Earlier this week, on the 24th September to be precise, The Guardian made a big splash about an analysis of what it claimed were the UK’s most powerful people – the ‘elite’. This provoked various responses, including one from a good friend of the Progressive Pulse blog, Richard Murphy, on his Tax Research blog (http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/09/25/we-need-good-administrators-but-the-guardians-wrong-to-consider-them-the-elite/)… Read more
Moody Fantasy
The attention given by the Mainstream Media to the downgrading of British debt by Moody’s to slightly less than triple A only goes to prove how ill they serve us. It might be more interesting if it were Cornwall that had been downgraded, which is one of the few UK counties to have a credit… Read more
Uber – too big to hail
When the London Black Cab Taxi Drivers took Uber to court it was established that not only was the Uber app not the equivalent of being able to ply for random hire in the street as Black Cabs, with their unique set of more onerous regulations, were able to, but also that the app showing… Read more
Brexit negotiations: how is the UK doing?
Chris Kendall is a European civil servant (a ‘eurocrat’) who works in foreign policy and has 20+ years’ experience working in the EU and Whitehall. This week he published an article Brexit negotiations: how is the UK doing? which I highly recommend. Here follows an extended summary of the article. Chris has been informed that… Read more
Poisonous tendencies
Cross-posted on Brave New Europe. Anyone that has tried to balance a seesaw – not touching the ground – knows about equilibrium. We know how to adjust our position to correct any movement away from perfect balance. The seesaw fluctuates and we cannot relax, but if we react correctly it never moves far from the… Read more
Brave New Europe
An interesting new website has appeared this week called Brave New Europe. The goals are similar to progressive pulse but on a pan European scale. I have an article on how rising inequality is a market failure that needs fixing in order to avoid a continual sequence of economic and political crises. … Read more
Irish Mist more Opaque than Ever
Along with the the status of EU citizens in the UK (and vice versa) and the financial settlement, the Irish border is the third major issue that needs to be resolved (or at least significant progress needs to be made) before talks on future trade between the EU and the UK can begin. Sadly the… Read more
Are we entering the first stages of a failed state?
The unbelievable news that the Home Secretary has ignored not one but two court orders regarding the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker, first stretches credulity and then provokes disgust. If even the Home Secretary doesn’t respect judicial decisions this is the start of an unaccountable state. And this in a country that originated the… Read more
False conclusions on the Brexit vote
At least someone agrees with me that austerity caused the Brexit vote – even if it is only Alistair Darling on Radio4’s ‘Westminster Hour’. I have long been of the view that with the population increasing, yet with no investment in schools, housing, health or much else (apart from the largely useless prestige project of… Read more
Green ‘Positive Money’ – perhaps….
Having spent an afternoon at a local ‘Green Fair’ manning (and there were some womanning it as well…) a stall about money for ‘Positive Money’ I have come to a few conclusions. First, it is the easiest sales pitch ever to be able to ask people “are you interested in money?”… Read more
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