WRITTEN ON Sunday, September 27th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

It’s time to wind this thing down. The Guardian owns and pays for this site and domain, and has decided the blog has run its course, which is entirely their prerogative and fair enough. They’ve been great for the last two years.
We’ve got, I think, a final four weeks before it closes end October. [...]

WRITTEN ON Sunday, September 27th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Save Time and Money, What do we want?

This is such a simple and good idea from the Nick Clegg website:

Let’s hope it works. It just takes humility to ask others for good ideas. Opposition breeds humility, and the LiDems have had too much opposition.

WRITTEN ON Friday, September 25th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, We told you so..., What do we want?

This powerful No2ID ad – much more striking, foreful and truthful than the stupid Home Office smiley-fingerprints ads launched today – was the subject, it seems, of complaint to the Advertising Standards Association by one single reader of the New Statesman.

pdf here
The complaints were:
that the ad: 1. misleadingly exaggerated the information that would be [...]

WRITTEN ON Thursday, September 24th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, We told you so..., What do we want?

Wired has a nice graphic for the FBI’s God-quest. It shows several of the businesses which handed over customer records to the state:

WRITTEN ON Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Identity, Transformational Government, What do we want?

My letter to ONS
I’ve been asked (by pacifists and others concerned that the 2011
census is managed by a US defence contractor) what are the legal
options for non-participation. I know it’s not a question you’ll
welcome, [however] I believe I fully understand the arguments about why it’s
safe and a good thing to do, and that Lockheed Martin [...]

WRITTEN ON Friday, September 18th, 2009 BY David Moss AND STORED IN Uncategorized

The Independent Safeguarding Authority are meant to help to protect children and vulnerable adults from abuse.
How?
According to a document leaked to Josie Appleton, reported in The Register, as follows:
… the ISA has decided to put in place a scoring system to be filled in by its army of trained bureaucrats. Items will be assessed on [...]

WRITTEN ON Thursday, September 17th, 2009 BY David Moss AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Only 13 short months ago, we were all enjoying our little adult evening class in social psychology and behavioural economics. You remember – anchoring, framing, cognitive dissonance, …
Maybe you don’t remember. But just because you’ve forgotten, doesn’t mean it’s gone away. There it was on the steam radio this week, with Daniel Finkelstein explaining how [...]

WRITTEN ON Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Pertinent Art, Save Time and Money, What do we want?

If we want to save time and money, the start point is here (click to downlod pdf):

WRITTEN ON Sunday, September 13th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Political engagement, What do we want?

The German-based anti-data retention campaign had 20,000 people marching in Potsdamer Platz in Berlin yesterday. Nice to see last year’s Open Rights Group Freedom not Fear image on their very organised web site.
Stoppt den Überwachungswahn! as they put it with such precision.

WRITTEN ON Saturday, September 12th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, What do we want?

It has been a leitmotiv through years of Government-Idealism that the UK National Identity Scheme offers no perceptible benefit to the ordinary citizen or taxpayer. Ministers have once or twice protested they’re about to tell us what the benefits are (while conceding it will offer no online functionality “in the present phase” ie until 2020 [...]