Opinion

Three unprecedented things happened with Brexit this week: Prime Minister Theresa May capitulated fully on Britain's financial settlements with the EU, amounting to around £40bn. Brexit Secretary David Davis failed to produce any impact assessments, telling the select committee that the Brexit impact assessments didn't exist, even though he had talked about them at great length. What parliament got was a couple of hastily thrown together ring binders of Wikipedia. However the Conservative-dominated select committee decided this was not a contempt of parliament. An agreement was drawn up between the UK and the EU on the exit process, satisfying the EU that trade talks could proceed. Theresa May conceded the following: Citizens rights would be arbitrated by the ECJ. Those rights would be conferred to family members and partners. In the absence of other agreements, the entire UK would effectively remain in the Customs Union so as to avoid a border in Ireland. Although

A short FAQ on Bitcoin. What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. It consists of data (information; a string of 1s and 0s), rather than anything physical. It uses mathematical algorithms, or cryptographic algorithms, to determine who owns what money, and prevent people from cheating by stealing money or spending the same money twice. Why is this suddenly interesting? Previous cryptocurrencies needed to be centrally managed. Bitcoin makes the entire process distributed which cuts out a single point of failure, and makes it hard for any government to control and shut down. Won't this piss off a lot of people? Probably. Banks just lost a lot of business. However they will still be able to continue to offer other financial services. Governments don't like it because they no longer have a privileged position, and can't manipulate it. What's the harm? Bitcoin facilitates transactions, and that includes money laundering, buying illegal things and other i

Read a few interesting things today. James Dyson said on the Andrew Marr show that Brexit offers a fantastic opportunity for the UK, and that Britain should walk away from negotiations and the EU will come running after us with an offer. [ 1 ] The comments about this on the Get Britain Out of the EU! Facebook page were in full agreement, of course: Of course James Dyson is right - they NEED us. They want to trade with us. They will be queuing to strike a deal. Then we can all get on with it and it won't cost billions!  I agree, the Eu needs Britain far more than Britain needs the Eu. Leave now, without a deal, You will have one and a good one within days.  I agree with him, he said that it was appalling that they are demanding more money to talk to us, why can't our government realize that the E U will lose out in a "no deal" with us? I have always wanted NO deal with them anyway!! Similar sentiments have been expressed by Yanis Varoufakis, Greek minister of

Mark Lilla writes in the New Statesman ( September 2017 ) that the "Left", i.e. the US Democratic Party, social justice and anti-facism movements, lost the US election due to being side-tracked by gender and race issues. Enough of the electorate weren't buying it and Trump won. In hindsight attacking a large proportion of the electorate based on their gender and race is never a good idea, no matter which race or gender you are talking about. No, it's not acceptable to denigrate men or white people either. Trump of course did the same, by attacking foreigners, Mexicans, Muslims and women, but he got away with it due to media bias and partisan politics. At home, Peter North, a prominent pro-Brexit blogger, tweeted about "self determination". This immediately raised the issue of what is "self", and lo and behold we are back to identity again. If we all feel European, then being governed by the EU is indeed self-determination, and let's not ki

Theresa May has affirmed that the UK will be leaving the EU at 11pm UTC on the Friday 29th March 2019, and this will be enshrined into law. This sounds very strong, but actually it's another unforced error by a UK government out of its depth. So far the government have gotten away with its incompetence because the effects of their folly haven't become apparent yet, and won't until Saturday 30th March 2019. This gives a whole weekend of Brexit euphoria, before things start to go wrong on April Fools day 2019. These tough-sounding red lines are designed for two audiences. Firstly, Brexiters are getting jittery and need reassurance. They want out before EU directive 2016/1164 on tax avoidance comes into force. Secondly, Britain is playing a high-stakes game of bluff with the EU, whereby if the UK sounds serious, the EU may be forced into concessions. Unfortunately the EU is too big to be bullied, and this is a strategic blunder. The biggest problem with this date is tha

As many commentators agree (including myself  a week after the referendum result), and most recently The Brexit Minister David Davis in front of the Lords Select Committee, the talks on the UK leaving the EU are likely to carry on until the very last minute. Although the UK was never going to be completely satisfied with the outcome of these talks, I have been a little surprised by the unity of the EU27, and by contrast the sheer lack of preparation by the UK government. I would have expected a lot of political infighting by Leavers as their ideal vision of Brexit is shattered, but that hasn’t happened yet simply because the UK government doesn’t have any kind of coherent position to criticise. With the clock running down, as Ian Dunt said in his latest Remainiacs podcast , the number of options is reducing. David Davis still claims to be on track for a comprehensive trade deal to be signed by March 2019 but this claim is so ridiculous that it’s embarrassing. That the Brexit

This article covers the main areas of contention surrounding Lyme disease. Whilst the medical profession has traditionally regarded Lyme disease as fairly mild and easily treated, there are now many patients and doctors who are claiming that the current treatment guidelines simply don't work and leave many patients with life long symptoms, and they are being systematically dismissed and ignored. What is the controversy? Many thousands of patients with generic symptoms of illness, pain, mental problems and fatigue claim to have Lyme disease. Some claim that scientists, insurers and government institutions are colluding to deny research, testing and treatment to them. Some claim that Lyme disease came from a government research lab located close to the original outbreak. Some claim that the attempts to develop a vaccine lead to many patients becoming seriously ill, and that testing methods were deliberately changed to not detect this condition, which as a result caused the

I made this

Ten weeks after Article 50 was invoked, we are already seeing a general election (which the Tories are likely to win by a landslide), and a fateful dinner at No 10 Downing Street where the disagreements between the UK and the EU were made more apparent. When I thought there would be a general election this year, I thought it would be because the government had seen sense, and had realised the impossibility of Brexit. I was wrong. This election is because May wants a larger majority in the House of Commons and does not want to be distracted by managing her own party during the EU negotiations. Theresa May hates scrutiny. The other reasons are that there was an expenses scandal which could have seen a series of by-elections which would be very messy and embarrassing for the government, and when the EU negotiations fail to deliver what Leave promised (because they are undeliverable), or because of economic chaos of a cliff-edge Brexit, the Tories would get the blame. With more time

Last Monday I wandered into the Chinese doctor’s in Oxford, who also specialise in acupuncture. I had been meaning to go for a while, after I had read that others had had success with Chinese medicine as part of their Lyme disease treatment, and I was still looking for that elusive cure. The fact is that Western medicine is of limited use for Lyme, but there are a variety of medicinal plants that help many people. I started babbling about Lyme disease to the Chinese doctor, telling him all about my problems such as infection, carditis, insomnia, tingling, immunity, borrelia, chlamydia, ehrlichiosis. He took my details, and proceeded to examine me by feeling my pulse on both wrists.  After a short while, his diagnosis was “damp”, and suggested acupuncture. I said I wasn’t sure, but did he have some medicines instead? I was given Taohong Si Wu Wan and Shenling Bai Zhu Wan, for a cost of £22. I was happy to take them - Lyme disease is an expensive process of trial and error.

The recent article by Shapiro, Baker and Wormser in the American Journal of Medicine [1] exemplifies the struggles facing Lyme disease patients. It seems that for now, traditional thinking about Lyme disease still has the ear of the mainstream medical journals. The authors repeat the traditional view of Lyme disease, which is that Lyme disease is easy to diagnose and easy to treat. The authors assert that any challenge to this view is "fake news." The problem is that the same names keep cropping up in defence of this traditional view of Lyme disease, but there is much dissent among the research community, practitioners and patients about what Lyme disease actually is. Superficially, Lyme disease is bacterial infection, Borrelia burgdorferi, which affects various parts of the body. In theory once the bacteria have been treated with antibiotics, the patient should get better. Unfortunately, theory and practice diverge. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are now

In spite of all the dire warnings and practical consequences, the UK prime minister Theresa May is determined to push through with Brexit. Although there are a lot of warnings that things could go badly wrong, I get the sense that she thinks the UK will muddle through and it’ll all work out in the end. No matter how adverse the situation, one can always pull through. This got me thinking about where this blasé attitude comes from. The problem is that the Prime Minister has lead a privileged life, with a good dolloping of luck, where indeed everything has worked out for the best. It goes deeper than this though.  Conservatives themselves tend to be hard-working and better off. Nothing wrong with that, but the feeling seems to be that if only the poor would apply themselves more, they too could be rich. Consequently, the poor who choose to not apply themselves are therefore poor by choice, and conversely, the rich have only got there due to merit and work. Conservatives bel