Well, Mr Hawkes, I suppose nitpicking comes from my background of software development, administering system, change control management, risk assessment, liaising with data protection lawyers ... where attention to detail is key - just reflect on the recent Cloudflare, Crowdstrike, MS, AWS et al issues that have wreaked havoc on the Internet where an anomaly slipped through with a change :-) And taking different positions on an issue is a great way to getting a the root of a problem (isn't that the idea of a discussion forum rather than taking pops at people or, for some, being rude?) - and what's normal? Wasn't Nazism normal in the Third Reich, Communism normal in the Soviet Union, the slave trade normal in the 18th century, Apartheid normal in South Africa until the early 1990s? I don't think Gaussian distributions are applicable to politics but, perhaps if they were, social democracy would correspond with the peak of a normal distribution bell curve? :-)On another point, no, I didn't vote for Ursula von der Leyen but then I didn't vote for Liz Truss to be PM, Bishops and hereditary peers in the HoL, or Charles III to be King. All democracies have their quirks. At least von der Leyen was elected by elected representatives (MEPs) rather than by an accident of birth, appointments by the CoE (hardly representative in a secular society?), or elected by mainly wealthy retirees who perhaps didn't want a second generation Indian as PM (but who was obviously more competent?).
Michael Ixer ● 33d