Voiceless

At a presentation on Data Protection, last week, one speaker expressed the hope that new European Data Protection supervisory authority would establish a sensible compromise on the levels of fine to be made under the GDPR, with the British, Dutch and Irish hanging out for realistic fines and some of the Eastern European countries seeking punitive penalties. Sadly, for those who are relying on British influence on the new board, we may not have a seat. …

Republic

One problem with Facebook (& Twitter) is that they are rivers, once the water has gone by it’s gone and can no longer be seen. I have written this and posted here, because a friend contributed to a thread on Facebook on the Monarchy, which I can no longer find. He suggested that we have a choice between what we have today or an executive presidency like France and the US. It’s not true, most of the European Republics have weak presidencies that do what our Queen does, play a role in the formation of government, a job done mainly by convention and law. This could be done by the Speaker or any other indirectly elected citizen.

Personally I am motivated for a weak presidency within a Republic with a strong Parliament bound by the rule of law. i.e. Parliament must be bound by a rule of law.

I read this line, a long time ago, in “Man & Superman” by George Bernard Shaw,

My rank is the highest known in Switzerland, I am a free citizen

I think I want that! …

Research

Techdirt, providing a public service as ever have posted a piece on confusion in the US Federal Government agencies. Whenever seeking to censor material, one has to prohibit research into the censored material and the techniques used to enforce the censorship. This is equally true in technology, and since encryption is used to ‘protect’ material, in the US they have prohibited research into circumventing “Digital Rights Management” technology which is used by creative capitalism to manage pay-per-view. This has led to the absurd situation that, in the US, unlocking phones was a prohibited technology for a while. The Copyright Office, often seen as creative capitalism’s agents in Government, have come to the conclusion that the copyright laws interference with security research is a bad thing. Whether they’ll repeal those bits of the law is another matter. …

Oi! Brexit No!

The Fleet Street Fox writes on Brexit in the Mirror, it contains this very short quote,

And the arguments for leaving are already moot. There is no more money for the NHS. Immigration can’t be reduced this way. The courts decided parliament already has sovereignty. We can’t avoid EU regulations if we want to trade with them. Every vote we’ve ever held has been overturned by a subsequent one. Migrants don’t weigh down our public services so much as provide them for us.

I thought it was pretty complete, one should add that she also says, “Migrants pay more in tax than they take out in benefits – in other words, they pay for Leavers’ pensions and healthcare”. …

Pre-emption

I am going to say it again. Was the “No deal is better than a bad deal” slogan designed to get us thrown out and avoid a second referendum?  As Brexit negotiations become more detailed, with the EU proposing that the Commission and the EU Court act as the judicial guarantor of the EU27 UK residents rights, it’s proving that actually agreeing to leave on the Tories desired terms is going to be hard. There’s also the point that,

if we negotiate any treaty amending the relationships established in EU treaties, we must have another referendum.

The brexiteers have behaved from the day they won as if they were frightened that we would change our mind. Getting thrown out is one way of avoiding a chance to think again. …

Little Acorns

I was quite excited to find this article on the BBC site about new MP’s in their twenties. While  they seem to have been selected in seats that unexpectedly switched to their parties, it reminds me that in the 70’s, Exeter University Labour Club, of which I was a member and delegate moved the motion at NOLS conference to change the law to allow 18 year olds to stand for Parliament. It was a long time ago and Mhairi Black would not have been allowed to stand if the law had not been changed and she remains the youngest MP. From little acorns …. …

six two

And another Lewisham Deptford GC, this time it’s a Special one, convened to deal with (some) Conference business. So in the best traditions of the Labour movement we started with a rules row.

The Secretary had, unlike in previous years, removed the election for a women’s delegate from the agenda. I felt that by not putting a women’s delegate election on the order paper, the organisation was taking a backward step. I can’t really believe that the feminists have changed their mind, they’ve always been so keen on the “…at least 50%…” rule. The agenda also proposed that the CLP only send three of its 12 delegate entitlement. The Chair now understands that when rulings are challenged, as we say in software testing, we are critiquing the product not the author and is very calm about it. However not everyone else in the room has got that yet and are keen to help him out by ensuring that his line is understood, . We voted on whether to have a women’s delegate or not and voted not to, actually we voted to send one, but not by the ⅔ majority required.

We then had an argument about the delegation size. To my mind it was unfortunate that the proposal from the floor was to fund three delegates, but to send twelve and then make a conditional commitment to the remaining seven that we might find the money. This would mean that people would be standing not knowing how much it would cost them which will exclude people. I have said before that the only way to control cost is to control numbers. I also suspect that 12 is too many, although I’d be interested to know how much we spent on the election.

Policy development is as important as fighting elections as this last election and the impact of the manifesto showed. It’s a shame that even a left leadership seems none to keen to share the making of manifestos with the membership, but their minds have been on other things. Luke Akehurst of Labour First had suggested (or maybe something stronger) that they argue for minimum sized delegations. I am not sure why, I and allies felt it should be larger. In the cold light of day, sending 14 is financially unsupportable, the influence of an individual delegate is tiny, it’s a very large conference and very few people get to speak. It’s easier to be called to speak if you are known to the chair, or your line is known to the chair. While I believe in Conference Sovereignty, there must be a better way of doing this. The final point to make is that now we have ½ million members (or more) perhaps the delegates’ expenses should be funded by head office.

Anyway, after an hour of this palaver, we moved on to the votes. It was close, but the left did well, better than last November at the AGM. The delegation has a left majority, we nominated both Left candidates for the National Constitutional Committee, which is elected at Conference by delegates and voted for a split ticket to nominate Chandwani and De Piero, who beat her running mate on the right slate on the toss of a coin for the CAC positions.

We ran out of time to discuss motions and rule changes of course. …