21/SEPTEMBER/ 2018.

Dear Mrs. Prime Minster May,

The other day I was hammering a nail in the wall to hang a picture.

I hit my finger. Immediately, my right hand put down the hammer and took care of my left hand.

My right hand never said, ” Left hand you know I’m taking good care of you. You should remember that” And my left hand did not say, Right hand, you have made me suffer. I want justice, give me that hammer.

The point is to demand respect you seem to be putting the cart before the horse.

Since joining as a common market member, the UK has secured numerous significant opt-outs from what is now the EU –  principle among them being from the common currency (Britain and Denmark are the only countries not obliged to join), Schengen (open borders and common visa area) and the common agricultural policy.

Given the ‘semi-detached’ status you already enjoyed one might even detect a return of the Anglophobia of the imperial era with its stress on English or British hypocrisy: the domineering bully of a country congratulating itself on its gentlemanly liberalism.

It’s time for you to stop acting like a spoiled child and accept that you can’t have everything both ways — departure from the EU but membership in programs like Galileo and Erasmus; an Irish border that’s both closed but somehow open; access to the single market without its most important conditions; the freedom of movement and no oversight by the European Court of Justice; your pick of the European cherry tree, without bothering to water the soil or tend to its branches.

Get real the European Union has and is showing respect to its core values and the millions how died that led to its foundations.  

YOURS FAITHFULLY,

The Beady Eye.

 

 

 

If you’re ready to de-reify your brain, read this.

My previous post asked the question:  What will be the point of life be in the technological age.

Perhaps I should have posted the above question first.

Today the spread of AI barely raises an eyebrow, to the point that we are growing increasingly comfortable with keeperless shops, tutorless classrooms, bankerless trading and even doctorless surgeries.

Do machines run or are they ruining our lives?

How do you stay relevant with so much information available to you?

It’s not the information age; it’s the age of over information!

When you’re walking down a typical city street these days, it’s hard not to bump into people who are so absorbed in their smartphones and tablet computers that they’re almost one with their gadgets, oblivious to the world around them.

We just need to ask ourselves, are we becoming victims of potential danger and laziness due to cell phones, computers, AND ALGORITHMS?

I call it digital dependence.

Life is not an Algorithm spreadsheet.

At the moment it is true to say that the biggest limitation of the human intellect is its shelf life. You only have so many years to learn, because no matter how smart you get, eventually the body that carries around your observations and insights will die.

It is more than a little frightening to know that science and machines could soon have access to our innermost thoughts LEADING TO neuromarketing, which targets people’s brains by manipulating their wants and desires through marketing and advertising.

To understand what relevance is, we must understand what it is not.

Our thoughts and actions could actually be hijacked by a form of media that makes us think we’re getting what we want when really, we’re going for something our brains may only think is supposed to be good.

There are some serious question on the horizon with technology.

Who or what remains relevant in an age where technology evolution is taking place so rapidly?

What to do with all of this data, and more specifically and maybe more urgently, how can we keep all of our activities in the virtual space from shaping the real space of our world?

You might think that in the past few years, individuals have become more and more empowered in a new emerging economy called data. The truth is that our choices in buying products and accessing news and information narrows as the enormous stores of data accumulate.

If you want examples to look at the results and what influenced them in the election of Donal Trump, Brexit etc.

Data and the machines and algorithms used to manage and make sense of it could largely replace independent decision-making — either large or small — and it is happening at such a speed that it’s sometimes hard to remember the data isn’t in control.

It seems one of the biggest challenges for leaders today is how to remain current and relevant in such changing times.

People still control the data, but just who has this control and what they do with it will become an ongoing challenge.

The major decisions will not be ours.

Picture a tiny bit of a thing on an already minuscule computer chip. Something microscopic with the power to think like a computer without the need of complex circuitry and capable of being moved by light or sound:

That is quantum technology simplified.

Put less simply, quantum control uses a technology derived from physics for computer applications.

So are we relevant or will we be relevant? or are we getting lost in the evolution?

Quantum computer will merge science and technology into something that isn’t mere experimentation but has enormous implications because they work and may someday power the computer and communication devices we use every day.

What if we could capture and digitize the entire information content of our brains and then upload that data to a computer or a robot?

Find a way of copying and uploading human consciousness into a machine, or even a holographic virtual body — basically, a software replica of a person that has the ability to operate machines not by flipping a switch or manipulating a joystick, but by simply thinking about them.

The key to such power is something called a brain-machine interface, or BMI, which essentially is a communication pathway that allows your neurons to send signals to external gadgetry, just as easily as they do to your muscles.

This technology is still in its infancy, but scientists envision someday equipping paralyzed people with neuroprostheses that would enable them to control powered exoskeletons to walk and do other everyday activities that fully-abled people take for granted.

Such chips eventually may have the ability not just to store information, but to learn and remember. That could mean that we’ll not only be able to create complete copies of our brains’ content but that those copies would be able to keep using what we know and build upon it, long after our original meat bodies have vanished.

That may sound totally, impossibly crazy. But given researchers’ recent progress in developing neurosynaptic computer chips — that is, machines that mimic the neurons and synapses of the brain — it’s hard to just scoff.

BMI envision that someday, not only will we be able to turn the stove off or start the car by thinking about it, but we’ll be wirelessly connected to thought-controlled computers and devices that will continually provide us with information — for example, the names of people whose faces we can’t place.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency has been working on AR-enabled contact lenses [source: Sakr].

Such devices will be able to read digital information embedded in the landscape itself, in the form of radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs) attached to objects, buildings and even people [source: Edwards].

Are we relevant or will we be relevant?

Currently, Algorithms operators are the sole judges of their own competence.

As the world gets smaller by sharing more and more of the same cyberspace and social tools, we are, like it or not, becoming a bigger collective target becoming assets of tokenization by AI.

Personally, I’m hoping someone will develop a technology that will assist us in becoming more empathetic, compassionate and willing to play nice with others.

Who knows what all of this will lead to.

We have to do something because if we just sit back and be complacent we are going to lose what makes any of us relevant on this planet –

Profit-seeking Algorithms run counter to what, throughout the twenty century had become a received wisdom- Life with free will.

The dangers of received wisdom in the twenty-first century is that it is never absolute and it can change – sometimes almost overnight. Received wisdom’ is often anything but ‘wise.’ as it has no backbone or foundation in facts.

This perceived wisdom is then spread like wildfire, aided by Social Media platforms and smartphone which are merely forms of corporate identity aiding inequality.

Resulting in those who embraced modernism as the badge of freedom and a political expression resting in a vegetative state of algorithms designed to control, to conform to a status and normative sense of cultural identity and a sanctified version of collective history.

Are we relevant, will we be relevant?  I think not unless we start to re-educate our received wisdom with values that are common to us all. The here and now is simply not enough. We are witnessing a steady decline in trust – in governments, brands and even each other. If this is true, where will we look for community, collectivity, and governance in the future?

What kind of world do you want to live in?

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do we all need to learn and teach in order to equip our people with the skills necessary to remain relevant in a world in which AI has just ushered in another Cambrian Explosion?

But on the other hand,

The global spending on AI at the moment is around 19 billion.

The EU new regulations require most companies that collect EU resident,s data to get the consent of the people whoes data is being processes.

What is now needed is a law that forces companimes to explain how an AI algorithm came to the outcome it did and whether the lgorithm is flawed.

 

All of this discontent may breed organized anarchy or rebellion in the form of technological or infrastructure sabotage, either physically or in cyberspace.

 

While our data puts us all “out there” in many ways, that same data enables those involved in dark networks and activities to get lost and take on false, covert identities in order to plan bigger and bigger attacks.

cognitive technology to describe how electronic devices and other tools can assist and influence humans’ mental activities, such as learning, retaining and retrieving information from memory, and problem solving

“Cognizers can offload some of their cognitive functions onto cognitive technology, thereby extending their performance capacity beyond the limits of their own brain power”

new generations of psychoactive drugs and electronic implants eventually emerge, cognitive technology is likely to really, really rock our world. Here are five such potential future developments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

( A one minute read)

Dear Sirs,

I write in the hope that one of you might read this letter.

My concern is given that digital data permeates so many aspects of our lives there is now an urgent need for public understanding of and engagement with AI.

As I am sure you appreciate there is a great difference between the technology we need and that which exploits us.

Technological advances must create a culture that is meaningful to all.

I don’t expect your companies to alter their business plans but I do advocate in order to make a genuine difference to enhance both your ethical and moral responsibility it would be a positive step to introduce a small subscription fee.

As Jaron Lanier says recently ” We cannot have a Society in which if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it’s financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them. ” “It’s time we started paying for searches on Google or Posts on Facebook which in time will remove false news, as when you pay for something it gets better.”

This fee could be promoted as a World Aid commission and would spread the rewards of technology to all.

Yours,

The Beady Eye. http://bobdillon33blog.com

 

 

 

( A Ten-minute read)

AI in the form of Algorithms is impacting not just the social and political realms of our lives it is affecting and eroding the foundations of democracy.

Given that digital data permeates so many aspects of our lives there is now an urgent need for public understanding of and engagement with AI. There is a great difference between the technology we need and that which exploits us.

The manipulation of data has recently been exposed and points to the need for regulation. Regulations not left to existing self-regulation but by establishing a completely New World International Body that is empowered on behalf of all of us to grant certifications of AI for the common good and benefits to humanity. It must establish a virtual strong room where all original software programs are held so there is a clear and traceable accountability related to AI.

It must ensure that all data is accessible to all.

We must insist by means of International agreement that we create a technological culture that is meaningful to all. The increasing consolation of power and influence by a select few must not be allowed to develop further.

What does this mean for democracy?

To answer, we must first look more closely at what the word actually means today.

It is probably one of the most complicated questions of our century.

“Democracy” was initially used in polite society as a term of approval by the masses oppressing their betters.

Democracy isn’t simply a matter of choice. It’s also a matter of power – and, at the moment, voters have very little of that as can be seen with the missile attack on Syria whether justifiable or not.

The problem is that voters have turned to social media in order to express their anger, unfortunately, social media lacks any form of collective opinion and therefore has little power to exert any meaningful political leverage.

It lacks the organizations through which such anger was traditionally expressed.

The notion of representative democracy, the idea that collective human action and decision-making could work for the common good is not only discredited, it is being recast by social media, a slippery slope to totalitarianism, the road to serfdom.

On the one hand, the primacy of the market in the economic and social developments falling under the rubric of the fourth industrial revolution necessarily predispose elites to what we might call a managerial version of representative democracy – a system in which politicians see their first and foremost responsibility as ensuring voters don’t interfere with “sound economic management”.

Indeed, the internet’s troll culture developed, at least in part, as a response to the inane “participation” offered by online marketers which urge us to participate in petitions, pools etc, are obviously merely for the most part publicity stunt, creating  a generation of digital natives vote to christen a research vessel thus exerting – even if only momentarily – a power that they were never meant to possess.

Most of these internet sites are meaningless and are more likely, an attempt by the site owner to harvest personal data.

Not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day creating a new sense of stagnation catering to voters’ fears.

In fact, almost everywhere in 2016, polls registered an upsurge in nationalism, xenophobia, and overt racism, as well as a growing hostility to global institutions and supranational blocs such as the European Union.

The result is ITS LONGER POSSIBLE TO HAVE NATIONAL DIRECT DEMOCRACY.

In the coming century, stable, long-term employment with a single employer will no longer be the norm, and unemployment or underemployment will no longer be a rare or exceptional situation. Indeed the so-called fourth industrial revolution sees workplace insecurity as a fundamental part of the new economy.

We are witnessing a significant transfer of wealth and power to those at the top of technological society that is using automation to reduced job security to break or diminish union power and are part of the vicious cycle of the reduced power of working people to actively pursue their interests.

Everywhere, rather than involvement, we’re seeing a kind of sullen apathy.

The schism we see opening before us is not just about policies, but about reality.

Brexit and Trump’s election laid bare this political schism of our time.

Left and right disagree so deeply about how best to cushion the effects of globalization, and how to deal with the vast influx of refugees and migrants, that even the threat of extremism may not be enough to bring them to make common cause.

On top of all this, the legitimacy of the electorate is now questionable. Have they the competence necessary for sensible decision-making. A large percentage of people have no clue what’s going on at all.

The party of accepting reality must be prepared to take on the party of denying reality.

The idea that we could aspire to a social condition of our own making, outside of the allegedly miraculous organizing power of the market has become laughable.

Perhaps its time to introduce a system in which only the well-informed may vote.

Why?

Because the internet provides a technical solution to all the traditional difficulties of democracy, allowing ordinary people the means and information to express their preferences with an ease unimaginable to earlier generations without committing to organizations or political parties. A world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth … where anyone, anywhere, may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

It offers a potential for direct democracy so profound that it may well transform not only our system of politics but also our very form of government.

Through its electronic linkages, voters will bind together with people from other lands to create a global political entity that has never existed before. Bypassing national representatives and speaking directly to one another, the people of the world will use the internet increasingly to form a political unit for the future.

As a result, the venting will take very different forms.  Allow … intimacy and involvement in decision-making at even the most local levels and it will catalyze a vast new expansion of political participation.

Digital connectivity would help voters surmount national borders.

The internet could provide a central nervous system for the global body politic.

Online voting through the internet would make politicians pay close attention to the views of their constituents.

Of course, that’s not what happened.

The early years of the online revolution inspired considerable overt utopianism.

In reality, opinion surveys consistently show that voters feel their views go unrepresented. Older people whose familiar world is vanishing beneath a welter of foreign tongues and multicultural celebrations are waving their fists at cosmopolitan elites. Extremism has gone mainstream. the depth of the anger at global forces.

It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres. Rather than embracing internet-augmented direct participation, the political class seems increasingly hostile to democracy altogether. They fabricate realities that ignorant people like to inhabit.

Technological Globalization means culture as well as economics, it’s not stimuli that is fed down our smartphones whether it be positive or negative, or advertising that is no longer advertising but behavior modification.

It’s time we started paying for searches on Google or Posts on Facebook which in time will remove false news, as when you pay for something it gets better.

These two world Monopolies are incapable of change, but they could adopt this policy that could go a long way to resolving other world problems, not just democracy. (See the previous post on a World Aid commission)

We cant turn back the clock but we must release ourselves from the cages we are now all carrying around if we are to avoid a tragic future.

As Jaron Lanier says recently which elegantly sums up this post.

” We cannot have a Society in which if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it’s financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them. ”

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

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( A three-minute read)

If one were to takes a look at England from the outside you would see that two world wars and the end of empire diminished its role in the 20th century.

Now the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union is raising significant questions about the country’s global role. It is redefining its place in the world with Brexit but is it now in danger of dying of inanition.

The world is on the brink of the Fourth Industrial Revolution “A tech revolution that started with the internet but has now spread to everything from materials science to medicine to robotics.

The world is also at the beginnings of a green revolution, that started with carbon reduction and is now changing the way people run businesses and live their lives.

We all know that England has a rich literary heritage encompassing the works of English writers such as William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. That the empire riches lead to the Industrial Revolution- to inventions- to inequality -to wealth- to world influence and power in fact – to all its present day’s problems.

Unfortunate it squandered its Industrial Revolution manufacturing to service industries.  Devotion to business and profit is now hocking its entire economy to save a broken system at the cost of social equality and a possible loss of international influence.

More recently, the UK has suffered a deep economic slump and high public debt as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, which revealed its over-reliance on easy credit, domestic consumption, and rising house prices.

The current English government is making life a whole lot less secure for many people. “Foreigners mate.” Take our jobs, undercut our wages is the great social media lie that is driving England into Isolation.

If it ever needed an example of the consequences of an isolation policy the recent abhorrent Salisbury assassination ( which are now resulting in tit for tat diplomatic expulsions) shows that with Mr. Putin been re-elected for a further six-year acting alone will not be enough.

It may well turn out that the substance used was manufactured in Russia and England is right to point the finger at Russia for its development but there is too large a gray area as to who used it.

Russia must have known that it would be linked to the assassination but I am unable to see the logic in the use a nerve agent. If Russian wanted the X soviet spy dead without a traceable trail back to the country it could have bumped Mr. Sergei and without his daughter Yulia with a bullet.

There is no benefit for Putin to be deliberately courting UK hostility.

On the other hand, the Russian use of murder as part of statecraft is well known.

There is nothing new about a high-profile or outspoken person being assassinated.

It is one of the oldest tools in the book to get rid of someone who is either too powerful, too dangerous or too inconvenient.

One way or the other the UK acting alone will not be enough in the long-term as there will be many that will not want or who will be unwilling to risk their links with Moscow in support of what they now see as a UK/Russia row.

Even though it is the core duty of the British government to deal effectively with a nerve gas attack on our streets, which has seriously incapacitated three people and endangered many more we are all going to need Moscow’s help to tackle the major international problems of terrorism.

Eventually in the long term, when the dust settles we will have to look for potential areas of cooperation with Russia which could begin to rebuild the shattered relationship with the West. Terrorism and perhaps the governing of cyberspace are good places to start.

When you become isolated you start kicked out every bit of imagination embracing inanition with false assumption that feeds back into further arguments distracting attention from failures of the British financial system.

Since no one would be expected to invest in an economy where future prospects and current creditworthiness are declared to be so shaky, leading who knows where?

Tomorrow’s consumption can only be funded by tomorrow’s production.

Stimulus…its what kind of stimulus and how to apply it intelligently that should be the focus of the governments’ economic policies in the UK, not isolation.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

(A two-minute read)

Prime Minister said her position is ‘based on practicality.’

These are empty reassurances not only for the fish stocks in the Irish sea but for the Good Friday agreement and any other agreement transition period or not with or without a border protecting Unionism.

We all need to face up to a few hard facts.

Brexit will be a loss for all of us.

England will be poorer in more ways than one and it will be so entirely of its own choice.

Next:   There will be no hard border in Ireland.

This is only true if Ireland somehow manages unites. Why? Because it is totally impossible while one side is in the customs union and the single market and the other isn’t.

Every Tom Dick and Harry will have their own regulations.  Yuppie England will see more snow than Columba exports.

Direct rule in Northern Ireland or a hard border after Brexit could lead to “serious trouble.”  When there was a hard border, there was very little commerce, very little travel, very little interaction between the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Republic.

“That led to stereotyping, to the demonization of others, to attitudes that were based upon acts from the distant past.”

Next:  Ms May needs to secure a trade deal to do this England has to remain in a customs union.

The UK and the EU have not started discussing their “future partnership” yet.

Next: Any transition period is going to be costly and riddled with but what we are saying is.

Citizens’ rights – in particular, EU nationals who move to the UK during the transition period. Do they get treated the same as if they had arrived while the UK was in the EU? The EU says yes, the UK no.

The UK also wants to be able to strike trade deals with other countries – which it cannot do as an EU member – although these cannot come into force until the transition ends.

Next: Vague aspirations.

There are two sides in England both have different ideas about what it should look like.

It is England, that wants to leave the European Union, not the European Union wanting to leave England.

She had the temerity to talk of what will be remembered of Brexit “a generation from now”.

Here’s a prediction:

A generation from now, the current young generation, who utterly loathe Brexit, will remember the monumental pain in the arse that was taking the UK back into the EU under worse terms, sometime around 2031 at the very latest.

“Brexit means Brexit”  “Let’s get on with it!”  “The world is not watching.”

The Lawyers are laughing all the way to the Bank.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

costly transformation,

 

 

( A three-minute read)

In the not so distant future, it will not be the aims of education to be the transmission of knowledge but the fostering of inquiry.

All human societies, past and present, have had a vested interest in education; children are born illiterate and innumerate, and ignorant of the norms and cultural achievements of the community or society into which they have been thrust.

We all know that education serves as a social-sorting mechanism but this is coming to an end with technology. The great social importance of education is underscored by the fact that when a society is shaken by a crisis, this often is taken as a sign of educational breakdown; education and educators become scapegoats.

There seems little point in education the children of the today with yesterdays knowledge if they are void of creativity. The passive language of seeing, which has shaped our discourse down to the present will no longer apply.

The question of what knowledge will be, and what skills will be needed ought to be—part of the domain of philosophy of the curriculum of the future.

What are the basic aims and ideals of the educational enterprise?

What ought educators try to accomplish?

I suppose the best education will equip individuals with the skills and substantive knowledge that allows them to define and to pursue their own goals, and also allows them to participate in the life of their community as full-fledged, autonomous citizens.

The world is going to need critical thinkers, not the present day state-provided brainwashing students.

Plato’s starting point is that the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. Only those who have rightly trained minds will be able to recognize the end.

Granted each individual is an organism situated in a biological and social environment in which problems were constantly emerging, forcing the individual to reflect, act, and learn but this is also changing and perhaps Plato’s theory “the spectator theory of knowledge” is going to come true.

In schools, those under instruction are too customarily looked upon as acquiring knowledge as theoretical spectators, minds which appropriate knowledge by a direct energy of intellect. The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is engaged not in having fruitful experiences but in absorbing knowledge directly.

Something which is called mind or consciousness is severed from the physical organs of activity.

However, in the future, as robots and automation sweep the global workforce each student although an individual will blaze his or her unique trail of growth on the internet.

This is already happening with many University offering online courses.

A teacher will have the task of guiding and facilitating this growth, without imposing a fixed end upon the process.

Dewey sometimes uses the term “curriculum” to mean “the funded wisdom of the human race”, the point is that over the course of human history an enormous stock of knowledge and skills has accumulated and the teacher has the task of helping the student to make contact with this repertoire—but helping by facilitating rather than by imposing.

As technology removes the need for knowledge students coming out of University with degrees in Law, Medicine etc will not be needed.

Virtual learning, digitization, and augmented reality will make obsolete our old definitions of a classroom in 2020.

Before each of us is imprisoned in a world of our own making we should move creativity to the top of the education premise.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

( A one minute read)

The feel-good factor of Britain’s success took little time to wear off after it emerged that each medal at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games had cost £4.1m in funding a mere £350m for 27 golds, 23 silvers, and 38 bronzes.

The five-medal haul in Pyeongchang cost a mere 28million, £5.6 million a medal. 

Using the current rates of both precious metals, the street value of a gold medal is approximately $548.

In a country with its national health services trapped for additional funds, (£8 billion a year in funding will be needed by 2020.) going through the biggest financial squeeze in its history with waiting times rising and quality of care deteriorating.

That is spending £6.2bn on two aircraft carrier that will be worthless and possibly be spending £40bn on a programme that is designed for uncertainty and indeed that an “uncertain future threat environment” may mean no threats arise and so £40bn would have been spent unnecessarily.

It would be a fair question to ask are they worth it. Is it Lottery Funds well spent.

I would say yes on the premises that money spent promoting peace far outweighs money spent on defense in a world that needs to come together to fight inequality and climate change.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

Against worthless Aircraft carriers, Trident missiles they certainly are.

 

 

( A Ten minute Read)

The idea that globalization has become unmoored from geography – and Britain is about to reap the rewards – is wishful thinking.

All evidence points to the opposite conclusion:

In fact, Britain is not about to enter a “post-geography trading world”.

Brexit will damage the UK’s flagship services sector, rather than liberating it.

In this day and age of technology services are increasingly delivered electronically, with financial transactions, advertisement mock-ups, and architectural blueprints sent to clients over the internet.

While this is true trade between two countries is greater if they have larger economies, and less if they are more distant from one another.

It is inconceivable that to this day it is not understood by the British people that the EU is the UK’s natural trading partner; that the single market has done more to raise trade in services than free trade agreements (FTAs); and that any barriers thrown up as a consequence of Brexit will be hard to offset with lower barriers to trade with the rest of the world.

The EU is a rich, large market that is on the UK’s doorstep, and its single market has proved more effective at reducing barriers to services trade than bilateral free trade agreements. The EU’s rules have led to an estimated 60 percent boost to services trade between EU member-states.

When it comes to goods and agriculture, the idea that trade is detached from geography is flat wrong.

Products and services are increasingly bundled together as one, services find themselves bound to the physical geography of manufactured goods.

While technology has certainly made interactions at a distance easier, these interactions still often require both parties to be in the same place:

Services are largely delivered by people and nearly half of the UK’s exports are now in services.

 

While it attempts to negotiate a new relationship with the EU, the outcome of which is highly uncertain, all of this undermines the government’s ‘global Britain’ narrative.

Britain is becoming a semi-detached member of the EU, outside the euro and the Schengen zone, and increasingly eurosceptic.

One does not need a crystal ball to see that the EU needs reforms, but there can be no half-way house between a free trade agreement and full membership of the single market. Nor can there be ‘Managed divergence’.

IE: The UK and EU commit to regulatory alignment in some sector while allowing the UK to diverge from new rules in others in the future.

This amounts to cherry-picking, which the EU has made a red line.

The EU-27 cannot agree to a system where the UK converges when deemed to be in its interest, but diverges in those sectors in which it could gain competitive advantage with the rest of the world.

It would be a political feat for the EU and UK to agree which rules are crucial for maintaining a level playing field, and which matter less. Certain rules matter for the operation of several different markets (chemical regulations have an impact on other markets for products that use those chemicals, as well as on the environment), and some are highly specific to a particular market.

Since the economic impact of regulations is very hard to identify objectively, any disputes could prove impossible to manage.

If the UK chose to diverge from one part of the EU’s insurance regime, should the EU have the right to curtail market access in the sector as a whole?

There is no getting away from that a free trade agreement would lead to more checks and paperwork on UK imports at the EU’s border – especially in highly regulated sectors like agriculture, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and cars, which would no longer be subject to the EU’s rules.

It is also not possible to do services-only trade deals.

So what’s left on the table is a fudge-

or- What’s in it for me?

One way or the other finding a solution is entirely dependent on EU goodwill with or without a transition period the time is ripe for EU reform.

The EU’s institutions, the European Commission is losing the trust of some governments because of the perception that it is increasingly dependent on the European Parliament.

It should return to an equidistant position between the Council of Ministers and the Parliament.

National parliaments should play a greater role in EU governance.

It is time to transcend the traditional battle between communautaire and inter-governmental thinking.

The EU cannot succeed without both federal institutions and a major role for governments; they must work together.

As long as the European Union is made up of independent nations with their own elected governments, their problems are going to be essentially local and they will need local solutions. Squeezing them into the same monetary straightjacket has clearly failed and adding a fiscal union would just exacerbate an already unsustainable situation. Governments need the flexibility to deal with their own problems.

History tells us citizens will not accept taxation without representation.

Fiscal union would, therefore, would not be a major step towards a true political union. Fiscal union would entail a ballooning of the EU budget – provoking endless bickering among the 27 (or more) member states on how to share it out, not to mention the expanded scope for graft and bureaucratic inefficiency.

It’s a recipe for gridlock.

All human comments appriciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.