The Virus, and independence
At least 750 — other people online have estimated more — folk in Scotland have died from COVID19 who would not have died if they had lived in any of our northern European neighbours of the same size.
In Denmark, there have been, as of 20th April, 61 deaths per million people. In Estonia, 30. The Faroe Islands, none at all. Finland, 16. Iceland, 26. Ireland, 123. Latvia, only 2. Lithuania, 13. And Norway, 28.
Putting data on the map
A couple of weeks ago, someone came to me with a problem. She had data in a spreadsheet. She wanted to display it as a map, on a website. And she wanted to be able to do that dynamically — that is to say, she wanted the map on the website to update as the spreadsheet changed.
So there were clear routes to several of the parts of this problem:
World enough, and Time
Last night I listened to an episode of the Politics Galore podcast which utterly depressed me: not because the content was depressing (although it was), but because the analysis was so shallow. It analysed Scotland's current dilemma solely in terms of the Westminster political game played by Westminster's first past the post rules. It suggested that the next independence referendum could be, and tactically should be, delayed until the late 2020s, as though nothing in the world would change in the meantime.
Human beings are programmed to believe that nothing much in the world, on a macro scale, will change very much from one year to the next. We call this inductive reasoning, and over the past million years it's served us pretty well. On the whole, tomorrow has been more or less like yesterday; on the whole, next year has been more or less like last. And for most of that time, what lay over the horizon was literally unknowable: oncoming crises, no matter how inevitable, could not be predicted or prepared for.
Party Party
Let's start this essay with a confession that I may have been badly wrong. I have been saying for some time that I did not believe that Nicola Sturgeon would actually call a second independence referendum; rather, that she'd use Westminster's expected rejection of an Article 30 order to indefinitely postpone one. Well, possibly, I was wrong. I hope I was wrong. Both The National and the SNP now say that Sturgeon will announce a concrete date for IndyRef 2, in 2020, at a rally in Glasgow on Saturday 2nd November.
So, good. Sometimes, it's nice to be wrong.
Eagles, and governance
Here is the text of my letter to the First Minister regarding the wildlife persecution on grouse moors crisis. I strongly suggest you write to her too, but please write your own letter — copy/pasted letters tend to get ignored.
Dear First Minister