There was a petition sponsored debate in the House of Commons on “Rejoining the EU” on 12th Oct. There is a video feed from parliament TV. Otherwise here are my notes. …
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Burnham & the innovation economy
Last Friday, Andy Burnham gave a speech to an innovation conference. I linked to the government press release which publishes the text of the speech. In my diigo notes, I say, “It’s a really good speech, not in my mind, one that Starmer or Reeves would have made: touching Devolution of industrial planning, innovation in…
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Labour Conference 2026
It’s that time of year again, here is my archive and preview, #lab26
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Dublin
I don’t know Ireland well enough. Perhaps I should visit Dublin.
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Some [more] notes on UK Defence
Surprisingly, one of the critical issues leading to Starmer’s resignation was a disagreement within the cabinet about the defence budget and strategy. I have persistently argued that Labour’s defence party strategy was aimed at defending labour’s right against his left rather than the country against any threats. The government has now published what they call…
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NPF 26 & Immigration
I am trying to draft an NPF reference back on Immigration.
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What will Lewisham Greens do?
A number of Green led councils are having problems fulfilling their promises, on housing, and disinvestment. Lewisham Greens manifesto is published here, and I have made a mirror. It is also available on the wayback machine, as is the its landing page. The final line on the manifesto web page is, Lewisham already has everything…
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Term Limits
One of the issues I rarely consider when looking at democratic reform is term limits, although I am in favour of them for Mayors. I found this paper, Term limits in parliamentary mandates – Democratic renewal or disruption? published by the European Parliament. I note that they are more common in Presidential republics, as in…
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Burnham’s reorg, IT, regulation & AI
The key responsibilities in Government for IT delivery, and AI have moved, swapped even; regulation remains at DDCMS.
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Lisbon
This needs to be checked off my list, my Portugal stay was business only.
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Mexico’s constitution
This is the first draft of this note, which will focus on the Mexican upper house, known as the Senate of the Republic.
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Unitary Presidents vs Colleges
I am trying to write something on the undesirability of unitary presidents, or over-powerful first amongst equals within collective executives.
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Federalism and IT Governance
While considering the recent disposition of HMG’s re-organisation as it impacts the IT industry, I did some querying. I took the view that HMG has three domains of concern, regulation, macro-investment and implementation. Within implementation programmes, there is a massive problem of scale and probably divergent requirements.
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Labour’s rules and electoral fraud
I have looked for this a couple of times, but found it last night. From Labour’s Rules, “The Labour Party does not tolerate electoral fraud”
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Ghost or something else
Another friend asks for advice I’m building a website. Ghost has been suggested, which led me to have a little look. This note looks at what I consider to be the critical selection criteria and make some notes about ghost and flat file CMS.
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