Longrider

Via NO2ID an article by David Goodhart on the database state. It starts badly and goes downhill from there on in.

We are not living in a police state.

Quite right, we are not. What we have is the apparatus in place waiting for someone to throw the switch (Civil Contingencies (2004) Act).

Not even a remotely authoritarian one. In fact we, all of us, have never enjoyed so much liberty—personal, political and legal.

WTF!?! Where has this man been this past five or six years? Has he tried taking photographs in a public place recently? Presumably he is not one of those unfortunates stopped and subjected to a humiliating search under section 44 of the anti-terrorism act. Presumably, he has not been subjected to surveillance under RIPA for leaving the wrong rubbish in his bin or trying to get his children into the “wrong” school. Presumably he hasn’t had some jumped-up little jobsworth slap him with a fixed penalty notice for accidentally dropping a cigarette end or feeding the birds. Of course it is an authoritarian state and this has become worse, much worse, since the Twin Towers attacks. This much is observably true even if you only look at the obsessive binge legislating carried out by a reactionary and authoritarian executive and not merely the unexpected consequences and the petty little jobsworths empowered by such. If Goodhart believes that liberty has improved he is either a fool, a liar or blind.

When I read the actual litany of complaint against the government, I felt unmoved. Forty-two days detention without charge and control orders (which apply to just 17 people)? True, 42 days (which was rejected by parliament) is a long time but suspects are under constant judicial review—and both measures were a response to a real threat, something that never seems to feature in the liberty lobby discourse. Then there is the surveillance state—CCTV cameras and DNA databases. Nowhere have I heard of innocent people suffering injustice as a result of either technology and, as the father of four children who often travel on their own around central London, I find the cameras reassuring (on some estimates half of all British transport police convictions are won thanks to CCTV evidence).

Unmoved by innocent people being locked up for 42 days without charge? I think we can see which mast this man has nailed his colours to. Maybe he would change his mind if it was he who was held without charge, without access to the evidence and had his life ruined as a consequence. That’s the problem with such people, they always assume that it will be someone else at the wrong end of this legislation. As for the threat, real it may be – so, too, is it over-hyped and over-stated. The response is therefore disproportionate. How many people, exactly, have died as a consequence of terrorist action in this country in recent years? Less than a hundred and for this we are all being treated as suspects. If Goodhart has not heard of innocent people suffering then he is a piss-poor journalist. And if CCTV makes him feel safe, he is an idiot.

These rebels without a cause might, in normal times, be mildly risible. But these are not normal times: the combination of new technology and the ever rising expectations that the public have of state services means that we are unavoidably living in a new era of the database state, and a cool, technocratic debate is required to establish its parameters. The shrill politicisation of the liberty lobby makes this harder.

What is risible is Patsies like Goodhart trotting out government propaganda as if it is true. We are not rebels without a cause; liberty is a cause espoused by humanity throughout history. Someone who thinks that a database is “cool” really is a fool – which, I think, answers my earlier question about this man.

We are moving from a world of privacy by default to one in which privacy must be designed into our systems. The modern social democratic state needs lots of data about us in order to fulfil the demands we make on it; not just trivial things like our bank account details to pay in pensions or tax credits but much more personal things like health records—to make sure we get the right treatment at the right time.

No, it doesn’t. My doctor has my health records. No other person needs to see them unless they are treating me and they can be made available to such people. No one else needs access and no justification can be made for it. I am not interested in making things “easier” for bureaucrats, I am interested in ensuring that only the appropriate people have access to sensitive personal and private information – only those people carrying out treatment.

If there is too much suspicion of the state, and too many data protection rules, the state cannot give us what we want. Equally, if there are no rules or inadequate rules to protect the more sensitive information about citizens then there is the potential for abuse, either accidentally or intentionally. At present we risk getting the worst of both worlds.

What I want is for it to butt out of my life and leave me alone. Where I need to interact with the state, I will give it enough information for the necessary transaction. There is no need for it to have any more. For the most part, I want no interaction with the state and want nothing of its “services”.

Nonetheless, the liberty lobby is unimaginatively one-sided. People want privacy where it matters, but they are also prepared to trade it off for other things—like safety from terrorism, or to stop tragedies like Baby P.

No we are not. And bringing in child abuse is the tactic of a charlatan.

In fact, people happily give up their privacy every day to private or public bodies in return for the smallest convenience. Take Google’s new “latitude” website. It allows you to register your mobile phone. If you do this, and your friends do too, you can see where everyone is on a map, located by the chip in their phone. On a night out in central London, or in downtown New York, this could be very useful: has everyone got to the party or are they already moving on? Latitude has caused a minor storm among the privacy lobby—but you can be sure it will be popular.

Jesus Christ! This man has all the intellectual capacity of the average Labour drone. People choose to sign up with such services. They are denied choice with government databases. See the difference there? If people wish to trade their privacy for some perceived convenience, then that is up to them. However, others of us can choose not to. There is no law making us sign up to Google.

It might be useful if we started to see our data as similar to tax, something we willingly surrender to the authorities in return for various benefits, but over which there is also a political negotiation about how much to surrender. The liberty lobby, in this analogy, becomes the Thatcherite Taxpayers’ Alliance of the database state—wanting individuals to hoard their data and leaving the state powerless to serve citizens as it could.

Moreover, by turning these complex, technical debates into a story of noble defenders of liberty versus cynical, power-grabbing tyrants (whether politicians or officials) the liberty lobby reinforce the lazy anti-politics of the age—a sort of Ukip for the chattering classes.

Personal data is not like tax. Not remotely and there is no justification for us giving it to the government where it is not absolutely necessary for them to interact with us. I do not willingly surrender it and will not. I do not owe the state anything beyond tax due. Nothing. Nada. Nil. There is nothing to negotiate. I will allow the HMRC enough information for them to deal with my tax affairs. They do not need any more information than that. Unless I choose to pay by direct debit, they do not need my bank details for example. They do not need my email address unless I choose to interact with them online. They most certainly do not need access to other information such as telephone number, mobile number or anything else. Therefore, they will not have it.

Finally, the only laziness going on here is a poorly researched article that is more befitting a students’ union debate – although I suspect that the students might just make a better fist of it. D minus.

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Update: Oops, I misread “cool technocratic debate” – consequently my remark on that makes no sense whatsoever. My bad.

Via the biased BBC this utterly fucking insane idea:

Can a simple idea help make the world a better place? Each week we ask a guest to outline an idea to improve all our lives. Here, Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam suggests randomly piping saltwater into homes.

Scientists now predict that the next 100 years will most surely see at least 10% of the world’s population displaced due to the effects of climate change - that is, 600 million people.

But despite so much evidence that proves that climate change is a direct consequence of human action, there are still many climate change sceptics out there.

In order to address the scepticism, which I believe is a result of a failure of the imagination, I propose that all citizens of countries that have high per capita carbon emissions have saltwater randomly piped into their homes.

The saltwater will arrive without warning, with complete disregard for whether or not the people in those homes are themselves high carbon emitters.

Is there no end to the insanity of these fucking people? So obsessed are they with their new religion? I don’t lack imagination, I am not taken in by the lies, obfuscation and quack “science” that is nothing more than a perversion of science. And this fucking lunatic thinks that piping seawater randomly into our homes will convince us that this religion is the “truth”. Yeah, right, I’m convinced alright.

Sam Pepper comments and sums it up perfectly:

Randomly piping salt water into peoples’ homes does not prove anything. All it would do is harden peoples’ opinions. In other words, those who are climate change sceptics would take this idea as yet another crackpot notion from the pro-climate change people.

Precisely. Fucking moron.

H/T The Englishman.

Via Chicken Yoghurt, I am reminded (reluctantly) about Earth Hour.

On Saturday 28 March 2009 at 8.30pm, people, businesses and iconic buildings around the world will switch off their lights for an hour – WWF’s Earth Hour.

We want a billion people around the world to sign up and join in.

Sign up to show that you care about people, wildlife and the planet, and that you want the world’s leaders to take action to tackle climate change.

Unfortunately Justin uses the egregious term “denier” when mentioning those of us who do not go along with the religious fervour that surrounds the issue of global warming climate change.

The cynics and climate change deniers will no doubt call it an empty gesture when really those of them of a romantic bent should be enjoying the amazing spectacle and the rest can copper up the money they’re saving sitting in the actual as well as rhetorical darkness.

I am not a denier – as denying that climate changes is silly. It has changed since this rock first solidified from the molten mass whence it came. It will continue to change long after we are dust, until, that is, the sun goes super nova, then it will have changed forever and even Al Gore won’t be able to stop it. Consequently, I have no intention of trying to stop it any more than Canute had any intention of stopping the tide from rolling up the shore. And the last thing I want is our “leaders” taking action because all that will mean is more draconian legislation and higher taxes for them to piss up the wall on their quangos, second homes and expenses.

So, no, I won’t be taking part. It is indeed an empty gesture and I see nothing amazing about it. And, frankly, I want no part of anything that furthers the green agenda of returning us to a medieval agrarian society.

Further to the recent cycle helmet issue, an article in the Telegraph by Alec Lom, who claims that his helmet saved his life, so we should all wear them:

If my ordeal, which left me nursing strained shoulder ligaments, torn muscles and a bruised ego, has convinced me of one fact alone, it is surely that my cycling helmet saved my life.

Quite possibly it did; it all depends on the speed of impact. A higher speed would doubtless have left him severely brain damaged as the brain spins about inside the skull. Frankly, I’d prefer to die in such circumstances, but that’s just me.

And yet many cyclists, free to choose whether or not to wear protective headgear, choose not to. According to the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation, the average cyclist would have to pedal for more than 3,000 years to suffer a serious head injury – and yet some 150 cyclists a year die in accidents.

The word here; the significant one; is “choice” and by those figures the actual risk is relatively low. So, while Alec’s helmet may well have made a difference in his case, it doesn’t always follow that it will in others and, frankly, it is accident avoidance in the first place that tends to keep one alive. If you are relying on protective gear to do that, you’ve missed a trick.

However, cyclists may soon be compelled to strap on a helmet before setting off. Last week, a High Court judge ruled that cyclists who fail to wear one should receive up to 15 per cent less compensation for injuries resulting from accidents in which the helmet could have made a difference.

What the judge was doing was applying common law principles. I’m not convinced that he was right to do so as failing to wear a helmet is not, in my opinion anyway, contributory negligence. Failing to observe the road around before making a manoeuvre, failing to light up after dark, failing to abide by road traffic law; they are negligence as they contribute to the accident happening, failing to wear protective clothing does not.

Alec then undermines his whole argument by pointing out that the judge admitted that in this instance, the helmet would not have made any difference. That is why many of us choose not to wear them, because in a serious accident, they are pointless. They may, in certain circumstances make the difference between life and death. We each have to make a judgement about the level of risk involved – and by the figures Alec quoted, that risk is low.

Still, that doesn’t stop Alec indulging in a bit of self-righteous ad hominem, does it?

What continues to amaze me is how few cyclists wear a crash helmet. The day after my accident, my daughter, Rosie, who is 13, counted 50 cyclists on her way home from school: “I saw 26 not wearing helmets – that’s crazy!”

No it isn’t; it is a choice made by people who do not share your assessment of risk. You wear a helmet if you want to, but don’t set yourself up to tell the rest of us to do so.

Excuses not to wear a helmet range from youngsters who protest “It doesn’t look cool”, to one of my Telegraph colleagues who said: “I never wear one because I get cold ears if I do”.

And I don’t wear one because I’ve assessed the risk and deemed it to be low. So what if people don’t think they are cool (they aren’t), that is their decision. It is not crazy, it is their business not yours – and, don’t forget, by the figures you quote, the risk is low.

Last year, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London and a renowned cyclist, wrote in this newspaper about his only serious cycling accident in almost a decade of pedalling around the city. He was “negotiating Knightsbridge with extreme caution when a French tourist walked across the road without looking (you could tell he was French by the noise he made on impact)”; Johnson sustained a sprained wrist. A helmet – or, an “undignified plastic hat”, as he described it – would have made no difference. “If I’d had a foghorn, it might have come in handy, or possibly a cow-catcher fitted to the front of my bike. But a helmet?”

Boris is right – he is doing as I am here, making the point about accident avoidance. PPE is an after the event mitigation measure, yet it is before the event that really matters. This is why, when riding my motorcycle in the UK I don’t put my headlights on during daylight hours (apart from conditions of poor visibility), because there is no evidence whatsoever that it reduces the likelihood of an accident occurring. Indeed, the best method for accident avoidance is defensive riding – and that applies whatever vehicle you use.

However, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents insists that, in an accident, helmets do help protect against injuries. Peter Hutchinson, honorary consultant neurosurgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, who regularly operates on cyclists with brain injuries, said: “Helmets act as a cushion and protect the skull. Common sense would dictate therefore that it reduces the risk to the underlying brain. If you’re not wearing a helmet, there’s an increased chance of fracturing your skull and causing a brain injury. If you are wearing one, then the helmet will fracture and protect the skull. It’s better to have a fractured helmet than a fractured skull.”

Yes, quite so. At low speeds such as happened to Alec, they may well make a difference. What, though, is the actual risk? Oh, yes, it’s low isn’t it? So, therefore, some of us may well choose to accept that risk. It’s a risk I have been accepting since I first started to ride a cycle at the age of about five or six. It’s a risk I accepted when I rode every day to school and went on long rides to the Kent coast during the long summer holidays. I don’t need to provide Alec or anyone else with an “excuse”; I’ve assessed the risk and decided to accept it.

Alec then regales us with a puerile experiment using eggs and tupperware to demonstrate that dropping a raw egg on the floor makes a mess. Yes, Alec, I know this. What part of risk assessment and management do you not understand? Just because you are risk averse, it doesn’t mean that we all are. You make your choices and I’ll make mine – just don’t tell me what to do, okay?

Via Timmy. This:

The single greatest instance of intellectual foolishness today is the continuing pretense that politicians are serious people worthy of serious consideration.  They are scoundrels, each and every one, regardless of party (although some of them, it is true, are more scoundrelly than others).  For any scholar to pretend that these people are disinterested servants of the public welfare — to pretend that the words politicians utter or send out in press releases are meant to promote any goal other than politicians’ own glorification and pursuit of power — is for that scholar to be duped to a degree that should be more embarrassing than would be the discovery that that scholar believes the earth to be flat or that Big Foot was in league with Lee Harvey Oswald to murder JFK.

Absolutely. Read, inwardly digest, remember – these people are not your friends, they are there to serve their own interests and no one else’s. Servants of the people, they are not.

Via the Englishman and Letters from a Tory, this little story.

Public health “mentors” will be enlisted by the NHS to offer ‘on the spot’ advice in their local neighbourhood when they see people smoking, eating or drinking too much.

Good God! Does it ever stop? Is there no end to the obsessive interfering of this government? Is there no place where they will not seek to poke and pry? Answers on a postage stamp, please…

The Government hopes that the volunteers will help to get across its messages on healthy living in a new and influential way but the plans have been criticised as evidence of the creeping ‘nanny state’.

Creeping? Creeping!?! Stomping with size fourteen hob-nails would be closer to the truth. They stopped creeping a long time ago, they’ve bashed the door down with a battering ram and are having a rave in your living room; creeping they are not.

Speaking at the Royal Society of Arts yesterday , Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, said mentors could be “amazingly successful” and that he hoped that they could revolutionise the nation’s health.

Alan Johnson is a deluded fuckwit of the highest order. How, exactly, is pissing people off going to be “amazingly successful”? And, be under no illusion, someone proffering advice when it has not been actively sought is generally unwelcome and a guaranteed way to earn a smack in the mouth.

The mentors, who as volunteers are not paid, are expected to work to influence the people around them, offering advice to workmates, family and friends about how they should change their unhealthy habits.

If you are thinking of becoming one of these mentors, it might be worth checking that you have adequate medical insurance for that eventuality when various items will have to be removed from unmentionable parts of your anatomy – having been inserted by those on the receiving end of your sanctimonious and ill-received advice.

Eating a third fried breakfast of the week in the office canteen, having a drink ‘for the road’ at your local pub or chain-smoking another cigarette while waiting for the bus could all see the mentors spring into action to offer the Government’s advice.

Anyone springing into action as a consequence of seeing me tucking into a fry-up will be given short shrift in very short order. If I am feeling amenable, you will get away with a sharp “fuck off and mind your own business”. I am the best person to make decisions about my lifestyle and health, not the government, not ministers and not bloody interfering prodnoses posing as mentors.

Ministers are concerned that some people are turned off by its traditional methods of advising on public health, including large-scale advertising drives such as the recent £75 million Change4Life campaign.

So, having noted that being hectored and lectured by the government turns us off, they come up with a brand new spiffing scheme to… hector and lecture us. Well done. Evidence if we wanted it that mankind does not learn by his mistakes – well, the political animal anyway. The rest of us tend to have to if we want to survive.

What part of “mind your own business” is it that is so difficult for the apparatchiks of New Labour to comprehend? Don’t all shout at once…

Cyclists, it seems, are now facing the same phenomenon so well recognised by their motor driven counterparts for some while now; contributory liability. Helen Pidd comments:

To the millions of sensible cyclists in the UK who don’t wear a helmet: why not? Is it because you’ve assessed the evidence and concluded there simply isn’t the proof that one will protect you in the event of a life endangering collision? Do you believe the research which has shown that motorists drive more recklessly around helmeted cyclists than those without? Perhaps you simply object to wearing something that gets between the wind and your hair as you freewheel down the hill.

Back in the early seventies, motorcyclists were having the same arguments. Sure, hitting your head on the tarmac at speed – even relatively low speed – is likely to prove fatal and wearing a helmet may mitigate this. Unfortunately, you will probably be brain damaged or die anyway from multiple organ injuries. So what is the point? For motorcyclists, the point (well, for me anyway) is comfort. It keeps the wind and the flying insects out of my face. So legally required or not, I would always wear one. Still, as cyclists are now finding out, those culpable of causing an accident will seek any means possible to reduce the cost to themselves and there is now a precedent that will aid them in doing so:

Well, thanks to a knuckle-gnawingly ludicrous judgment from the high court, carrying on as you are might just cost you dearly. From now on, if you have the misfortune to be mown down by a speeding vehicle and are not wearing a helmet when the paramedics scrape you from the road, you could be held partially liable – even if there is no doubt in the world that it wasn’t your fault.

For this scarcely believable truth we can look to one Mr Justice Griffith Williams, who has concluded that cyclists who suffer head injuries when not wearing a helmet may not be entitled to full compensation if it can be shown that a helmet would have reduced or prevented their injuries.

There you have it. Welcome, cyclists, to the world that has erstwhile been inhabited by motorcyclists. Don’t ride with a dipped beam on during daylight hours? Partially culpable (failure to abide by Highway Code rules can be used against you), despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that this will have any mitigating effect in a potential accident situation. Not wearing a neck brace? Not wearing one of those new airbag jackets? Well, you had it coming, didn’t you? So, cyclists who choose not to wear a helmet (and I don’t), you, too, are partially culpable despite the fault being someone else’s. In this case, ironically, the fault was a motorcyclist’s…

This, as the fine national cyclists’ association, the CTC has pointed out, is madness. Being a helmet refusenik is not the cause of most brain-threatening accidents sustained by cyclists. Careless motorists are.

Indeed. Motorcyclists have been saying this for decades. Welcome to the club. And, before anyone makes the expected comment; motorcyclists don’t generally make a habit of ignoring traffic signs or jumping red lights – that is  contributory negligence in the event of an accident. Some carry out the most atrocious weaving through moving traffic and that, too, is contributory negligence if they get knocked off.

The other big flaw with the judgment is that Williams didn’t really take into account any evidence of the efficiency of cycle helmets, particularly in high speed, high impact collisions. No one has proved those silly Sars-style facemasks work either, but what if a judge ruled that cyclists were putting themselves at risk of respiratory problems by not wearing one?

Oh, now come on! You don’t really want evidence, facts and reality to get in the way do you?

Of course, there’s always the idiot factor as the comments to this piece demonstrate:

Can’t they just pass a law that you need to wear a helmet if you cycle on the road?

Is it that big a deal?

Yes, it is a big deal. We do not need a cycle helmet law any more than we needed a motorcycle helmet law. It should be a matter for the individual to decide, having weighed up the risks. But, then, the righteous don’t do individual responsibility. It’s the Groan after all, I should expect no less.

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Update: Okay, I sort of expected comments regaling me with the heinous crimes committed by cyclists on the roads. Yes, I know all about it; I’ve witnessed enough myself. Please, that is not the point of this discussion, so if you would be so kind, lay off the “they jump red lights, they don’t obey the Highway Code, they don’t have lights fitted… ad nauseum” because those things are, indeed, contributory negligence. Consequently, I’m really not that interested. This discussion is about the freedom of the individual to make assessments of risk and act accordingly without the state getting involved – and, indeed, whether common law principles have been applied appropriately in this case. i.e. is failing to wear a helmet contributory negligence?

I see that while I was returning to France yesterday, the obsessive control freakery of the UK government continues apace.

Passengers leaving every international sea port, station or airport will have to supply detailed personal information as well as their travel plans. So-called “booze cruisers” who cross the Channel for a couple of hours to stock up on wine, beer and cigarettes will be subject to the rules.

In addition, weekend sailors and sea fishermen will be caught by the system if they plan to travel to another country - or face the possibility of criminal prosecution.

The owners of light aircraft will also be brought under the system, known as e-borders, which will eventually track 250 million journeys annually.

Quite apart from the sheer enormity of the data collected – and, therefore, its reduced usefulness, the pretence that this has anything to do with terrorism is risible. This is nothing more than control freakery for the sake of it. Terrorism is simply an excuse, just as it has been a useful excuse for every grab at our liberties that this nauseating administration has taken.

I travel back and forth to the UK every month or so and now they want to know all about it – despite it being none of their business where I go or what I do as I am breaking no laws. And, why should I allow them access to sensitive information? Why do they need my email address, my credit card details and where I am travelling to when in France?

Currently passports are not checked as a matter of routine when people leave the country.

That’s because they are leaving so where they go thereafter is none of the UK government’s concern unless they have reasonable cause to suspect; in which case there are already the means in place to put such individuals under surveillance. To effectively put us all under surveillance is the height of paranoia.

However, passport inspections at ports have gradually been reintroduced as the Government looks to prevent anyone on a Government watchlist fleeing the country.

And how many of these people are there? Although, so far when leaving Portsmouth, I have only been stopped when driving something unusual – such as a van. When coming back last time, I was stopped and asked a few desultory questions by a bored policeman because I have French plates on a right hand drive vehicle.

Gwyn Prosser, Labour MP for Dover and a member of the all-party Home Affairs Select Committee, said: “I think e-borders are absolutely necessary,” he said. “Governments of all complexions have always been criticised for not knowing who is in the country. This is a very sophisticated way of counting people in and out.”

Quite apart for Prosser being a nasty fascist authoritarian, how, exactly, will this tell them who is in the country? They don’t know now, so harassing holiday makers and booze cruisers won’t change matters. Illegals will find more surreptitious methods of entering the country and those elusive terrorists will doubtless manage a workaround. No, as is usual, it is the law abiding majority who will be inconvenienced. It always is with these nasty little schemes. And, if I am being cynical, I would suggest that that was always the objective.

I’ll be following Leg Iron’s lead and using disposable email addresses and “dead” credit card details. Certainly I won’t be using my proper ones.