The EU & Immigration

The Council decided at an emergency meeting, to spend more money on its border enforcement. The likely consequence of this is more deaths at sea of refugees.

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Petitioning

UK Petitions, are they worth it. A petition at the parliamentary site, 10,000 gets a response, 100,000 is considered for debate in Parliament, albeit, not usually on the floor of the

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Labour’s Manifesto Consultation

The Labour Party are running a ‘final’ policy consultation. Only CLPs can contribute now and it has a portal home page at the NPF site. I am reading through the commission documents and comment on some below/overleaf …

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UK democracy in 2022

TI published their review of the world in 2022, and the UK falls seven places to join not so salubrious company of Qatar (-5), Myanmar (-5), Azerbaijan (-7) and Oman (-8).. This is followed by the Economist’s publication of their Democracy Index, where the UK maintains its place in the rankings which I find strange.

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Devolution

After the publication of the Brown Commission report, I was surprised to discover that a Scottish comrade was underwhelmed by its proposals for Scotland, I don’t know why that way it should be, as I was underwhelmed by the English proposals for devolution; the whole thing is unambitious and the unimaginative hands of LOTO cover…

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A living wage

It’s conference time for the GMB, and prompted by some members I looked at the state of policy development on low pay and the living wage. The GMB Policy is stated in its policy guide albeit dated 2021. I look at Labour’s “A new deal for working people” and note that the GMB’s minimum wage…

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A bonfire of worker’s rights

Not content with making it impossible to “go and live there” if we don’t like Brexit, the Tories are planning to repeal all the EU derived legislation. The Bill is called the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022-23. It is understood to threaten most already inadequate worker’s rights including holiday pay, working hours…

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On CoFoE

Over the last 18 months I have working with CTOE, their focus has been on using the Conference on the Future of Europe to further democratic reform of the EU. CTOE has been influenced and supports the work of direct democracy campaigners. I made this page at the end of 2022 to expose some of…

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New Britain, new britcon

Gordon Brown’s Commission on the constitution of the UK has finished its report. Much of the press focus on the proposal to abolish/reform the House of Lords but it is much more thorough than that. I wonder if in its way its as ambitious as the Chilean constitution that failed earlier this year. I feel…

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Anti-Brexit websites

I was considering the effectiveness of Brexit Spotlight and it was suggested I look at it’s pseudo-competitors. Here are my notes …

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