This will not end well

Theresa May explains her plans for leaving the EU; she plans to leave the EU, the EEA and the customs union in order to finish her failed task of reducing immigration and excluding the UK from the European Court of Justice. This was originally a storify and contains a video of the Chatham House speech.

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Why you should be bothered about the Snoopers Charter

Why you should be bothered about the Snoopers Charter

Late last year, the UK Parliament passed the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. This law builds on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Acts and the Data Retention Laws. This law allows the Government to store all our electronic communications traffic, read the content and meta data and co-opt the product and service vendors to help them. I describe this in more detail below.

The Law was written in the aftermath of Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) ruling in the Schrems vs. Facebook case that the EU’s Data Retention Directive and hence the member state implementations were in contradiction to the EU’s human rights law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Parliament had considered aspects of these proposals twice before under the two previous administrations and rejected them.

This article looks at the new Law, criticises it on Human Rights grounds in that it jeopardises the right to privacy, the right to organise, the right to a fair trial and rights to free speech and on IT Security grounds in that the new regulation of encryption products jeopardises access to electronic trust and privacy. It also examines the likely impact of the recent CJEU ruling on the legality of its predecessor law, and in passing, likely conflicts with last year’s passage of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the European Union.  …

Evidence

A day or two ago, I read a blog article on where UKIP’s vote comes from and who it threatens published on the LSE blog site by Evans & Mellon. They say, they,

… examine the voting history of UKIP supporters, finding that the party is attracting, primarily, disaffected former Labour voters from the Conservatives and elsewhere, and that the working class basis of UKIP has been markedly over-stated. On the whole, however, it is the Conservatives, not Labour, who have most to fear from UKIP.

This is an important piece of evidence of deep inconvenience to those arguing that we have to do more than listen to UKIPs voters, usually an excuse to explore the cess pitc corners of the immigration control policy cupboard.. I tweeted it as I thought it was interesting and one of the retweets, emphasised the factual nature of the paper.


https://twitter.com/DaveLevy/status/816327113515134976

Thanks for the retweet Red Labour, howver we need to remember that

“you can’t reason people out of positions that they didn’t reason themselves into”.

I made a storify to document my sources,

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Boris and probity

Boris and probity

He's very unlucky, at the least! Let's look at the Garden Bridge! Ooops! Here's a storify story dealing with the bridge, Convoy's Wharf, his management of the Met and relationships with its Commissioners, his "chicken feed" fees from the Telegraph and his fast track appointment of Veronica Wadley to the Arts Council. ...

Harbinger of Disaster

Harbinger of Disaster

I made this storify, called “Has the earth moved/”, it would seem a couple of days before the Referendum, a harbinger of disaster!

 

I talk about the growing split in the country. I start by suggesting UKIP is here to stay 🤔, look at some aspects of the politics of Jo Cox’s murder and finish with this,

You can’t oppose racism and pander to it.

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Beyond Factionalism, but not today

Beyond Factionalism, but not today

I made a storify covering attacks on Momentum, it’s possible role in allowing new members to influence the party, the extent to which they should be listened. It finishes with a critical look at Burke’s “All I owe you is my judgement” and the way in which members of Labour’s PLP were preparing to use it to ignore Party Mandates.

This was written over the winter of 2015/16 and published in March 2016, and I have backdated it to that date. The optimism about Momentum might have been misplaced.

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