Wood Green; Donkeys at PMQs; De-escalating US-NK Tension

A phone call from Carel in France prompted me to book for a meeting in June at the Natural History Museum. It's "Connecting with the Crowd", a one day cross-disciplinary conference to explore best practices and new perspectives on crowdsourcing citizen science. I submitted abstract for a five minute talk on the science engagement experiment we did with the Quekett.

Jane and I had an early lunch and then went to help out on the Huntingdonshire Business Network desk at the Wood Green Business Fair. It was the best attended fair at this venue for the past few years, not so much humming, but roaring with visitors and activity. It was a busy couple of hours, meeting both friends and engaging visitors to our desk in conversation.

It was the last Prime Minister's Questions time in parliament today, and what an unedifying spectacle of donkeys braying, triumphalism and point scoring it was. Enough to turn anyone off politics. The new Dalek mantra is "Solid and Stable".

Pre-election news dominated over Brexit, but there were a few undercurrents in the media. A Financial Times article comments on how the Home Office is now advising EU nationals to hold off applying for residency and simply go onto a mailing list to await information. This is probably to stave off being swamped by applications for residency; 92,000 permanent residence applications were received from EU nationals in 2016 alone - and as I know from German friends, each requires an arch-lever file full of the 5 years residency evidence to accompany the 85-page application form.

The EU's Jean-Claude Juncker and his Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier met with Theresa May over lunch in advance of the EU's Saturday meeting to discuss Brexit policy. News tonight that the UK will still be bound by European Court of Justice for the next five years. A track change?

President Trump had three surprises for us today.
1. He backed down on insisting that funding for the building of his wall to Mexico should be included in the financial plans he needed to sign to stave off a total government shutdown this week.
2. The White House announced "The Biggest Tax Cut Ever!" A reduction of US corporation tax to 15%.
3. Trump makes a move to de-escalate US-North Korean tensions by
a) holding a large military exercise with South Korea close to the border with North Korea,
b) bringing in the Thaad defensive missile sytem into the country, to the alarm of China, and,
c) as Headmaster, invites entire Senate to White House for North Korea briefing.