Brexit Brexitumma Dr Martin Worthington, a fellow of St John’s College, has learnt how to speak Babylonian and is now teaching his students. The written form of the language is cuneiform, as seen on ancient tablets from the once-great city. Here is an example:In Latin script that is “Brexit Brexitumma” and in written, modern-day English … More Keep Taking the Tablets
The European Union is amazingly successful at convincing many that it has been successful – that has been its only major success. This may seem a crass and overblown claim to some but the evidence is strong and we have detailed much of it in previous posts. Lesser achievements did not require an overbearing, supra-national … More EU: Greatest Hits
We know her as the constituency MP of one of this blog’s authors. We know she has a strong sense of public duty and works her stockings off trying to fulfil that duty. What she seems to lack is a clear vision of how to achieve things that really matter. We don’t like to judge … More May (The Force is still with Us)
What should we call a second referendum vote? Will there ever be a border in Ireland? Can a one-size-fits-all economic strategy work for the EU? People’s Vote 2 For the sake of democracy the people of the UK should have another vote on whether to continue membership of the European Union when the terms of … More Shorties-20
There is no example of absolute democracy; the term denotes some sort of ideal from which real nations fall short but so-called democracies can be measured against widely accepted and straightforward criteria. We believe – and believe that many others share this belief – that the notion of democracy contains two elements that are clearly … More So What is Democracy?
Let us suppose that the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement is adopted, will Theresa May remain as Prime Minister to manage the next stage in the process of non-withdrawal? If so we are totally screwed. At every stage so far she has made terrible mistakes or caved in to EU demands despite clear, advance warnings of EU … More The Turn Of The Screw
This is true but also a truism, it adds nothing we didn’t know but it’s a slimy statement from anti-Brexiteers. It presumes that leaving the EU will make us poorer without demonstrating it as a fact. It says that we, the voters, didn’t realise this so they, the experts, have a duty to save us … More Nobody Voted to be Poorer
The Economist (TE) in its Charlemagne column of 13 October offers an explanation of why Europe (i.e. the EU) will “…never produce a Google”. https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/10/13/europes-history-explains-why-it-will-never-produce-a-google “Europe lacks large firms in areas like social media, e-commerce and cloud computing comparable in scale to America’s Google and Microsoft, or China’s Alibaba and Baidu.” “Europe’s history explains the … More Empire Building?
In this post we continue our discussion of the EU’s Task Force report on Active Subsidiarity. [1] The authors are not in any doubt about what ‘subsidiarity’ means in the EU’s treaties: “The Member States have expressly limited the areas in which the Union can act by conferring specific competences on the Union in the … More More is Less: Subsidiarity-2
After the publication of their White Paper (WP) on the Future of Europe in March 2017, The European Commission (EC) set up a group, called the Task Force on Subsidiarity, Proportionality and ‘Doing Less More Efficiently’ to reflect and report on the fourth scenario outlined in the WP: “Doing less more efficiently”. [1], [2] This … More More is Less: Subsidiarity-1
This EU Won't Work 