Parental licensing - in Denmark

Following on from yesterday's post, another topic that I'll cover next semester is parental licensing. This was proposed/defended by Hugh LaFollette some time ago. However, it turns out that it's not merely a philosophical thought experiment. I just learned that Denmark does actually have a parental competency test.

Unfortunately, I don't know any more about it than what's in that article. It seems it isn't applied to all (prospective) parents, but only those that are considered a risk. Nonetheless, it appears that children can be taken away from parents who fail the test, even if they haven't yet suffered any harm.

Scotland proposes to criminalise prostitution

The module that I'll be teaching next semester includes, amongst other things, a week on prostitution. So, it's good to know that there are moves to criminalise it in Scotland. This makes it more topical.

Disrespecting a Game 2

Earlier in the year, I made a post about disrespecting the game of football. That concerned the practice of standing on the ball in Brazil. But, thanks to a recent BBC article, I learned that "under Ifab's law 12.4, a player can be booked for dissent by word or action, or even for displaying unsportsmanlike behaviour such as showing a lack of respect for the game". Unfortunately, they don't give a link, but I assume this should be easy enough to find.

Forecasts and predictions

Political scientists are sometimes expected to predict elections (and maybe other political events). And there's often some comment if pollsters (are seen to) get it wrong. But making predictions about the future is difficult.

One comparison might be to sports pundits. Out of 30 BBC pundits, no one predicted Liverpool winning the Premier League last season, for example. Another might be to weather forecasting. There's an interesting piece about that on the BBC. Weather forecasting is getting more accurate. And it seems that AI might be improving things further, though there's a cautionary note that models based on the past may fail to predict unprecedented events.

Disrespecting a game

Luke Maring has an interesting article (here) on the obligation to vote. He argues that democratic citizens have a role-based obligation to vote, since failing to do so would disrespect democracy. And he motivates the idea that it's wrong to disrespect a practice with an example of a basketballer. (I forget the exact details of the case.)

I was reminded of this today, when I saw this article about Memphis Depay, in which the Brazilian Football Federation (CBF) is reported to have issued a letter saying that standing on the football is "provocation to a rival and disrespects the game."

I assume this was in Portuguese, so not sure how easy it would be to track down the original, but it's an interesting example (for those with more interest in football than basketball, at least).

EDIT: See follow-up post here.

Commons vote on PR

I'm teaching about proportional representation tomorrow, so it's timely that the House of Common approved a motion on PR today (3rd December). Coverage in various places, including the Guardian, Telegraph (sign-up required), and Independent, plus several less-prominent sites that seem to be carrying the same version of the story (here, here, here, here, and here - I link to several in case some links don't last).

This is pretty meaningless, since it's clear that the government doesn't plan any changes. Nonetheless, it's slightly frustrating to see Conservative MP Lewis Cocking trotting out things like "The British people have made their opposition to this clear. In 2011, 13 million voted to retain the first past the post system". That refers to the AV referendum, but choice there was between FPTP and AV, not PR. So, the British people haven't had chance to express their views on that.

I should say though that Sarah Olney (whose motion it was) may be partly responsible for this, since her comments seemingly focus on criticising FPTP. We could change away from FPTP without introducing PR (for instance, if each constituency used AV to choose its MP - the result might still be very disproportional, though it would be slightly less clear how to judge that).

Anyway, one particular point of interest is the breakdown of votes. Amongst those who voted against is David Pinto-Duschinsky. My students will be reading a critique of PR by his father. (My knowledge of the relationship is based on Wikipedia, so I hope it's right!)

Holocaust denial on campus

This coming year, I'm planning to teaching this piece by Catriona McKinnon on Holocaust denial. So, I've been paying some attention to recent debates over freedom of speech.

Bridget Phillipson has announced that the Labour government will be pausing implementation of the previous government's Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, partly because (she suggests) it might protect Holocaust denial. An official statement can be found here. 

This move has been welcomed by students or, at least, the NUS. (Presumably student opinion isn't unanimous.)