Extraterritoriality

This week has been nuts, even by my standards. Back on October 5 I submitted my application for UK citizenship. As with the three visa applications, much stress over whether I was interpreting the questions correctly and providing accurate answers. I had to, for instance, list all travel for the past three years, the dates I was gone, where I went, the reason. I forgot the conference I went to in Paris--focussing instead on trips to the U.S.

This past week went like this:

Monday: Interview for a job as a developmental editor at the Principles for Responsible Investment. PRI employs me currently but I'm seconded to Climate Action 100+. While I think CA100+ is doing great work, my role is largely administrative and I'm bored.

Tuesday morning: Drive to Dublin to collect my friend Aelish and her wee dog Lilly. She's moving back to NI after 40 years in the states and will quarantine with me for two weeks before moving on to Newcastle, where two of her siblings live. Tuesday afternoon I go into Belfast first to renew my home insurance, and second for my UK citizenship documentation appointment. A contractor scans my two most recent passports, David's passport, our marriage certificate, three of my p60s (showing annual income and tax payments), my employment contract, and forms filled out by two friends as references (one of whom must be a minister, civil servant, or a professional--solicitor/accountant). Each of whom must have known me for three years. I was stressed out all day Tuesday in case anything went awry with collecting Aelish--I couldn't miss my documents appointment as it takes a month to get one. After all scanning was done, I went to a deli that sells American stuff, like canned pumpkin. And bought a few presents and a Payday candy bar! Also rare here. Then to a bakery for sausage rolls for Aelish.

I get home and realise I have left behind my folder will all my crucial documents. I blame my excitement over a Payday. This is not what I needed after a stressful day, but that is when we are most likely to misstep. Call the bakery. No folder. Call the deli. Folder. Halle frickin' llujah.

Wednesday: I'm up at 4:30 a.m. to edit an academic paper due this week for my friend Marek. I'll be up at 5 a.m. four days running as before work is the only time I have for editing (too tired after work). At lunch I go into Belfast to collect my folder.

Saturday: Edit from 6:30-10 a.m. with a half hour break for breakfast. Send to Marek, the professor, then go to the park for a walk with Paddy and my neighbours. Saturday afternoon, sand the ceiling cracks I spackled last week. Spackle the remaining cracks. Go to the grocery store and paint store. Collapse.

It's Sunday. I'm 'looking forward' to sanding and wiping down and painting the ceiling--looking forward in the sense that getting paint on the ceiling is a big step.

I didn't need Marek's paper in the midst of everything else going on. But he pays 25 pounds an hour because he says my input is really helpful. And I like Marek. All the Polish people I know are incredibly polite. He's also a leader in his field--competition law--and is widely published. Here's the edited intro to the paper--it isn't easy reading, but academic work isn't meant to be a breeze:

"This piece critically analyses how the European Union (EU) gradually embraced the extraterritorial application of competition law. Moving beyond case law analysis, this phenomenon is examined in the contexts of intra-EU institutional interplay and changing broader circumstances, especially related to intensified  globalization and a failure to develop a multilateral solution to the challenges posed by transnational anticompetitive conduct. While over time the EU increasingly asserted the use of extraterritoriality in competition law, it was a long process informed not by convenience, but necessity. The most recent developments in this regard recognise the far reach of EU competition law, making the EU one of the most assertive enforcers of extraterritoriality and setting an important precedent for other jurisdictions."

Nov. 8