Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Just in time for the increase in defence spending from 2.4% to 3.5% by 2035. Really just precautionary rearmament we can take a decade to do, given how still and peaceful everything is

[Sheilbh]

I have noticed that often what the Guardian call an "expert" is just a person committed enough to an idea or course of action to join/form a lobbying group for it.

And also a fair bit of bias in how they are covered. The way the Guardian frames someone speaking from a right wing think tank or pressure group v a left wing is very blatant

Incidentally this always rminds me of law school because my equity lecturer used to rage against the 2006 Charities Act In part because he was an elderly reactionary Cambridge don (he was so old he'd been a tutor for John Cleese ), but his argument was largely because it broadened the definition of a "charitable purpose" that charities could be set up to advance. I think it has basically become a bit of a middle-class graduate make-work scheme (and route into politics). So he moaned a lot about I think a homelessness charity that was basically raising lots of money on its reputation for helping the homelessness but was spending most of that money on public policy - so coming up with and lobbying for policy ideas on how to address homelessness.

I get the argument for why that might be more effective on a large scale (I'm not sure it actually has been though in many areas of policy) - but his point was it basically totally elided the world of charities v the world of pressure groups which used to be separate (eg Oxfam was a charity while Amnesty was a pressure group).