Sticking with politics, it's been a while since we checked in on the folks at Lembit Opik's zero gravity baby farm. The following is taken from the "Weekly Q and A with the Chairman of Asgardian Parliament" held on the eighth day of the month of Leo in the Asgardian year 0010 (full video posted below) with thanks to YouTube's transcription function...
12:31 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Yes, I believe we are live. Um and while we wait on the Chair, Peter,
would you like to give a summary of our um chair's meeting from an hour ago?
12:42 - Deputy Chair Peter Maughan (pictured):
Yes, Sarah. [clears throat] We're looking forward very much in the the meeting of the chairs [clears throat] looking forward to further discussions of our trip aa of the uh
Antarctic potential. We also are looking forward to whatever we're going to be able to do to
celebrate the uh anniversary of Asgardia and uh we had a lot of chairs there at the meeting tonight.
So it was very very good. Um we're waiting for some reports back from Lembit (Opik, Chairman of Asgardian Parliament)with regard to the uh discussions he's been having with Head of Nation
and with uh the Prime Minister. So we're hoping we might get some more news from him him at uh at this
meeting. But as it stands at the moment, we're really sort of waiting, absorbing,
looking forward to what we can do, and hoping that I can find a cure for the hiccups that I keep getting every two minutes, um, courtesy of the new drug that I'm taking and it gives me uh it gives
me hiccups. So, don't let anybody tell you that it's easy to lose weight with these
injections that you have because it is. But unfortunately, it also gives you ter terrible indigestion which I
have.
But no, we had a we had a very good meeting and we're now looking
forward to what Lembit will bring back to us. Lembit's in a in a conference in London at the moment (GB News' and Jordan Peterson's ARC). So, he's having to work around that. But, uh, we're hoping that he'll have some good news for us [clears
throat] in a few minutes when he manages to come to us. So, that's pretty much all we did. We didn't come to any huge conclusions
about anything, but we did uh we did have a good meeting and uh and that, and now we're waiting for Lembit.
15:12 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Thank you, Peter.
15:13 - Deputy Chair:
But now, now we're live. I should say that uh that my name is Peter Maughan
and I'm de deputy chair of the parliament of Asgardia which is the first space
parliament and also the first fully digital democracy and that if anybody's
watching this who is not a resident of Asgardia this is a good time to join. It's €100 or the equivalent in your currency per year and that gives you access to
all of the facilities of Asgardia. So if you're not [clears throat] already a member, get joined. Uh we
love it. We come together once every week as chairman of the committees of
Asgardian Parliament, but we also we also enjoy ourselves. We're all friends. It's all quite nice. Those of us who've been involved in politics for a long
time, as I have, know that politics is a dirty, filthy business. But this is not politics. This is politics with a small P in the sense that we are looking to
guide the the destiny of mankind in space and looking to safeguard the residents of Asgardia, but not to fight with
one another. It's very easy to fall out with me. I mean, I'm in lo local politics in
the northeast of England and everybody falls out with me. Although I try to avoid that, but we're just all friends. If I'm in
trouble with regard to anything, I can reach out to all of my colleagues in the Parliament of Asgardia and they're always
here to lend a helping hand. So, it's worth it to join to have that constant on constant friendship
just at the end of a phone and it's lovely and I wouldn't have it any other way. Now, I
don't know who's here. You can't ask Lem any questions because he's not. But if anybody wants to ask any questions of any anyone, I'll try.
17:48 - Doctor Sarah E v. Clark:
Peter, you are you're muted, Peter. And I think Lembit has joined us...
I'm glad they've kept the intro, but why change perfection?
No, not Lembit Öpik. He's just here to introduce the real winner – and, for all I know, only candidate – Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli. Dr. Igor keeps his victory address short and informative, and since I haven't been keeping up with the Asgardian Parliament, I was grateful to be brought up to date...
While Ashurbeyli admits the "so-called panemic" has stalled Asgardia's financial development somewhat, I was excited to learn that the Space Nation now has its own currency – the "Solar" – and that the exchange of fiat currencies into Solars has been "enabled", even if "the third part of the cycle" – namely the exchange of Solars back into actual money – "has yet to be addressed." A project for the next five years then.
The launch of a new sattelite called "Asgardia 2" is also on the agenda it
seems, although what it will do, how it will do it, and how it will be
launched is yet to be determined.
Ashurbeyli is keen too, he says, to create a new language for Asgardia, and website.
An imagining, I'm guessing.
But "the constitutional anchoring of Asgardia's primary mission" remains "the birth of the first human child in Space." The Head of Nation still seems really keen on this, and "on our path to achieving the goal," Ahsurbeyli announces, "we have come close to the first stage – an isolation experiment on the ground, simulating a year-long space flight involving several married couples of volunteers to conceive and give birth in conditions as close to those in orbit as possible. However," Ashurbeyli admits, "the cost of such an experiment is very high and funding has to be secured." Close then, but no cigar. Also I'm pretty sure the closest conditions to being in orbit achievable "on the ground" are forty second burts of zero gravity in a plummeting fuselage, so encouraging couples to volunteer for a whole year of that might really eat into the budget. Still, at least someone voted for him.
I've dropped you into this video just as the Head of Parliament Lembit Öpik – himself introduced by Asgardia's "Head of Administration" and one-hundred-and-third human in space – appears to be pretending to know sign language. Oh Lembit.
The Space Parliament of Asgardia (the hard-drive orbiting Earth, chairman: Lembit Öpik) has just had its seventeenth (?!) international cyber-sitting, and put all three days of it up online, as is the Agardian way. I haven't taken minutes of the whole thing as before – because there are hour and hours of it – but looking in on the opening day I did notice a development you might want to hear about.
We're seventeen minutes into the first day, Lembit's late again, and someone's just complimented the Minister of Manufacturing Jacob Mulder's presentation skills, suggesting he should get his own radio show, which is nice, but just everyone's basically hanging around. Then Egbert Edelbrœk asks if he should play a commercial, and Jacob laughs, but no, Egbert's not joking, he's made a presentational video which was going to be played later so they might as well play it now.
And to my enormous surprise we then see... well, firstly, this:
Because it's always nice to get a glimpse of someone's wallpaper for a split second (this looks A LOT dirtier when only glimpsed) but then the video...
Is this Asgardia?! Is this what's up there, the hard-drive? Or just a plan for what to send up next?
"Is there sound?" someone asks.
Interesting shape too. I don't really know what a butt plug looks like, but it does look like something you might use to plug a butt. And what does "Spaceborn United" mean?
Then we get a cross section...
And it takes me a moment to realise what I'm looking at...
Oh wow, that's...
...
And then it ends.
By which point Lembit has joined us to start proceedings, munching on something, crisps? "Bon appetit, Mr. Chairman," to quote Ariadne Gallardo. Voting is about to start, Lembit explains: "You can vote Yes, No, or I don't know"...
Seguéing from Stooky Bill to Lembit Öpik is a cheap shot I know, but the Space Nation of Asgardia broadcast its first ever Live Weekly Q&A with the Chairman of Parliament over a month ago now, and I've been meaning to record minutes of it on here ever since. The questions potentially raised about the founding of an international space community may be more pertinent now than ever. Also, today is the founder's birthday! Happy Birthday Dr. Igor! Also I've been bingeing For All Mankind (and I've been trying to binge Foundation, but there are so many space guns!) So let's go...
00:00 – Live stream countdown starts.
10:04 – We begin not with the Q&A but an absolutely must-see promotional film. If you don't already know what Asgardia is this might not be the best introduction, so just to bring newcomers up to speed...
As first explained back in this post, the "dream driven space nation" is currently just a memory stick with its own national anthem, orbiting the Earth, whose "Head of Nation" and "Chairman of Parliament" –
former missile tycoon Doctor Igor Ashurbeyli, and former Liberal Democrat MP and
Cheeky Girl consort Lembit Öpik– are now keen to organize, among other
things, the first ever child born in zero gravity.
Obviously this enterprise raises some interesting questions, such as what might drive this new nation's economy? Well we now have an answer: Franchising! Really, the promo is quite something.
Now let's meet Opik...
12:04 - Q&A with the Chairman of Parliament begins! There's no sound. However it's hard to tell if anyone knows this. There's also no Chairman of Parliament.
None of these people is Lembit Opik.
13:39 – We have sound! But still no Chairman. It's not really clear if it's started. Some people are still trying to find the link.
15:29 – This flashes up for a second some reason:
...Which is fun.
15:30 – "Who's going to start the meeting?" Still no Chairman. Maybe Lembit missed the new time. There are Asgardians all around the world and it must be genuinely hard to arrange a globally convenient window: "This hour is not popular for many others." (By the way, despite it seeming to be the first language of absolutely noone pesent,
everyone is speaking English which is really appreciated.) Is it possible to contact Mr. Lembit? "A warning, maybe?"
16:21 – "Don't worry. We're going to send the security people to go and get him. Give me a minute," jokes an unseen "Aida M." It's all very good humoured. I don't wish to misrepresent this. Asgardian Mayoral candidate Ferda Inan suggests that migh have been an Agents of Shield reference, possibly for the record. More logging on. Everyone starts comparing their climates.
18:36 – Clearly unable to conact Lembit, the Chair of the Executive Committee Salvos Mouzakitis logs back on to get the ball rolling. (I've no idea what all these titles mean.) SESSION BEGINS!
Salvos really seems to know what he's talking about, so this all gets a bit harder to follow, but here are the topics covered:
18:45 – A hundred and forty four amendments to the Asgardian Constitution have been proposed at a recent summit of the "Supreme Space Council". No amendment was rejected on the grounds of not being liked it, only if it were deemed "non-constitutional". Salvos praises the professional focus of the four members of the Supreme Space Council who turned up – ("I didn't expect it, to be honest") – but he doesn't have the results of their vote because he's on holiday.
23:24 – There is to be a meeting of the Asgardian Legislative Forum on the twenty sixth. Salvos will attempt to participate again, at least in part, but he is still meant to be out of office, and is really beginning to piss off his wife. "I am in danger, real danger that my wife will divorce me," and his wife is a lawyer. Among topics up for discussion at the forum will be the decentralisation of Asgardia, as the franchising plan has hit a snag it seems: Apparently China is turning out knock-offs. 25:00 – That's really all Salvos can bring to the table right now, as Lembit still hasn't shown up and he hadn't prepared to chair this meeting, so the floor is given to Ferda Inan.
25:28 – Ferda was hoping for more gossip. Salvos says he wants to wait for Lembit. Ferda has no more questions and returns the floor to Salvos. "Thank you."
26:29 – Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Seref Kaplan has a question: Can we have subtitles? Salvos segues onto the topic of the translations, in particular the – understandably stretched – but
sloppy translations being provided in the lead up to Asgardia's
forthcoming constitutional elections. To further complicate matters, mistakes have been spotted in the English originals, "Head of Government" and "Head of Nation" being used interchangeably, for example, when these are entirely separate pillars of Asgardian Government, and differentiating between them will prove vital if the Asgardian electorate is to determine what either of them eventually
mean.
An announcement is expected from Lembit when the first Asgardian books are to be appear.
A succesful Persian translation of the Asgardian consitution has now been completed by "Navid".
31:08 – Tax law. Salvos is personally not in favour of Asgardian taxes as Asgardians aleady pay taxes in their native countries (and presumably because Asgardia doesn't actually do anything yet – also isn't there a joining fee?) If there are to be taxes however, Salvos prefers taxing gross profit rover net because it's less work.
33:43 – Once Asgardia leaves zoom and physical sittings resume, "Fernando" has proposed rotating the countries in which these take place. Salvos loves travelling, but of course there are visa considerations and also not everyone can afford it. Basic stuff, cooly considered.
35:20 – Fernando has also suggested the Asgardian website could be improved.
36:20 – MP Bridget. She proposes Canada for a physical sitting: "They tend to have much lower standards from what I'm aware of as far as entry into their nation." I'm guessing Bridget's from America, although from my own personal gap year experiences I can tell you she's not wrong.
She also suggests free language classes as a perk for Asgardian residents. Apparently there are plans afoot for an official Asgardian Academy.
39:22 – Seref has the floor again. He has uploaded a Turkish translation of the constitution to the website, but just wants everyone to know it's not a translation of the most recent version. Seref is very on board with Bridget's free langauage class idea. They could might a real draw. Or even just a separate enterprise, open to non-residents. He also proposes Turkey for the physical sittings, especially if it's off season.
44:45 – Salvos expresses doubts about how easy it will be to get a lecturer to give regular language classes for free, but would love to go to Istanbul.
47:33 – Ferda again. Apparently nobody should worry about how the Academy will be funded, and volunteers are welcome to upload educational videos to it. Salvos suggests preparing a promotional intro: "Make it nice." (Was Ferda behind the Asgardian promo?) Ferda: "Done already." Salvos: "Really? Great!" Ferda: "Why not?" I couldn't hear the topic chosen for the Academy's first lecture. Visas?
50:35 – Aida M has the floor: Not all countries have the internet. Could these classes be put onto a video or CD and posted out? Also not all countries speak English. Also either you've got to pay people or not. Also Aida has been asking for a while for sign language translations.
53:26 – Aida still has the floor but this has flashed up for a couple of seconds:
Some absolute crackers there.
53:50 – Salvos supports Aida's proposal and recognises how vital accessibility must be for the Asgardian
project to succeed. However, he points out there are as many different
sign langauges as there are spoken languages. "That's going to be a problem."
56:15 – Ferda says that sign languages aren't actually too varied. It's more like an accent thing.
58:30 – Aida says you have to start somewhere. There seems a general consensus then that "English" sign language will be something to look at. (The inverted commas are my own because I'm not sure British and American Sign languages are the same.) Salvos will bring this up with Lembit.
59:40 – Apparently there's a lot of talk happening in the chat about going to Canada. Salvos does not necessarily support it. I get the impression he's spent quite a lot more time on here than he meant to. Session ends. "Adios, amigos."
Lembit remained a no show, but two days later recorded the video at the top of this post.
O HOU, everyone! Happy First of Leo! Let's all celebrate One Humanity, One Unity – but not necessarily in that order – with Asgardia's plucky "Chair of Parliament" Lembit Opik, an uncredited Lena DeWinne, and their tiny "Head of Legal Affairs", none of whom outstay their welcome. If that wasn't enought to make this a Unity Day to remember, joining them is a computer-generated woman from 2005: "All Asgardians will be awarded celebrating in all corners!" Imagine that!
Speaking of all corners, I see Dennis Shoemaker has found the perfect place for his map of the US. Okay, so it turns out that Unity Day was actually six months ago, but that's my fault, not theirs. I wasn't going to let the year go by without sharing the latest from Asgardia with you anyway, and every day's Unity Day here at Unattended Articles, so let's hear now from their Head of Information and Communications. Take it away, Dennis!
Of course, Asgardia won't just be about law and information and recruiting women to give birth in outer space. There will also be a strong cultural element. But what will the Art of Earth's First Space Nation look like? It will look like Hell. O hou, Cheryl!
Oh, who's this at the door now, but Asgardia's Minister for Trade and Commerce, Ben Dell, who maybe hasn't had that much to do this past year? I don't know. That's just a guess. Maybe sloppily photoshopping the Starship Enterprise onto pictures of himself sitting on a space swing was exactly how Ben was meant to be spending his time. It certainly wasn't wasted anyway. That's one tasty vision. Here's still to the future, guys. O HOU!
"Nestled in woodland, in the heart of Berkshire, is the exclusive Badgerwood Park development–"
I was letting youtube run, and this ad came up. I can't remember before what, I wasn't paying attention. Not at first anyway, I had my back to it. But something made me turn and start staring, and by "Welcome to a new way of life" I had so many questions, I knew I had to watch it again.
Rewatching answered nothing however, except possibly why I was being targeted...
"Seventy residential park homes, for the over-45's. Picturesque scenery. Quiet and peaceful..."
Hey, I'm over 45! So it's not a retirement village. Or is it? What are over-45's? Why? What?
"Badgerwoord Park is perfectly located, and has great transport links, nearby..."
What's this map?
"Each home is unique. Made to your requirements..."
But who am I?
"And don't be fooled by the quiet pace of life, as there are lots of things to see and do around Badgerwood Park."
Refreshments? Count me in! Look at all these... different types of lawn. Paddling pool? Children's play area. But the children aren't over 45, are they? Are these first time properties then? But there's no... Where are the... These are chalets. How can anyone...
Okay! Sorry! Sorry, what exactly is supposed to happen here?
Are we meant to believe that people will pull these chairs back from this table, sit on those chairs, pull them back in again, and then sit next to each other, dining at this dining table? In this dining room? All I saw at first was how little elbow room there was, I hadn't even noticed the walls.
So what is this? Who's it made for? Who made it? I mean, no-one yet; I get some of this is CGI. But is this new? Or is this actually normal – like Jersey – and it only seems weird to me because I live in a city, and there are actually hundreds of people over 45 watching this advert and going "Brilliant, that's exactly where I want to move to and park my 4x4. I hope it has kids"?
I'm going to try to follow the progress of this development more, in a manner not dissimilar to how I've been trying to follow Lembit Öpik's space nation of Asgardia. Badgerwood Park might take Asgardia's place in my non-affections, in fact, as the latter just brought out its calender for the year 0005, which has thirteen months, all four weeks long, and inwardly I scoffed: How's that going to work! before doing the maths, and realising that twenty-eight times thirteen is three-hundred and sixty-four, so month thirteen just needs one extra day.
The historic Handing Over of the Licensing Agreement
"Hello, I'm Lembit Öpik, the Chair of Parliament for Asgardia, the worlds' first space nation." Oh yes! The Asgardian adventure is still very much a thing, and joining Lembit today to see in the year "Triple-O Five" are Asgardian Prime Minister Lena De Winne, Mark Bogen – the "CEO of Asgardia Financial Ark and Minister of Finance" – and Ben Dell – "a business person who wants to do business in Asgardia" – all here to witness the signing of this, the very first business contract between Asgardia and "an Earthling business". That's not what we're actually witnessing here in this little clip, is it? You can't just hand stuff over in a zoom chat, can you? And then cut to it being signed? And why are they boasting about the "many, many... long and sometimes challenging sessions" it's taken to draw this licensing agreement up, if business person Ben Dell is, according to his own linkedin profile, Deputy Chair of Parliament for Asgardia? Wouldn't that have made negotiating quite easy?
I should stop minding. Ultimately, the Asgardian project has always been an adventure in presentation, and it's in the little things, like Lembit Öpik's joke at the end, where the real thrills are to be found.
Thank you very much. In other news, I'm keeping the tree up until at least February.
Apparently outer space still needs forty-to-eighty-one-year-old "Life Skills" graduates to stand for the Parliament of Asgardia, and Lembit Öpik's finally been allowed outdoors to issue a chilling warning of what will happen if they're not forthcoming: "We know it's a statistical certainty that, sooner or later, life will be extinguished unless we do something about it." He never tells us what "it" is, but bloody hell! I woke up at nine in the morning today, as opposed to seven in the evening, and I'd had absolutely no idea how normal things had got back to...
Normal
Normal
Normal
Normal
Chilling... So I might go back to taking night walks. And it really looks like we're going to need those Zero Gravity birth experiments soon, so get those forms in!
Great to see Tim Curry on board as well.
Firstly, apologies for missing out the umlaut in "Öpik" in my previous post about the Chair of Parliament for outer space's first ever pyramid schemezero-gravity sex-farm micronation "Asgardia", but I didn't know how to do them in January. You just have to keep the vowel key pressed, it turns out. Moving on: I'm not sure what those images are behind Öpik, something space-based no doubt, and it doesn't look like wherever he's quarantining himself allows the hanging of pictures, but that print of an aeroplane window looks pretty levelly propped up on the back of his sofa so I've no further notes. Take it away, Lembit!
Clearly.
(The Cosmic Shambles Network, by the way, has also been doing some actual zero-gravity research, here.)
I'm concerned that not enough of you know what former Cheeky-Girl-dating, light entertainment Lib-Dem Lembit Opik
is up to these days. Don't worry, he's doing fine:
He's now a "Chairman of Parliament", specifically the parliament of "Asgardia", a micronation the size of a hard drive orbiting Earth which is what it is. It has a king:
Thanks, Dr. Igor! Further specifics about the actual make-up of this parliament can be found on Asgardia's website, which is of course asgardia.space, where you should also find a link to click on if you want to be mayor. Don't worry, it has scientists as well obviously:
So yes, I will be keeping a very close eye on these guys. The full story of this putative zero-gravity sex farm or whatever it is can be enjoyed in Amy Hoggart's brilliant piece for "Samantha Bee's Full Frontal" below, which is how I first heard of it, and in which I was really not expecting to see Lembit Opik pop up. Anyway, happy twenpy-twenpy everyone! Here's to the future...
So
were you up for Opik? It doesn't have the same ring, does it? Firstly
then hats off to Alistair Stewart and ITV...Christ I'm watching BBC News
24 right now and their palpable impatience with the absence of a result
favouring the Tories is like an armpit in the face. Do they not realise
this might take some time? What the hell were they thinking last night?
Where was their Plan B? Paxman asking half-heard questions about
results that weren't in, David Dimleby grumbling about shots of
"leylandii and other sorts of hideous hedges" while fielding eerie
late-night phone-calls describing a mood of despondency, intercut with
Andrew Neill (if there was ever a Dick Tracy villain called Cowpat...)
and Bill Wyman on a yacht, all this maybe was not the way to go. No, I
turned over to ITV at around two in the morning and gratefully never
turned back. There was arguing on ITV. I like arguing, it's sort of a
bit like explaining. Alistair Stewart, who I'd thought ran that first
leaders' debate with the deceptively hectic hand of a Thelma
Schoonmaker, insured once more that time flew, while points got made and
I actually felt like I was learning something. And the choice of guests
was perfect: For Labour, looking like Dredd without the helmet and
sounding like John Wagner John Reid appeared the epitome of stour, sly
Old Left badass (I thought they'd all died). Anne Widdecombe meanwhile
was everything I wanted to see in a Tory that night: angry, baffled,
tiny and old. And for the LibDems - I don't know, who who is that guy?
He's great, I've seen him quite a bit. He looks like the haggard
scientist nobody will listen to charting the course of the meteorite,
and he sighed a lot.
As well he might. It looks like I wasn't
alone. Nick Clegg's now doing exactly what he said he would, which is
why in the end so many of us didn't vote for him and plumped instead for
the party we wanted to see him form a coalition with. Bear this in mind
though, it's not Clegg's decision in the end. Any alliance he forms
will have to supported by his party. And look at them. I don't see them
favouring Cameron. But I don't know. It's like Battlestar Galactica,
isn't it. Is it? It's like Mad Men. What's the word I'm looking for?
It's drama.
I'm looking over my tweets, what was the highlight? Definitely this. "Nakedpainter posted at March 6th". She's alive. You Monsters are the greatest.
