Friday Five on Compliments and Achievements

1. What was the best compliment you ever received?

When I was 17 one of the girls in the sixth form told me that I had a sexy walk.

My dad thinks the best thing I've ever done is to marry My Lovely  Wife (which whilst probably true is not exactly a compliment).

2. What are your five best talents?

1) Thinking logically about things and holding enough information in my head to run a good world model in my brain.
2) A ready wit and a pithy turn of phrase.
3) Being able to improvise
4) Public speaking
5) Explaining things to children

3. What do you wish most people knew about you, and why?

I'm not sure that there is any particular piece of information about me that I wish was more generally known. I'm reasonably open about my mental health. There are a couple of things about me that it would probably be in the public interest if they were more widely known but I don't much fancy talking about them.

Perhaps the only thing I'd like more widely known is that I am the  (co-)chair of Unlock Democracy. If more people knew that it would mean that more people had heard of UD.

4. What has been your biggest accomplishment so far, and why does it mean so much to you?

Probably having such a good relationship with my daughter. She was very young when her mum and I separated and my relationship with her mum was very, very poor so it's taken a great deal of continuous work for me to remain an important part of her life whilst also having a good life of my own.

5. If you could achieve anything in your life, what would it be?

A codified and revised constitution for the United Kingdom arrived at through the exercise of popular, deliberative democratic processes including a citizen lead constitutional convention which gives significant power to ordinary people and local communities, respects and promotes human rights and has membership of the European Union.

Plan B is the same, but just for Scotland.

On a Cocktail of Five Things for Friday 12th October

Five Things on a Friday Make a Cocktail of Five Things

1) I am now officially excited about the US mid-terms. The only other foreign elections that excite me as much are the ones in Australia. The US elections are certainly the elections that I'm not eligible to vote in that I'm most excited about. It looks like the Democrats are likely to win the House and have a decent chance of winning the Senate. They also look like they might win lots of seats at the state level. This is important because mostly the states handle re-districting after the 2020 census and seats-by-state reallocations. I hope that Trump turns out to be Phyric victory for the populist right in the US and that in winning the trifecta at the Federal level but being so bad at it it costs them heavily for a decade or more.

2) It is October half-term and the Captain is on holiday. He is a bit tired. He recently negotiated a later bedtime and he hasn't quite adjusted to it yet. He was sick at school yesterday and was sent home. So I have a half day today.. He was still up before me at 6am this morning. There is no football or rugby for a few weeks. I shall enjoy the time off.

3) This weekend I'm away to London for a UD meeting. I hope the travel back is better than last time when I got stuck on a train for 10 hours and didn't get home until 3.33am. I'm stopping off in Newcastle to see BB then fully home on Sunday. I'm taking the Captain down to see his sister in a few weeks time. I must schedule a visit to Bristol to see my niece.

4) In other election news I shall be interested to see how Seann Walsh and Katya Jones do this weekend on Strictly following Snoggate and Rebecca Humphries rather damning comments on Walsh. I might be able to watch the programme over the internet on the train (have just put my headphone in the my pocket). My guess is that they will lose support but they are probably able to avoid going out this week and I suspect that by next week it will have blown over.

5) There seems to be some strange shenanigans afoot with rugby internationals with some proposals from the IRB for an international league with the top 12 teams to encompass the Six Nations and the modestly titled Rugby Championship. I can get behind that but it doesn't have much emotional context for me and it detracts and distracts from the Rugby World Cup Hints at some sort of relegation structure which I think is daft. You can't have a relegation structure and still involve the Six Nations and the Rugby Championship unless you have relegation from those competitions. As those competitions are essentially the UK and friends and southern Commonwealth nations and friend relegation robs the competition of their emontional content. I think it would also unfairly penalise Italy. Italy are currently ranked outside the top 12 teams and almost always finish bottom of the Six Nations.  I think the reason they are ranked as low as they are is that they play almost all of their games against better teams than them, in the Six Nations and the autumn tests. It's only during the World Cup that they have an opportunity to play and beat the likes of Spain, Roumania, Georgia and Russia.

I'm happy if the autumn internationals were more meaningful but not if that damages the meaningfulness of other, more important, competitions.