One of the things we've learned from this week's Conservative Party conference -- an event once described by former Labour MP Austin Mitchell as a convocation of sixth-form schoolboys taking it in turns to read their eccentric essays to each other -- is that Theresa May's "Brexit means Brexit" means a hard Brexit, prioritising immigration controls ( Read more... )

A local Conservative Party member of my acquaintance is fairly contemptuous of Andrea Leadsom -- in his words, "she isn't Cabinet-quality". As would appear to be demonstrated by her suggestion at this week's Conservative Party conference that, post-Brexit, British yoof be tasked to harvest English fruit and vegetables in place of the seasonal ( Read more... )

The abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and the folding of its functions into two separate departments -- energy into what is essentially a revamped industry department (the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) and climate change back into environment -- has garnered negative comments from various green ( Read more... )

One almost despairs at some of Theresa May's cabinet appointments. The gaffe-prone Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary -- will he have to spend more time apologising to the foreign politicians and diplomats that he inadvertantly-on-purpose offends than actually doing the job? Chris Grayling as Transport Secretary -- having signally failed to ( Read more... )

The pundits have been punditting away since the outcome of the referendum vote, and will doubtless continue to do in the weeks and months ahead. For what it's worth, here are my thoughts:

1. Scotland  Scotland will eventually become independent, but not as quickly as Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP might wish and not until the following three ( Read more... )

I last (and for that matter first) wrote about the EU referendum in late April, when I declined to speculate on the eventual outcome. But now I will: as the weeks have progressed, so momentum has shifted towards the Brexiteers, who now seem likely to clinch a narrow victory when the votes begin to be counted after the polling stations close on 23 ( Read more... )

I have been a supporter of "the European project" since at least my late teens when (in parallel with my O Level history studies of Europe between the Napoleonic and the Great Wars) I first encountered Robert Schuman's and Jean Monnet's proposals for a United States of Europe -- so I naturally voted in favour of the UK remaining a member of the ( Read more... )

I am obviously pumping this stuff out at, er, top boop. Here's another Facebook photo album of our travels around Sydney Harbour, which again you do not need an FB account to access.

A photographic record of a walk around the promontory that forms the northern side of the entrance to Sydney Harbour, available here. It's a Facebook album, but a public one, and you don't therefore need a Facebook account to view it.

A compilation of photographs taken in September 2015 and January 2016 of Fremantle's fascinating stock of heritage and historic buildings, available here.