labour – Page 38 – davelevy.info

What do London’s MEP candidates think about digital?

Yesterday the Open Rights Group held its final European Parliament hustings at Shoreditch Village Hall in Hoxton, London. It’s been a while since I visited and it’s certainly cleaned up well. It was great to be there. On the way in, I met Claude Moraes, Labour’s spokesman who told me that the Tories non-attendance was deliberate policy. I don’t know if it’s shame at their behaviour on the lobbying around the data protection directive or fear of a digitally educated audience. The meeting was moderated by Glyn Moody, who led the meeting through the issues of privacy, surveillance, whistle blowing, net neutrality, lobbying and copyright reform. The Tories absence meant that representatives from Labour, the LibDems, both represented by incumbents Claude Moraes and Sarah Ludford,the Greens (Danny Bates) and UKIP (Paul Oakley) who were not, were present. …

Pragmatic Radicalism’s Top of the Policies on the Digital Revolution

As promised I popped over Pragmatic Radicalism’s the Top of the Manifestos event run by @LabourDigital. I proposed that “the regulator’s code must be open” and this can be seen at their updated event page. I presented a pitch entitled, “The regulators code must be open” but sixty seconds isn’t long. It didn’t win, or even make the final cut! …

Policy for Labour on the Digital Economy

The Labour Party’s proposed policy programme only mentions the digital economy once, and this is to promise more speed, everywhere it can go. There are two internal pressure group style swarms/groups/initiatives looking to do better. The first is launched by the front bench incubated if not commissioned by the impressive Chi Onawaruh MP, currently shadow spokesperson for the Cabinet Office. This has it’s home at this site, Chi publicised the initiative at in an article at Labour List called How can we make Digital Government work better for everyone?. A great deal of thought has been undertaken in launching this initiative. The second initiative is @LabourDigital, …

Supporting the EDRi Charter

Earlier this month I wrote about the 10 Point Charter for a Digital Society and the voting exchange supporting it. Claude Moraes, Labour’s 1st place candidate on the London List, an incumbent and a leading member of the EU Parliament’s LIBE (Civil Liberties) Committee has already signed it as has Ivanna Bartolleti, who is also on Labour’s London list. Two days ago, I wrote to the remaining London Labour candidates and asked them to also support it. The rest of this article is a synopsis of the argument I used in favour of all 10 points. I said something like this, …

Digital Liberty, Labour’s Policy?

I have today, posted a submission to Labour’s YourBritain site, arguing for the Labour Party to support the EDRi’s charter of digital rights. I repeat my categorisation of the charter as supporting citizenship activism, defending privacy from corporate and state surveillance, promoting equality before the law and seeking to ensure a democratically regulated internet. I suggest that this builds on two of the last Labour Government’s greatest democratic reforms, the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and the Human Rights Act (HRA). I conclude with the proposal that the Labour Party supports the Charter for the European Parliamentary elections and the general election in 2015. …

Labour & Rent Controls

A glimmer of hope, as Sadiq Kahn, Labour’s Shadow Minister for London argues for rent controls as part of Labour’s Manifesto, at the Fabian Society New Year conference; he sparks a debate with powerful allies and opponents.

…

Labour Party Reform, and the final word is

The Collins report on Labour Party Reform s published via Labour List, the report itself is hosted on Scribd, and I now mirror it on my Google Drive. …

The end of the road from Falkirk

The final findings of the Collins Review into Labour Party Reform have been leaking into the public domain over the last few days, I originally felt it best to have my say on Storify, The story is now available here, see below.

…

Cleaning Up Labour’s Politics II

I have just published and backdated my first thoughts in response to Ed Miliband’s speech on “Cleaning Up” politics. This has been written over a six month period. It was started as I shaped my thoughts and was originally written as a contribution to what became the Collins Review but I decided it was insufficiently focused and made no proposals. It merely expressed my anger. The final version of the article was published today and backdated to near the point I started it. It was thus published after the closure of the Collins Review deadline, and before the publication of the Special Conference agenda. …

Rent Controls

There’s been a bit of twitter shower, bit less damp than a twitterstorm about Labour’s policy on Rent Controls. I reflect on the correspondence here, but have also storyfy’d it here. Earlier today Mark Ferguson of Labour List, tweeted, …