Here is the flash card that ties Lukes (block 2) with Lijphart ( block 4)

Here is the infographic that applies Lijpharts model of liberal democracies to the UK and US democratic systems.

Onto Block4 of DD211 now, revision on Lijpharts models of liberal democracies.

Here is the first flash card, an overview on Lijpharts themes.

Here is the flash card for the Conservative ideology, what I made, ideologies on welfare not included...

Here is the ideology flash card infographic for block 3: Ideology.

Again, just making this was a great revision activity.

I did not do any blogging here in April.

After a long illness, caused by industrial illness, asbestos, my father passed away on the 5th of April. So many things to think about and do during the month of April.

We were fortunate to be supported by some wonderful NHS staff during my fathers final days, I thank them for that.

so I did not climb mount Snowdon on the 19th of April, my fathers cremation was on the 20th in Portsmouth, so I did not fancy the 5 hour drive each way under the circumstances.

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me, I will still be abseiling down the Spinaker Tower on the 28th of May. So I hope every one who has sponsored me is happy for the money to carry forward tot he abseil.

My final TMA was very difficult to write, the deadline was the 18th of April. So I did not score well, the essay was written under very difficult circumstances and to be honest, I really did not care much about the sure, under the circumstances.

So now I have done the ICMA and will finally finish with the exam on the 6th of June.

All my study is concluded, time to write my TMA 05.

At the end of the block we were encouraged to have a look through the library at relevant articles.

It was a little disheartening, the quality of the works presented is exceptional and here I am, trying to write 2000 words that are on a pathway to quality. It did scare me, I imagine what I will write is like the scrawling's on a 5 year old child, compared to the works in the library. 

It is hard to see how my work is going to progress to a level that is even 1/100th of the quality of the peer reviewed articles in the Library.

Perhaps that is because I tend towards analysis rather than any ground breaking insight when I write. It is a little frustrating when put into a wider context, I work full time and study part time, so I tend to study to make sure I can pass my module rather than having the time and freedom to properly explore and drill down on the material I am studying. There are just never enough hours in the day to do everything I would like to do.

I have about 8 hours of study left in block 5. The last block, block 6 is revision for the exam, so very much the home straight now. I will have to write my TMA5 a week early because of my fundraising excursion to climb mount Snowdon the following week.

So time to stop procrastinating and get on with wrapping block 5 up....

I want to thank you all for taking the time to visit my blog,

My views have just passed 1250, which is fantastic, and I appreciated you all taking the time to read my blog.

At the moment my audience grows by 45 people a day, I think that is amazing, I only took to using this blog properly a couple of months ago, before that I had put up 3 posts in 18 months, so it was a choice on my part to get more involved and use my blog to it's full potential.

I am enjoying the experience very much, I have partnered this blog with my blog site and set up a partnership page on Facebook to try and pull it all together.

So once again thank you all for taking the time to read my blog, and thank you very much to all the people who have taken the time to comment and challenge some of the things I have written.

Here are my other links, they have less posts than this blog, but some are a little different and contain a different set of comments....

Thank you

www.thespecialistgeneralist.net

and

https://www.facebook.com/thespecialistgeneralist/

From the www.thespecialistgeneralist.net

The Second Scottish referendum.

Or

You can supranational away our sovereignty, but you’ll never take our ‘freedom’.

So the Scottish had a independence referendum, 3 years ago. The result was a NO to independence by a wide 10% majority. Job done, message sent, VHS copies of Braveheart put away and a continuation of the continuum by the UK.

Described at the time by the lead Yes to independence campaigner and head of the Scottish nationalist party, Alex Salmond, as a ‘once in a generation’ vote. Well generations move very quickly in Scotland, 3 years later the generations who voted to remain in the union (baby boomers, generation X and millennials) look set to vote again. This time we might have a second ‘once in a generation’ vote in a second generation (baby boomers+3,  Generation X+3, millennials+3 and generation Y-those born in the first 18 months of generation Y only though, these 3 year generation gaps really do stop a real divergence of generational voting demographics!).

Perhaps Mr Salmond, meant something different when he spoke of generations. Perhaps it was a threat, do it now or you will never get to do it again. Perhaps that was the motivation behind his evaluating the referendum as a generational defining moment. This is a historic vote everyone, best do your best, and bring home the result us nationalists have been longing for. The hopes of the nationalist Salmond were dashed, but his replacement, Mrs Sturgeon (that fishy surname confluence might come back to haunt these two, later in this article-when I am looking at the economic claims made by them both and the SNP).

So what changed?

We had a Uk wide referendum about our membership of the European Union. In which we voted, by a 4% margin, to leave. Scotland voted by a 24% margin to remain- now that is a big margin-if the population of your slice of the Uk was bigger than 8.5%. This disparity of a 24% margin of 8.5 million Scottish voters is the basis for the calls for a second referendum. If the entire population of Scotland had voted remain, 100%, the result would have been the same, Leave, instead of a 4% margin, it would have been a 1% margin for the Leave campaign. So Scotland might not liked the result, but they could not have changed it, even with 100% return. So was that demographics over democracy or just the social contract in operation? Either way it is enough to warrant the new SNP calls for a second-once in a generation-independence referendum, because Scotland does not want the result of the EU referendum to stand for them.

So the whole UK voted to leave the EU, if you consider the whole UK to be a democratic union. Scotland does not seem to feel this way, they are unhappy with the democratic result of the union they are in, so wish to leave the union to restore their democratic membership of the E.U. So rather than leave the EU as part of the world’s 5^th largest economy ( and forecasted to become 4^th, over taking Germany, in the next 10 years) the Scottish would aim to leave the Union and re-join the E.U as an independent economy, an economy that is 43^rd largest in the world and 12^th largest in the E.U. and about the same size as Chile in a global perspective or Ireland in an E.U perspective.

Lots of claims were made by Nationalist’s in the first, once-in-a-generation independence referendum. Three years having passed some of the claims made the firs- time round can be viewed with better perspective if a second referendum comes about. Mr Salmond had claimed that the revenue from oil production would be, in the first year of independence, £ 8 billion pounds (UK pounds), where as the actual figure as audited by the national Audit office was £ 600 million (still in UK pounds). Mr Salmond was wrong by a factor of 1300%, or to put it another way 3% of the total Scottish GDP!. This is staggering, but then if you are going to tell a lie, try to make it a whooper. If a second referendum goes around then Ms Sturgeon will not be able to be quite so ‘liberal’ with the projected oil revenue’s. So if granted a second referendum, the SNP will not be asking to leave the union so it can be an independent country, it will need to leave the union so it can join the E.U asap because it will need the euro, the European central Bank and the subsidies that the E.U provides to survive as an independent economy, I do appreciate the this is an oxymoron, to be an independent economy whilst being locked to a currency union, central bank loans and a group wide economic policy, does not sound very independent at all. It all sounds a bit fishy really, not that Mr Salmond or Ms Sturgeon would recognise the pun.

So we will see, Mrs May has already refused a second referendum, the Scottish parliament is still discussing if they should even ask for one, and the SNP are still curtailing generations to 3 year spans and declaring everything that is not to their liking as ‘undemocratic’. So while the world turns, liberalism in western societies continues to spin, the SNP are sounding like a broken record (we have to presume a Rod Stewart record).

‘you will never take our freedom’ *

* Terms + Condition’s apply, the word freedom may be substituted for currency union, economic union, ECB debt and IMF influence over internal political policy or supranational influence of a state’s sovereignty by the E.U at any given time.

as part of my module we have to conduct a role play, to do with international law and human rights, interventionism, the UN and the sovereignty of the state. It is available on open learn and the link to the simulation is here.

http://www2.open.ac.uk/openlearn/savingsetrus/

It is interesting and disturbing at the same time, I have role played it twice and scored 78 % both times, taking different stances with both the UN and military action. I had 100% scores for both legal and political actions, but my humanitarian score was low.

It seems to be making the point that if you act or don't act, the humanitarian side of the scores is always lowest, if you go straight in with troops and aid you will score a high humanitarian score but fail on legal and political scores.

I invite you all to try the role play, please comment your scores here, I would like to know if there is a optimal path through the role play.

Here is the link for the starandcrescent.org where some more of my satire has been published.

as ever I am grateful to my editor, Sarah, for her wise words and patience.

http://www.starandcrescent.org.uk/2017/03/22/pompey-satire-trumps-cards-cronies-and-cat/

The views counter is now at 1066.

Which made me chuckle. For those of you who have worked in buildings with digi locks on doors to staff only areas, hands up how many had the button code,  1066?

Next mile stone will be 1648.