Superb pared down performance of Die Walküre this afternoon by London Opera Company at St John’s Waterloo thelondonoperacompany.org . @hunkentenor and Gweneth Ann Rand superb as Siegmund and Sieglinde - followed by a wonderful @baritus and @THECaramchardy as Wotan and Brünnhilde.
They are raising money for a chamber “Siegfried” in 2022.
The London Opera Company was formed in the summer 2020 to give musicians and opera singers who had lost their work to the pandemic the chance to keep performing and to give music lovers a first class treat after a summer devoid of live concerts. They succeeded today!
Classical music in the U.K. faces huge challenges due to Covid and the current government’s incompetent and blinkered Brexit deal: it needs initiatives like this and (if you can help) they deserve your help.
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This passage from last week’s judgment in Allister v SoS for NI (the NI protocol case) deserves some political attention.
The current Prime Minister was asked in PMQs whether the legislation implementing the Protocol had resulted in an implied repeal of Article 6 of the 1800 Act of Union (GB/Ireland).
The current PM gave his “assurance” that it *had not*.
These are troubling allegations. Being able to see who has decided what and said what to whom is essential to contract management and effective decision-taking. So this is about bad government.
It is also about unaccountable government (which leads to bad government). Government that can’t be held to account in Parliament, in the press, or in the courts for the decisions that it has taken.
It is sometimes said that “paper trails” are a luxury in a crisis. But it is precisely in a crisis that it is critical to keep a decent record of what decisions were taken and why.
2. Cummings has never managed to distinguish problems with procurement law (and there are problems there with rules and procedures) from a head on attack on judicial review of all kinds (where his criticisms don’t land).
3. Cummings has never explained what reforms to general JR he has in mind or how they would address his criticisms while ensuring that government complies with the rules Parliament has laid down.
Listening to Grant Shapps on @BBCr4today: the reason for maintaining test/quarantine requirements on those who can prove that they are double vaccinated seems to be that it’s unfair to exempt them vis a vis people who can’t be vaccinated or can’t easily prove vaccination.
I don’t see how that can be a lawful basis, under public health powers, for applying quarantine to those who can prove double vaccination, if the position is that they pose no health risk sufficient to justify quarantine.
The only relevant question is danger to public health. If some people pose a significant danger and others don’t, there is no justification for imposing the requirement on those who don’t.
Two case studies. On subsidy control, it should have been a U.K. priority to renegotiate Art 10 of the Protocol (which is going to cause problems).
But no discernible attempt was made to do that. Perhaps because that would have involved clear commitments up front that the U.K. would have its own effective subsidy control regime.
1. The thesis that the rule of law is a difficult concept that may be being over-extended has some force. But that may be because it’s being used to do jobs that in a mature constitution would have been properly articulated: such as the boundary between courts and legislature.
2. These claims are not alternatives: they can be (and are) both true. The U.K. executive in the 50s/60s had an extraordinary amount of power (Hailsham’s “elective dictatorship”). It was constrained by “good chaps” understandings of how that power would be used.