Westministenders: Parliament Perogies pushing Rats in the Corner

[RedToothBrush]

One Opposition MP has just talked in parliament about how little the public understand what Preroguation is and what it meant. She described how one constituent thought it was about perogies.

The Benn Bill is now law and compels Johnson to ask for an extension if we have no deal.

Something that he has said he will die in a ditch to avoid and has suggested he would break the law.

But his options are hugely limited - if he refuses to do so and we no deal accidentally now, he is potentially personally liable for loses. He has no majority and the defeats keep on coming as a result.

Everything coming out now is the behaviour of a man with his back to the wall. The only thing he can do is frame everything as a people v the establishment and hope he survived until a GE. This is a dangerous time - he is now a rat in the corner with nothing to lose.

After Rudd's resignation, not much has got better for Johnson. Several other Tory MPs have signalled they won't stand again. This might mean they decide to rebel as they have nothing to lose. Lord Wellington, who has Tory written through him like a stick of rock, has also resigned the party. Attorney General Buckland hasn't resigned but has made threatening noises if the rule of law is broken.

Proroguation now does stack pressure on Johnson. He has to be the one to make moves and that is going to be difficult for him. However it also gives him time to say and do something without the scrutiny of parliament who have been blowing his arguments and legal assertions to bits with such ease.

Today he has visited Dublin where he stood next to Leo Varadkar who was less than polite nor even particularly diplomatic. The discomfort on Johnson's face and in his body language was very obvious. Varadkar in no uncertain terms said: ""if there is no deal, it will cause disruption for British and Irish people alike", adding "there's no such thing as a clean break, or just getting it done" and that he'd recieved no workable plan.

Tonight are two emergency debates. The first has just concluded about the government's lack of willingness to release documents relating to proroguation and operation yellowhammer.

Its been reported that ministers and civil servants have used private communications to conduct government ministers and this has caused huge concerns and Grieve wants to compel the government to release them. The government have responded saying this is an invasion of privacy. This has raised the accusation that Dominic Cummings personally has rifled through the phone messages of the former treasury communications officer as he sacked her and number 10 were not particularly concerned about her privacy then.

At the same time as the debate the government were briefing the press that they would refuse to comply with demands to release information. Grieve then made the point this was leading to the complete breakdown in trust in government.

David Allen Green said that if the government were to do this we could well be headed into a full blown constitutional crisis. This is the first time he's said he thinks we are actually at this stage.

Grieve was supported by the house by 311 votes to 302 votes ordering the government to release the documents.

The second debate is about the Rule of Law and the government's obligation to obey the Rule of Law.

Yet to come tonight is another vote about an early General Election before parliament pergoies, possibly in the early hours.

In other news John Bercow has decided to stand down at the next election or on the 31st October, which ever is sooner. There are rumours he was about to be deselected by his local conservative association and against convention would have to fight an election to win back his seat. He therefore was merely taking action before he was pushed. This might also be an action to protect parliament from the election of a new speaker after another election, fearing that there might be a hard right takeover which could threaten parliamentary soverignity.

Also this:
Declan Lawn @DecLawn
ERG stalwart Andrew Bridgen on @BBCPM saying the only way he could see a NI only backstop being acceptable is if it was put to an NI-only referendum. Fascinating.

And this is it.

Here we are.

I've been wondering what the disaster would be, that would follow the hovering up of huge amounts of citizens' data as services are moved services online.

In previous eras it was to identify who had Jewish ancestry, or track who talked to a "known subversive".

Now it's to infect democracy with a sickness.

So, a system that looks like democracy. But using deeply personal data to target individuals with personalised messages and potentially with actual rewards/sanctions from HMRC, the DWP, the NHS, passport office...

So that each individual "chooses" to freely exercise their free, democratic vote in exactly the "right" way.

I've been wondering what the disaster would be, that would follow the hovering up of huge amounts of citizens' data as services are moved services online.

I'll wager any election date will be set as a result of "big data" analysis of citizen data.

How can we use the data back in a way that might confuse? If we all went to gov.uk and searches Yellowhammer or Medicine shortages, say, would they not start worrying the public was anxious for news on these?

How deep does this data-snatch go?

Which gov.uk websites people visit?
The contents of DWP files?
CVs that people have been forced to put online if they claim eg Universal Credit?

Authoritarian states rather like beaucracy.

It frustrates me how history is taught as if its about the past.

No, its about how you understand the present and can understand and shape the future.

How does this go from here?

Do we need people in scary uniforms to make this start to feel more real?

I was worried about this with the last YouGov survey I did as it was very targeted - do you know who Cummings is, which papers do you read and trust and what did you vote last election...

I can only hope when I move things get muddled. Seriously considering deactivating my fb though.

Would 6.1 million GDPR requests slow the Conservative party down a bit ??

Well passport applications are all through the government portal aren't they? And you have to enter your parents to apply for a new one don't you?

Just match that up with any government petition you've signed and you've got a voter profile and family history.

That's just for starters.

How delicious is big data to corporations and government?

And how much is it against the interests of the freedom of people.

Ask someone in China.

No wait you can't as they are being monitored...

Would 6.1 million GDPR requests slow the Conservative party down a bit ??

No cos this is government paper not Conservative Party data

For now.

Which is why I never sign online petitions, Red. Or any petition.

For the next dystopian TV series may I suggest the concept of 'patriot rations'.

I would be more scared if the Government could find it's bottom with both hands. Plus (speaking as someone who does it), data harvesting only works if you have the relevant data sets and filters speaking to each other and enough departmental goodwill to push it through. As it stands, this looks like another potential disaster for them - the GDPR regulations have teeth. We still have an independent judiciary and media (well, mostly). I would also wager that a lot of Leavers will be less than keen on big data targeting when Brexit dies or busts out.

"targeted and personalised information" sounds like the Leave using FB data in the ref to target individual voters

This time, they control the govt, so they have govt data too - they'll download it to Tory HQ
Could work even more effectively in the GE than in the ref

A friend who is the the SNP in central Scotland( who has a strong IT background: used to be the CEO of an ISP when they were small, so a while ago followed by various risk management roles, so is up-to-date with current legislation) is adamant that the reason that the Conservatives are strong in that particular area is that they have kept the information that they gathered during the Indyref campaign and are continuing to use it, in contravention of GDPR, to micro-target their potential voters.

Can't prove it though

So the idea that the Government would do somthing similar doesn't come as a surprise

"people in scary uniforms"

That's last century

How deep does this data-snatch go?

How long have you got ?

I know the 1991 census data was passed over to the Community Charge units of councils despite assurances it wouldn't be as it was illegal.

And before that I read that people who voted for certain parties would have a file somewhere with Special Branch.

As always, it's not what this shower do with their powers and data, but whoever follows them. Usually that's what pulls us back from the brink. I have no idea how extreme the anti-terror laws that Labour wanted started off as, but I suspect a civil servant quietly pointed out that all those powers would be in place for the next government.

GDPR regulations may have teeth, but they'll have to use those teeth quickly.

As we've said here Cummings' modus operandi is to do WTF he likes and wait for the law to catch up with him later... or not at all.

He was held in contempt of Parliament and has suffered not a jot for it.

I would love to see the Information Commissioner's Office go in wearing tabards and seize his servers, like they did to his pals in Cambridge Analytica.

Paging Elizabeth Denham... You're wanted in Westminster...

they have kept the information that they gathered during the Indyref campaign and are continuing to use it, in contravention of GDPR, to micro-target their potential voters.

Which does raise the interesting question of how effective it all is ? Plenty of marketing campaigns have massively failed to sell their wares over the years, so what exactly is a "targeted voter" to do ?

How many here would change their voting intentions based on anything that pops up on their social media ?

"the GDPR regulations have teeth. We still have an independent judiciary and media (well, mostly). I would also wager that a lot of Leavers will be less than keen on big data targeting"

The judiciary is nervous and can be replaced

Most Leavers are authoritarians, who relish the govt taking control

BIG misunderstanding:

Many people who were against govts having the powers they do aren't "libertarians" at all
They just hated any govt that wasn't far right
They'll be fine with a far right / hard right govt taking all the power they want

Common theme on "libertarian" posts that claim to be politically neutral is demonising "liblabcon"
too often misunderstood as posters who are disillusioned by politics and hence creates a fellow feeling

Wrong
They were just bitterly angry that the far right wasn't in power.

Their time has come

Also, data theft isn't like theft of material goods. Data can be duplicated and distributed as widely as the thief likes. There's no getting the toothpaste back in the tube. You can only wait for the toothpaste to degrade with time.

Eg It's extremely likely the data filched by Cambridge Analytica was transferred onwards to Alexander Nix and the Mercers' next company, Emerdata.

DGR - the particular area is more strongly Conservative than one would expect from its demographic, especially at the LA level (that was why I asked him the question as it seemed surprising it was so Conservative in its elected representatives). Having that illicit info is not just effective for social media: it's also about having the addresses (and how they were planning on voting in the Indyref), both physical and email, which makes it much easier for them to target their canvassing efforts. Especially when there are not that many foot soldiers and they need to use their resources effectively

DGR I don't know re changing voting due to SM - the more my Leaver No Dealer posts up about JC being "the same size as a whales c*nt" and a "PROVEN LIAR!" the more inclined I am to vote for him works both ways I suspect, much like The BoZo Effect.

Marking place, and craving perogies

I image right now, the rest of the EU is quietly breathing a sign of relief that the UK are islands with no land border to the mainland (sorry Ireland). Unlike a lot of rogues states that do have borders and eventually end up using them to distract the population with a nice war.

I can't say I've ever read anything which suggests it, but one alternative interpretion of Nazi Germany's territorial ambitions was not that they were an expression of the philosophy of Lebensraum, but a political necessity in order to keep the population from overthrowing the regime. I refuse to believe I've just thought of it though.