Slashdot Mirror
British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg 'Kills' Snoopers Charter
judgecorp writes "The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has effectively 'killed' the Communications Data Bill which would have required service providers to share personal communications data with the police. Clegg has withdrawn the support of the Liberal Democrat Party (part of the Coalition in power in the UK) from the so-called 'Snooper's Charter.' The announcement is timed to block the measure from the Queen's Speech on 8 May, which introduces the next programme of planned legislation."
Lilly livered little Cleggy has actually some use.
Don't count your chickens yet: Clegg has said he'll withdraw support. This is the guy who signed a pledge not to increase tuition fees and then almost as soon as the coalition had been formed backed them being roughly tripled.
Lilly livered little Cleggy has actually some use.
Don't count your chickens yet: Clegg has said he'll withdraw support. This is the guy who signed a pledge not to increase tuition fees and then almost as soon as the coalition had been formed backed them being roughly tripled.
"backed" is a bit strong and he didn't 'sign a pledge', it was in their Manifesto which may be splitting hairs, but let's not forget that was if his party got in sole power. They didn't. They had to compromise. He was naive, the coalition is not 50/50. It's more like 90/10 in favour of the other party (for those of non-UK and who care). What he didn't do was defy the rise after the fact (much).
Now that the election is only a couple of years away and the fixed term parliament (that was bought in) is pretty much likely to go the distance, Nick Clegg and the LibDems don't have anything (more) to lose and a lot to gain.
I think you will see more of this as we get nearer the election. I don't particularly have string feelings for Nick Clegg but by Christ, theirs was the only party to care about our deomcratci system enough to try to push much needed Lords Reform - scuppered by their coalition partners, also get rid of the ridiculous first-past-the-post voting system (yes AV was a silly compromise which in the end they didn't get either) again scuppered by their coaltion partners they give a damn about Freedoms of Joe Public and still push for Human Rights for instance, the Blue party would have those excised from statute as soon as look at you and the Red party would put us under evem more surveillance and government scrutiny on our every day lives.
Sorry but most of the adult population without kids (or kids past university age) simply don't give a shit about tuition fees.
If you look past the stupid media portrayals of the lib dems (who are not all Nick Clegg) you'll see they have a good record for the the little person.
And in a few months a new law will be proposed: 'The anti-terrorist and anti-child porn law for public protection', that requires ISP's to do exactly the same.
"backed" is a bit strong and he didn't 'sign a pledge'
Actually, he did. If you look you can see it says "I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative", and you can just about see his scrawled signature below it. In his apology "It was stressed that Clegg was apologising for making the pledge...not to raise tuition fees, but not for the eventual decision by the coalition to lift the cap on fees to £9,000." So, he pledged not to, then at the very minimum didn't object to it happening and then apologises for the pledge itself but not the decision which contradicted the pledge.
As for the "LibDems are better than the others" comments, I'm not convinced by any of them. You've outlined the problems with the Conservatives and Labour pretty well, and summed up the LibDems with "they don't have anything (more) to lose".
At any rate, I wouldn't take his word on this issue until it actually comes to the crunch, because it's not the first time he has said X and then allowed Y to happen anyway.
"backed" is a bit strong and he didn't 'sign a pledge', it was in their Manifesto which may be splitting hairs, but let's not forget that was if his party got in sole power.
I'm sure this is how lib dem supporters prefer to remember it, but he (and 500 other candidates from his party, including every elected MP) did indeed sign the pledge:
http://web.archive.org/web/20101215160749/http://www.nus.org.uk/Campaigns/Funding-Our-Future/Lib-Dem-MPs-sign-the-pledge/
The wording was: "I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative", a personal promise which does not assume the lib dems would hold sole (or any) power.
Here's a photo of Nick holding up his signed copy of the pledge for the cameras, and some quotations from confidential documents in which senior party members were planning to betray this promise in the event of a hung parliament (which is, of course, exactly what they did):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/12/lib-dems-tuition-fees-clegg
'Clear yellow water' indeed.
The new system is "a fairer alternative" to the previous system for people on low incomes however. The number of people from the lowest economic stratum applying to university has increased under the new system. One of the major issues it has introduced, claims that young people can "no longer afford to go to university", is an atrocious lie that will cause more harm than the system it is attempting to attack.
I have problems with how the change in funding arrangements will affect universities structurally (further marketisation) but to the students it is arguably a better deal. The only case I am aware of where it does cause problems is where students are taking a second undergraduate degree (which the state is not obliged to give them a cushy loan for).
If government are elected to pursue the will of the people, why, then, do government engage in actions that clearly are not the will of the people?
'Cause a British government is typically elected by about 20% of the people, and election winners are typically determined by the votes of less than a million people in the Midlands where no party has a clear majority.
In this case, the British people voted 'none of the above' and refused to give any party a majority, but they got a government anyway.
Britain is already in the EU. It's not part of the common currency, and given its debts would almost certainly not qualify for common currency membership.
We're in the EU, we're not dead. Are you confused, perhaps about the Euro?
Yes, they could have used their influence to stop pretty much everything the Tories have done. And if they had the coalition would have fallen apart, and no one would have taken them seriously as a party they could have done business with in the future. They made some bad decisions, especially in the beginning but as the minority partner in the coalition I think they have actually done pretty well. Of course I'd rather have seen them let the Tories form a minority government then screw them at every turn. But they really wanted to get their electoral reform ideas through.
The pledge was written by the NUS. Not the Liberal Democrats.
I doubt they were too concerned with the wording for what was, in effect, a PR stunt that was most likely sprung on them.
They're manifesto is what they should be held to.
I'm not forgiving the hypocrisy of they're actions, but you must recognise that life in the UK would be a lot worse right now if not fopr their influence.
p.s. If you do choose to reply to this, please don't pressume you know how I vote.
Agreed, he absolutely did sign the pledge.
The problem is he probably also didn't foresee that he might be in a coalition government.
The things that irk me about the tuition fee debate are:
1) At least 77% of people who bitch (seeing as everyone bitches about it and the Lib Dems only got 23% of popular vote) about the tuition fee cannot complain. The Lib Dem policy was that they would ditch tuition fees if they got power - if people wanted tuition fees ditched or at best to stay the same, they should've all voted lib dem. You cannot vote Tory/Labour/UKIP/Whoever who were clearly for an increase in fees and then bitch at the Lib Dems when they fail to stop an increase - most of the population voted for an increase at the end of the day, so the Lib Dems were outvoted by the general public on the issue. An increase in tuition fees is what about 77% of the UK's population asked for. That's how democracy works - you don't get to vote for parties that are against something you want, then bitch when that doesn't happen - you fucking voted for it. Hence, the only people with a right to bitch are people who actually voted Lib Dem.
2) The Tories wanted £12,000 tuition fees, the Lib Dems got them down to £9,000. A £3,000 drop is a roughly proportional drop in the Tory proposals relative to their share of coalition legitimacy towards their pledged goal. In other words, the Lib Dems got what they asked for relative to their democratic legitimacy. Again, blame the fucking voters who voted for increases in tuition fees.
Finally, where the Lib Dems really went wrong was in actually voting for the £9,000 increase. They did this because they naively believed that if they fulfilled their side of the bargain, that the Tories would fulfil theirs. This turned out to be naive and foolish given that they got fucked on the greater and more fundamentally important goals of electoral and Lords reform amongst other things.
The problem is for all their faults, I still do think they're the best option. Each time Ed Milliband gets on TV or in the papers he tells us he wants to restore the money for nothing state with money we don't have - just this morning he said he'd restore the highest tax band back up to 50% and use that money to give more handouts to people with kids or who don't work much. Here's a better idea - why not use that money to invest in something that will actually grow our economy in a worthwhile manner, or to shrink the deficit and hence debt? Labour has also made it clear they still desperately what ID card databases and other surveillance plans that were key in them getting kicked out last time.
Then you have the Tories, which are plagued by irrational debate on Europe based primarily on xenophobia and who are at the other end of the economic extreme and aren't willing to accept that maybe at least some of their cuts haven't been particularly well thought out, and hence refuse to backtrack or do something to fix the badly thought out ones. They're plagued by infighting between the younger more moderate Tories and the old fuckwads who hate gays, foreigners, and women with, for some reason, that vocal older minority being given too much of their own way.
Then there's the rise of the far right in suits - UKIP, I don't think much more needs to be said about them other than the fact they're racist, anti-gay bigots, whose economic plan is completely nonsensical - they actually think we could magically replace the lost of 1/3rd of our economic exports with trade elsewhere overnight if Europe opted to shun us post pull out, combined with removing the limit on working hours. Farage actually genuinely believes that by simply trading with other nations and getting the whole country to work 80 to 120 hour weeks we could write off Europe completely - he thinks productivity scales linearly with hours worked and thinks there would be no health or social problems that would arise from that.
So of the mainstream all that's left is the Lib Dem