OMG !!!! Parakeet invasion

BBC2 - The Great British Parakeet Invasion

The above mini-documentary on Rose-Ringed Parakeets is a very 'watchable' mixture of entertainment and investigation by the BBC: It's done with a balanced, playful tone at the same time as being informative and avoiding either sentimentality or hostility. It's not seeking to increase the dosage for servicing peoples' "emotional hits".

This is an example of a positive and balanced "investigative and discursive journalism" that aims to be informative and entertaining. It could do with a few more numbers on the actual population, a few more contributions from scientists studying their "impact" for both ecologically positive and negative outcomes as an "invasive" and now naturalised species. But overall it is inviting and inclusive of opinions and simultaneously fun. The best quality is that it is produced with confidence in letting the subject matter "do the talking" and leaving overall judgement and interpretation to the viewer.

There's something oddly familiar-sounding...

To compare to The Daily Mail which decides more of peoples' "emotional-buttons" need pressing to increase it's "attractive/detractive-value" or what people otherwise term "Deliberate (Professional) Trolling" of readers. Indeed, the RSPB "Giving Nature A Home" advise:-

'It is important that the spread of the ring-necked parakeet is monitored, and its potential for negative impacts on our native bird species assessed.'

If the parakeet population were to continue to grow, the implications for our native species must be closely monitored. The Government is obliged to ensure that non-native species do not adversely affect native wildlife, and is currently developing a policy framework for addressing the possible risks associated with such species becoming established.

And here we have "The 2 Overruling Themes" on our own National Conversations concerning Migration Policy often reported as "Immigration Stories" of one kind or another in the Legacy News-Media.

1. Communication: Hot-Buttons

Stephen Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature :-

"Aside from supplying a direct justification for violent conflict, the ideology of intergroup struggle ignites a nasty feature of human social psychology: the tendency to divide people into in-groups and out-groups and to treat the out-groups as less than human. It doesn't matter whether the groups are thought to be defined by their biology or by their history. Psychologists have found that they can create instant intergroup hostility by sorting people on just about any pretext, including the flip of a coin."

 According to Westphalian sovereignty :-

"Westphalian sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non-interference in another country's domestic affairs, and that each state (no matter how large or small) is equal in international law. The doctrine is named after the Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648... As European influence spread across the globe, the Westphalian principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to international law and to the prevailing world order.

International relations theorists have identified several key principles of the Peace of Westphalia, which explain the Peace's significance and its impact on the world today":

1. The principle of the sovereignty of states and the fundamental right of political self determination
2. The principle of legal equality between states
3. The principle of non-intervention of one state in the internal affairs of another state

In The Road To The European Union we looked at a comparison between different forms of governance via Roger Scruton's series of articles which concluded the significance of National Borders and hence Sovereignty to Nation States and the preconditions for Democracy such as The Rule Of Law etc, eloquently summarized by Jesus Christ Matthew 22:20-22 King James Version (KJV), whom Roger Scruton quotes:-

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's"

To add the context above, effectively National Democracies form "in-groups" and "out-groups" as such it will inevitably be a "hot button topic" in the nature of arguments that follow. From this statement of fact, it follows that due care and management of both: Communication and Policy are needed for the handling of Migration Policy at the National Level of good governance.

2. Migration Policy: A Government Dereliction of Duty

In Literature and Science we came to a hugely significant conclusion concerning the Visibility Of Arguments vs Quality of Arguments, to recap:-

• Media, UKIP, Establishment: Immigration > EU > Democracy 
• FLEXCIT: Democracy > EU > Immigration

 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)

 This inference is backed up in two ways: First, the argument we make here (above) and secondly looking at a history of The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) (cheekily referred to as the UK-immigration-P); it demonstrates the growth curve away from being dismissed as a:-

"UKIP was founded in 1991 by the historian Alan Sked as the Anti-Federalist League, a single-issue Eurosceptic party. Renamed UKIP in 1993, the party adopted a wider right-wing platform and gradually increased its support vote over the coming two decades. Under Farage's leadership, from 2009 the party tailored its policies toward a politically disenfranchised white working-class support base, before making significant breakthroughs in the 2013 local elections and the 2014 European elections, where UKIP received the most votes. At the 2015 general election, the party gained the third largest vote share but won only one seat in the House of Commons.

"In 2006, Farage was elected leader of UKIP. He sought to broaden UKIP's image away from that of a single-issue party by introducing an array of socially conservative policies, including reducing immigration"

 UKIP EU Parliament Elections Results 2014

The numbers provided at wikipedia completely back up the growth of UKIP and it's politically impressive and significant to the state of our arguments. Looking also at:-

• A summary history of immigration to Britain
• Immigration Under Labour
• European Union | Key Topics

The full picture of the visibility of Migration Policy such that polling represents (in so much as polling represents anything of use - wet thumb for wind direction): Opinion Poll Results on Immigration shows this effect asserting itself in tandem with UKIP's political numbers and support growth.

However, UKIP and Immigration Polling are all about Visibility of Arguments, they represent (an especial topic for national democracies to be sensitive concerning) which are symptoms and effects of policy failure or lack of policy from our Government - not - the actual causes.

Dr. RAE North documents Government policy failure with perspicacity and detail:-

Migration: dealing with the problems
Migration: a continued parade of ignorance
Migration: the UN intervenes
Migration: the pot speaks of the kettles
Migration: reducing the pull factors
Immigration: not an EU issue?
Immigration: joined-up policy needed
Immigration: a series of marginal gains
Immigration: not quite what it appears
Immigration: the "pull factors" prevail
Immigration: the rehearsal is over
Immigration: a perfect storm in the offing?
Immigration: amateur time is over
Immigration: a "resolute Conservative government"
Immigration: a free pass for "criminals"
Immigration: opportunities galore
Immigration: Eritrea – confusion and ambiguity
Immigration: in the year to come
Immigration: a tale of incompetence
Immigration: Pegida hits a new record
 
A lot of the main arguments are summarized in FLEXCIT. Dr. RAE North as you can see provides a vast analysis of Migration Policy, and both deeper and broader than Migration Watch, as well as far more contextual and impartial. But it shows the complex web of Policy Failure that is the true measure of the Quality of Argument and you compare it to UKIP's website, which is so barren of information to educate yourself with, by contrast: They don't need to regarding relying on the visibility of arguments only:-

Legacy Media: "Pushing your buttons"

Ultimately we can establish a hierarchy: 

• "Representative Democracy" fails to represent voters.
•  The Political Party in office is more concerned with holding power than working on "joined-up policy" across not just Migration, but the EU, Energy, Defence etc.
• This incoherence is amplified in the News-Media along with various Political Correctness orthodoxy or "Groupthink".
• In turn the underlying tenets of National Democracy start to strain and the rise of alternative parties such as UKIP are a direct result of the Top-Down Crystallization of Westminster Politics under the further and continuous Centralization of the EU.
• Improving the quality of our arguments even if this appears less expedient than pushing the visibility value of arguments (which is where prestige is able to sustain no productive changes) will help people see beyond their normal moral filters and start to find greater consensus: Which means greater democratic representation and removing barriers towards that.

Coming back to the Parakeet examples of people's numerous varied reactions:-

Parakeets: "Flying secateurs" or "colourful characters"?

The above perfectly summarizes the hyper-emotional level of debate: Highly visible but extremely shallow and hence poor quality arguments: Mostly sentiment: Sentimentality and hostility. Towards Sir James Goldsmith's speech in The Referendum Party's Election video in Our Government: "Ifs, Buts, Maybes" he mentions that the great property of democracies is the ability of opposing groups with different views to accept the other side's arguments in a fair vote, fairly represented and hence "democracy heals itself". This property is not possible within the EU and is also very lacking in our own government at Westminster.

Previusly, the trend is from accusing UKIP, Dr. RAE North: EU Referendum: migrant misinformation. Then more people realize there's also something wrong with our media "in on it too" as per Lost Leonardo: A User’s Guide To The New Media and sooner or later it will work it's way back to the Government, The Brexit Door: Mrs May, Twittter & The politics of independence

When we gain more consensus closer to the ultimate source, then we will see that the argument beyond the government was all along within ours, the people's power to change things and force the govenment to actually work according to democracy. But in order to do that, all of:-

• UKIP
• Legacy News-Media
• Our Government
• Ourselves, The People

Must start using higher quality arguments according the fair rules of Real Democracy.  I personally believe UK/Britain has been one of the most tolerance and welcoming nations in the entire world and that we have one of the best and most cosmopolitan cities in the world in London where a lot of migration is focused.But without real democracy, those values and collective virtues of our culture are undermined; "our national treasures" as a people are tarnished by the politicians in power.

Rose-Ringed Parakeet tail-feather

Here's the tail-feather of a newly fledged Rose-Ringed Parakeet, I inadvertently saved from a Sparrowhawk, over the Summer. By everyone managing to improve the quality of their arguments across the board and not merely their visibility we'll all be able to "put a feather in our caps" for real democracy (pardon the pun!).

The Road To The European Union

In The Greatest Political Problem of Our Time the observation of the parallels between our current government's EU Referendum and the National Scale problem, opened to the public via the creation of "The Board of Longitude" in 1714 (301 years ago) were made and resorting to the people to help resolve this problem. Namely: "broadening the debate" by opening it up. In modern terms this might be thought of as "Crowdsourcing" the problem.

 1. Celtic Tribes - Roman Britain AD 43–c. 410

Ordinarily the UK's Representative Democracy system of governance appears to be capable of solving most problems of running policy solutions to improve results at the Nation level and as part of the decision-making and debating process, via consulting the people in General Elections. In this way we can think of democracy as a large forum of debate and discussion to test arguments before choosing via voting which arguments we feel are the "fittest" at this large scale of human organization (millions) and also the most "representative" of the needs of the people. Roger Scruton describes this sort of situation in a very brief summary very clearly underpinning these features: A Point of View: Is democracy overrated?:-

• Freedom of Speech and opinion
• Property Rights
• The Rule of Law & Judicial Independence
• Legitimate Government Opposition

"Long before the advent of democracy, our parliament divided into government and opposition, and except in stressful periods during the 16th and 17th Centuries it was acknowledged that government without opposition is without any corrective when things go wrong. That is what we saw in the Soviet Union and its empire - a system of government without a reverse gear, which continued headlong towards the brick wall of the future."

2. "Saxon" England and Celtic Wales & Scotland pre-Viking 5th to the 11th century

Therefore under the right conditions, necessary institutions or framework; effectively democracy is a National Level Forum for debate and discussion between people who have shared reasons to both agree and disagree over problem-solving with each other via both cooperation and competition. This point is made in Scruton's next piece: A Point of View: Why it can be good to give in to your enemies . Where you start to lose "legitimate opposition", you inevitably start the process of disenfranchisement of the people from the decision-making process. Already voter participation in large population size nations is operating at a scale that is less and less representative and hence resulting in increased disincentive for people to invest in the nation-level decision-making process. For people to invest they must feel part of the family, they must extend their identity what we call national or patriotic identity.

3. Modern Britain/UK (& Ireland)

Again Roger Scruton compares different systems of super-identity in groups of people for human organization leading to different results and "quality of democracy" operating ie quality of debate and discussion in groups of people to resolve their combined problems successfully: A Point of View: Should countries be more like families?

"In the wake of World War II the political elite in the defeated countries became sceptical towards the nation state. The European Union arose from the belief that the European wars had been caused by national sentiment, and that what is needed is a new, trans-national form of government to unite people around their shared interest in peaceful coexistence. Unfortunately people don't identify themselves in that way.

There is no first-person plural of which the European institutions are the political expression. The union is founded in a treaty, and treaties derive their authority from the entities that sign them. Those entities are the nation states of Europe, from which the loyalties of the European people derive. The union, which has set out to transcend such loyalties, therefore suffers from a permanent crisis of legitimacy."

 This is recorded extensively in The Great Deception history of the EU:-

"The real  key  to  understanding  the nature of  the  project  which is  the  theme of this book lies in appreciating just how the central idea behind it came to birth. The  foundation  of  our  researches  lay  in  uncovering  just  how  directly  the European  Union  had  drawn  its  inspiration  from  events  during  and  after  the First  World  War,  in  particular  from  the thinking  of  two  friends  who  had held senior  posts  in  the  League  of  Nations,  the  Frenchman  Jean  Monnet  and  his British colleague Arthur Salter.

One simple test of whether someone has an informed grasp of where and how the ‘project’ first came to be launched on its way is to ask ‘why was the EU organisationally  structured  as  it  was,  round  a  Commission,  a  Parliament,  a Council  of  Ministers  and  a  Court  of  Justice?’.  Not  one  of  many  previous histories  of  the  EU  had offered  an answer  to  this  question.  Yet  in  this,  as  we discovered,  lies  the  single  most  important  clue  to  the  ‘project’s’  essential nature and purpose, crucial to any proper  understanding of  its evolution up  to the present day." 

4. The European Political Union

Jürgen Habermas describes the European Union in his book: "The Lure of Technocracy" in Chapter 2: European Citizens and the People of Europe, p.29:-

I use the term "transnationalization" to refer to the process that aims  to create a "supranational " democracy, that is, one above the organizational level of a state."

Considering this above compared to Roger Scruton's observations and comparisons with both Totalitarian and Theocratic States compared with Secular Democratic States based on the underlying preconditions for Democracy, it does not seem to fit. Secondly it is a quite worth marking with a "Milestone" confirming that the EU Cake really is a Supranational Political Organization: Can we have our cake and eat it too? In any Referendum we must define which "cake" we as a "Demos" choose to vote for.

Looking at our maps evolution of governance at ever greater scales, it seems "natural" that the European Union should be the next stage for Britain and other similar sized Nations to integrate towards?

However according to  Friedrich von Hayek in The Road To Serfdom, similar such processes have not increased democracy through increases in size and power of the state, but Centralized power and decreased democracy:-

"The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. The people are made to transfer their allegiance from the old gods to the new under the pretense that the new gods really are what their sound instinct had always told them but what before they had only dimly seen. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning."

It becomes quite clear from reading The Great Deception and comparing the observed, actual results with the promised, predicted results of the EU "Projet" that to quote Scruton:-

"...a system of government without a reverse gear, which continued headlong towards the brick wall of the future." 

Some further quotes from Hayek:-

"The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

The effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go; with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.

Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders."

From all this I would argue that The Road To the European Union is "paved with good intentions" despite selling itself as the "next-level of scale for debate and discussion to exist at a European Regional Level. But is there a more positive future, an "alternative cake" which not only strengthens our democracy in a realistic and quantifiable measure but also accepts the above trend of "Globalization" as per the sequence suggested in the maps above? Yes and here's the Twist In the Tale that even argues the central point about the EU to a higher level again without the deleterious results we're witnessing in the quality of our national-level arguments (aka Democracy):-

5. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE or ECE) was established in 1947[2][3] to encourage economic cooperation among its member states. It is one of five regional commissions under the administrative direction of United Nations headquarters. It has 56 member states

Why should UNECE turn out any different from the EU? Because it's a "different cake" created in a very fundamentally different way:-

In Supranational Subordination Versus Intergovernmental Co-operation the blogger "Lost Leonardo" at Independent Britain captures The Essential Difference: How we argue affects the questions and the answers we choose and hence the process of debating and discussion and hence the very formulation of successful democracy.