Slashdot Mirror
UK Gov't Launches 'Your Freedom' Website To Seek Laws Worth Repealing
Firefalcon writes "The UK Government launched Thursday the 'Your Freedom' website, headed by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, to 'identify laws that should be repealed.' In a recent tweet, Police State UK pointed out an article in the New Statesman which appeals for people to call on the Government to repeal the ill thought-out Digital Economy Act that was rushed through Parliament without sufficient scrutiny. While part of the Act is regarding the digital TV switchover, other sections allow for users to be restricted or disconnected from the Internet at the behest of copyright owners, which goes against the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' that has been in place since the Magna Carta."
Damm, that rocks. Can we have some?
Shooter licensing and gun registration, imposing penalties for refusing to divulge passwords, default penalties for people who refuse drug and alcohol testing all go against the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' that has been in place since the Magna Carta.
The 3 strikes "omgah, your a illegal downloader!!1!1!!!" law that was secretly brought in. Nothing else that im aware of needs changing. Maybe the games industry tax relief? *shrugs*
This should be coupled with a law that states there can only be a thousand laws (not including this law) on the books at any one time.
That means that if they want to add a new law, they would have to get rid of an old one to make space. This would keep the number of laws from getting ridiculous, as well as discourage legislators from passing laws simply to look like they're doing something. Though I suppose they could be cunning and have one of the laws always be a disposable one which would be the one replaced by the new useless law which would then become the disposable one.
Hm. There's gotta be a way to discourage politicians from making new laws. Perhaps just keep it simple and make the price of introducing a new law a finger or thumb. No mp could introduce more than 10 laws, and they might be reluctant to introduce even one.
Loose lips lose spit.
What stupid tax regulation that costs the state more money than it raises. Its the bane of all consultants.
Great idea, in theory. I foresee abuse, trolling, duplicate posts and spammers making it an unintelligible and useless database for public opinion, but maybe it will at least highlight a few laws to be looked at and refined. I don't personally believe these sort of ventures stand much ground without some serious work being dedicated to dig out the gems of relevance within the tides of pure crap. The interent is a powerful tool, but having access to unlimited and unmediated information is not always the best thing possible when you need specific ideas. Then again, i've always been a 'pessimist'. We'll see how this works out, i hope it really makes a difference.
I am writing this from within the maximum security wing of the New British National Defence Forces detention island.
I was absolutely delighted to share all of my views about laws I felt needed repealing in the UK. My IP address was in no way used to trace my identity and when my new friends from the NBNDF came to talk to me I felt I was completely fulfilled by their probing and vigorous questions.
I have not been added to any lists of registered subversives.
My stay at the security wing has been fulfilling. I feel refreshed, invigorated and entirely supportive of the NBNDF. No electro-pain equipment was used upon me at all during this week.
Signed,
Mr Bottles.
I just woke up, but I'm still dreaming!
Plus a new law that states all new laws must have a sunset (five years max) and must be voted into renewal each sunset.
(save for actual amendments)
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
You want dumb laws on the books. Dumb laws on the books means the media has something worthy to report on. Dumb laws on the books means potential lawsuits (if it's possible) over such laws.
By the way, does the UK has jury nullification?
This is what can happen in the rest of the civilised world if you vote for the third party.
when i saw that when cameron moved into number 10, he only had a simple bed, 1-2 ikea brand stools and whatnot. i said to myself, well, someone who is living that simple has to have some good qualities at least.
...
immediately thereafter he apologized to irish for the bloody sunday. then, he come up proposing that queen's funds should be frozen. (11 mil or so a year). now, his partner clegg comes up with this.
it is sorry time for elite bloodsuckers in britain
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...but then I realized your nick.
Well played, sir. Well played.
wow lots of legalize cannabis posts. We need something like that here in the states. That would help alot of issues I think.
g0t b33r?
It seems Britain would like to return to it's libertarian laissez faire ways. Kudos.
There's already a campaign on there to repeal the laws of thermodynamics. It's been spotted and locked but not deleted (at least, when I saw it).
'Identify free thinkers and malcontents' more like. Although I fail to see how a british government and rail infrastructure will organise the cattle cars to take us to the british equivalent of the god-forsaken fly-blown taiga (Norwich).
I, for one, will not submit any complaints about the laws but will continue to pay cash for my tinfoil millinery.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Cameron's a fucking brilliant PR man. He knows that the Internet is mostly paTrolled by lazy, middle-class Libertardian types with way too much time on their hands. The loudest voices on this site will not represent the population, but people obsessed with:
Non-single-issue laws which have a significant impact on the freedom or purse of the public, such as those related to the right to remain silent or surveillance or regulatory bodies or corporate taxation or military spending or public-private partnerships are far too complex to be properly analysed by the lazy group dominating the forum, let alone able to be tackled in terms of "keep or repeal". And Cameron knows this.
Let's be clear on this: the majority just love their tyranny. For the small minded (you don't have to look far to find them) it's just so much fun to think up things that other people shouldn't be allowed to do.
A Freedom/Repeal bill is great in principle, but it'll never happen in practice. Quite apart from the problem that any repeals will pilloried as Soft On Something, the coalition have very different ideas on what the little people should be free to do: Cons tend to be pro freedom to smoke tobacco and anti freedom to smoke cannabis, and the Dems are t'other way around, for example.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...how much did this site cost then eh?
Although it's possible they may review it, the bill won't be scrapped. Before the election, I emailed my local Conservative MP (Nick Soames) about the Digital Economy Bill. Here's the response:
Thank you for your email of the 8th April about the Digital Economy Act. I share your concern about this piece of legislation and I want to make clear the approach that my Party has taken.
As you will be aware the Bill received Royal Assent yesterday.
Britain has been made to wait too long for legislation updating the regulatory environment for the digital and creative industries. I regret that once the Government got around to considering these issues, it did not allocate sufficient time in the House of Commons for proper legislative scrutiny. It says a great deal about the Government's support for the creative industries that despite considering many of these issues as far back as 2006 they only just brought this piece of legislation forward.
My Party took the decision to seek to remove those clauses of the Digital Economy Bill that we did not support or feel received proper legislative scrutiny, while supporting the Bill as a whole. Rejecting the Bill would have been an unacceptable set-back for the important measures it contains.
We supported the Bill's efforts to tackle online copyright infringement. This is an extremely serious issue that costs the creative industries hundreds of millions of pounds each year. We want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual property framework in the world for innovators, digital content creators and high tech businesses.
The measures in the Bill aimed at tackling online copyright infringement received robust scrutiny in the House of Lords. My Party was concerned about the lack of Parliamentary oversight of the original clauses and as such the Act now has a super-affirmative resolution in it. This means Parliament will debate any order that the Secretary of State lays that would allow people to be disconnected. These measures can also not be introduced for 12 months [ie 12 months after it became law]. This means that we are by no means rushing in to these decisions and that the next Parliament will be able to consider them beforehand.
The measures in the Act designed to tackle illegal peer to peer file sharing set up a proportionate regime that would, only following public consultation, repeated warnings and due process, lead to people having their internet connection temporarily suspended. It will not, as many have suggested, lead to people being disconnected without an appeal. Even if people are disconnected they will be able to sign up to another ISP immediately without penalty.
While I have no doubt that these measures could have been improved if the Government had allocated time for this Bill to be debated in Committee, blocking these measures in their entirety would have risked hundreds of thousands of jobs in the TV, film, music and sports industries and was therefore not something we were willing to do.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact me.
Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Soames
Fun fact: Nick Soames is Winston Churchill's grandson.
OK, sure. Now are you going to the job they did or are you "too proud" and will just keep claiming benefits instead?
Summation 2
Is the extreme pornography law.
I should not be penalised for having pictures of a simulated act between two consenting adults.
I also think the 'anti-lolicon' law should be scrapped. I disliked lolicon but it's utterly wrong that I could draw two stick people having sex, label one of them as being 17 and end up in jail (with all the fun treatment you get for being labelled a nonce).
Douglas Carswell MP had already been inviting members of the public to contribute to a Great Repeal Bill.
It's rather odd that Nick Clegg (having taken to the Conservative-Liberal coalition like a duck to water) has had to set up this consultation with the public. Prior to May's election his party, the Liberal Democrats, had a fairly comprehensive list of laws they'd like to repeal - as well as supposedly stalwart opposition to illiberal laws proposed by the previous authoritarian government. My thinking was that Clegg could simply re-read his manifesto from a whole 3 months ago, and gain a laundry list of repeals from that.
However it isn't that simple; despite his party being a vital component of the coalition most of the LibDem policies haven't been integrated convincingly to the workings of the government. This has become a much-sneered at point here in Britain; those who voted for Clegg at the election believed in his constant optimistic tone. He struck this same tone to a greater or lesser extent at all the TV debates we had; saying that Britain could become a fine nation, recapture its liberal values which it founded so long ago etc etc. He presented himself as a charismatic leader, with his second-in-command Vince Cable present to provide a sound economic policy; Cable had warned multiple times of an impending recession and was ignored. So we liked the combination; supposedly good leader and less-charismatic but wise economy-guru.
Clegg back in 2003 had partly authored a neoliberal tract named 'The Orange Book' - this basically cast aside most of the social-democratic principles which held quite some sway in the Lib Dems, and proposed a shift to the right for continued economic prosperity. Once the election and post-election negotiation ended, Clegg's deal was revealed. Most were surprised that he'd sold himself short, and abandoned a lot of the socially liberal principles native to his party...there are no signs of the Lib Dem proposals to 'recapture the values' of the past; Clegg has thusfar toed the Tory line - dragging his party into a place quite far from their liberal values. This has caused derision amongst LibDem voters; the Guardian recently had an article which claimed half of them would consider voting for another party next time round.
Basically the Clegg phenomena should have been seen a mile away, and was seen by a minority of individuals. The press went along with "Cleggmania", and the more vitriolic gutter press went with smear campaigns. It all seemed rather refreshing at the time; this liberal guy enraging all the nanny-state, corporate Murdoch press etc. But the truth wasn't investigated in the flurry, perhaps wilfully cast aside - the truth that Clegg, economically and socially, had a heck of a lot in common with our now-Prime Minister Dave Cameron. As I said in a topic on British laws against photographing police a couple of days ago...the new coalition government will not tackle the majority of New Labour's authority intensive legislation. That the Terrorism Act is so broad and vague means its use amongst rank-and-file constables doesn't belong in any democratic nation. The best we can hope for is a moderating of the law, with the formerly positive Clegg now a stooge (or be it, lapdog) of one of our most negative governments in quite some time. Clegg never put up much hardball negotiation, because he saw little worth bargaining for in keeping with his ideology.
Finally that crazy law about shooting a Welshman with a crossbow after midnight can be stricken from the books.
... because a long inquiry into the massacre found that the army used unnecessary force and basically lost control of the situation.
Any PM would have had to apologize after reading the devastating conclussions about the whole sorry saga.
Only in Britain (where people have no idea how coalitions work) do the journalists (lazy ones with an agenda normally) believe that adjusting to the political realities of being a junior partner in a coalition is "selling out".
The reallity is that the coalition is composed of more than 300 Conservatives and around 50 Lib Dems.
It stands to reason to expect that the Lib Dems would bring all their government programme superceding the one of the coalition Senior partners.
Repeal The Treaty of Paris of 1783, the Treaty of London of 1794 and The Treaty of Ghent.
The AC above was my response to your post; I must have accidentally checked the 'Post Anonymously' box. Here's a thought to give this post a point:
This year, the UK is closer in political climate to the USA and Australia in the sense that all major parties occupy a much narrower spectrum than say...the parties of Germany, Netherlands, some Scandinavian nations. On the continent there's a nice left-right spectrum often expressed between 4 and 10 major parties!
All three of our major parties are quite authoritarian, and right-wing; the question is not whether the neoliberal ideas are the correct ones, but exactly how these concepts should be implemented to reality. (This is paraphrased from politicalcompass.org ).
Chances are they'll both be able to agree on repealing 'Stuff That Labour Did'.
Actually, since the Repeal Bill was a Lib Dem manifesto pledge that made it into the Coalition agreement, it might be worthwhile seeing what it was the Liberals had in mind. This might change because the Tories will have their own ideas and they might even bring in some public suggestions from that website (it is just about possible), but I'd expect the bill to end up looking a lot like that one.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
For quick reference, here's the page on the repeal of the Digital Economy Act:
http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/repealing-unnecessary-laws/digital-economy-act
Please add your votes/comments.
Sir Humphry says: Noooooo, Minister.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The Magna Carta is a horribly outdated document and some of the terms are laughable. It's why it's only used as a guideline, not as a cast iron constitution. Here's some questionable rules it puts across:
If you're a noble, your heir cannot be of someone of lower social class.
If you're a widow, you can't re-marry without permission from the crown.
Rules regarding debt (specifically) to Jews.
Nobility can only be punished by their equals
Women cannot accuse anyone of murder unless the victim was their husband
Lots of rulings regarding specific barons alive at the time and new forests that had been created that are utterly irrelevant now.
They are maybe irrelevant, but that does not make them revocable.
The so-called 'War on Tourism' law that was so loosely written that police are detaining people for taking photographs of parades. Google it if you don't believe me.
I would pick "mandatory disclosure of encryption keys". No one should ever be compelled to testify against him/herself.
The military could not take over a country with 100 million armed individuals. Bomb the cities and lose your economic base. At the end of the day, you need boots on the ground to take over, and there is no way to do that if the populace is armed to the teeth. Look at the chaos a bunch of poorly-armed ragtag extremists cause the military. Imagine if Saddam had not banned guns. Would have been a bloodbath. Even the Japanese military leaders knew during WWII that a ground assault on the US would have been suicide given the number of armed people in the US even at that time.
Uber-Liberal assholes like you are the reason why other countries are gelded into submission.
In the mid-1950s, Chinese Chairman Mao noticed that the revolution was getting a little stale (after having purged and killed all the productive people after winning in 1949).
So he announced a campaign to have people come forward with new ideas and reforms to get people excited again about the new government. "Let a hundred flowers bloom! Let a thousand ideas break free!"
Some people came forward. And spoke out about the problems. And suggested reforms and solutions.
The communists rounded them up and put them into slave labor prison camps, for their re-education and the redirection of their labor for the people's benefit. There may still be a few remaining alive, left in the Chinese re-education camps.
I remember this whenever the government (Which government? Any government. Any group of men with guns that have permission to kill you) invites its citizens to come forth with suggestions for improving the way that they do things.
If you have ideas to reform and improve government operations, for God's sake, don't tell anyone. Quietly and discreetly discuss your ideas with others who have the power and authority (not necessarily the same thing) to make it happen. Just do it. Make your changes invisible and inevitable.
This doubly applies to people working in corporations.
Stay low, stay effective, stay informed, stay relevant, and stay alive.
the Laws of Physics, they get in the way of unrestrained and perpetual economic growth.
Just pass a bill that says "All elected representatives are required to certify under oath that they have both read and understand any act/law they vote for.
That would solve the legnth problem, the complexity problem, etc. because anything written in legalese simply wouldn't have enough people willing to put their credibility on the line (and yes, this would give credibility back to our system if people were watchful and there were penalties for lying about it).
Basically it's a prescription for inactivity except on major issues where there is a pressing need and a national consensus which sounds pretty damn good to me.
"any pm would have had to apologize after X" - you are either very young, or very naive.
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someone who was rotten inside, would feel the need to live a pompous life wherever s/he went. no holds barred. even if he is having such calculations, it means that he has at least a sense of logic, measure, modesty whatever you call it.
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They are actually very much revocable: they were revoked within a decade and had to be forced into being reinstated.
even the 'upper class minimalism' of some people is a positive trait compared to the mainstream politics of today.
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From a UK blogger Chris Applegate:
"This could have been a nice idea; crowdsourcing opinions from ordinary citizens and the wider public away from the professional lobbyists or niche activists and giving them a more coherent and representative voice. It could be used to take a hard look at some of the laws that people have found restrictive over the years, whether they be anti-terror laws, anti-smoking or anti-foxhunting (for the sake of this analysis, I’m deliberately being neutral on what I think of these respective matters). Instead, it’s so vague and generalised that it’s become “a massive dickhead magnet” (© Justin) within hours of opening.
The submission form (login required) doesn’t ask for specifics on which laws or regulations should be looked at, but rather “ideas”, which renders it near-pointless. The questions for the form fields are so vague – “What is your idea?” and “Why is your idea important?” that you could literally put anything there. The moderation policy implies they operate post-moderation – i.e. no moderation – with little or no prescreening at all.
The result is that any old shit can get in, and it does. Even if those ideas are proposing adding more new laws, rather than taking them away – such as Restrict Immigration which turns into a rambling stream of barely-consciousness:
Schools cannot cope with the amount of children who speak different languages and it is holding back our children’s education. The same with gypsies. If this is a life style they choose, fine. Contribute to the tax pot or do not expect use of public services. Why should taxpayers provide taxis for their children to attend schools etc. Ridiculous.
The ideas look like something that’s fallen off the back of Have Your Say. In fact actually if you look at the relevant HYS page you’ll see exactly that – people spelling out just how they want the government to enforce their own petty prejudices rather than reform what we have. Let’s look at the comments beneath:
Prison meant to be for punishment, but the so called Human Rightists
Ok enough. Next
My proposal would be for a new law
Oh, fuck off.
So, what can we learn from this? First off, design your site better. If you want people to propose changes to laws, then make the users think about those laws when submitting. There should be a mandatory field asking them to specify which acts or regulations they would want to change – e.g. “Terrorism Act 2000. Anyone who just writes “laws about immigrunts“, or doesn’t put a proper name for the law, or the year, filter it out.
(This has a beneficial side-effect – with a bit of fuzzy parsing, we could include a link to the relevant law on OPSI in the proposal so we can look up the more relevant section, and it also makes finding related proposals on the same law easy, a sort of auto-tagging).
Secondly, pre-moderate. If a proposed change is totally incompatible with our international obligations, say if some idiot wants to get rid of all human rights legislation or leave the EU or scrap the NHS, the moderation team should have the sanity and bravery to filter it out. Anything badly spelt, in all caps, copy & pasted from The Chap or proposing repealing murder, bin it. This is not an issue of denying freedom of speech – the green ink brigade are free to write wherever they like – but of keeping the site a proper and sensible civic space. If you want to get the most out of an online community, you have to keep it in good order.
Thirdly, delete duplicates and employ an algorithm to suggest duplicates to a user before they post – look at the number of duplicates for repealing the Digital Economy Act (though you’d think geeks especially would check for dupes before posting). Having fiv
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Which job? Blowing up buses and trains, or killing girls for not wanting to be bought and sold like cattle?
If Americans had any knowledge of history, you would be getting lots of angry replies to your post. Especially on this July 4th weekend, when for some reason I forget we have some extra time to do such things.
If Britons had any knowledge of history, you would be getting lots of even angrier replies to your post.
The implication that the switchover to digital pay TV has no freedom-restricting consequences is inaccurate - millions of people have been forced to take out Sky or 'Free'view subscriptions in order to continue watching television for which they have already paid through the licence fee. I myself will be voting for the switchover to be reversed, and the costs reclaimed from the collaborators.
If you say so. "UK Gov't Launches 'Your Freedom' Website To Seek Laws Worth Repealing " may not be the most general of cases. I suppose a statement (by you) that "in the US federal la requires the possibility of..." would be very hard to argue with, as well as entirely informative. BUt what you said was that it is done fairly often. As I mentioned, I have read of it occurring in an Australian State, can you point to the laws you refer to being invoked or used in some specific case in the US? I do not think that these laws exist in the UK (where, BTW, I live) and am pleased to help anyone else avoid confusion on this.
How about repealing the laws against bestiality ? Some of us love our pets a lot. Having a Penalty of Life in Prison if caught makes any fun mighty risky. Are there any willing to risk speaking out about this and taking the risk to rework the law to still punish cruelty to animals while allowing consentual sexual relationships between humans and animals ?