Dangerous Times

Dangerous Times

Anthony Barnet writes at Open Democracy, an article called, “The Media Monarchy”, in which he looks at the Law, the Media, contempt and the bullying of the Supreme Court. He finishes by pointing out that our Constitution is the result of centuries of fighting against originally despotic monarchs amd that the new unaccountable, unchallengeable power potentially oppressing citizens is the media and while he doesn’t make much of it, the UK, has the weakest foreign ownership controls on the media. …

Article 50 & Parliament

Article 50 & Parliament

The BBC reports that the High Court states that the Government needs Parliament’s permission to trigger the EU’s Article 50 Brexit process. The article is silent on whether Parliament has to express its will as a Law or joint house resolution; I’ll leave the last word to others more qualified, but I don’t think there is any other way to undo previous Parliamentary dispositions other than to pass a new law, which involves four readings and a committee stage in the Commons and the same in the Lords and potentially whatever we call the Conference process to resolve disagreements between the Houses. …

Cyber-amnesia

Jarred Anderson wrote an interesting little piece on Pulse, questioning how the right to be forgotten can be implemented in the block chain; in my view a false dichotomy since the right to be forgotten is being applied to search engines and the regulators’ need to prove non-repudiation will probably override citizens rights to privacy. It is even more interesting that he catalogues the jurisdictions implementing a strong right to privacy as Argentina and the EU; both places with histories of fascist, neo-fascist, stalinist regimes and murderous secret police forces. …

Steadfast

While I am sympathetic to the advocates of a “progressive alliance” working for a government committed to a Parliament elected by proportional representation, I do not think unilaterally, or even in conjunction with the Greens, withdrawing Labour’s candidate from the Richmond bye-election as proposed by is the right thing to do. Labour should of course consult its local membership and consider the candidate chosen by the LibDems but Labour’s voters in Richmond, who vote Labour for local councils, the Mayor of London, and the GLA deserve to be able to express their preference on the ballot paper. It is arrogance to think they can be directed! …

Paradox of the Republic

A short piece in the Guardian about the USA, arguing that ownership of guns is not a human right. These are arguments that most Europeans and probably most US citizens would approve. One of the problems in the US, is the “paradox of the Republic”; a Republic guarantees rights and protections to its citizens only, it refuses to recognise the universality of human rights. Human Rights are universal, the basis of world citizenship.

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A stitch in time

I really can  be a dense sometimes. When rump new labour resigned from the Shadow Cabinet last July. there were two noticeable absentees, Tom Watson and Jonathan Ashworth, both people one would expect to have supported the coup. Watson we assume failed to put his job on the line because getting it back would have involved fighting another Deputy Leadership election which he may well not have won. Ashworth was famously removed from the NEC earlier this month, this would have happened at the point he resigned from the Shadow Cabinet. I suspect that he didn’t do so in order to stay on the NEC. Which way did he vote on the freeze date, the rigging of the registered supporters class, the membership of the star chambers, and the gerrymandering of the NEC membership? …