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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Time management and notebooks

Why is the topic of notebooks and planning so popular? I came across a bunch of youtube videos on how to use various notebooks for personal planning. I never realised how many videos on the topic there are, or is this just a side effect of the youtube algorithm, having shown a bit of interest,…

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Bay of Angels by Raoul Dufy

While exploring the idea of visiting Biarritz, I was reminded of a poster I used to have which I misremembered of being of Biarritz. I went looking for it, and discovered the picture I wanted was actually of the Bay of Angels which is in Nice, and was painted by Raoul Dufy, one of whose…

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Some reminiscences

I visited the People’s History Museum; I was looking for something specific on NOLS, the Labour Student organisation, in the 70’s, which I sort of found. I also found some other things, which interested me and so here are my notes …

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Sailing the High Seas, reforming and enlarging the EU

For reasons, I made a wiki page, called Labour’s Turning Point, which looked at matters in the Labour Party on the topic of the European Union following Starmer’s speech/interview in Montreal in Sept 23. I argued that , it needs to be seen in the context of the EU’s consideration of its own reform which…

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Germany’s future

In this article in the New Statesman, Walter Münchau looks at the macro-economics and industrial policy of Germany and predicts its failure and notes the effect of ‘leaving behind’ the old East in particular in its politics with the rise of the AfD. The article is subtitled, “The country is in economic and political crisis…

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Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill

It seems that GoNads screwed up the Tories first attempt to amend the 2018 Data Protection Act which implemented the GDPR in the UK. The current data regulation regime has earned the UK an adequacy ruling from the EU commission. This page documents my thoughts on this current attempt to amend the law.

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Labour’s turning point?

Over the second half of September, a couple of things happened with respect to the Labour Party’s position on relations with the EU. I want to write something punchy, and made this page to collect my sources and shape m thoughts. This may not be easy to read because it as yet has no narrative….

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Interest, debt & housing prices

I came across the video from the i linked to below and wondered how much the assertion that the UK has never had such a malign nexus, oh high inflation, high interest rates and high consumer debt. I was shocked at the Schroders report that the price to income ratio is now nine i.e. a…

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