thoughts

It’s been a busy week on the Brexit front, first, the Prime Minister lays out her stall and vision on how the Article 50 negotiations might take place and on the UK’s goals, I originally created a story on Storify which is now posted here, and then the Supreme Court rules that the Government needs an Act of Parliament to authorise the Article 50 notice. This has created much excitement in all the political parties; let’s hope the result is that Parliament or the electorate get the opportunity to authorise or reject the final agreement although much will depend on whether the Article 50 notice is revocable since I want the rejection of the Article 50 negotiations to be that we remain members. There’s much to play for. Let’s hope to opposition play their cards well in the next month. I am still of the view that there’s no exit terms as good as staying in and I am in direct disagreement with the Tories, we want and need the European Court because it’s a counter to Parliamentary Sovereignty; it’s the only way to guarantee workers and citizens rights against a backwoodsman Tory Parliament. …

Jon Lansman and his allies in Momentum have through extraordinary means overturned the decisions of the last Momentum national committee i.e. to hold a delegate based Conference to set rules and determine policy. They have also determined that expelled Labour Party members cannot be members of Momentum, it’s claimed that this is in order to prepare for affiliation as a Socialist Society. At least some of the Socialist Societies have non members as do the Trade Unions, it’s part of their design goals. As Jill Mountford points out in her blog, in the ’80s, the Left opposed expulsions despite stronger provocation. This is a power play by the same people that have been losing to Labour’s right since 1980, the goal should be to energise new joiners and those that have rebooted themselves; playing the same old games lets them down and will lead to Labour’s destruction.

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Over the last couple of years, a number of economists and politicians have been exploring the threat to professional and middle class jobs posed by algorithms and robots,, for instance, here at the Harvard Business Review and here at the Economist.

Interestingly Article 22.1 of the GDPR offers a freedom from automatic processing, stating that,

The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.

Obviously this can be finessed via consent as are the working hours restrictions in the UK, but this is a big problem for the robot lawyers (& doctors). When I originally found this clause I thought it might be new but it is in fact part of the previous Directive (Article 15.1) and implemented in UK Law as Para 12 of the Data Protection Act 1998 …

It seems that the UK are investing in research into the military use of “laser beams”; this is to support a military,  which as a result of Cameron’s “Defence Review”, has an Army that can’t operate abroad, whose surface fleet has aircraft carriers with no planes, has no area air defence vessels, and is now only questionably a blue water fleet and has an air force with obsolete ground attack capability.  …

It must be clear that I am preparing a blog on the Investigatory Powers Act. The more I look into it, the worse it seems. By not requiring the proof of a probable cause, the law weakens the need for a prosecution to prove a case in court and the right to silence. Another instance of jeopardising the rights to a fair trial …

I am preparing a blog article on the Investigatory Powers Act and the CJEU ruling on DRIPA and one issue that comes up is, “What is a serious crime?”. I have looked it up and find the UK’s definition appallingly low. I wonder what others think? …

Last month, Bruce Schneier commented on The Encryption Working Group of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s  has 2017 Annual Report. He says they conclude that, strong encryption is in the (US) national interest, the supply of encryption tools is globally liquid (hmm!), there is no one size fits all answer to law enforcement’s need to snoop, or whatever they call it, and that co-operation between law enforcement and the tech. sector should be fostered.

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Mrs. L went off on one this morning. It was brought to her attention that a bijou 2 bed room flat in Bordon, built on public land were deemed affordable at £240,000 and the Labour Party having failed to change the legal regime of housing finance management when in power are now too busy playing Roshambo to do anything about it. It should be noted that the UK is the only OECD country that treats public housing debt as part of the national debt since it is not paid for through taxation. …

I had a quick look at the August Economic Journal over the Xmas break, and specifically at the article by Barro & Misra, ” Gold Returns”. They argue that the facts (1836 – 2011) suggest that Gold is not a long term extraordinary good investment, offering a long term rate of return of about 1% which they categorise as the equivalent of the standard risk free ROI although its volatility is much higher since 1971 when the US quit the gold standard. They also argue that it is not a great hedge against macro-economic disasters. It would seem it’s like everything else, you need to get it right when to buy and when to sell. …