Slashdot Mirror

Brexit legally scheduled for 29 March 2019 at 11 pm UK time. less than 6 days from now.
Read https://petition.parliament.uk... which got a government response
Consider https://petition.parliament.uk... which read We’ll have to reject your petition if: It calls for the same action as a petition that’s already open
Ask: why did they allow the petition https://petition.parliament.uk... post nine days later when it is essentially the same?

The government likes to play head games with the minds of the people.... shrug...

Brexit legally scheduled for 29 March 2019 at 11 pm UK time. less than 6 days from now.
Read https://petition.parliament.uk... which got a government response
Consider https://petition.parliament.uk... which read We’ll have to reject your petition if: It calls for the same action as a petition that’s already open
Ask: why did they allow the petition https://petition.parliament.uk... post nine days later when it is essentially the same?

The government likes to play head games with the minds of the people.... shrug...

Brexit legally scheduled for 29 March 2019 at 11 pm UK time. less than 6 days from now.
Read https://petition.parliament.uk... which got a government response
Consider https://petition.parliament.uk... which read We’ll have to reject your petition if: It calls for the same action as a petition that’s already open
Ask: why did they allow the petition https://petition.parliament.uk... post nine days later when it is essentially the same?

The government likes to play head games with the minds of the people.... shrug...

The petition website has data of the signatures by county (the "Get petition data (json format)" link). I downloaded that file just before writing this comment and I see that are currently 123 signatures marked as coming from Russia. According to this 2015 news article, there are (were?) 1688 British expats living in Russia.

Of course, we're all technical people here. We know that foreigners could be using VPNs or botnets (so all the requests wouldn't obviously be coming from the same VPN endpoint) to proxy their requests so they appear to be coming from inside the UK.

Since it's a petition, not a poll, there's an actual list of names (i.e. not just IPs or whatever) associated with it. You could do QA on the data by simply sampling the names, confirming they're real people, contacting them, and asking them if they really did sign the petition at the timestamp on their signature. (Needless to say, doing this for all 4+ million would be a lot of effort, but a statistically, you should be able to get fairly high confidence on your measure of accuracy with a properly designed random sample of thousands.)

Last, we have a good proxy for how many signatures we expect: there's a protest today and we can count the crowd. It's on the order of a million (the group organizing the protest says slightly over a million, BBC says "hundreds of thousands"). If a quarter of the people who signed the petition showed up for the march, that would be incredibly high turnout for the march; if anything, given that information, we should be surprised the petition signature count isn't higher (probably best explained by it having started very recently) not looking for reasons the real count should be lower.

The petition website has data of the signatures by county (the "Get petition data (json format)" link). I downloaded that file just before writing this comment and I see that are currently 123 signatures marked as coming from Russia. According to this 2015 news article, there are (were?) 1688 British expats living in Russia.

Of course, we're all technical people here. We know that foreigners could be using VPNs or botnets (so all the requests wouldn't obviously be coming from the same VPN endpoint) to proxy their requests so they appear to be coming from inside the UK.

Since it's a petition, not a poll, there's an actual list of names (i.e. not just IPs or whatever) associated with it. You could do QA on the data by simply sampling the names, confirming they're real people, contacting them, and asking them if they really did sign the petition at the timestamp on their signature. (Needless to say, doing this for all 4+ million would be a lot of effort, but a statistically, you should be able to get fairly high confidence on your measure of accuracy with a properly designed random sample of thousands.)

Last, we have a good proxy for how many signatures we expect: there's a protest today and we can count the crowd. It's on the order of a million (the group organizing the protest says slightly over a million, BBC says "hundreds of thousands"). If a quarter of the people who signed the petition showed up for the march, that would be incredibly high turnout for the march; if anything, given that information, we should be surprised the petition signature count isn't higher (probably best explained by it having started very recently) not looking for reasons the real count should be lower.

More than 4 million sign Brexit petition to revoke article 50.

See the Petition. 4,392,160 signatures at Saturday, March 23, 2019, 09:11 am Pacific Time.

Show us on the doll where the mean orange man hurt you...

My brain.

Seriously, I don't understand this big group of his supporters who can't perceive how comically incompetent he is.

Sorry for clipping your salient points, but it was to cut down on over-quoting for readability's sake.

In any 2 party democracy (US, UK, Australia and Canada for example),
 

The UK, Australia, and Canada, are not 2 party democracies -- they are multi-party, they usually have 4 or more political parties.

For example, the UK Parliament has 9 parties:
        Conservative Party
        Co-operative Party
        Democratic Unionist Party
        Green Party
        Labour Party
        Liberal Democrats
        Plaid Cymru
        Scottish National Party
        Sinn Féin
see: https://www.parliament.uk/abou...

The American political system is inherently unstable, with only two parties, it tends to be very polarised. In a multi-party democracy, when the major parties stop being representative, then new parties emerge -- in practice, this can't happen in the USA, though attempts have been made.

America is not really a democracy, it is essentially a 2 party dictatorship!

Probably New Zealand is the most democratic country in the world, as the relative proportions of the political parties in Parliament match those of the votes cast for each party.
see: https://www.elections.org.nz/v...

Quite the opposite - deaths due to terrorism by christians has gone down significantly over the last few decades. As have killed the greatest numbers by an order of magnitude or two in the UK, I'll presume that's the certain religion you're talking about.

https://researchbriefings.parl...

Sigh, your pedantry has been noted and filed in the big bin where it belongs.

"Big Ben" is commonly used to refer to the tower just as much as the bells themselves. Hell type Big Ben into Wikipedia you not only get a picture of the tower first, but this declaration that it's commonly used to refer to multiple things as the first line on the Wiki.

Or maybe you prefer a more legitimate reference like the UK Parliament's page: https://www.parliament.uk/bigb...
First line: "The name Big Ben is often used to describe the tower, the clock and the bell but the name was first given to the Great Bell."

Cambridge Analytica is dead – but its obscure network is alive and well “The company’s executives have formed a web of linked companies, suggesting its work will continue”

Cambridge Analytica and SCL: How I peered inside the propaganda machine

Cambridge Analytica staff set up new firm

“we must look first at Cambridge Analytica, LLC .. is a Delaware Limited Liability Company that was formed in June of 2014 .. the larger the database Cambridge controls, along with its ability to demonstrate the value proposition for its analytical tools, the greater the likelihood Cambridge will be retained by political entities.”

Probable cause isn't the correct legal standard here because that is an element of criminal law. Annoyingly, the new reports don't say anything more than "rarely used power", but what exactly is that power? Something about select committees and contempt, I think.

It's not a crime if it's done outside the country, right?

Probably not. If you were to hack into a bank and transfer the money into your own offshore account, then I'm certain that the country with the bank would have both some law saying that they can extradite you, as well as some treaty with a bunch of other countries that give permission for the extradition. Not that I believe it's okay to charge anyone outside of your country with anything, I'm just saying with certainty that such laws exist.

Depending on the crime and where you live, actually it is. https://publications.parliamen...

If someone refuses informal requests to appear before a select committee of the House of Commons with the power to send for persons, papers and records then they can formally summon him. Failure to appear when summoned would make him liable to be declared in contempt of Parliament. In theory, Parliament has the power to imprison those it finds in contempt, which would mean that Zuckerberg would probably want to avoid entering the UK. In practice, I think it would be unprecedented for the committee to issue a formal summons to a non-citizen non-resident. If you want a longer discussion, I found a Commons briefing document from 2016.

Did I say anything about prosecution?

Why not ask them yourself?

https://publications.parliamen...

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.

On the other hand, the FBI counts all bodies which did not die of natural causes or suicide which makes sense because that literally is what homicide is, killing by same.

So, by your theory, more than 50% of the US-govt-sponsored studies during the Bush administration should have been anti-climate-change.

Not true at all. You pretend to misunderstand the very concept of the "conflict of interest". Whoever is in charge of an institution, for its employees to conclude, that their work is pointless and overvalued is to issue themselves a pink slip. Worse, it also means, their entire choice of profession is (almost) meaningless. Few people are capable of it — and climate scientists aren't any better at it, than anyone else. Hence the frantic resistance...

Meanwhile, consider this — none of the theories you are alluding to would be acceptable for American financial institutions.

The folks who used to work for Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers would like to laugh (and cry) at this obviously false statement.

The regulations I'm referring to were introduced after those names have collapsed. "Obviously false" my tail.

The problem is that the best way to falsify is to run a different experiment with different subjects

Which is just another way for you to admit, it is not, in fact, falsifiable. You've accepted — and confirmed — this fact, you are just trying to explain why. And the "why" is irrelevant... The few falsifiable statements that have been made, have already been falsified — indeed, I offered a link to one, more are easily available. I've requested citations to the counter-examples, which you — despite replying twice already — have been unable to provide. I will not reply again, until I see the list of link-pairs I described above...

But that doesn't make them unscientific.

The person starting this thread claimed, "climate science" is equally scientific to the perfectly falsifiable field of medicine — and denounced everyone, who accepts medical treatments like vaccines while rejecting climate scientists' recommendations, as hypocritical. That statement was bullshit, because medical researchers actually do follow scientific method. Climate researchers do not — whether it is due to some fault of theirs, or the very nature of their domain, is irrelevant.

Whether this makes them completely unscientific or just less scientific, is a matter of semantics — but it certainly makes their conclusions less reliable than those of other disciplines (such as medicine). Hence, rejecting or questioning them is not at all "anti-science".

The "raw data" showed a higher temperature rise, due to the effects of increased industrialization near recording stations, so they had to "massage" it to remove that flaw

Thank you for confirming my statement — that massaging did take place. I'm not saying, it was not necessary — I was just pointing out, that it was done by programs written by fallible humans, who had the same conflict of interest I keep bringing up. They had all the incentive to "hide the decline" — such as by subtly altering the software or tweaking the calibration constants in it until the resulting figures confirmed, what they (or their bosses) wanted to see.

They also attempted to hide the raw data, and even destroyed some of it. Had scientists working for "Big Tobacco" or "Big Oil" been caught at any of such, their credibility would've been destroyed forever — why you'd give the "Big Government" scientists a pass, escapes me.

Un

There is not, and never has been, an inheritance tax between spouses that causes middle class little old ladies to have to sell their houses

And yet if you read this that problem has caused both Labour and Conservative governments to alter the rules on the nil band multiple times since 2007

http://researchbriefings.files...

Not to mention people who knew what they were talking about set up a trust to avoid the problem before 2007

Deutsch's point is that under AV or any low Gallagher Index systems there's no way for voters to vote to remove the third party from government.

And he's right. You can see here that the winning party hardly ever gets more than 50% of the vote

https://researchbriefings.parl...

See PDF

http://researchbriefings.files...

On page 7 you can see in only two elections did the winning party get more than 50% of the vote - the Conservatives in 1931 and 1935 though Labour came close in 1951 and 1966

So you'd end up with 1st/3rd party coalitions almost all the time.

And - as he points out in the comments - that's what has happened in Israel and Germany.

In Israel religious parties typically hold the balance of power and extract subsidies unpopular with the great majority. In Germany for 49 years the FDP with

Saying 'well people might vote differently' doesn't affect his argument. People vote differently from the UK in Germany and Israel and differently between Israel and Germany. However both Israel and Germany have the same problem where smaller parties can extract unpopular concessions from the larger ones as a price for entering a governing coalition.

Deutsch's point is that under AV or any low Gallagher Index systems there's no way for voters to vote to remove the third party from government.

And he's right. You can see here that the winning party hardly ever gets more than 50% of the vote

https://researchbriefings.parl...

See PDF

http://researchbriefings.files...

On page 7 you can see in only two elections did the winning party get more than 50% of the vote - the Conservatives in 1931 and 1935 though Labour came close in 1951 and 1966

So you'd end up with 1st/3rd party coalitions almost all the time.

And - as he points out in the comments - that's what has happened in Israel and Germany.

In Israel religious parties typically hold the balance of power and extract subsidies unpopular with the great majority. In Germany for 49 years the FDP with

Saying 'well people might vote differently' doesn't affect his argument. People vote differently from the UK in Germany and Israel and differently between Israel and Germany. However both Israel and Germany have the same problem where smaller parties can extract unpopular concessions from the larger ones as a price for entering a governing coalition.

Out of interest, what did you think would happen with the Irish border?

Pretty much what is happening - the UK and the EU will do a deal.

Brexit has little ot do with that. ECHR is a separte thing and exiting the EU won't take us out of the ECHR. Also, Article 8, the right to a privacy?

Right to family life, inter alia.

102 foreign criminals and illegal immigrants we can't deport - More than 100 foreign criminals and illegal immigrants have beaten deportation under controversial "right to family life" laws in the past year.

Inside the EU the EU will no doubt argue that ECHR membership is a condition of EU membership

http://researchbriefings.parli...
"Opinions differ as to whether a Member State can withdraw from the European Convention and remain in the EU, given that the EU Treaties specifically refer to the human rights guarantees in the Council of Europe instrument."

In the PDF file the EU Commission claimed

"Respect for fundamental rights as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights is an explicit obligation for the Union under Article 6(2) [now Article 6(3)] of the Treaty on European Union, and the Court of Justice has held that the Convention is of especial importance for determining the fundamental rights that must be respected by the Member States as general principles of law when they act within the scope of Union law. The rights secured by the Convention are among the rights guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. In the negotiations for the accession of new Union members, respect for the Convention and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights is treated as part of the Union acquis. Any Member State deciding to withdraw from the Convention and therefore no longer bound to comply with it or to respect its enforcement procedures could, in certain circumstances, raise concern as regards the effective protection of fundamental rights by its authorities. Such a situation, which the Commission hopes will remain purely hypothetical, would need to be examined under Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on European Union."

Article 7 is about suspending countries from the EU

http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/w...

"Where a determination under paragraph 2 has been made, the Council, acting by a qualified majority, may decide to suspend certain of the rights deriving from the application of the Treaties to the Member State in question, including the voting rights of the representative of the government of that Member State in the Council."

I.e, the EU Commission is making a clear threat it might suspend UK voting rights, such as they are given we're the state most often in minority, if the UK leaves the ECHR but stays in the EU.

False, the EU is our largest single export market. Second that will likely involve having weaker regulations on product safety, e.g . cars.

http://www.worldstopexports.co...

US is the top country. The EU is not a country, even though it wants to be one. And, like I say I don't expect the EU to impose tariffs on UK exports. And even if they did we've got a trade deficit and using the tariffs we collect on imports to pay the tariffs of exporters is not against WTO rules.

I.e. we could get lower tariffs on exports to non EU countries with most likely no net tariffs on exports to EU ones.

If we have the power to sign our o

Norway pays about 2/3 the single-market contribution per capita than the UK (£140 in Norway, £220 in the UK).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Nor is membership of the EEA without costs, she points out. Through it, Norway contributes €340 million a year to the EU - despite neither being a member, nor having any voting rights. Were the UK to leave the EU, its annual contribution through the EEA might fall to just €2 billion from the net contribution of €11.6 billion it makes at present.

http://researchbriefings.files...

EEA countries also make annual financial contributions to the EU in return for access to its single market. Over the period 2009 to 2014, Norway is providing almost €1.8 billion through the EEA and Norway grants to efforts to reduce social and economic disparities within the EEA (The UK's estimated net annual contribution to the EU budget was £8.1 billion in 2011 and £6.9 billion in 2012) The EEA and Norway grants were negotiated in parallel with the negotiations on improved market access for seafood, which is an area where the EEA Agreement does not provide for full market access.

I.e. Norway's contributions are substantially less than they would make as a full EU member.

Nope. "20 million Euros or 4% of the undertakingâ(TM)s total annual worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year, whichever is higher"

-- https://publications.parliamen...

Although interestingly that wording doesn't explore complex corporate structures, and 'undertaking' doesn't look like it's defined anywhere. Although if it was it probably wouldn't help, I read the definition of 'controller' and couldn't make any fucking sense of it at all. Bloody legalese.

Yes very progressive in the media and university establishment. And look at the government, so progressive in Europe. I mean just think how much shilling they go out for to protect islamists, covering up those rape gangs, burying their head in the sand over extremist imams. The same ones who'd turn around and kill that trans individuals or gays. And just look at that progressive media in the US, the ones not reporting on the mass murder by Emanuel Samson. You know the black guy, who's the equivalent of Dylan Roof and shot up that church full of whites. So progressive to cover up for the supremacist, I mean we really wouldn't want a "social outcry" like what happened when whitey shot up that black church.

It's kinda like feminism too. Which turns around and cozy's up with islamists and defends them so fiercely. The same islamists who'd turn around and demand that the "stupid whore should get that black bag on, and shut her mouth up." After all, those sharia courts that are running in the UK are also very progressive in many cases, per your own inquiry. They operate on the belief that women are eternal children. So progressive!

Crime in the UK has been slowly decreasing over the past 25 years, however since 2014 it has started rising again (source). Coincidentally, police officers in the UK have been slowly rising, until 2010, since when there has been a reduction of 20,000 - down from approx 140,000 to 120,000 (source). More police indeed could not have stopped a vehicle from mounting the pavement (not sidewalk, this is the UK), however a former Met officer (that's London) has been very vocal about the reductions and that current staffing levels are faked and has directly led to a rise in crime and terrorism - police also gather information and investigate leads. So while they cannot prevent a crime once it has been committed, they most certainly can prevent some crimes before they are committed. The rising crime figures reflect this.

That you live in a magical land of unicorns and pixies where police levels do not influence crime which falls all by itself is lovely and all, but not founded in demonstrable reality.

You should reread the sentence before it: " Women were still considered people even though they had less rights just like the men that didn't own property."

Men that didn't own property couldn't vote.

August 18, 1920 - 19th Amendment grants womens suffrage.

July 1, 1971 - 26th Amendment grants suffrage to citizens to young to vote but old enough to die in war. For 50 years soldiers had less rights than women yet they had the responsibility of defending those rights.

The argument against women's suffrage was that if they were given civic rights they would be expected to adopt civic responsibilities. It just so happened that no one wanted to push women into war after suffrage was granted. The last time the topic of women signing up for selective service was brought up, it was shot down because "women can't do the jobs required for war". This was in the 70's. Now that women are doing all jobs in the military during war, they have proven they can do that responsibility. Should they sign up for the same responsibilities as every other voting citizen?

Why would a formation of a political group matter more than their actual results?

According to "Before 1918 no women were allowed to vote in parliamentary elections"... What was your point? Did I miss something?

https://petition.parliament.uk...

"compiled the list" is internet for "cut and paste" . In this case from Schedule 4 of http://www.publications.parlia...

The blog is linked to from the article. If that's too much for you, here's a link: https://yiu.co.uk/blog/who-can-view-my-internet-history/

Immediately before the actual list, the blog says "A list of who will have the power to access your internet connection records is set out in Schedule 4 of the Act"

The act does indeed have "schedule 4". One version of it can be found here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2016-2017/0066/17066.pdf

I don't suppose this post will do any good though, as reading truly does seem beyond you.

This petition is currently getting a signature a second by my reckoning. https://petition.parliament.uk...

Has it actually been passed?

I saw this story on Slashdot yesterday (Thursday) and it's now Friday morning (10am in England) and there is nothing on the BBC and no update to the parliament.uk page regarding the bill.

Is there a chance this hasn't actually been passed which is why it's not being reported? The BBC has no recent (within last week) news on this.

OK, so searching with Google News I can now see a few UK papers picking this up today: The Independent, Digital Trends, Out-Law, and Press Gazetta but they are not what you'd consider main-stream.

Fuck the main-stream media.

Fuck the UK government.

The news suppression must be in force.

No mention of it on the BBC website, but that's frequently the case if the government want something suppressed, the BBC is not the impartial news service that some people outside the UK think it is.

What's more annoying is that it has no mention of this on the bills before parliament site which shows the last action as Lords bouncing back to Commons.

But even if it's not actually law yet, it's going to be soon. There are just formalities left.

. Two years after article 50 of the Lisbon treaty has been invoked, the UK will be out of the EU anyways, even if no "exit deal" is reached. That's what article 50 says.

That's not what law professors told the House of Lords, or the person responsible for drafting the article think.

https://www.parliament.uk/abou...

. . . .if Parliament is required to have their say. . . the PM can put the question to Parliament, and if the question fails, she can call for elections. . .

If they're replaced by new MPs that support Brexit, it will pass the second time.

That's the way it's SUPPOSED to work. I suspect, that in reality, not too many MPs will be replaced: they have similar incumbency to that of the US House: 8.7 years in Parliament vs 9.1 years in the House. . .

The petition in question was about confirming the electorate's wishes if the vote was close. Rather like one of those "are you really sure" questions you get before doing something potentially dangerous (like reformatting a hard disk).

In this case, I think there are good grounds for the government to confirm the electorate's wishes, given the closeness of the vote and the enormity of the decision.

It's worth pointing out that unless you believe in ex post facto legislation (passing laws which apply to acts which occurred before the law was ever a law), the consequence of approving this petition would be that a vote to overturn the referendum and remain in the EU would need to win by a 60% margin with 75% of the electorate participating. In other words, it would not invalidate the already-counted vote to Leave. The Remain side would need to get at least 60% in a new vote, while simultaneously convincing roughly half of the people wishing to leave to even bother to vote (so they could get over 75% participation) to invalidate the previous referendum. You cannot move the goalposts after the fact, then claim previous goals are invalidated based on the new goalpost position.

As has been pointed out, the petition was initially a last ditch spoiler backup plan in case the Leave side lost, and wasn't a very well thought-out one at that. It actually makes it harder for the loser to reverse a referendum (25% of the population on the winning side simply has to refuse to participate in the re-vote), than a straight-up majority-wins vote at a later time. And it's worded poorly enough that you'd have to constantly run referendums if the 60% and 75% thresholds were not surpassed.

Five years maximum if you stab someone (without killing them): http://www.inbrief.co.uk/offen...

Average prison sentence length for rape: 8 years: http://www.publications.parlia...

source

Is this really worse than rape?

For the benefit of UK readers of this site (and, incidentally the rest of Europe, imo), I am going to copy a post of mine that I've made elsewhere.

There is a method by which members of the public can petition parliament, with that petition forming the basis for a commons debate. The parliament website says that it will "take the existing threshold of 100,000 signatures for a petition to be considered for debate in the House as a starting-point. But it also noted that there may be occasions when a debate is not appropriate—such as when a debate has already taken place in the House on the same subject"

The petition I have in mind is here:

Petition for a second EU Referendum

It doesn't have quite the rationale I'd have used - personally I'd have gone with something like "Whereas the leave campaign grossly misrepresented their position and flat out lied to the voting public we the undersigned..." but there's no point filing multiple petitions to the same end, as that could potentially split the vote, resulting in a much weaker case for a second referendum.

Of course, parliament has already debated the issue, so the chances of getting a second referendum are slim indeed. But slim is not nil! If enough signatures are gathered, if there is an overwhelming show of support, there is always a chance. What counts as overwhelming? Well, considering about seventeen and a half million people voted to leave the EU, I'd say about twenty million signatures would be required to guarantee a second chance. How can we get that many signatures? One at a time!

Bearing in mind that in the immediate aftermath following the results about £150 billion was wiped off our national worth, one of the leaders of the leave campaign admitted that the campaign (not him, of course, never him) lied about at least one of its major promises, and, listening to Nicola Sturgeon we are facing the breakup of Great Britain itself, we simply cannot sit back and do nothing.

So, if you voted to remain in the EU, I'm sure you need little persuading. Please sign the petition.

If you did not vote, and, like me, are aghast at what has happened, and what will almost inevitably happen, please sign the petition.

If you voted to leave the EU, in all good conscience, and are now realising that you were misled by the leave campaign, and are, similarly, shocked by the reactions and revelations that have followed, please, do the right thing, and sign the petition.

Finally, after you have signed the petition, hang on to some hope, there is still a faint glimmer of it, and share this post, share the shares, or, in any other way you can, make as many people as you can aware of the petition, and encourage them to sign it.

Please, before it's too late!

I think this evening was just it passing 3rd reading stage of the Commons. Can follow progress at http://services.parliament.uk/... (this was linked in the summary above).

Comparing murder, rape, robbery, and total violent crime for the ten years before the UK gun ban vs the ten years after, we find that murder, rape, robbery, and total violent crime all doubled immediately after the ban. .

No they didn't. What happened is that the recording of the statistics changed in 1998 and crimes were now recorded as per victim, not per perpetrator so for example if a credit card was stolen and used in 5 shops previously only one crime would have been recorded. When the change was implemented that was recorded as 5 separate crimes. As a result of the change in the way crimes were recorded, the offence of "Violence against the person" increased in numbers by 118% between 1997/8 and 1998/9. That doesn't mean that there was a more than doubling of violent crime in a year, just that because of the way the offences were recorded it resulted in a doubling.

If you're interested in learning the facts.... http://researchbriefings.files...

http://www.parliament.uk/busin... is the background.
UK mass surveillance 'totalitarian' and will 'cost lives', warns ex-NSA tech boss (06 Jan 16 )
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar... has some more background with the pdf:
Re link to the draft bill https://www.gov.uk/government/...

The problem with the UK system of government is that once a party gets a majority they can pretty much do what they like, and so there isn't really much to stop them just grabbing whatever powers and data they want now. Plus, it is likely that they are using the usual tactic of asking for extreme powers and then "compromising" on the only slightly milder powers they really wanted. Hay, look, they are listening to our concerns!

The written submissions are interesting reading. For example, Trading Standards wants access to enforce trade marks. They want the ability to sift through your metadata to enforce commercial trademarks. This is just to start with, we haven't even had the mission creep yet, and they want to use this hugely invasive tool that other oppressive regimes can only dream about for the relatively mundane purpose of enforcing commercial trade marks. Not paedophiles, not terrorists, companies using branding without permission.

Then they ask if it is really necessary to have judicial review of Trading Standard's requests, because hay they can monitor themselves for abuse and save a bit of time and money. Oh, and anyone who doesn't cooperate should go to jail, because this is Trading Standards, those trade marks are life or death!

It gets worse from there. The Police Chief's council is concerned that hacking will be limited to serious cases only. Even ignoring the flimsy justification, it's a really, really stupid idea because the more police malware is used the easier it will become to get samples, detect and block it. I somehow doubt that foreign anti-virus companies are going to add exceptions for the UK police to target the phones of people posting revenge porn.

Naturally they are worried that the retention term might be reduced from 12 months too, because they prefer to record things forever, e.g. their vast DNA database.

The CPS claims that evidence acquired by hacking will be usable in prosecutions. This is rather worrying. Once a device or computer has been hacked it will be extremely easy to plant evidence on it. The accused will find themselves in the position of having to pay for independent experts to give evidence that the prosecution could have planted incriminating files or metadata, or just written their own log files. They must be planning ways to get around people claiming that they were framed when hacked evidence is used, which is extremely alarming.

The Local Government Association simply lies in their submission. They point out that under existing legislation only 19 out of 6000 data access requests were rejected by courts, but of course don't mention that many of those granted were later found out to be abuses or unwanted mission creep.

Basically government agencies are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of being able to pry into people's lives, while everyone else is extremely alarmed and vowing to resist.

The problem with the UK system of government is that once a party gets a majority they can pretty much do what they like, and so there isn't really much to stop them just grabbing whatever powers and data they want now. Plus, it is likely that they are using the usual tactic of asking for extreme powers and then "compromising" on the only slightly milder powers they really wanted. Hay, look, they are listening to our concerns!

The written submissions are interesting reading. For example, Trading Standards wants access to enforce trade marks. They want the ability to sift through your metadata to enforce commercial trademarks. This is just to start with, we haven't even had the mission creep yet, and they want to use this hugely invasive tool that other oppressive regimes can only dream about for the relatively mundane purpose of enforcing commercial trade marks. Not paedophiles, not terrorists, companies using branding without permission.

Then they ask if it is really necessary to have judicial review of Trading Standard's requests, because hay they can monitor themselves for abuse and save a bit of time and money. Oh, and anyone who doesn't cooperate should go to jail, because this is Trading Standards, those trade marks are life or death!

It gets worse from there. The Police Chief's council is concerned that hacking will be limited to serious cases only. Even ignoring the flimsy justification, it's a really, really stupid idea because the more police malware is used the easier it will become to get samples, detect and block it. I somehow doubt that foreign anti-virus companies are going to add exceptions for the UK police to target the phones of people posting revenge porn.

Naturally they are worried that the retention term might be reduced from 12 months too, because they prefer to record things forever, e.g. their vast DNA database.

The CPS claims that evidence acquired by hacking will be usable in prosecutions. This is rather worrying. Once a device or computer has been hacked it will be extremely easy to plant evidence on it. The accused will find themselves in the position of having to pay for independent experts to give evidence that the prosecution could have planted incriminating files or metadata, or just written their own log files. They must be planning ways to get around people claiming that they were framed when hacked evidence is used, which is extremely alarming.

The Local Government Association simply lies in their submission. They point out that under existing legislation only 19 out of 6000 data access requests were rejected by courts, but of course don't mention that many of those granted were later found out to be abuses or unwanted mission creep.

Basically government agencies are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of being able to pry into people's lives, while everyone else is extremely alarmed and vowing to resist.

It's no bloody use right now!

* We can't maintain one-boat-at-sea at all times, because they're falling to bits - they can't even complete readiness drills reliably

* We can't use it anyway : From the House of Commons Defence Select Committee (in 2006) : "the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it"

In short, it's just a way to siphon money into the pockets of defence contractors.

Jeremy's heresy is that he wants to use those resources to build infrastructure to better all our lives instead of just a few rich warmongers.

canadian naval maintenance guys are buying repair parts on ebay http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
but as the saying went, http://www.northernsun.com/ima...

It's no bloody use right now!

* We can't maintain one-boat-at-sea at all times, because they're falling to bits - they can't even complete readiness drills reliably

* We can't use it anyway : From the House of Commons Defence Select Committee (in 2006) : "the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it"

In short, it's just a way to siphon money into the pockets of defence contractors.

Jeremy's heresy is that he wants to use those resources to build infrastructure to better all our lives instead of just a few rich warmongers.

Corbyn and McDonnell are on this list:
http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2...

Link

Early day motion 1240

NHS HOMEOPATHIC HOSPITALS

        Session: 2006-07
        Date tabled: 28.03.2007
        Primary sponsor: Vis, Rudi
        Sponsors:
                Campbell, Ronnie
                Conway, Derek
                Meale, Alan
                Russell, Bob
                Wareing, Robert N

That this House welcomes the positive contribution made to the health of the nation by the NHS homeopathic hospitals; notes that some six million people use complementary treatments each year; believes that complementary medicine has the potential to offer clinically-effective and cost-effective solutions to common health problems faced by NHS patients, including chronic difficult to treat conditions such as musculoskeletal and other chronic pain, eczema, depression, anxiety and insomnia, allergy, chronic fatigue and irritable bowel syndrome; expresses concern that NHS cuts are threatening the future of these hospitals; and calls on the Government actively to support these valuable national assets.

  Total number of signatures: 206

        Show:
        Supported byWithdrawn signatures

Showing 206 out of 206
Name Party Constituency Date Signed ...

Corbyn, Jeremy Labour Party Islington North 17.04.2007

Similar with the UK e-petitions scheme. The top two are (with 200k+ signatures each and 'awaiting a debate in parliament) are for general hate of one guy from the cabinet and to legalize cannabis. I think everybody has realized that anything they do not actually want to acknowledge will just go into limbo or will get a response that just avoids the issues.

I mean, when members of the House of Lords make selfies in womens underwear

Women have held peerages in the House of Lords for over half a century. So I don't see the problem unless there is some other reason making it improper for members of the House of Lords to model underwear.

Amazingly:

Last year, British officials claimed that flight log records, which might have shed light on those rendition operations, were "incomplete due to water damage” thanks to “extremely heavy weather in June 2014.” A week later, they suddenly reversed themselves, saying that the “previously wet paper records have been dried out.” Two months later, they insisted the logs had not dried out at all and were “damaged to the point of no longer being useful.” Except that the British government’s own weather data indicates that June 2014 was an unusually dry month on Diego Garcia.

My comment about the BBC documentary (yes... i insist!) "Yes, (Prime) Minister" has been modded as "Funny" BUT:

I was watching an episode of it with some "lessons" about how a politician can avoid a reporter's question, and the advise was "just answer the question by saying 'that's not the question', and change the subject answering something irrelevant" - ABOUT JUST AN HOUR LATER i watched some politician in the T.V. DOING EXACTLY THAT (and the phrase he used in Greek -i am Greek- was an exact translation of "that's not the question" )!!!

Amazingly:

Last year, British officials claimed that flight log records, which might have shed light on those rendition operations, were "incomplete due to water damage” thanks to “extremely heavy weather in June 2014.” A week later, they suddenly reversed themselves, saying that the “previously wet paper records have been dried out.” Two months later, they insisted the logs had not dried out at all and were “damaged to the point of no longer being useful.” Except that the British government’s own weather data indicates that June 2014 was an unusually dry month on Diego Garcia.