Modelling settlement with a cellular automaton
I've written about modelling settlement patterns before; several times, actually:
- Populating a game world;
- Modelling the change from rural to urban;
- Modelling rural to urban, take two.
I had hoped to have the algorithm for Populating a Game World written by now, but I've been ill most of this summer and it hasn't happened. Instead, I've revived a rule-driven cellular automaton which I first wrote back in the 1980s; I've reimplemented it in Clojure, and used it to experiment with settlement. The results have been mixed.
The West Lothian Question, take two
Back in 1977 that famous old-Etonian, Sir Thomas Dalyell Loch, 11th Baronet of the Binns, famously asked a question which has troubled his party ever since.
The question, in his own words, was this: For how long will English constituencies and English Honourable members tolerate ... at least 119 Honourable Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on English politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? Those 'honourable' members — better known here in Scotland as the 'feeble fifty' — have indeed had a decisive effect on English politics. It was with their votes that Tony Blair imposed tuition fees on English university students, foundation hospitals on the English NHS. I believe that it is true that Labour did not have a majority of English MPs on either of those votes — which affected only England.
Syria and Galloway
In these days when we're all listening on the news to the developments in Syria and Iraq, the emergence of the Islamic State, the conflict between Sunni and Shia, the plight of fleeing Yazidis and of the Syrian Christians, I was struck by this powerful essay by Robin Yassin-Kassab, exploring the historic links between Syria and Galloway.
Yes, of course there were Syrians (and also Nubians — people from what is now Libya and Morocco) on the wall. I've mentioned them before on this blog. And we know that at the end of their service, they were not sent home: instead, they were given grants of land locally to where they were stationed at the end of their service. So there were certainly Syrians and Nubians settled on what is now Northumberland and Cumbria, and their descendants are almost certainly still there.
Independence which changes nothing is worth nothing
[I wrote this just before the referendum, but didn't publish it then because events overtook it; I think it's worth publishing now for the record]
The referendum is upon us. I start this essay with fewer than thirty hours to go before I cast my vote, fewer than fifty before polls close. On Friday morning we will know whether we have indeed risen now, whether we shall be that nation again. I cannot think about it, any longer. It is too stressful. It is time to think past it, to the nation we could become.
Gaza: towards an ethical foreign policy for the new Scotland
Jean Urquhart MSP, one of our excellent crop of independents, has tabled a motion in the Scottish Parliament calling for sanctions against Israel in response to the current crisis in Gaza. In considering how to persuade my constituency MSP, Alex Fergusson, who is that most old fashioned and endangered species, an honourable Tory, to add his name to it, I thought about how I envisage — hope to see — the foreign policy of our reborn nation develop; how it can establish its place and distinctive voice in the world. ** I thought about the history of the Palestine issue, and the United Kingdom's sorry role in it. Appealing to Mr Fergusson, I thought, over the current plight of the Palestinians was unlikely to succeed; presenting that appeal in the context of our responsibility for the construction of the problem and our consequent responsibility to aid in its resolution might do so. Of course, it's highly unlikely I'll succeed in also persuading him to turn from unionism to internationalism, but — with this issue particularly in mind — I think it's worth a try. ** Scotland — our Scotland — really does have a chance to make the whole world a better place.
Dear Alex Fergusson