Labour’s road to here

Labour’s road to here

There has been much a-wailing and gnashing of teeth as the Labour Party NEC decides what Labour’s Euro manifesto should say; they have reiterated Conference ’18 policy, to oppose a Tory Brexit by all means including a Referendum.

I was asked elsewhere when we established and then stepped away from the six tests; The six tests were confirmed at Conference 18 although the phrase “respect the referendum” which was inserted to the 2017 Manifesto presumably through the Clause V meeting, has not been approved. I have over time tracked the development of Labour’s Brexit policy as set out by Conference.  The first is about #lab16  which says we’ll stay if terms set by the Tories are unacceptable and states that we’ll accept any mandate including a vote in Parliament. I cover the  the #lab17 stitchup but while it’s weaker, it’s still fundamentally about no worse than in, (read the comment for the bad news), and I record the words of #lab18, last year,  which opposes a tory brexit by all means, prioritises jobs, the economy and the Northern Ireland border. I also talked about the abandonment of the six tests, in this article, called “Consenus” and the low profile insertion of the Common Arrest Warrant as a requirement. …

Meaningful Votes

Meaningful Votes is a role-playing game, written by Richard Barbrook, where player’s (or teams) represent parliamentary factions and replay the last 3 months in Parliament to see if a different outcome might have been possible. The factions have different power (ie. votes in Parliament) and the different goals i.e. different Parliamentary goals which are enforced by the scoring system. You can also win points through your rhetoric. At least some factions score higher if they are on the losing side of some votes. Heckling is encouraged.

We played this with Lewisham West and Penge CLP.

Richard suggested that people play a faction with whose views you disagree because the learning experience is better. I played the “Lexiter” faction and certainly clarified my ideas about who they are and what they represent, an alliance of rump Bennites and Blue Labour and that’s before we just consider the careerists & triangulators, who are frightened for their seats or for a majority. …

Euro Parliament 2019

The European Parliament Elections are coming, here’s what you need or can do to get involved. Help Labour keep its four seats in London.

  1. If not on the electoral roll, register to vote before the 7th May, here…, I didn’t know you could vote if homeless, but it seems you can, If you can’t provide an address, you are advised to contact your local Electoral Registration Office for advice.
  2. If a citizen of an EU member state other than Republic of Ireland, Malta or Cyprus you need to notify the Electoral Registration Officer that you will not be voting other than in the UK. This can be done using the form on this page at the Register to Vote site. This needs to be done by midnight 7th May
  3. Register for a postal vote here …, before the 8th May; you’ll need a printer
  4. You may apply for a proxy vote until 15th May.
  5. Join the Party here …
  6. Donate to the national party here…
  7. Join us on the doorstep, find out where & when here …,, we also run phone banks for those who can’t or don’t want to knock on doors. check out here …, or tell us here …,
  8. Put a poster, or posters up in your window, or garden, tell us here …, you’ll need to say that you want a poster and tell us where to deliver it.
  9. Donate to Labour’s campaign in Deptford here …
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Creative Industry exports or not

Over 6 months ago, I decided to see how true the proposition that Creative Industries are foreign exchange earners for the economy as claimed by British Music and the Shadow Culture team. I asked my MP to ask a written question and the replies are linked to in a comment on the above article. I asked for a broader range of industry classifications as I was interested in broader questions than just the creative industry.

I think this is validly constructed.

EMI was sold to Sony & Universal in 2012 and so their balance of trade position was reversed at that time and they were a competitively large music publisher at the time. I last looked at the structure of the global music industry a long time ago, pre-streaming, pre-Apple and pre-Spotify (which is incorporated in Sweden).

Five years out of nine, the industry was in deficit. The final year surplus is extraordinarily large, it would be good to see 2017/2018 and/or understand the reasons for this number. It is not historically true to say that the Creative industries are a net contributor to the foreign exchange account.

I should add that the aggregate trade current account deficit is run as at about minus £2.5bn /month over the period in question.

ooOOOoo

I wrote about this last year, I have corrected a spelling mistake in the title, and so the SURL/permalink is now, https://wp.me/p9J8FV-1Nb …

A first domino?

Carol Cadwalladr and others are speculating that the US Federal Trade Commission plan to fine Facebook $5bn for its privacy law breaches. This is reported today in the New York Times, in an article, Facebook Expects to Be Fined Up to $5 Billion by F.T.C. Over Privacy Issues. This documents the breaches which focus on Cambridge Analytica and the Brexit time span and the laws. $5bn is a lot, the EU only fined Google €1.5bn. I posted the NYT article on Facebook with the following comment.

But he still won’t come to the UK to testify to the DCMS select committee, although I have sympathy with the argument that if we aren’t investigating our citizens who have broken the law, why should he put himself at the front of the queue.

 …

War & Schools

In this article in the Guardian, Richard Norton Taylor looks at the UK defence budget, quotes its critical parliamentary scrutiny, the NAO and defence select committee through the prism of an examination of value for money; It costs too much, the nuclear subs and aircraft carriers are of questionable value and as suggested by Conan’s “Riddle of Steel”, weapons need to be wielded by people, we don’t have enough and they are not well enough educated.

It’s almost as if the ruling class and their educational policy makers have forgotten that the greatest educational reform acts were passed in response to the challenge to the nation of then recent wars. …

Sometimes it’s only the long odds that work

Sometimes it’s only the long odds that work

We have got to a position in British politics, where people will say anything to get what they want. One annoying meme doing the rounds is that Remain voters should abjure Labour because it is a Brexit party. It isn’t. But it is the only anti-austerity party, the only Party that will address investment, jobs, and the labour market, housing and education. Remainers must consider Labour, as the likely alternatives to a Labour MEP are a Tory or a Brexit Party MEP.

To non Labour Remainers, it ain’t going to happen without Labour; you should play your hand to maximise the strength of the Remain cause and voting for likely losers only strengthen’s the hand of Farage & the Tories’ brexit extremists.

I used to read Jeremy Flint’s bridge class, I also used to play a bit but not very well. Flint’s bridge class was a comic and the lesson he repeated time after time was that if the obvious odds meant you failed to make your contract you had to bet on longer odds, and because it was a fiction it always came off. I didn’t really get it until a couple of years later. How come he always bets against the odds and wins? The answer is that if he bet with the odds, he was going to lose. …

First thoughts

The table in this article lists the EP constituencies and the first seat quota, and when looking at the ComRes opinion poll LAB 33%; CON 18%; BRX 17%; CHUK 9%; LD 9%; UKIP 5%; Green 5%; SNP 4%; Other 1%, it is implied that only Labour, the Tories and the Brexit Party would win any seats, in England

Votes are generally geographically concentrated, so the SNP’s 4% of national polls, translates into a much bigger number in Scotland. In 2014, they won two (out of six) seats with just under 30% of the vote.

The south east region has 10 seats and the lowest quota. It also has very strong pockets of Remain votes in both the Brighton and Oxford but also along the railway lines in Surrey & Hampshire. It’s 1st seat quota is the lowest and it elected four UKIP MEPS in 2014. (I should look up how many voters there are in each region but we are working in percentages today.) It elected one Green, one Lib Dem and one Labour MEP and three Tories, one of whom has defected to Change UK, the party once known as the Tinge.  They may keep their seat here as Tory Remainers may find the LibDems and Greens a step too far. I wonder if Labour can pick another one up but otherwise across the country i.e. England, if ComRes are right, everyone except Labour, Tories and the Brexit Party is going to struggle.

The constituencies vary in size from three to ten seats; the single ten seat constituency is the most proportionately sensitive.

The last seat in each election is also interesting as it is evaluated on those votes left; parties with seat already declared have “exhausted” their votes but there are no transfers. In seats like London, it was a choice between the Greens and the Lib Dems as Labour, Turies and UKIP has exhausted their votes and their final seat quota’s were lower than the other two parties first round quotas. …