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'getting'? 'GETTING'?! They've been like this since 1998 when they introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

Was it the new parliament bill that allows polititians to change the law without debate?

That'll be the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill currently on its second reading. Then there's also the Police and Justice Bill which amongst other nefarious things will probably make posession of nmap, nessus and smbclient illegal and punishable by upto two years in jail and a fine.

'getting'? 'GETTING'?! They've been like this since 1998 when they introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

Was it the new parliament bill that allows polititians to change the law without debate?

That'll be the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill currently on its second reading. Then there's also the Police and Justice Bill which amongst other nefarious things will probably make posession of nmap, nessus and smbclient illegal and punishable by upto two years in jail and a fine.

The UK on a slippery slope? Ridiculous! We tumbled and reached the bottom long ago. Now the government are just standing over us, pissing for enjoyment.

A peace campaigner has been convicted under a new law banning unauthorised protests from taking place within half a mile of Westminster. She was arrested in October after reading out names of soldiers killed in Iraq at central London's Cenotaph.

A new Enabling Act will allow government ministers to alter any legislation at will, as long as the do not create any new offences which carry a penalty greater than 2 years imprisonment.

(1) A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes-- (a) reforming legislation; (b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Law Commissions, with or without changes.

And just in case we haven't got the message yet, the government are going to create a vast database (like the Stasi one, but more frightening and much more expensive) and force everyone in the country to be photographed, fingerprinted, iris scanned and required to notify the authorities of their whereabouts. (Identity Cards Bill)

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame, All their attempts to bend thee down;
Will but arouse thy generous flame, But work their woe, and thy renown.

The UK on a slippery slope? Ridiculous! We tumbled and reached the bottom long ago. Now the government are just standing over us, pissing for enjoyment.

A peace campaigner has been convicted under a new law banning unauthorised protests from taking place within half a mile of Westminster. She was arrested in October after reading out names of soldiers killed in Iraq at central London's Cenotaph.

A new Enabling Act will allow government ministers to alter any legislation at will, as long as the do not create any new offences which carry a penalty greater than 2 years imprisonment.

(1) A Minister of the Crown may by order make provision for either or both of the following purposes-- (a) reforming legislation; (b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Law Commissions, with or without changes.

And just in case we haven't got the message yet, the government are going to create a vast database (like the Stasi one, but more frightening and much more expensive) and force everyone in the country to be photographed, fingerprinted, iris scanned and required to notify the authorities of their whereabouts. (Identity Cards Bill)

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame, All their attempts to bend thee down;
Will but arouse thy generous flame, But work their woe, and thy renown.

"Sir Tim"

I found this amusing,


I found it saddening against the recent UK Honour scandal.

If Sir Tim was viewed as a member of traditional sphere such as Law, Economics, Education he would be Lord Tim.

His work has changed the world in all of those traditional spheres.

The whole interview content, our agenda would, would gain real traction in the second house of a G8 Nation.

The orders in question are Regulatory Reform Orders. They already exist and you can see the amount of scrutiny and debate they go through here:

http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/ regulatory_reform_committee/regulatory_reform_orde rs.cfm

So they can be voted down by a huge backbench rebellion, but won't get the kind of scrutiny a Bill gets. Under the old Act they can only be used in a fairly limited set of circumstances, but this Bill widens those.

I've just done so.

Not that I expect it to achieve much, as he's Labour.

The law itself is actually quite short and, once you get your head around the legalese, just about readable.

It's here if you want to have a read. Do so, there is nothing more annoying than debating legislation with people who claim to know it but haven't actually read it.

Dear ...,

The "Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill" recently came to my attention, thanks to a piece on The Guardian's website.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/ cmbills/111/06111.1-4.html

Having looked at the proposed text of the bill, it bears chilling comparison to Hitler's 1933 Enabling Act, which allowed him and his cabinet to enact laws without the participation of the Germany's parliament.

Please can you help clarify what the Bill will allow, as by my reading it is disturbingly broad with very few limitation, and whether you will be supporting or opposing it.

Yours sincerely, ...

And as for why the opposition parties and UK media aren't mentioning it, I have no idea.

They have. Here's some links:

http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.stor y.page&obj_id=128487

http://www.libdems.org.uk/government/story.html?id =9824

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/ cmhansrd/cm060321/debtext/60321-05.htm#60321-05_sb hd3

Opposition editorial in the Times by a member of Parlament.

"The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill has been called the "Abolition of Parliament Bill" by several leading lawyers because it appears to give the Government an unrestrained ability to rewrite laws as it chooses without passing them through Parliament."

I was wondering how that compared to the average sentence for rape or murder, so I did a little googling, and came up with this page from the parliament website. Going by those figures, you're looking at an average of 7 years for rape, 3 for robbery, and so on.

How the fuck do they justify 10 years for hacking?

Oh, and the slashdot summary is a little misleading. While it's true that tougher laws against hacking are gaining support, this particular bill has been widely criticised. It's right there in the linked-to article...

Look at Part 5, sections 34 and 35 of this

The most evil thing is The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. With this the UK government can make laws without having the problem of having to discuss it in parliament. So the government can abolish elections and things ...

Professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, urged the Government to contact Microsoft over fears that evidence could be lost by suspects claiming to have forgotten their encryption key.

My memory was faulty: it was in fact Patrick Mercer rather than Lembit Opik. Hansard.

Well, IANAL so I'm a little fuzzy on what is and isn't a criminal offence, so I did a quick google.

From http://www.speedcheck.co.uk/FAQs02.htm:

Speeding is both a serious and criminal offence... If no response is received [to a speeding ticket], a police officer will call at the registered keeper's address to serve the papers personally. If matters get to this stage a court trial will be the only option where, if found guilty the penalty points and fines can be considerably more severe. Any attempt to give false information will result in criminal proceedings.

So, perhaps the actual speeding isn't criminal, but you can certainly end in court because of it. Similarly, the last time my girlfriend was ticketed for a parking violation, it was a police officer who did it. (The site is some kind of industry/corporate site for (a) speed camera manufacturer(s), so may be biased, but shouldn't be outright lying - they're going to sell the cameras whatever the public think of the penalties)

Also, from http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ ldhansrd/pdvn/lds04/text/41116w03.htm:

Enforcement of road traffic law including speeding offences is a matter for the police of the country where the offence is committed but the Government do not believe that those who commit offences in this country should evade justice simply by returning home. The Government have agreed with our EU partners a framework decision on the mutual recognition of financial penalties. This will allow the UK to ask another EU member state to enforce any fine imposed here totalling 70 euros or more, and for the UK to enforce fines imposed abroad.

Again, that doesn't necessarily make it a criminal offence, but it appears that there's an EU-wide agreement between member states to allow states to request each other to impose penalties for offences commited within the EU.

Besides, as I understand it if something is illegal, it's either a criminal offence or a civil matter. You're not suggesting that traffic violations are civil matters (that have to be sued for), are you?

It would seem to me that our attitudes (in the first world) to climate change will have far more impact than any direct measures that we might take to decrease our carbon emissions.

Sure, I might use the train rather than driving to work but next to China building 1 new coal powerstation PER WEEK anything that I actually do seems rather irrelevant.

The UK: Unemployment in the double digits over most of the past 20 years.

The UK: Unemployment in the double digits in three of the past 20 years.

England has it's own government, as does Scotland and Wales, for example. Scotland has a Parliament, and Wales has the Assembly.

That ceased to be true in the eighteenth century.

• Scottish Parliament
• Welsh Assembly
• Northern Ireland Assembly
• UK Parliament

Please point me to the equivalent for England. Oh wait, there isn't one. There is, however, a campaign to create an English parliament.

I never said GB has its own government.

By stating that England, Britain and the UK were the same place, you implied it.

Each country that's a part of the UK has their own government, under the UK government.

No. The UK government is shared between the home nations. The other home nations have their own government too, but England does not.

England is a part of Great Britain and the UK, just as you said. If something happens in England, it has also happened in GB and the UK. I used UK or England in the way I did becuase some things do not happen across the UK as a whole, but only happen in England.

Nonsense. You were talking about the government being fascist. There is no English government that can be fascist, only the UK government. It's true that some things happen in England rather than the whole of the UK, but that's irrelevant when talking about the government, because the entity that governs England is a UK-wide entity. You are trying to justify the ignorance displayed by using England and the UK as synonyms.

You were right about principality being the wrong word. Not that you couldn't figure out what I was saying from context

Er, no. We were talking about what types of states England, Great Britain and the UK are, and you claimed that the UK was a principality. "What you were saying" is exactly what was wrong.

England has it's own government, as does Scotland and Wales, for example. Scotland has a Parliament, and Wales has the Assembly.

That ceased to be true in the eighteenth century.

• Scottish Parliament
• Welsh Assembly
• Northern Ireland Assembly
• UK Parliament

Please point me to the equivalent for England. Oh wait, there isn't one. There is, however, a campaign to create an English parliament.

I never said GB has its own government.

By stating that England, Britain and the UK were the same place, you implied it.

Each country that's a part of the UK has their own government, under the UK government.

No. The UK government is shared between the home nations. The other home nations have their own government too, but England does not.

England is a part of Great Britain and the UK, just as you said. If something happens in England, it has also happened in GB and the UK. I used UK or England in the way I did becuase some things do not happen across the UK as a whole, but only happen in England.

Nonsense. You were talking about the government being fascist. There is no English government that can be fascist, only the UK government. It's true that some things happen in England rather than the whole of the UK, but that's irrelevant when talking about the government, because the entity that governs England is a UK-wide entity. You are trying to justify the ignorance displayed by using England and the UK as synonyms.

You were right about principality being the wrong word. Not that you couldn't figure out what I was saying from context

Er, no. We were talking about what types of states England, Great Britain and the UK are, and you claimed that the UK was a principality. "What you were saying" is exactly what was wrong.

France's GDP per capita stands at about 95% of the UK's

Yes, but it is down from 122% of the UK's since the 1970's...

This study looks at labor regulation effects on European work hours.

A great historical comparison between other countries and the U.S. on GDP per capita, hours worked, productivity, and workforce participation is here

Section 15 of the Terrorism bill is to increase the penalty for withholding encryption keys from two years, to five in a "National Security Case".

While I don't support detention without trial or charge for 90 days (3 months, almost 13 weeks), arguing against this by reference to the RIP Act 2000 isn't ideal as that's also a bad, freedom restricting law, giving excessive powers to "Government Agents".

I am particularly worried by the section of the RIP Act 2000 stating when a failure to comply with a key disclosure notice - ie. stating when an offence will be committed:

In proceedings against any person for an offence under this section, if it is shown that that person was in possession of a key to any protected information at any time before the time of the giving of the section 49 notice, that person shall be taken for the purposes of those proceedings to have continued to be in possession of that key at all subsequent times, unless it is shown that the key was not in his possession after the giving of the notice and before the time by which he was required to disclose it.

Are you in a position to provide all encryption keys that the state could prove you once had in your possession? Are you taking precautions to ensure that you always remain able to supply such keys to the state should they demand them at any future point?

What if your computer equipment was confiscated / destroyed? How many people would loose the ability to comply with the law should they have a hardware failure - or accidentally fail to backup their data.

This is one of many laws that many people are going to find themselves vulnerable to committing an offence under - I think such laws are wrong and serve to give the state a power over people that they shouldn't have - either that or the law becomes so widely ignored that a prosecution under it becomes implausible - though as long as it remains law it the potential for it to be used as an tool for the state to use to threaten and intimidate those in breach of it remains. While key disclosure is only required by law for serious offences and under certain very limited circumstances - it's not only those guilty of serious offences who might find themselves in receipt of a disclosure notice - that group includes innocent people merely under suspicion.

An additional worry is that my MPs see "IT" issues such as these as technical and not of broad interest, so irrelevant.

. . . and it's saving the trees.

Unless of course, you make encryption illegal, which would be difficult to do, because the privacy hounds would never let something like that happen.

You'd think so, eh?

Unfortunately in the UK the police already have powers to demand that you hand over your keys/passwords to any encrypted data. Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill the UK government can demand that you to hand over your encryption keys to the police.

Laws like these are getting slipped through very easily, with little counter from the opposition parties. With all of the hype around "terror" there is an even stronger drive to give more and more power to the police - the privacy hounds, at least here, are too quiet a voice to halt laws such as RIP when more media-friendly laws such as smoking and fox hunting seem to dominate. :/

In the United Kingdom the head of the Judiciary is the Lord Chancellor and is an appointee of the Prime Minister and has many political as well as judicial duties.

Our consitution isn't even written down although wikipedia seems to be steadily doing it for us ;-)

However, the Lord Chancellor has very little direct power over judicial matters as most judicial duties are shared by the Law Lords [They don't all have the first initial L. It stands for Lord or one case B for Baron]. The Law Lords are also appointees but are senior judges, appointed to the House of Lords for life, and tend to have a great deal of independence from the parties that appointed them.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/ cmbills/045/2006045.htm

The only restriction on the type of bill which can be introduced in the senate is that they are not allowed to introduce a "money bill". Any other bill can be introduced in either house. See articles 20 and 21 of the constitution.

The UK cabinet currently has two ministers, Baroness Amos and Lord Falconer of Thoroton who are members of the house of Lords.

Answer: Never. Or when the U.S. changes over to proportional representation, whichever comes first.

So presumably there's something more than just proportional representation involved here, unless I've missed something, as this was somebody in the UK Parliament, which, as far as I know, does not use proportional representation.

Note, of course, that when he said he was "the first Jedi Member of this place", he was speaking of his religion, not his political party, as the cited Hansard section shows him as "Mr. Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)", not "Mr. Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Jedi)". Are you saying that, without proportional representation, nobody with the courage to state in Congress that they're a Jedi would get elected?

Peter Mandelson lost his job over a dodgy house sale and was repremanded by Parliament over the affair, so it comes as no great suprise given his past history.

Scottish banknotes are not legal tender in the UK. This was discussed in the context of joining the Euro:
"Scottish bank notes are not themselves legal tender; they are merely promissory notes issued under the Bank Notes (Scotland) Act 1845 and the Currency and Bank Notes Act 1928. They are backed by reserves in the banks concerned, but they are not themselves legal tender. For that reason, they could remain in circulation as promissory notes if they were reissued as euro notes in the event that we joined the single currency. Of course, the European central bank and the other member states would not recognise them as legal tender, but, as they do not have such recognition in England or, indeed, in Scotland, that would not be a problem."

Assessing the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities In recent years there has been increased awareness of the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities, which could have widespread consequences for the environment and for public health.

This is an interesting 148 page report about the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities in the UK

Or the quick four page summary ;-)

Interesting the worries this report generated as politicians and commentators thought it might be a how-to guide for budding t3rrorists...

Assessing the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities In recent years there has been increased awareness of the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities, which could have widespread consequences for the environment and for public health.

This is an interesting 148 page report about the risk of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities in the UK

Or the quick four page summary ;-)

Interesting the worries this report generated as politicians and commentators thought it might be a how-to guide for budding t3rrorists...

The reason you couldn't find the clause is because there isn't one.

The Computer Misuse (Amendment) Bill introduced into the House of Lords in May 2002 was an attempt to add denial of service to the Act.

It seems to have sunk without a trace.

The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group still seems to be pushing for it to be added though.

No doubt being chased by a pack of dogs and numerous upper class British twits on horse back.

I love how out of puritanical fear that people will get drunk (and probably have sex) we put something that will instead make them blind or dead. What a country.

They do that in Britain too; although here it has a lot more to do with the fact that spirits are taxed to the gills... quote:-

"The excise tax today, literally today, on a 70 cl bottle of Sainsbury's vodka in Aberdeen is 84 per cent."

Needless to say, you don't get charged that if you pop over to B&Q for some luridly-coloured purple alcohol.

Not exactly overwhelming the debate with the intellectual force of the argument, is it?

There may well be a case for an entitlement card to combat fraud. This whole affair is more to do with the ID database, and the desire to get the mug^b^b^btaxpayer to pay for it. I just pray we in the UK don't get a nine-eleven incident before the next election, because that would play right into the hands of the paranoia-merchants, and we don't have a realistic opposition to vote for, unlike the Spanish.

You're thinking of Prime Minister's Questions, in the House of Commons. Basically, any MP can ask the PM a question (the leader of the opposition usually gets 4, and the leader of the third largest party 2.) There are also question times for each government department, where MPs can put questions to government ministers. (See this factsheet (pdf) for more about how parliamentary questions work.)

Of course, sometimes PMQs are used to give the PM a nice easy question for political point scoring. And example, from last week shows.

You're thinking of Prime Minister's Questions, in the House of Commons. Basically, any MP can ask the PM a question (the leader of the opposition usually gets 4, and the leader of the third largest party 2.) There are also question times for each government department, where MPs can put questions to government ministers. (See this factsheet (pdf) for more about how parliamentary questions work.)

Of course, sometimes PMQs are used to give the PM a nice easy question for political point scoring. And example, from last week shows.

Apologies - Parliament Link, question but to the Secretary of State David Blunkett by Lynne Jones, MP for Birmingham and a member of the Commons Science & Technology Select Committee. Apparently the legality of the action is already being questioned.

Apologies - Parliament Link, question but to the Secretary of State David Blunkett by Lynne Jones, MP for Birmingham and a member of the Commons Science & Technology Select Committee. Apparently the legality of the action is already being questioned.

The UK has this, it's called Question Time or Parliamentary Questions (PQs) Note also that the questions and answered are published in book form.

Something we could well copy from them, although I admit that it's highly unlikely under the current adminstration.

The UK parliamentary system may work "smoothly" but it is entirely useless.

With our first-past-the-post system, one party usually ends up with a massive majority in parliament. The leader of this party then becomes Prime Minister and appoints the government from the elected MPs (from their own party, of course). The result of this is that the government are guaranteed to be able to push through almost any legislation that they desire, regardless of the wishes of electorate.

More importantly, the lack of proportional representation means that we invariably end up with a government that has a massive majority in the House of Commons, but which most people voted against! Since the second world war, no party has received 50% of the popular vote. That hasn't stopped the Conservative and Labour parties from winning "landslide" victories however. At the moment, Tony Blair has a majority in the hundreds, despite only winning 43.2% of the vote at the last election.

We are in dire need of a directly elected president and an elected chamber of people with no expectation of being appointed to cabinet. Don't look to Britain for ideas about how to run a democracy. Our system is rotten to the core.

The UK parliamentary system may work "smoothly" but it is entirely useless.

With our first-past-the-post system, one party usually ends up with a massive majority in parliament. The leader of this party then becomes Prime Minister and appoints the government from the elected MPs (from their own party, of course). The result of this is that the government are guaranteed to be able to push through almost any legislation that they desire, regardless of the wishes of electorate.

More importantly, the lack of proportional representation means that we invariably end up with a government that has a massive majority in the House of Commons, but which most people voted against! Since the second world war, no party has received 50% of the popular vote. That hasn't stopped the Conservative and Labour parties from winning "landslide" victories however. At the moment, Tony Blair has a majority in the hundreds, despite only winning 43.2% of the vote at the last election.

We are in dire need of a directly elected president and an elected chamber of people with no expectation of being appointed to cabinet. Don't look to Britain for ideas about how to run a democracy. Our system is rotten to the core.

as in here (via the
Register.

Is there an official record of the proceedings of the Dutch Parliament, similar to the UK's Hansard, to which I can direct the attention of my MP? I'm not sure that a wiki page at the FFII website will carry sufficient authority to prompt her to try the same thing here.

According to Blunkett, it will help "combat terrorism".

He is trying to keep up with Blair on the u-turns:

"it is important that we do not pretend that an entitlement card would be an overwhelming factor in combating international terrorism." - David Blunkett 3rd July 2002

(for context see here)

I do not know about Princeton but the JET Experiment reached Breakeven in 1997. Spot-on about the neutron production issues though.

Brits can find the name of their MP from the Common's list of members by constituency, or can use faxyourmp.com. They can find names and contact details for their MEPs from the UK Office of the European Parliament. I'm sure similar sites exist for other countries.

I'm sorry to interrupt your conspiracy theory with an unfortunate fact, but Lord Hutton isn't a Labour peer, but is a cross-bencher, meaning he's independent.