I am involved in conversations about local government governance models and I am concerned as I learn about the tricks that public authorities are using to frustrate scrutiny exercised by FOI and SAR correspondence. Here are my notes. Continue reading “Scrutiny in Local Government”
An internal document made by Labour Party officials designed to be evidence to the EHRC investigation was leaked. It was reported on by the Guardian who finish this article with an on the one hand .. pair of quotes. The Labour Party set up an investigation into the circumstances, its terms of reference (TOR) was reported in Labour List and I have made a mirror of the text. I have bookmarked, on diigo, a number of other articles from different sources. Continue reading “Labour and that leak”
Keir Starmer made 10 pledges on policy during the Labour Leadership campaign. It behoves us to remember them. I have made a mirror of the pledges , just in case. Sometimes these things have a habit of disappearing. 😜😜.
I was challenged by Michael Wilkinson of the LSE on my interpretation of he importance of the Cherry/Miller ruling on the legality of the 2019 prorogue. Suggested or discovered reading, included a review of a book he co-edited. My notes have lain around on my hard disk and I decided to tidy them up. Here are my notes and thoughts. From the reviews, I’d say the title is provocative but it might have a jargon meaning about which I am unclear. … Continue reading “Constitutionalism beyond Liberalism”
The Labour’s Left have been badly beaten on the elections that have just taken place. Both Rebecca Long Bailey and Richard Burgon’s votes were disappointing and in the NEC bye-elections, the Progress/Labour First candidates won al three positions. Even the left’s leadership have come to the conclusion that things must change. Corbyn’s coalition is broken, a new one needs to be constructed, but it may not be possible. Here’s some reading to help me understand because, “All the King’s horses and all’ the King’s men” aren’t available. Continue reading “On Labour’s Left & Unity”
To deal with the coronavirus crisis, the Govt. wants more powers and it wants them for a long time. I wonder why because they don’t seem to be making any decisions and they pretty much have the powers they need. They have a page on Gov.UK describing what they think they need, and Big Brother Watch have published their take on it. We should consider their failure to offer security to those in work who may lose their jobs, fall sick or have to stop work to look after children or elderly relatives. This will also highlight the appallingly low levels of statutory sick pay and redundancy payments, not to mention the 2 year employment longevity requirement for redundancy payments. No-one is talking about those living on savings who will be hurt by the reduction in the BoE interest rate to 0.1%, by the collapse in the stock market (the FTSE 250 is down by over 40% in the month), and even their business support programme is based on loans and not grants. Continue reading “First thoughts on coronavirus in the UK”
While doing politics over the last 4 years I have come across good people influenced by the writings of Leon Trotsky. Furthermore, once again we, the Labour Left need to have another think about our political practice. Here’s some of what Trotsky said about Great Britian. … Continue reading “Trotsky on Britain”
The Labour Party’s nominations are in for the Spring Elections; I have converted the Labour Party’s web pages to .pdf and mirror them here. Continue reading “Labour Party Elections (Nominations)”
Part of the argument about the election results has become whether Corbyn’s Labour should have pitched itself more profoundly against 40 years of Thatcherism. I have my own critiques of the New Labour governments, but I hadn’t seen a failed Regional Policy as one of them. Here are my notes. … Continue reading “New Labour’s Regional Policy”
In order to answer the questions I want answered I need the election results in spreadsheet form. I have previously got this from the Electoral Commission; it took ’em 18 days to get it out last time, wonder what the delay is this time. However the Democracy Club claims to have them available via a REST or REST like service. Here are my notes. … Continue reading “Analysing the 2019 Election Results”
One of the first commentators on the General Election was a new outfit called DataPraxis, anyway new to me. The report, Tory Landslide, Progressives split is published as a tightly defined .pdf and is behind a use once cookie controlled access scheme. It’s very hard to share, navigate & mine. Here’s what I have done to try and make my access easier. …
I mirrored the .pdf and bookmarked it in diigo. I then used https://www.pdftohtml.net/ to make an html version which can be found here.
This article has a SURL: https://wp.me/pauVx4-1dL
Obviously with the results of the general election announced my mind turns to analysis and visualisation. I had/have been looking at this for a while, and here are my notes. Actually this is an index entry as much of what I had found is catalogued in the two related posts below/overleaf. … Continue reading “Visualising electoral data again”
Mexico has a sad and long history, having finished Class Wargames, I am looking to pick up, “Mexico, a brief history”. Here are my other notes & links … Continue reading “Mexico”
I have been/am still reading Richard Barbrook’s book, “Class Wargames”. Among its many fascinating themes is his study of the collapse of democratic military forces into dictatorship.He name checks Napoleon, Toussaint Louverture & the Russian Revolution. I wonder why he didn’t start earlier with the English Civil War, it would seem to me to be another failure of a democratic military. To him, Guy Debord’s “Game of War” is critically important, partly because of the way it abstracts large elements of military conflict, but they adopted different rules, using miniatures for both the Haitian and Russian Civil War scenarios. How easy would it be to find or adapt some ECW rules? Here are my notes … Continue reading “Class Wargames & the ECW”
The story of the criminal cheating on the Vote Leave campaign is long and complex, and there seems to be a ground rush effect as the election approaches. The issues are breach of personal privacy laws, over spending, covering up the overspending. It is possible that there have been breaches of the transparency rules, and that some money came from prohibited foreign sources. Here are some links and notes. Continue reading “Criminality and the Referendum”