Sometimes it’s good to see that conservatives in every country are freakin’ morons. Look who the Tories appointed to be Space Minister in the UK:
The Conservative space minister has apparently confused Mars with the Sun.
Andrew Griffith, who has been in charge of the space sector since November, also mistook Jupiter for Saturn.
On a walk around the Science Museum in London, Mr Griffith pointed to an exhibit showing the surfaces of different planets, the House magazine reported. “Now we have got Mars,” he said, before being told by a member of museum staff that it was actually the Sun.
He went on to say “that one is Saturn”, after the display changed, before the employee said “no, no, that is Jupiter”, according to the magazine.
Insisting he is learning on the job as space minister, he said: “I’m not an encyclopaedia.”
No one expects a bureaucrat to be an encyclopedia, but why does he even have this position? He’s clearly not very curious or informed about space — last summer, my 4 year old granddaughter was getting hooked on space science, reading children’s books about the planets, drawing pictures of different planets…maybe the UK can appoint her to the position of Space Minister?
“You don’t have to be stupid to be a conservative, we’ll teach you!”
Prerequisites: arrogance, ignorance. Being a jerk is a plus.
Judging by the effectiveness of the UK government, he may well be their most qualified minister.
No, the prerequisite is being evil. Ignorance is listed in the “preferred” category, rather than essential.
Given the people what have held ministerial posts in the UK in the recent past, minimal requirements are belonging to the right party and having a pulse.
The UK has a Ministerial Code, but these days that seems to be dead paper.
He can’t even diagram the solar system.
There are only 9 main planets (or 8 if you don’t count Pluto), so how hard could that be anyway? We live on one of them so that should be an easy one.
This is a task I learned in the first grade. It wasn’t even hard back them.
He’s just being snarky because he’s still mad about Pluto being kicked out of the planet club.
I looked him up on Wikipedia.
I was prepared for some guy with a hereditary title like Count, who went to an expensive private school, and has a lot of direct relatives that are closely related.
So much for stereotypes.
He has an impressive history, coming from the middle class, and rising to COO of Sky group.
It is safe to say that astronomy and space just aren’t his thing.
If they had Pound signs in front of them, he might have paid more attention.
raven @ #6 — Well, Pluto is out, but there may be a new 9th planet beyond Pluto. The evidence is controversial, of course, having to do with the orbits of some of the larger trans-Pluto objects. Still, I doubt this guy would know about that.
I LOLed at the “dubious Saturn” graphic.
After reading I immediately thought this:
Abraham Lincoln – Quote – Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.
Largely as a result of the various contortions Brexit has put the Tory party through, they’ve lost most of what passed for the competent part. (Who were still horrible, of course.) Loyalty to an impossible and unworkable idea selected membership for compliance, loyalty, a lack of curiosity and, often, frank stupidity.
The apparent surprise expressed by P Z Mters tells me be has not followed British politics the last 13 years as closely as I have.
I might be surprised if a govermment minister is photographed flinging feces on a rival.
A tory MP was seen watching porn while in session – he had to leave but only because it became impossible for him to deny it. Others have been more successful in covering their tracks.
The COVID inquiry has failed to aquire the phone messenges from the critical period as they have *mysteriously” disappeared from Mr. Sunak’s telephone.
The Idiot (aka BoJo) literally gave away many billions of € to EU from the EU development fund. This money belonged to Britain but the EU negotiators knew BoJo was in a hurry- for PR reasons- to finish this particular negotiation. They cleverly slow-walked the process until he gave up and literally signed away several billion €.
-Billions in contracts for PPI were given away to tory donors who sometimes even did not even deliver useful equipment to the hospitals (they got to keep the money).
It is a perfect storm of corruption, incompetence and performative cruelty that makes even the Trump administration pale.
Sorry for the typos, I was too angry to type slowly.
Prerequisites:
Opportunism, doublethink, a knack for betraying allies at the right time, learning to repeat the right phrases in front of a camera, dodging questions from journalists (BoJo literally hid in a fridge), no empathy and a complete absence of shame.
Ignorance and a mediocre intellect are merely things that follow along because they are not selected against.
And there’s Mars…
Sir, that’s the sun.
(puts on glasses)
And that doesn’t make a world of difference, it makes a universe of difference, for now I see planets! You’ll excuse any reflection from my reading goggles…
At least I’d have a valid excuse.
Saturn and Jupiter, well, nearly interchangeable moon storage depots.
And who really cares about the assorted rubble?
Yes, I really do make science jokes at parties.
But, most of the misleaders placed in charge of science and especially space programs typically have no excuse, they’re looking for sinecure positions and got them. Most likely think that space is full of a gas that puts people to sleep. Rather like a certain Florida surgeon general, who opposes vaccines and likely secretly supports bloodletting, rejecting germ theory.
@13 “It is a perfect storm of corruption, incompetence and performative cruelty that makes even the Trump administration pale.”
…though it doesn’t take much to make Rethuglicans look pale. They generally start that way.
BTW Saturn is faintly visible in the evening sky, but you need to know where to look.
Jupiter easily dominates the evening sky.
At dawn Venus is quite bright. Mars is technically above the horizon not far away, but it will probably not be visible in the dawn light.
Living in a town or city will vastly reduce your chances to see anything interesting in the night sky, so take the opportunity to go outside if you go to the countryside (if the skies are dark without a full moon).
Unclestinky @ 12
The MPs had to pledge supporting the Idiot and his Brexit deal to be accepted as candidates.
This purge devastated the parliamentary tory party and ensured only opportunists and fools were left.
I think your granddaughter is over qualified. She knows how to not shit herself in public.
It’s time Andy started keeping that bullet in his pocket just like Barney.
Crazy idea: if you want to be Space Minister, you should be able to derive the ideal rocket equation, and solve the Kepler problem. Yes, that disqualifies at least 95% of the population, and 99.9% of conservatives. That’s the point.
Okay confusing the Sun and Mars if both are orange spheres seen very breifly but Jupiter with its red spot and Saturn with its rings ? Really?
Ahem. Settle down, chaps. The only pre-requisite for one being appointed Space Minister in this fag-end, barrel-scraping shitbucket of a Tory government is to publicly demonstrate that one has both friends in the right places and sufficient space between one’s ears. Given that, it’ll all go swimmingly.
He’s a junior Minister: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_for_Science,_Innovation_and_Technology
(Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister )
:)
As per cartomancer@4–
As a Tory minister for a portfolio that does not generate a reliable source of corrupt payments and often raises evidence against moneyed interests, his job is not to promote the portfolio. His job is to gut it. He is surely well qualified.
And to answer the question posed in the headline, YES. To be a Tory you have to be ignorant, craven, and amoral. Much like the Republicans in the US and the Lib/Nat coalition in Australia, conservative parties almost everywhere in the West have actively ejected party members who showed the slightest evidence of competence or reasonableness.
chrislawson:
That’s democracy.
(All these people are elected by the electorate)
@28
well true but mostly given the choices by the parties themselves and outright misleading appearances the voters are often left with the lesser of evils to chose from
@robro
Pluto is still the 9th planet – just an ice dwarf variety of planet as we have earth-like ones (rock dwarfs?), gas and ice giants and other varieties. Ice dwarfs also include the 4 & a halfth planet Ceres, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Sedna, etc.. In fact, if ice dwarfs count as planets – and they should – then Pluto is not only a planet but slightly larger than the average one and most planets are actually ice dwarfs!
A nice symmetry with stars where almost all stars are red dwarfs that are far smaller and dimmer than our sun even though we cannot see a single one* with our unaided eyes and the vast majority of stars we see in the night sky without optical aid are far bigger and more luminous than our daytime star. Most stars are dwarfs too!
As for the extra trans-Plutonian hypothetical gas / ice giant planet, well, we’ve been looking a long time and not found it yet with the WISE space observatory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-field_Infrared_Survey_Explorer ) ruling out many hypothetical candidates as well as the hypothetical Nemesis companion star idea.
Other suggestions explaining the orbits of KBO’s include being the results of close stellar encounters and even a small black hole instead :
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-planet-primordial-black-hole.html
Alternatively, even more likely maybe, no planet much larger than Pluto or perhaps Mars in size exists out there :
Source : https://spaceaustralia.com/feature/undiscovered-world-why-planet-nine-might-not-be-there
Of course, this also raises the notable point that a Mars sized world or even an Earth-zized one wouldn’t be able to clear its orbit at that distance from the star and yet – clearly we’d understand that such a lareg and massive planet is a planet and that whole “cleared orbit” criteria of the IAU is thus rendered absurd and fails. As it does even more so by the IAU definition stating planets have to orbit a star indeed only a single, specific star, our sun. The IAU’s anti-Pluto definition badly needs scrapping and replacing with a better alternative. One I’d suggest simply be that a planet is a gravitationally rounded object thus not a comet or asteroid, not directly orbiting another planet and thus not a moon and not self-luminous from core nuclear fusion thus not a star or brown dwarf.
Oh &, yeah, I very much doubt the Tory klown here would know or care anything of this despite him being their flippin’ Space Minister FFS!
.* Nor married ones or partnered ones even!
@28. John Morales : “That’s democracy.”
Well, one form of democratic governance anyhow.
A form that seems in dire need of improvement and reform and to not be delivering very good representatives and governance based on this example as well as so many other examples.
That’s democracy. (All these people are elected by the electorate)
Actually, no, those people come to power when democracy is degraded, suppressed or compromised; or when the majority are unable/unwilling to form a unified coalition against them.
Yes, the form where the populace elects its representatives.
(Pray tell, what are the other sorts, where no such election by electors occurs?)
You mean, when they are elected. :)
Here, for you: https://members.parliament.uk/member/4874/electionresult
Andrew Griffith Conservative
35,566 57.9% -4.4%
Alison Bennett Liberal Democrat
13,045 21.2% 13.3%
Bella Sankey Labour
9,722 15.8% -6.9%
Isabel Thurston Green Party
2,519 4.1% -0.1%
Robert Wheal Independent
556 0.9% 0.9%
—
Can’t have it both ways; either the eligible population elects its legislators (democracy), or it does not (other systems).
Be aware that, by definition, half the populace is below average in any measure you care to name.
So. Actually, yes.
But fine: tell me how he was not properly elected or how the Tory government was not elected democratically. You made the claim, care to attempt to sustain it?
Oh, to clarify:
Perhaps my reference to Yes Minister was too obscure; in the UK, pollies are not the bureaucrats — that’s the Civil Service. So, this dude is basically Jim Hacker, not Sir Humphrey Appleby.
Huh. Such sudden quietness. I get that a lot.
Here I was hoping for some talk about the distinction between representative democracy and direct democracy. Lots of the former around (with varying degrees of true representation) but none of the latter.
(For reasons. Good reasons)
First-past-the-post is the democratic system that yields these sorts of morons.
Most people vote by party, not the individual candidate and most seats are so heavily skewed towards one party that the chances of them changing are greatly diminished. So you end up with the majority of votes cast having a greatly reduced effect (or no effect) on the final result.
From the figures John gave in post 28 you can see that Griffith is in a rock solid Tory safe seat – the Conservatives could have fielded a paper bag in that seat and still got it elected.
@33. John Morales :
Athenian?
Referendum by, say, computer poll on every issue voted on by a sufficient quorum of people?
Jury selection style system for politicians?
Viking style Moots?
Sure we can imagine & come up with more..
Yes.
Traditionally/historically, it was also true, but for reasons of education/miseducation and “honest” ignorance, which continues is most places. of course.
Now, as we see in every country without such excuses, it’s a conscious and evil (as I define evil – to choose to do harm to others without any excuse or need) choice made by people who have a deep, but consciously faked and empty, “faith” in their own wonderfulness.
Every T—p voter – every “conservative” actually – that I’ve drawn out for literally the last ten years, ends up admitting that in the same way that every Creationist or racist does: they declare that their beliefs require nothing but their declaration, even as their faces, their words, their entire attitude says they don’t believe a word they’re saying.
However sad that is, it makes them bad human beings.
No one under sixty raised in an English-speaking country or a more-or-less “open” society has any excuse any longer. And even the most unintelligent of them knows it.
And most are willing to see the world burn (or go along with those who do), rather than be embarrassed.
Well, they THINK, they PRETEND, they are. Lying is all a “conservative” has,
T—p and MAGA are the Big Lie that makes it all right to do so.
John Morales,
Democracy of the sort that is like an updated version of Jim Crow “democracy,” eh? You don’t want to mention voter suppression, or extreme gerrymandering, or every other thing now being done in the US, eh?
Are you really that sort of asshat?
You sound utterly insincere – like someone who votes “white” and “conservative” – but maybe you’re just a mean-spirited asshat Devil’s advocate.
Either way, it’s – you’re – very unpleasant to read.
StevoR:
Sure:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy)
(Wouldn’t want women to get the vote!)
—
imthegenieicandoanything:
Yes. Extant democracy, eh?
(Your verbal tic amuses me)
BTW: Democracy index
(https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu?tab=table)
United Kingdom 8.28
United States 7.85
(and Australia 8.71)
<snicker>
Eh? :)
I notice you’re not disputing any of my claims.
Again: those people got elected. Democratically.
Whereas you are a ray of sunshine. Just lovely.
Simple: the Tory Party gained an absolute majority of seats (56.2%) on 43.6% of the vote. So more people voted against them than for them, yet they have effectively complete control of the executive, and near-complete control of the legislature, for 5 years – or less if they think calling an election earlier will be more advantageous.
Well, yes, KG. But they were voted in, using the system at hand. Which is democratic.
As andywuk noted above, “First-past-the-post is the democratic system that yields these sorts of morons.”
(https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2019-turning-votes-into-seats/)
As I recall, the populace at large voted to keep that system in place, some little time ago.
US democracy is one of the big rings of the circus to keep the populace docile. The various levels of government are elected in a democratic way give the voters an illusion of control, but the resultant representatives do not represent the people. The part that is ignored is that the vast majority of elected officials take their orders from lobbies paid for by various oligarchs that actually control what laws are passed. Sometimes what the lobbyists write to influence a law ends up being most of the legislative bill, even word for word sections. The politicians will keep it this way as long as the populace keeps shooting each other rather than those in charge and keep voting thinking it will make a difference.
John @43:
The system at hand is not democratic, because it allows rule by the wishes of a minority. If the “system at hand” only allowed white property-owning men to vote, would that be democratic? If not, why not?
Correction: “…it allows absolute rule by the wishes of a minority.”
Only half of the UK parliament is voted in, we do not vote in the House of Lords, they are a mixture of inherited and appointed. Ministers can come from the House of Lords, eg our current Foreign Secretary the deplorable David Cameron.
Fine, for some people, the UK is not a democracy.
Presumably, even those people acknowledge the reality that Andrew Griffith was elected by the electorate, just like every other Tory MP, even though they consider those elections to be undemocratic.
(https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/members/electing-mps/)
@ ^ John Morales : awell, technically its stilla mionarchy as Iguess also applies to us in Oz and other Commonwealth countries with someone even if as figurehead ruler being that from luck of birth alone.
Name me a country with a representative democracy where the representatives represent the people rather than the capitalist corporations. Explain how all those trade relation laws have reduced your personal costs in doing your individual trades with other country’s individual citizens. Show me how a specific corporate tax break for building infrastructure in a state (province) in a country to support a factory in another country represents the people in all the states (provinces) not getting that infrastructure. Explain how all these representative democracies have so well represented their people that the world has not avoided the global warming disaster. I could go on, but the end result is that votes do not matter, but they do make a vast majority of people think that they have a say in how their country is run and so avoid actually running their country. The Kool-Aid of representative democracy is so sweet.
[digression, but in the mood]
Alan, not disputing you at all, only addressing the relevance.
Again: half the people are below the median (to be a tad more accurate than before).
They get to vote.
It’s why direct democracy is problematic, and it barely helps that the representatives in current models are those most people elect on the basis they will make the best decisions about policy and law, thus ameliorating the impulses of the mob.
Obs, the more granular, the closer to the populace’s desires, but the more complicated the consensus and the governing.
Ahem, the USA which is so big and so populous those problems become significant, and India likewise.
And of course, that leads to demagogues and populists getting elected — take Boris Johnson, since the OP is about the UK.
Regulatory capture and subsidies for friends is a bit more complicated, I suppose, but it’s obviously there.
Also a feature of the system.
I here allude to Winston Churchill famous quotation about democracy.
Now, at least here in Oz (thus the higher rating) we don’t have first-past-the-post and we do have compulsory voting (which in practice means getting your name signed off the list and putting the voting slip in the box, you don’t have to actually make a valid vote, just turn up). The former allows for someone who gets the plurality of the vote because of some bloc but a minority of the total vote to have to have an implicit run-off, the latter vitiates the technique of getting some particular bloc to vote en masse (e.g. the Evangelical vote in the USA) by motivating them to actually vote.
Not silver bullets, but definitely prophylactic.
Still. Best as I can tell, the main feature of a functioning democracy of whatever sort is the peaceful transfer of power between administrations and adherence to the rules and principles and the ability to change those as needs must or changing consciousness requires.
That’s how one can tell whether one is dying or not; cf. Putin.
But of course, concomitant to that is the ability to amend or excise the suffrage of its voters; without looking up the quotation, something to the effect that democracy is the only system that can vote to dismiss itself.
—
Anyway, the main thrust behind my original and subsequent comments is that the this chap was elected as are other Tory MPs, and that it is the electorate who elects them.
I mean, had this chap not been elected, he could not be in that position, could he? ;)
So, sure, Tories may be to blame for choosing him for the post (which is how the system works there, for you USAnians), but not for electing him to be available for it. That’s the electorate’s doing.
(And, to be fair, the process iterates; the next election, the electorate will (mostly :| ) remember how it went and adjust their vote accordingly)
@ 41. John Morales :
Regarding Athenians democracy :
True. Good point. It is a different model of democracy though and an updated versuion wher eeveryone gets to particpate and obvs noslavery – might be a good idea.
Well, given our democracy has preferential voting and no gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, Electoral College, House of Lords etc .. that really makes nosens eto me that we’d be below the USA & the Brits but okay. Thanks.
For certain value of the word Democracy anyhow.
Every system has its flaws and issues I guess and we’ve yet to find a perfect model but am I the only one wishing more people worked on getting closer to an ideal system and trying to get more governance reforms that make things ever better?
Makes no sense to me..
Also, no disputes here. He was elected and it will not make the least difference if he is reelected or not. The same overall system is in place and with the same set of the people voting, and the information fed to them to influence their vote, change toward a truly representative government seems remote.
Um, StevoR. Bigger number is better for that index. More democratic.
From the linked site: “It ranges from 0 to 10 (most democratic).”
(Did you not click on it? Did you not read the fucking heading of the chart?)
See, this is why I sometimes become frustrated with you.
You, here, are repeating your #31.
I can but give you basically the same response, perhaps phrased differently.
Still, we’ve been on this path before, and I know when it becomes pointless for me to persevere.
Right. But, you do get this bloke was elected, right? By the electorate, not by the party.
He was not plucked from the populace by the Tories and given the post, he was elected by the populace, then assigned a job by the Government of the day. Exactly how it works here in Oz.
—
But, not to entirely waste this response in just repeating myself, I note that I see a certain similarity between posters who imagine when an electoral (ostensibly democratic) process elects people with whose policies they disagree, they claim the election was unfair and, basically, stolen and another set of people in the USA.
Look at this specimen’s claim, for example:
(See the similarity? You probably do not)
Time for a new acronym, RDINO, Representative Democracy In Name Only.
@55. John Morales :
Dóh! No I didn’t. I stand corrected, apologies. (Hangs head in shame.)
[Respect, StevoR. You are honest to a T]