A failure to serve fans

The European Parliament sent the Copyright Directive to the trialogue process, where the views of the commission, the council and the parliament are negotiated; the final words agreed by the parliament are basically the words lobbied for by the large corporate press and content companies aided at the last gasp by the sports industry. To understand why this is shit we need to go back to basics. This article is quite long and continues below, or overleaf … …

Winning a Composite Meeting

Labour Conference approaches and I am keen to ensure that no-one shares my experiences in the Education Compositing Meeting in Liverpool 2016. I published my lessons in this blog post, “Compositing” and I and a friend have made a video capturing those lessons which we hope will be useful to attendees at #lab18.

I hope you find it useful. (The above video is the YouTube version.)

One point of clarification, I am advised that members of the Composite meeting can refuse to accept the composite and insist their words remain on the order paper.

ooOOOoo

SURL: https://wp.me/p9J8FV-1Ci …

Flexibility required

So wise people have considered my “paper” on the proposed rule changes on Parliamentary selection. The advice is to obtain a flexible mandate for several reasons. The first is that we do not know what the NEC is going to do; it may propose an amendment itself, and it will certainly make recommendations and if they recommend opposition then it’s felt the motion will fall and thus unless the rules change, cannot be debated for five years. Despite the Skwawkbox’s publication of Unite’s position supporting open selection, it is felt that the Unions are more likely to support the Hastings & Rye (et al) motion which reforms and not abolishes the Trigger ballot; it requires an incumbent MP to win ⅔ of the individual members and to win ⅔ of affiliated organisations. Whatever happens, the NEC position will be critical; it will be important to be flexible but there can be no denying that there’s a lot of membership pressure to take control of this decision. …

Sectoral Balance of Trade

As one does I am considering the international trade implications of copyrighted products? I wonder what the balance of trade state is, over the last five years for Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) groups J.58 broken down to 58.1 & 58.2, J.60, J.62, M.72, R.90? These are Publishing inc. computer games and other software, Programming and Broadcasting, Computer Programming and Consultancy, Scientific Research and Creative Arts and Entertainment?

It would also be good to see the balance of trade for the UK drug industry but it is no longer a single SIC and I am afraid that much as for the five SIC classes above, the real surplus/deficit will be hidden through inter-company transfers, i.e. the import is by one company that buys from a another foreign division of itself and the trade is a sterling internal market trade. …