Down the rabbit hole

I am not sure where this started but I have known about Professor Danny Dorling‘s work for a number of years. He has written a book and authored a white paper called variously Shattered Nation or Shattered Britain. I watched the launch of AEIP’s joint report which he authored, “Brexit: A failed project in a…

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Booze, weights and measures

The government have been consulting on weights and measures; to their chagrin the vast majority of those consulted want to keep grams and metres but they have decided to allow wine to be sold in pints, a measure enjoyed by Churchill.

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Creative Industries & Trade

I have looked at whether the UK’s creative industries are net contributors to the nation’s wealth i.e. Do we import more than we export? The music industry on the BBC are both very proud of their export data, but discovering important facts is much more difficult. Here are my notes and links, …

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Cadiz

Some suggested I visit Cadiz during the winter. Here are my noted and links.

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Capitalism Divided

I am reading this, by Geoffrey Ingham and making some notes. At the moment, i.e. where I am in the book, he is examinimg why the British state is not acting as the executive committee of the [industrial] bourgoisie. As ever, here below or overleaf are my links and notes …

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Kier Starmer and Resolution Foundation

At the launch of the Resolution Foundation’s report, “Ending Stagnation”, [Press Release], they had a bunch of speakers, including Sir Kier Starmer, Labour’s Leader, whose speech is posted at Labour List. It seems Hunt was also there. Here are some notes and links …

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Von der Leyen again

Ursula von der Leyen made a speech in which she said the EU had goofed up over Brexit. I have a number of articles collected in response to this speech, which I will add to this page at a later stage. But today I have reproduced an article entitled “Goofy” from EuroIntelligence, because it is…

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Politics in Poland

What’s happening there? Tusk’s Centrist coalition has just won the election but I was challenged as to what I could do to help fight the far-right in Europe and given where I live and that the largest European ethnic minority in the UK is Polish, I thought I’d have a look at what’s happening there.

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Why treat the CEO as a superman?

OpenAI just did a boomerang firing of its CEO, Sam Altman. The press went mad as did the stock price. Their major investor and most of the staff demanded his reinstatement and got what they wanted but why? What did and does Altman bring to the company, he seems to be a venture capital manager,…

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Who has the best song?

It seems Keir Starmer has chosen “Ode to Joy” as his choice as a representative song for the Labour Party, strangely given his “Not in 50 years” position, but it made me wonder who has the best anthem, I have made a little poll, sorry it’s a bit ugly but I don’t pay for the…

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Catalonia

When the Catalunya independence movement made a declaration of independence, the reactions of the People’s Party led Spanish government were harsh and immediate. Today, the PSOE needs the votes of their successors to sustain their government. They are planning to pass an amnesty law, which the right wing opposition are calling an attack on the…

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EU Reform

What chance is that there’ll be a convention and that the TEU will be amended progressively?

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Money & Lies in Starmer’s Labour Party

Novara Media point me at some work, presented in an article in the Times by Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke who track the role of Labour Together and its shady fund raising, Novara say, According to the Sunday Times account, between 2017 and 2020 McSweeney failed to declare £730,000 in donations from a slew of…

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