If Theresa May gets to form a new government next month, then it would appear that the Conservatives will be attempting a regulatory land grab of the Internet. But, if the Conservatives' digital record is anything to go by, its pledge to negotiate an "international settlement" and be a "global leader" for an incredibly complex area of Internet and data law looks, frankly, like the stuff of dystopian movies about totalitarian regimes. I suspect the phrase "digital crime" is set to take on a whole new meaning.
May is planning to introduce far-reaching regulations on the way the internet works, allowing the government to decide what is said online. Much of the internet is currently controlled by private businesses like Google and Facebook, Theresa May intends to allow government to decide what is and isn't published, the manifesto strongly suggests.
The proposed laws would also force technology companies to delete anything that a person posted when they were under 18.
The companies would be forced to help controversial government schemes like its Prevent strategy, by promoting "counter-extremist narratives".
The plans are in keeping with the Conservatives' commitment that the online world must be regulated and controlled as strongly as the offline one, and that the same rules should apply in both.
"Our starting point is that online rules should reflect those that govern our lives offline," the Conservatives' manifesto says, in justification for the new level of regulation.
At the end of the Conservative's manifesto, it's clear that May wants to introduce huge changes to the way the internet works:
"We will take up leadership in a new arena, where concern is shared around the world: we will be the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the Internet."
Among the new self -appointed powers proposed, the government intends to force internet companies to remove "explicit" or "extremist material", backed by legal power to impose fines. This is a government that has labeled disability campaigners "extremists" and fully endorsed the media labeling of those in standing in democratic opposition to Conservative policies as "saboteurs".
The Conservatives say "Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet. We disagree."
The Conservatives are claiming this proposal is part of an ambitious attempt by the party to impose some sort of "decorum" on the internet and social media.
Senior Conservatives have confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the phrasing indicates that the government intends to introduce huge restrictions on what people can post, share and publish online.
The plans will allow Britain to become "the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the internet", the manifesto claims.
Internet imperialism, how very Conservative.
There are many proposed measures in the manifesto that are designed to make it easier to do business online, of course, but the Conservatives are proposing a rather more oppressive approach when it comes to social networks.
One particular issue that caught my eye was the Conservative's voiced "concerns about online news", warning the government is willing to "take steps to protect the reliability and objectivity of information that is essential to our democracy", while pledging to "ensure content creators are appropriately rewarded for the content they make available online".
One Tory source clarified that this comment relates to Google and Facebook's growing dominance of the advertising market, which the newspaper industry believes is crushing its business model. The source suggested that if the web giants failed to act voluntarily then they could be forced by legislation to find ways to financially compensate traditional news producers. So, the Conservatives will also seek to regulate the kind of news that is posted online and how companies are paid for it.
This may have some serious implications for the growing number of independent media platforms that have developed precisely because our mainstream media has more generally become such an unreliable source of objective news.
I haven't forgotten Iain Duncan Smith's pledge to "monitor" the BBC's news coverage for "left wing bias", or the jackbooted government officials visiting the Guardian offices to smash the hard drives containing the Snowden leaks. This doesn't signal a coming improvement if it is based on Tory notions of "objective and reliable".
The manifesto also says that the government will work even harder to ensure there is no "safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online". That is apparently a reference in part to its work to encourage technology companies to build backdoors into their encrypted messaging services – which gives the government the ability to read terrorists' messages, but also weakens the security of everyone else's messages, technology companies have warned.
The proposals follow on from the Investigatory Powers Act being passed into law. That legislation allowed the government to force internet companies to keep records on their customers' browsing histories, as well as giving ministers the power to break apps like WhatsApp so that messages can be read.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 20 May 2017
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dementia and your house
It all makes sense if you think about social care as a commercial opportunity – and the Tories think all health care is a commercial opportunity.
The Dementia Tax, as it has been dubbed, is nothing more than an attempt to create a grubby little insurance market.
To explain, take a look at this (originally written by Alan Newman, I’m told, in response to a post by the terrific Peter Stefanovic):
For those who can’t read Facebook screen grabs very well, a commenter to This Site has typed it all out as follows:
“The Conservatives will attempt to soften the blow by promising that pensioners will not have to sell their homes to pay for their care costs while they or a surviving partner are alive. Instead, ‘products will be available’ allowing the elderly to pay by extracting equity from their homes, which will be recovered at a later date when they die or sell their residence.
“I have just seen this post online:
“‘People need to read the small print associated with this because its a lot nastier than it looks.
“I work in the City. The insurance industry was approached by the Government several months ago with the aim of creating a new market for a new product.
“This arrangement is a culmination of those discussions. You wont have to sell your house PROVIDED that you purchase an insurance product to cover your social care. The “premiums” would be recovered from the equity after the house has been sold and the Insurance company will have a lien on the house and can force a sale if it wants to. So your offspring cant keep it on the market for long in order to get the best price.
“The real kicker in this is that in order to encourage the industry to market these products the government guaranteed that there would be no cap on the premiums.
“This was in some ways “atonement” for Osborne’s destruction of the highly lucrative annuities market. This means that the premiums could be up to (and including) the entire remaining equity in the property after the government has taken its cut. Companies will be falling over themselves to get their snouts in this trough.
“In short your offspring and relatives could get absolutely nothing from your estate.
“If you buy one of these products you need to read the small print very very carefully indeed because there will be some real dogs on the market.
“I suspect that this is another financial scandal waiting to happen, but by the time it does May will be long gone.'”
I wonder if a company called Unum has had anything to do with this?
Posted by jeffrey davies [86.17.83.77] on 20 May 2017
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jeffs posts
Salena Hannah (Photo: Adam Sorenson)
A woman who suffered a heart attack during a job centre in-work progression interview has said she was too scared to get up and leave to get medical help as she was afraid of losing her benefits. Salena Hannah, who works part-time, says that she had the attack during her appointment, but was ignored by the “callous” job centre interviewer.
She explained: “I had been suffering with chest pains for about two weeks and took a couple of sprays of GTN spray, to help with my angina, before I walked in to meet my interviewer.
“My job is under 16 hours, so I am forced to attend regular meetings, or my benefits might be stopped.
"I was feeling some really bad pains in my chest and I told her at least two or three times that I was in agony, but she was just so callous, she just kept ignoring me.
“I said I needed to go to the NHS walk-in centre immediately, but it fell on deaf ears. I was living in fear of being sanctioned and just felt trapped. I didn’t think I could leave or I would be sanctioned.”
Salena says she was forced to endure a 40-minute interview, while sweating profusely and suffering chest pains.
As soon as she left the interview, she went straight to a nearby NHS walk-in centre, where medics immediately called an ambulance and took her to hospital.
Blood tests revealed she had suffered a heart attack and she had to have surgery to have two stents inserted into her arteries.
Although Salina was discharged after three days in hospital, she suffered serious chest pains an hour after she got home, and had to return to hospital, where doctors inserted three more stents.
Salina is now recovering at home but is struggling for breath and feels constantly weak.
She said: “I was just dreading getting sanctioned. I just would not be able to afford to live if that happened, so pain or no pain, I had to endure that meeting.
"It is unbelievable how cruel the sanction scheme can be to people like me. It is almost like they are trained to be unfeeling.
Is that what Britain is coming to these days under a Tory Government?”
Salena, a mum of four, is bringing up her two grandsons aged 14 and 10 on her own. Had she been sanctioned, she would not have been able to provide for their basic needs.
At the time of her heart attack, she was working in a chip shop and was in receipt of JSA and housing benefit.
Last year, the The National Audit Office launched a scathing attack on the benefit sanctions system, saying that punishing people for "non-compliance" with welfare conditionality does more harm than good and costs more to enforce than it saves. There is no evidence that the pointlessly cruel welfare sanctions work at all.
The report said that withholding benefits, which is now very commonplace, plunges claimants into hardship, hunger and depression. It also seriously jeopardises their health, since sanctions leave people without the means to meet the costs of food, fuel and often, shelter - and these are fundamental survival needs.
Dr Wanda Wyporska, director of The Equality Trust, said: “It’s disgusting to see how some of the most vulnerable people in society are treated.
“Our social security system is being slowly eroded and further cuts will see the poorest families hit even harder.”
Tim Roache, general secretary of the GMB, said: “You have to wonder if all compassion has been completely ripped from our system by continued austerity and cuts to frontline services.”
A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokesperson said: “We would always encourage claimants who suddenly fall ill to seek medical attention, or to speak to a member of staff for assistance.”
The Department, however, is not focused not on helping individuals but on cutting welfare expenditure while hitting targets for doing so.
In February, Steve McCall, employer relationship manager at Jobcentre Plus in Tyne & Wear and Northumberland, who is based at the branch featured in the film I, Daniel Blake, said: “I, Daniel Blake is a representation … I hope people don’t think the film is a documentary, because it’s a story that doesn’t represent the reality we work in.”
“My team and I try to treat people as individuals, and we care about the work we do,” he told the Guardian. “There will be times when we get it wrong, but I don’t believe we are ever as wrong as how we are portrayed in this film.
“I remember talking about the film in the canteen. We were concerned about how it might affect our relationship with the people we were trying to help find work. How would they react to it?”
Ken Loach, however, defended the authenticity and realism of the film's content. “I challenge anyone to find a single word in that film that isn’t true,” he said.
I, Daniel Blake tells the story of a joiner who has had a heart attack, and is no longer able to work. However, he becomes caught up in the nightmare bureacracy of the welfare state, is passed as "fit for work" at his work capability assessment, and is told he has to look for work. He suffers a second fatal heart attack just before his tribunal, as a consequence of the sustained psychological distress and strain he experiences because of the punitive Conservative welfare "reforms".
Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary, said the film was “monstrously unfair” – though he added he had not seen it.
I wonder if Green considers his department's lies "monstrously unfair". For example, in August 2015, the DWP admitted to using fictional stories from made-up claimants on leaflets, despicably advertising the "positive impact" of benefit sanctions, following a Freedom of Information request from Welfare Weekly, claiming that they were for "illustrative purposes only" and admitting that it was "quite wrong" to pass these off as genuine quotes.
Later that month figures were released which showed that between December 2011 and February 2014, 2,650 people died shortly after their Work Capability Assessment told them that they should be finding work. The DWP had fought hard for the figures not to be released, with chief minister Iain Duncan Smith at one point telling Parliament that they did not exist.
Research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health by Oxford University and Liverpool University, showed there were an additional 590 suicides between 2010 and 2013 in areas where Work Capability Assessments (WCA) were carried out. The researchers say that the DWP had introduced the policy of moving people off benefits without understanding the consequences. The research showed a correlation between worsening mental health and the assessments. The DWP of course denied the evidenced correlation between suicides and the WCA.
I, Daniel Blake has been criticised by some media commentators, such as Toby Young (the Daily Mail) and the Sunday Times film critic Camilla Long who said it did not “ring true”. However, Hayley Squires, who plays a single mother in the film, said it showed “the absolute truth of what’s happening to millions of British people in this country” and accused Young and Long of “irresponsible journalism”.
The cruel and inhumane way that Salena Hannah was treated by a job centre "advisor", and the fear and dread that she felt at the prospect of being sanctioned, is real.
Susan Roberts' despair following her PIP application being refused, which led to her suicide, was real.
David Clapson’s awful death, which was the result of grotesque government policies, is real.
David Sugg, who was so afraid of the catastrophic health impacts that the strain of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) may have had on him, left a letter for the local coroner, to be opened in the event of his sudden death. He feared the assessment would kill him. That is real.
George Vranjkovic's extreme anxiety, agitation and fear facing the WCA, which he knows is designed to try and cut costs and take lifeline support from sick and disabled people, is real. He lost his lifeline support for six months previously. His panic attack the night before the WCA is real.
I co-run a support group on Facebook for sick and disabled people claiming disability benefits. I know from the accounts and everyday experience of many others just how stressful the assessment process is. It’s a terrible and shameful state of affairs when people who are already struggling with severe health problems are made even more vulnerable because of callous cost-cutting government policies. That is real.
It needs to change. That is real.
We are all, potentially, Daniel Blakes. That is real.
Posted by jeffrey davies [86.17.83.77] on 20 May 2017
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torys
Foxes, badgers and now ELEPHANTS: hidden manifesto plan by Tories to allow ivory trade
The Conservatives had previously pledged - along with other UK political parties - to put into place a ban on ivory trading. This follows bans by China, the US and other important ivory trading countries to end domestic trades in ivory by the end of 2017.
But sneakily hidden away in the Tory manifesto is the DROPPING of a ban on ivory trade. This comes after heavy pressure from wealthy antiques traders who have been lobbying Teresa May hard to drop the ban on ivory.
The most powerful UK antique traders association is the British Antique dealers' Association - whose president is Tory MP and pal of Theresa May, Lady Victoria Borwick.
On average, an elephant is killed every 15 minutes for its ivory and their population has fallen by almost a third in Africa since 2007.
Interestingly, this policy puts the Tories in direct conflict with Prince William, who has been a vocal supporter of a total ban on ivory sales.
Will we see the Duke of Cambridge campaigning for Labour - which has pledged to introduce the total ban the Prince has been lobbying for?
Posted by jeffrey davies on 20 May 2017
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labour has said
CONFIRMED: Labour will end Tory persecution of the sick, disabled and poor
16
Tuesday
May 2017
Posted by Mike Sivier in Uncategorized
The Labour Party manifesto, released today (May 16) has confirmed what we all saw in the leaked version last week – a bonfire of the cruel legislation that has led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of vulnerable people.
But remember – this is only what Labour would do, if elected back into office on June 8.
With the mass media lining up to attack Labour over any slightest quibble, that will be hard to achieve.
So please make sure all 12 million sick and disabled people, and all of the unemployed and under-employed get to see this.
Labour’s full manifesto can be read here.
As I wrote last week:
This Writer has no problem whatsoever with a document written by an organisation that promises to “Scrap the Work Capability and Personal Independence Payment assessments and replace them with a personalised, holistic assessment process which provides each individual with a tailored plan, building on their strengths and addressing barriers”.
I applaud the (draft) announcement that Labour will “End the pointless stress of reassessments for people with severe long-term conditions“.
I welcome the plan to “Scrap the punitive sanctions regime“.
And I salute the promise to “Scrap the bedroom tax” (yes, the bedroom tax! “Spare room subsidy” – what an insult).
Anybody who expressed doubts that Labour would follow through on its promises can start eating their words.
And there’s more. Labour would:
Increase ESA by £30 per week for those in the work-related activity group and repeal cuts in UC LCW.
Uprate carer’s allowance by £11 to the level of Jobseekers Allowance.
Implement the court decision on PIP so that there is real parity of esteem between those with physical and mental health conditions.
Reinstate housing benefit for under-21s.
Scrap bereavement support payment cuts.
Review the cuts to work allowances in Universal Credit.
Review the decision to limit tax credit and Universal Credit payments to the first two children in a family (the so-called “rape clause”).
Commission a report into expanding the Access to Work programme.
Perhaps crucially, the party would “change how Jobcentre Plus staff are performance managed” – so DWP employees are no longer encouraged to find spurious ways of pushing the vulnerable off their books?
“Labour supports a social model of disability. People may have a condition or an impairment but are disabled by society. We need to remove the barriers in society that restrict opportunities and choices for disabled people,” the draft document states.
“We will change the culture of the social security system, from one that demonises people to one that is supportive and enabling.”
Bravo.
Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary is Debbie Abrahams. This Writer has known her for several years now, and always considered her to be a person of strong professional integrity who would act on her promises.
This proves it.
If YOU have a long-term illness or disability, this is all the reason you need to vote Labour on June 8. If you don’t, but know somebody who does, please share this information with them.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 16 May 2017
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jeffs post
A paramedic has written a moving description on Facebook (see below) of the difficulties he has to face every day in his job, and how he is paid a pittance of just £12.35 an hour to do it.
This is because the Tory government has over the last 7 years capped paramedics’ and other public workers’ pay rises at 1%.
The cabinet ministers who made that decision, however, have seen their own pay rise over the last 7 years to the point they are making approximately £117.92 an hour*, on top of which they can also claim expenses, subsidies and other perks.
A perfect example of Theresa May’s warped Britain today.
Brian Mear:
I joined the Ambulance Service in 1986.
For over 28 years I worked doing “Front Line” work. That’s Emergency work. Covering 999 calls. For the last 6 years of my service I worked alone predominantly on nights at weekend so I could care for my mum who had cancer. At night I would be covering 80,000 people alone. In that time I undertook significant training. Advancing myself in skills and knowledge. I became a Paramedic in 1992. A Pre-hospital Trauma Life Support instructor, I trained new entrants on the road for over 16 years. I became an Hems Paramedic on the Thames Valley Air Ambulance dealing with Major System Trauma incidents . I’ve dealt with royalty and the lowest sections of society. Film stars, Rock Stars, Serial Killers, Drug Addicts, I’ve been stabbed twice, punched, spat at. Had vomit thrown in my face. Had ribs broken by being kicked by a hypoglycemic patient. Been called a c*nt and worse, been held at gun point as a hostage even had a man try and bite my nose off.
Been to major shootings. Helped guide 60+ babies into life. Seen countless people at the very end of their journey. I’m trained to cannulate people to administer drugs, intubate, defibrillate , put chest drains in, I’ve put a trachyoctomy on a 16 year old boy hit by a train, tried to resuscitate two burnt toddlers after their father set fire to them both. I’ve seen things that no one should have to witness
At the end of that time with all that experience I was worth £12.35 an hour before tax (this was my bank shift rate on my very last shift, somewhat lower than my colleagues due to not getting anti social enhancements but even with I feel we are criminally underpaid for the work we undertake).
That’s what my skills are worth to society.
Less than an estate agent, less than a refuse collector, much less than any MP regardless of political party, less than the majority of office workers working in a clean environment doing sociable hours.
Yes £12.35 before tax and National Insurance. Tax is something the super rich avoid.
Why because modern society puts no value on me because I don’t make money.
I’m not a footballer or an actor or a bean counter for the banks. I don’t fit into the capitalist system that we are all brainwashed to think is the only workable system humanity can live by.
So go ahead and vote for the Tories again and see the NHS finally die. Let them take away the last decent thing we have left in this country that cuts across all races, ages, and class.
The great institution that our grand parents fought through the horror of the Second World War to set up “from cradle to the grave
Posted by jeffrey davies on 15 May 2017
