Berlin, that other potential capital of Europe has voted today, and Chancellor Merkel’s ConDem alliance has not done well. This follows the election of a Social Democrat led government in Denmark earlier this week. Is Northern Europe turning left? German Wave, aka Deutsche Welle reports the Berlin results here. …
Banish the poor from the electoral register!
The development of the politics of the Boundary Commission review is moving with immense rapidity. In the area I live, we have a rather awesome local web site called Brockly Central which has reported on the Boundry Commission’s review in an article called “Deptford & Greenwich”. The Tory/LibDem coalition have decided to reduce the number of MPs in the House of Commons. While this may on the face of it be poplar, it’s a ruse to disguise the rewriting of the rules in their favour. …
Liberal Grandstanding
Vince Cable, the ultimate tight rope walker is up to his tricks again. He spoke to the Liberal Democrat Conference today, having leaked his speech to any one that’ll print it. Much respect to the Delegates! His two pre-event headlines …
Knacker of the Yard finally goes after Press wrong doers
The Guardian led yesterday, with a story about itself, How the Metropolitan Police are planning to use the Official Secrets Act to force the Guardian journalists that broke the story about the hacking of ‘Milly Dowler’ phone to reveal their sources. …
Of compromise agreements, and the spreading of manure
Coulson, the former Director of Information for the Conservative Party and Govt. Press Supremo, and currently under arrest, has been spreading it like manure again. It seems he left News International under a ‘Compromise Agreement‘ and continued to receive payments from his previous employer while serving as a senior employee of the Conservative Party. It has been suggested that these payments are a de-facto and thus undeclared donation to the Conservative Party. If true, this would be against the law. …
About Labour’s Conference Members Open Day
The Labour Party are boasting about their, or is our ‘Open Day’. They have invited 2000 ‘ordinary members’ to have their say at an ‘open’ session during the Labour Party Conference. This should be good, but they’ve done it before, and it wasn’t. …
Good British Universities, again
I don’t want to get into a row with David Blanchflower,who takes issue with the QS University Ranking results 2011 and have no argument with his assertion that Cambridge is not the best University in the World, but unless the U. of Shanghai (UoS) have revised their methodology since I last looked at it while on the EU’s NESSI steering committee, in early 2009 , they
- overemphasise Science (& specifically Medicine)
- overemphasise US publication (& hence English language research)
- have no teaching quality metric ( apart from alumni citations)
Music Copyright, Qui Bono?
The Register today comments on whether Vivendi might buy EMI. They don’t seem that interested but they point at a story that EMI had passed into the hands of Citigroup, which I had missed. They are no longer a public company and certainly not in the FTSE any more.
This is important, since according to Wikipedia’s Music Industry page, albeit in 2005, EMI sold ~13% of the world’s traded music.(The market is dominated (72%) by four companies, the other three of which are Universal, owned by Vivendi, a French company, Sony, ultimately a Japanese company and Warner Music, a US based company.)
They were the only UK company in this list. (I think we can see where I am going with this). The world’s law makers are passing laws, such as the UK’s Digital Economy Act against the interests of their voters, and in the interests of four companies. In the case of the UK lawmakers, none of these companies are now UK quoted. Just whose jobs and prosperity are they protecting?
Why are we doing this again?
Wikipedia also has a page called Global Music Market Share, which might shed some light on today’s numbers. …
Censoring the Internet
In August, earlier this month, Vince Cable announced the Government’s response to the Hargreaves Review aka the Google review into intellectual property law. Some of the UK’s IT companies, including Google together with many economists, strongly believe that the current intellectual property laws in the UK inhibit innovation and growth and persuaded Cameron to launch a review into the intellectual property laws. The review was chaired and directed by Professor Hargreaves and it published its report “Digital Opportunity, A review of intellectual property and growth” earlier in the year. This article looks at the Hargreaves Review’s recommendations and reactions to the report and comments on Cable’s speech which de-committed the Government from pursuing the web bocking clauses of the Digital Economy Act. …
On Mayors
Andrew Adonis reviewed Vernon Bogdanor‘s latest book, “The Coalition and the Constitution” in the New Statesman last month. Adonis believes that Bogdanor argues that the fact of Coalition is a more significant change than the proposed reforms, which he summarises as Alternative Vote, so-called Fixed Term Parliaments and House of Lords reform. I’ve not read the book, so am not sure if focusing on Clegg’s quote, “the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832” is from Bogdanor, or Adonis, but neither think the plans meet this hype.
They suggest that A.V. & Fixed term parliaments are not major game changes, and Bogdanor also looks at the reform of the House of Commons, the reduction in MPs and the equalisation of constituency sizes. He argues that these latter reforms, while hyped as anti-Labour will particularly disadvantage the Liberal Democrats. The Government plans for House of Lords reform have now been published, so their impact can be estimated, and we now know that the next elections will be held under First Past the Post electoral system.
Adonis departs from a review of Bogdanor’s ideas by looking at the extension of the idea of executive mayors. He argues that this, “has great democratic potential”. I don’t really see it myself. …