The Government have announced major regressive changes to the Asylum regime. These are all regressive, & vindictive. They must be opposed, and those MPs & Peers opposing these measures supported. This article looks at a couple of statements in opposition, and points at the Momentum model motion. While various press sources seem to have seen the proposals, I can't find the formal government statement. (10:57), see overleaf for more ...
Five things
It’s useless as a pillar of a growth/industrial policy. …
The Labour Party staff stopped reporting membership to the NEC earlier this year, but they reported the end of year membership to Annual Conference and of course the electoral commission.
A number of years ago, I made a chart showing Labour’s membership from 1989 to 2021; I have just updated it using the end of 2024 figures.
There are stories published that Reform have overtaken Labour in terms of membership numbers; it would take an extraordinary amount of departures for this to be true. This article in the New Statesman published under a pseudonym as a gossip column is headlined as such and points at Labour List reporting the membership in Feb as 309,000. …
I have recently, watched the YouTube video, “How tech CEOs are lying to you”, where Karen Hao is interviewed by Aaron Bastani on Novara Media's channel. Ms Hao has just published a book, “Empire of AI” and the interview covers the topics of the book.
At the centre of her arguments are, that large language modules aka AI, and their use of resources, water, power, land and rare metals are a choice, and one that society cannot afford. She questions the business model of the AI industry, sees it as a threat to [US] wealth and notes its scofflaw approach to its own regulation and its oppression of poor and vulnerable communities. She is highly critical of the motivations of the oligarchs funding the AI bubble.
The remainder of this article, which is over 2000 words is overleaf, use the "Read More" button ....
While posting my notes on my reference back for Labour Conference I fell back on the OBR statistic that Brexit had cost the UK 4% of GDP. I thought a chart would have been helpful and so went looking for one.
The NIESR published an article, Revisiting the effects of Brexit, which now they’ve archived it, no longer has the chart they made from the model, but google search can still find it today.
Their model tries to disentangle the effects of the COVID slump, and the article, dated 2023, says,
…These estimates suggest that Brexit had already reduced UK real GDP relative to the baseline by just under one per cent in 2020 as consumers and businesses adapted their expectations even before the TCA came into force. Our estimates further suggest that three years after the transition period, UK real GDP is some 2-3 per cent lower due to Brexit, compared to a scenario where the United Kingdom retained EU membership.
Labour is holding an election for the position of Deputy Leader, I have five questions I want to ask them. Use the "Read More" button to see what they were ...
At the General Committee of Lewisham North last night we agreed to send a motion calling for the abolition of the two child benefit cap, and also proposed a reference back of the NPF report. I intiallly proposed the words in a blog article posted last week. This article repeats some of the text of the reference back and my notes for my moving speech, and right of reply, as it was opposed by both those who think that being outside the EU is a good thing, and those who fear Farage and think the time is wrong. For those details, read overleaf ...
On 1st September, 2025, Yvette Cooper made yet another immigration policy announcement, most startlingly, prohibiting, refugees, who enter the country irregularly from bringing their family with them: reported by the Guardian & BBC. We should bear in mind that there are no legal routes for refugees to enter the country and they have the right to claim asylum here,
In addition there’s a growing mood music inside the Government to amend, or leave the ECHR; this demans originates from the Tories and Reform and is entering the Labour Party via the parasitic Blue Labour current. It’s now being repeated by cabinet members.
We should all bear in mind that the UK is currently a good citizen as far as the ECtHR is concerned, it only appeared three times last year, and only lost once, and that was to the Daily Mail in a dispute about libel costs.
The ECHR and the UK’s Human Rights Act are designed to protect citizens that’s you and me from oppressive governments. If it’s a problem to governments, then they can easily solve their problem by behaving decently.
The Labour Campaign for Free Movement is campaigning for a motion on immigration, refugees and asylum to go to Labour Conference 25. I have set up my #lab25 conference.
Here is what the Guardian had to say,
I wrote a piece for Chartist on AI & its regulation, which I have signposted on LInkedin. I look at its likely macro-economic effects and the essential defence of Article 22 of the GDPR, where I say,
… the most important defences that we as citizens, workers, and consumers have is the EU’s GDPR, which in Article 22 & Recital 71 establishes what they call a right to “freedom from profiling”. This, through the rulings of the CJEU, has become quite extensive and now prohibits such things as ‘general monitoring’, a legal protection brought forcefully to light by the French supervisory authority fining Amazon €32m for violations of the GDPR within their workforce management regime.
In the article, I talk about the problem of Authority vs Popularity, the need for open source, and source citation. I also review the need for some innovators for privacy and competitive advantage and the possible future of regulation of AI to ensure decency and accountability. I also look at the patchy European response and the paradoxical attitude of the US.
I conclude.
In summary, there are plenty of laws to ensure that AI and its owners behave decently, and in some European countries, the will and resources to enforce them, but it’s not universal. Also, there are important economic countervailing forces opposing the creation of a privately owned “Global Intellect” even if the current technology is capable of such a task.
…
This article looks at the development of Labour's Policy as its annual Conference approaches. It looks at the rules commitment to "voting in parts", and reproduces an NPF report reference back motion on the subject of the relationship with the EU that I shall take to my local party. My motion calls to rejoin the single market immediately and to promise to rejoin the EU in the next manifesto. To read the whole article, use the "Read More" button ...