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May 08, 2005

Scottish Socialists

Angus Dwyer asks "seriously, do the Scots need their own Socialist and Green parties, too? Are Scots really this proud and disagreeable?".

Well, to some extent, Scots really are that proud and disagreeable, as much as I like their country. While I tended to see the cross of St. George only at football or rugby times in the South, the cross of St. Andrew is everywhere once you get north of Berwick. Not that that's a bad thing, but I think it's true.

But this is also a great moment to remind people of the single greatest talking shop in the history of things named parliaments (the Welsh Assembly is called an Assembly) - the Scottish Parliament. Being a pretty standard modern day federalist, I'm all for devolution. But with the strong limits on the Scottish Parliament's sovereignty (though it did abolish tuition fees for Scots, and not English people at Scottish universities), and some pretty mediocre representatives, the Scottish parliament is most worth observing for the pitch to which they raise issues of really awesome unimportance. My favorite debate during their "First Minister's question time" was one in which the Tory leader wanted to know why the Scottish football team's performance had been so "execrable" the last Sunday, and whether the Scottish Executive was planning on doing anything about it. I don't remember the answer, but perhaps the local parties Angus questions are useful to party leadership in that sense these days - as somewhere you put your scottish up-and-comers who you don't think much of.

EDIT: And, of course, the obligatory link to the Scottish Parliament's website in Scots, which begins, "e Scottish Pairlament is here for tae represent aw Scotland's folk".


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Economists on Parade

I will (hopefully!) not be blogging much until my Land Use Exam on Tuesday. Unfortunately, that does not mean I am not reading blogs in the interim. E.g.:
Tyler Cowen on the betrayal of the 1994 Republican revolution.

Bryan Caplan on rent-seeking in Sin City.

Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner was served rancid food at an upper West Side restaurant, which then refused to comp his meal even when he bothered them about it repeatedly. He gets his revenge by blogging about the restaurant, which is called French Roast. Oddly enough, I ate at French Roast with co-blogger Amy when I was in New York in January-- it was one of the few places on the walk home that was serving what we call "real" food that late at night, and it earned serious gratitude for that. I trust Dubner, however, and will not be going back.

Oops. This looks like blogging. It must stop.


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