Tony Connolly of the Irish Television network RTE has disclosed that the EU member states want to extend the Brexit agreement deadline from the end of February to some time in April. This could be of interest to Johnson, already seemingly throwing his weight around with regard to labour and tax laws, which he seems… Read more
Category:
Constitution
Input legitimacy not output legitimacy…
There is searing stuff (below) from Meg Russell, Professor of British and Comparative Politics at University College London, and previously on the House of Lords standards committee: I couldn’t agree more: Indeed, even Murdoch’s Times is pretty sniffy (click to enlarge): With Keir Starmer recently speaking about plans for a convention on constitutional change I… Read more
Health is made at home, hospitals are for repairs
Is the wonderful title of an article, concerning his own book, in the ‘New Local’ by Nigel Crisp former CEO of the NHS, and now a crossbench peer. He says: I argue in the book that we need to think about health differently and recognise that health creation plays an important role alongside health services… Read more
I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!
Was of course Trump’s tweet in characteristic capitals long before he, or anyone else, could possibly know the result. I think we can safely presume that his legal challenges will be found to be without merit, and that any recounts will not alter matters significantly. I thought the survey below interesting (and always having to… Read more
A decade of over centralisation
This is a very instructive chart demonstrating how allegedly small government is really suppression of local control by Westminster knows best. Westminster hogs all the resources and employs more people. Local government gets starved of resources by cutting centrally provided money. If evidence were needed that central government creates money and local government merely uses… Read more
Britain in the vanguard of fascism..
A constituent has written an open letter to his MP, Anthony Mangnall (Conservative, Totnes) of which I quote the conclusion below. It is powerfully argued and well worth reading the rest. I’d urge everyone to do so. In leaving the EU, the UK has placed itself in the vanguard of the fascist revival taking place… Read more
Beggar thy neighbour politics
The saga of English children’s free holiday meals vote demonstrates so much of what is wrong with UK politics. First we know that we have about 2.5million children in the UK in food insecurity and 4.2 million in relative poverty and almost three quarters of them are in working households. So this already indicates that… Read more
Britain looks like a failed state
Where to start with Manchester? The Tories seem to think their election result based on the approval of about 43 % of the voters gives them absolute power. And that they can ride roughshod over the democratic and even clearly logical wishes of Britain’s third big city. It is instructive to read a tweet from… Read more
The psychopathy of Brexit
Allegedly, according to Bloomberg, unless there is a trade deal within a week, Brexit trade talks are likely to flounder to no deal. A very bleak prospect. This outcome would, I suggest, be the most monumental act of self harm, perhaps ever, in British history. I fear that Rees Mogg’s father – remarkably, a former… Read more
Economic health – or not
There is an interesting post from Simon Wren Lewis from last month where he suggests that: in the UK Treasury cutting the deficit generally takes priority over the health of the economy He says: The UK Treasury bears some responsibility for the disaster of 2010 austerity, yet it has not accepted or understood the mistake… Read more