Today, the Guardian reports that Civicus, a global campaigning NGO, in its recently published monitor has downgraded the UK’s acceptance and tolerance of protest, ‘it is now classified as “obstructed” — putting it alongside countries such as Poland, South Africa and Hungary.’ Civicus classify countries as: open; narrowed; obstructed; repressed…

Here is my write up on Day 3; the meeting kicked off in working groups and then returned to plenary; the plenary video is indexed on their web page. This article is made from mainly contemporaneous notes, but I had to revisit the video for the final two speakers. The…

On the second day of the EU’s citizens assembly on Virtual Worlds, I observed Working Group 6 which reconvened. The working group was directed to focus on the Commission’s principles, numbers four and five, “Fostering participation in the digital public space” & “Increasing safety, security and empowerment of individuals”. While…

Bloomberg, and others, report (£) that Sunak is planning to spend £800m on a new British Supercomputer. This is also covered in the Register, who among other things suggest that the amount of money is extraordinary for a super computer, allowing the building of the largest in the world, exceeding…

The plenary sessions were set in a virtual world, which looked from the demo, very like 2nd life and note, the picture above is not from that virtual world. Observers could not see or participate in this. I have a note but the ice breaker did not really work, it…

On Tuesday, the Government presented a new bill called the Illegal Migration Bill. It’s centre piece is that any asylum seekers who enter the country illegally will have their claims denied and be ‘removed’ from the UK. Here is a quote from Sunak’s twitter feed, If you come to the…

Both the IAPP and the Open Rights Group are predicting or pre-empting a new data protection law for the UK. The IAPP preview it here, but mainly repeat the Government’s puffs. The Open Rights Group take a more detailed and critical view. I have summarised the ORG criticisms as; they…

The 2022 version of the Economist’s Democracy Index is out, and I am surprised to find that the UK remains classed as a Democracy and maintains its position as 18th in the World. I last looked at this in 2018 and wrote quite a long article, being surprised at how…

As the UK government sorts out the argument with EU over the border between Eire & Great Britain, rejoining Horizon Europe becomes a possibility although it seems that Rishi Sunak is not so keen. (from the FT). The advantage of the EU’s R&D programme is more than the value of…