While the secrecy, harmonisation and the inclusion of investor state dispute resolution are bad enough aspects of TTIP, it seems this is another ‘Living Agreement’. Not only will the courts that interpret these agreements be beyond public accountability, any amendments to the treaty and agreements will be so too. I found this out at the meeting called by the Open Rights Group where Nick Dearden of the World Development Movement came to speak. …
I wanted to write this up but it’s jolly long. Here is their home page for the report, “The Condition of Britain”. …
Better change that then! In April, the Court of Justice of the EU, ruled that its 2004 Data Retention Directive mandating Information System Services Providers to store all their records for 12 months was declared incompatible with the EU’s Fundamental Charter of [Citizen’s] Rights. It and all the national laws implementing the Directive need to be reviewed to see if they remain legal. Last week, the Government announced that it planned to introduce new laws to plug the gap. This is to be called the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill/Act. (DRIP) which they plan to pass in less than ½ a week using emergency provisions and the agreement of the Labour front bench. …
How awesome! The US Military having already made Batman’s surveillance machine, is now looking to recreate Iron Man. …
Was NO2ID a cul-de-sac? Who should be the identity assurers in the internet age? Today it’s code, that code is owned by someone and run by someone. Once we thought banks might run it, they don’t seem interested. The NO2ID campaign polarised the debate. We seem to be in a place that either the state does so on behalf of the public or private companies do so on behalf of their shareholders. Do we need a third way? Co-ops or P2P code?
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It’s getting to be an old story now, but the other week, the Sunday Times, having obtained quotes by subterfuge and without permission, ran a story that John Cruddas, Labour’s policy review chief had criticised the likely way in which the Leader’s Office would deal with what he saw as Labour’s rich and detailed policy reviews; he may have been most interested in the reviews he’s running himself, and less so in the long term policy commissions and the National Policy Forum processes, the latter of course being the process the membership are most invested in. The criticism’s are also reported in the New Statesman. …
I have just submitted a short comment opposing the inclusion of Investor State Dispute Resolution (ISDR) clauses in the EU’s negotiating position on TTIP, and urge you to join me. I used this web site, at sumofus.org. While their tag line, “Fighting for people before profits” is reminiscent of Lewisham’s rag bag of careerists and trots, both ISDR and all the non-tariff extensions to TTIP should be opposed and the concept of putting people before profit is equally laudable. …
In London, Labour won 50% of the seats in the European elections, won control of four more councils and increased our majorities in the others. This rather fucks up the right’s desired narrative that UKIP won the elections. The argument that London rejected UKIP because we are younger and better educated is deeply unhelpful and yet still reinforces UKIP’s story that they are the only party fighting an oppressive metropolitan elite. Funny that. It is ignored that Labour also did well in Manchester, Liverpool and North East. …
Many company’s, particularly US owned, staff evaluation schemes are based on ranking their staff, and additionally rewarding the top 20% and firing the bottom 10%. (This idea comes from the US, probably from GE; firing people because they are not as good as someone else is illegal in the UK and much of Europe.) Basically it is not about continuous improvement, it’s based on a world view that thinks people are lazy and need fear to make them work hard. Fear of not getting a bonus, or fear of dismissal. This cynicism and hate will never build a successful firm. …
Back in 2005, in order to win his position as Leader of the Conservative Party, he offered his eurosceptic loonies the policy position of leaving the European Parliament’s main conservative alliance, the European People’s Party. The Tories then created their own euro-caucus mainly with the Polish Justice and Law party and while in 2009 the ECR refused to ally with the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party and Italy’s Lega Nord, the new group meant that the Tories were no longer in the EPP and thus excluded from the European centre right’s central debates and policy making. (It should be noted that both the Poles and the UK are outside the Eurozone, making the EPP, more eurozone centric and the ECR less relevant to the EPP.) So while having a hissy fit and as a result of brutal self-interested calculation, Cameron cut himself, and thus the British people, off from the EPP and the German CDU …