After the Privacy meeting, I hobbled along to the Black Lion for Pragmatic Radicalism’s “Top of the Manifestoes” event. This is cross between a Pecha Kucha presentation and a balloon debate. There is 60 seconds to present, two minutes of Q&A and then a vote and a second round for the top five. All this taking place in a Pub with an open bar tab. Some of the questions could be fun. …
This was chaired by Jamie Bartlett of Demos, with David Blunkett and Helen Goodman with Nick Pickles of Big Brotherwatch. Jamie Bartlett, who has an interesting publication record at Demos may have been the perfect chair for the meeting.
He opened by looking at Labour’s mixed record, on the positive side introducing the Human Rights Act and on the less positive side, introducing RIPA and extending detention. RIPA is not well understood; but it defines the powers and duties in the issue of search warrants as a result most police searches are now self-authorised. He made the point that once in existence, databases suffer from scope creep and that to some extent the Communications Data Bill is an attempt to legalise actions already taken. …
I stayed in the Hilton to take part in a fringe event called “The economic contribution and growth potential of the creative industries” with speakers from the CBI, UK Music and UKIE. The meeting was planned to be chaired by Tom Watson, but Sion Simon stood in for him.
Matt Fell from the CBI’s competitive markets division spoke first. He started by pointing out the bleeding obvious that creative is becoming digital; except it’s not! Most musicians make more money performing than they do through licensing their content. It’s industrial music and its parasitical lawyers, agents and accountants, and now it would seem commentators, lobbyists and analysts that need copyright and the corporate industrial cocoons. He also stated that there was a lack of government backing, absolutely look at the coalition’s abolition of the British Film Council and he called for strong intellectual property laws. I wanted to ask how they could be stronger! …
I popped back to the Metropole to listen to “The Housing Fringe”. This was advertised as having Jack Dromey MP as its star speaker and the meeting was chaired by a very self-satisfied Michael White of the Guardian.
The slogan “A million houses in a Parliament” has been trialled in the Press and so expectations were high although the announcements of policy were reserved for Ed Miliband’s speech the following day. …
On my way to the Housing Fringe, I bumped into a Times journalist, who asked if I was attending their meeting, which was branded around one of their columns which I had not heard of, and was starring Peter Kellner, ex-political columnist and now star poller. I rather rudely said I hadn’t read the Times since it went behind a paywall neglecting to mention that I hadn’t been a fan before and I was challenged about how to pay for investigative journalism.
While I could have carried on with my rudeness asking when the Times last broke an important story such as ‘Phone Hacking’ for instance, I quoted the fact that 80% of the cost of newspapers is about paper, logistics and ink. This was denied. …
I popped along to a session entitled “The creative industries: A Cinderella sector?”, convened by Demos. The panel speakers were Luciana Berger MP, Helen Burrows, and Doug Richards.
I got there in time to here Doug Richards speak, who stated that the UK was the “most successful creative sector in the world”, but lacked support. Helen Burrows, report is now three years old, and either archived or behind a paywall, its launch was reported at billboard.com, where she put some numbers behind support, size and success. This is still missing the balance of trade figures; but the report acts as a prelude to the comments that ONS is not measuring creative business well i.e, the SIC/MLH industrial measurement model needs to be updated. It was published in 2010, just after the election as the coalition were settling in. …
I got there in time to hear the debate on the Collins Review Interim Report Sep 2013. There was only time for five speeches from the floor of conference, one general secretary, two MPs, and one prospective Mayor, but then there are few newly joined activists on the floor of conference. The platform had made it clear that this was an interim report and an interim debate and Ed Miliband joined the platform to listen to the it. …
The Open Rights Group are convening a meeting as part of the Labuour Party Conference Fringe.
Event Title: PRISM and Mass Surveillance: a Threat to Democracy and Economic Welfare?
Start Date Time: Tuesday 24th September, 2013 at 17:00
End Date Time: Tuesday 24th September, 2013 at 19:00
Weblink: http://www.meetup.com/ORG-Brighton/
They say,
Mass Internet surveillance is now an undisputed fact. Its defenders tell us that it is necessary to protect us from terrorists, criminals and rogue states. But the Snowden revelations show that we face unaccountable indiscriminate surveillance of Internet users on a global scale. This attack on privacy has potential devastating implications for our understanding of democracy.
But is’s not just the foundations of democracy that are under attack. Recent revelations of a systematic weakening of encryption systems by US and UK security agencies undermine fundamental Internet security. These are the basics of trust on the Internet; they are the reason we trust our bank, our credit card payments or Virtual Private Networks not to leak this information to criminals, blackmailers or governments. Thus the real impact will not just be about state security, it may be about economics and the opportunities for increased wellbeing presented by the Internet.
Confirmed speakers: Tom Watson MP, Paul Johnson – Deputy Editor, The Guardian, Javier Ruiz – Campaigns Director, Open Rights Group, and Nick Pickles – Executive Director, Big Brother Watch.
Not sure if Tom’ll make it. He had to miss an earlier meeting today.
I’m told there’ll be free drinks.
Sadly, I’ll not be there, I need to be back in London. …
Ellie Reeves, one of Labour’s NEC member’s representatives and an ex-Lewisham Deptford Party member came to the Lewisham Deptford CLP General Meeting to bring us up to date on the proposals to reform Labour’s membership rules and its relationship with the Trade Unions.
As a result of some alleged improper behaviour in the Falkirk selection, Ed Miliband proposed to change both Labour’s rules and the Law to “Clean Up” politics. I commented on the proposals as they stood in an article on this blog called “Clean Politics, a bit of Ed, a bit of me” which lists the proposals as I see them. …
Another thought about Nokia’s last year and a half!
Q: What happens when you hit windows phone with a duck?
A: You get two dead ducks?
First heard applied to OS/2, but worth repeating in the light of the Nokia sale to Microsoft …