Category: Found Online

A very clever Brexit that would leave everyone happy.

Recently Nicola Sturgeon announced that Scotland would re-vote on the matter of Scotland's independence, given the Brexit context that had not existed during prior vote, in 2014. The motivating factor is that the citizens of Scotland overwhelmingly wish to stay in the EU. I was reading in the comments section on a certain brilliant blog (slatestarcodex) that there is a problem here: the EU might not want to easily welcome a newly independent Scotland as a member – because certain countries, most notably Spain, don't want to encourage their own separatist regions (e.g. Catalonia). Thus a country like Spain might essentially block an independent Scotland's effort to join the EU.

So then this one commenter on that blog reports a very clever solution, which is attributed (without specificity) to Alex Salmond. If Westminster is amenable to a "friendly divorce", then there is a simple legal solution for a Scotland wishing to remain in the EU, and and "Rest-of-the-UK" wishing to exit. The solution not only solves Scotland's problem but also allows Westminster to avoid negotiating with the EU per Article 50.

This solution is, frankly, brilliant. England, Wales, and North Ireland can secede from the UK. The remaining "Rump UK" in this case is Scotland, which thus remains in the EU. England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are at that point de jure independent countries which Spain (among others) would, of course, not want to allow into the EU anyway (on principle, right?). So they're out, and they're out only on the terms of their secession from the UK – essentially an "internal matter" and EU terms don't need to be negotiated. Then they can reunite at their own convenience, the day after their secession from the UK. Then everyone can just "coincidentally" rename their countries, and the problem is solved.

Corporations do things like this all the time. I once worked at a corporation that underwent a "reverse merger," which seems conceptually similar in some ways. So why can't countries?

[daily log: walking, 7km]

I'm actually pretty sure that the new Space Emperor's reference to an incident (presumably "terrorist incident") in Sweden last week was just a syntactic mutilation such as routinely emerges from his mouth, rather than any kind of premeditated prevarication.

Nevertheless, the media reaction has been entertaining. One thing I ran across, that was amusing, was this cartoon originally posted at a site called The Postillon (although the cartoon predates the reference made to Sweden at the news conference):

I wonder if the numbers of pieces listed (e.g. 3,772,896 connector screws) is accurate, or if the cartoonist just made the numbers up. 

[daily log: walkig, 7km]

Urban planning has always fascinated me. I think if I'd felt more confident and more motivated during my college years, I'd have pursued that as a career.

Perhaps it can be attributed to my somewhat countercultural background, but I have always harbored a great deal of skepticism about what might be termed the US's "typical suburban development model." Recently I ran across a rather stunning indictment of this development model, concluding that not only does it produce fragmented and/or insular communities and excessive energy consumption, but it also is, in strictly financial terms, something like a publicly-sponsored pyramid scheme and utterly unsustainable. 

[daily log: walking, 5km]