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It's far from "unrelated" to the EU.

After the accession to the Treaty of Amsterdam in 2004 (after a popular referendum in 2003), Estonia was obliged to be a member in good standing of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the court of which (ECtHR) is only nominally independent of the European Union.

The ECtHR and ECHR are administered by the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE, see below), which is dominated by EU member-states and in which since the Treaty of Lisbon the EU's institutions themselves directly participate. The explicit goal of the EU is ever closer cooperation with the COE, specifically that means greater subsidiarity, as in courts across the EU that are local or specialist in nature, and legislative assemblies at all levels, will take into consideration the previous decisions of the ECtHR, and the guiding principles laid out by the PACE with respect to human rights law. The reasoning is that this will lead to less litigation and fewer appeals (which benefits individuals), and facilitate the progression to higher courts (including the ECtHR) with novel or difficult human rights questions.

This is what the Commission of the European Union says about the ECtHR:

http://europa.eu/legislation_s...

This is what the UK Parliamentary all-party website says about the PACE. Much of the "tear up the UKHRA, withdraw from ECHR, Brexit if necessary!" faction in the UK Parliament are well aware of the work that their benchmates (and sometimes they themselves) do in PACE, which is almost always much more constructive and progressive than their public positions would suggest:

http://www.parliament.uk/mps-l...

So, it's not "unrelated" because it [a] all of the member-states of the EU participate in it at all levels, [b] the EU's principal organs (the Commission, the Council, the Courts and the Parliament) and the court in question have had a formal partnership since 2012, and [c] while there are other non-EU members and observers of the COE, the COE strongly reflects the consensus of the EU and its member-states by virtue of numbers (which makes sense, as the EU itself forms the largest part of the human-geographical area with which the COE is most directly concerned).

It is only barely safe to say that the ECtHR is independent of the EU; that's still true formally, but the lines have been deliberately blurred by the EU and the COE deliberately in recent years, because that makes for more efficient administration of human rights law in the EU itself, and opens up greater access to the ECtHR by non-EU-member-states (i.e., the idea is that UK or ES cases won't clog up the ECtHR to the point where cases from UA or TR have difficulty being considered).

I could but as is the nature of superinjunctions you won't find it on BAILII.

There are, however, news articles on the couple and their children, such as this one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... and there is mention of them by name on Hansard: http://www.publications.parlia... (John Hemming at Col. 243) and by Tim Yeo at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (25 November 2009 Adjournment Debate, 2-part video)

FYI, public family law matters are held to Chatham House rules (no discussion outside the Chamber) in Star Chambers (secret courts illegal since 1640 yet Kennth Clarke has claimed that right thinking people should accept their return - sensibly, as justice must be SEEN to be done, this has not come to pass for criminal courts YET). The public are not generally given access to the hearings nor to judgements in non-anonymised (read: nonadulterated) form.

In addition to the Chatham House Rule, there is also a clause in the Children Act 1989 (section 97) that prohibits discussion of live cases in public.

Countries don't count homicides the same way. In England and Wales, as an example, deaths don't count as homicides unless, and until, there is a conviction for the death. Here is a report that highlights that difference: www.parliament.uk

35. Homicide statistics too vary widely. In some developing countries, the statistics are known to be far from complete. Figures for crimes labelled as homicide in various countries are simply not comparable. Since 1967, homicide figures for England and Wales have been adjusted to exclude any cases which do not result in conviction, or where the person is not prosecuted on grounds of self defence or otherwise. This reduces the apparent number of homicides by between 13 per cent and 15 per cent. The adjustment is made only in respect of figures shown in one part of the Annual Criminal Statistics. In another part relating to the use of firearms, no adjustment is made. A table of the number of homicides in which firearms were used in England and Wales will therefore differ according to which section of the annual statistics was used as its base. Similarly in statistics relating to the use of firearms, a homicide will be recorded where the firearm was used as a blunt instrument, but in the specific homicide statistics, that case will be shown under "blunt instrument".

36. Many countries, including the United States, do not adjust their statistics down in that way and their figures include cases of self defence, killings by police and justifiable homicides. In Portugal, cases in which the cause of death is unknown are included in the homicide figures, inflating the apparent homicide rate very considerably.

the BBC is a Central Government agency.

http://www.publications.parlia... page 11:

24. Reclassification of the licence fee as a tax also has the consequence that the BBC is reclassified from the public non-financial corporations sub-sector to
the central government sector. The status of the BBC is thus also affected by this decision and it becomes a central government body. This change also
affects the Welsh broadcaster S4C.

the TV Licence is in fact a tax. From http://www.publications.parlia... :

Page 11:

The licence fee as a tax

22. Since our last report there has been a significant change in the position of the licence fee. In January 2006 the Office of National Statistics re-classified the licence fee as a tax. Previously, this payment had been classified in the National Accounts as a service charge. Explaining the change the Office of National Statistics (ONS) says “in line with the definition of a tax, the licence fee is a compulsory payment which is not paid solely for access to BBC services A licence is required to receive ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, satellite, cable”.

23. We are not convinced by this argument not least because it has been the case that a licence has been required to view any television channel in the UK for
many decades. Nevertheless the decision means that from now on the licence fee will be recognised as a form of hypothecated taxation.

24. Reclassification of the licence fee as a tax also has the consequence that the BBC is reclassified from the public non-financial corporations sub-sector to
the central government sector. The status of the BBC is thus also affected by this decision and it becomes a central government body. This change also
affects the Welsh broadcaster S4C.

25. When announcing its decision the ONS tried to offer some reassurance that “These classifications are solely for the purpose of producing National
Accounts and the statistical products based on them. This has no implication for the independence of these broadcasters”.

The upshot is that enforcement is now in the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system, rather than the civil system. In an attempt to remove any further doubt, the Government are attempting to legislate to reflect this position but sneakily: by abolishing the TV Licence and reintroducing it as an all-households tax (call it an "Air tax"?), so you have to pay it whether you have a TV or not, to also remove the requirement and burden of proof that a TV is in fact present.

Accusations of this were made several times and denied but someone hacked into the email servers and released a bunch of email showing them discussing withholding the information. Now it is said that the original raw data does not exist any more nor does the methods and processes used to correct irregularities of it.

Interesting, but the first link shows that CRU scientists would be lousy lawyers, and the second is unrelated to CRU completely. And now for a dose of facts about the CRU affair:

The British House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee investigated the matter and concluded: "Within our limited inquiry and the evidence we took, the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact. We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Beddington, that 'global warming is happening [and] that it is induced by human activity'."

The Independent Climate Change Email Review team investigated the matter and concluded: "On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policy makers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."

Lord Oxburgh’s independent panel investigated the matter and found "absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever"

The US Environmental Protection Agency investigated the matter and stated that they "reviewed every e-mail and found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets. Four other independent reviews came to similar conclusions."

And so on and so on. Should I continue? More or less, the worst thing anyone in possession of facts has to say about the CRU scientists is that they suck at communicating. Bummer, but not an uncommon one.

Now, I know you are a global warming pusher

No, I'm not a global warming pusher, CO2 is a global warming pusher. I have no interest in contributing to global warming.

and have your own beliefs but this is not about you in the slightest.

No, it isn't. It's about you and presumably some other people apparently being unable to grasp basic principles of reasoning. Even if if you found out evidence of gross academic misconduct having happened within CRU (which didn't happen), it still wouldn't prove anything about global warming (or the lack of it). If you find flaws in a study saying "P", it doesn't mean you've proven "not P". All you have at that moment is an empty set of proven claims. And if you have ten independent studies of global warming, all of them saying the Earth is warming, every study having independent data, research, and people involved, and one of the people or teams is found to have made anything invalidating that one study - anything from flawed methodology through measurement errors to even outright scientific fraud, it demonstrates nothing about those other studies. All it demonstrates is that from the one flawed study in question, no conclusion can be made about the subject in either direction. Arguing otherwise would be an argument from fallacy, which is a formal fallacy in its own right.

here is the working group list referred to in the parliamentary answer http://www.publications.parlia...

Tredinnick's a nut who has form for this kind of statement.

Still. At least he's not on the House of Commons Health Committe or anything. What's that? Oh...

This is a good example (warning, pdf). See table 2, which shows that handgun offences were at 2648 in 1997, the year they were banned, and had risen to 5874 by 2001/2.

There isn't any evidence to show that handgun crime fell or stayed the same after the ban, because it didn't, it more than doubled in 5 years.

Buses are per person mile very inefficient in energy use, pollution and especially convenience. They are only efficient in the first two when full to capacity which they are only during major commute rushes.

That's not true. Busses even when pretty empty are efficient. A modern bus weighs about 8 times that of a small car, is a hybrid (which really does help substantially for city driving) and has a single large engine which is generally a bit more efficient than a collection of smaller ones. As a result a bus only needs a few people on board before it matches a car for efficiency.

Given a maximum capacity of about 90 people, I'd estimate that even at 10% full the bus will win in terms of efficiency. There are other factors which probably help in the busses favour, since busses aren't built for high acceleration and are also driven by more competent professionals than cars on average.

Anyway I found this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

Seems that busses are in the range 5 to 8 MPG roughly. Cars are largely around the 30 mark for decent cars. At that point even the worse busses only need 6 passengers to equal the efficieincy of single occupancy cars.

The average occupancy in the UK is apparently 1.58:

http://www.publications.parlia...

meaning compared to the worse busses you'd need 9 people to match the efficiency of cars, with the least efficient busses. Coincidentally, this is about the same as the average bus occupancy in the UK as well.

People tend to use busses differently from cars. During commuting, occupancy is only 1.2 per car and busses are fuller.

So, I'd say your claim that busses are inefficient are misplaced.

It is a claim by an MP in UK Parliament, made back in 2005.

They got their number by essentially guessing. Cause there is no such number as "passengers per vehicle".

Fuel consumption estimates for buses are based on National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) estimates combined with road passenger kilometres taken from the 2002 Transport Statistics for Great Britain.

Except there is no such value as "passenger kilometres" for buses in the source as you can't use that for buses - cause they operate by "zones" and not by destinations.
Same price for one stop as it is for three or five and passengers keep getting on and off along the way.
A ticket price is not related to the of distance that a passenger WILL BE traveling but to the MAXIMUM distance ALLOWED to travel.

So, they rounded it down to the lowest common denominator.
"9 passengers average" might be stretched as technically not a "wrong" number - just factually completely inaccurate as an average, minimum or maximum number of passengers.

It's actually the minimum number of passengers a bus must be able to carry in order to NOT BE CONSIDERED a "not-a-bus".
If it talks like a bus, drives like a bus... then it is not a taxi, which CAN be used as a bus but it is NOT a bus.
So what is a bus? Anything from 9 seats and up.

Transport Statistics Great Britain, 2002, 5 Public Transport: Notes and Definitions

Taxi industry: 5.9
A taxi, or hackney carriage, is a vehicle with
fewer than 9 passenger seats which is licensed to
âoeply for hireâ (i.e. it may stand at ranks or be
hailed in the street by members of the public).
This distinguishes taxis from Private Hire
Vehicles (PHVs), which must be booked in
advance through an operator and may not ply for
hire (taxis may also be pre-booked). Taxis must
normally be hired as a whole (i.e. separate fares
are not charged to each passenger). However,
taxis may charge separate fares when a sharing
scheme is in operation, when they are run as a
bus under a special PSV operators' licence or
when pre-booked (PHV operators may also
charge passengers separately if they share a
journey).

5.2 Bus and coach services: vehicle stock:1 1990/91-2000/01

1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01
Single deckers:
Thousands
up to 16 seats 8.1 7.9 8.7 9.4 9.3 8.8 10.0 10.5 10.9 11.6 10.9
17-35 seats 11.5 12.4 13.5 14.5 15.9 16.5 16.6 13.6 14.4 13.9 15.0
36 plus seats 30.2 29.8 29.5 30.8 30.4 30.8 30.5 34.9 36.4 37.8 38.0
All single deckers 49.8 50.1 51.7 54.7 55.6 56.1 57.1 59.0 61.7 63.2 63.8
All double deckers 22.2 21.3 20.9 20.1 19.7 19.6 18.6 17.1 17.0 16.8 15.9
All vehicles 71.9 71.4 72.7 74.8 75.3 75.7 75.7 76.1 78.7 80.0 79.7
         

That "9 passengers average" is like saying that average number of seats for motor vehicles is 1 - because motorcycles.

From Minutes of the UK Defence Select Committee...

http://www.publications.parlia...

UK'S TRIDENT SYSTEM NOT TRULY INDEPENDENT
    33. Acquiring Trident gave the UK a greater nuclear weapons capability than it could ever have achieved on its own. This enhanced capacity, however, had significant consequences.
    34. The fact that, in theory, the British Prime Minister could give the order to fire Trident missiles without getting prior approval from the White House has allowed the UK to maintain the façade of being a global military power. In practice, though, it is difficult to conceive of any situation in which a Prime Minister would fire Trident without prior US approval. The USA would see such an act as cutting across its self-declared prerogative as the world's policeman, and would almost certainly make the UK pay a high price for its presumption. The fact that the UK is completely technically dependent on the USA for the maintenance of the Trident system means that one way the USA could show its displeasure would be to cut off the technical support needed for the UK to continue to send Trident to sea.
    35. In practice, the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it. There are precedents for the USA using UK participation in this way for conventional military operations. The principal value of the UK's participation in the recent Iraq war was to help legitimise the US attack. Likewise the principal value of the firing of UK cruise missiles as part of the larger US cruise missile attack on Baghdad was to help legitimise the use of such weapons against urban targets.
    36. The most likely scenario in which Trident would actually be used is that Britain would give legitimacy to a US nuclear strike by participating in it.

Maybe they forgot that the Internet has no borders?

No, they remembered:

http://www.publications.parlia...

'The only way as we see it to resolve questions of jurisdiction and access to communications data would be by international treaty.'

Coming soon to a legislature near you!

After many clicks, I came finally to the real report and the section on Anonymity.

http://www.publications.parlia...

and the bold part is here,

From our perspective in the United Kingdom, if the behaviour which is currently criminal is to remain criminal and also capable of prosecution, we consider that it would be proportionate to require the operators of websites first to establish the identity of people opening accounts but that it is also proportionate to allow people thereafter to use websites using pseudonyms or anonymously. There is little point in criminalising certain behaviour and at the same time legitimately making that same behaviour impossible to detect. We recognise that this is a difficult question, especially as it relates to jurisdiction and enforcement.

So it seems they are not complete idiots, just trying to make things easier for investigative purposes. How they want people to identify themselves, well, that's another story.

Your truly,
A.C.

CAPTCHA: thanks

A limited private copying exemption was approved in the House of Lords yesterday, and is due to be introduced on 1st October - see http://www.publications.parlia... for a full and interminably dull discussion on it.

44.45% of the popular vote, with about 25% of the eligible population abstaining

Reminder: 75% turnout is really rather good: it beats the UK turnout rates[PDF warning]. Also, 44.5% of the voters is a huge number. To imply that anything less than 50% makes it illegitimate is just stupid: thankfully, not all countries are stuck with a two-party system.

Your other points (possible duress, unfair blame) are sound.

You can argue if you like that a ~ 27.3% increase is large but I disagree, since climate sensitivity to CO2... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-07-07]

Ocean acidification is independent of climate sensitivity, and it's another reason to be concerned about the unprecedented rapidity of our CO2 emissions.

I would also like to point out again that even if acidification is happening, the RESULTS of that acidification are probably less than alarmists have claimed. Example (2010 article): http://www.rationaloptimist.co... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-06-10]

Lonny Eachus also linked to that misinformation from Matt Ridley, a journalist with a long history of distorting climate science.

In contrast, I quoted from Honisch et al. 2012 (PDF), Knoll et al. 2007 (PDF), and Ken Caldeira’s 2012 AGU lecture. That last link was from my videos section which also includes:

• Andrew Dickson gave a technical 2009 presentation called “Acidic Oceans: Why Should We Care?”
• A series of panels at the 2011 AGU discussed declining reef health and tipping points.

I'm not a chemist or a marine biologist/ecologist, so I read peer-reviewed papers and go to conferences like the AGU to watch lectures by scientists who do specialize and publish in those fields. For instance, consider that 2011 AGU panel on declining reef health. Nina Keul observed one species of foramanifera Glas et al. 2012 (PDF) growing faster as carbonate ion concentration decreases (which happens when CO2 increases). She provided context by noting that this is one species from one experiment, noting that this is like looking at one puzzle piece of a big puzzle.

Then Adina Paytan provides further context by noting that most species aren't like this. She shows Fig. 2 from Crook et al. 2012 (PDF) which shows that only ~3 out of 9 species of coral are present in locations with naturally low pH and notes that "Because these three species are rarely major contributors to Caribbean reef framework, these data may indicate that today’s more complex frame-building species may be replaced by smaller, possibly patchy, colonies of only a few species along the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef."

Finally, Robert Ridin

"Regarding your first link, it's unlcear what the chart is depicting. The vertical axis is labelled "Numbers", with each data series corresponding to a different kind of weapon. Are these numbers of weapons? Numbers of violent crimes committed with these weapons? Numbers of homicides committed with these weapons? The chart, on its own, doesn't make that clear."

Sorry, I should've posted the full link. It's the number of recorded incidents:

http://www.publications.parlia...

"In the end, I'm curious as to why there's an apparent discrepancy between the claims made by the WSJ and BBC. It's sad that even with an issue that's so thoroughly documented, it's hard to get a straight answer."

I don't know why either, but personally I'd be inclined to consider that the WSJ article is an opinion piece by someone who seems to have a history of being a bit of an anti-gun control zealot and provides absolutely no citations, whilst the BBC article is an actual news report reporting on the actual ONS figures. It wouldn't be like it's the first time that Dr. Malcolm had just made stuff up on violent crime:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoi...

I know I know, this is an ad-hominem argument against her, but without citations to consider or dispute what is left? Honestly, it's gotten to the point where I almost just discount US sources automatically because the debate there is so polarised and so full of dirty tactics on both sides. I shouldn't of course, because there's the danger in discounting sources of only ending up with one side of the picture, but when it comes down to outright lies (again as is the case with The Daily Mail) it becomes ever harder to give such sources just consideration.

Will this do?

http://www.publications.parlia...

The graph finishes early, but the trend has continued downwards (i.e. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2...)

The problem is the article you cite uses The Daily Mail as it's source, I'm almost inclined to say that automatically makes it wrong, because on average if you take a Daily Mail article and say it's wrong to at least some degree you'll more often be right than not as The Daily Mail exists purely to push a political agenda that often runs against the grain of reality - more recent examples being gay marriage, when the law was going through parliament they published polls saying the majority opposed it, but that ran contrary to every other poll in existence. One of The Daily Mail's past articles (in fact it's the one linked at the bottom of the second article you linked I believe) even conflates crimes and violent crime, so it doesn't even get the absolute most basic comprehension of the numbers right but jumps to conclusions anyway.

Part the issue in comparing firearms offences in the UK is the fact that firearms offence can mean anything from a kid carrying a realistic looking toy gun in public and being told by the police you can't carry realistic looking weapons around, to someone going on a massacre. Whilst firearms themselves are defined in law as non-air weapons - i.e. what most people would see as "proper guns" a firearms offence can involve something that isn't a firearm but looks like one, through to air rifles, through to actual proper guns.

This doesn't contrast well to nations like the US and South Africa where many such offences are kept well away from firearms statistics, but in The Daily Mail's comparisons often ignore this sort of disparity because it doesn't paint the picture they want to paint. Or in other words, many UK firearms offences are actually completely non-violent crimes. Even illegal poaching leads to such offences, for example, carrying a shotgun on private farm land without permission would be an offence under the firearms act.

UK murder rates are even more encouraging now, the UK's homicide rate is below that of nations often seen as some of the most peaceful on earth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

If you don't trust Wikipedia, the World Bank provides the same data, but the presentation is much more awful IMO:

http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

Mexico has a tight restriction on guns yet their murder rate is 23.7, Switzerland where every adult over 18 is issued a true assault rifle has a murder rate of 0.7. It is not the gun laws that cause problems it is the culture.

Mexico has tight restrictions on guns yet are flooded with guns from the USA. This effect is so severe that researchers have actually studied the effect on Mexican homicide rates from the lapsing of the US Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which had a ten year sunset rule.

Switzerland does have a lot of guns .... at home, as part of their military system. There is no culture of people carrying around guns with them in civilian life just in case they get randomly attacked for no reason. I live in Switzerland. I've not spent a huge amount of time in the USA, just visits over the years, yet I've seen there a bar with a "no guns" sign outside. This is something I have yet to encounter here.

But even if it is due to culture, you aren't going to turn the USA into Switzerland, so stop blaming culture (which implies that's how to fix it). Instead look to the UK, which has a culture far closer to America's. The UK experienced steadily growing gun crime rates for decades (graph on page 4), with very small occasional falls being quickly reversed by growth again. The big jumps in 1998 and 2002 are due to changes in counting methods - so you can mentally smooth the graph if you like. A few years after the UK passed much stricter gun control laws firearms offences started to fall dramatically and have continued falling every year.

I've noticed that UK statistics are frequently abused by gun rights advocates in the USA. Ways I've seen them be distorted include: chopping off the earlier years and then trying to claim that passing gun control laws made gun crime go up (it was going up anyway and the big jump was due to counting method changes), and claims that the UK has more violent crime than the USA (the category of "violent crime" excludes homicide, because the stats are collected through surveys and dead people don't reply to surveys, homicide rates are over 4x higher in America).

Something else to consider about the UK experience is that the stats cover up a lot of interesting detail, like the fact that whilst there are still firearms offences they are almost invariably committed with used guns and that provides a lot of evidence that can be used to bring the cases to resolution. "Clean guns" that have never been used before are exceptionally rare. In the USA they're the norm because it's so easy to buy new guns, so why leave a trail of evidence? Ammo is also hard to obtain. Some gangs have tried to make their own, but their home made ammo is far less deadly than professionally manufactured ammo.

I do not expect the USA to actually ever shift itself on the issue of gun control, even though it stands practically alone amongst developed countries. Instead American's who don't want to fear getting shot should simply leave.

And the "UK TV License" is enforced at a national level. I do apologize that my use of the word "federal" was confusing, that's an american distinction from state or county or city taxes. Perhaps I should have been more careful in my adjective? None of that means it is not a tax enforced throughout the entire UK, see http://www.publications.parlia...

Firstly, Cameron didn't say it was necessary. He merely used that example to illustrate what he was saying.

Cameron's first act as PM was to repeal Labour's ID Cards Act (which was compulsory fingerprinting, numbering and recording on a national database to hook up all govt databases) and destroy the hard disks Guardian-style. Maybe this is where he got the idea.

He also attended the inception meeting of NO2ID, the immensely successful campaign that Labour's Home Minister Secretary at the time, David Blunkett, acknowledged in his final speech.

The Tory Snooper's Charter was a mess. Expert after expert (including industry data-rape experts from Google et al) slagged it off in official proceedings and even an open letter. We're kinda used to Govts being clueless about IT but what was properly disturbing was how the Home Office ignored all this clear and helpful feedback. So certainly, Theresa May should be sacked.

I'm not sure Cameron ever stepped in until now. Under pressure from his party, Clegg eventually said he wasn't going to support any such Bill and so that killed it for this Parliament.

We badly need an Act clawing back some of the surveillance powers of the state. They can do already do any surveillance at the ISP level they want as well as lock up people for not disclosing their public keys. There are no checks on that power whatsover in this country bar possibly The Guardian.

So that's a summary of where we are. The debate I wanted to highlight is how do we assess Cameron's views on this:

Few people know this but Cameron used to write a column for the left-wing Guardian. And he was far more liberal a couple of years before he got into power.

Has he gone from liberal to totalitarian in 3-6 years? If so, why? Is it merely scary-sounding intelligence reports or is it possible that our secret services are blackmailing him?

Or is he merely trying to shift the cost burden of surveillance from the state to the ISP/customer? And if so, why is he talking about a dead Bill which he has almost no chance of reintroducing (since he'll almost certainly be kicked out in 2015)?

Citation needed.

And not a Daily Hate Mail opinion piece, please.

well its hard to have a citation before the event but parliament thinks it will be an issue.

As has been said again and again, parents need to take responsibility and monitor their childrens internet usage if they don't want them viewing porn.

Filters don't work - Case in point:

* My 7 year old niece has a tablet, and she said it was connecting to the neighbours wifi instead of their own for about a month without them realising, the neighbour had left it open - what if they don't have the filters enabled?

* Also URL blocking does not prevent all the other ways kids can access this content

Also be aware that while ISPs don't have to implement the blocking right now, they are trying to push it into UK law it seems:

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/onlinesafety.html

Yeah, removing the second jobs and one off fees would make sense. British MPs are not under-paid by any stretch of the imagination. It seems the average is £66,396 ($106,812), which is comfortably above the median salary for the UK. They also have a raft of expenses they can pull.

Anyone wanting to get rich by sitting on numerous boards and committees should be actively discouraged from seeking office. I'd rather see people in this to do the job, and with the salary as it stands I don't see issues in finding suitably qualified candidates. I'd understand as well that the government may well employ advisors on higher salaries, due to a need for specific expertise, but MPs do not require high expertise in any discipline that should be commanding salaries higher than the ones they already have. Obviously salary would vary based on their position - such as the Home Secretary probably pulling in more than a vanilla MP.

Some interesting sources:

http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/members-faq-page2/

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-2269520/Best-paid-jobs-2012-Official-figures-national-average-UK-salaries-400-occupations.html

Interesting. Are they going back and censoring Hansard too?

All the UK's police forces keep armed units available and on patrol 24 hours a day[1]. The number of armed police in each force varies, with more rural counties having less and forces that cover a large city having more[2], but the idea that you could go on an almost unstoppable GTA-style rampage in the UK since the police are mostly unarmed is bogus.

Not to mention that if something more serious, like the Kenya shopping mall attack, happened here it's likely be turned over to the SAS, who have well proven they can deal with this kind of thing (see the Iranian embassy siege for e.g.).

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10260298
[2] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmhansrd/cm100305/wmstext/100305m0002.htm

There is actually a bill part-way through parliament which shortens the detention period to six hours: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2013-2014/0093/cbill_2013-20140093_en_16.htm#sch7

I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear it widens powers in other areas, too ('Power to make and retain copies'). (You probably also won't be surprised that I haven't read and understood the whole thing, but other parts of it give the impression of doing both, too).

People that can change things will notice if http://www.parliament.uk/ is blocked.

The "solution" that the legislators will come up with will be a whitelist of sites. Parliament, bbc, facebook, twitter, etc.

Basically enough sites to keep the masses from revolting.

People that can change things will notice if http://www.parliament.uk/ is blocked.

"Can you post links to the stats you are talking about? Would actually be interested to see them."

Here are a couple of sources. You might have to look around a bit. But really, this stuff is not too hard to find.

U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics

The DOJ kept these stats before the formation of the BJS. For earlier years, you might have to look there.

House of Commons, Firearm Crime Statistics

The latter is a .pdf. IMPORTANT NOTE: when reading the UK stats, be sure to separate out the parts that refer to air guns. Those just simply aren't considered "firearms" by the rest of the civilized world, and aren't included in anybody else's statistics.

There are a lot of gotchas when comparing stats from two different countries. For example: in the UK, a homicide is not listed in the stats as a "murder" unless someone has been tried and convicted of the murder. In the U.S., on the other hand, it is called a "murder" regardless of whether anybody is caught and convicted of the crime.

last I checked UK has beat cops that cary sticks instead of guns

Indeed, only 5% of police in the UK are authorised to carry firearms. Of course armed units are called out for incidents that need them: official stats for England and Wales for the year 2010–11 http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-vote-office/July_2012/12-07-12/14-Home-PoliceFirearms.pdf say there were 17209 operations in which firearm use was authorised, of which there were just 3 in which the police actually fired a firearm.

No, the pardon is specifically for Alan Turing. That's why it's called the "Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Bill [HL] 2012-13"

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/alanturingstatutorypardon.html

Wow, I never knew disenfranchisement was actually a thing in modern countries.

Although most countries in the EU allow prisoners to vote, some countries like Begium, Finland and Iceland have differing rules on felony disenfranchisement that end post release (depending on the seriousness of the crime). In the UK, this is currently a hot topic as recently, the European Court of Human Rights issued a final ruling that the UK needs to change its law that stipulated felony disenfranchisement whilst incarcerated. However, to my knowledge the law has not changed on this yet.

Similarly, each state in the US has slightly varying rules. For example, in Vermont and Maine felons can vote whilst incarcerated, where in Massachusetts disenfranchisement ends when a prisoner is released, in California felony disenfranchisement ends after parole, and in Virginia and Kentucky the only recourse is to petition the governor. However, most states are similar to the UK (can't vote whilst incarcerated).

Of course it goes the other way too. For example, in Japan, felons can vote whilst incarcerated, but homeless people can't vote (because they are currently not allowed to register with temporary accomodations as an address). Also until just recently, if you were under a guardianship in Japan (kinda like britney spears) you couldn't vote either. Of course in Japan, there are quite a few obsticles to naturalization for a person born a non-citizen to obtain citizenship and thus voting rights in the first place so they are probably an outlier...

When I first saw this story I wondered if they were to apply it in a legal sense, and not for marketing..

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhaff/80/80we20.htm

they have things called "anti social behavior orders" in england to curb.. well, anti social behavior, one such example was this (source above):

The oldest recipient of an order to date is an 87-year-old who among other things is forbidden from being sarcastic to his neighbours (July 2003). He was subsequently found guilty of breaking the terms of his order on three separate occasions.

really? england ?

what about ASBOs ?

https://www.gov.uk/asbo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order

those seem kinda of anti-freedom to me.

11. A 13-year-old was served an order banning him from using the word "grass" anywhere in England and Wales.

12. In May 2004, a 16-year-old boy was banned from behaving in an anti-social manner at school. The five year order covers the whole of England and Wales and came as a response to his disruption of a science class

19. The oldest recipient of an order to date is an 87-year-old who among other things is forbidden from being sarcastic to his neighbours (July 2003). He was subsequently found guilty of breaking the terms of his order on three separate occasions. He awaits sentencing but the judge has already made it clear that "there will be no prison for an 88 year old man".

source: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhaff/80/80we20.htm

It looks like the UK received 201 extradition requests for the crime of rape in 2011/2012. It wouldn't appear that the Assange case is an outlier.

Alternately, if you actually read those emails then you should be armed with precise quotes of the "deceptions and manipulations" which you found so powerfully convincing, or at least have some mental construct of their findings to provide us, rather than just a brief handwave in their direction preparatory to an ad hominem slur devoid of substantive content.

As, for instance, these quotes from 7 unrelated investigations which I find convincing:

"even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified."
-"The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia" http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387i.pdf

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal. "
- "Report of the International Panel set up by the University of East Anglia to examine the research of the Climatic Research Unit." http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/SAP

"Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."
- "Final Investigation Report Involving Dr. Michael E. Mann" http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf

"On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. ... In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policy makers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."
- "The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review" http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

"Petitioners say that emails disclosed from CRU provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate data. The media coverage after the emails were released was based on email statements quoted out of context and on unsubstantiated theories of conspiracy. The CRU emails do not show either that the science is flawed or that the scientific process has been compromised. EPA carefully reviewed the CRU emails and found no indication of improper data manipulation or misrepresentation of results."
- "Myths vs. Facts: Denial of Petitions for Reconsideration of the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act" http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/myths-facts.html

"In our review of the CRU emails, we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data comprising the GHCN-M dataset or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures. In addition, we found no evidence to suggest that NOAA was non-compliant with the IQA or the Shelby Amendment. "
- "Examination of issues related to internet posting of emails from Climatic Research Unit" http://www.oig.doc.g

On DRM, the measures could be good... or could be bad. This might be a response to the CJEU ruling that downloaded/licensed software could be resold, so the Government may legislate to overturn this in exchange for adding a few other consumer protection provisions.

On patents, software patents are already allowed in the UK (sort of); my understanding is that the EPC people and EU have been keener on them than the UK courts, so a move to the Unitary Patent Court might mean more software patents in the UK. There's also some really worrying stuff in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill which may criminalise the activities of people running gambling services but who aren't operating in the UK

Stuff that was missing; anything on the EU (being dealt with by Tory backbenchers next week, it seems), the Equal Marriage Bill (which has been brought back, but is being kept quiet; almost as if the Government is ashamed of it), and the anti-lobbying and MP-recall legislation we've been promised for a few years now but has never come up...

On DRM, the measures could be good... or could be bad. This might be a response to the CJEU ruling that downloaded/licensed software could be resold, so the Government may legislate to overturn this in exchange for adding a few other consumer protection provisions.

On patents, software patents are already allowed in the UK (sort of); my understanding is that the EPC people and EU have been keener on them than the UK courts, so a move to the Unitary Patent Court might mean more software patents in the UK. There's also some really worrying stuff in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill which may criminalise the activities of people running gambling services but who aren't operating in the UK

Stuff that was missing; anything on the EU (being dealt with by Tory backbenchers next week, it seems), the Equal Marriage Bill (which has been brought back, but is being kept quiet; almost as if the Government is ashamed of it), and the anti-lobbying and MP-recall legislation we've been promised for a few years now but has never come up...

The NRA doesn't dictate statistics to the U.S. Department of Justice, nor to the U.S. Bureau of Crime Statistics.

Let me get this right. You don't trust the UK government who have the data. But you do trust the US government who's only source is the UK government.

But up to now these so called stats of yours are notable by their absence, aren't they? After all you can't now link to the NRA nor one of the other gun-nut sites that get their FUD from the NRA.

It's all rather different from my stats, which are from a primary source, and which I linked to. They show exactly what I said they do. Or are you now thinking that you pretending to be too stupid to read a table of figures is preferable to you admitting you were wrong?
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn01940.pdf
Table 2 page 12.

You're looking more pathetic with every post. Are are you so delusional you are blind to the facts when they are inconsistent with your previously held opinion.

"That's not true. The facts are that handguns were banned in the UK in 1997 BECAUSE gun crime was rising."

Haha! I call BULLSHIT.

Read your own statistics. The ones YOU supplied to ME.

Gun crime was DROPPING from 1993 to 1997, when the largest gun ban went into effect. See page 5 of your own source.

Gun crime then ROSE, to levels almost double what it had been, between then and around 2003-2005. Again see the numbers in that document, or just look at that chart on p. 5 if you don't want to bother with the math.

Gun crime then started to fall again, well BEFORE the latest gun ban.

Your own assertions are disproved by the document you cite.

I suggest listening to what the NRA has to say is not "research".

My version of events is factually correct. Yours is wrong. The official statistics are here, just as they were when I laid them out in my post:
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn01940.pdf

You think you know what you are talking about. But you don't.

You're making the mistake of taking the summary at face value. If you follow the link, the actual motion was "I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time." It's rare for anything not to get a second reading: it's only the second stage of 11 (not counting royal assent).

"GCHQ estimates that 80% or more of currently successful cyber attacks could be defeated by simple best practice, such as updating anti-virus software regularly" link

A4e, The AA, Accident Helpline, Acorn Computer Recycling (Mandatory Work Activity, personal testimony, Dec 2012), Age Concern, Alpha Stream, Argos, Asda, Asian Star Community Radio LTD, ATS, Barnardos, BHS – British Home Stores [1], Blue Arrow, Bookers Wholesale, Boots, Bournemouth City Council, B&Q, British Heart Foundation, BT, Burger King – claim to have pulled out, Burton, Carillion, Capability Scotland, Close Protection UK, DB Accident Repair, DC Cleaning Sussex, Debenhams, Diamond Glass Medway, Dorothy Perkins [1], Dunelm Mill (also personal testimony, Nov 2012), Envirostream, Evans [1], Finsbury Park Business Forum, FP Mailing [Source: Interview with Director, LBC Radio 27/6/12], F&S Interiors, Go Response, Helen & Douglas House Hospice – Maidenhead, HMRC, HMV [3], Holiday Inn – claim to have pulled out, Holland & Barrett – claim to have pulled out, Grosvenor Casinos, Haven House Children’s Hospice, Hilton Hotels, JA Glover, Jessup Electrical Wholesale Ltd, JJ Vickers & Sons Ltd, Kennedy Scott, Kent Flooring Supplies, Kent Space, Kingston Community Furniture (MWA, personal testimony, Dec 2012), Marriot Hotels, Maplin – have tweeted that they have withdrawn, awaiting statement, Matalan, Mayhem Paintball, McDonald’s, Medway Council, Medway Tyres, Miss Selfridge – claim were never involved, Mr Gleam – Sussex – claim were never involved, Newham Council, Newhaven Community Development, Olympic Glass, Omnico Plastics Ltd, Outfit [1], Payless, PDSA (several sources including personal testimony of MWA, Nov 2012), Pizza Hut, Plumbase, Poundland, Poundstretcher, PPDG, Primark, Process Plant Services Ltd, Quality Savers, RBLI, Refurb project (MWA, personal testimont, Dec 2012), Regency Guillotine, Richmond Fellowship, Romney Resource Kent, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (Note they have made 50-60 staff redundant in each of the last 3 years), Royal Mail, RNR Performance Cars, Saffron Acres Project, Sage UK, Salvation Army, Savers, SERCO, Scope, Scout Enterprises, Sense (Mandatory Work Activity, personal testimony, Dec 2012), SERCO, Servest, London, SHOC Slough Homeless, Shoe Zone, Signs & Imaging Ltd, Sixhills Aquatics (Work experience, personal testimony, Nov 2012), Slough Library, Slough Furniture Project, Southern Membranes Ltd, Southern Metal Services, Southern Roofing & Building Supplies, Storie Argyll Ltd, Stephens Fresh Food, St Oswald’s Hospice shops (MWA placements, personal testimony, Nov 2012), Sue Ryder, Superdrug, Swan Lifeline – Windsor, Tate Recruitment, Tesco, Timbermills, Toni & Guy, Topman [1], Topshop [1], The Range, The Conservation Volunteers, Town and Country Cleaners Kent, Wallis [1], WD Close & Sons, Westvic Enamellers, Wetherspoons, WHSmith, Whittingtons Silk Flower & Plant Centre, Wilkinsons, The Works, YMCA (Mandatory Work Activity, personal testimony, Dec 2012)

Tens of thousands of unemployed people made to work without pay
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/15/thousands-unemployed-work-without-pay

Latest Workfare statistics: (15 Feb 2012)
http://www.consent.me.uk/statistics/

References:

[1] Arcadia Group
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/03/waterstones-ends-unpaid-work-placements

[2] Asda, Tesco, Tussauds Group, WHSmith, Royal Mail, Greggs
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubacc/uc1814-i/uc181401.htm

It was probably more of a (positive) comment on the number of women who seem to be involved in the issue / in the EU Parliament.

Found an interesting document from my parliament (warning - PDF): http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01250.pdf. From this it seems that 35% of the EU Parliament are women. (The corresponding percentage for the UK is 22%. No idea what it is for the US after the recent elections, but according to the document in 2010 it was 17%).

Still could be better, of course. Only two parliament has either more women than men or the same number - Rwanda and Andorra! Given the figures globally I can't think that a positive observation on the role women are playing in any parliament can be considered misogynistic.

Alternatively, was the work you were looking for misandristic?

Technically it is not a tax, though the Office for National Statistics does classify it as a tax, and most people might see it however incorrectly as such.

They might correctly see it as such for a variety of reasons. For instance:
1) It's a compulsory fee that carries criminal penalties for evasion.

2) It's classified as a tax by ONS, as you said.

3) It's being used as a tax, such as the fact that it was used to help pay for the digital switchover a few years back and that failing to pay it blocks access to more than just the BBC (e.g. ITV and Channel 4), suggesting that it's not a simple fee for access to private content, but rather a tax on access to any content at all.

4) The House of Lords, while it didn't necessarily agree with the reasoning for the change, did not dispute the reclassification, and instead made a series of recommendations in response to the reclassification.

Long story short, technically, it is a tax. It's just a very unusual one that's being handled in a different manner than most of the others. And a lot of people are very uncomfortable with calling it a tax because of the obvious implications that would have on the status of the BBC as an independent agency. I'm not calling their journalistic independence into question (I really am not, despite what I'm about to say), I'm just pointing out that over 80% of their income comes from government grants and a fee that is technically a tax, and that people need to be honest about that.

More interestingly and relevant to the topic at hand, however, is the fact that the BBC's status as a public organization means that they need to field FOIA requests, but their nature as a journalistic entity means that they can also enjoy certain protections. In the past, it's been ruled that the BBC is required to turn over operational or other non-journalistic material they may have in the case of a FOIA request. Typically, a list of conference attendees would fall under operational materials, but because the conference was being used to dictate future paths in their journalism, I imagine that they were able to get it ruled as being journalistic material (IANAL, nor did I read the article...this is Slashdot, after all).

As of 2006, the licence fee *is* considered a tax.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldbbc/128/128i.pdf

"Parliament and not Government should set the level of the licence fee. In January 2006, the Office of National Statistics classified the licence fee as a tax for the first
time. We are very concerned about the consequences that this decision will have for the BBC’s independence."

If you read the Early Day Motion he signed in 2007, he says is that he "believes that complementary medicine has the potential to offer clinically-effective and cost-effective solutions to common health problems faced by NHS patients" (emphasis mine). To be fair, he was only one of 206 MPs (including such luminaries as Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister) who signed the motion. That's almost a third of British MPs who believe the NHS should be spending upwards of £4 million* per year treating sick people with something that works no better than a sugar pill.

* This is from the £12 million 2005-2008 expenditure figures for homeopathy obtained by Channel 4, which apparently doesn't include the running costs of the NHS homeopathic hospitals that the Early Day Motion is supporting.