Category Archives: Government

Posted on
by

As you are probably aware, Nosy-parker in chief Theresa May wants to record all the internet activity and emails of everyone in the UK, just in case you do something the government thinks is wrong (or decides is wrong sometime later down the line should you become “Politically inconvenient”).

One wily UK citizen recently did a very British act of defiance and, using the Freedom of Information Act, requested CCDP like information for just one UK individual, namely Theresa May.

Since she is so keen on snooping on the rest of us, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.

After a certain amount of back and forth the request was unsurprisingly denied. What I find interesting is that the request was denied on cost grounds due to the breadth of the request. This begs the obvious question: if the cost of obtaining this information for one person proves too costly to comply with a simple FOI request, and that by their own admission the request is too broad, how on earth can they justify doing the same for ~65 million people?

As a government minister, much of the requested information would almost certainly be recorded anyway as a matter of course.

My suspicion of course is that this request was never going to be complied with, as always there is one rule for us and another for them, cost was just a convenient excuse. In the words of Lance-Corporal Jones, “They don’t like it up ’em”.

Posted on
by

Our economy is officially in the grip of the much feared double dip recession, and since we’re all in it together it is our duty to save the country money wherever we can. We’re in the big society after all!

So, since the government’s plan to spy on every UK citizen’s email, IM and phone calls is going cost billions of pounds that could be better spent murdering brown people or giving the Queen a nice new boat for her jubilee, National “CC your emails to Theresa May” day hopes to save the government the cost by encouraging patriotic citizens such as yourself to simply forward all your emails to our beloved big sister!

Anyone know her cell number so I can conference her in to my meetings tomorrow as well?

Posted on
by

My mother reminded me of this yesterday; here are the Liberal Democrat’s pre-election promises, posted without comment…

We will be strong in defence of freedom. The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.

We will implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion.

We will introduce a Freedom Bill.

We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.

We will outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.

We will extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.

We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.

We will protect historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.

We will restore rights to non-violent protest.

We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech.

We will introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.

We will further regulate CCTV.

We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason.

We will introduce a new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

We will establish a Commission to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in British law, and protects and extends British liberties. We will seek to promote a better understanding of the true scope of these obligations and liberties.