coalition or possibly a temporary government of national unity.

In the present circumstance May and BoJo have attempted to run down the clock to one of other Brexit that MPs as a whole either don't support for personal reasons or think is against the long term interests of the nation. That has produced a crisis situation in which case an election is untenable. The timing of it would present the incoming government with a dog's breakfast for the management of which he or she would be responsible.

* In fact the last election did just that. May only got a majority with the aid of DUP. The change since than is that what with MPs deciding to follow their consciences and what they considered to be the best interests of their country to change parties and BoJo chucking more out of "his" party, even that majority has gone.

"The courts are the wrong place to be doing this"

What was the "this" you had in mind?

If you were thinking about Brexit the court explicitly rules that out as being up for consideration:

1. It is important to emphasise that the issue in these appeals is not when and on

what terms the United Kingdom is to leave the European Union.

Take a good look at that number. 1. It's the very first thing the court has to say in the judgement.

Re: Remain MPs all broke the law and should all be in prison anyway.

"David Cameron made it law that the Referendum would be a legally binding vote and that Parliament COULD NOT do anything to interfere with the result being carried through."

Just because you can find numpties to believe that an Farcebook and Twatter you shouldn't believe you can get away with bollocks like that here.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

"Yes, the Brexit rabblerousers are already spinning this as being the judiciary being against Brexit and other such b*llocks."

Actually, to his credit (and this must be the only time I've said such a thing) even Farage has said "The calling of a Queen's Speech and prorogation is the worst political decision ever."

"I think it's reasonable to expect the UK to have left the EU before the end of this Parliament.

Don't you?"

No. I think it's up to MPs to take an informed view of what's in the best long term interests of the country, including their constituents and do that, irrespective of what their constituents want at the time, especially in respect of something that might prove difficult to reverse. To follow a referendum that binds future generations should require a much larger majority than it got and it should be explicitly binding.

However I suspect that the only way to put this issue to bed will be to leave, discover the consequences, and get back in with the best terms then available (which will probably be less agreeable to most of us than those we have now). That might not be reasonable but it would at least end the arguments.

"British politicians were in fact part of the EU's governing bodies"

And the refuseniks who got themselves elected as MEPs weren't going to be much help in reforming anything except their own bank accounts.

"What if Boris and the other idiots run an election campaign with a mandate to shackle them?"

With the fixed term Parliament Act he can't have an election now without their permission.

OTOH Parliament can pass a vote of no confidence in him and agree to get behind someone else to avoid an election right now. There are enough grown-ups still in the room, especially those who BoJo expelled from the Conservatives, to provide such a person.

Re: IANL but...

"I'd be surprised if the Speaker can legally act on behalf of the Executive."

No but AFAIK he can act on behalf of Parliament. In fact, only on behalf of Parliament.

"I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me" was how one Speaker put it at another time when the sovereignty of Parliament was under attack.

"Which is why they didn't vote to overturn the prorogation"

Not within Parliament's power. They can vote on a recess but not on proroguing.

"or to have an election"

Which would have presented BoJo with a fait accompli on a no deal Brexit and, as an additional benefit to him, left someone else to deal with the consequences. Not even Corbyn was going to fall for that.

They had time for one thing within their power. They chose to ban no deal.

Probably about the only way to minimise it would be leave on the sparsest of no-deals. Then, once we've got back in, it would al be over apart from the recriminations against those who can't persuade the rest that they were really in favour of remain all along.

"Always struck me as an odd and unattractive option."

But probably the next best alternative to staying in.

"My point was simply that the MPs and the "political class" / "establishment" / whatever term you want to use are vastly more pro-EU than the electorate."

I'm not sure it's a matter of being pro-EU on a matter of principle but on informed consideration of the economic well-being of the country as a whole and being determined to do what's best for that well-being in the long term.

"And that in these specific circumstances that's helped create this log-jam."

Quite so.

I'd rather MPs didn't simply follow their constituencies but acted intelligently, considered the long term welfare of the nation and, if need be, make explanation and even give leadership to their constituencies.

@TRT

I'd add to you list of incompetencies a lack of ability, or perhaps knowledge of, such steps as impact assessments, feasibility studies and go/no go decisions in advance of proceeding with a major project.

Sadly that's been BAU for generations of British governments.

"A few years ago, the appeal would have been heard in the House of Lords, which would have been interesting."

Not really different. The name and venue might have changed. But these are just the current law lords who would otherwise have sat in the name of the HoL. A case going to the Lords wasn't dealt with by the whole House, just by the senior members of the judiciary.

"No-one knows what some bits of legislation mean in practice until they're tested in court."

I'm not sure it even goes that far in this case. It was simply a matter of BoJo thinking he could get away with it. Nothing very different to a young lad being caught scrumping but in this case it needed to go further up the legal food chain before he got the telling off he deserved.

Re: Surprising?

"the newish (less than 20 yo?) UK Supreme court "

Newish? It's just the continuation of the HoL sitting as a court. They now have their own building instead of having to put up in some room in Westminster Palace. Its legitimacy as a forum descends directly from the medieval royal court.

"Rarely a good thing to tell judges what they can and cannot do"

When a case goes to appeal the issue is usually a point of law and the role of counsel is to present arguments about what legal principles the lower courts should have applied. In this case one of the issues was about the rights of courts over a particular aspect of prerogative. It would be one where the court itself expected such arguments to be presented. It's a subtle difference between telling the court and presenting an argument. If you read the judgement it discusses areas of prerogative where the court can and can't intervene.

Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

"The courts have been granting themselves greater and greater political power."

Could you explain this in greater detail whilst allowing for the reality of this judgement: that it (a) excluded any consideration of the purpose of the advice to prorogue, of of the rights and wrongs of Brexit or of the party in government and (b) simply confirmed the sovereignty of Parliament which has been the cornerstone of the British constitution for several centuries.

Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

"or change the constitution itself (in other countries that do have a written one)."

This judgement is now part of our constitution.

Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

Are they Brits unaware of the constitional law of their country? Or foreign folk who haven't been briefed properly? Am I just a grumpy sod?

Probably all three but I'll keep you company on the last of them.

Re: Regardless of which side of the fence you are on.

The case before the court was that it was the PM overruling Parliament. So your "unelected judges" have prevented that "unelected PM" from doing that. In your, and presumably his, terms that's an outstandingly bad case to make to the people.

Re: Ignorantia juris non excusat

You really should treat the matter more seriously.

Brilliant. Have an upvote.

Re: Damning...

"Presumably Bojo will resign before he Parliament decides to hold him in the contempt which he deserves."

Should but not necessarily will. Parliament has a couple of options if he doesn't. On would be a vote of confidence, the other is to charge him with contempt of Parliament. In the latter case I wonder if that results of him being kicked out of his seat as well as out of No 10. Presumably Cummings would also be in their sights.

"Faecal Transplants?"

Just hope the waiter washes his hands thoroughly if you don't want one. And above all, hope he doesn't dry them on a towel someone else has used. (Long-ago bacteriology practical included dabbing the lab towel onto an agar plate.)

Re: For 2025 read 2075

"I have no idea who's responsibility this is"

In practice, the customer I'd guess.

"Unlike the digital TV switchover, people aren't going to buy new phones/sockets and do it themselves."

There may be a built in assumption that people will be expected to buy new phones.

Re: Bye Bye Fax

The other weekend there was article in the Times magazine about Deep Mind in the NHS. The reporter was being shown round a participating hospital where there was fax (sneer), pager (sneer) and a PC system. The PCs would regularly crash which might explain why these sneered at old technologies were still in use.

The Deep Mind bit was picking up creatine levels from haematology and sending an alert to a nephrologist. To send the alert they were using a purpose written app for the nephrologists' phones. IOW they were reinventing the pager (sneer) for the phone but only for one of the many possible alerts that might need to be sent out.

I suppose that as this magic bullet gets extended to other conditions for which an alert might be needed we'll get Matt Hanckock's wet dream: a multitude of HNS apps for the doctors' phones. Eventually someone might realise the toll taken on the performance of the phone and come up with an all purpose alert app. They could call it Pager.

Re: About time.

" If you wanted to clone Office you can, but that’s a really big job."

Just as well somebody's done it. I use one of those clones every day.

"Germany and the EU would be better off using their influence (carrot and stick) to shape MS to their needs."

Much easier and cheaper to drop some Euros to the Document Foundation if they need something specific that's not already in there.

Re: About time.

It might be worth your reading up why, after WWII, it was decided that international cooperation in Europe was a good thing.

Re: "but they tend to retain support for legacy stuff"

Actually, until now Microsoft retained support for "legacy stuff" far more than open source.

The issue with Microsoft was the other way around. By periodically updating the format it meant your "legacy" version of Office couldn't open the .doc or whatever file someone sent from their more recent version so you had to buy the new as well.

The open approach is to set the file format as a standard and stick to it so our old version of the S/W will open and use a file written by the latest version or even from some other application using the same standard. Microsoft got its arm twisted to use an open standard so they got their own, reportedly of dubious clarity.

he business case has to should include the contingencies for the cloud being inaccessible, just like an 'in-house' plan business continuity by having multiple data centres, mirrored server instances etc etc

FTFY

If the driver is cost will those contingencies be included. Maybe, but very likely only after the need for them has been cogently demonstrated by an outage.

Re: Do you want to be held hostage by Microsoft?

In any case big distros ship with a fairly full set of applications so the patch info will be mostly "everything". At best it might tell them about Gnome vs KDE vs XFCE vs whatever else.

Re: Yep

They can come back but it would require some effort to rebuild the organisation. Effort that the C-suite would be unwilling and/or unable to exert.