( 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. ”

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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.

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(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.

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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.

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( 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.

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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.

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( A two minute read that could save your humanity)

There, not a day that Artifical Intelligence is not in the news – Social Media, Davos, TV, Magazines, Flipboard all telling us that we are going to be replaced by Robots.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Creating a common future in a fractured world.  

It seems that we are all to be made redundant, to live in a world run by Algorithms that have no conscious while our imaginations run wild.

In my last post ( Soon there will be no need to wait for the return of Jesus) I said: ” If you are expecting some kind of warning when computers finally get smarter than us, think again.”

You only have to look around you to realize that if we as a species continue to ignore the warning signs life its self will be hacked.

Then the question will be who or what should own the data.

Should it be a few Corporations that live in the cloud or should data that is biological in its nature be owned by all of us?

Algorithms without any human values or responsibility for their decisions are already making decisions on our behalf.

If this continues unabated without any form of regulation we are going to have a world of vast inequality and bias.

The programmes that will drive machines like robots in the near future will carry the contamination of the values of there owners.

Our ideas about responsibility are out of date.

Does our conscious rule what we are responsible for.

If we are just biological Algorithms is it our intelligence that gives us consciously or is it our imagination that is the governor or the other way around.

A question that has many answers but would you befriend a robot that has no responsibility.

If you had Alsimers you might as there is no end point in your life.

This is why we need to ensure that all Robotics ware their nonhumanity on their sleeves so we are fully aware of what association we have with AI.

We need new stories new thinking to match the new technology,

This Fourth Industrial revolution requires a solution that is global not a race to the bottom in a fragmented world.

It’s time to get our faces out of our smartphones and become smart before it’s too late.

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( A three-minute read)

IT IS APPARENT TO ANYONE THAT DOES NOT HAVE SAWDUST BETWEEN THEIR EARS THAT OUT OF THE CUSTOM UNION MEANS A HARD BORDER BETWEEN IRELAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND.

“Let’s make a deal first, and we can figure out the details later.” Is bull shit.

British negotiators refusal to tackle and solve the question of the border during these talks is tragic.

Failing to address issues surrounding the border question can have ugly and unforeseen long-term consequences.

Had the British government taken direct responsibility for drawing the border in 1921 and sought to respect the wishes of local communities regarding which state they wanted to join, it is quite possible that the Troubles would never have broken out.

Instead of taking the Good Friday Agreement and the opportunity to remove the root cause of the Northern Irish conflict they paid the DUP billions to support a minority government.

In order for the UK to enact its post-Brexit immigration policies and leave the single market, it must be able to control its borders.

This said it is impossible to overstate the horror with which such a wall between the north and south would be greeted.

The arbitrary line of partition London imposed on the Free State in 1920 helped to spark the Troubles and is still a lingering grievance.

The Good Friday Agreement was seen as answering the question of whether the island of Ireland could be reunited once and for all, establishing as it did that Northern Ireland would only rejoin the South if a majority of citizens voted in a referendum or plebiscite for the option. With nationalists being demographically subordinate in Stormont, the simple mathematics meant it would never happen.

But here’s a sentence I never thought I’d utter: for the first time in my lifetime, a united Ireland is now credible – and perhaps inevitable.

Whether you believe that England is going to somehow negotiate a deal better than the remaining countries already have it is turning a blind eye to politics in Northern Ireland.

This was epitomized in the Brexit campaign, during which Northern Ireland was scarcely mentioned despite being the only part of the UK which shares a land border with another EU country. The Leave campaign also appeared to have no knowledge of or interest in what would happen to the border between North and South of Ireland.

Northern Ireland receives millions in funding from the EU for cross-community peace projects between Catholic and Protestant communities, but the loss of this money, or where replacement funding might come from, doesn’t appear to have been calculated into the Leave campaign’s financial deliberations over the cost of Brexit.

Northern Ireland voted to remain, but, like Scotland, is now finding it will be dragged out of it anyway thanks to Welsh and English voters.

Almost a year on from the EU referendum, we’re no wiser as to the future of the Northern Irish border.

May has continuously obfuscated as to how, where or why a border will be erected between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Despite the British Government’s insistence on batting away the question, it must be urgently addressed.

In order for the UK to enact post-Brexit immigration policies and leave the single market, it must be able to control its borders; a physical fence or wall is the only realistic option.

In effect, a border will fence off Northern Ireland, making its own tiny country, with one million residents penned in together with no option of traveling, working or visiting the other three-quarters of the island as easily as they are accustomed.

With Sinn Fein just one seat short of being the largest party at Stormont, reunification is by no means imminent.

The next election is likely to see them returned as the largest party, barring major events to stop their momentum.

A united Ireland is no longer hypothetical or absurd, but a credible option that must be considered seriously by both the Irish and British governments.

For the first time in my lifetime, the Irish question is no longer a question of if, but of when.  Unfortunately,  the DUP would never agree such a deal and they have the power to bring down the minority UK government.

There is more at stake than just the border in the north.

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( A FIVE MINUTE READ OF HARD FACTS.)

A transit period is going to lead to a massive EU and British taxpayers loss.

Instead what is needed is a moratorium on the implementation of the final deal, not a flexible transit deal, which will see circumstances changing on both sides.

The issue the UK needs to decide is how to deal with the over 750 international agreements, including trade deals the EU already has. During the transition or indeed a moratorium, the UK will be bound by them, meaning it will have to collect tariffs and make sure EU standards are upheld at its borders.

However, the third partners will have a say in how much the UK can benefit from those existing deals.

It is blatantly obvious that these 750 trade deals are EU international agreements that benefit the members of the EU.

London will have to decide whether to ask the EU to help in rolling over these existing agreements. This should not stop the UK from being able to negotiate their own trade deals during the transition or moratorium period, but these agreements cannot come into force unless the EU-27 agrees or the moratorium expires.

WHY?

Because it will be politically very sensitive both in England and the EU, making any kind of compromise especially difficult.

Because as the realities hit home England will (as it is its right) endeavour to reinterpret what it has agreed, as will the EU.

Because while trade talks could begin alongside the formal exit negotiations, EU law means that they cannot be concluded until the UK officially exited the EU.

The UK would then revert to being a “third country”.

This would imply the UK would face a period in which it is outside the EU but does not have a new trade deal with the single market. In this case, it would have to rely on World Trade Organization (WTO) rules until the final deal is concluded.

So England does have the right to set the groundwork for a free trade agreement between it and other nations.

It is reasonable to expect that countries with a vested interest in maintaining trade links with the UK may wish to begin informal negotiations.

Under EU law, the bloc cannot negotiate a separate trade deal with one of its own members, as rules have to apply to all member states equally. Similarly, individual member states cannot make trade deals with individual member states, with third countries on their own.

This suggests that, because the UK will remain a full member of the EU throughout the negotiating period set out in Article 50, it could only formally sign trade deals with other countries once it has left.

The UK could insist it has a different legal status now that it notified the EU of its intention to leave. However, there is no legal precedent for such a situation, as Article 50 has never been triggered before.

Since the UK is going to be in a different situation, it could be argued the normal rules can’t really apply and the UK should be able to have informal trade negotiations that could be enforced from the day it leaves, but this is largely hypothetical at the moment.

As for whether the UK could open informal trade talks with non-EU countries like India or China, the UK could make the same legal argument about the change in its status. But we have no way of knowing whether the UK could successfully argue this position regarding trade with EU or non-EU countries.

I say “First, you exit and then you negotiate the new relationship, whatever that is”

What a future trade deal with the EU might look like, and how long it will take to conclude, will be a matter for Parliament and the next prime minister.

Reality Check:

So when the BBC news stated recently that Theresa May has done a trade deal with China is this false News or is Britain in breach of the Lisbon Treaty, and if so should negotiations be suspended.

Today we learn that  THE CHINESE prime minister has hailed a new high point in UK-China relations after Theresa May signed a cooperation agreement on trade and investments.

Dress it up how you like this is a blatant breach of EU Laws.

The alarm bells are ringing:

All human comments appreciated

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( A Ten-minute read)

We all know that the world’s problems are complex, but what in the first place is it exactly that makes a problem complex when the solution is known.

You could say there are many reasons, and you would be right.

The problem is ignored, misunderstood, tampered with, to complex to understand etc,

So is it that our history is now so complicated that it cannot teach us anything.

Indeed understanding complexity an inconvenient oxymoron.

The word itself is generally used to characterize something with many parts where these parts interact with each other. It is difficult to understand the whole without understanding the motion/behaviour of every single one of the components.

I suppose in the end the complex thing about complexity is it is constantly in competition with other complex systems.

Complexity breed complexity.

We see and witness this every day with Capitalism versus the core values of life, none more so than with Climate Change and Poverty that are interconnected to all the woes of our world.

The climate is probably the most complicated system in the world and maybe only a fraction of the many problems that we face in the world,  but no matter how you look at it, the climate has plague human civilisation and is entrenched throughout human history.

The problem is that all of us take it for granted and have little understanding of its effects other than it governs all of us for better or worse.

Ignore it at your peril.

So will Social media change the course of history?  Will it make the world a better place? Can it force all of us to realise that if we want a world we must as a unity world address what is becoming more and more evident day by day that if we continue to ignore the scientific warnings we are heading for a world that will not be livable on for and species, man or mouse?

It has the power to do so, but only if it expresses the majority in a unified outcry.

Two hundred or so years ago we had Slavery. These days you would say that it is all but eradicated.

Today we are causing inescapable devastating changes to the ecology of the earth.

Let’s awaken our conscience. With every passing year, the environment is getting degraded.

In the foreseeable future.

Scientists have estimated that over two-thirds of flora and fauna that once inhabited the Earth are now extinct.

However, we all know the problems that climate change will bring and once started will be unstoppable for all intuitive purposes other than building defences and moving.

There will be little or no point in saving National Parks with Elephants, Tiger, Silverback Apes unless we save the termite, the ant, the butterfly, the trees, the plants unless we save the environment as a whole.

Everything is interconnected – especially the environment which is connected to all forms of HUMAN LIFE, RICH OR POOR, INTELLIGENT OR IGNORANT, VIRTUAL OR  REAL.

Unfortunately for the planet ( On which all life exists, ) we are the only species with the ability to effect change. All others are only interested in their own existence.

Our present dilemma is the lack of Collectivism driven by the Smartphone and Algorithms. Both technologies are concealed from us the truth, creating a sea of irrelevance, with a captured Culture of short-term Pleasure.

We are becoming oppressed by data. A society drugging ourselves.

In 20/25 years we are going to see a major change due to climate change which will be swift and big. There will be no room for I am all right Jack politics of the Donald Trumps of this world.

Something is rotten in the state of technology where there is little social conscience.  Fake news and disinformation are just a few of the symptoms. But the problem is far more fundamental. These powerful algorithmic engines that run platforms are black boxes of profit.

The great lie is that social media shows us the world. Brings us closer together. Little wonder that lies spread, and inflates, to pickle our minds and our own prejudices.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, strap us into a single-seated algorithms theatre without any windows or doors. It is an infinite blend of your personal likes and dislikes scraped off the internet.

How will we be able to measure the impact of the above?

Google is more powerful than most states on the planet presenting a threat to liberal democracy in as far as the preservation of the rights of the individual’s data is the property of private corporations or the state.

No one should now douth that these platforms impact and shape public discourse, and shape society at large, distracting attention away from of core values TOWARDS social INSTABILITY.

Facebook and Google, Apple, U Tube, and their like are powerful monopolies almost void of any regulation.

Algorithmic accountability should not mean that a critical mass of human suffering is needed to reverse the damage they are inflicting on us and the generations to come.

It will be too late to measure their impact, except when we feel its harms.

With climate change, there will no gradually decay.

The Paris Climate Change Agreement is not an inspirational rallying cry or a recipe for bold action. It serves better as the motto for the tortoise than the hare.

It appears at this moment in history as in the past centuries that we humans do have not the ability to turn long-term thinking into action without creating a war.

There will be no solution till we give Eco Systems a Monetary and Rights value.

Shallow Paris Climate agreement promises are already worthless.

Why?

Because without removing or at least making the one thing that is driving Climate change and poverty – Greed to pay there will be no marked improvement in any future or present world problems.

We can all wail like I am doing here till the cows come home.

Without independent financial clout to effect change, we are pissing against the wind. ( See previous posts)

The solution to climate change and poverty is not just money.

Free energy would go a long way to saving the environment.

A basic wage, generated from greed/ profit for profit sake, would reduce the inequalities of the world and have a profound effect on the climate.

Both are a simple solution to a complex world problem.

It is Crystal Clear that if we do not do something to protect the Enviorment we all Fucked.

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