britain

Bombing Syria

So Parliament is to debate if it should authorise the government to use the RAF to bomb ISIS in Syria. What we must keep in our mind is that we i.e. the British state must only act under the rule of law. While the UN resolution (SC 2249) last week makes military action more likely to be legal, the legality still depends upon the actions to be taken. Many argue that the UN security council resolution changes nothing, because it does not authorise the use of military force under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

Any actions need to remain an effective act of self-defence. …

Gordon Brown steps down as MP

Gordon Brown announces his retirement to the clash of views from the press and the Labour Party. To be accurate, he has announced that he isn’t standing for re-election as an MP. He leaves a mixed legacy, well summarised by the Telegraph of all sites, who list his contributions to New Labour and the ’97 landslide, economic stewardship until 2007, his opposition to the UK adopting the Euro, his leadership in response to the 2008 global liquidity crisis and his critical contribution to the Scottish Referendum debate on the No side. …

An internet accountable to private contract

The BBC ran a story yesterday about the impending agreement between the UK based industrial content and the ISPs to adopt a warning system whereby the top four ISPs, will on notification from the industry trade associations write and warn their customers who allegedly download potentially copyright infringing material. The BBC covered this scoop in the morning on the Radio 4 today program and later in the evening on News Night. …

A look at the sources of Government Income

The budget was presented last week and I decided to look at where the money comes from.

Interesting how much comes from personal taxation; NI is a payroll tax, much of it paid by business. 13% of the total income is new borrowing. I suppose I am most shocked by how little is collected through the ‘progressive’ income tax ( 23%). …

Good British Universities

Why is the LSE not one of the top Universities in the world according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities? I scattered some thoughts on the UK Higher Education system in an article on my blog the other month and promised to look and see what Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s methodology thought of, what I thought to be three highly competitive British Universities, i.e. LSE, Sussex and Warwick, which had failed to make the top 100 of their 2007 ranking. I have come to the conclusion that what seems to me an anomaly, illustrates either a flaw in the methodology, or a misuse by me as the ranking’s design goal does not meet my needs. …

The 9th Doctor

The final episode of the series was shown over the last weekend and IMO, its not as good as the penultimate episode. I’d been questioning whether the change from four part (30 minute) episodes to what seemed like single or double 45 minute episodes worked and had just come to the conclusion that they did, so imagine my surprise when they brought all the threads crashing together in the penultimate episode. There seemed so little to do to finish the stories, only 1/2 million Daleks to destroy and billions of humans to save. All in a day’s work for the Doctor. …

Australia & England, a sporting rivalry!

In the Guardian, a journalist quoted an Australian Olympic sportsman as saying “You ****** poms, you can only win medals in sports where you sit down”. Looking at the Great Britain’s medal tally, he had a point. Sailing, Cycling, Rowing, Canoeing & Riding.

It does ignore Kelly Holmes winning the women’s middle distance races, but its a great piece of abuse, with enough truth to make it hard to ignore. I love Australians! …