"Didn't mean to imply they are mindless serfs, but more that their interaction with the local sheriff would have remained pretty much the same regardless of whether it was Henry or Henri on the throne. It just wasn't relevant to their day to day life, and I'm sure that there wouldn't have been any radical change in the system overnight."
I am really not sure I can go along with that. This is much tied up with the idea of Nation and the development of the Nation State. I think that happened a lot earlier in England that it did in France. In fact I would suggest that England as a nation state had already occurred by the time Henry V came to the throne, but was not to happen in France for another few centuries (arguably until Bonaparte).
So in England, but probably less so in France, the peasants really did care who was on the top of the pile and, as you will know, the City of London certainly did.
Interesting discussion between Hurst and Charles. There are present-day parallels in Eastern Europe, where some people have found themselves in a series of different states in their lifetimes. They seem to react differently - some attach themselves to a particular state/ethnic group and cling to it fanatically, going to war for it if necessary. Others, probably most, just pragmatically get on with life and wish everyone else would calm down (possibly the view of many ethnic Russian in eastern Ukraine today). Similar patterns are visible in the Middle East and the Arab world.
A feature of more or less competent autocratic governments is that the latter group increases - the cost of joining a faction rises (because the autocrat throws you in prison or worse if he notices) and the benefits if just getting on with things rise too (the Asian tiger economies are good examples of that). Tito was the classic European example - the proportion of people who said they were "Yugoslavs" rose steadily at the expense of those who said they were Serbs, Bosnians, etc. The weakness is that autocrats rarely prepare properly for succession (so when Tito died it fell apart at high speed) and if the autocrat start to look incompetent or dangerous, internal and external enemies will get rid of him (Gaddafi).
The foreign policy lesson isn't to embrace autocrats, but to recognise that the demand for democratic change isn't always uppermost in most people's lives, and we mess with other countries at some risk without the effects of the change being necessarily welcome to the people affected (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya?).
The mechanism* of the Libyan intervention - embedding secret squirrels among a friendly force as spotters for air strikes - worked well.
(*Obviously the consequences of the intervention are a separate argument but the mechanism worked well.)
(The benefit of someone directly spotting on the ground rather than just using GPS is you're less likely to bomb weddings by accident.)
Personally I doubt the Kurds need any more than that to defend their territory and provide a safe haven for refugees. Any more than that would be re-opening a can of worms imo.
Eventually the Isis types will go too far and the currently allied Sunni tribes will turn on them and that will be that.
edit: on the other hand if the neocons manage to use this to start Iraq 3.0 in a big way then it will all go to **** again.
The Kurds are under strong and frankly unexpectedly severe battlefield pressure from ISIS both in Iraq and in Syria.
The ISIL swing north has two main aims:
1. Oil 2. Securing uncontended Communications links between territories that make up their self created Caliphate in Iraq & North Eastern Syria.
Makes you wonder what Assad did letting those guys out of prison at the time.
To absolutely successfully push ISIL back requires taking them on across that territory as a whole and as yet the US has restricted itself to limited strikes in defined spots.
The US has held back from action due to its own President and a general, and probably correct unwillingness, to assist the current Iraqi government. If the Kurds are having problems, however, the calculations for the US & the West in general change. Arms supplies are already on their way to the Peshmerga but that hasn't been the main problem in reality, the Kurds simply haven't organised or fought effectively. Given the number of Western advisors in Irbil, the situation perhaps should have been seen. Certainly the Kurds have been warning the US for months about ISIL.
To justify wider action, Maliki may well have to go, and indications are that his successor has been chosen. Its down now to getting Maliki out.
"Didn't mean to imply they are mindless serfs, but more that their interaction with the local sheriff would have remained pretty much the same regardless of whether it was Henry or Henri on the throne. It just wasn't relevant to their day to day life, and I'm sure that there wouldn't have been any radical change in the system overnight."
I am really not sure I can go along with that. This is much tied up with the idea of Nation and the development of the Nation State. I think that happened a lot earlier in England that it did in France. In fact I would suggest that England as a nation state had already occurred by the time Henry V came to the throne, but was not to happen in France for another few centuries (arguably until Bonaparte).
So in England, but probably less so in France, the peasants really did care who was on the top of the pile and, as you will know, the City of London certainly did.
Interesting discussion between Hurst and Charles. There are present-day parallels in Eastern Europe, where some people have found themselves in a series of different states in their lifetimes. They seem to react differently - some attach themselves to a particular state/ethnic group and cling to it fanatically, going to war for it if necessary. Others, probably most, just pragmatically get on with life and wish everyone else would calm down (possibly the view of many ethnic Russian in eastern Ukraine today). Similar patterns are visible in the Middle East and the Arab world.
A feature of more or less competent autocratic governments is that the latter group increases - the cost of joining a faction rises (because the autocrat throws you in prison or worse if he notices) and the benefits if just getting on with things rise too (the Asian tiger economies are good examples of that). Tito was the classic European example - the proportion of people who said they were "Yugoslavs" rose steadily at the expense of those who said they were Serbs, Bosnians, etc. The weakness is that autocrats rarely prepare properly for succession (so when Tito died it fell apart at high speed) and if the autocrat start to look incompetent or dangerous, internal and external enemies will get rid of him (Gaddafi).
The foreign policy lesson isn't to embrace autocrats, but to recognise that the demand for democratic change isn't always uppermost in most people's lives, and we mess with other countries at some risk without the effects of the change being necessarily welcome to the people affected (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya?).
Syria has been left pretty much alone, it's turned to shit anyway.
The Kurds are under strong and frankly unexpectedly severe battlefield pressure from ISIS both in Iraq and in Syria.
The ISIL swing north has two main aims:
1. Oil 2. Securing uncontended Communications links between territories that make up their self created Caliphate in Iraq & North Eastern Syria.
Makes you wonder what Assad did letting those guys out of prison at the time.
To absolutely successfully push ISIL back requires taking them on across that territory as a whole and as yet the US has restricted itself to limited strikes in defined spots.
The US has held back from action due to its own President and a general, and probably correct unwillingness, to assist the current Iraqi government. If the Kurds are having problems, however, the calculations for the US & the West in general change. Arms supplies are already on their way to the Peshmerga but that hasn't been the main problem in reality, the Kurds simply haven't organised or fought effectively. Given the number of Western advisors in Irbil, the situation perhaps should have been seen. Certainly the Kurds have been warning the US for months about ISIL.
To justify wider action, Maliki may well have to go, and indications are that his successor has been chosen. Its down now to getting Maliki out.
"The Kurds are under strong and frankly unexpectedly severe battlefield pressure from ISIS both in Iraq and in Syria."
Yeah, weird Isis should open up a third front like that and then do stuff that would guarantee US intervention.
That was my point: Jack Cade cared about the abuses of the various underlings (Crowmer, etc), but I don't think he was trying to overthrow Henry. Equally, I am not convinced he would have cared if Henry were Henri: his focus was on reasonable treatment of the ordinary man.
Cade's rebellion, and the associated political crisis of 1450, with Richard, Duke of York's return from Ireland as the commons brayed for blood, had a common cause, viz. the loss of the the remaining English possessions in France. In that sense, the rebellion of 1450 was much more concerned with national political issues than 'the reasonable treatment of the ordinary man'. It was whollly unlike that of 1381. That is hardly surprising given the growing intensity of English nationalism in the period, pace E.J. Hobsbawm, E. Gellner and the elder Anderson who assert nations and nationalism had no existence before 1789.
I'm not sure, though, that France was the *cause* of Cade's rebellion. It certainly helped with the availability of armed and trained men who had lost everything because of the perceived failure of those at the top to look out for their interests (viz the Treaty of Tours). But was the cause really nationalism - and, if so, why were they so careful to focus on the perceived mid-level grafters vs. the structure as a whole?
YG Labour lead 4: 37/33/12/8. Prompting with Cameron/Miliband/Clegg explicitly mentioned (not Farage) has almost no effect (35/33/9, UKIP not explicitly mentioned), and replacing Cameron by Boris likewise (35/34/10). Most people think Boris should quit as mayor if elected, and Cameron should quit as leader if defeated (though Tories want him to stay on by 56 to 31). Warsi supported in resigning by 44-25.
Overall, the impression given is of the voting shares being pretty stable regardless of how the question is put and what prompts are given. Cameron's personal rating as PM is higher than the others, but mentioninig him doesn't actually help the Tories significantly, so it's presumably factored in.
Incidentally, the last 3 YGs have all had good SNP subsample results, close to Labour, perhaps reflecting the high profile at the moment ev en if Salmond is seen to have lost the debate by the majority of voters. Some of that may be up for grabs if the referendum is heavily No. That said, I wonder if we're counting chickens a bit too much on the basis of the debate - the referendum is still a month away.
The effect of Boris replacing DC is that 20% of UKIP VI would vote CON at 2015 GE
Yes, though it also makes 9% (or 8%, depending on rounding) of Tories move away to other parties. As the Tory figure is larger than the UKIP figure, the net effect is +2, which is negligible for a prompted question. Generally if you ask the same question again with a specific prompt it tests whether that prompt is influential, and overstates the actual effect.
Of course, it's possible that if Boris won the leadership in a contested, highly-publicised contest, the effect would be different, but the starting point is that it doesn't do much for Tory VI.
NPEXMP. You need to say the VI looks stable WITH YOU GOV,( even that is questionable)> it isn't stable elsewhere c/f Populus and ICM.
Its a bit like you stating the ED Balls was gaining credibility( or whatever other nonsense words that you used the other day.)Does having a credibility rating of 1/100 instead of 0/100 count as gaining credibility? I guess it does if you are spinning like a top.
Of course you never post anything on here you know not to be true.
Comments
A feature of more or less competent autocratic governments is that the latter group increases - the cost of joining a faction rises (because the autocrat throws you in prison or worse if he notices) and the benefits if just getting on with things rise too (the Asian tiger economies are good examples of that). Tito was the classic European example - the proportion of people who said they were "Yugoslavs" rose steadily at the expense of those who said they were Serbs, Bosnians, etc. The weakness is that autocrats rarely prepare properly for succession (so when Tito died it fell apart at high speed) and if the autocrat start to look incompetent or dangerous, internal and external enemies will get rid of him (Gaddafi).
The foreign policy lesson isn't to embrace autocrats, but to recognise that the demand for democratic change isn't always uppermost in most people's lives, and we mess with other countries at some risk without the effects of the change being necessarily welcome to the people affected (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya?).
Still turning to sh*t though Alex isnt it
(*Obviously the consequences of the intervention are a separate argument but the mechanism worked well.)
(The benefit of someone directly spotting on the ground rather than just using GPS is you're less likely to bomb weddings by accident.)
Personally I doubt the Kurds need any more than that to defend their territory and provide a safe haven for refugees. Any more than that would be re-opening a can of worms imo.
Eventually the Isis types will go too far and the currently allied Sunni tribes will turn on them and that will be that.
edit: on the other hand if the neocons manage to use this to start Iraq 3.0 in a big way then it will all go to **** again.
The ISIL swing north has two main aims:
1. Oil
2. Securing uncontended Communications links between territories that make up their self created Caliphate in Iraq & North Eastern Syria.
Makes you wonder what Assad did letting those guys out of prison at the time.
To absolutely successfully push ISIL back requires taking them on across that territory as a whole and as yet the US has restricted itself to limited strikes in defined spots.
The US has held back from action due to its own President and a general, and probably correct unwillingness, to assist the current Iraqi government. If the Kurds are having problems, however, the calculations for the US & the West in general change. Arms supplies are already on their way to the Peshmerga but that hasn't been the main problem in reality, the Kurds simply haven't organised or fought effectively. Given the number of Western advisors in Irbil, the situation perhaps should have been seen. Certainly the Kurds have been warning the US for months about ISIL.
To justify wider action, Maliki may well have to go, and indications are that his successor has been chosen. Its down now to getting Maliki out.
Yeah, weird Isis should open up a third front like that and then do stuff that would guarantee US intervention.
Overall, the impression given is of the voting shares being pretty stable regardless of how the question is put and what prompts are given. Cameron's personal rating as PM is higher than the others, but mentioninig him doesn't actually help the Tories significantly, so it's presumably factored in.
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/s41ippsqgi/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-140808.pdf
The correct figures are: 33/37/8/13/4.
The effect of Boris replacing DC is that 20% of UKIP VI would vote CON at 2015 GE
Of course, it's possible that if Boris won the leadership in a contested, highly-publicised contest, the effect would be different, but the starting point is that it doesn't do much for Tory VI.
You need to say the VI looks stable WITH YOU GOV,( even that is questionable)> it isn't stable elsewhere c/f Populus and ICM.
Its a bit like you stating the ED Balls was gaining credibility( or whatever other nonsense words that you used the other day.)Does having a credibility rating of 1/100 instead of 0/100 count as gaining credibility? I guess it does if you are spinning like a top.
Of course you never post anything on here you know not to be true.