2012/01/31 23:45
In Scotland we use different voting systems for every single election – First-past-the-post for Westminster, AMS for the Scottish Parliament, STV for Scottish council elections, and d'Hondt for the elections for the European Parliament.I personally prefer d'Hondt and don't mind AMS, but I really don't like STV (the Single Transferable Vote).On paper it's a beautiful system. As Wikipedia puts it,...
2012/01/27 12:00
The Telegraph are reporting today that the Westminster government after a Yes vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum will be willing to pay any price to keep Coulport, the navy base where the submarines are loaded with nuclear missiles:MoD insiders believe that, after an independence vote, ministers in London would have no choice but to strike a deal with Scottish...
2012/02/04 22:52
It’s Phyllis’s birthday today, so I decided to cook her a few nice curries for dinner.
I have several nice curry cookbooks, but at the moment one of my favourites is Mridula Baljakar’s Real Balti Cookbook, which is very reliable.
I cooked an Amritsari Dhal (a vegetarian dish with both masoor and channa dhal), a Methi Chaman (a dish with paneer cheese, spinach and fenugreek leaves) and a Rista (lamb meatballs with cream and cashew nuts), served plainly with rice, chapatis and cucumber raita, and everybody seemed to be quite happy with that.
I discovered this cookbook when we visited Phyllis’s old uni friend Gillian last year, and it’s definitely worth buying.
2012/01/30 23:53
In an essay by Jurgen Klausenburger called "The morphologization and grammaticalization of French liason", he quotes Pierre Swiggers ("How to Order Eggs in French" in Folia Linguistica 1985) for the following data: On the same topic, this blog posting states the following:I had a professor when I was in college — a linguist from Normandy whose native language was French — who was very interested in and amused by such language quirks. He would come to France in the summer...
2012/01/29 15:27
I've decided to make a blog dedicated to Scottish Independence. It's called the Arc of Prosperity, and you can find it at arcofprosperity.org.To quote from the About page:On the 11th of August 2006, Alex Salmond said:Scotland can change to a better future and be part of northern Europe's arc of prosperity. We have three countries Ireland to our west,...
2012/01/26 17:57
The Scottish Government today launched its consultation on the Independence referendendum. (The Westminster crowd have also started one [PDF], but I have a feeling the former will be more important to participate in.) You don't need to live in Scotland...
2012/01/24 23:09
Although some nationalists have at times hand-waved the problem away, I have for a long time been convinced that an independent Scotland might find it hard to be allowed membership of the EU (even though refusing it would be ludicrous,...
Earlier stories »
Comments