Interesting Links for 28-04-2015

[andrewducker]

• My friend is famous (for being stranded at Kathmandu Airport after being barred from boarding a relief flight).
  And they mis-title her - should be Dr!
  (tags: India earthquake Nepal )
• Ex-Nasa man to plant one billion trees a year using drones
  (tags: drone trees environment )
• Check your local candidate's views on digital surveillance
  (tags:

Comments

Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, a minority Government doesn’t need a “confidence and suppl

[drdoug]

Argh

Re: Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, a minority Government doesn’t need a “confidence and s

[andrewducker]

"Queen's Speech and Budget are confidence issues (as are any votes designated as such by the Government), and a Government that loses those votes has lost the confidence of the house and must resign."

Show me the law that says that the government resigns if this happens.

As far as I can tell, there is no such thing, on the law-books, as a confidence issue. Except in the context of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.

If you'd like to know what constitutional experts think then here's a preview from tomorrow's links:
http://www.headoflegal.com/2015/04/19/ed-can-enter-no-10-without-nicolas-keys/

[kalimac]

If there's no law on the books requiring the government to resign if it loses a vote of confidence now, there was no law saying it before 2011 either. But it was acknowledged as understood. So the only thing that's changed, as drdoug said, is the Fixed Term Act itself. Which really basically formalizes the situation under which a defeated government can call for a new election or let the opposition take over.

The only way the paradox could arise is if there's enough votes to defeat supply but not enough votes to pass a non-confidence motion. And if the latter only requires a majority - I thought it was something like 55%, but apparently not - I don't see how that combination would happen.

[andrewducker]

I don't see how it can either!

[fub]

That article about travel is wonderful. And it's true: some tourists don't appreciate that it's not some kind of theme park they're walking through -- it's other people's lives.

(My sister lives in Denmark, and even though there is a large overlap in cultural values between the Netherlands and Denmark, there are enough differences to be noticed. My mother used to call those things "weird", until my sister kept on correcting her. It's "different", but it's not weird: it works for the Danes, otherwise they would have done things differently!)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's a tricky line to walk between wanting to report the truth, and knowing when you're not actually doing anything good by doing so.

[don_fitch]

I've been A Plant Person since about 1957, and I'd expect the success of the drone tree-planting to be on the order of 1% survival in five years. The chance that I'll find out about the success is probably a fraction of 1%, assuming that I live that long. *sigh*

[drdoug]

Summary of a series of blog posts from an economist (Simon Wren-Lewis, Oxford University) with an interesting take on the macroeconomic situation in the UK since 2007/8:
http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/mediamacro-myths-summing-up.html

tl;dr The situation as presented widely in the media is not indisputably the case.

Who would've thought?

Relief For Nepal Earthquake Victims

[drdoug]

The Disasters Emergency Committee's Nepal Appeal might be a better place for donations. The DEC is pretty much all the UK charities who are well placed to respond to international disasters, with staff, equipment and experience. If you're a UK taxpayer, your donation is topped up with tax relief too, making it even more valuable.

No disrespect to the people behind the appeal you linked to - it's great they're trying to help, and they are doing more than I am - but they don't look like they are already well placed to get help to the people who desperately need it.