accountability Archive

  • Robert Montgomery plays Philip Marlowe in the 1947 film version of "The lady in the lake"

    The lady in the lake

    Taking a break from thinking about the future of the eurozone or the prospects for a UN Parliamentary Assembly, I took a trip to 1940s California in the company of Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s iconic, hardbitten private detective.  But amidst the glitz of Hollywood and...

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  • The Occupy London protest (picture Richard Symonds)

    The case for global democracy

    The Occupy London protest (picture Richard Symonds) Based on a talk by Richard Laming at the OccupyLSX camp at St Paul’s Cathedral, 11 December 2011 Before talking about the issue of global democracy, I ought to say a few words about Federal Union and its interest...

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  • Richard Laming

    No globalisation without representation

    That the protestors outside St Paul’s cathedral are critical of global capitalism should not be surprise.  Doesn’t everybody object to the way in which what was effectively gambling in unregulated markets nearly brought down the financial system and has ground economic growth to a halt?...

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  • obamawestminsterlandscape

    The rights of citizens, the rights of nations

    Barack Obama was widely praised for the declaration in his speech at Westminster Hall on 25 May that “we believe not simply in the rights of nations, we believe in the rights of citizens.” It sounds great, but is it really true?  Here’s a test....

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  • facemaskhead

    Too many vaccines

    It has become apparent that the British government ordered many more shots of swine flu vaccine last winter than turned out to be needed. (The Guardian reports the story here.) The excess cost is not quoted but must run into tens of millions of pounds....

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  • Tuna

    Tuna off the menu and onto the agenda

    Environmentalists are angry about the decision by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) at the weekend to reduce the allowable catch next year from 22,000 to 13,500 tonnes but not to abolish it altogether. Stocks of tuna are at dangerously low...

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  • Compost heap on a frosty morning (picture Andrew Dunn)

    Need for global rules

    By Richard Laming Published in The Daily Telegraph, 4 October 2009 SIR – Janet Daley (Comment, September 27) is correct to warn of the problems posed by global governance but is wrong to dismiss the idea out of hand. Her fear is that global governance...

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  • G8 summit (source whitehouse.gov)

    Not just who but how

    Claire Melamed, head of policy at ActionAid, writes in the Guardian today about the G8 summit to be held in Italy this week and whether it would be better if it were the G20 represented instead. (Read the article here.) She discusses whether the G20...

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  • Sleeping on duty

    Asleep on the job

    This blog has commented in the past on the impact of sleep and tiredness on political decision-making, and it is interesting to see the same phenomenon arise elsewhere. The practice of the EU of taking its most important decisions at intergovernmental summits is prone to...

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  • Sheep (picture snowmanradio)

    The EU gets the wrong farm deal

    EU farm ministers never tire of discussing the Common Agricultural Policy. The latest negotiations concluded in the early hours of Thursday morning, over the so-called CAP healthcheck. The aim was to revise some aspects of European agricultural policy, but without affecting its overall cost. (The...

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