News UK government plans emergency data retention law

Well, I guess reality is what you make of it

 

Isn't it just:









For us it's another day in paradise. We live in a Western affluent democracy --which, for all its flaws, still allows us to influence who will be in government in 2016; with clean drinking water, ready access to food, a welfare system, free health care and free education. So why don't we stop bitching already that MI5 can see just who we talked to on our £500,-- iPhone last Friday and use those gifts to shape our reality. You know, like smart and wise adults who don't vote for caricatures like Farrage, who don't go on riots that offer justification for politicians to bestow more powers on the police, who first learn to read and write properly so they can articulate a decent argument when they visit their MP. We still have that choice.

A government should be afraid of its people? You should ask yourself why this one isn't.

 

Isn't this thread about the UK and the erosion of our rights?

I'm thankful for things I have which is why I don't want to lose the rights and freedom's our ancestors fought so hard for

Tbh your post of the poverty of the third world countries in irrelevant sad yes but nothing to to with this thread

 

Indeed, appeal to emotion is a common logical fallacy. Common among politicians.

 

It is very relevant: it reminds you of the privileged and empowered position we enjoy. Do you think those people can influence their governments (such as they are)? Nope --they are truly ****ed.

We're not. Any kid from the sink estate can in principle make it to one of those fancy Oxbridge universities that our politicians enjoyed. Not saying it would be easy, but they still can. We can still talk to our MP and many of them are idealistic enough to listen. We are still relatively empowered. But rights have to be exercised to keep them from eroding, and I do not see this population exercising its rights: it's right to be healthy, educated, informed, politically aware and behave and vote accordingly.

Simple example: remember the internet filter that all ISPs now have to implement? If every user now called their ISP and demanded for the filter to be turned off, then it simply would not work anymore. Because everybody would do it, nobody would have to feel embarrassed about their request, or defend it.

You don't want your mobile phone company to keep records of your calls? If every mobile user decided not to use their mobile for a week: simply do without, like back in the 90's (we survived guys, honest), how much money do you think operators would lose? How long before they'd be caving in to customer demand? How long before politicians would be lobbied by those companies to abandon their monitoring schemes?

 

We are all entitled to our opions, I still say its not relevant.

Just because one sector of the world has little or no control of their lives doesn't mean we should have to tolerate it too

 

Yeah it's a common tactic to win an argument

 

Well I have phoned my ISP and told them not to put the filters on my internet I certainly don't feel embarrassed why would I be?

Also I handed a letter to my GP demanding that my medical details kept private and I will oppose what the government is trying to do now, I'm exercising my rights, how about you?

 

I guess that's why people are getting evicted for not paying their bedroom tax. The same people who want to move to smaller homes but can't because nobody is building the. Great opportunity for the people who are being made homeless just for being poor.

Or perhaps you were thinking about the disabled who had their benefits stopped for not looking for the not existent jobs they are incapable of doing? The people who, in this rich country, have died of hunger because they have no money and no way of getting any?

Talk about people having opportunity after we get a government who understand poverty well enough to do something about it. The only people with opportunity in this country are those with money. The poor are being treated as a sub class. And that includes people working and earning less than a living wage.

 

I'm not saying that either. I'm saying that we do have some control, and should exercise it. LocknLoad basically is arguing that people are sheep for accepting the current state, and should do something. I'm arguing for some of the things we can do. Interesting that this meets with such opposition.

I've also rejected the filter, but decided not to refuse sharing of my medical notes. This is because (working in the NHS) I know that my notes are already shared in all sorts of ways that most people are not even aware of (LHA's, DoH, commissioning groups and private heath care providers as part of monitoring and planning health care policies). The new government rules actually change very little.

Labour is keen for our vote. If all these people (after all, how many are we talking about) now visits their local Labour MP and promise them their vote in return for abolition of the bedroom tax, that would be an interesting incentive. But if I ask how many of these same people voted in the last election, what would I find?

And yet their government feels it can do that, because they were voted into power. UK general election turnout in 1950: 84%. Turnout in 2010: 65%. See what I'm saying?

Also, this is the conversation I have with my disabled patients when I help them fill out the disability benefit form:

"can you walk 200 yards on a level surface?"

"Yeah, slowly, but I'll be breathless and ache all over and be no good for the rest of the day..."

"So can you walk 200 yards on a level surface?"

"Well... yeah, I suppose. With difficulty."

(Now looking them directly in the eyes) "So can you walk 200 yards, normally, like I or any other ordinary person can?"

"Well, if you put it like that, no"

I tick "No" in the box. The penny drops.

I am reminded of the woman who at a disability assessment was asked to get up off the floor unassisted. She ended up breaking her arm while doing so. She was nonetheless declared fit and able, because she got up off the floor. My question was: "Why did you try so hard if you knew you couldn't do it?"

Seriously: acknowledge the system, understand the system, use the system to your advantage.

Oh, hai: I'm a mixed-race mongrel from a broken home on a council estate. My mother drummed into me all my life that education is power. I went to University (where I took a subject relevant to a career) and worked my socks off. No pubs. No girls. No parties. No "student life". The last year I sofa-surfed my way to graduation as I was effectively homeless. When no good jobs were forthcoming in the Netherlands I packed the suitcase out of which I was living and moved to the UK, where there was a shortage of my skills. I paid my study debts off about a decade later. The rest is history.

I know all about the poor being treated as a sub-class. That is not going to change by shaking your fist at the injustice of overprivileged politicians. It will change if all of them appeal the bedroom tax process, as is their right. It will change if that same sub-class gets their kids to school (ironically, several Labour councils have now decreed that you can avoid bedroom tax by reclassifying the bedroom as a study) and makes sure they get qualifications so they can get the jobs that them foreigners strangely seem to find (hai again). It will change if they go out and vote.

I know, I know: who do you vote for, they're all the same. Why, the other guy, of course! It doesn't matter what a party proclaims to stand for --if they get the message that if they piss off the population, they are out on their ear in four years' time and their opposition is in, they will start taking an interest in not pissing it off. Negative reinforcement principle at work.

 

I'm not against my medical records being shared with other medical organisations but that isn't what's going to happen just about anybody that pays will get access to it, it's being done for the government to gain revenue not to benefit the people.

Oh, hai:
I left school at 14 university was for the rich and privileged not for the working classes , to young to be employed I worked as a mobile welder till I was old enough to get a job I got a electrical apprenticeship and went to collage 3 days a week while working as a apprentice electrician I also did a evening class to get my welding qualifications.

Some years later I spend nearly a year living on the streets a single person was not a priority for housing so I know about poverty and hardship.

It's true they do get the work and work for far less money which is why they get the work, mind you the fact that they live 20 to a room and pay a fraction of the rent and living cost that other people do and it's unlikely they pay tax etc, they eat the cheapest possible food, it makes it possible to do the work so cheap. Where as other people have a mortgage to pay their tax's council tax feed their families and put their children though uni they couldn't live on the kind of money the foreign workers do they just can't compete.

 

You may mean the same thing, but secure and private are still very different concepts.

If a society does not need a government, who is the governing body of that society ?
This one sentence "A society that governs itself wisely does not need a government to do so., is a contradiction. Getting into office is often very different than what happens once they are in office.

Only true to a very limited extent, it doesn't apply to everything outside your sphere of influence, such as TAX, defense, spending, policing, laws, utility's such as water and power, street lighting, transport, etc, etc. In fact most things we depend on in our day-to-day lives.

That is a long way from setting up their own police force, or dictating how much or what their taxes are spent on, setting up their own power station, army, or transport system.

All you seem to be saying is that it's fine to liaise with the neighbourhood constable, to educate yourself, or access legal advice so you can talk to your MP, who might i remind you is part of the very governing body that you seem to be saying should have it's powers limited by people taking charge of their own lives.

The scale of a war is not in question. What is, is the claim that a governing body couldn't go to war if citizens simply refused to sign up and fight, something that has been proven not to be so throughout history.

Well you seem to be saying that expecting a government to nanny you is infantile behaviour, and "pushing back" is just teenage rebellion, but whatever emotive words you wish to use, it all seems to boil down to what you say is "that compromise thing again"

So are you saying people are behaving in an infantile manner and acting like a teenager when they seek compromise, it seems you are saying anyone who complains is acting like a child, yet at the same time saying that people need to seek a compromise.

And how do you think people created this western affluent democracy with clean water, ready access to food, a welfare system, free health care and free education, this "paradise" we currently live in ? Was it by keeping quiet about a wrong, an injustice, the corrupt, those without a voice. Or was it by pushing back against the state, by making sacrifices, by making our voices heard, in other words acting like rebellious teenagers.

Indeed it is.
Rights and freedom's that we should all be standing up for, lest we fall backwards into a society depicted in those emotive pictures Nexxo posted, as that is what can happen when citizens don't stand up for their rights, don't let it be know they are not happy and make their voices heard.

And how do you think that privileged and empowered position we enjoy came to be ?
Those people are in a similar situation that the western world was in many years ago, how do you think we changed things for the better.

While somewhat true that any kid from a sink estate could make it to Oxbridge, the chance of that happening are infinitesimally small.

And who is to say this has not happened, just because an uninformed minority maybe making use of it doesn't mean it wouldn't work anymore. The government would still back it even if everyone turned it off, why ? Because it's good PR and because it makes the monitoring of what web sites citizens visit much easier.

It would take a lot longer than a single week, and not only would it be harmful to the telecoms companies, it would also be harmful to the customers.

This is something we have seen when people take strike action, what happened to the miners, what is going to happen to all those public sector works that recently held strike action. Did the government change course with the miners ? Is it going to change course with the public sector workers.

 

Well, yes and no. Those records will be anonymised --they have to be, else the government is violating its own Data Protection Act. As NHS services get increasingly privatised (which is something that worries me more, for all sorts of reasons), our records will increasingly be handled by private companies anyway.

My question is: what happens to the money? In principle I have no problem with the NHS leveraging its resources (such as anonymised demographic medical stats) to fund its health care services, but I would be annoyed if the money goes somewhere else.

And see where you are now. Because you did not just complain; you did something about it. Hard work? You betcha. Unfair? And then some. But life is what it is, and the only way that will change is to do something to change it.

Not necessarily. Many foreign residents work in ordinary UK jobs paid at UK wages and pay UK taxes --like yours truly. But if said people with mortgages, council tax and families to feed cannot afford to work for such low wages, that kind of begs the question what they are living on instead. Benefits? That means that we have a system where it is financially more advantageous to stay on benefits than to get a job. How is that working out for everybody?

Not only does it make benefit claimants extremely vulnerable to the whims of government, it also disempowers them because it marginalises them in society. If anything, that is what the Tory government wants: cheap foreign labour with no civil rights (a mere 150 years ago we'd call them slaves), a marginalised, dumb and disempowered working class (remember Dickens: ignorance and want) and a wealthy, powerful upper class to reap the benefits. The way to fight that is for the poor working class to not kick down at the foreign slaves but to empower itself through the resources, hard-won in the last century, that it still has at its disposal --but are disappearing fast. Use them or lose them!

 

Society itself.

Governed by the council. When is the last time you voted in a local election, or talked to your MP?

Not the example you raised.

Correct. I see no contradiction in that. I consult my GP, but I still look after my own health and inform myself about my own medical conditions. Thus I limit my dependence on him, and his power over me.

It simply has never happened yet.

I think we have different understandings about compromise.

No, acting like informed adults, by informed challenge through the social, legal and political processes available to them.

Is a good question. How has that happened in the past?

Oh, hai again (I went to the Dutch equivalent). Not enough reason for not even trying.

But if everybody turns it off, it doesn't work anymore, does it?

No, seriously: it would take a week, and I question how it would be harmful to the customers. I remember society functioning just fine before mobile phones came along.

Nope, so "pushing back" didn't work, did it? What could they do instead?

 

So every individual sets their own laws and rules then ? That would be known as anarchy.

The council is just another governing body.
So instead of expecting the government to nanny you, you are relying on the council to nanny you.
And instead of pushing back against the government, you are pushing back against the council, how is that any less "just teenage rebellion" ?

Not that i see it as being relevant when i last voted, or talked to my MP.
But if you must know, i last voted in the recent local elections, and depending on what your definition of "talked" is, it would have been last week.

That's because it wasn't the example i raised, it was the example you raised, right here.

And how is that limiting the power of a governing body, or taking that power to yourself and minimising your dependence on them ? As you stated here.

So when one nation declares war on another the country being invaded had a choice in the matter ? Or in country's with conscription people had a choice ? Both situations that have seen governing body's go to war without the citizens having a choice in the matter, or because they refused to sign up and fight.

I don't think so, we just seem to have a different understand of how compromise is reached.

And that is what happens most of the time, unfortunately challenging through the social, legal and political processes available to them doesn't always work, sometimes people are forced to take more visible, or direct action. Such as the poll TAX riots, the suffragette movement, etc, etc.

By people fighting for what they see as basic rights, such as the above mentioned suffragette movement.

No one ever said it's a reason not to try, IIRC you said...

So contrary to what you said about us not being truly ****ed, for the vast majority of the population they are truly ****ed. Sure they may not be as truly ****ed as those people in the emotive pictures you posted, but with only around %10 of children from underprivileged backgrounds making it to university, they are still ****ed.

Depends what that "work" was meant to be.
Was it intended for the 1 in 5 parents that found installing filtering software to difficult, or were unaware of it, or was it done to win votes, or to make monitoring the internet easier ?

That's a matter of opinion, the miners strikes lasted for over a year and changed nothing.
And to claim it wouldn't effect customers is very short sighted IMHO.

Pushing back isn't just about strikes Pushing back is as simple as not accepting what is being forced on you, as in someone pushes you and you push back, in one form or another saying NO.

 

If done wisely and with mutual respect and consideration, anarchies can work. But I am talking more about a matter of degree.

Shall I just let you speak for me as well and get on with it while I go and do something else?

The people of the invading country do. Every politician knows this, which is why they work so hard at whipping the population up into a jingoistic frenzy first. And the people buy it every time.

OK, let's see where we agree. I agree that the government should act in our interest, but (people being people, and power corrupting as it does) mostly it doesn't. It never has. Not even in the good old days. I agree that's unjust.

I agree that our civil liberties are being eroded. I agree that is wrong. I agree that we should resist that. I also agree that our options for doing so are rather limited.

However, in many fundamental aspects of our lives we do have some control. We do have access to some resources and information. We do have some rights. We are not totally helpless and at the mercy of our government. But I think that the argument that we are powerless to stop the government eroding our civil rights loses considerable strength when we, the people, do not even bother to take responsibility for, and control of those aspects of our lives and our government that we still can take control of.

Every time we relinquish personal responsibility and control over an aspect of our life, we are basically handing it to a government that doesn't care about us. We put ourselves in a vulnerable position of dependence on some remote, ineffectual and somewhat corrupt bureaucratic system. We live in an obese nation that drinks too much; people can't be bothered to look after their own health. So they put ourselves ever more at the mercy of what the government decides to do with the NHS. They don't raise their kids to respect (free) education, so (apart from undermining that education system for future generations) they can't compete in the workplace and end up at the mercy of what the government decides to do with the benefits system, with council housing, with minimum wage. And if their rights are being violated, they wouldn't even know how to challenge that.

Instead people vote for Nigel Farrage under the vague notion that if the UK exits the EU, it will stop them foreigners taking their jobs. Of course they are too outraged to ask themselves why politicians wish to exit the EU, given that, as we have established, they don't act in our best interests. Why, it's to concentrate all governmental control back in Westminster of course, so they can violate our rights even more. But you know, keep voting for Fascist clowns. It worked so well for the Germans of the 1930's.

Seriously, the UK population needs to get its own **** together so it can confront the government from a position of independence, knowledge and strength.

 

Lol..."speak to your MP, if you have concerns"

The local councils are creaming their collective pants at the level of access to information that has been granted by central government.
The local councils do not currently have the expertise to collate the information, the problem for us all will become all to clear in times ahead.
At the last recent census, where we were all threatened with massive fines or/and imprisonment for not filling in the forms, we were bullied and promised court, bailiffs and police etc.
A large group of people filled the forms in under the name of Darth Vader, which i thought was quite amusing, and while i was looking into the case of a 71 year old man who set himself on fire rather than be dragged through the courts, i was perplexed by what i found.
All the information from the millions and millions of people who filled out the forms and returned them as ORDERED was sent to its ultimate destination....where do you think that was?

Local council HQ?........No!
Regional central council?........No!
Central government?.....No!
The EU?............No!

All of the information contained in the last UK census was eventually sent to the major American defense contractor.

Northrop Grumman Corporation.

Why did our Government, who is supposed to be run for the people, by the people, send all of our private information ( which was in contradiction to the Data Protection Act), to an American Defense Contractor?

Our country is run by a puppet government on behalf of the Americans, make no mistake about that.

In Today's England, money is the only God.
Merrell Lynch, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, this is where the fate of the UK will rest, with these 3 entities.

William Blake: "until we can build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land"


We sold our soul many years/wars ago.

 

You've heard the bell chime, but you don't know where the clapper hangs (as they say in Holland). Lockheed Martin won the £150m contract to run the census on behalf of the Office for National Statistics. Not quite the same thing, although of course still objectionable.

 

I hate to barge in on the carried-away discussion here, but shouldn't this be argued in the Serious forum? And not the Article discussion forum?

Also, this explains why the recent windows article didn't inflate by 5 pages overnight...

 

Groups of people don't act wisely, it's hard enough for some people to treat another person with respect and consideration, let alone a whole group of people doing that, most of the time it's each man, or woman out for them selves.
I have never known anarchism to work, unless you consider civil war to be working. Most of the time anarchism, at some point, gives way to the establishment of some form of governing body.

That maybe true for the invading army, but that was not you original premiss.
Your original premiss was that no governments could go to war if its citizens simply refused to sign up and fight.

Whereas I think the government does act in a citizens best interests (most of the time), it's just a matter of who that citizen, or citizens are.

Indeed they are, sadly though civil liberties are the type of thing most people don't know they have lost until the day comes that they need them.

Very true, but as mentioned above, civil liberties are the type of thing you don't miss until you want, or need them. They don't effect people in the same way as raising, or lowering the TAX rate, cutting public services, building new railway lines, or privatising public services.

When a government makes changes, most people ask a single question, does it effect me, or my life ?