This time from criminal barristers, who are supposedly striking about legal aid fees. They are – but of course the Crown Prosecution Service fishes in the same pool for its own criminal barristers and when their numbers are so depleted as a result of the poor pay for defending, then the prosecution too has problems…. Read more
Category:
Constitution
Labour’s Black Horse
I much regret that apparently, according to Aaron Bastani’s Novara Media: I’m most worried about the finance lobby. What the hell is Labour thinking of? Why is it necessary? Why do Lloyds want to gift Labour anything? It is completely suspect and also further pollutes our democracy. But of course, while we are a two… Read more
Now that Johnson will face a vote of Confidence…
Whether he wins or loses, he is on the slippery slide out. There are also, it seems to me various further advantages: He has revealed that the UK constitution is so fragile that it allows an autocratic government, accountable only – and then not always – in the courts. He has shown that a good… Read more
Hoping that better monetary understanding leads to better politics
Thus concludes an article in the New Statesman by Josh Ryan Collins, associate professor in economics and finance at the University College London Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Amoungst other things he states: When you request a loan, the bank converts your IOU to the bank into liabilities upon itself that appear as newly… Read more
The F word is already on the way..
Mhairi Black speaks for just over four minutes on why our current givernment is so dangerous – because that F word is fascism:… Read more
Putin will be pleased
What I can only suggest as a certain family frailty* is currently preventing any comprehensive sort of commentary on the current democratic deficit (wasn’t that actually what we were told was the problem with the EU?) that comprises Johnson’s lying to, and misleading of, Parliament – never mind to everyone else… The main reason for… Read more
Guarding against ‘Pathocracy’
In an article in the journal of the British Psychological Society ‘The Problem of Pathocracy’, Dr Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, draws on the term ‘Pathocracy’ created by the Polish psychologist, Andrzej Lobaczewski, who endured what he called Pathocracy under both the Nazis and the Soviet Regime. He defines Pathocracy… Read more
Discouraging participatory democracy
In an idle conversation yesterday it was mentioned that Mayors are part of the ‘levelling up’ agenda. Of course nobody can tell us exactly what the levelling up agenda is, but broadly, I think it can be agreed that central government requires local government to bid for an artificially constrained pot of money in order… Read more
Caroline Lucas tells it like it is
…yet again: In short – do we really have a traitorous Prime Minister?… Read more
Sold! But how do we get democracy back?
City AM reports that: French activists in the city of Biarritz, in the south [west] of the country, have taken over the luxury villa of the daughter of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, Catherine Tikhonova. Reportedly the activists have changed the locks and plan to throw the villa open to Ukrainian refugees. Meanwhile in London, rather… Read more