exchemist

I am having to guess at your meaning but what I think you may be trying to ask is which substituent is allocated position number one in the numbering convention. It is normally done by choosing position 1 to give the lowest numbers for the other groups. So in the first example the left hand NO2 group is a poor choice since you then get 1, 3 nitro , 4 chloro, total 8. Similarly if you choose the right hand NO2 as position 1 you get 1, 5 nitro 2 chloro = 8 or (going round the other way) 1,3 nitro 5 chloro = 9, even worse. By choosing Cl as position 1 you get 1 chloro, 2,4 nitro = 7, which minimises the numbers.

I specifically asked you about the democracies in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands and by what mechanism this "elite" of yours controls candidate selection. You have not answered that, preferring instead to continue to give examples from the USA. If you make a criticism of "western" democracies, you cannot just base it on cherry-picked examples from the USA.

These statements need support. Whom do you think constitutes your "financial elite"? And by what mechanism do they - whoever they are - prevent "smart and honest people" from becoming elected representatives in the UK, Germany or the Netherlands, for example?

If you like Minnie Driver, this is quite funny. I'm coming to the conclusion she is rather a good sport and would be fun to meet:

Ah yes, another "framework".

Yes you could get one at the town hall or something, with anti-counterfeit markings like a passport.

I presume that even with a digital ID system you could always print out documents confirming your identity and keep a copy somewhere safe in case of problems. Estonia adopted digital ID some year ago. There is a review of how this went here: https://www.publictechnology.net/2025/11/13/society-and-welfare/how-estonia-made-digital-id-work-through-choice-transparency-and-trust/ There is a discussion in the UK about introducing digital ID, partly to combat crime and illegal immigration. But it would also replace the various tiresome requests from different sorts of proof of ID required by banks, the legal system and government departments. I don't really see the problem.

What has your question, about the choices made in a single US presidential election, got to do with your general assertion about "hidden authoritarianism" in Western democracies?

Lotti Messa del Primo Tuono, which I will be singing a month from now and an excerpt from "Who Do You Think You Are" about the actress Minnie Driver's parents and grandparents. She was illegitimate, her father being having had a family with someone else. He was an RAF gunner in WW2, aboard a bomber in the failed Battle of Heligoland Bight. Seems the plane was damaged and only just made it back he rescued the pilot from the wreckage after crash landing - and ended up being invalided out of the RAF into a psychiatric hospital, after being proclaimed a hero of the action. He must have recovered as he ended up director of a city financial company later on. Quite an interesting story, which Minnie didn't know at all until she researched it. She seems a nice woman, actually.

Not a chance, mate. This is the same idiotic"pothu" rubbish you've been hawking round the internet for the last 6 months. Forget it.

In that case your definition of "elite" has to encompass the political parties themselves, as it is they - usually at local level - who decide who the candidate for their party should be in their constituency. This is not - at all - the same "elite" as the financial "elite" you were talking about earlier. I think you need to clarify who is in your "elite" and who is not, because at the moment it looks like a woolly concept you can use flexibly to object to any system for selecting representatives.

Those examples, if true, do not indicate democracy is an illusion. Government is always imperfect, like anything else. But in a democracy the people can throw out and replace those that make decisions that are sufficiently bad for a sufficiently large portion of society. Most government policies will make at least some people unhappy, but that's just the reality of life. Under any system of government. If you claim Western government are ruled by a financial aristocracy you need to say what you mean by that. After all, government finances have to managed if the country is not to go bankrupt. So yeah, governments have pay attention to central bankers, the bond markets and so on. That, again, is just reality in the adult world.

I’m not sure the law is quite dead yet. There have been plenty of judgements against Trump’s administration, e.g. most recently the termination of that absurd plastic bimbo Lindsay Halligan. A lot will hang on this forthcoming Supreme Chicken judgement on tariffs. If they do not uphold the constitutional rights of Congress on that, then the US will be well on the way to despotism.

Brilliant. 😆

Hmm, Project Anchor. Missing W perhaps?😁