h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Caulkheads

You mean that we'll actually have the roads repaired? (They're not suffering from minor mamby-pamby potholes, but coastal erosion has meant that the council cannot afford to repair one of the Island's major roads due to major land slippage).

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Will the Wightians want possible shale gas/oil deposits exploited considering that the main trade of the Island is tourism?

'Wightian'...? People born on the Isle of Wight are Caulkheads!

This particular Caulkhead does not - and considering the reaction against a proposed windturbine, I wouldn't expect the idea to be favourably received.

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Wightians Wightese? Wighters? Wightsmen?

I think the phrase you are looking for is Caulkheads

Wightipharians

Only had an MP since 1584 huh?

Wow, that bitterness will never die

"Wightians Wightese? Wighters? Wightsmen? I think the phrase you are looking for is Caulkheads" [Bald Bloke]

Are there many leftists on Wight?

As for tourism, I would be happy to take up any offers of an expense-paid vacation there to test the impact of shale exploration.

...reminescent of an issue from the American War of Indepedance. "taxation without representation"...

The critical tax issues that excited those American protests actually originated with Bahamian sugar planters who'd hit on the device of buying up depopulated election districts in England with a view to turning Parliamentary policy to their advantage.

In one case, I believe, there were only two qualified voters on the ground in the given district.

Parliamentary reform came eventually with John Stuart Mills reforms of the electoral process in the mid-19th century.

If the Mills reforms had been in place from the end of of the French and Indian War (American theater) and the Jacobite Insurrection (British Isles theater), the American revolution might never have happened at all.




Being an American, its natural for me to think in terms of American models, which are not necessarily apt or pertinent to the British Isles situation.




The Ametican congress was created as a bicameral institution with a view to reconciling opposing needs with respect to representation for the states vs representation for the populace, respectively in the Senate, which represents the States themselves, all of them equally, irrespective of size, and is primarily charged also with foreign policy, ratification of treaties requiring a majority of the Senate vote, while tax issues must originate in the House of Represenatives and be ratified by both houses before they become law.

The number of Representatives allowed per state is regulary readjusted according to the population of the respective states so that it is proportional to population, congressional election districts being redrawn after every census.

The process is susceptible to abuses, notably, 'Gerrymandering', in which the districts are redrawn to afford one political party an advantage by means of breaking up the constituency of the opposing party into minority populations within the congressional districts, where they'll be outnumbered by the party doing the redistricting.

Redistricting is undertaken at the level of the State, according to the number of Representative seats assigned them by Congress.

Federal territories that are not part of any state, for example, The Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Samoa and Guam, do not vote in national elections, but are allowed their own local government and a non-voting delegate to congress, who can propose legislation.

British Isles regionalism is well and long established, but much more organic than that of the American system.

In the American system, local regional differences below the level of the state are ignored for the purpose of redistricting for the national House of Representatives, but remain the same over time at the city and county levels under the state goverment, with usually a split between two houses corresponding to the Senate and the House of Representatives, representing regions and population respectively.

All the states and territories maintain their own military and policing agencies, subject to the national government.

With the British Isles, Parliament corresponds most closely to the American House of Representatives, but is charged with foreign policy responsibilities that in the USA would be reserved to the Senate.

Its tempting to think the House of Lords analogous to the American Senate, but in fact, it corresponds more closely to the American Supreme Court, a separate branch of the government from the legislative and administrative branches.

Regions like England, Scotland, Wales and Northen Ireland correspond most closely to American states, counties and shires to counties (in Louisiana, parishes) below the level of states.

There's also a subcultural division in England itself between Anglo-Saxon (and Celtic) southern England and the northern England regions which before the Norman conquest were the Danelaw.

There was an effort to develop a sense of regionalism and rivalry on those lines back in 2005, which I personally have to view as questionable, since it was being promoted by a Liberty Lobby* sponsored neo-Nazi organization out of the USA.

Some major cities, like New York City and Los Angeles, are both cities and counties for the purposes of local self government under the state.




One cannot emphasize strongly enough that British local government is older and more organic than American government with considerable local rights and prerogatives issue long established of kinds that don't occur in American law.




*The Liberty Lobby, founded by an American traitor, Francis Parker Yockey, who was dishonorably discharged from the US Army over using his position as a trial prosecutor at the post WW II Nuremberg war crimes tribunals to sabotage prosecution efforts, made it on to the American subversive organizations list over discovery that Yockey, and his brother in law, Curtis Dall, were involved in a plot to foment a 'Revolt of the Colonels' style military coup des etat in the USA.

Yockey died of cyanide poisoning while awaiting trial on passport violations, while the FBI investigation was still ongoing, Dall was compelled to resign his commission as a US Army Colonel.

When Eisenhower won in the 1952 elections, the Liberty Lobby tabled its plans for a military coup des etat and went to a more subversive approach under Willis A. Carto (originally 'Carteaux'), Francis Patker Yockey's successor.

Besides being implicated in the Greek and Argentine revolts of the Colonels, more recently they became a campaign issue in Ronald Reagan's campaign for his first term as American President over discovery that one of his selections for a cabinet post was a member of the Liberty Lobby.

I personally viewed the controversy as analogous to Magaret Thatcher's somewhat later histrionics over Anthony Blunt in connection of his involvement in the background of the Cambridge Four controversy and counter-productive.

Of more recent and current Liberty Lobby activity, they've been promoting separatist politics not only in the British Isles, but also Canada and the USA, and under Yockey's 'Varangian' organisation, in the post cold war rise in National Socialism in the territories of the former USSR.

When the Quebec separatists got into power, shortly after adoption of the NAFTA treaty, the outgoing chief of Canadian National Security took home some documents and the links of the incoming Quebec separatist regime to ODESSA (the post WW IIorganisation of Hitler's SS) through the 'Heritage Foundation', a Liberty Lobby organ.

The Liberty Lobby is also behind the rather questionable economic strength ratings figuring in Quebec, Scottish and California separatist politics, appealed to by California Governor Gray Davis (D) in his last campaign.

~ WOW ~ So glad to learn all that. Never heard of Francis Yockey,etc and the liberty Lobby. i think I have read stuff put out by the Heritage Foundation. Glad to know what box to put them in now when I read their stuff. Thanks. . .. ... . .. ...

...one needs to be careful about that tag, "The Heritage Foundation", there are some legitimate orvanizations that call themselves that...

OH, OK ~ ~ ~