The European Space Agency is quite different than the European Union. It includes Canada for a start...

They own Flickr. That's about the only product they own which is leader in its field though.

Uh this is England. Shooting people, other than Brazilian electricians and tooled-up lawyers, is rather frowned upon here.

We were less dicks with you precisely because the Americans won, and we realised that being less dickish was more likely to keep the remaining colonies in the Empire.

Although that was a relative thing of course: we carried on being dickish for a lot longer where the colonies were mostly inhabited by brown or black people, sad to admit.

Well yes, Parliament cannot bind its successors, but that could apply just as well to recognising *US* independence.

What might be the theoretical legal situation isn't always compatible with the real world situation. Sensible people defer to the real world.

Has already announced that schools will no longer be allowed to fingerprint pupils for any purpose without their parents' consent.

In this case, if the Lords do block it, which is possible but relatively unlikely, AND there's no time left for the Commons to overturn the Lords' vote, which is possible and fairly likely as the Mandybill is the last of the wash-up bills to be debated in the Lords, then it will fail, as the current Parliament will be dissolved. Unfinished bills can be carried from one annual session of a Parliament to the next, but can't be carried from one Parliament to another. If the above, admittedly not likely, scenario takes place, then even if Labour do get re-elected with a Commons majority, they'd have to re-introduce the Mandybill from scratch.

Also, not applying to this bill I beleive, but generally any bill that begins in the House of Lords can be thrown out by the Lords and the Commons can't override this. That's why if the government has any sense they always start likely to be controversial bills in the Commons.

The EU sets out what it wants, Canada sets out what it wants. In this particular section, the EU is asking for a lot more than Canada, but quite possibly in other sections Canada is asking for more than the EU (I've not read the full text of the draft).

Then the two parties sit down and start horse-trading. Maybe there's something that Canada really wants that they'll happily swallow these copyright provisions to get. Maybe Canada will say, no, we can't accept these provisions, but we'll concede something else instead, or maybe the EU will say insist, in which case the Canadians will say "no deal". Most likely there'll be a lot of compromises by both sides, with both getting some of what they want, but not all.

It's interesting to consider why the Canadians are considering a free-trade agreement with Europe, considering that they're already in NAFTA. I understand the Canadian government has been unhappy with what they see as persistent US non-compliance with their NAFTA obligations, so perhaps they're looking at a deal with the EU as a Plan B.

Next month marks my having worked professionally as a programmer for twenty years.

That is all.

If you've ever experienced our climate, you should realise we'll put up with anything.