I did not realise so much can go down in the space of a few days of this week but here we are. I was getting all worked up to do a post yesterday especially if Boris Johnson had not decided to step down by that point but he soon very quickly did. So, skipped that day because I was exhausted anyway from another busy day on my Course.
Plus I can just talk about such things in this usual Friday post anyway.
He Really did Try… Almost Scarily So
Try as in he really did try his hardest to bend and ignore typical convention to remain in office, but even for Boris Johnson it all ended up becoming too much. Realistically I think many of us knew this day was coming soon, I feel like the writing has at least been on the wall for over a month now.
I guess some people just do not know when to quit while they are behind. Trying to stay in place was very clearly making things much worse as time creeped onwards. It was a very frustrating affair to witness. I knew by now that by the way Boris Johnson has behaved (in regards to convention and ‘tearing up the rule book’ as people like to say) that he simply was going to put up a big fight.
But at least we now know he does have a limit, although he certainly went too far. When I heard rumours that he was thinking of even ignoring a confidence vote to trigger a General Election to try and remain in charge is when for me things started getting a little worrisome.
Luckily it did not go that far if such was a potential pathway in Boris Johnson’s mind. But the very mention of this and the behaviour of Boris Johnson has exposed a major flaw in our centuries old system of Prime Minister’s following a convention and a so-called unwritten constitution.
Just to think that after all this time it took one man to tear up convention and expose it as something weak. It seems it is not the safest approach to leave this loophole in place. I used to think that a dictatorship was not possible in our country but I think if we do not put up some new laws and actually write a modern-day constitution then sadly it is indeed possible if the wrong person comes along under the right circumstances.
This would be someone who is smarter than Boris Johnson, someone who knows how to campaign, has the right team, backing and finance. And someone who has an unbelivable attraction towards ultimate power.
Imagine the same scenario we witnessed takes place but this person chooses not to step down, they ignore confidence votes, force an election (now that the Fixed-Term Parliament Act has been repealled) and by unfortunate circumstance they have enough influence with local party affiliations to deselect all their opponents, replace them with ‘yes-men’ and then by further unfortunate circumstance manage to win that election with a majority – once they are past that final check we could be in very big trouble.
Cannot happen right? Refer to the 2019 Election – Boris Johnson managed to get rid of all his most fierce ‘remainer’ opponents within his party from the Parliament and replace them with ‘brexiteer’ MPs. Under the RIGHT circumstances it is possible and that election is your proof. If someone repeated this under/for far more malicious intent/goal – well.
In effect that person would turn the party from one that is democratic to one that purely revolves around said person, they would have power to pass legislation that further erodes democracy until we are then under an authoritarian regime.
Although the chance of this happening would need so many things to go right that it is unlikely the point is that it is not impossible (enough proof now exists that it can happen) and it could easily be fixed through introducing new legislation and a written modern-day constitution that patches this loophole and holds leaders to account for their actions.
I do not see why we should leave this to risky chance. The flaws are exposed and people have noticed due to Boris Johnson’s damaging incompetence.
I think it only makes sense to strengthen our democracy and make sure the worst-case scenario absolutely cannot happen. And there will be many people thinking – scaremongering – won’t happen – as if – you’re wrong. But I also think so many people just do not realise how fragile democracy can be, especially in a 1,000 year old system that has had no major reform – but just patches here and there, with old infrastructure hidden away (but still there) in hopes it all won’t collapse.
Leaders are meant to set examples, good examples. So when you have leaders like Boris Johnson setting bad examples and playing around with the system – people notice – and they will take what he has done and mould it into a new form that may work better next time. That is the danger now. And without change that will persist.
And what about another scary thought: Someone who takes what Trump has done, picks certain beliefs, certain characteristics, moulds them into something smarter, and this man or women IS smarter. They become the next US President. Dangerous.
Whatever happens the future is going to be interesting – scarily more so if things do not change (new laws, wide-ranging reform, an actual written modern-day constitution, etc).
Shinzo Abe
Talking of more unbelivable news. If this week could not get crazier and sadder enough. I mean it feels pretty surreal. I always found Abe to be an interesting figure.
I don’t know enough about Japanense politics to say too much but I do know that these kind of things happening in Japan are very rare. It is a moment in history. For Japan this could be compared to the Robert Kennedy assassination. His political influence was strong as was his social influence. He was one of the world’s most recognised leaders.
I certainly remember the time he dressed up as Mario. Considering that’s the thing that comes first to mind for me shows you how little I know about Japanese politics. Still though I found myself to be pretty sad at his death. Very heinous.
This Week on my Course
This week we dived into scripting on the ServiceNow platform. Obviously it uses JavaScript but they have their own library – obviously. Anyway, although the ServiceNow platform is built around the concept of low-code/no-code there are still of course times a company may want to go super advanced and script things that otherwise cannot be done.
It is emphasised though that scripting should only be done if absolutely necessary and the same goal cannot be achieved via the low-code/no-code approach – which is pretty rare.
Basically we learned about UI Policies and Client Scripts (scripts that run client-side via the browser), Business Rules (scripts that run server-side), and Script Includes (scripts you can reuse on other scripts by calling them). We also looked at scripting using the Glidesystem (database stuff – so think SQL but instead it uses JavaScript). And also scripting in the Flow Designer and other areas that offer it as an advanced feature.
So basically scripts can do things like impose user restrictions, trigger things to happen when a trigger occurs, fetch data, provide information (such as via popups) and so on so forth.
Note that as baseline the ServiceNow platform already includes 1000s of already-made UI Policies, Client Scripts, Business Rules, and Script Includes. So chances are what is wanted already exists – but if not that is why the ability to script something yourself exists.
Interestingly if you do script something yourself on the platform and it turns out to be really good ServiceNow may even add it to the baseline in a future release of the platform. GlideQuery is an example of this… kind of.
I really enjoyed the week and I am looking forward to further pursue scripting (including outside of ServiceNow) and hopefully one day get good at it.
Well that’s it for this week. It’s my brother’s birthday tomorrow so we’ll be enjoying a takeaway. Then after that I really need to cut down on eating more than usual because I’ve had two buffets recently as well and there are lots of cupcakes and muffins left over from my last buffet that I brought!
Oh well… have a good weekend.
Thank you for reading this post, if you have any queries please Email me, you can find my Email in the Contacts & Community section. Please also follow The Weekly Rambler on Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest and Facebook which you can access through the buttons at the bottom of this website. You can also use the social media buttons under each blogpost to share with your family, friends and associates.
You can also subscribe to Email notifications at the right-side of this website to know whenever a new post goes up (you can easily unsubscribe from this at any time through a button in each Email notification), or alternatively you can use an RSS Feed Reader.