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UK Switches Off £235M Child Database

Posted by timothy on from the after-all-they've-grown-up dept.

wdef writes "The UK's controversial ContactPoint database has actually been switched off! It's rare that we hear anything this sensible from government about an expensive, privacy-destroying, 'think of the children' solution: 'The government argued the system was disproportionate to the problem, so is looking at developing other solutions.' Perhaps the UK coalition government really is winding back Big Brother, as they had promised to do? Does seem unlikely."

19 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Of course they are, for now... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The coalition is unpopular with a lot of Liberal Democrat voters (not sure what they'd prefer - probably for the LibDems to continue to be completely ineffectual, rather than to get at least some of their policies passed) and is in danger of a back-bench rebellion by the LibDem MPs who'd rather pander to popular opinion than get on with running the country. They need to do some things about civil liberties to keep these people on side, and cancelling existing programs is one of the few things that won't alienate Conservative back benchers, who are typically against government spending of any kind.

    So far, the coalition seems to be the best government the UK has had while I've been alive (although, to be fair, that's not exactly hard). Unfortunately, it's not clear how long it will manage to stay together.

    --
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    1. Re:Of course they are, for now... by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm not sure why you're suggesting this is a Lib Dem move. Both parties in the coalition had scrapping this database as a pre-election pledge. And the one actually actioning it is the Conservative Children's Minister.

      It's way too early to judge this government as a "the best". They've only been in power a year. That's short enough that they can take credit for doing things they promised, whilst still blaming anything wrong with the country on the previous government. Things will change. For a related example when there is another Victoria Climbié type case, this government will get the blame for it.

    2. Re:Of course they are, for now... by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Informative

      David Davis was acting as a rebel against Tory policy at the time you mention, thus it's completely wrong to cite his action as representative of Conservatives.

    3. Re:Of course they are, for now... by Hope+Thelps · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's way too early to judge this government as a "the best". They've only been in power a year.

      More like three months in fact.

      --
      To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
    4. Re:Of course they are, for now... by BasilBrush · · Score: 2, Informative

      Any change to the rules is bound to favour one group over another, and could therefore be called gerrymandering.

      It's not a matter of favouring one groups over another in a general sense. If this change were made during the term of a government which had an overall majority, as is usually the case, then it could have perhaps been judged as being good in it's own right. A good engineering decision as you describe it perhaps.

      However that's not the case. It's always been the case that a government could face a vote of no confidence, and a simple majority would have the effect of forcing a general election. It's rarely been used, but it's probably been a good thing on those occasions when it has been. This government has quite cynically changed the percentage to 55% because of the particular number of seats the Conservatives have. The conservatives have 47% of the seats, so if they become so unpopular that even the Lib-Dems don;t support them any more, they will still cling onto power under the new rule. but they would be out under the old rule.

      This isn't about making coalitions more stable. It's about the Conservatives being able to lose their coalition partners, and still cling on to power. It's a change to specifically bolster this Conservative administration, not a change designed for more stable government in general. Gerrymandering was the polite way of putting it.

    5. Re:Of course they are, for now... by Nursie · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's doing precisely what she did: blaming a previous socialist government for over-spending

      Which they did, without any doubt at all

      proudly announcing in the first few months of Thatcher - who was a fine orator for the easily soundbitten - how she would save the country with her laissez faire mantra.

      Which she did, I'm sorry if your sensibilities were offended, but she unloaded some deeply unprofitable industry from the state and thus stopped the profitable sectors from being tied down with mega-taxes to support continuing, economically non-viable industry in areas like coal mining.

      And, within the first two years of government, you must divert all attention to some enemy: the Argentinians, the Russkies, the Arabs. I dread to think what Cameron will come up with.

      Sorry, WTF? After the Iraq fiasco you're saying the Tories will invent enemies!?!?!!!

      Jesus, hope it's fun living in la-la land, sounds like you've been there a while.

    6. Re:Of course they are, for now... by monkeythug · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think it will stay together for the full term, firstly because they are going to change the rules so that 55% of the MPs need to vote to for a dissolution.

      To any independently minded person, it stinks of gerrymandering to change the rules of democracy in order to keep yourself in power. Like some third world dictatorship.

      This is a source of confusion for many people. The 55% rule to dissolve parliament is in addition to the existing "motion of no confidence" which still requires only 50% + 1 MP to pass.

      In a motion of no confidence, parliament is not automatically dissolved - the Prime Minister gets to decide that, and can choose to resign the government instead which results in the Opposition taking over automatically without an election (assuming they have enough seats to form a majority government or can form a coalition of their own to do so).

      The new rule (which I think has now been revised to a higher percentage) allows MPs to force a general election - which is a power that they haven't had before. It gives dissatisfied MPs from across party boundaries another option, where they might not agree on a motion of no confidence since not all of them would necessarily want the opposition to take power without a general election to decide that.

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    7. Re:Of course they are, for now... by monkeythug · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's not the case ... please see my comment above. The new rule is in addition to the motion of no confidence, which still stands.

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      Don't you wish you hadn't wasted 3 seconds of your life reading this sig?
    8. Re:Of course they are, for now... by manicb · · Score: 2, Informative

      David Davis =/= The Conservative Party
       
      He voted against the Digital Economy Bill, which was nice of him, and rebelled over some of the anti-terrorism bills too. However, he also voted against equalising the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual acts, and doesn't have a great record on gay rights. His complete voting record is available. (Warning, page is slow and huge.)

    9. Re:Of course they are, for now... by Nursie · · Score: 2, Informative

      Nationalised British industry as a whole was a complete clusterfsck. It's a good thing that the government is out of it.

    10. Re:Of course they are, for now... by leathered · · Score: 2, Informative

      I work for a PCT and it is the most inefficient and bureaucratic organisation you could possibly imagine. It's running joke that the billions that Labour poured into the NHS would have been better served if they had shovelled the cash into the hospital boilers, in that at least it would have been useful in keeping the patients warm. Even though the disbandment of PCTs puts my livelihood at risk, for the good of the nation and the public purse, they have to go.

      You are just recycling the typical Labour fearmongering over the Tories and the NHS. Health spending actually increased in real terms even under Thatcher, but at least you can trust the Tories to ensure that money makes its way to patient care and not into the pockets of the army of middle managers and others in 'non-jobs' that blight the NHS today.

      --
      For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
    11. Re:Of course they are, for now... by FuckingNickName · · Score: 2, Informative

      You might want to ask your seniors which government, which ideology and which policies created the Trusts you rightly criticise. Or read this.

      Yes, they've got worse under Labour (just as they got worse during the years of Conservative rule), primarily because the Trust system was designed precisely in the knowledge that all such bureaucracies become top-heavy power-struggles.

      It was designed to pave the way for stage two of privatisation: where management is taken out of State control and where services are purchased directly from the private sector.

    12. Re:Of course they are, for now... by kvezach · · Score: 3, Informative

      So party A has the most first choice votes, and party A has the most second choice votes. But party B gets in. Instead of making 49% of people completely happy and 48% slightly happy, you're making 48% completely happy and 33% slightly happy. Why are you giving the final say to the second choice of those who have voted for the least popular candidates?

      That's because AV is not a very good single-winner method. What you want is something more like what Wikimedia uses - a Condorcet method, where each candidate is counted as beating the candidates ranked below it, and the candidate that beats every other one-on-one (like in sports) wins. Unfortunately, it's too radical (with a very few exceptions, no such method has been used for governmental elections) and so it has absolutely no chance even in situations where using a single-winner method would make sense (like electing a president or a party leader).

      For your example, a simple count-the-winning-side Condorcet method would give:
      A preferred to B by 49, B preferred to A by 51, B wins and gets 51 points
      A preferred to C by 97, C preferred to A by 2, A wins and gets 97 points
      A preferred to D by 97, D preferred to A by 1, A wins and gets 97 points

      B preferred to C by 69, C preferred to B by 22, B wins and gets 69 points
      B preferred to D by 70, D preferred to B by 10, B wins and gets 70 points

      C preferred to D by 22, D preferred to C by 10, C wins and gets 22 points

      and the outcome is: A: 194 pts, B: 190 pts, C: 22 pts, D: nil.
      There are better systems (Wikimedia uses the Schulze method), but they are also more complex.

  2. Re:Think of the children by clark0r · · Score: 4, Informative

    Its not exactly like they have cameras in their bedrooms.

    I think they'e already started exactly that.... "CCTV cameras were installed, including in their bedroom. Social workers explained that the cameras were there to observe them performing their parental duties and for the protection of their baby." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/3507238/Social-services-set-up-CCTV-camera-in-couples-bedroom.html

  3. Re:Big gov vs small gov by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    "or just very, very naive."

    Read up on history and see how dictators get into power. Do you think it would be a good idea for someone like hitler to have this sort of technology? Just because something is implausible now doesnt mean it wont be in 50 or 100 years. Our histories are littered with small wins that stand the test of time, its also littered with big loses that have an impact 100s years later. Just because technology makes things easy doesnt mean it should be done.

    P.

  4. Re:They discovered... by D.+Taylor · · Score: 2, Informative

    Consultants.

  5. More power to local government by Kupfernigk · · Score: 2, Informative
    The Lib Dems are strong in local government. Labour (and Thatcherites) hated it. The Lib Dems will support anything that devolves power back to local Government, and Cameron and the Conservative modernisers seem to be less London-centric than New Labour, which basically viewed the country as London, Edinburgh, and the railway line in between. I think it's significant that the new local government Minister is from Yorkshire, possibly the most anti-London part of England. He's begun quite well by announcing that he will ban councils from lobbying or employing lobbyists, which means they will have to put more effort into informing local electorates and less into trying to influence London-based politicians.

    It was Thatcher who began the process of disenfranching not only voters but MPs by governing by Statutory Instrument, but New Labour were enthusiastic adopters of it (along with PFI, which transferred public projests to private management and made them more profitable for construction and services companies.) The new Government will, I think, actually find it quite hard to be worse.

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  6. Re:They discovered... by ffreeloader · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's called "government efficiency".

    All governments run at this level of efficiency, or worse. If the private sector can do something for a $1,000,000 then government can do the same thing for $10,000,000+. You have to work for a governmental organization to see and understand how it's possible. I didn't really understand how this possible until I worked for a US government agency for a while, and then it became very clear. The waste built into the system was incredible. If someone didn't do their job they hired someone else to do it and kept both people on the payroll rather than firing the incompetent/lazy employee and then replacing them. The same went for parts/machinery. If they ordered something custom-built and it didn't come in built to specifications then they had another one built and paid for both.

    Any private enterprise run the same way the government agency I worked for was would have gone out of business in a very short time. It would have bankrupted itself, just like both of our governments are, and have been, doing for years. You think it's chance that deficit spending is the norm? Corruption and incompetence rule.

    --
    "while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
  7. Re:Think of the children by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Name calling is first grade stuff. Calling it "Torygraph" only hurts your cause.