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19,000 Emails Against and 0 In Favor of UK Draft Communications Bill
Qedward writes "Open source writer Glyn Moody discusses the Draft Communications Bill (aka Snooper's Charter) in the UK and how the Joint Parliamentary Committee that had been considering the bill received almost 19,000 emails during its consultation period. He notes: 'Out of 19,000 emails received by the Committee on the subject of the proposed Draft Communications Bill, not a single one was in favor of it, or even agreed with its premise. Has there ever been a bill so universally rejected by the public in a consultation? Clearly, it must be thrown out completely.'"
People always voice their concern when they're against something but rarely express their opinion if they're for it. This makes it unfair comparison. Just saying..
I wrote to my MP, via a link the Open Rights Group (which I'm a member of) sent. I was pleased with the reply -- my MP agreed with me, gave some additional points that I'd not made, and asked me to forward any reply I received to him.
(At least, I think I did. There have been a few similar bills, and I've not necessarily kept up with which one is which.)
When faced by overwhelming public rejection of a Bill has there ever been a modern government that has thrown one out because of that? Clearly they will just change the name and sneak it in with something else. Because what do the public know?
Government politics is now so completely flawed that it needs to be replaced. I'm with Billy Connolly when he said that "the desire to be an MP [modify as appropriate for your jurisdiction] should automatically prevent you from becoming one."
...suggest such a thing. Just like it's illegal to organize and conspire to murder or terrorize people. Oh wait. That means it already is.
Government doesn't pass or reject bills based on what its subjects want. Government passes or rejects bills based on what it wants.
"When SOPA-PIPA blew up, it was a transformative event," said Dodd. "There were eight million e-mails [to elected representatives] in two days." That caused senators to run away from the legislation. "People were dropping their names as co-sponsors within minutes, not hours," he said.
When you are directly quoting someone's writing it is usually considered a professional courtesy not to change the spelling to suit your own preferences.
He did not say "not a single one was in favor of it", he said "not a single one was in favour of it.
In case you're new here, First post refers to the first post in this story not the first post by the account. The point the parent is making is that this newly created account seemed to have been created solely to reply to this story, and only this story seeing as they didn't then comment elsewhere, even now.
In the case of manipulation of opinion this is a quintessential sign of an interested party trying to set the tone before people read on, especially given how infrequently people actually read the articles here.
Hope this helps.
Clearly, the submitter doesn't understand the purpose of a consulation in the UK if he thinks this will get the bill thrown out.
The purpose of a public consultation is so that Westminster can tick a box saying "we had a public consultation". If the consultation is favourable, they additionally may say that a bill has public support. If a consultation is negative, the consultation is simply ignored. I've responded to a couple of these consultations and I shan't bother again because they were simply ignored despite volumes of correspondence voicing (often constructive) opposition.
Perhaps a consultation won't be ignored if the majority of the comments are from marginal constituencies, but 19,000 voters can safely be totally ignored if not.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Being the proud posessor of a Welsh name - come on, it's not that hard!
You must have heard of Bob Dylan (who took his name from Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet). The y in Glyn is exactly as the y in Dylan. (Although many people from the US seem to think that Dylan is actually pronounced Dialin', which is what you do on a telephone - despite Bob Dylan's fame).
I know a motorcycle sidecar racer called Glyn Jones who crashes often (and puts his passengers in hospital so frequently) his nickname is the Glyn Reaper. Think how you pronounce 'grim', it rhymes with Glyn, hence the joke.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
As I already commented, consultations generally are to tick a box "we had a consultation" (not to pay any actual attention to the responses), furthermore the document from "JOINT COMMITTEE ON DRAFT COMMUNICATIONS DATA BILL" is already titled "WRITTEN EVIDENCE: SUMMARY OF CHAIN EMAILS" (sorry about caps, copy and pasting from the PDF). They note more than once that most of the emails are pro-forma and go onto mention it's from a political pressure group website. This means furthermore that the responses will be ignored.
If you're ever responding to a European Union consultaiton, they say right up front that pro-forma responses will be ignored (at least they are honest) - so if you ever want the slightest chance that your response to an EU consultation then you have to write your concerns in your own words. I suspect Westminster is the same, they just don't come right out and say it.
Therefore I'm even more pessimistic that anyone is going to pay the slightest bit of attention to this consultation - it will be full steam ahead for this awful bill.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Another scenario is someone who finally saw something they cared enough about to make an account to post on it. In this case, they would be unlikely to go around posting in other stories right away.
Simple solution: you hold a lottery among all people of voting age. The losers go serve in the legislature. Lots of good points:
1) Fair
2) Representatives don't owe anyone payback for helping them into office
3) Representatives are truly representative of society (i.e., no lawyer bias, or rich person's bias), and you might even see some homeless people in the legislature for a change
4) When you make the changeover, enforce that any benefits they vote the Legislature membership don't go to them, but to the next "winners"
5) Force service by "well, you either serve in the Legislature, or you serve in prison. Your choice!"
downside:
a) could give the bureaucracy too much power--inexperienced legislatures
b) people stuck with the job could do a lousy job 'cause they don't really care and resent the duty
--PM
Don't ask for consultation and you won't get rejection. The US politicians try to do this all the time and sometime it slips by in fine print along with other bills.
Piemasters has 1 comment, this one, which is a first post.
And, your point is ...? We all start somewhere. Perhaps it's a former AC coming out of the closet. :-)
I thought the point of all of this is to weigh the pros and cons of the content, not tangentials. PieMasters actually expressed a valid opinion with no "Frist Post!!!111". What did you do other than stir the conspiracy pot with your big wooden spoon?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
That is the exception that proves the rule. Public opposition got major corporations to change their stance, which preceeded legislators changing their stances. And they're just going to push the same provisions through other means, e.g. trade agreements. Not a particularly inspiring example of the responsiveness of the US government to petitions from citizens.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Good try, except that people overwhelmingly support ObamaCare when you present it outside of a political context (in other words, sit down and show the terms to people without the label). Inside political context, you still have well over 50% supporting it, so it's not even clearly divided on party lines.
Heck, even Mitt supports it, he practically wrote and implemented it himself at the state level.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Reminds me of when Google introduced its new version of News a couple-three years back. There were thousands of messages on its user forum deploring the new interface, and asking for the old one back. I never saw a single message in favor of the new version. (Ok, there was one, but it was tongue-in-cheek.)
FWIW, Google never did go back to the old version, despite its unanimous rejection on the part of users.