"We will no longer be loaning either the US or EU any more money. Furthermore we've decided it's time to collect our 5 trillion in loans. If you don't have the money, we'll be happy to take Alaska and Spain as payment instead."
Yeah. Who cares about China?
Don't affect us at all!
(rolls eyes)
Dear China, how about you take France and Texas instead? That way we both win!;p
The manifesto is still being voted on, but in brief: We want to abolish drug patents to make health care cheaper, & we want to shift the focus of IT education from learning how to use MSOffice to understanding how computers work. Here's the manifesto proposal: http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/wiki/Drafts:Manifesto_Proposal
Unions: "we'll go on strike if you do\don't do x"
Corporations: "We'll pull out of your country if you pass\don't pass law x"
Lobby\pressure groups: "we'll cary on protesting\causing trouble\telling people not to vote for you unless x"
Those all sound like ultimatums of one sort or another to me.
I don't know of many other institutions that attempt to bully a national government, you know?
How about, Unions, political parties, lobby groups, trade associations, multi-national corporations, political pressure groups, news papers, broadcasters etc. I'm sure there are more, but governments are pressured from all sides. Of course, only one group has real power over governments: the voters.
For image-heavy documents, it's not so good. Not that I'd accuse Word of being particularly great in that regard either.
MS Publisher (or other DTP package of choice) is there for image heavy documents. Word processors were just never designed for image manipulation, I've never seen one that's good at it; that's why DTP packages were invented.
No, the fire department would come out and wet the buildings that had fire insurance so they didn't burn. Shoulda bought insurance
Of course the wouldn't; they only get paid for putting out fires, so they'd actually be incentiveized to cause more fires. It's the insurance companies that would want to stop fires.
almost 75 years later and whose constitution wasn't even the supreme legal document until a British parliamentary act in 1982 isn't the best example.
It's only 75 years, we've had wars go on longer than that (I'm English). The history of these isles runs back for more than two thousand years; the Canadians waiting under a hundred is like the blink of an eye from that perspective. I guess it just proves the old maxim: Americans think a hundred years is a long time; Brits think a hundred miles is a long way.
but note that we still have issues such as the bishops who get given seats in our House of Lords,
This is (strangely) one fact that I don't mind. Whilst it's common knowledge that the CofE now more a social organisation as opposed to a religious one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBtDIVfhh8k it still means when the real crazies (the strange band of creationists and misogynists etc. that occasionally rear their head) start complaining the religion is being "denied a voice"\"pushed out of society"\"marginalised" etc. you can point at the bishops and remind them that actually, they're still making law. In essence I think that having the CofE as an established church has proved a bulwark against the American style religious fundies also filling the vacuum that would be left if the church was disestablished.
There are two types. I'm not sure about the English equivalent terminology, but in Scotland we have Disclosure and Enhanced Disclosure. They're essentially the same except with the latter, a police officer pulls out your police record and adds anything he thinks is germane. Anyone can get a Disclosure report for themselves and it can be a condition of employment, especially for sensitive positions, such as IT contracting in financial services. Enhanced Disclosures can only be applied for by approved bodies, such as schools or whatever. And of course, employers can and do run credit checks as well...
There are two types of CRB in England as well, I've only ever had the enhanced because I've had jobs working with young people. AFAIK No one I know has had a plain check, and I don't think that large numbers of employers require you to get them. OTOH I know someone who had to get official security clearance (up to "Secret") to work for the MCA. That went waaay beyond a regular CRB check, but isn't exactly usual procedure for getting a job.
Not completely true. I emigrated from the UK, and they required a background check for my visa. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to apply for your own in the UK, only your employer can. Enhanced disclosure checks can't be released to you from your employer, and the data protection act has exemptions for anything you actually need to know.
If you had an enhanced CRB, you should have got a copy, at least I did both times I had one.
It is true in so far as that is the situation for people today, but the law has already been changed and the changes are being phased in over the next year or so and will affect many more people.
For example, if you have an arrangement with other parents to give their kids a lift home with yours from an after school club more than once a month, you will have to personally apply to be vetted by the police. There were some incredibly high profile protests from authors earlier this year/late last year when it was revealed that if they regularly visit schools to give talks, they would have to be vetted too.
If* & when the vetting and barring scheme is introduced then you will be correct; I was talking about the situation as it is now. I still hold out hope that the scheme will be quietly dropped by any incoming government before it starts as an "efficiency saving". My logic is this: it's easy to cut things that haven't started yet. I think ID cards and the NIR will be dropped for the same reasons.
The definition is so broad that it covers at least 11 million employees (that's by the Government's own statistics - some estimates I've read place it closer to 14 million).
I'm against most "for the children" measures, but of all the people I've heard who've had an CRB, I've not heard of an inappropriate case. The argument could of course be made that there should be no CRB checks at all, and I have some sympathy with that view point, but if we're going to have them as far as I can see, the rules (for once) have been applied consistently. Those numbers just show how many people have contact with vulnerable individuals on a regular basis.
And these days you also have to pay a load of money for the privilege of being checked.
The two times I've had them, my employer has paid, not me. If an employer tried to get me to, I would negotiate it as part of my salary; the small amount it costs is cheaper to them than re-advertising and re-interviewing for the post.
Over here in 'sunny' Bristol, UK, there was a great little scandal a while ago, where a black city councilor accused an Asian councilor of being a "coconut"
I've had this insult thrown at me; I make a point of calling it out as a racist one, though the people using it usually don't realise it... It would be funny how other Indians\Asians react when called out on blatant racism if it wasn't so serious.
Except Labour have been expanding the scope of CRB checks. It used to be, you do paid work with children every day, you need a check. Now it's "you could possibly come into contact with children, in a job or outside of one", you need a check.
I understand this, but you said "you can fail a background check and never know". That's outright false. When I had mine, the CRB results were sent to me, not my employer & I had to produce it when they wanted it.
However these records are now accessible outside of CRB checks (at the moment only in certain regions but it's being rolled out nationwide). Girlfriends can check to "see if you're a danger", families of girlfriends can check, parents of kids who your kids often play with can check.
I understand this (my area is one of the pilots). The information given out in these cases isn't a full enhanced CRB. What happens is a person can go to the police and ask them about an adult in contact with someone to whom they are related (e.g a woman can ask about her new boyfriend, or an ex husband could do similar). The police then choose what (if any) information to give out and it has to be relevant. If the man is a serial child molester then they'll say, but if he was cautioned for stealing sweets when he was a teenager then they won't, or rather shouldn't.
It's not perfect, but it's better than the American route of putting all sex offenders on a totally public access database which some people were campaigning for.
To top it all off, there's a condition that the government can put on your record making the information on your background check confidential to anyone. Including yourself. You can fail a background check and never you have failed one. The employer can't tell you you've failed, so if there's a mistake on your background check, it is impossible to get it remedied and your life is basically ruined.
In the UK the only "background checks" that are done by employers are those done for people who work with children & vulnerable adults; they are called CRB checks. Both times I've had one done, I got a copy. Other employers don't get to do 'background checks' and even if they were allowed, you could use the data protection act to find out any information they hold on you. In short, your post doesn't apply to the UK.
In time - I don't believe in this election - the Pirate Party may come across as a more mature group.
We're only about seven months old. We're not a politically mature organisation. I freely admit that this election has come far too early for us. Hopefully we can grow through the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish & Euro ones so that four or five years from now we'll have a better platform at the next one. If you take a look at the early green movement, they looked like a lot like us in terms of single issue politics. Now they've won the war of ideas without ever getting a seat in Parliament. If we can do the same, the Pirate movement will have been a success.
He's probably never taken a gun safety course in his life, so didn't ensure the gun was safe before putting it down.
I'm from the UK, the only guns I've seen are in museums, on TV and occasionally in the hands of cops*. Even I know that leaving a loaded gun lying around is a dumb idea. Do people really need gun safety classes to tell them that?
*only in high security places & high profile events. Our cops don't all have them.
Sorry for the late reply on this, but I've been unable to get to My PC for a couple of days.
So that's why wi-fi catches your eye, but for instance the John Venables story plastered all of the news, with the comment pages full of privacy vs. disclosure debates, didn't register?
With all the noise about Jon Venables, exactly which news outlet would pick up on the Pirate party's view of this story? With only volunteers to write press releases and blog posts we prioritize on issues that give us the most visibility. That's not to say we're not discussing it internally, there's a thread on the forum devoted to the issue.
The fact remains that it simply doesn't seem coincidental that none of the stories on the site on are really about freedom of speech or privacy, but a narrow set of interests.
It isn't surprising the Pirate Party has not been able to do that with their central concern of copyrights - it has a rather more limited vision.
Really? We've got things on our agenda like abolition of drug patents to make medication cheaper (I paraphrase). Sounds like medical policy to me. Similar principles can be applied throughout policy areas, you'd be surprised at how far IP law pervades society. Having said that, we're not looking to win power, just with the debate. The green party has all the big ones falling over themselves to appear greener than one another. We're looking for that type of success, not government.
The idea of a political party whose members mostly come from a similar domain of knowledge is kind of offputting, too.
This is hardly our fault, we are recruiting & we do have people from outside IT. I'm a librarian, for example. I agree we need more though, and we'll welcome anybody.
Oh, and if Green doesn't appeal, the Lib Dems and their Freedom Bill would deliver a number of the PPUK policy goals. Your efforts will have more effect feeding into an existing political machine rather than a new one. Really, why take a the less effective route to realise your goals?
Slashdot Mirror
wohoo, the search for intraterrestrial intelligence is over =)
It's actually called the search for terrestrial intelligence & it exists: http://totl.net/STI/
Well, sort of...;p
>>>Who cares about China. Seriously.
"We will no longer be loaning either the US or EU any more money. Furthermore we've decided it's time to collect our 5 trillion in loans. If you don't have the money, we'll be happy to take Alaska and Spain as payment instead."
Yeah. Who cares about China? Don't affect us at all! (rolls eyes)
Dear China, how about you take France and Texas instead? That way we both win! ;p
what's your policy on healthcare and education?
The manifesto is still being voted on, but in brief: We want to abolish drug patents to make health care cheaper, & we want to shift the focus of IT education from learning how to use MSOffice to understanding how computers work. Here's the manifesto proposal: http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/wiki/Drafts:Manifesto_Proposal
If you can demonstrate an elephant using its trunk to ... build a tool of some sort, I'll concede to your point.
Elephant tool use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_intelligence#Tool_use
Giving them an ultimatum?
Unions: "we'll go on strike if you do\don't do x"
Corporations: "We'll pull out of your country if you pass\don't pass law x"
Lobby\pressure groups: "we'll cary on protesting\causing trouble\telling people not to vote for you unless x"
Those all sound like ultimatums of one sort or another to me.
I don't know of many other institutions that attempt to bully a national government, you know?
How about, Unions, political parties, lobby groups, trade associations, multi-national corporations, political pressure groups, news papers, broadcasters etc. I'm sure there are more, but governments are pressured from all sides. Of course, only one group has real power over governments: the voters.
Elephants ... lack of handy appendages.
What exactly do you think a trunk is?
For image-heavy documents, it's not so good. Not that I'd accuse Word of being particularly great in that regard either.
MS Publisher (or other DTP package of choice) is there for image heavy documents. Word processors were just never designed for image manipulation, I've never seen one that's good at it; that's why DTP packages were invented.
No, the fire department would come out and wet the buildings that had fire insurance so they didn't burn. Shoulda bought insurance
Of course the wouldn't; they only get paid for putting out fires, so they'd actually be incentiveized to cause more fires. It's the insurance companies that would want to stop fires.
England is post-xian? Um, they have a state church.
It may be a church, but it's not a religious organisation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBtDIVfhh8k
almost 75 years later and whose constitution wasn't even the supreme legal document until a British parliamentary act in 1982 isn't the best example.
It's only 75 years, we've had wars go on longer than that (I'm English). The history of these isles runs back for more than two thousand years; the Canadians waiting under a hundred is like the blink of an eye from that perspective. I guess it just proves the old maxim: Americans think a hundred years is a long time; Brits think a hundred miles is a long way.
but note that we still have issues such as the bishops who get given seats in our House of Lords,
This is (strangely) one fact that I don't mind. Whilst it's common knowledge that the CofE now more a social organisation as opposed to a religious one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBtDIVfhh8k it still means when the real crazies (the strange band of creationists and misogynists etc. that occasionally rear their head) start complaining the religion is being "denied a voice"\"pushed out of society"\"marginalised" etc. you can point at the bishops and remind them that actually, they're still making law. In essence I think that having the CofE as an established church has proved a bulwark against the American style religious fundies also filling the vacuum that would be left if the church was disestablished.
There are two types. I'm not sure about the English equivalent terminology, but in Scotland we have Disclosure and Enhanced Disclosure. They're essentially the same except with the latter, a police officer pulls out your police record and adds anything he thinks is germane. Anyone can get a Disclosure report for themselves and it can be a condition of employment, especially for sensitive positions, such as IT contracting in financial services. Enhanced Disclosures can only be applied for by approved bodies, such as schools or whatever. And of course, employers can and do run credit checks as well...
There are two types of CRB in England as well, I've only ever had the enhanced because I've had jobs working with young people. AFAIK No one I know has had a plain check, and I don't think that large numbers of employers require you to get them. OTOH I know someone who had to get official security clearance (up to "Secret") to work for the MCA. That went waaay beyond a regular CRB check, but isn't exactly usual procedure for getting a job.
Not completely true. I emigrated from the UK, and they required a background check for my visa. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to apply for your own in the UK, only your employer can. Enhanced disclosure checks can't be released to you from your employer, and the data protection act has exemptions for anything you actually need to know.
If you had an enhanced CRB, you should have got a copy, at least I did both times I had one.
Police forces can put a condition on elements of CRB checks that threaten the employer with jail if they reveal what they say (including to the subject of the check). They're pretty rare but they do indeed exist. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/2009/07/crb_checks_and_secret_letters.shtml
Thanks for the link; interesting.
That's almost completely incorrect.
It is true in so far as that is the situation for people today, but the law has already been changed and the changes are being phased in over the next year or so and will affect many more people.
For example, if you have an arrangement with other parents to give their kids a lift home with yours from an after school club more than once a month, you will have to personally apply to be vetted by the police. There were some incredibly high profile protests from authors earlier this year/late last year when it was revealed that if they regularly visit schools to give talks, they would have to be vetted too.
If* & when the vetting and barring scheme is introduced then you will be correct; I was talking about the situation as it is now. I still hold out hope that the scheme will be quietly dropped by any incoming government before it starts as an "efficiency saving". My logic is this: it's easy to cut things that haven't started yet. I think ID cards and the NIR will be dropped for the same reasons.
The definition is so broad that it covers at least 11 million employees (that's by the Government's own statistics - some estimates I've read place it closer to 14 million).
I'm against most "for the children" measures, but of all the people I've heard who've had an CRB, I've not heard of an inappropriate case. The argument could of course be made that there should be no CRB checks at all, and I have some sympathy with that view point, but if we're going to have them as far as I can see, the rules (for once) have been applied consistently. Those numbers just show how many people have contact with vulnerable individuals on a regular basis.
And these days you also have to pay a load of money for the privilege of being checked.
The two times I've had them, my employer has paid, not me. If an employer tried to get me to, I would negotiate it as part of my salary; the small amount it costs is cheaper to them than re-advertising and re-interviewing for the post.
Over here in 'sunny' Bristol, UK, there was a great little scandal a while ago, where a black city councilor accused an Asian councilor of being a "coconut"
I've had this insult thrown at me; I make a point of calling it out as a racist one, though the people using it usually don't realise it... It would be funny how other Indians\Asians react when called out on blatant racism if it wasn't so serious.
Except Labour have been expanding the scope of CRB checks. It used to be, you do paid work with children every day, you need a check. Now it's "you could possibly come into contact with children, in a job or outside of one", you need a check.
I understand this, but you said "you can fail a background check and never know". That's outright false. When I had mine, the CRB results were sent to me, not my employer & I had to produce it when they wanted it.
However these records are now accessible outside of CRB checks (at the moment only in certain regions but it's being rolled out nationwide). Girlfriends can check to "see if you're a danger", families of girlfriends can check, parents of kids who your kids often play with can check.
I understand this (my area is one of the pilots). The information given out in these cases isn't a full enhanced CRB. What happens is a person can go to the police and ask them about an adult in contact with someone to whom they are related (e.g a woman can ask about her new boyfriend, or an ex husband could do similar). The police then choose what (if any) information to give out and it has to be relevant. If the man is a serial child molester then they'll say, but if he was cautioned for stealing sweets when he was a teenager then they won't, or rather shouldn't.
It's not perfect, but it's better than the American route of putting all sex offenders on a totally public access database which some people were campaigning for.
To top it all off, there's a condition that the government can put on your record making the information on your background check confidential to anyone. Including yourself. You can fail a background check and never you have failed one. The employer can't tell you you've failed, so if there's a mistake on your background check, it is impossible to get it remedied and your life is basically ruined.
In the UK the only "background checks" that are done by employers are those done for people who work with children & vulnerable adults; they are called CRB checks. Both times I've had one done, I got a copy. Other employers don't get to do 'background checks' and even if they were allowed, you could use the data protection act to find out any information they hold on you. In short, your post doesn't apply to the UK.
If it was a single work then why did they make individual tracks?
Why did classical composers split their works into movements?
Can any crazy person waltz in here, say something wacky, and get modded Insightful?
You must me new here, welcome to slashdot. ;p
In time - I don't believe in this election - the Pirate Party may come across as a more mature group.
We're only about seven months old. We're not a politically mature organisation. I freely admit that this election has come far too early for us. Hopefully we can grow through the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish & Euro ones so that four or five years from now we'll have a better platform at the next one. If you take a look at the early green movement, they looked like a lot like us in terms of single issue politics. Now they've won the war of ideas without ever getting a seat in Parliament. If we can do the same, the Pirate movement will have been a success.
He's probably never taken a gun safety course in his life, so didn't ensure the gun was safe before putting it down.
I'm from the UK, the only guns I've seen are in museums, on TV and occasionally in the hands of cops*. Even I know that leaving a loaded gun lying around is a dumb idea. Do people really need gun safety classes to tell them that?
*only in high security places & high profile events. Our cops don't all have them.
So that's why wi-fi catches your eye, but for instance the John Venables story plastered all of the news, with the comment pages full of privacy vs. disclosure debates, didn't register?
With all the noise about Jon Venables, exactly which news outlet would pick up on the Pirate party's view of this story? With only volunteers to write press releases and blog posts we prioritize on issues that give us the most visibility. That's not to say we're not discussing it internally, there's a thread on the forum devoted to the issue.
The fact remains that it simply doesn't seem coincidental that none of the stories on the site on are really about freedom of speech or privacy, but a narrow set of interests.
Really? I just checked the PPUK fron page and there's a story about CCTV cameras being installed in a school toilet in Solihull http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/blog/2010/mar/9/solihull-school-installs-cctv-childrens-toilets/
It isn't surprising the Pirate Party has not been able to do that with their central concern of copyrights - it has a rather more limited vision.
Really? We've got things on our agenda like abolition of drug patents to make medication cheaper (I paraphrase). Sounds like medical policy to me. Similar principles can be applied throughout policy areas, you'd be surprised at how far IP law pervades society. Having said that, we're not looking to win power, just with the debate. The green party has all the big ones falling over themselves to appear greener than one another. We're looking for that type of success, not government.
The idea of a political party whose members mostly come from a similar domain of knowledge is kind of offputting, too.
This is hardly our fault, we are recruiting & we do have people from outside IT. I'm a librarian, for example. I agree we need more though, and we'll welcome anybody.
Oh, and if Green doesn't appeal, the Lib Dems and their Freedom Bill would deliver a number of the PPUK policy goals. Your efforts will have more effect feeding into an existing political machine rather than a new one. Really, why take a the less effective route to realise your goals?
These would be the same lib-dems who made the digital economy bill worse: http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/blog/2010/mar/6/lib-dems-make-digital-economy-bill-even-worse/
Well we helped convince their PPCs, but their MPs are ignoring them. http://www.libdemvoice.org/digital-economy-bill-parliamentarians-reply-to-prospective-candidates-18200.html If the lib-dems were to adopt all areas of Pirate policy, the need for the pirate party would be over, but they haven't and don't look like doing so.