Mayors, People, Money and Ireland - and Trump's 100 days

Today's excitement for me was hosting the HBN Mayoral Hustings in Alconbury Weald. Jane had invited all seven of the candidates last month, after great difficulties in finding any information of contact details on many of them. Three agreed to come, Kevin Price (Labour), Rod Cantrill (Liberal Democrats) and Peter Dawe (Independent). On the day, only the latter two appeared. Fortunately, they were the two who actually had real business experience in the past (indeed, Peter had to sell Cambridge TV to take part as a candidate).

Richard Wishart, our social media and technology afficionado, had suggested and then agreed to do a live broadcast from his phone on Twitter. I took along my tripod and tablet holder to assist, and also used my H1 microphone to record a separate audio track for a podcast.

Prior research and preparation provided the psychological support at the start of hosting. The candidates, the 15 in the room and the 50 online viewers soon got the meeting flowing. We began to see clear differences in the focus of the two candidates, Rod emphasising the need to build communities, Peter looking at using technology to tackle local problems, with both agreeing that their key role will be as influencers on the unitary and district councils. I only had to intervene occasionally to curtail overlong responses or bring in different members of the audience. The live broadcast and audio recording worked successfully throughout the discussions. We all had a much better understanding of the two candidates and their styles by the end of the debate. It certainly narrowed down my choice to between the two when voting next Thursday. By this evening the total of online viewers was 77 and growing.

Today, saw the release of the 'Invitation letter by President Donald Tusk to the members of the European Council (Art. 50)'. It outlined the key principles for discussion by the 27 members of the EU minus the UK for the EU Brexit discussions. Der Spiegel summarised them very succinctly as sorting out "People, Money and Ireland" before the next stage of discussions with the UK. In more detail, this means addressing the status of EU citizens in the UK and vice versa, establishing the financial commitments from both the EU and the UK, and ensuring that there would be no hard border re-established in Ireland. This contrasts strongly with the UK preferred position of parallel negotiations on leaving and agreeing on new trade arrangements.

We are coming up to the milestone of President Trump's first 100 days tomorrow (Saturday). The US fleet is still off the North Korean coast and the North Koreans launched a medium range missile test, which exploded shortly after take-off. So far, he has on the one hand been stalled by finding his actions on Obamacare and immigration blocked. On the other hand, he has taken actions internationally, in Syria, that were seen positively in the US. Furthermore, he has been adapting to the challenges of his role. His realpolitik includes realising that at present, Europe cannot be split and he will be negotiating with the block, with the UK pushed down the trade deal queue; that China has to be kept on board for trade and influence with North Korea; and that NATO might not be so redundant after all.