Are conservatives doomed?

I came across a video from Tory Party Conference, a round table on whether the Conservatives were doomed. It was hosted by Unherd, and the panellists are, Peter Hitchens, Ed West, Miriam Cates MP and Matthew Goodwin. For more as ever, read more …

Read more

57 Varieties

I used to have fun describing the Trotskyist sects as the 57 varieties, here’s two things to help understand its schismatic history.  Read more  …

Read more

Labour Conference 2021

At this conference the LP made the documents much more easily available, and I was not a delegate, but they may remove the documents and I think I’d like my history to remain complete. Here is my document repo. …

Read more

British Army Command & Doctrine

I was prompted by a plaque in the Tank Museum to consider if the Army was always looking back to the last war. It certainly seems to have done poorly in both Iraq & Afghanistan. In fact, once the British were known for winning their wars, but the hostory over the last 40 years is…

Read more

Labour noughties debt

During the noughties, the Labour Party failed to generate the cash to win and fight elections, it had to borrow tens of millions. Here’s some reporting on it,

Read more

Comparative Advantage

Looking for Dennis Healy’s admiration for how Austria came to terms with its loss of Empire and found ‘Like Romans Becoming Italians’: Italy as the Negative Paradigm for British Decline in the Language of the Press and Denis Healey by Ettore Costa, published it seems in 2018. An interesting read, here are my notes.  i.e….

Read more

Unified Patent Court

This has been a long time coming or not coming; but what does Brexit do to it. This piece holds my notes, and concludes by asking if the political opposition is based on “sovereignty as a business”?  …

Read more

Delegates to Conference

The rule on delegate entitlement in Chapter 3 says, C3.I.1.B. Delegates duly appointed by CLPs to the number of one delegate for the first 749 individual members in the constituency or part thereof paying their membership dues as of 31 December in the previous year, and one further delegate for every additional 250 individual members…

Read more

Apple vs Otis, FRAND vs FLOSS

I was pointed at Apple vs Otis in the UK Courts. This is an NPE suing Apple for its non-permitted use of a standards essential patent. The court backs Otis and is now assessing a fair licence agreement. Apple say that if it considers it unfair, they’ll with draw from the UK. There is, of…

Read more

Is voter id/GOTV worthwhile?

I am receiving notices from comrades planning to travel to Batley & Spen to help Labour’s ground campaign. I wish them well. It’s part of Momentum’s mythology that they almost won it for Labour in 2017 with the new ground campaign/doorstep but how useful is it?

Read more

Labour’s +ive action for women

I am considering some of the positive action programmes in place in the Labour Party, which are most extensively developed in favour of women. The Labour Party’s rules are subject to the law of the land[s] and possibly the most important part of the positive action programme for women other than all women short lists…

Read more

Another Amethyst?

The Govt send HMS Defender into the Black Sea where it approached or entered Ukraine’s or Russia’s territorial waters and the Russians took some form of warning action using either artillery, naval guns and/or bombs. This is just a provocation. WTF were we doing there? …

Read more

Privacy, another Brexit benefit

An attack on our rights to privacy? Now they think they’re free from the EU, our security state, encourages the government to roll back those privacy rights that were underwritten by the EU treaties and the Human Rights Act. Here are some links and notes …

Read more

Service Model vs Organising Model

The Unite GS election and the new GMB GS’s introductory statement in the Morning Star have brought the questions of syndicalism and auto-labourism to the fore. Personally I wonder if this is a rehashing of the debates around the service model vs. organisational model. Here are my notes?

Read more