Feint1

That’s a detail that’s not really important to the point being made.

I know that the Americans have a creation myth where they see the British as unspeakably evil and Americans as an oppressed people, but the reality is that the situation was very messy and there were differing views on all sides.

The fact is that American independence actually had some sympathy among the British establishment. This made the Treaty of Paris possible, which made American Independence legal and recognised internationally. There is no longer a disagreement about the status of the United States because of this.

There is no such support for Taiwanese independence in China and I cannot see them ever recognising a Taiwanese State, no matter how badly they lose a war. Without Chinese recognition i cant see Taiwan ever getting much recognition internationally.

> There's also the argument that Western-style term limits prevent long-term strategic planning.

It seems to me that term limits are mostly the reserve of countries that have a genuine fear of authoritarian takeovers from recent experience, e.g. the nonaligned countries in South America and Africa.

Countries with executive power vested in a member of Parliament don’t have such limits, hence how you get people like Merkel, Thatcher and Mark Rutte serving as Prime Minister for so long. You also have long-term planning with the maintenance of a professional civil service rather than political appointees and the use of cabinet level decision making rather than allowing the Head of Government to unilaterally make decisions.

America and France are really the only significant “western” (politically rather than geographically) countries you can say have term limits on executive power. In both cases the introduction of term limits are post-ww2 changes. To use either example as a criticism of “the west” as a whole requires a rather narrow view of the world I think.

That is referring to the executive functions of the Crown. In some cases it was possible for a Government to create or block an ordinance for a territory without legislative approval.

There is no limit over Parliamentary power. The House of Lords had judicial functions (now The Supreme Court) which allowed it to act as the second highest court in the land under the Privy Council. No court can revoke an act of Parliament. Any limits on Parliamentary power over these territories is by convention. Another interesting aspect of the British constitution is that institutions generally follow agreements even if they lack a legal basis.

Something that might confuse Americans in particular is the use of the term “government”, which, within a British context, refers only to the executive branch of government. Also the idea of a strongly defined clear constitution is rather alien… as are checks and balances on the legislature.

I take issue only with the characterisation of colonial America as authoritarian. It was democratic and the King and his Governors had limited power. The issues leading to revolution arose mostly from the lack of representation in Parliament and a series of unforunate blunders in handling greivences on the part of HM Government.

This isn’t really true. Before the declaration of independence the people of the American colonies couldn’t vote in British general elections, yet the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain (as it was known then) had full legal rights to legislate for the colonies. This is due to the way the British constitution works, where Parliament has supreme power over everything, including the the Monarch, the Monarch’s government and any territories outside of the United Kingdom. This remains the same for all existing British overseas territories such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands where there is no representation in Parliament.

The individual American colonies had legislatures for their own territory, with limited powers as defined in their charters. One example is the legislature of Virginia which has had elected members since its inception 150 years before American Independence and still continues to hold elections to this day.

> I understand why an academic thinks this is a good idea. More jobs for the boys.

This isn't fair. Academics usually have a true love of their subject and desire to teach that to the next generation.

>Third, try explaining programming without computers to a child. There are so many abstract concepts...it is just insane.

They teach many abstract concepts. The current curricula for many subjects are already full of abstract ideas that we expect children to learn. Programming is basically functions, logic and basic algebra. It's not remotely difficult to teach these to children.

>Fourth, this feeds into the aspect of British culture that reveres irrelevant knowledge (and despises practice). Nowhere is this more evident that in CS departments. Example: the UK has great CS depts but no innovation within business. The university local to me has a top ML department, they have been doing speech recognition since the 60s...all the PHds leave, there is only one speech recognition startup in the city...and that is govt-funded afaik. Taking advice from people like the OP is suicidal.

I think this is wrong. Developing strong theoretical understanding is not pointless. You can't have innovation without theory. I agree that maybe the country needs to apply that academic kowledge better to money making endeavours, but I don't believe that keeping the education system as it is now is going to help. We need more numerate people with detailed knowledge of scientific disciplines in order to drive innovation.

The worst bit is that there's actually a chance it'll pass into law.

I remember laughing about the proposed cookie law and the incandescent light bulb ban before they actually managed to successfully get both through the European Parliament.

I hope the British people do get a referendum on Europe soon. We've had enough of this rubbish.

I actually have a phobia of lotus plants. It was bad enough that I couldn't look at that picture without almost passing out. (It would have been nice if you'd put a warning in the title).

I can't really explain why it has such an affect on me, but it's pretty nice to know I'm not alone.