Last week in Loulé, at a meeting of NERA, the regional employers association, the urgent need to retrain workers and bosses was highlighted. Automation and digitalization is coming. We need to retrain some 30,000 of them. Thus we need updated teachers.

For 60 years, universities have been publishing methods to improve the qualification of teachers. Unlike Portugal, almost all civilized countries delegate primary and often secondary education to regional or local level. Part of the programme is also flexible, since good teaching starts from students’ real world to the abstract, from the specific to the generic. In the USA, counties offer or control primary and high-school.

Four years ago I published for the first time that Portugal would be the gateway for terrorists in the EU. I do not have a crystal ball. It is historical and logical. Earlier, in 2005, I published in ‘Barlavento’ that we would have a crisis in 2009 - writes Jack Soifer.

The accident in Funchal was a terrorist act, perhaps by one person. The organization behind it does not want to reveal itself. Leaving doubts requires more work from intelligence agencies - and it creates interest among extremists.

There is no fair taxation. The more profit they have, the less tax is paid by giga corporations. Almost all have cartels and dominate the market in the EU and Portugal; they pay only 2%-5% through tax havens.

In 2012, the European Parliament presented proposals to reduce this tax evasion. Brussels did nothing. Lux Leaks detailed the evasion in 2014. To compensate for this fraud, governments tax us more.

Theresa May announces she is prepared to make way for a new leader, on one condition…

When I woke this morning, I pinched myself. Had I been dreaming, or was it really true that she was going at last? I`m referring of course to the British Prime Minister´s long overdue decision to step aside and make way for a new leader.

One thing for sure amid the mass of political, economic and social unknowns as the United Kingdom prepares to leave the European Union is that its language is staying.

This is ironic, as the current chaos in Britain could have been avoided had the whole question of Brexit been explained and debated before and since the 2016 referendum – in plain, honest English.

Portugal’s government on Friday laid out proposals to protect rights of British citizens living in the country if there’s a no-deal Brexit but made clear it expects similar treatment for the around 300,000 Portuguese living in Britain, write Paul Ames, in Politico.

“We are deciding these things unilaterally and we expect the United Kingdom to respond in the same way,” said Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva, announcing contingency plans to be applied if Britain crashes out of the European Union without a deal.

Most economists say that in 2019 the EU and particularly Portugal will have a drop in GNP, mainly because the US will import less but also because the EU will have to carry out improved checks on laundered money used to purchase real estate, espcecially in Portugal.

Also, more speculative investment funds will quit the EU for the more profitable markets in New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Bolivia.

Voters are not as silly as some advertising agencies think. One minister consistently makes a mess and tries to deceive us – this will hurt Socialist Party in the elections, writes Jack Soifer

The results of the elections in Brazil, Sweden and Andalucía confirm what I have written for years - citizens deceived by their parties end up voting for extremists. They do not choose a political party, but vote for change, sometimes radical change.