New day out – Barton Marina to Shobnall Marina

Not done this trip before.

It takes you a little way out of Burton on Trent to Barton Marina, and back again.

About 7km in all and about an hour and 1/2 trip all in, with 1 person driving and the other doing the locks.

Met a few boats on the way. One woman told me about the front doors on her barge had been sealed shut because boaters kept approaching the fully open locks, when locking up and letting the flowing water flow in though the cabin.

It was a hire boat.

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Duck removal

Background

The background to this story is that this duck just wanders into my mom’s back garden every year to lay her eggs.

She’s not near the canal, it’s not near any water, but a female duck has decided to make my mums’ garden the home of it’s off-spring.

Last year, my mom had to carry the chicks down from the garden because they couldn’t find their way down to the canal.

Local celeb

This duck is now a local celebrity, and there are many people checking up on it’s progress.

I can’t say I’m sorry. It’s just part of nature.

Ducks can have up to three broods a year.

This one didn’t make it,

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Trump: The face of US Authoritarianism

Make America great againIn the 1990’s, a political scientist named Stanley Feldman developed a set of four very simple questions to related to parenting to test the level of authoritarianism.

  1. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: independence or respect for elders?
  2. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: obedience or self-reliance?
  3. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: to be considerate or to be well-behaved?
  4. Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: curiosity or good manners?

The success of the test in pin-pointing inherent beliefs indicative of an authoritarian character trait was enough to mark an industry standard.

These tests and similar have been carried out on voters in the United States, with some interesting results.

If not unsurprising, it does quantify what some have been saying all along.

Here is the evidence. Taken from vox media

 

The rise of American authoritarianism

A niche group of political scientists may have uncovered what’s driving Donald Trump’s ascent. What they found has implications that go well beyond 2016.

by Amanda Taub on March 1, 2016

The American media, over the past year, has been trying to work out something of a mystery: Why is the Republican electorate supporting a far-right, orange-toned populist with no real political experience, who espouses extreme and often bizarre views? How has Donald Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly become so popular?

What’s made Trump’s rise even more puzzling is that his support seems to cross demographic lines — education, income, age, even religiosity — that usually demarcate candidates. And whereas most Republican candidates might draw strong support from just one segment of the party base, such as Southern evangelicals or coastal moderates, Trump currently does surprisingly well from the Gulf Coast of Florida to the towns of upstate New York, and he won a resounding victory in the Nevada caucuses.

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