Quotulatiousness

June 6, 2018

How to become Prime Minister of Spain without the pesky need for voter approval

Filed under: Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Tim Black explains how the new Spanish leader got there without ever winning an election:

There is a big, fat, blindingly obvious problem with Spain’s new prime minister, Pedro Sánchez: no one voted for him, or indeed the Socialist Party (PSOE) of which he is leader.

In fact, 46-year-old Sánchez has never been overly familiar with the electorate. He entered congress in 2009 as an internal Socialist Party replacement because a lawmaker was leaving his seat early. He then promptly lost this seat in the 2011 General Election. Fortunately, in 2013, another Socialist congressional deputy left her seat early, meaning that Sánchez could once more return to the political fray, bypassing the electorate en route. Improbably, he was successfully nominated, thanks to the backing of PSOE grandees, as the Socialists’ general secretary in 2014, leading them to their worst-ever result in the 2015 General Elections. A few months later, the PSOE got rid of him as leader, and Sánchez, in turn, rid himself of congressional responsibilities by quitting his seat. His reason, it seems, was to have time to concentrate on becoming the PSOE leader again. Which is what happened.

His triumph this past week, therefore, was not built on anything resembling popular support. Rather, it was a feat of constitutional chutzpah. It began last week, when the corruption scandal that has long dogged Mariano Rajoy, then prime minister, and leader of the governing Popular Party, came to a momentary head (the so-called ‘Gurtel’ case is ongoing), with the jailing of one of the PP’s former treasurers for 33 years for fraud and money-laundering. The PP was itself also fined for benefitting from the kickbacks for public contracts. Sánchez saw his chance, and proposed a motion of no confidence in Rajoy, a move that under Spanish constitutional law results, if successful, in the replacement of the subject of the motion by the proposer. Congress duly passed the motion and that was that – for the first time in Spanish political history, a sitting prime minister was deposed through a vote of no confidence. Sánchez, with the Socialists in tow, had ascended to power.

But that big, fat fly in the ointment of Sánchez and the Socialists’ success won’t go away. For a start, you can see the absence of any public mandate writ large in the congressional maths. As it stands (following the 2015 General Election), Rajoy’s PP remains the largest single party, with 134 members of the 350-strong Congress of Deputies, while Sánchez and the now ruling socialists have only 84. To be able to govern without going to the electorate, Sánchez will have to strike deals with the seven other parties and regional representatives, including, of course, Catalonia’s independence-demanding cohort. Which means concessions, deals, compromises, all rich in cynicicsm and opportunism.

D-Day: Canada at Juno Beach

Filed under: Cancon, France, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Yesterday Today
Published on 3 Jun 2017

D-Day: Canada at Juno Beach

6 June 1944

Of the nearly 150,000 Allied troops who landed or parachuted onto the Normandy coast, 14,000 were Canadians. They assaulted a beachfront code-named “Juno”.

The Royal Canadian Navy contributed 110 ships & 10,000 sailors in support of the landings while the RCAF had helped prepare the invasion by bombing targets inland. On D-Day & during the ensuing campaign, 15 RCAF fighter & fighter-bomber squadrons helped control the skies over Normandy and attacked enemy targets. On D-Day, Canadians suffered 1074 casualties, including 359 killed.

Travelling on British passenger trains

Filed under: Britain, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Other than preserved steam train passenger trips, the last time I took a train in Britain was during the “Winter of Discontent”, and it was a grim experience indeed. Recently, Malcolm Kenton purchased a First Class BritRail Pass and did some extensive travels on many of the passenger services (averaging over 250 miles per day over 12 days). He said he understands why the British complain about on-time arrivals, but compared to American passenger trains, he clearly felt he was in a railway wonderland:

10:00 PM on a Tuesday, May 15, at London’s magnificent Paddington Station. At right, a Great Western Railway
Hitachi dual-mode train has just arrived from points southwest, with a Great Western DMU train across the platform.

Photo by Malcolm Kenton

The Brits have a habit of complaining about their trains. As I experienced, their on-time performance often falls short of Swiss standards (though is excellent by American standards), ticket prices are continually increasing, and service frequencies and span on some lines aren’t what they could be. But it’s hard for someone who’s used to a country where even major cities are served by just one train a day, if that, to knock a system that provides at least three daily frequencies to even the least densely populated lines. If this is what remains after the infamous early 1960s Beeching cuts, which saw the abandonment of many secondary lines, then what existed before must have been absolutely mind-boggling.

[…]

The regular National Rail trains I rode were about evenly split between electric and diesel power. Most of the lines emanating within a 100-mile radius of London are electrified — both the East Coast and West Coast mains boast catenary as far as Edinburgh and Glasgow from London, and several other lines have third-rail power, including the South Western trains between London Waterloo and Weymouth via Southampton, which I rode — the world’s longest continuous third rail-electrified railway at 136 miles, whose electrification was completed in 1988. By contrast, America’s longest electrified railroad is only 57 miles: Metro-North’s Harlem Line from Grand Central Terminal to Southeast, N.Y. Trips of up to 200 miles on electrified lines tend to be covered by Electric Multiple Unit trainsets, while electric locomotive-hauled sets cover longer runs.

Top speeds for expresses on the electrified mains range from 100 to 125 MPH, akin to Regionals on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. Older equipment is usually limited to 80 to 90 MPH. On less busy branch lines, speeds top out between 40 and 70 MPH depending on track condition. Some of these lines are dark territory and some still use semaphore signals and manually-operated switch towers (signal boxes in British parlance).

Catenary electrification is working its way westward on the Great Western main line towards Cornwall, but long-distance expresses on this line use either 1990s-built High-Speed Train trainsets powered by diesel locomotives on both ends or two-year-old Hitachi dual-mode (catenary electric and diesel) multiple unit trainsets. Most services on less busy lines, however, are provided by Diesel Multiple Unit trainsets of varying vintages and configurations, often of just one or two cars. ScotRail’s rural services, including the five-hour run Sam and I took from Glasgow to Mallaig, all use DMUs.

Of the ten different branded National Rail services I sampled, I was most impressed with Virgin Trains, Great Western and Chiltern Railways. I took Virgin’s expresses on both the East and West Coast main lines and both offered a comfortable First Class product with hot meals and alcohol included, similar to Acela First Class. Great Western’s First Class seats were the most comfortable and the color schemes and seat arrangements the most attractive, and the food service included sandwiches as well as snacks, coffee, tea, sodas and still or sparkling water. On most trains traveling for more than one hour, there is food and beverage service from a cart. In most cases, First Class passengers get one complimentary snack (such as pretzels, fruit, crisps (potato chips in British parlance), candies, cookies and pastries) and one drink each time the cart passes through the coach.

D-Day – I: The Great Crusade – Extra History

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Extra Credits
Published on 6 Jun 2017

D-Day: June 6, 1944, the day when Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy to retake France from the Germans. They hoped to take the Germans by surprise, and their decision to brave rough weather to make their landings certainly accomplished that, but despite these small advantages, the American forces at Utah and Omaha Beach had to overcome monumental challenges to establish a successful beachhead.

QotD: When the “Right Stuff” becomes “old school”

Filed under: History, Quotations, Space, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Consider the popular conception of firefighters: brave, selfless, strong enough to haul an incapacitated person from a burning building.

A few years ago, at a conference, I learned that many women were failing to qualify as firefighters, because they were coming up short on the strength test. What was so interesting, though, was that in practice, it turns out that one of the most important skills a firefighter needs is not so much the strength to drag an unconscious person from a building, but, far more commonly, the ability to coax someone who’s in danger and is terrified to come with them. Apparently, many women turn out to be far more persuasive than men – highlighting the importance of selection based on real-world skills, rather than legacy stereotypes.

Space flight offers another striking example of this phenomenon. In the context of a recent Tech Tonics podcast interview with Dorit Donoviel, director of the Biomedical Innovations Laboratory at the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, I had told Dr. Donoviel about my lifelong interest in astronomy and space, about launching Estes rockets and my love of the National Air and Space Museum and above all, about my affection for the heroism captured in the movie The Right Stuff, an all-time favorite.

In response, she laughed, and told me how “old school” that thinking was. When the space program started out, she explained, there was an exceptional degree of risk involved, and astronauts tended to be selected from the ranks of fighter pilots – because, in her words, they had “the skill sets and the cojones.” But today, she said, things are different – in large measure because the “space program is a lot safer than it used to be.”

Consequently, Donoviel explained, “Today what we’re looking for is less of the sort of alpha-male pilots, and more of the sort of scientists and engineers, geologists and earth scientists, folks who can work together in a cohesive manner in a team.”

Moreover, she added, the astronaut of the future needs to be able to endure long periods of boredom and the prolonged lack of stimulation – in many ways, the opposite of high-adrenaline “seat-of-the-pants flying” that in some ways characterized the early astronaut missions.

In space travel, as in firefighting, our notion of what constitutes the right skill set has evolved appreciably.

David Shaywitz, “Evolving Notions Of The Right Stuff — In Spaceflight And In Medicine”, Forbes, 2016-09-20.

Powered by WordPress