Archive for theresa may
Snooper’s Charter: You got it right once Nick. Please get it right again
Dear Nick, You got it right last time, vetoing the Home Office’s attempt to get the Communications Data Bill into the last Queen’s Speech and instead securing extensive Parliamentary scrutiny of the plans. Please, get it right this time too and veto it once more, as the press are suggesting you might. The likes of [...]
Three cheers for Lib Dem peer Paul Strasburger
From The Guardian: The home secretary, Theresa May, has been told by peers and MPs that her £1.8bn internet monitoring proposals will be a “honeypot for hackers and criminals around the world” and that she must bring in prison sentences for those who hack databases… A peers and MPs on the joint committee [looking at the [...]
News snippets from the Conservative conference: tax, Europe, migration and more
Trouble ahead on tax as Osborne opposes a mansion tax: We are not going to have a mansion tax, or a new tax that is a percentage value of people’s properties. Before you rush to spot the loophole in that – what about adding extra higher bands to Council Tax? – he opposed that too. [...]
“Credit to Cable: He has a game plan for putting industry on right track”
So wrote the Evening Standard’s Andrew Hilton this week: He is bored with Britain having the talent, the inventors and the innovators, but then thinking it is virtuous to leave them to fend for themselves with no support so that too few of them become business gold medallists… He identified the essentials for success — [...]
Maria Miller’s appointment: have you forgotten what was said when Theresa May got the role?
Maria Miller’s appointment to, amongst other things, the Women and Equalities brief has received quite a lot of criticism from non-Conservatives today. One part of that is wrong, but understandable – a simple mistake in not realising that the role she’s taken on isn’t the one Lynne Featherstone had but rather the one Theresa May [...]
Why doesn’t Theresa May want mandatory tracking of all cars?
Because it is an absurd idea may well be your answer to that question even before you’ve reached the end of it. But bear with me a moment. Imagine a government policy to have mandatory tracking devices in all motor vehicles, which would record all the journeys and store the data. The data would normally [...]
Guardian investigation finds sexual predators in police abusing powers
The Guardian reports: Sexual predators in the police are abusing their power to target victims of crime they are supposed to be helping, as well as fellow officers and female staff, the Guardian can reveal. An investigation into the scale and extent of the problem suggests sexual misconduct could be more widespread than previously believed. The situation raises questions [...]
The wheels are coming off the online monitoring bandwagon
Item one: A letter tomorrow in The Guardian from 15 Liberal Democrat MPs setting out their opposition to illiberal monitoring plans. Item two: More Conservative MPs joining with David Davis in speaking out against widespread online monitoring, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg. Item three: The Times reporting, Cameron forced to retreat on snooping powers [£]. Item four: a subtle, but [...]
Walking: it’s time to take action on this major terrorist threat
With apologies to Theresa May and The Sun. Walking is now a part of our daily lives — it’s how we go to the travel agents to book our holidays, buy our Christmas presents and meet our friends. But walking can also be abused by criminals, paedophiles and terrorists who want to cover their tracks [...]
Home Office decides against national spending limits for Police and Crime Commissioner elections
The controversy over the Government’s view that there should be no freepost election addresses for Police and Crime Commissioner elections has caught the headlines so far, but there is something far worse in the details of the draft legislation. Put simply: having considered having national expenditure limits for the elections, the Conservative ministers in the [...]
