politics

  • Pinnies at prayers

    Steve WoodsOddities, Politics

    A protest by women will be taking place today in the Anglican Diocese of Hereford, which covers Herefordshire and parts of South Shropshire.

    They’ll be wearing their pinafores and aprons in church in protest at the Church of England’s recent rejection of women bishops.

    One of the organisers of the protest, Christine Walters, from Stoke Lacy in Herefordshire, said: “The idea is that women wear an apron or pinafore on top of their clothes as a mockery of the idea that they are fit only for tea making. We all know that women contribute so much to the church and especially our women priests who need our support at the moment. We are asking men to wear a purple ribbon”.

    pinny protesters in action
    The hardcore pinny protesters of Stoke Lacy

    One report also suggests the pinny protest is to show they are not tied to their church by apron strings.

    Church of England bishops are due to meet tomorrow (Monday) to discuss the fallout from the lay vote in Synod that defeated the proposal.

  • News from the (male chauvinist) pigsty

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    Q: What do the Bristol University Christian Union and the village of Suderbari, in the Indian state of Bihar have in common?

    A: They both treat women as second-class citizens.

    The Bristol University Christian Union has passed a ruling that women are not allowed to teach at its main weekly meetings, as well as making it clear that women will only be able to teach as principal speakers at away weekends and during its mission weeks if they do so with their husbands, according to a report posted today on Bristol 24/7.

    This action has since led a Christian Union committee member to resign and prompted one CU member to write to Bristol University’s independent student news site Epigram, saying:

    On a personal note, I believe that Jesus was a feminist and that women should be allowed to teach.

    Up in its Clifton eyrie, the University of Bristol Union is examining whether this move by the Christian Union falls foul of its equality policy (hint: it undoubtedly does. Ed.)

    However, it’s not just the Abrahamic religions that are treating modern women as second-class citizens.

    In Suderbari, as today’s Guardian reports, women in the village have been barred from using mobile phones since mobiles “pollute the social atmosphere” by encouraging women to elope. If women are caught using a mobile, they risk a fine of Rs. 10,000 if they are unmarried and Rs 2,000 if they are married (so much for equality before the law. Ed.).

    The reason given by the village’s leadership was summarised by Manuwar Alam, president of the local social advisory committee, who stated the following:

    Unrestricted use of mobile phones is promoting premarital and extramarital affairs and destroying the great institution of marriage. We are extremely worried.

    However, the real reason is likely to be that traditional male authority in India is now being challenged due to improved education for women and, as Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army used to say: “They don’t like it up ’em!”

    Update 06/12/12: An item has now appeared on Epigram to the effect that Bristol University Christian Union has issued a statement which says they will extend invitations to both women and men to speak at any of their events without exception. However, this might just be a little too late to save their reputation.

  • Snooper’s Charter – my letter to my MP

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    Below is the text of an email I’ve written today to my constituency MP, Stephen Williams, regarding the coalition Government’s vastly invasive draft Communications Data Bill, also known as the Snooper’s Charter.

    Dear Mr Williams

    Subject: Draft Communications Data Bill

    I am writing to you express my concerns about the draft Communications Data Bill, also known popularly as the Snooper’s Charter, and how I regard it as harmful to the interests of the UK population in general. I understand that the joint Lords and Commons Parliamentary Committee examining the draft Bill will be reporting shortly.

    At this point I wish to point out that I’m also the Company Secretary of Bristol Wireless, a community co-operative that functions as a small ISP (which resells bandwidth to clients who are our network) and telecommunications provider (supplying VoIP telephony services) which is based in Bedminster. I have already written to Bristol Wireless’ constituency MP, Dawn Primarolo, to make her aware of the concerns of the co-operative.

    The draft Communications Data Bill raises significant issues connected with human rights, privacy, security and the nature of the society in which we wish to live. These issues are raised by the draft Bill’s fundamental approach, not its detail. Addressing them would, in our opinion, require such a significant re-drafting of the bill that the better approach would be to withdraw the bill in its entirety and rethink the way that internet security and monitoring are addressed.

    According to Liberty, the draft Bill will turn a nation of 60 mn. citizens into a nation of 60 mn. suspects. It won’t matter if citizens have never got so much as a speeding fine, personal information about them will be stored just in case it may prove useful one day. Put in another way, would you – as an upright, law-abiding citizen – be happy if the police popped by tomorrow to install a CCTV camera in your living room just in case they one day suspect you have committed a crime? Crime prevention arguments must not unquestionably trump the privacy of law-abiding citizens.

    The general public has been misled by the government and the mainstream media as to the purpose of the draft Bill. It is not about tackling serious crime, paedophilia or terrorism. Access to communications data is granted to local authorities and hundreds of other public bodies for a wide range of purposes that have nothing to do with crime fighting.

    The Government assumes too much in assuming it has an automatic right to keep track of all of citizens’ electronic communications with each other: what we’re looking at online and who we’re emailing, talking to on Skype or texting. It doesn’t. If this is HMG’s logic, why does it not demand that we all report to it every day, telling them who we’ve met for lunch?

    Stockpiling large amounts of data indiscriminately simply amounts to blanket surveillance. Experience shows that amassing large databases of personal information inevitably leads to discrimination. The retention process lends itself to the great temptation of “data mining” – fishing expeditions based on clumsy stereotypes rather than reasonable suspicion of individual wrongdoing. In addition, there are already problems with unauthorised access to sensitive information with existing systems such as the Police National Computer DVLA database and local authority and health records. These problems would be multiplied many times over with the amounts of stored data envisaged by the draft Bill.

    Furthermore, any increase in the level of surveillance would inevitably result in an increased use of encryption (and other circumvention techniques too) by ordinary internet users, thus rendering the surveillance useless, unless public sector technicians are skilled in the art of cracking encryption. Moreover, those alleged terrorists and organised criminals – if they are using the internet at all for their nefarious activities – are probably already using encryption and other security measures to obfuscate their activities.

    Finally, I’d point out that given the technology that’s likely to be needed, the Government may well end up building the technical infrastructure to intercept all our communications.

    I would be happy to discuss these matters in further detail with you should you so wish. In addition, there is plenty of other information available via the Open Rights Group website (http://www.openrightsgroup.org).

    Yours, etc.

  • Stop the Snooper’s Charter local training sessions

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    ORG logoThe Open Rights Group is organising a series of workshops around the UK so supporters can help to tell people across the UK about the dangers of mass government surveillance, profiling and data mining for supposed criminal suspects, as envisaged by the draft Communications Data Bill (aka the Snooper’s Charter. Ed.). If the Bill ever reaches the statute book, everyone – whether suspected criminal or innocent citizen – will have their communications data stored by order of the British state.

    It is presently a critical moment for the Bill, as Parliament reports and the Government will soon decide whether to go ahead with the draft.

    ORG’s training will comprise:

    • A briefing on the draft Bill;
    • Providing participants with draft campaign materials, free leaflets and campaign tools;
    • Putting participants in touch with people in your local area who can assist in defeating the Bill;
    • Participants’ own ideas.

    Three events have already been held in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively; however, those still to take place are listed below, with a link to take you to the relevant (free) registration page.

    The Bristol event will be held at the Watershed (map) from 7.00 pm to 9 pm.

    Full details of the events are available on the ORG site.

  • Little Brother alive and well in North Somerset

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    North Somerset strikes me as a somewhat ambivalent area of the country. On the one hand, it has town councils eager to indulge in Luddism and hold back the tide of technology (posts passim). On the other, the unitary authority – North Somerset Council – seems eager to do its bit for Orwell‘s dystopian vision of the future in its own Little Brother-ish way.

    North Somerset Council is apparently compiling a database of email addresses of people who choose that means of contacting it, according to a report in today’s Bristol Post.

    According to the council, this database is for use to contact people in an emergency and will not be passed on to third parties.

    However, the council has only just released details of the existence of this email address database once it had already collected 20,000 entries.

    According to a council spokesman: “The central database complies with data protection and email addresses will not be shared or sold to third parties (now where have we heard that before? Ed.).

    “This is just another way of the council being able to communicate with its residents should an emergency situation arise.

    “The addresses will not be used for any other reason. People who do not want to be contacted in this way can ask to have their details removed from the database.”

    Isn’t that reassuring? People can have their details removed from the database if they don’t want to be contacted by this means. This means North Somerset residents will have to take action themselves to be removed from a list that they probably didn’t want – or consent – to be added to in the first place.

    There’s far too much of this kind of data scraping going on. It would have been better if North Somerset Council had sought the informed consent of its email correspondents before adding them automatically to its database, but then again that would involve treating people like intelligent human beings. However, this is a highly unlikely prospect given that North Somerset Council has an even greater propensity than its big neighbour Bristol to refer disingenuously to its residents as ‘customers’. 🙁

  • Election special: 80% of voters don’t bother

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    It cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that there was an election for an elected Mayor in Bristol on Thursday.

    The fact that George Ferguson – affectionately known as Red Trousers after his preferred choice of leg coverings – received a total 37,353 votes and was declared the winner.

    George’s win is being described by all the political pundits as a consequence of the people of Bristol being fed up with party politics.

    However, there’s another analysis. Turnout in the mayoral election was under 28%. That means George was elected by a tiny minority of electors who could be bothered to turn out and vote for him. Indeed, George’s winning total means just 11.7% of Bristol’s 320,000 voters put a cross next to his name.

    Meanwhile the vast majority of voters – 78% of the on Bristol’s electoral roll – stayed away from the polls.

    The figures for the Police and Crime Commissioners suffered from even lower turnouts right across the country, with a national average of 15% in the 41 English and Welsh police areas. In the Avon and Somerset area, turnout was 19.59%, meaning 80% of the electorate didn’t bother and winning candidate Sue Mountstevens, who received a total of 125,700 votes, was likewise given a mandate by about 10% of voters.

    Representative democracy doesn’t seem to be faring very well at present and one must question the legitimacy of the mandates received.

  • Your chance to vote for the UK’s fishiest outsourcing firm

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Over at False Economy, the anti-public spending cuts website, you can now cast your vote for the UK’s fishiest outsourcing firm.

    Government ministers are privatising and outsourcing ever more of our public services. Yet some of the companies taking over have a dismal performance record, while others have avoided tax, given suspiciously large political donations or even helped to write the policies from which they will profit.

    False Economy’s shortlist currently comprises 10 outsourcing firms:

    • A4e
    • Atos
    • Capita Translation and Interpreting (posts passim)
    • Care UK
    • Circle
    • FirstGroup
    • G4S
    • McKinsey & Company
    • Serco
    • Virgin Care

    False Economy gives a brief summary of the finer points of the rip-offs practised by all of the above.

    These people are doing a poor job and trousering huge amounts of taxpayers’ money for the privilege.

    It’s high time they were stopped from doing so.

    If you think that False Economy has missed any company out, you can always remedy that omission.

    Hat tip: Madeleine Lee

  • Interpreters invited to crunch meeting by MoJ

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    There have been new moves in the ongoing catastrophe of the new arrangements for the provision of court interpreting services (posts passim).

    Justice Minister Helen Grant MP has taken up the repeated calls by professional interpreters’ groups for talks and invited them to meet and discuss ‘a way forward’ following parliamentary hearings where MPs on the House of Commons Justice Select Committee (JSC) and Public Accounts Committee (PAC) exposed the infeasibility of the Ministry of Justice’s £42 mn. contract for court interpreting.

    Both committees have heard evidence of the botched procurement process and farcical administration of the contract by Capita, who bought Applied Language Solutions (ALS) at the end of 2011 before the contract was implemented on 30 January 2012.

    Whilst the agreement to meet has been cautiously welcomed by ten professional interpreter organisations represented by Professional Interpreters for Justice, Guillermo Makin, the Chairman of the Society for Public Service Interpreting (SPSI), has expressed disappointment at the Minister’s apparent lack of understanding of the gravity of the current situation in courts.

    He says: “The Framework Agreement (FWA) set up by the Ministry of Justice is unsalvageable and whilst we are pleased that the Minister has accepted our proposal to meet, we are disappointed that, given the compelling evidence of the last two weeks, Ms Grant continues to believe the unverified, self-serving performance figures served up by Capita Translation and Interpreting. These figures are widely regarded as dubious to say the least and thus far remain unverified by the Ministry of Justice, as pointed out by Baroness Coussins in the Lords on July 9th“.

    This was echoed by Geoffrey Buckingham, Chairman of the Association of Police and Court Interpreters (APCI), who added: “We will be interested to determine whether this is simply a case of the Minister ‘going through the motions’ because the National Audit Office recommended it or whether the Government is now ready to engage in genuine consultation, which so far they have singularly failed to do. Ms Grant has expressed a desire and a need to rebuild trust with the interpreting community, yet one meeting does not represent a trust building measure. This contract is not working and everybody knows it. We believe the Minister needs to listen to how interpreters’ organisations can help deliver language services more efficiently and save money in the public interest, whilst serving the interests of justice”.

    When repeatedly questioned by Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the PAC, on Monday, Capita refused to concede that the FWA should be modified, despite openly admitting that they now believed that the contract’s key performance indicators were “unrealistic” and “unachievable”.

    In response to questioning, Andy Parker, Capita’s Joint Chief Operating Officer, said the company was aware of the resistance of professional interpreters to work under the new system, but had made no attempt to meet them. “We didn’t expect that the amount of interpreters who have refused to work would continue,” he said.

    Ms Hodge commented, “It sounds like chaos, frankly”. When she asked how many of the 1,000 court interpreters on the company’s books had been properly assessed or had their qualifications checked, Mr Parker couldn’t answer, to which Ms Hodge responded: “I can’t believe you’re running this show and you don’t have that figure; it is frightening”.

    Back in February 2012 a spokesperson for ALS/Capita claimed the company already had 3,000 registered interpreters on its books. The hearings revealed that only 280 of these had in fact successfully completed the assessment process by the start of the contract.

    Finally, a reminder: tomorrow, November 2nd sees the closure of submissions to the JSC’s Court Language Services Forum (posts passim).

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