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Pop and Troinanovski look at the tough negotiations ahead for Brexit and describe Theresa May as a experienced negotiator. Belgian Interior Minister Jambon says she has "a lot of policy knowledge" and moved in the direction of European cooperation. Germany Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich says May has a very clear idea of her objective, uses clear language, and is consistent. Yet much depends on other factors including elections in Germany and France in 2017. For France and Hollande the issue becomes particularly filled with implications with the need not to give the far right and Marie Le Pen any advantage by making concessions in the negotiations. German chancellor Merkel is also very clear from her perspective on migration and free movement in the European Union, a point on which she was tested by other Eastern European countries during the refugee crisis. Merkel made this clear that it was Britain's choice of direction in future relations- "Whoever wants free access to the European single market must in return accept all of the basic freedoms, including the free movement of people." Because of domestic politics in Germany and France and in the rest of the European Union, these negotiations could drag on for a very long time. The only positive sign for both sides is that May is known as a responsible politician after 6 years as Britain's Home Secretary, holding one of the top positions in the cabinet. As Merkel's popularity has recovered with about 55% popular support and the decline in the support for the AfD in recent poll cited by DW.com, Merkel may be prepared for a long negotiation to keep the original idea and spirit of the founders of the European Union alive and strong. ...

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The parliamentary elections in Britain have changed the environment in which the first day of Brexit talks took place on June 19, 2017. There is a great deal of uncertainty as the government of Theresa May has only a thin majority in parliament. A debate is now taking place on how much support Brexit has after the parliamentary election, and what kind of Brexit should take place, what are the risks and uncertainties for Britain. As expected the European Union negotiator Michael Barnier emphasized that some issues have to be resolved first- that Britain owes the European Union between 40 to 60 billion euros over 5 years, the rights of EU citizens in Britain, for the beneficiaries of EU policies and for the impact on borders particularly in Ireland.  Only then would the EU discuss access to the EU market for Britain. Mr Barnier handed British negotiator David Davis a hiking stick, a way of saying this will be a long hike up the mountain. In Britain there is a growing sense that the talks cannot be completed by the current deadline in 2019, that it might take 5 years. Another hurdle- Britain cannot have access to the single market if it seeks to control immigration. For the European Union there is the additional problem of how to negotiate with a government that may not be there in a few months, say experts. For the European Union Brexit is now more of a distraction, as there are other issues that rank higher such as relations with the Trump administration, NATO and Russia, refugees and borders.       ...

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The title about Indians in America as an Experiment is a misnomer, and reflects a loss of understanding of American and European civilization, the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions that created the Modern World starting in Britain and the US, and of India's aspirations for modernization. When both China and India aspire to the modern world that the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution have created.  India's Mohandas Gandhi read Emerson, had the support of FDR, of Christian missionary Charlie in the Bardoli Satyagraha, of a British Admiral's daughter at the Gandhi Ashram,  and Gandhi's prayer service included his favorite Christian hymns. This report shows no appreciation of this India and its relations with America. No country does that, what the US has done for 2 decades according to the National Science Foundation cited in this article, not the countries in the European Union, not France, Germany, Italy and Britain, not India, not China- provide tution and stipend and educate more foreign students than Americans or citizens of the home country in advanced engineering. It has never happened in the history of the world for the major nations that participated in the Renaissance in Europe and the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, that have created the Modern World. It puts at risk what we know as the Modern World. It also puts at risk the countries such as China and India in addition to the US, as either these Indian or Chinese engineers stay in the US and take jobs and lower wages for Americans, or go back to their home country and help the development of their home country which has invested vital resouces for their previous education. Only if they return to their home country can 2.4 billion people of China and India gain from the investment made in these engineers education. This is particularly true for India, which is now emerging as the fastest growing country in the world with the access to pools of capital, labor and technology needed to match the US and China in modernization and development. For India these computer and other engineers can play a vital role in development for 1.4 billion people.  India like Germany, Italy and France in Europe and Japan, Indonesia Philippines, need the US and Britain as the leader of parliamentary democracies with a long history of parliament since 1600. Need Britain and the US as the cradle of the scientific and Industrial Revolutions, and see their vital interests in the making of a strong Nation in the American continent that can fulfill this role through it's religious values, scientific spirit, pioneering spirit, and generous impulses towards other nations. ...

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Amanda Lacaze of Australian rare earths maker Lynas- what can be learned from her experience in rare earths? Lynas is a Australian mining company with a mine in an eroded volcano Mount Weld that has a concentration of rare earths metals. In 2014 it was faced with China's near monopoly of rare earths and price subsidies, lack of awareness in financial markets and the government about the importance of rare earths in manufacturing. It was a period under the Obama administration that after the Bush administration had little grasp of the importance of manufacturing in America and how its decline would affect communities across the Nation, economists trumpeted the virtue of free markets without grasping how China would wrestle control of manufacturing with state subsidies and aggressive pricing and of strategic new technologies.  This included rare earths where the monopoly was close to 100%- if it is 90% today it is because of companies like Lynas. Production processes at Lynas's plant in Malaysia were not sufficiently developed in 2014. When Amanda Lacaze (now 66 years and head of Australia's Minerals Agency) joined Lynas in 2014 the first problem aside from getting Japanese creditors to restructure loans because of aggressive pricing by Chinese firms was to improve manufacturing processes to get 95% quality instead of 48% quality (measured in number of quality rejected product). This was achieved in the first year. To do this she thinned her management ranks and closed offices in Sydney (to cut costs) and moved management to Malaysia where the problems in manufacturing processes would make or break the company. She was able to get creditor Japanese government backed Japan Australia Rare Earths financial institution to renew and extend loans. Had this not happened the company may not exist today. It shows the sheer foolishness that pervaded most of the American industry at that time, the failed economic theory that said America could not support its industry when rivals were supporting theirs, the Bush and Obama administrations that had no understanding of how the industrial competition was takin place in world trade that could substitute other nations for America' s dominance in manufacturing and did little to push back and regain the position for America in world trade. This ignorance continues in some sections of business today that cannot see the plain facts and refuses to see the enormous damage to the Nation from the destruction of its manufacturing base and loss of good jobs in communities across the US. Lynas is now getting contracts from the US government for rare earths and is the only reason China's dominance in rare earths in 90% and not 100% along with MP Materials of the US. Planning was discredited in the crazy euphoria that turned the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Communist Soviet Union, as economists never understood that planning that was used by the Soviets and Chinese in their Five Yer Plans is just borrowed from centuries of basic ways of conducting business that had originated with the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Without planning the growth of the British Navy and the industry that supported it Britain could never have gained the dominance that it did in the 19th century Industrial Revolution. As the Industrial Revolution spread in the US in the 19th and twentieth century every major company had a 1 year Operating plan and a Long Range Plan for 5 Years and 10 Years. The government would have identified rare earths with foresight as one of the newer technologies and the manufacturing infrastructure needed to support its development if these plans were developed at the different levels of government and at the highest levels. This was done under market economy in China. Instead DJT was forced to step back from trade negotiations with China for unfair trade when China held out with a threat to stop export of rare earths materials in 2025, because a huge hole or gap in planning happened at the highest levels of the US government. That happened 11 years after 2014 when Australian rare earths maker Lynas survival was in doubt under a new CEO Amanda Lacaze. This is only one of many misses in American manufacturing and industry, in world trade, that came from misguided economic theory and failure to grasp the basic facts behind the success of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the US. ...

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Ms. Esken the new leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) party in Germany says SPD will withdraw from the coalition government of chancellor Merkel as its demands for more spending on education and transport were not met. Ms. Esken says the coalition "is crap for democracy." Both the partners in this coalition the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, parties that ruled in the post war years, have seen their support drop to the low twenties and thirties percent in recent elections with votes shifting to the Greens and the far right the AfD, and other parties. The disenchantment among voters with Merkel's immigration policies grows and the SPD is seen as failing to stand up for workers rights against decade long austerity policies of Merkel. Labour party in Britain faced a similar situation as it lost its focus on workers and ordinary people and is only now shifting its stand under Corbyn to workers rights and spending for education, infrastructure and health. ...

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France has renewable energy potential for wind farms that is similar to Britain with its long coastline. The Saint Nazaire wind farm with 80 turbines opens on the Atlantic coast with president Macron saying it is time to go twice as fast as other countries in Europe. France gets only 7% of its energy from wind compared to 22% for the UK, 23% for Germany and 44% for Denmark.  Saint Naziare wind farm took 10 years after protests from environmentalists, fishermen and other groups. France is looking at diversifying its energy capabilities so that it is not too dependent on nuclear energy. Macron says- "Our neighbors are going twice as fast. we have to get rid of the legal disputes and the delaying tactics."

Three wind farms will come on stream in months in Normandy and Brittany. A floating wind farm is proposed for the Mediterranean. Macron wants to see more nuclear reactors. He also says the key to better energy supply is diversification.

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The CDU has the nost popularity at 34% yet Merz himself. a private equity executive with Black Rock Germany, is not personally popular with the German public. His popularity is at about 25%. Boris Pistorius, the Defene Minister in the Scholz SPD and Greens government is the most popular politician in Germany today. Elections are only 4 months away in February 2025, a short time but also a long time with all the changes going on today. In the past CDU and SPD have worked together. Past CDU approaches may not work as Germany badly needs to invest in its economy as the US has done under president Biden. The experience of Britain shows that simply making deals and counting on free trade deals doesn't work, and cuts to public services to budgets including on basic services including water and transportation, climate, do not work either. Are their good leaders and policies that fit the times is a question that will be persistent for many nations.

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Labour party leader Corbyn reflects on his years as leader, the 2019 election, his effort to get Britain to spend more money to fix social wrongs made worse through austerity programs of the last decade. He tells BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, that he was denounced in the election for advocating spending more money  than Britain could afford. He sees himself and Labor vindicated in its proposals for spending vast sums, to invest in the state, as this is what the Tories are now doing under Johnson. He sees Britain as ill-prepared for the coronavirus pandemic after ten years of austerity. The result of the Labour party election will be announced on April 4, a contest between Sir Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long Bailey, and Lisa Nandy. Mr. Corbyn is resigning after Labour's defeat in the 2019 election. He says the divisions over Brexit which led to a vote at Labour's conference to negotiate a new deal with EU and put it to another referendum, clearly did not win the election. Reflecting he says he did his best with an expanded level of membership for Labour party, and shifting the party to an interventionist economic policy that was anti-austerity investment led economy. He made his share of mistakes says Corbyn, as he was just human. And urged new Labour party leaders to spend time listening to people in all parts of the country, and recognize the strengths and good in the people.  ...

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Two professors from Northwestern University from Slavic Languages and Literature, and from Economics, look at the cultural outlook of Russians in the recent period of the Bolsheviks and of Putin, that takes on a attitude of ruthlessness in the Bolshevik period writings of Sholokhov and Lenin. They contrast it with the works of other writers in Russian literature such as Tolstoy, Turgenev and Chekov, which provide the basis of humanism and concern for individual suffering. Morson and Schapiro say Russia is different in that unlike the US and to some extent Britain and the Netherlands which are commercial societies based on a shopkeepers mentality of trade and commerce, Russia tends to look at the state in a different way. Individual interests are not paramount according to this view in Russia, it is the state that matters.  Yet this has limited use as theory because it is also true that a lot is shared by all human beings and societies. There is a English saying that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Leaders start out differently and change over long periods of power, the power tends to isolate them and corrupt them. Mistakes are made after decades in power that can push back the country's development. The Russian president is no exception and may have understood history and literature in a Russian context but long periods of power may have led to the kind of isolation that led to the severe miscalculation in Ukraine leading to a prolonged war and so much destruction on all sides. This has extended to the effects of the war in countries that depend on wheat from Russia such as Turkey, Egypt and much of the Middle East and Africa.         ...

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Iran War and rescue of pilot of downed F15-E in mountainous terrain in southern Iran April 4 2026. CSAR or Search and Rescue Missions become a critical part of the war. The pilot was a colonel trained for the mission and spent 24 hours in mountainous terrain which was monitored by US forces, after intelligence located him in a mountain crevice. For this to be possible unlike in the Vietnam War and Korean War other nations are not involved as in the earlier Cold War.  The US under DJT as president has shifted to respecting Russia as a Northern European power that it can talk with (meetings with Putin in Alaska 2025) and China as a trade partner (planned meeting in Beijing in April 2026) that it can talk with unlike with previous administrations of Biden, Obama and Bush where China had afree hand in economic matters and global trade and Russia was shut out of the world economic system by elites who ran the government in the US at that time. Russia seeks reintegration in the world political and economic systems, and China seeks acceptance as an economic power which the US respects, both points in which the US has offered to accept. US has also repeated the line to China that it was not going to do the job of keeping Hormuz open for China and Japan to get 90% of oil imports, and in oding so risk losing its soldier's lives, while China and Japan can quietly watch doing nothing to help free navigation of international waters. Note that the narrowest strip of water of 13 miles separates Oman from Iran so that a part of these waters are on the Omani side and not on the Iranian side making free use of that Omani part under international law possible- in which sense Iranian hostile activity closing the Omani side also is a violation of free navigation. This is not pointed out by Iran or Japan or even Britain who are benefitting from US action and remaining silent or being ambivalent or accusing US of being interventionist even when everyone knows MAGA base rejected Bush in the Republican party and the elites and embraced DJT for great part because they want nothing to do with interventionist adventures in the Middle East for certain. US is getting a bum rap from European allies and from China, India, Japan and the media inside the US and in those countries as if the US seeks oil from the Middle East. It was Britain where a lot of the posturing goes on about non intervention that started this oil based intervention since 1900 in Iran itself, and in artificial states of Iraq, Syria, that it created out of the collapsed Ottoman Empire in World War 1. Sykes and Picot were the US and French diplomats who set that up. US under DJT has accomplished self sufficiency in oil and US has no need for anything from the Middle East, no desire to even get involved, and MAGA well grasps that fact and wants to keep it that way. Only nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles with long range to hit US and EU are reason for US action, which is reason enough for EU, China, Russia to set their own goals so that non proliferation in dangerous areas is prevented. So that the people of China, Russia, India, Europe and the rest of the world can enjoy the fruits of their own labors after a century of severe hardships and struggles which the American people if not their elites respect, and the fruits of peaceful cooperation which the American people extend to the World, and to China, Russia and India. ...

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This report by Jia Lynn Yang in NYT covers only the Coolidge period and the JFK period ignoring the wider trend since the 1850's when immigration from Asia to the US was discouraged. The laws limiting Japanese, Chinese and Indian immigrants were put in place long before 1924 by the 1890's. Japan agreed to limit immigration to the US under an agreement with the US after 1900. China was undergoing a transition under the Boxer Rebellion and upheaval in government in the period after 1900, India was part of Britain's colonial Empire.It does not mention that Chinese laborers helped do the dangerous work to build the railroads east to west. It also ignores the immigration from Mexico which was a special case in immigration because of Mexico's relationship along the border, first with the Mexican American War that achieved Jefferson's idea of a continental nation coast to coast. Mexico was a source of labor for US agriculture in the 1930's and 1940's when Asian immigration was severely constrained. When Gen. Eisenhower won the election in 1952 immigration policy was on the agenda, in fact Truman had a commission look at it by 1950. Operation Wetback was launched by Eisenhower and returned millions of Mexican migrants back to Mexico. Fearing the lack of farm help for Mexican agriculture Mexican agricultural interests supported the return of migrants. All this is left out by Lynn Yang. For almost a century Asian immigration was discouraged till JFK with experience in Asia during the war looked at Asian immigration to US differently passing new legislation to support this in the JFK/LBJ terms as president. In this sense the operations under DJT at the Border  and in the US in 2025-2026 are similar to what happened under Operation Wetback under a popular president Eisenhower, after the surge in Mexican migration adding millions of migrants to the US population in the 1930's and 1940's. A greater glimpse of the US can only be imagined if after the early immigration and discovery of the continent by the Spanish, the French and the British by 1600, the continent had not been unified first by the war of 1756-1763 with the French and Indian Wars creating the original 13 British colonies before the War of Independence in 1776, and the expansion to Spanish/Mexican territory to the West and South including California, Texas and Florida in the Mexican American War of 1846-48. In that situation there would be five sectors in America- British, Spanish, French, Mexican and American. The US could not have advanced as an industrial power divided in this way and would not have attracted immigrants from Europe the away it did. If it was split into two Southern confederacy and Northern Union states it would also have led to a similar situation. There would be conflict. It is only divine intervention and the courage and ideas of Jefferson and Washington, the work of president Polk, the leadership of Lincoln, and the industrial revolution on a large scale of one Nation in peace for most of the 19th century, that it became a haven for immigrants from a troubled Europe, a struggling Asia and Mexico. ...

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Theresa May, Britain's Home Secretary in the Cameron government, is a candidate for prime minister with the planned resignation of David Cameron by the fall of 2016. May was first elected to parliament in 1997 from Maidenhead, a town west of London. She was educated at Oxford University, worked in financial services and the Bank of England, before entering politics. She is known for hard work, a direct approach, and candor on policy issues. During a annual party convention she told Conservative party members that "our base is too narrow, and so occasionally are our sympathies," adding that people called Conservatives as the "nasty party." This was the period when Blair's Third Way was popular and Labor Party was in power. A daughter of a clergy man, she presents a rather austere image but reassuring in turbulent times with a down to earth and patient manner.  Her sports hero is a cricketer Geoffrey Boycott, known for taking long patient batting stands on the cricket  grounds- something Britain needs as it faces long and difficult negotiations with the European Union.  During the EU referendum she supported Cameron and the Stay campaign but quietly, so that she can be seen as the Unity candidate for the deeply divided Conservative Party. On immigration  she was as Home Secretary responsible for one of the difficult issues of the Brexit campaign- with net immigration at 330,000 in 2015 exceeding the 100,000 target set by Cameron. That she retains confidence from all segments of the party, as well as her education, experience, and resilience, may provide some of the "calm and composed" manner that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for in the Brexit negotiation. ...

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By August 6, Britain had 16 gold, 11 silver and 10 bronze medals at the 2012 Olympics in London, more than any nation except the U.S. and China. Andy Murray won the Olympic gold medal in tennis defeating Federer in straight sets. Britain won gold medals in cycling, sailing, long distance running. Runner Mo Farah won the 10,000 metre race. At one point Britain won three medals in one hour in track and field events as Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Farah won gold.

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Brexit negotiation guidelines from the EU rule out parallel talks on both Britian's future relationship with the EU and the separation agreement negotiations, preferring a phased approach. Only when the first phase of separation is complete or at an advanced stage would the second phase of future relationship with the EU be negotiated. The EU Council president, Donald Tusk, says the process would be long, complex and at times confrontational. Der Spiegel online writing on the negotiation describes the approach in a meeting with the lead German negotiator Mr. Oettinger, on the team of Michael Barnier who leads the negotiations for the EU- Oettinger focussed on what Britain owes the EU, estimated at over 60 billion euros. So far apart are the British and EU positions that Michael Barnier has no idea on the pathway for these negotiations, only awareness of the priorities such as the rights of EU and British citizens in each others region, says Der Spiegel. Looking at Theresa May speaking in parliament about her decision to move forward with Brexit in a letter to the EU invoking Article 50, one senses a mixture of confidence and nationalist appeal, far different from reality on the ground. The Leader of the Opposition cited government figures for a sharp decline in GDP as a result of Brexit, and the Scottish leader in parliament went so far as to say the government attitude in negotiations made "Scottish independence inevitable"- all headwinds Theresa May appears to be ignoring or treating with disdain. At this time the EU and the British prime minister appear to be talking over rather than to each other.   ...

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A survey by Bonn based infas Institute of Applied Social Science in 2017 shows Germans are not affected by 2 years of crises in the way they look at the world. Germans are still the same in their international outlook, in tolerance and openness, and liberal outlook. Chancellor Merkel even says today that she would do again what she did during the height of the refugee crisis when refugees gathered at Keleti station in Budapest and began the long march to Austria and Germany. Merkel goes into the 2017 election with the kind of confidence that did not appear likely even at the beginning of 2017. The European Union could even emerge stronger from the crisis. Britain's Conservative government appears isolated after the Brexit vote.

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The governor of the Punjab province during the Jallianwala massacre in Amritsar was an Irishman. Ireland was a troubled spot in Britain during the French revolutionary wars and France even attempted landings to liberate Ireland. Forward to 1900 and the Irish Easter rebellion leading to the Irish Free State in 1906. Read this article in the BBC for a nuanced understanding of history. As the writer an Irishman says Irish people following the European project called the European Union are now able to sit on equal terms with the British. Old conflicts are not uppermost even in the IRA that won the recent Irish election with its focus on economic issues.  This is good reading for anyone in Pakistan or India also as old conflicts can only be sustained for so long before economic, social and development issues such as education, healthcare and services take prominence in people's minds. It is also good reading in India as it looks at the British period in India, to realize that India now sits astride the Indian Ocean. What Britain accomplished in the eighteenth and nineteenth century with its  Royal Navy is now the task of the Indian Navy in alliance with the American Navy, and the Australian Navy on the world's seas. Indians like Irishmen can sit with the Americans or British on equal terms. ...

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Jaishankar on the connection between the Indian and Pacific Ocean region into one integral whole with the emergence of independent nations from the British, French, and Dutch Empires in the region, and the growth of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand. The growth of trade and use of sea lanes for supply chains, modern shipping and logistics, have created sea lanes that stretch from the Gulf and Suez to Hawaii and Seattle. India plays a critical role with the US, Australia and Japan to ensure international law and open shipping lanes for all nations in the Indo-Pacific. Jaishankar also touches on infrastructure developments such as the new Trilateral Highway that connects India's northeast to Burma and Thailand. This opens up ties on land between the three nations with connections into Malaysia and Indonesia. That would enhance the movement open people and goods, and cultural connect that would create a new northeast- southeast Asian connection. It restores what was the long lost connection that India once had with nations from Thailand to Indonesia, and Vietnam to Japan through China. This is the connection that brought Buddhism from India's north east in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to these countries.  Look East, Act East, the Quad, Indo-Pacific Economic Framework are all ways of saying the same thing of making the East connections the vital ones in India's social, economic and political, cultural life, restoring the connections in which India thrived and existed as one entity. It also brings life to the Gulf countries which are otherwise isolated in a sea of European nations on one side of the Mediterranean and Russia on the other side near the Black Sea that have different historical interests and cultures. This sees the central Asian connections through Afghanistan as being secondary and of less significance in the long history of nations such as India, China, Korea and Japan from the Buddhist era. That secondary connection brought an interruption of the long Buddhism and Vedanta civilization in India, intermittent wars, and the division of the country under the British Empire. It is a natural progression in a long history that seeks to restore the natural and intuitive connections to the Vedanta and Buddhist regions in the East that are part of the Indo-Pacific. These are now integrated with the settlers from Britain who sought to build better and fairer societies based on the rights of man in the new nations of Australia and America. This gives new life and meaning to this vast Indo-Pacific region. The British Empire and the other colonial empires simply bring back an orientation to the period of colonial wars of the nineteenth and twentieth century, which tore apart China and then Japan, and used resources in India for these wars, and which ended with the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These wars also leave behind memories in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and Korea that can only be truly be put behind by looking at Vedanta and Buddhist Asia as it once was from India to China to Japan. And to the regions of Australia and the US that brought new meaning to the modern scientific period and the rights of man in settler societies away from Europe. ...

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Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, and the leader of the British Liberal Democrats party, the junior member in the coalition government in Britain, said he was "bitterly disappointed" by prime minister Cameron's decision to reject a pact for 27 EU nations to revise E.U. treaties. He told the BBC in a long interview :"This is bad for Britain." Britain is close to becoming a country "hovering in the mid-Atlantic and not being taken seriously in Europe." But he said "it would be a disaster" for the Liberal Democrats to withdraw from the coalition. Cameron's conditions for protecting Britain's financial industry were rejected by Merkel and Sarkozy.

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The conflicting set of priorities sometimes unrealistic are leading to a lack of clear direction for the BBC. Internationally BBC and BBC News are viewed as a key information provider with a long history. This role conflicts with the idea of the BBC as a competitor of Netflix and Amazon for serials and other shows such as "The Crown" done by Netflix.  The Boris Johnson government supports BBC's international role. The role of competing with private firms like Netflix is unrealistic because the revenue stream is different. There is also the concern about the BBC News failing to properly reflect Leave voters. Boris Johnson has himself found the local BBC News presenting a very different picture. In the end the new head of the BBC was chosen from Tory circles and with the idea of not doing much. The priorities of tackling post Brexit Britain  the pandemic, the economy, the northeast of England lagging behind, infrastructure building, remain much larger for Boris Johnson. BBC will have to wait for now. ...

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Central banks for the European Union, US and Britain show slight divergence in their approach to inflation. The Bank of England's Bailey increases interest rates in UK to 0.25% from 0.1% a slight increase to signal its direction more than a serious interest rate increase. In the US Fed chairman Powell indicates an intention to make 2-3 rate increases  in 2022 if the conditions require action. In the European Union Ms. Lagarde of the ECB will taper purchases to 20 billion euros a month later in 2022, and keep interest rates at minus -0.5%. The British pound and the euro gained slightly as a result. 

Supply chain issues and energy prices are a big part of the current inflation increases which were described as transitory by Mr. Powell. The persistence of this inflation led to recent moves by the central bank. At some point these pressures would ease leading to a long term policy approach that pushes for a robust economic recovery.

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Questions raised in this Hindustan Times report about whether India's participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization makes sense now after the pandemic and the new arrangement in global affairs. New supply chains and trade alliances formed after the pandemic are likely to be very different after the pandemic and formed with dominant consideration of each nation's economic interests including manufacturing in the home country.  India joined the SCO to forge ties with the central Asian countries. But this no longer makes sense as India's manufacturing ties with individual nations such as Britain, Japan, Taiwan and the U.S., European Union may make more sense and build on "Made in India" initiatives than older thinking and approaches. Britain after Brexit, Japan and Taiwan after a realignment of trade relations, are keen on expanding business and trade, investment ties with India. India has many opportunities to pursue for mutual economic benefit with these countries. Germany, France and other EU countries, the U.S. are also keen on expanding trade and investment with India to boost their economies after the pandemic. This is a crucial juncture for India to plan for the next 10 years for a changing world in which India becomes a dominant story in manufacturing. Australia's participation in the RCEP may also not be long term under the prevailing climate of trade relations with China. Australia India trade can be expanded with new efforts.  ...

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The European Commission predicts a long and deep recession. In 2009 even with government spending that would add about 0.75% to GDP growth the economies of the EU would shrink by 1.8%, and the 16 countries that use the euro shrink by 1.9%. A jobs loss of 3.5 million jobs is expected. Falling exports mean Germany would see GDP shrink by 2.3%, Britain by 2.8% and France by 1.8%. The downswing will be protracted in Spain and worse in countries like Britain and Ireland where there is a high degree of consumer indebtedness.