Last thought - or I'll be working until midnight again - I think I'm less bothered about another referendum (which I doubt will be any clearer than the last one was) than about parliament having free debates and votes on the issue, that seems to be a big challenge at the moment. When the most popular newspaper in the country brands judges "enemies of the people" for stating that the law says that elected representatives should debate and agree a critical political decision then I...feel like I need to go and saw some logs again. (Old news, said newspaper is, of course, now under new editorship. But still scary that it could easily happen again.) I feel the press - on all sides - have probably come out with the least credibility of anyone in the whole business - but again, their owners would argue that ethics and politics isn't their business, their business is to sell newspapers or airtime, so if people want to buy anger and outrage it's their job to provide it. Even my favourite, the BBC, in their desperation to be impartial seems to have ended up annoying everyone.
More important to me as to whether we are in or out of the UK is whether we are or aren't a society that values debate, collaboration and synthesis of the best solution over arrogance and condescension. But it's a huge human problem, those who have certainty on an issue can fight single mindedly for that issue. Unfortunately most issues nowadays are too complex to have one person's certainty, so us liberals (small 'l') appear to bumble around working towards a solution, meanwhile how much more appealing is someone who flies in with the certainty of their magic fix!
Phew...right, back to the uncertainty of assessing a safety argument for a safety-critical system...whenever a client states something as an obvious fact I immediately doubt it!
Last thought - or I'll be working until midnight again - I think I'm less bothered about another referendum (which I doubt will be any clearer than the last one was) than about parliament having free debates and votes on the issue, that seems to be a big challenge at the moment. When the most popular newspaper in the country brands judges "enemies of the people" for stating that the law says that elected representatives should debate and agree a critical political decision then I...feel like I need to go and saw some logs again. (Old news, said newspaper is, of course, now under new editorship. But still scary that it could easily happen again.) I feel the press - on all sides - have probably come out with the least credibility of anyone in the whole business - but again, their owners would argue that ethics and politics isn't their business, their business is to sell newspapers or airtime, so if people want to buy anger and outrage it's their job to provide it. Even my favourite, the BBC, in their desperation to be impartial seems to have ended up annoying everyone.
More important to me as to whether we are in or out of the UK is whether we are or aren't a society that values debate, collaboration and synthesis of the best solution over arrogance and condescension. But it's a huge human problem, those who have certainty on an issue can fight single mindedly for that issue. Unfortunately most issues nowadays are too complex to have one person's certainty, so us liberals (small 'l') appear to bumble around working towards a solution, meanwhile how much more appealing is someone who flies in with the certainty of their magic fix!
Phew...right, back to the uncertainty of assessing a safety argument for a safety-critical system...whenever a client states something as an obvious fact I immediately doubt it!
