Energy, Climate Change and Just Transition

I need to consider the politics of energy and climate change. I shall be looking at the politics inside the labour party but I should look at what the UK Government is saying. This was originally written when I returned from GMB 2019, augmented with GMB items in 2020 and then some links and comments made…

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Illegal Wars

I have been pushed to having a look at the law and war crimes, partly, as a result of meeting again, a bunch of people who think they can substitute their own judgement vs. the Rule of Law. Here are, as ever, my notes.

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Social Housing Finance

I attended a presentation on Lewisham’s Housing policy last night and was wondering why the lifting of the borrowing cap wasn’t more effective. Here are my notes on social housing finance.

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FOI

I need to write an FOI request, I have Heather Brooke’s book and checked the ICO FOI page. Heather is probably best known in this country as the journalist who used the FOI Act to break the MPs expenses story. She later wrote a book about how to use the Act, called “Your Right to Know,…

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Trade Union Democracy

I was looking at the way democracy dies in Unions, with a whimper and came across these two articles, Trotskyism and Trade-Union Struggle from marxists.org and the Iron Law of Oligarchy, on Wikipedia. which points at further reading.

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GDPR & DPA 2018

I have today returned to the GDPR and the Data Protection Act. I was specifically interested in “legitimate interest” and wrote a blog at linkedin on the subject. Here are my links and notes,

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Hayes & Harlington 1983

Wikipedia’s article on the 1983 election asks for citations where the SDP/Liberal vote allowed Tories to win seats on a plurality. Interestingly their page on Hayes & Harlington shows this and although it’s a seat where an SDP defector tried to hold the seat, the Tory vote is virtually unchanged and yet they won it…

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The Socialist International

One of the issues raised while considering Venezuela, is the suggestion that since Jose Guaido’s party, Voluntad Popular is a member of the Socialist International, Labour Party member’s should be supporting him and his party; interestingly the Labour Party is no longer a full member of the SI, having downgraded its membership in favour of…

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Venezuela

On Venezuela, where the US would seem to be trying to engineer another regime change in support of their oil industry, here are my notes and my diigo bookmarks . I consider sanctions, human rights and democracy …

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Dr. Fritz Scharpf

I had cause to look at, I have not yet finished the following paper, “The asymmetry of European integration, or why the EU cannot be a ‘social market economy’” or here at Berlin Free University.. written by Dr. Fritz Scharpf, a German Academic who finished his working career as the Director at the Max Planck Institute…

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Lewisham Council’s Democracy Review

Lewisham Council, are looking at their constitution to see if they make it more democratic. They are running a consultation  which started in 2018 and is planned to finish and I propose to submit some evidence. I thought I understood how it worked, but I don’t; here are my notes. 

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Measuring Democracy

Often one finds that people argue their solution is more democratic; how does one know? Some political scientists have looked at measuring democracyness, here’s what I have found.

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