Time To Reverse Brexit

The British economy is suffering with the Office for National Statistics, using HMRC records, showing the UK economy has effectively flat lined, fluctuating between 0.5% and -1% for the past 12 months but what is to blame for such a series of awful results?
Researchers at the London School of Economics point towards the damage from Brexit to trade links with the EU which cost the UK £27bn since 2021 when Britain left the Bloc fully with disastrous trade barriers for small businesses which forced 16,400 businesses to stop trading with EU nations.
The Centre for Economic Performance looked at 100,000 firms and found that total British goods exports had fallen by 6.4% and imports by 3.1% and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has forecast that the UK will suffer a 15% slump in trade, leading to a 4% reduction in national income or an estimated £100bn in lost output each year..
So five years since Brexit 'got done' the British public is still counting the cost so not so much of the promised new age of British sovereignty, a crackdown on migration (currently at the highest since records began) and the much-derided '£350m a week' that could be diverted from the EU back into the NHS.
A yougov poll found that 60% of Brits think that Brexit has been bad for the UK with just 12% believing it has gone well and former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine said that nearly five years on: 'Brexit has been a historic disaster'.
Undoubtedly then Breixt has been a massive act of economic self harm mistake and the Labour Party are opening talks to repair some of the economic damage of Brexit and to 'reset the relationship with our European friends to strengthen ties, secure a broad-based security pact and tackle barriers to trade'.
It is right that our future prosperity depends on a much closer partnership with Europe and the Globes largest single market right on our doorstep so with the latest Yougov poll showing 55% regret leaving and 31% still thinking we did the right thing by leaving, we should look again at rejoining the EU.
With a 165 seat majority in the House of Commons, Keir Starmer should be able push through anything he wishes, including returning the UK to the EU but as it was a Democratic vote that took us out, it should be put to the public again with another referendum on rejoining and this time with cold, hard facts of how much the British economy has suffered and the Briexit Bonuses are rarer then hens teeth.
I cannot say for sure if the previous result was due to being lied to by Brexiteers like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage who promised the sunny uplands or if it was just good old fashioned racism to kick out the foreigners (my money would be on this) but Brexit has been a disaster and promises to carry on being a disaster until it is sorted because the alternative is higher taxes or a return to the catastrophic days of austerity to balance the books because of the £100bn shortfall of this ruinous experiment.

Ai Warnings From History

The progress of artificial intelligence (AI) has been relentless with each new version many times more powerful than its predecessor which raises urgent questions about safety and the very future of humanity.
Concerns about computers are not a new thing, the English 19th century mathematician Ada Lovelace is recognised as the first computer programmer for her work with Charles Babbage and in 1842 warned that they should 'guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the analytical engine' and 'the collateral influences this machine has must never be underestimated'.
In 1949, Alan Turing designed a test to determine whether a computer could think in a way comparable to a human and warned: 'If a machine can think, it might think more intelligently than we do, and then where should we be?'
George Orwell, in 1937 said: 'The sensitive person’s hostility to computers is in one sense unrealistic, because of the obvious fact that computers have come to stay. And even if the whole of humanity suddenly revolted against computers and decided to escape to a simpler way of life, the escape would still be immensely difficult'.
In 1950, the Scientist and mathematician Norbert Wienerm wrote that: 'The machine like the djinnee which can learn and can make decisions on the basis of its learning, will in no way be obliged to make such decisions as we should have made, or will be acceptable to us' and physicist Stephen Hawking had similar concerns, writing in 2016 that: 'The biggest event in the history of our civilisation, but it could also be the last unless we learn how to avoid the risks. Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers like powerful autonomous weapons or new ways for the few to oppress the many'.
That is some pretty important people in Computing history who seem to be telling us to tread very carefully.

Female Journalists Offline Violence Increasing

As a female journalist there was a frightening report by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) which found that online violence against women journalists is increasingly spilling offline with potentially deadly consequences.
There has been a steep rise in online violence against female journalists over the last few years and of the 1210 female journalists asked, 73% said they had experienced online abuse, harassment, threats and attacks and 20% of them received offline abuse and attacks.
In 2017, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that in at least 40% of cases, female journalists who were murdered had received death threats, including online, before they were killed.
Another report by the ICFJ-Tow Center’s Journalism found that social media channels were increasingly toxic spaces for female journalists who were withdrawing from frontline reporting, removing themselves from public online conversations, quitting their jobs, and even abandoning journalism in response to their experience of online violence.
It is not a solution to say that women journalists need to build resilience in order to survive this threat to their safety for daring to speak, investigate and report and the responsibility falls on the Social Media platforms to deal with threats of violence because the reality of journalism for many women is grim and it is understandable why many shy away from it as a career choice.
 

 

 

Gaza Peace Deal Imminent

There are signs a Gaza peace deal might be close, but we have been here too many times before and each time it reverted back to conflict later and another peace deal bit the dust.
American negotiators in June last year announced a peace deal was 'imminent' only for Israel to move the goalposts (a favourite Israeli tactic to scupper talks) and threw in further demands after Hamas agreed to the deal which Hamas refused to accept and Israel just continued the bombing of Palestine and a death toll which today stands at 47,000 but is a figure which is wdely expected to be an underestimate.
All previous deals, and there have been many since Israel militarily occupied Palestine decades ago, have seen Israel remain an occupational force in Palestine and even during the rare times of peace, see them continue to illegally seize and builds settlements on Palestinian land, defy countless UN Resolutions, kill innocent Palestinians, hold thousands of Palestinians in its prisons, destroys farms and bulldoze homes and businesses as part of their ongoing plans to clear Palestine and claim the land for their own.
What Israel really want is for the Palestinians to meekly remain quiet while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonise their land which is what the Fatah Party tried but when the land grab, occupation and murders continued, they were voted out in favour of the more militant Hamas so appeasing a genocidal neighbour hell bent on removing you didn't work.
Any peace deal this time has to include the removal of Israel from Palestine, the return of stolen land and the removal of settlers and a two state solution which leaves Palestine to administer itself and not face regular incursions from Israel, anything else is a return to the status quo and committing genocide is a great to provoke hatred and revenge against you.     
The International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice need to go after the Hamas and Israeli Governments and bring them to justice and America needs to withdraw the financial and military aid they give to Israel to focus minds within the Israeli government who know that the Israeli economy would collapse if it had to fund its own military misadventures .
It also needs to stop protecting Israel with it's Veto at the United Nations because if you find yourself backing a nation being accused of genocide but almost every global body then you are backing the wrong side.
Without all this then the peace deal will go the same way as all the others and the appalling circle starts again.

What Happened To The Centre Right?

Once upon a time there was a centre right and anyone further along the ideological X Axis was deemed far right and ignored as a fruitcake but over the last few years the two seem have have merged and all the right are now in loony town territory.
Donald Trump, a man who ticks all the boxes of being a fascist, has gained power in America and in the UK Nigel Farage's Reform Party has been crowing that they have a higher membership than the Tories and the Tories have slid effortless into the same demographic ground that their members can comfortably switch between the two and it was only a decade ago that the then Tory leader, David Cameron, dismissed Farage’s mob as 'closet racists'.
The shift in the UK could be put down to 14 years of Tory misrule who rather than fix problems, pointed at the unemployed, immigrants and the European Union to create scapegoats to blame and the right wingers who had been held at arms length since the dark days of the 1980's, were now free to reign their vile hatred down upon anyone they wished.  
The countries mental breakdown that was Brexit made immigration toxic and Theresa May's notorious 'Go Home' vans and the far right found a kindred spirit in Boris Johnson and Liz Truss while across Europe immigration has been used to stir up ill-feeling in Austria, Hungary, Italy and Marie Le Pen came within a whisker of replacing the Government and in Germany the far right in the country is surging.
Elements within the media haven't helped with the right wing press serving up a relentless diet of bile against Muslims, migrants, refugees and trans people and Elon Musk's X is now an instrument of right-wing radicalisation.
Nothing now, it seems, is considered 'too extreme' for the right to rally against and although we have history books to show us what happens when the right wing take control, if history teaches us one thing, it’s that we don’t learn from history so maybe we just have to watch on in horror and let this play out with all its awful consequences before the wrongheaded experiment with right wing extremism is put to bed once again.  

How Safe Is Your Job From Ai?

In 2023 a report from the World Economic Forum confidently predicted that AI would bring about a net positive for job numbers although their 2024 report isn't quite so chipper as they are now saying that 41% of employers across the globe have plans to fire your arse and replace you with an AI that can do your job.
On the up side though, 77% of them are saying that they reskill and upscale the now not needed employees replaced by AI to be able to work alongside the technology now doing their job.
You know the person who oversees the self-checkout lanes at the Supermarket? That's the plans, a babysitter for technology but what jobs are most at risk?
The survey handily provides a list of the kinds of jobs that companies are looking to replace with the most vulnerable job being Customer Service Representatives with 95% of customer service interactions powered by Ai, Data entry clerks and processors where 69% of data processing tasks could be automated using current technologies and  manufacturing and assembly line workers, driving jobs, proof readers and translators, banking sector jobs and accountants.
Less likely to be replaced are the creative fields such as writers, musicians and designers,  Healthcare Professionals, teachers, social workers,  electricians, plumbers, and carpenters so if you are currently working in a bank or are sitting in a taxi tryign to work out how much you could get away with overcharging the foreign couple sat in the back of your cab, now might be a good time to learn the piano or find out where the green wire goes in that plug.

What The Royal's Own

While i was investigating who owned the South Downs, i came across an interesting article which explained The Crown Estate which is a collection of lands and holdings in the United Kingdom belonging to the British monarch.
The proceeds of the Estate, in part, funds the monarchy but is handed to the Government in exchange for an annual Sovereign Grant payment of around £130m to run the Royal household which is a decent portion of the annual Crown Estate profits of £312 million.
So what actually is owned by the Royals?
The whole of Regent Street and half of St James's in London's West End as well as Ascot Racecourse, over half of of the UK's beaches but only the the area between the high and low water mark weirdly, all of the UK's seabed up to 12-nautical-mile from the low water mark, the Crowngate Shopping Centre in Worcester, Silverlink Shopping Park in North Tyneside, Bath Road Shopping Park in Slough, Ocean Retail Park in Portsmouth,  Queensgate Centre in Harlow, Victoria Retail Park in Nottingham and the Morfa Shopping Park in Swansea.
They claim all wild mussels and oysters in Scotland but there's a commonly held belief that the family 'owns' all the swans in England is false, they only claim the mute swans and have since the 12th century to stop people eating them which was a thing back then and was a particular favourtie of Henvry VIII.
All this means that if you are shopping in Ocean Retail Centre in Portsmouth or catching oysters in Scotland then you are contributing to the Royal pay packet but if that swan chasing you around the lake isn't a mute swan, feel free to kick it in the bill because the Royals don't care about them ones.

Still Plenty To Write About

 
Ever since Boris Johnson got pissed up at Downing Street lock-down parties while appearing on TV every evening telling everyone under no circumstances can they have parties, people have said to me what will you write about once Labour come to Power and this awful shower are dinged out of office?
My reply was always not to worry because there will be more of the same because whether the leader wears a red or blue rosette, there will always be morons in politics and especially the party in power and here we are 12 days into 2025 and my keyboard hasn't stopped, the E and T keys are looking a lot more faded than they did when i was tapping out Christmas posts in early December.
First up is the anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq who is being investigated by the National Crime Agency International Corruption Unit for three London properties gifted to her by her aunt who happens to be the deposed former prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, who is being investigated by the International Criminal Court for embezzlement and money laundering with tens of millions being shifted out of the country to purchase ..well, who knows what but i'm sure the Crime Agency will be telling us soon enough.  
If we learnt anything from the 14 years of Conservative Rule is that no matter how bad things seemed at the time, worse was to come so David Cameron wasn't great but then came Theresa May who was awful
then we had the chaos and bedlam of Boris Johnson and then come Liz Truss who was so unhinged she was kicked out of office in under 2 months and beaten by a Lettuce so each leader at least made the previous one look not so bad and now at the helm of the Tories is Kemi Badenoch.
Now Kemi was put forward as a smart cookie but this week found the Tory leader trying to kill a major bill aimed at protecting children supposedly, as she bizarrely claimed, to protect children and whilst she was doing that the World's richest man and Worlds second biggest biggest bell-end was tweeting spectacularly uninformed political interventions every 10 minutes while dangling £100m in front of Reform Leader Nigel Farage and then snatching it away saying he 'didn't have what it takes'.
Throw in the mix that having the words 'Sex Abusing Criminal' beside your name is not the drawback it would appear in America and Donald Trump is going back to work on that arse groove in the Oval Office chair then i feel confident that i will be having plenty to write about for quite a while yet.

Think Before Downloading That App

My new phone wasn't doing what it oughta so i asked one of the Tech guys at work to have a look and obviously he fixed it within minutes but as he handed it back to me he said: 'You sure got a lot of apps, you might want to delete a few for safety' which got us into a discussion about using apps instead of just going to the places website.
It never crossed my mind before but thinking about it, many apps are just neatly packaged versions of the website accessed via the phone rather than a browser but according to the Tech guy, that's the problem.
As double sourcing is our stock in trade, i asked another tech expert which is better, websites of apps which got the answer: 'The web obviously, i thought everyone knew that' to which i replied, everyone but me obviously.
The reason, so it turns out, although apps are vetted, once downloaded they collect much more tracking information about you then a website can including your location, what else is on your phone and what other devices are connected to your WiFi which information could then be passed on to advertising companies or anyone interested in collecting personal information.
Although Websites can spy or track you, it is not as easy for them to gain your confidential information and the browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Edge have much better security measures (paranoid by default as he put it) than the app's as each app is responsible for its own security updates and browsers allow you to hike up the privacy and can even block advertisements although not much love for Google Chrome which is a bit more forgiving to the tracking technologies.
The advice then is to consider whether you need to download an app to your phone and if you already have it, whether you can use the website instead and if you can, always go direct to the website.

Isn't She That Woman Who Crashed The Economy?

Think back to October 2022 and hey look there's Liz Truss, the short term Prime Minister who crashed the UK economy only now she is taking legal action against people who said she crashed the economy because by repeating it is causing serious damage to her reputation.
One recipient of a lawyers cease and desist letter is the Labour Party who were told: 'Our client requests that you immediately cease and desist from repeating the defamatory statements at any point, from causing them to be repeated or from otherwise re-publishing the defamatory statements or any part of them' and responded with:  'She might want us to cease and desist, but we won’t cease and desist from telling the truth, that she crashed the economy.'  
The ex-Prime Minister was kicked out of office after her disastrous mini-Budget complete with £45bn unfunded tax cuts which led to economic panic, caused chaos on the financial markets and ended with her being forced to quit her job after the economy crashed and almost all of her budget was reversed by her replacement.   
Now she is best remembered for being the shortest term and worst Prime Minister ever, and as she replaced Boris Johnson that is remarkable in itself, but it hasn't stopped her bleating ever since that her failure was down to 'the left' and an 'anti-growth coalition' which turned out to include everyone on Earth apart from her and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
She did go to America where she explained to members of the Conservative Political Action Conference that the crashing of the economy on her watch was actually the fault of the left who sabotaged her time in office after infiltrating British institutions and insisted that her economic policies were actually brilliant which shows an alarming amount of unawareness of what she did, which was crash the economy.
I wonder if Liz Truss has thought of taking legal action against Liz Truss for the serious damage she has done to her own reputation?