The real tragedy is that even the jam man has sold out to the buisness-burqa lobby.

Mantises are so badass

their brains are 100% dedicated to getting in scraps and i admire that pic.twitter.com/Ks4uCxkj4b

— Stirg (@Carzonfye) 22. September 2019

US version of IX would be Article I, §6, ¶1 --which also positions Congress "above the law".

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

And while you're at it with the DIY comparative politics study, check Article 1, § 3 before Miss Nancy opens her ignorant, myopic, senile vision of "constitutional norms" again.

The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.

The apple does not fall far from the tree.

in a legible format, published by THE PRIME MINISTER AND ADVOCATE GENERAL FOR SCOTLAND'S FURTHER SUBMISSIONS ON RELIEF, full text. 8 pp.

uh oh. Counsel rolled up the not-enumerated article "IX of the Bill of Rights [Cherry/Auth/43/MS2893]" (1688) and fanned the SCOTUK with it: "does not define the term 'proceedings in Parliament'" such as reading of the Commission in parliament on behalf of infirm HRM.

That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament;

--

1. citing the relevant part in Cherry QC briefing, I surmise; additional citations to Law Lords and SCOTUK opinions
   
2. std.-Eng. transcription of 17th cen. puritan verse, two declarations, one "article"/bullet point
   
3. commentary on defects in constitutional monarchy, Britain's unwritten constitution , emphasizing the unwritten parts, namely not The Parliament Acts et seq.:
   

The Monarchy is one of the three components of Parliament (shorthand for the Queen-in-Parliament) along with Commons and Lords. In legal theory, the Queen has absolute and judicially unchallengeable [!] power to refuse her assent to a Bill passed by the two Houses of Parliament. However, convention dictates the precise opposite and in practice she automatically gives her assent to any government Bill that has been duly passed and agreed by Parliament. Another important convention is that government ministers must have a seat in Parliament (and, in the case of the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, specifically in the House of Commons) in order to hold office. This is a vital aspect of what is known as the 'Westminster system of parliamentary government', providing a direct form of executive responsibility and accountability to the legislature.

--

The forgotten man

Cameron saw the opportunity to demand guarantees for the UK's financial sector only to pump out Eurosceptic rage when EU leaders told him where to go.

"You have missed a great opportunity to be quiet," was Nikolas Sarkozy's retort to Cameron.

Several years later, after being presented with a bill for several billion euros as a result of an adjustment to the EU budget remissions, the then Prime Minister turned puce with anger. And that was before his cack-handed attempts to renegotiate the UK's membership status.

< pick teeth, suck vigorously >
archived in the shade of T. May
"Cameron veto", 2011
"Special Enterprise Zones" for All, 2017-2018
it just might confuse Arlene and Sammy!
The UK to remain within a reformed EU?

Europe switched to 12-hour clock or is that a S. Bannon tell?

walp, The party conferences are on--as predicted by Voldemort and his dotty puppet Regina-- despite rebellion against prorogation ending 14 Oct 2019 until further notice. Jo Maugham QC has ventured Tue, 24 Sep.

Labour is now, 22-25 Sep, while SCOTUK is "poised to rule against Boris Johnson, according to the Guardian. First draw may well be fortunate for Labour to sweep the crazy bits under the rug before parliament returns to session and super critical constitutional crisis management--such as CRAFTING party platform for the poll as yet scheduled on or before expiry of the latest "A.50(3) extension period," 11.00pm on 31 January 2020.

Corbyn on collision course with Labour members over Brexit, according to Guardian

Before a crucial vote on Monday on whether the party should explicitly back remain in any election, Labour's autumn conference descended into factional rows over its Brexit policy, with rebellious MPs privately threatening another leadership challenge.

Corbyn moved to stamp his authority on Labour's Brexit position by proposing a delay to deciding how the party should campaign at a second referendum [?].

Mind the pronouns

When asked if it was in Britain's long-term interests to remain in the EU, the Labour leader suggested a Labour Brexit deal could be preferable in some circumstances: "It depends on the agreement you have with the European Union outside."

The new position caused a fresh revolt among several shadow ministers and pro-remain activists, adding to the febrile mood at the Brighton conference following an abortive attempt by Jon Lansman, the Momentum chair, to abolish Tom Watson's job as deputy leader and the resignation of Corbyn's key policy aide, Andrew Fisher.

wut

Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, also made clear her unhappiness with the position, saying Labour risked getting stuck in a "crusher" between leave and remain with the "walls coming in" unless it picks a side before an election. She said a new direction in favour of remain needed to be decided by activists at this conference, not in a future one after an election.

I've no idea whether UK law or "convention" would accommodate a four-day session with 5-day recess for the minority "government" conference. If no, parliament will have recovered 12 days nearly lost to MPs seeking "a deal" because of perfidious prorogation. Give us a clue.

The Conservative Party ho-down is scheduled 29 Sep-3 Oct, and its schedule of events for 100 or so conniving bastids is rich with swag and public frauds.

One advantage of solar arrays in desert areas is that they provide micro-climates that can be helpful. In the Mojave they have been helpful to conservation of desert tortoises.

Lots of possibilities.  Little general understanding of them.

My favorites are the Vietnam Vet hats worn by 40 year olds. Because they were -20 years old when they were in the army.

This is fucking savage pic.twitter.com/pddnKMKvKX

— Unlearning Economics (@UnlearningEcon) September 7, 2019

NEW! deck chairs

Among the proposals in the book are that employees should have 50% of the seats on company boards; that the voting power of even the largest shareholders should be capped at 10%; much higher taxes on property, rising to 90% for the largest estates; a lump sum capital allocation of €120,000 (just over £107,000) to everyone when they reach 25; and an individualised carbon tax calculated by a personalised card that would track each person's contribution to global heating.

In an interview with the French weekly news magazine L'Obs, Piketty made no apologies for the impact his ideas would have on the stock market. He said: "[Yes], it will also affect the price of real estate that is crazy in Paris, and it will allow new social groups to become owners and shareholders."

Thomas Piketty's new book, Capital and Ideology, contains more than 160 graphs and about 10 tables

Style news: Trump's overly-long neckties have taken the establishment by storm. BoJo was sporting a tie down to his crotch in Belgium recently, and Corbyn has a nice one today. It is pathetic.

...under the current constitution. Maybe the "if only the Queen would step in and settle this problem that the politicians can't manage" sentiment will lead to an upwards increment in her power under a new constitution...

Is it better to be Queen, titular leader of a smallish country, but who has all sorts of monarchical perks and wealth and news coverage and PR (e.g., the Downton Abbey movie, for crying out loud), or is it better to be the Queen, relic of a now-useless monarchy, gradually diminishing in importance under EU democracy?

If there is actually a volcano-level problem with the UK's constitution (what was it when there were actual riots in the streets of London, and murdered heirs, and dukes duking it out; asteroid-level???), maybe it is better to be Queen of the UK with a hope of regaining some limited executive power under a reworked constitution...

Free transportation seems reasonable. Freedom of movement in an agrarian society where everybody lives in villages with high streets only a couple of hundred meters long is one thing, because few people bother to go to Paris or London. But when it's three km from your urban apartment to the nearest grocery store...

In benighted Colorado Springs, an unlimited monthly bus pass costs $63 ($31 for youth, disabled, elderly), which is pretty close to free. The limitation is the poor coverage of the routes. It's ok if you live in the older sections of town, but in the far-flung new suburbs, forget it.

For example, the terminus of Route 9 is the local university. The nearby neighborhood was built in the 1950s. The massive population growth since 1960 is almost entirely in neighborhoods beyond that radius from downtown. Few buses out there.

I can't find a trace of an invitation in April, but in late July-August for early September. Here are a couple of press snips on that:

As per tradition, the monarch extends an invitation to the Prime Minister and their spouse each year to spend a few days each summer at Balmoral.

Prime Ministers and their partners traditionally visit the Queen at her Highlands estate in late summer, typically in the first week of September before the Commons returns after recess. It is believed Mr Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds will be no different.

The big question for the press being Ms Symonds is not married to Mr Johnson, who is married to another woman.

But it seems all PMs are invited to Balmoral towards the end of the summer hols. Even Corbyn would be (really? Why not, at least he's married to Mrs Corbyn, even if she's his third wife...).

From New York to Mumbai, climate protesters flooded the streets in cities around the globe, marching out of their schools, homes and workplaces to demand action on climate change https://t.co/lpTJjCsjKr pic.twitter.com/C2qQoP9IvG

— CNN (@CNN) September 20, 2019

I would be wary of reading this either way, and I think the Guardian is being recklessly optimistic.

This won't be decided on the merits, and in spite of appearances there are no reliable tells from the bench.

It will be decided in behind-the-scenes discussions which will never be made public. We can assume Crown representatives will have a say.

It turns out that Johnson - with current plus-one - was invited to stay with the Queen at Balmoral in April.

I don't find that an encouraging omen.

No One Could Have Predicted.

My conclusion from reading the court coverage is that it is highly likely that the court will rule against the government. As for a constitutional volcanic eruption, that is what the UK has been having for the last month anyway.

Wales voted for Brexit, but was it the Welsh?

The question of why Wales voted to leave the European Union can in large part be answered by the number of English retired people who have moved across the border, new research has found.

Despite being one of the biggest beneficiaries of EU funding, Wales voted leave by a majority of 52% to 48% in the 2016 referendum - a result that took some analysts by surprise.

However, work by Danny Dorling, professor of geography at Oxford, found that the result could in part be attributed to the influence of English voters.

"If you look at the more genuinely Welsh areas, especially the Welsh-speaking ones, they did not want to leave the EU," Dorling told the Sunday Times. "Wales was made to look like a Brexit-supporting nation by its English settlers."

Around 21% (650,000) of people living in Wales were born in England, with nearly a quarter aged over 65, and the country voted for Brexit by a majority of just 82,000.

Normally, one would expect the Supreme Court to rubberstamp the government's wishes. But:

There is a growing belief in the legal community that the court will find against the government when it hands down its momentous verdict on Johnson's decision to prorogue parliament.

The prospect of the court finding against the prime minister has left the UK heading towards a "constitutional eruption of volcanic proportions", according to another senior legal figure who asked not to be named. He said he also believed the case would go against the government.

Before the case, few thought the court would determine that Johnson's advice to the Queen to suspend parliament for five weeks would be found unlawful. But over the course of the three-day hearing opinion has dramatically shifted.

(...)

 the judges spent a large portion of their time exploring possible remedies - what they might determine must happen if they find against the prime minister. In other cases, judges seldom devote effort to discussing remedies if they are not seriously considering finding in favour of the complainant, legal sources say.

Bullshit and trolling may allow the executive to take a wrecking ball to "the norms of governance", but the SC seems to have been highly unimpressed by the government's feeble arguments in this case.

Boris may still brazen it out. Maybe not.

I am reminded of another story by a telanovela premiering on Netflix this past week, "Unbelievable." In the new story two female detectives, after doggedly pursuing evidence of serial rapist, vindicate a young girl's report of being raped. I not going to watch this. The story I heard before, also "based on a true story," conveys an uncanny similar plot by subversive moral agents. At the time I was thoroughly disgusted by #MeToo dangerous, simple-minded misanthropy.

The podcast story is Anatomy of Doubt. The prologue to the interviews gingerly profiles the covert antagonist of a sex crime.

IRA GLASS, EXEC. PRODUCER: ... This was back in August, 2008, a woman named Shannon was sitting on her balcony, Seattle suburb, when she got the phone call. It was from an eighteen-year-old she knew, named Marie. She told her, she'd been woken up at night by a stranger who raped her.
SHANNON: And I asked her, 'Are you OK?' And she said, you know, she was OK, and that she was going to be staying, I think, with a friend that night. And when my husband got home I told him what had happened. But I said, 'I don't know that it happened.' There's something about how she said it that just made me question that she'd actually been raped. It was the tone of her voice. There was just no emotion. It was just like she was telling me that she'd made a sandwich. 'I just made myself a chicken sandwich.'
GLASS: Shannon felt awful doubting Marie. She'd known Marie for years. Marie was a foster child who had stayed with Shannon and her husband very briefly, just a couple weeks when she was younger, and they all hit it off. And she stayed close with Marie even when Marie went to live in another foster home. They'd hang out together, cook together. They gave up carbs together for a few weeks. Shannon loved Marie. She saw herself in Marie. They were alike in lots of ways. That's actually part of her doubt. Marie was emotional. She did cry like Shannon.
SHANNON: If I had been raped, I would have been hysterical. I would have been crying, really upset, 'cause I was sexually abused as a child, and I was sexually assaulted as an adult, and I have never told anyone for years and years. And when I did tell someone, I was hysterical, emotionally crying and shamed.
GLASS: But Shannon was wrong about Marie. Marie had been raped. It was proven later beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As the tale unfolds on discovers how Shannon sabotaged Marie's testimony and police searches for the perp. I leave you to work out what compelled Shannon to confess to producers of a radio show and millions of strangers...since "we" are all so good at reading minds these days.

Leading renewable energy show returns with dedicated farm diversification advice
"Ireland has committed to producing at least 16% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 and farmers are looking for land use alternatives and to benefit from green initiatives."
Clock ticking for sheep farmers to avail of EID tag subsidy
Gee, whatever will they do with EID tags?
Beef factory protests end in six counties

Protesters outside beef factories in Cork, Waterford, Tipperary, Clare, Kilkenny and Mayo have left the picket in the last few hours. Farmers at ABP Cahir, Co Tipperary, stood down at 8pm on Friday evening after a day of intense discussion among themselves and with fellow protesters in Munster.

Alison De Vere Hunt, who was among the protesters at Cahir before being selected to represent them as part of the Independent Farmers of Ireland group, read a statement at the gates of ABP.In it, she thanked members of the public and the farming community for their support.

"We acknowledge and graciously thank all our fellow farmers who respectfully declined to pass our picket line, even though we are all acutely aware of the financial effect it may have had on them," she said.

"fight me" is the traditional Philly greeting, this guy is legit

under the radar

French city of Dunkirk tests out free transport - and it works,31 Aug

The study will officially be released on 11 September, but some of its initial findings have already been published. They show that ridership has spiked over the last year, more than doubling on weekends and increasing by around 60 percent during the week.
[...]
Meanwhile, several cities closer to Dunkirk's size are testing out their own versions. Among them is Calais, less than 50 kilometers down the coast. Mayor Natacha Bouchart, of the right-wing Républicains party, presented the measure as a response to the Yellow Vest movement's demands for greater purchasing power and better public services. It was voted for unanimously by the local government and will take effect in 2020, affecting 100,000 residents. As well as Calais, Chateauroux (population 44,000) and Niort (population 59,000) in central-western France have also made their buses free in recent years, although without necessarily improving the service.

French power output down 10% as over a third of workforce strikes, 19 Sep

EDF said about 23,700 workers in France had joined the industrial action by Thursday evening in one of the biggest strike turnouts at the company in eight years.
[...]
EDF workers are protesting plans steered by the French government to restructure and potentially split the heavily indebted group, with its nuclear power generation business set to one side.

French police fire tear gas, arrest yellow vest protesters, 21 Sep

More than 7,000 police officers were deployed in central Paris and authorities banned protests in an area including the presidential palace, government and parliament buildings, the Champs-Elysees, the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral.

French authorities said Saturday that around 1,000 "radical protesters" first marched with yellow vests and then joined a separate climate change rally, where they provoked clashes with police.
[...]
The climate march organizers urged protesters to go home to avoid violence in the city. French police in riot gear have arrested at least 150 demonstrators. ... The hard-left Workers' Force union is also holding a separate march against planned pension reforms.

oops

Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

The adjustment, which the world's biggest online retailer hasn't publicized, followed a yearslong battle between executives who run Amazon's retail businesses in Seattle and the company's search team, dubbed A9, in Palo Alto, Calif., which opposed the move, the people said.
[...]
Amazon said it has for many years considered long-term profitability and does look at the impact of it when deploying an algorithm. "We have not changed the criteria we use to rank search results to include profitability," said Amazon spokeswoman Angie Newman in an emailed statement.

uh oh

Amazon's lawyers rejected an initial proposal for how to add profit directly into the algorithm, saying it represented a change that could create trouble with antitrust regulators, one of the people familiar with the project said.
[...]
Amazon declined to say why A9 engineers considered the profitability emphasis to be a significant change to the algorithm, and it declined to discuss the inner workings of its algorithm or the internal discussions involving the algorithm, including the qualms of the company's lawyers.

standard silo operating procedure

The change could also boost brand-name products or third-party listings on the site that might be more profitable than Amazon's products. And the algorithm still also stresses longstanding metrics such as unit sales. The people who worked on the project said they didn't know how much the change has helped Amazon's own brands.

Back in May, this was satire.

John Bolton: `An Attack On Two Saudi Oil Tankers Is An Attack On All Americans'