Politics

  • Companies House to make all of its digital data available for free

    Steve WoodsMedia, Open Data, Politics

    Yesterday, while David Cameron was rearranging the deckchairs on his governmental re-enactment of the SS Titanic, one significant piece of news (apart from the DRIP Bill. Ed.) seems to have escaped the personality-obsessed British media.

    open data stickersThe news was the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills announced that Companies House is to make all of its digital data available free of charge. It has hitherto charged users for anything but the most basic company information on its website.

    This will make the UK the first country to establish a truly open register of business information.

    As a result, it will be easier for members of the public and businesses to research and scrutinise the activities and ownership of companies and their directors. Last year (2013/14), users searching the Companies House website spent £8.7 million accessing company information on the register.

    The release of company information as open data will also provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to come up with innovative ways of using the information.

    This change will come into effect from the second quarter of 2015 (April – June).

  • DRIP: I write to my MP

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    This week the British government, with the collusion of the so-called opposition, will be attempting to railroad the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (DRIP) through Parliament as emergency legislation. This is deeply illiberal legislation and I’ve written about it this morning to my MP, Stephen Williams.

    My email is reproduced below.

    Dear Mr Williams

    I am writing to you as your constituent to express my deep concerns about the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers (DRIP) Bill due to be rushed through both Houses of Parliament this week.

    Firstly, it is my understanding that the government is describing it as emergency legislation. This is a misnomer: there is no emergency at least as far as the alleged terrorist threat is concerned; according to the MI5 website (https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/the-threats/terrorism/threat-levels.html#history), the terrorism threat level has remained the same for the last 4 years! In the light of that information, 4 years seems like a tardy response to a so-called emergency. Any legislation – including alleged emergency legislation needs proper scrutiny by MPs, peers and civil society. It would appear that the UK has learned nothing from the idiocies that came in the wake of earlier ’emergency’ legislation, such as the Official Secrets Act of 1911, which dogged the rest of the 20th century.

    Secondly, the European Court of Justice recently ruled blanket data retention – as implemented by the European Data Retention Directive and the respective domestic legislation enacted as a consequence thereof – incompatible with human rights legislation. Any new legislation should comply with that judgement. DRIP is just an attempt by the UK government to sidestep that ruling. If enacted, I fully foresee civil society groups fighting DRIP all the way through the UK courts and all the way up to the ECJ. Furthermore, the latter ruling against DRIP would have the unintended consequence of giving the UK’s large tribe of Eurosceptics and Europhobes yet more ammunition to stir up anti-European sentiment.

    Thirdly, the UK has an obligation to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, of which it is a signatory and which the UK we should uphold as an example internationally, particularly as the UK was a prime mover for its initial drafting.

    Fourthly, I understand that the Prime Minister has promised a review of RIPA as a concession to get MPs to approve the legislation; this is an inadequate sop to the back benches and as such should be rejected.

    Finally, I would like to mention the fact that I am nearly 60 years old. In all that time I have never been convicted of any criminal act, arrested or detained by the police, i.e. I’m of previous good character. Blanket surveillance of the communications of the entire UK population makes them every single member of the population a suspect: it throws doubt on their previous good characters. Blanket communications surveillance has not failed to stop foolish young people disappearing off to the Middle East as jihadists; it has to the best of my knowledge likewise failed to stop some serious crimes being committed. If the police and/or security services wish to search my home, they need a warrant. They should require the same to interfere with my communications.

    I trust you will look seriously upon my concerns.

    Yours sincerely
    Steve Woods

    I would urge you to contact your MP today on DRIP. You can find his/her identity (if unknown) via the excellent WriteToThem. In addition, the Open Rights Group provides some excellent guidance for your letter.

    DRIP is a most appropriate acronym. It’s the sound made by falling water: falling water causes erosion and this Bill seriously erodes civil liberties, as well as showing utter contempt for the European Court of Justice.

    Meanwhile Paul Bernal calls the government’s course of action a “shabby process for a shady law“.

    Quite.

  • #tidyBS5 gains momentum

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    After the last Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum meeting where I talked about fly-tipping in my area of Bristol (posts passim), it was suggested to me that I devise a hashtag for use on Twitter and elsewhere to help highlight the problem. My answer was #tidyBS5.

    The hashtag and its use have now been given another boost by publicity in the fortnightly Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Management email bulletin.

    image from newsletter featuring tidybs5

    There’s also a meeting with councillors and officers on fly-tipping and rubbish in just over a week’s time to which I’ve also been invited. Let’s hope it ends in some proper enforcement and action to make scenes like the one below a thing of the past.

    image of Stapleton Rd fly-tipping

  • EU Commission locked into Microsoft

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    EU flag with MS Windows logo inside circle of starsThe European Commission has recently renewed its commitment to a proprietary desktop and secret file formats, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) writes. The Commission is refusing to make a serious effort to break free from vendor lock-in and is ignoring all available alternatives. In doing so, the EU’s civil service fails to practice what it preaches.

    In April, the Commission signed two contracts with Microsoft: firstly, an agreement for “high-level services” worth €44 million and secondly a framework agreement on software licensing conditions. The actual licences are provided by Hewlett-Packard under a separate contract from 2012 that itself is worth €50 million. The contracts cover the Commission itself and 54 other EU organisations.

    “We are extremely disappointed about the lack of progress here,” says FSFE president Karsten Gerloff. “The Commission has not even looked for viable alternatives. Its lazy approach to software procurement leaves the Commission open to allegations of inertia and worse.”

    The Commission recently admitted publicly for the first time (PDF) that it is in “effective captivity” to Microsoft. Documents obtained by the FSFE reveal that the Commission has made no serious effort to find solutions based on open standards. As a consequence, a large part of Europe’s IT sector is essentially prevented from doing business with the Commission.

    In a strategy paper (PDF) which the Commission released in response to official questions from Amelia Andersdotter MEP, the EC lays out a three-track approach for its office automation platform for the coming years. This strategy will only deepen the Commission’s reliance on closed proprietary file formats and programs.

    “The Commission should be setting a positive example for public administrations across Europe,” comments FSFE’s Gerloff. “Instead, it shirks its responsibility as a public administrations, and simply claims that such alternatives don’t exist. Even the most basic market analysis would have told the Commission that there’s a vibrant free software industry in Europe that it could have relied on.”

    Many public sector organisations in Europe are successfully using free software and implementing open standards. Examples include the German city of Munich with its internationally recognised Limux project and (believe it or not! Ed.) the UK government, which has made great strides in using free software and open standards to obtain better value for money in IT procurement.

    However, the FSFE says it will continue to work with the Commission in spite of this setback and will help it to improve its software the way it buys software, such as by relying on specifications and standards rather than brand names, by using open invitations to tender instead of talking to a single vendor and by incorporating future exit costs into the price of any new solution. These practices are fast becoming the norm across Europe’s public sector. The EC should practice what it preaches and adopt these practices for its own IT procurement.

    This post originally appeared on Bristol Wireless.

  • Ministerial photo opportunity

    Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics

    Last Friday, the Bedfordshire News website published a story of a visit by Defence Minister and Tory MP for Ludlow Philip Dunne to the hangars at Cardington, one of the major British sites historically involved in the development of airships.

    From the screenshot below, the visit provided a photo opportunity.

    screenshot featuring group looking like it's been excreted from giant bottom

    The ministerial party looks like it’s been excreted from or is about to be crushed by a giant bottom. Don’t ministers and their civil service minders ever check behind them before smiling for the camera?

  • Goodbye Ebenezer

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    Despite the best efforts of campaigners (posts passim), east Bristol is losing another part of its dwindling number of buildings of historical interest as the former Ebenezer Chapel in Midland Road in the city’s St Philips area is currently being demolished by its owners, no doubt to make way for yet more soulless ‘apartments’ of zero architectural merit (like much of Bristol’s post-war architecture. Ed.).

    The building itself has had a chequered history: it opened as a Primitive Methodist chapel in 1849. Henry Overton Wills II, from the local tobacco dynasty, laid its foundation stone. It closed as a Methodist chapel in 1938 but reopened as a Christadelphian hall in 1958 after WW2 bomb damage had been repaired. It was converted into business premises in the 1980s.

    Ebenezer Chapel demolition

    I feel that the demolition has been aided and abetted by a gutless local authority which could have stepped in and refused the demolition order. Bristol City Council justified its actions by giving two reasons:

    • the building is not listed; and
    • the building is not in a conservation area.

    The fact that the Ebenezer Chapel was neither listed nor included in the nearby Old Market Conservation Area is indicative of the abject failings of Bristol City Council as a local authority.

    The chapel was the first Primitive Methodist chapel built in Bristol. Surely it deserved listing solely for that single reason?

    Furthermore, unlike the more conventional Gothic style employed for chapel buildings at the time, the Ebenezer Chapel was designed with decorative round arched windows in a very rare bold Romanesque style. This should have been yet another reason for listing.

    Regarding the chapel, Kathy Clark, conservation officer at the Victorian Society has said: “Ebenezer Chapel, or at least its distinctive front wall, should be reused and extended for a new use, whilst preserving a worthy piece of Bristol’s heritage. We urge Bristol Council to work for retention of the chapel.”

    There’ll be no chance of that now that half the front wall has been demolished! 🙁

    So, I’ll bid a sad farewell to the Ebenezer, as no doubt will the thousands of people that pass it every day, but I will end with a question to Bristol City Council: when will the historical and architectural heritage of east Bristol – traditionally a poorer and less prosperous part of the city – be given equal treatment with its counterpart in Bristol’s better-off districts?

    Perhaps the city council would like to answer that question using the comment form below.

  • What’s Portuguese for “I can’t interpret?”

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    On Friday Linguist Lounge’s Facebook page carried a disturbing report on the abysmal quality of interpreters – or more specifically one interpreter – used by Capita Translation & interpreting. It is reproduced in its full horror below.

    We’ve received a report that today Capita sent an unqualified Portuguese interpreter to a court in England. The linguist is reported to have summarised court proceedings, using English terms for unknown words such as “guardian”, “placement”, “local authority”. The judge was said to have been made aware of this after the hearing, however, the defendant was left stressed and anxious, without any understanding of what was going on inside the court room.

    When is the Ministry of Justice going to terminate its failing contract with Crapita? Will that have to wait until a change of government next year?

    In the meantime Crapita will continue to be rewarded for poor service and public money will continue to be wasted.

  • Talking rubbish

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

    One perennial problem in the Easton district of Bristol where I live is fly-tipping, the illegal dumping of waste.

    trade and other waste dumped by communal bin for household waste in Stapleton Road, Easton
    Disgraceful! Trade & other waste dumped by communal bin for household waste in Stapleton Road, Easton

    Some areas – such as Stapleton Road (see above picture) – have persistent problems and last night I gave a short presentation at the latest Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum meeting to try and encourage other residents and those who work in the area to get involved and make Easton a tidier place.

    I’m pleased to say I received whole-hearted support from local councillor Marg Hickman, who is equally concerned about the amount of litter on the streets (are fly-tipping and littering related; does one attract the other? Ed.).

    Flytipping can be reported online using the council’s dedicated report form. Some people use Twitter to do so too, whilst for those with a smartphone various third party applications are available, such as My Council.

    If anyone does draw attention to fly-tipping or litter on Twitter, you might like to add the hashtag #tidybs5. If you live elsewhere in Bristol you might like to adapt the #tidybs* hashtag, replacing the asterisk with the first figure of your postcode.

    Yesterday I did learn prior to the Neighbourhood Forum meeting that persistence pays off: via an email from the city council I learnt that several traders on Stapleton Road are or have been served with fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping by enforcement officers. It’s a start, but I get the impression that fly-tipping will be as hard to eradicate as a Hammer horror film vampire.

    Bristol will be European Green Capital in 2015. Unless it sorts out fly-tipping and other environmental problems in Easton and the city’s other less prosperous areas (like the plague of flies, dust and other industrial pollution in Avonmouth. Ed.), the accolade should be amended to read European Greenwash Capital.

  • Almost 1 in 5 sites blocked by UK nanny filters

    Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics, Tech

    ORG logoThe Open Rights Group’s Blocked Project has revealed that nearly 20% of websites are blocked by web filters implemented by UK ISPs.

    Those affected involve Porsche broker’s website and a political blogger/mum hoping to read an article about post pregnancy care, yet they still get blocked by filters ostensibly designed to protect young people from adult content (which apparently includes talking about alcohol, smoking, anorexia and hate speech. Ed.), indicating that ISPs are acting as censors and arbiters of what is acceptable content for their subscribers.

    The extent of excessive blocking has been revealed by the Open Rights Group’s Blocked project, which is documenting the impact of filters. Web users can use a free checking tool where they can instantly check to see if a website has been blocked by filters. So far, the Open Rights Group has tested over 100,000 sites and found that over 19,000 are blocked by one ISP or another.

    One of the blocked sites is the political blog, Guido Fawkes. It’s being blocked by ISP TalkTalk, which puts the latter on a par with the not exactly democratic government of the People’s Republic of China.

    ISPs have also been criticised for the lack of information about how to get sites unblocked. Mum-of-one Marielle, said she was “humiliated” when she visited a shop run by mobile operator Three to find out how she could enable access to an article about post-partum care on her phone: “The manager told me that I couldn’t access filtered articles without entering a 4 digit PIN every time I wanted to read a filtered article because I had a PAYG plan” Marielle submitted a report to Three saying that the article had been incorrectly blocked, but didn’t get a response.

    Other sites that have been incorrectly blocked by filters include:

    www.sherights.com – this feminist rights blog was blocked by TalkTalk in April 2014. Its Editor-in-Chief says that as advertising revenue is generated by the number of site visitors and that being blocked, “directly impacts our bottom line. But, more than that, we are concerned with the message that blocking our site sends: that pro-woman, pro-equality, pro-human rights subject matter is somehow offensive, inappropriate or otherwise problematic.”

    www.philipraby.co.uk – Philip Raby, who sells and services Porsches, only found out that his website was blocked by O2 when one of his customers told him. Philip says that it’s difficult to measure the financial impact of being blocked but, “we must have lost some business and, of course, it doesn’t look great telling people the site is not suitable for under 18s!”

    Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group stated: “Through the Blocked project we wanted to find out about the impact of web filters. Already, our reports are showing that almost 1 in 5 websites tested are blocked, and that the problem of overblocking seems much bigger than we thought. Different ISPs are blocking different sites and the result is that many people, from businesses to bloggers, are being affected because people can’t access their websites.”

    The original impetus for the introduction of filters came from Claire Perry, the Conservative MP for Devizes, a vociferous campaigner for protecting children from adult material. However, she should have been careful what she wished for, as her own website (which features many references to pr0n. Ed.) has also fallen victim to the ISPs’ filters.

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