Catch up

Have been up and down with tiredness and energy and was completely distracted for a bit by Settlers 6. Did three half days last week and am paying for it this week by being insanely busy. This wasn't helped by our fridge dying on Monday night.

Tuesday (already a busy day at work) was thus compounded by all my breaks being related to the purchase of a replacement fridge, which meant that I played all of two or three points of Ultimate before crashing.

Wednesday, having overdone it the previous day, passed in a haze of exhaustion, occasional stupid questions to my lawyers, being ridiculously busy at work, and being called at 8.50am by the fridge delivery people saying the fridge would arrive between 9.30 and 10.00am. My protests that I'd requested an afternoon delivery and 2 hours notice were not headed. maudlinrose and I dropped everything, were home for about ten minutes by the time the delivery people arrived, and were out of the house by 9.50am. I was annoyed enough by this that I called up the store we bought the fridge from, complained and they have refunded the home delivery fee.

The new fridge now has our old magnets and the magnetic erotic poetry set that purplesparkler and [Unknown site tag] gave us for Christmas over it. There is now NSFW paragraphs over it. My mother is visiting in a month - it might need to be rearranged before then.

Today has been much better, despite not getting enough sleep last night. I keep forgetting I tend to cope slightly better on some sleep deprivation...

Anyway, on Tuesday night while I was watching my team play as I sat exhausted on the sideline, I was taking photos. I actually got a good action one...

( Assorted photos, not just frisbee> <a href= )

What is Law?

maudlinrose and I were talking last night about New Zealand having an unwritten constitution and the fact that we thought this was preferable, and depending on the government, far more flexible. The unwritten constitution includes the Magna Carta, the Human Rights Act 1993, the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and many other documents.

And yes, with a simple majority, the Crown could repeal BORA - the Crown is bound by the Act in exactly the same way as it is by Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Act 2008, which is proposed to be repealed in the Infrastructure Bill. The Crown can legally overturn any piece of legislation that it wants if it has a majority in the House. In practical and political terms, overturning BORA would be far more challenging (they chip away at it instead).

Then we got onto the idea of all law ultimately being a construct, which is something the two of us have discussed before, and something that I quite firmly believe. Yes, it's simplified, but I think it's a simplification that works.

Law is a construct - an idea or series of ideas - that is collectively bought into and followed by a group of people, like any other rules of behaviour for groups. It's just that law has been written down so that everyone knows what the rules are and when people (or companies) break them, because you don't automatically know the unwritten rules of a group.

I get frustrated when random people during the week do not follow the keep-left rule on the main street through town. There are many office workers there, and we automatically kept left; it allows for faster flow of foot traffic. It is noticable if someone does not do so. That is a collective construct of behaviour by the public in that area.

We buy into the construct because it makes our lives easier. Sometimes law codifies constructs that are already socially in place; BORA is a good example of that. Sometimes law codifies what people want to be the social construct in place, such as with the Civil Union Act 2004.

Law being a construct is not necessarily a bad thing; it ties into the very basis of group dynamics. Just because it has been written down, does not mean it's a bad thing.

And because I want to see if we're alone in this, have a poll:

[Poll #1530335]