Note this is an archived version of this page. The current blog is now here
I just sent off my opt-out letter to my GP, asking them not to upload a summary care record for me to the NHS data spine. I've thought quite hard about this - I don't have any medical data that I'm actually that bothered about keeping strictly private - but the government's implementation of central NHS records seems likely to undermine doctor-patient confidentiality, and is yet another facet of the database state (see past rants about ID Cards, the ridiculous children's database etc).
You can read more at The Big Opt Out. There's a form letter you can use to send to your GP.
If you're worried by the imminent introduction of ID cards and the National Identity Register, but you have to have a passport, now is your chance to renew and stay out of the system for 10 years. There's a number of good reasons to do it, and I recommend the factsheet at RenewForFreedom.org if you still have some unexpired validity and you're not sure why you should bother.
Really though, do you need any more incitement than that Charles Clarke has said that anyone who opts out of the NIR scheme is foolish? Here is the UK Passport application site. Download the forms and you're away.
From the Oxfam email:
East Africa is in the middle of a serious food crisis. Water is scarce. Food is running out. People have died and more will die if sufficient aid is not delivered fast. Nomadic herding communities are most at risk, with over 70 per cent of the animals on which they depend already dead in many areas. Recent rains, far from solving the crisis, have actually increased the risk of disease and are hampering the transportation of relief.
To donate to the Oxfam appeal, you can:
No2id have successfully received 10000 sign-ups to their pledge on refusing to sign up for an ID card. I didn't sign that because I didn't think I could realistically afford not to have a passport, a driving licence -- or indeed afford the potentially large fine for not signing up when the scheme becomes compulsory.
So, now there's a new pledge, which you can sign if you will support (with money) the people who will refuse to sign up. I've signed this one, but we're still looking for nearly 50000 more people to sign too.
Hopelessly out of date as usual. With a surveillance flavour this time
Way too late, but I was pleased to see the end of Anne Campbell's time as my MP, and her replacement by David Howarth of the Liberal Democrats. This election was the first time I've been involved in campaigning for a political party and it was nice that it was the winning one.
I was inspired to get involved after going to the No2id meeting in January. I spoke to a couple of LibDem councillors after the meeting and they gave me the impression that Cambridge was winnable. Since I was well fed up with Labour by then, I started leafletting for them, and I even did a bit of knocking up on Election Day - a slightly nerve-wracking experience, I have to say.
Still, I'm hoping to do a bit more, particularly as youngest Freestone gets old enough not to need a feed at 11pm - that really buggers your evening up (although I am grateful for the fact that she doesn't need feeding at 2-3am now).
Just been out leafletting for the Cambridge LibDems and also for NotApathetic.com. I resisted the temptation to put deliver both sets of leaflets to the same houses - didn't seem right somehow, so that added quite a lot onto the time it took.
Also just dumped my lazyweb idea for a living will generator onto the mysociety wiki.
Still lots of Cambridge blogs to sort through - I want to put as many of the feeds as possible into my Bloglines blogroll + update the delicious list with a quick comment on each blog.
Thank you for your prompt reply to my somewhat intemperate letter. I amvery pleased to hear that you are unhappy with the idea of detention without trial.You've made a number of points that I feel I should respond to.
Firstly, on the question of the existing detainees at Belmarsh: I actually take the view that law governing their detention that was recently ruled unlawful by the Law Lords actually sidestepped the difficult issue which we now confront quite neatly.
Obviously, I would prefer nobody to be detained without trial (we all agree that it's a Bad Thing), however, in the case of the existing detainees we are dealing with foreign nationals who we would normally deport (I assume).
The reason we don't do so in these cases is the threat to their human rights in their countries of origin. However, as I understand it, the detainees are free to leave at any time if they choose to return home, or can find a third country that will take them. I don't mean to be flippant about the difficulties that they face in this, but they do have options.
Conversely, because the law applies only to foreign nationals, I don't see it as a threat to the freedoms of UK citizens. I've tried to give the Government this much credit: that the measure imposed was as limited as possible.
Now the Law Lords have taken a higher stand on principle, but the Government's response to this seems wholly disproportionate to me.
I feel sure that you understand at least as well as I do the idea that we are free people, and that the Goverment is our servant. Central to that is the idea that if we're accused of something, we get a day in court to argue our case before our peers.
The current proposals undermine that fatally - Governments cannot be trusted with the sole power to determine who shall be detained. Nor can a secret review process be trusted to uphold the rights of the people detained. It's not a question of the goodwill or integrity of the people entrusted with the power. It's just a fact of those kind of systems. Only openness ensures justice will (eventually) prevail.
I've read the summary on Abu Qattara, and he sounds like a dangerous fanatic. You ask how we should deal with him - implicitly I suppose you mean if not by detaining him without trial? If I see someone in the street doing something dangerous, and I tell them to stop, I don't think I'm actually obliged to offer them an alternative occupation.
The Government has access to much smarter people than me, and I can't believe this is the best they can do. If you want my opinion, then I would say there seems to be plenty of scope for prosecuting Mr Qattara with, say, receiving stolen money, or perhaps incitement to racial hatred.
In the more general case, I appreciate the difficulty of exposing secret operations in the course of prosecutions, but I think it's wildly overstated - we know that phones and emails can be intercepted (the Government must be the only people still pretending not to know what Echelon is) and that evidence should be admissible in court. Everyone has a right to a fair trial.
I would appreciate it if you would pass my concerns on to the Home Office. I'd also like to know whether your distaste for detention without trial would extend as far as voting against the current proposals.
I've become involved in the No2id campaign to prevent the Government from introducing ID cards and a national identity register. The local group here in Cambridge had its second meeting last night, and managed to rather overwhelm our chosen venue of The Old Spring. This was partly my fault as I posted the time and place to cam.misc, from where it reached Indymedia. Anyway, the upshot was that from a first meeting of 3 people, we had a second of nearly 30.
We had a good mix of backgrounds and views, and the current plan is to organise a public meeting for early next year. If you are interested, do drop me a line, visit the No2id site, or subscribe to the local group email list.
A quick plug for Juan Cole's excellent site on Iraq which I recently heard about via Crooked Timber. The current material on how the Bush administration leaked the name of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan thus jeopardising UK intelligence operations and leading to the premature arrest of several suspected Al Qaida suspects here.
The press here don't seem to have really picked this up - perhaps there isn't enough corroboration - but it seems very plausible to me, and explains both the unusual timing of the operation, and David Blunkett's comments in the Guardian.
Before the whole event fades completely from my mind, I thought I'd write about an aspect of NotCon that I've not seen much other comment on, which is the theme of access and representation. I followed most of the political panels during the day, and different aspects of this theme emerged in several talks. In particular:
This also connected in my mind with Tim Ireland's talk on blogging your MP as a form of political activism. I can see that idea has somewhat wider uses too - you could blog the doings of pretty much any public figure as a way of increasing the public scrutiny they are under - although you are dependent on there being publicly accessible sources of information on what they do and say. I think that's largely a good thing - I would quite like to be able to type in my MPs name to Google and see (ideally) her own blog and also two or three blogs that follow her activities. Blogging seems a good way to pursue this kind of micro-journalism.
However, coming back to Richard Sargeant, I can also see that the kinds of people who are able to do this sort of thing (essentially as a hobby I guess) need a certain amount of technical knowledge, or access to people who have it. They need leisure time. They need a bit of social confidence dealing with authority - Tim said you should get information on your MPs diary from their office. Basically, this is largely a middle class hobby. That's not to denigrate it as dilettantism, but I think as this kind of "private" political activism grows, we need to be aware of the biases that it brings with it.
A couple of depressing links on Darfour. For what it's worth, I may write to my MP again, and use the G word, and see what she says about that. Probably should give some money to someone too - I may get a bit of cash soon, so in that case I shall definitely make a donation.
Apologies for not posting for a while - I've not been able to dial in from home, as I switched phone service to NTL, who lost my phone connection, and haven't been able to fix it for 5 days or so now.
Anyway, the blogosphere seems to be buzzing with comment on the torture memo, which is certainly one of the more shocking things I've seen from the Bush administration. A few links on the subject:
I emailed my MP to protest at the plans by the council of ministers to overrule the European parliament who had sensibly decided to restrict patentability of software. Probably a bit late to have much effect. Lots of information on this at FFII.
I guess I ought to lobby my MEPs too, but I only have so much energy for this sort of thing.
There's a useful summary here of yesterday's Mistaken Identity conference at the LSE. I quite wanted to go, but it would have clashed with work commitments.
I also noticed in the latest FIPR news that there's now a one stop shop for opposing the ID card bill at No2Id.net
I've been meaning for ages to write something about this. It seems the Government wishes substantially to erode the confidentiality of our medical records without any real consultation and with only a very dubious case for the benefits we would get.
A great post from cam.misc on why the Guided Bus is idiotic. This is probably the most unbiased and comprehensive summary of the issues that I've seen.
I've been meaning to post about this for ages - Cambridge County Council has decided it wants to build a guided bus system to provide transport into Cambridge from St Ives and ultimately Huntingdon. However the scheme seems to be completely farcical as the buses will have to run on the roads when they get into the city. Not only that but the scheme will destroy a viable rail trackbed to provide the guided route for the buses thus removing the possibility of building a rail system that could be far faster and cheaper.
There is a proposal to build such a scheme - it's called cast.iron, but of course it's very hard to judge whether it really is viable. The council are spinning their mad scheme for all it's worth, and the only other people who've gone into the matter in depth are cast.iron themselves. I've tried to follow the discussions on cam.misc and cam.transport, but there's really only so much time I can devote to trying to work out where the truth lies on the enormous number of areas the schemes have an impact on.
All I can say is that I can't believe the Guided Bus scheme is sensible - it seems to be a combination of a vanity project for the council, and the fact that central Government will put money up for this, but nothing else. I'm going to write to object to the scheme - not because I'm necessarily in favour of cast.iron but simply so the matter can be debated more fully at a public enquiry.
A couple I just saw:
A couple of interesting political links that have been languishing in my inbox for weeks:
Ok, last one before bed. I wrote to my MP Anne Campbell last night (using FaxYourMP.com of course) to protest about the continuing detention of Britons in Guantanamo. I'm not too happy about anyone being there, but I figure it's better to start with the cases we have some vague influence over.
I also registered my unhappiness about Home Office proposals for secret terrorist trials and the possible lowering of the standard of proof in such cases. To my mind you can't win a fight against terrorism by giving up the liberties that make this a civilised country in the first place.
I doubt it will do much good - Mrs Campbell is good at responding to her mail, but in my experience the responses don't necessarily have much to do with the questions asked. Still, I figure I may as well use my democratic rights while I still have them :-)
I posted back in November about the Government's ID cards consultation. I did eventually get a response (after about 2 months) which reproduced a lot of bumph about why ID cards were a good idea and didn't answer my questions about how responses to the consultation had been counted.
I've written again, but I'm not all that hopeful for a more sensible response. Meanwhile Stand has an update on the Home Affairs Select Committee's hearings on the ID card proposals.
Update - 04.02.18 -- I got a letter back from the lovely Aamna Saeed of the ID cards unit this morning. To be fair, this one does address the question I asked. I don't agree with the answer but at least it's not just nonsense. I think it's time to let this one go - I've made my point at least.
Horribly behind the times as always, but I thought Ken Mcleod's piece expressed both sides of my own conflicted views on Iraq in a clear and honest way. I narrowly come to the opposite conclusion as him, but it's a tough call. Seymour Hersh's piece is just interesting in that it's a part of the story I hadn't really thought about before - what tactics do you need to find independently operating terror cells?
I just saw the following piece on the Guardian's website about the Home Office's ID cards consultation.
The short version is that anyone who submitted their comments through STANDs gateway website has been treated as part of an "organised campaign". The response to the consultation counts these separately from other responses, which means they can claim a majority of responses in favour of ID cards.
I've written to the Home Secretary, complaining about the way my response has been treated (I'm certainly not aware of being part of an organised campaign). No response yet.
I read about this place in an Observer article via a link on Robot Wisdom and I've never quite been able to get it out of my head.
It's a place where you can send your teenager (if you are in the US - UK law wouldn't permit it I think) to straighten them out. I don't know quite why the thought of sending children to this place bothers me so much - far worse things happen to many children around the world, after all.
I think it's partly the fact that it's considered okay for the parents to do it without oversight from some sort of independent child welfare body, and partly that it's so easy to imagine yourself into the children's situation - more so than it is into, say, the much more horrific position of a child soldier.
Whatever. It disturbed me, but there's not a whole lot I can do about it except say what I think: it ain't right.
Some old links on technology and privacy issues. This is a subject close to my heart as I think it's an area in which new technology potentially has the ability to damage rights that we currently take for granted. I'm not a privacy fundamentalist by any means, but I do think the UK government (and others) are in the process of a land grab of these rights before most people even realise they had them to lose. I'll definitely be writing more about this.
A few old links on broadly political topics:
While I think about it - the e-voting resolution encourages you to ask your MP to support the resolution. It provides a link to faxyourMP.com which is a wonderful facility as it saves all that business of printing your letter, looking for stamps etc.
There's also a useful page of stats of MPs response rates here. My MP - Anne Campbell - seems to be quite responsive, but some are awful.
I just signed the e-voting resolution at http://www.free-project.org/resolution/
This is a really important issue for the future if we are preserve trust in the electoral system that underpins our democracy. More info here.
Old news, I know, but I just saw the Political Compass which adds another dimension onto the traditional left-right dichotomy and administers a test to see where your views fall. I seem to be left-liberal which sounds about right.
Introduction
A recent conversation made me wonder about the cost-benefit analysis of making a large group of people redundant under UK law. That is, if you want to make more than 20 people redundant from one site, then there has to first be a three month consultation. If it's fewer than that, then there just have to be individual consultations with the people involved, so typically you only have to pay them for one month more. It seems intuitively clear that if you only want to get rid of, say, twenty people, it's going to be cheaper to get rid of nineteen today, and pay the other one for three months, then make them redundant then. But where's the break-even point?
Analysis
In the simplified analysis that follows, I've assumed that the cost of employing someone for a month is a fixed cost K (that includes salary and other overheads). The cost of making someone redundant is R (including notice, and redundancy payments). Note that this assumes these costs are the same for all people. I'll show how an uneven distribution affects things later. I've ignored all secondary effects, like the cost of the consultation itself, and the interest accrued on the redundancy money not paid out till the 4th month in the "nineteen today" scenario.
N denotes the number of people in the workforce, and x is the number that are to be made redundant.
For those who find symbolic maths painful to look at, the table breaks down like this:
| Month |
Consultation |
Nineteen now, then the rest |
| 1 |
KN |
K(N-19) + 19R |
| 2 |
K(N-x) + xR |
K(N-19) |
| 3 |
K(N-x) |
K(N-19) |
| 4 |
K(N-x) |
K(N-x) + (x-19)R |
Consultation cost (C), simplified = K(4N - 3x) + xR
Nineteen upfront cost (U), simplified = K(4N - 57 - x) + xR
Excess cost of consultation = (C-U) = K(57 - 2x). So for consultation to be economic, this cost should be negative, that is, 57 -2x < 0.
Which implies 57 < 2x, or x > 28.
That is, it's only economic to have a group consultation if you want to get rid of more than 28 people.
But You Assumed Everyone Costs the Same
It's a fair cop. Okay, so now assume the income distribution is not flat. Does it make a difference in the case when there's a consultation? No, because everyone is laid off at the same time. It only makes a difference in the case where you get rid of nineteen people upfront. Now, which people will the company choose, other things being equal? The most expensive, right? So that means the K(N-19) term is going to be smaller.
Let's look at that excess cost of consultation: (C-U) = (K(4N - 3x) + xR) - (K(N + 3(N - 19) - x) - xR). If we think of xR as the total cost of redundancy, that term will still drop out on both sides, leaving K((4N - x) - (N+ 3(N - 19) - x)). But we said the K(N-19) term would be smaller, so lets just take off another constant S from that side.
What do we get? K(57 + S - 2x), which is negative if 57 + S < 2x.
Which implies x > 28 + S/2. S is positive, so the effect is that more people must be made redundant for it to be economically worthwhile to the company.
So in summary, as long as the company can get rid of the more expensive people first, the number of people made redundant via a group consultation must be higher for it to be economic. In other words, flat income distribution gives the best possible case for a group consultation so 28 is the least possible lower bound to make the consultation economic.