Hurrah for Feedly

I have been playing with feedly as replacement for google reader. I am rather taken with it. It’s a browser plugin and an app. on many mobiles.


As with other replacements, I have reorganised my feed tags/categories to create better groups. I have dropped a bunch of feeds that I wasn’t reading or were broken. Its “Today” feature allows me to keep up with the news. It’s availability on the phone helps with this, because I don’t have to open a laptop, I can read my news without getting a seat on the train. Feedly encourages me to treat news as a ‘river’ and so my reader is not cluttered with loads of stuff that I might want some day which I am learning to like. It lacks the social features that google reader had at it’s best but they’d walked away from them. I have made some suggestions at their user voice site. I am impressed. I hope they adopt some of the ideas that I have suggested or supported. A twitter client would be good, but I can live without it.

My wiki project page is here…. …

Stern, Management and taking Solaris as a feed

The meeting today was opened by Hal Stern (Sun Services CTO). He repeated & re-inforced several themes about utility and annuity or subscription services but interesting highlighted several things. Firstly he argued for an enlightened, liberating management style to harness talent, “Think XP, not waterfall” because waterfall involves management saying no or re-work it a lot and “does not scale”.

He also in a discussion about mapping AIM onto “Customise, Standardise, Utilise” raised the goal of offering Solaris as a service based subscription. The language I’ve been using is to make Solaris a real-time feed, enabling Sun’s customers to take advantage of the newest, most reliable and best as it becomes available.  …

My Diigo

Davelevy’s Favorite Links from Diigo

  • The Guardian view on the king’s speech: a new era of state intervention begins
    on 18th July 2024 at 1:22 pm

    Sir Keir Starmer’s cautious-sounding manifesto has generated a governing programme of radical departure from recent economic orthodoxy Annotations: There will be bills for engineering national economic renewal, financing new infrastructure, setting ambitious targets for housebuilding, rewriting planning rules to thwart nimby objections, nationalising railways, establishing a publicly owned energy company to accelerate the transition to renewable power. Labour also aims to diffuse power, though a question remains over English council funding. The state will also be more vigorous in protecting workers’ rights and regulating utilities. the legislative agenda announced on Wednesday goes some way to repudiating rightwing ideology The conditions of frustration that have fuelled far-right insurgencies in many other democracies are not absent in Britain. To neutralise that threat, the prime minister is betting on state intervention to engineer conditions that will not only ease the cost of living crisis but restore public faith in politics in the process. There is no way to judge the feasibility of that plan before the hard work of implementation has begun. But as a statement of intent to apply a new ethos of government, the scale of Labour’s ambition is beyond doubt. Tags: politics labour 2024 kingsspeech

  • Ursula von der Leyen wins second term as European Commission president – POLITICO
    on 18th July 2024 at 1:11 pm

    “Lawmakers give the current European Commission president green light for another five years. Tags: politics europeanunion vonderleyen europeancommission

  • Brexit will haunt a Labour government too – New Statesman
    on 17th July 2024 at 5:00 pm

    By walter munchau, .”.even if Starmer wants to, I struggle to see how he can. I see the main constraint not in UK politics, but in regulatory divergence.” “The Starmer government would not only have to shadow what the EU is doing now, but also cover the large mass of legislation passed in the EU between 2020 and now – in addition to implementing its own legislative agenda.!” It all ignores the fact that exporters have to align, so we are rule takers without agreement Tags: politics brexit waltermunchau internalmarket rejoineu europeanunion

  • More Than 130 Reform Candidates Ignoring Electoral Commission Rules on Anonymous Donations – Byline Times
    on 17th July 2024 at 4:50 pm

    Candidates have raised tens of thousands for Nigel Farage’s party despite failing to explain how they will vet donors, amid claims the party doesn’t have ‘millionaire’ funders Tags: politics ge2024 reform

  • Hidden behind the celebration of Labour’s ‘landslide’ win is a depressing disfranchisement | Nesrine Malik | The Guardian
    on 17th July 2024 at 4:47 pm

    The gulf in voter turnout between haves and have-nots has widened. The result is no politics for those who can’t afford it. This is an important article and cross references a chart from the FT, showing a declining support from the less well off. Annotations: It all feels oddly disconnected from real life. My overwhelming sensation during the general election campaign and the result that followed has been variations of a sort of cognitive dissonance, mirrored in a participation concentrated among certain classes and professions. Turnout was higher in areas with an older population and where there was a high proportion of homeowners and lower in areas with high ethnic minority populations. Labour has a historic majority in the polls, but it’s a hard search to find the people who delivered it – or those who did so with any enthusiasm. “Put simply,” the report said, “the ‘haves’ speak much louder than the ‘have-nots’ in British democracy.” The result is no politics for those who can’t afford it. Labour’s vote demonstrated a “dramatic flattening of the class gradient” in the party’s support, according to the Financial Times’s chief data reporter Tags: politics ge2024 voting voters labour

  • EU leaders ‘open-minded’ about future relations with UK, says senior official | European Union | The Guardian
    on 17th July 2024 at 4:41 pm

    “Bloc sources say ball firmly in UK’s court regarding reset of ties as leaders prepare to meet at Blenheim for EPC forum. Annotations: they have indicated the ball is firmly in the UK’s court and they expect an offer from London on issues such as youth mobility and citizens rights to get things rolling One EU diplomat said Thursday’s EPC summit was an “opportunity for the Starmer to set a different tone on migration” after killing off Sunak’s Rwanda deportation plan. Many EU countries are expected to press Starmer regarding their desire for youth mobility and Erasmus university exchange programmes, something they see as an important way of helping the next generation forge cross-border bonds of understanding. “Otherwise they will grow up without knowing each other, which will be bad for Europe,” said one diplomat Tags: politics europeanunion labour rejoineu

  • Former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt to retire from politics in 2024
    on 17th July 2024 at 4:38 pm

    A piece summarising his career, and his declaration that he wasn’t planning to stand for re-election to the European Parliament. Tags: politics guyverhofstadt europeanparliament

  • Labour to seek regular UK access to EU foreign affairs council
    on 16th July 2024 at 3:20 pm

    Proposal is one option for more formalised relations with Brussels if opposition party wins general election and now we see what Labour means, but it requires more than a change of personnel. Annotations: In an 11-page essay for Foreign Affairs magazine, published on Wednesday, Lammy accused the ruling Conservative party of having “compromised” the UK’s soft power, which he described as one of the nation’s “greatest strengths”. “It is quite simple. To attend council meetings you have to be a member of the council,” said one EU diplomat. A second diplomat was even more dismissive, suggesting that as part of a deal to attend the meetings, the UK “could start making voluntary contributions to the EU budget and aligning all their legislation”. Lammy said a new security pact with Brussels should complement Nato and drive “closer co-ordination across a wide variety of military, economic, climate, health, cyber, and energy security issues”. The Labour frontbencher also reiterated his party’s long-standing policy that it would not seek to rejoin the EU, single market or customs union but argued there were “plenty of pragmatic steps we can take to rebuild trust and co-operation and reduce barriers to trade”. He cited former Labour foreign secretaries Ernest Bevin, an archetypal pragmatist who helped drive the creation of Nato in the 1940s, and Robin Cook, who emphasised the ethical dimension of foreign policy and pushed climate change and human rights up the agenda in the late 1990s, as key inspirations Tags: politics defence europeanunion labour

  • Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we’re determined to change that | Arash Abizadeh | The Guardian
    on 16th July 2024 at 2:59 pm

    via Comment is free | guardian.co.uk Tags: IFTTT Feedly

  • Another view of where the votes came from at x.com by Adam Ramsey
    on 16th July 2024 at 8:25 am

    More 2019 Tory voters died than switched to Labour. We really have to ask if the “strategy” worked? Tags: politics ge2024 adamramsey voters voting

  • Thousand Islands Expeditions
    on 16th July 2024 at 8:21 am

    A boat trip off the Pembrokshire coast, viewing nature from the water. There maybe some dolphins Tags: holiday pembrokshire boattrip boat

  • All That Is Solid …: Building a Left Electoral Insurgency
    on 16th July 2024 at 5:53 am

    via A Very Public Sociologist Tags: IFTTT Feedly politics ge2024

  • Labour to fight 2029 election ‘like an insurgent’ as preparations begin | Labour | The Guardian
    on 14th July 2024 at 6:44 pm

    Party’s strategist already planning how to secure second term, bolstered by former MP’s appointment to thinktank Tags: politics labour psephology strategy 2029

  • The rich were led to believe they were different. Those days are numbered | Will Hutton | The Guardian
    on 14th July 2024 at 11:20 am

    via Comment is free | guardian.co.uk Tags: IFTTT Feedly

  • Starmer’s relegation of 31 Labour MPs and peers creates cohort of potential troublemakers
    on 13th July 2024 at 8:35 am

    from the FT; They say, “At least 22 former front bench MPs are now backbenchers, including former shadow attorney-general Emily Thornberry, shadow science minister Chi Onwurah, shadow children’s minister Helen Hayes and shadow prisons minister Ruth Cadbury. ” There’s some great quotes about whether they will cause trouble or not. I am not so sure. It also lists the unexpected promotions. The article has a sankey diagram. Tags: politics labour labourgovernment demotions ft.com

  • Starmer’s red button: Labour’s long addiction to nuclear weapons
    on 13th July 2024 at 7:12 am

    Tags: politics defence trident nucleardeterrent

  • Business Manifesto Outlines 5-point Action Plan  – British Chambers of Commerce
    on 12th July 2024 at 4:41 pm

    The BCC’s appeal for policy, not exactly vote Labour, but pretty close. Tags: business bcc europeanunion internationaltrade industrialpolicy ge2024

  • UK must stop ‘walking on eggshells’ over post-Brexit deal, says BCC chief | Brexit | The Guardian
    on 12th July 2024 at 4:38 pm

    Bt the Guardian, “British Chambers of Commerce director general calls on politicians to improve ties with EU and strike better deal” get the BCC press release Tags: politics ge2024 brexit rejoineu internationaltrade BCC

  • UK election: Muslim voters’ impact was even bigger than you think – Hyphen
    on 12th July 2024 at 4:35 pm

    by Lewis Baston, taglined, “Labour lost more than half a million votes in areas with the highest Muslim populations, leaving it with fewer supporters overall than it had in 2019”. Mainly a catalogue of successes and failures together with a review of what happened in the noughties after Iraq. Tags: politics ge2024 Muslimvote

  • Not great at all – the Thatcher government’s economic record and legacy – Prime
    on 12th July 2024 at 4:33 pm

    Last week (in 2013), we pulled together and tweeted a set of charts (including a few screenshots of charts we found) about the Thatcher government’s economic record. They show that on all key fronts, her government failed, absolutely or by comparison with other UK governments over the last 60 or so years. We have now added some more charts, and offer the information they contain as an antidote to the British establishment’s evidence-lite but ideology-heavy eulogies of her government’s economic performance. This was recirculated in July 2024. Annotations: her deregulation of finance and the City of London (continued alas by her successors) set the UK on a false path, one that has severely damaged the UK’s economy and social fabric. And continues to do so. Near the end of this blog, you can find a chart on private sector (especially financial sector) indebtedness which -far outstrippping public sector debt – started to balloon in the late 1980s. In fact, the average increase in GDP from 1948 to 1976 was considerably higher than for the period since then, even though much of it was – especially from the late 1980s –  private debt-fuelled. Tags: politics macroeconomics thatcherism thatcher IndustrialPolicy

My diigo bookmarks are here, links to other feeds are in the page footer, or at my linktree page, …

The GMB & LME

The GMB & LME

At the GMB Congress, my Region, London, organised a fringe meeting on the “The rise of the far right and worker’s rights“. This was jointly organised with the Labour Movement for Europe who had planned to put their President, Stella Creasy, up to speak. I had originally planned to use the meeting and Congress as a last attempt to get better policy on trade and relations with the EU but the announcement of the election obviously changed this, and meant that Stella could not make it. My speech to the fringe, spoke of workers rights, sovereignty and its constraints and looked at the European Parliament results which has occurred on the previous weekend. You will find below my speech notes, although I did not use them all as I was unable to time the speech in practice and had too cut the speech short. …

Labour and pandering to racism

Labour and pandering to racism

I was published, last week, at Another Europe’s Brexit Watch site with the subtitle, “Labour is lurching to the right on immigration”. What follows below/overleaf mirrors that article, with the deadlines for the National Policy Forum interventions removed, because by the time I made this mirror, the deadlines had passed. The article looks at the Labour front bench’s reticence to speak up for migrants and the refusal to rejoin the EU’s single market, a topic on which Starmer has long term form;it also looks at the tendency to prioritise public finance and competence, over compassion and decency, studies the electoral impact of the position, and suggests what a decent immigration policy would look like. It was originally designed to encourage Labour members to canvass their NPF representatives. See below/over leaf for more, or go to the Another Europe version of the article. … …

The need for truth

The need for truth

I got a lot of posts about Fox vs Dominion in my feeds last night; I am not sure how well this is being covered in the UK. Dominion make voting machines and are suing Fox for $1.6bn because Fox made and repeated damaging allegations about Dominion’s machines performance during the US Presidential elections. Many allege that this was a deliberate attempt to boost Trump’s line that the election had been stolen!

It is clear from leaks, that Fox knew what they were saying lacked evidence at best and that their lawyers had withheld important evidence from the court’s discovery process. The court was due to start today, but the Judge has postponed it by a day; there are rumours that Fox may be seeking a settlement.

In this article, from NPR, they have two spokespeople arguing that the 1st amendment rights of Fox should trump Dominion’s right to a reputation. Do billionaire funded press organisations have the right to lie under freedom of speech rights?

This is important in Europe and the UK too. From my experience in Tallinn, many in Eastern Europe are rightly suspicious of Government regulation of the press, but in the Anglosphere, and possibly in Germany, we have a biased, ultra-rich owned press and I note that journalists are privileged under law. In the UK, the press dominate politics, and are were complicit in the legally flawed Brexit referendum. Somewhere we need to be able to hold the press, and social media platforms accountable to a duty to tell the truth, because,

A lie ain’t a side of a story. It’s just a lie.

Terry Hanning (The Wire)

We should also note that balance can also be the enemy of truth, giving liars equal time with the truth is still publishing the lie. …