OU blog

Personal Blogs

Lukes and Lijphart

Visible to anyone in the world

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


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Creating the infographics for revision.

Visible to anyone in the world

I am really enjoying making the infographics for revision. For me it is a good revision tool, I am able to produce them without referring from the module materials, I only check what I have produce against the module materials to correct what I have produce, so I must be retaining the info quite well.

I am about half way through producing the flash cards, I have 2 more to do for block 4, Lijphart's model of liberal democracies. Then I will move onto 4 cards about globalisation.

That should mean I can take sound knowledge of 4 of the 5 blocks into the exam, and then once there, I can decide on the structure and themes of my short and long answers, depending on my confidence in producing short and long answers to each block themes.

Well that is the plan anyway.......

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Lijpharts model applied to the UK and US systems

Visible to anyone in the world

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


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Lijphart continued

Visible to anyone in the world

Slide 2 for block 4 lijphart flashcards


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Lijphart

Visible to anyone in the world

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

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


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Ideology of Liberalism

Visible to anyone in the world

Ideology of Liberalism. it has a spelling mistake, Liberals usE not liberals us the above. also i am stopping here with ideology, i would only ever carry it forward to the exam as a short answer. i don't have time to do each ideology in relation to welfare, nor make a infographic for feminism or environmentalism. I am moving onto Lipjhart and his modules of Liberal democracies next. so sorry Simon Banks van Zyl but it's 4 flash cards only for ideology.


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Ideology: Conservatism

Visible to anyone in the world

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


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Ideology: Socialism

Visible to anyone in the world

Here is the flash card for the ideology of socialism (excluding the ideology of welfare).


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Block 3 revision infographics

Visible to anyone in the world

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

Again, just making this was a great revision activity.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Block 2 revision infographics.

Visible to anyone in the world

those of you who follow my blog will know I am a big fan of infographics.

I decided to produce some for my revision study of DD211.

so I have posted them here, if any one is interested, I would be very proud if any one else used them in their own revision program.

Just producing them was a very good revision activity.

Lets start with Block 2: Political concepts.

Freedom:

Equality

Power

I found it very useful to produce these, a act of revision in itself.

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Michael Gumbrell, Monday, 8 May 2017, 17:25)
Share post

no blog for April

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Michael Gumbrell, Sunday, 7 May 2017, 16:05

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.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

First 5 days of sponsorship

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Michael Gumbrell, Sunday, 7 May 2017, 15:55

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me so far in my 'what goes UP, must come DOWN challenge.

5 days into fundraising I have raised 54% of my target, the target was £ 500 and so far people have been kind enough to sponsor me for £ 265.

This is the link to my page if you want to sponsor me, thank you for the kindness if you do:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/michael-gumbrell4

I bought some new walking boots this morning, ready for my march up mount Snowdon. that gives me two weeks to wear the boots in before I walk up the mountain in them.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

TMA 5 Time

Visible to anyone in the world

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.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

some more published satire

Visible to anyone in the world

Here is the link to the micro news site in my home town.

follow the link for some more of my published satire on the local politics of my home town, Portsmouth.

http://www.starandcrescent.org.uk/2017/03/31/board-games-with-portsmouth-politics/


Thank you

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

counting down the hours

Visible to anyone in the world

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....

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

What goes UP must come DOWN

Visible to anyone in the world

What goes UP must come DOWN.

Which is me, i have to now squeeze my TMA 5 in 7 days before the cut off date because i will being doing something else on deadline day.

On Wednesday 19th of April i will be climbing up Mount Snowdon.

This will be the UP part of my challenge, and on Sunday 28th of May i will be abseiling DOWN the Spinaker Tower ( 103 meter's or 315 feet). all to raise funds for my chosen charity.

Here is the link to my just giving page, it would be wonderful if any of my fellow students could sponsor me to complete this challenge,

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/michael-gumbrell4


Thats the UP.

This is the DOWN


and this is who i am fund raising for,


your support would be very much appreciated,

Mike

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Still more hits

Visible to anyone in the world

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/

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Interconnectedness

Visible to anyone in the world

Interconnectedness, is not a made up word, it appears in my module, it alludes to the collectivist perception of international relations.

so I thought I would try a little interconnectedness, so as well as my blog website:

www.thespecialistgeneralist.net

I also created a Facebook page to run along side it for extra digital presence and enhanced interconnectedness.

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

I urge you all to like my page on Facebook, please.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Scottish Independance

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Michael Gumbrell, Sunday, 26 Mar 2017, 11:36


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 5th largest economy ( and forecasted to become 4th, 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 43rd largest in the world and 12th 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.


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

the end of history.

Visible to anyone in the world

i am coming to the end of the module now.

one more week of study planner, one final tma to write, one online quiz and the exam.

I have been looking very closely at fukuyama's concept of the end of history, that we are in a stable neo-liberal stasis, that no further events will be extreme because we have liberally stabilised. I am not sure I agree with that, especially as that principle seems to condemn the poor nations to remain behind forever.

Well now to stop procrastinating and polish off the final week of study and get the TMA 5 done. 

Permalink 5 comments (latest comment by Michael Gumbrell, Sunday, 26 Mar 2017, 19:06)
Share post

simulated human rights

Visible to anyone in the world

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.

Permalink 3 comments (latest comment by Michael Gumbrell, Friday, 24 Mar 2017, 18:48)
Share post

Specialist satire

Visible to anyone in the world

Here is my latest offering for the micro news site in Portsmouth.

I have squeezed Portsmouth city councils year into the news that monopoly has been updated.

I hope you enjoy it, even if you are not local to Portsmouth

I quite like this one, I might get accused of having idea's above my station (Fratton)

For any one who reads this and has ever been in the Navy, then you know what

'getting off at Fratton' means !

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

satire published

Visible to anyone in the world

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/


Permalink Add your comment
Share post

TMA 5

Visible to anyone in the world

Just trying to get my head around TMA 5. Globalisation and political practice is hard.

Fukuyama has much to ssy about the end of history on thst subject.

I am just sweating the end of this block and tma 5.

Oh look, another level 2 is hard post from me. Well it has been a couple of weeks since i mentioned it.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

Hitting a mile stone

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Michael Gumbrell, Friday, 31 Mar 2017, 08:34

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.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 384788