Class action

Prompted by the ORG, last week I wrote to the DCMS to argue that 3rd Party organisations, like ooh!, the ORG should be allowed to initiate ICO investigations into corporate privacy breaches. The #wannacry worm attack is a proof point that campaigning organisations should be able to pursue class actions; as I said in my evidence, the right of private prosecution is the flip side of this coin. …

The submarine campaign

After campaigning I discussed with a comrade what was happening, and was curious about some of the military language used. The Air Campaign for the TV, Press and Radio, the Ground Campaign for door knocking and leaflet delivery, but thanks to Carol Cadwalladyr, we now know about the Submarine campaign, the use of purchased private data to develop secret online campaigns, seen only by the Parties and the individual voters targeted. Cadwalladyr has shown how this cannot be regulated, and how effective it is. …

In France

Christopher Caldwell, in the New Statesman reviews Christophe Guilluy’s body of work including “Le crépuscle de la France d’en haut”. It’s an examination of France but we in Britain should recognise the coming hour glass economy, the growing politics of anti-globalisation, the new definitions of identity and multi-culturalism, even in the home of secular republicanism. In France we add, the poverty of the rural economy, and the massive public housing stock. The French, like us, have an imperial past creating an immigration flow above and beyond that of economics.

He argues that in France immigration is bringing in cheap labour to act as the new servant class to the bourgeois. I can’t find the chart, but the Financial Times during the referendum campaign illustrated that immigrants to the UK were spread, fairly evenly across the skills spectrum and the point has been made very powerfully about the number of immigrants working in the NHS as Doctors, Nurses and other carers. The same is true in both Banking and Construction. Possibly an important difference, certainly I am of the view that the number of people coming here to work is based on demand and stopping them or sending them home is madness and wrong.

The article examines Hollande’s election campaign and how it sought to rebuild Obama’s coalition of ethnic minorities, graduate and post-graduates, women, youths and non-Catholics in France; arguing that this wasn;t a majority but was the core of one.

It’s a long read, but I found it worth while; there are lessons for us in Britain. …

Kaahn!

And now I discover why it’s still worth buying and reading the New Statesman magazine. I have just read George Eaton’s full article on Sadiq Kahn’s first year as Mayor of London. It is trailed here on the New Statesman site and the full article is as yet unavailable on the web. It is quite timely as I was challenged as to what good he was doing for those who voted for him by people last week.

He has been busy, freezing the fares on the buses and tubes, launching the Night Tube, introduced a toxicity charge for the most polluting vehicles and imested in skills provision for London’s workers. hasn’t he introduced the bus hopper fare? I know he’s shit-canned the Garden Bridge which I am in two minds about. He has set a 38% affordable housing target for new builds (up from 12%) and redefined the meaning of affordable. The housing policy launch was reported by Dave Hill here…. He has appointed the first female Met Police Commissioner and also appointed a women to the position of Head of the Fire Brigade.

The article also points out that much of Boris’ activity was planned and approved under his predecessor’s (i.e. Ken Livingstone’s) term of office but that Kahn has had no initiatives to inherit, apart from the Garden Bridge, Water Cannon, the Vanity Lard bus, the Helter Skelter without a mat and the Dangleway.

The interview also covers his opposition to the Progressive Alliance; he states that, “There should be no no-go areas for Labour”. He recalls that he was advised to focus on core areas only but (righty) refused. I think that Labour supporters deserve to have a Labour candidate to support, but am ready to take advice from local activists.

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