Nadine’s not a feminist, but….
I found myself in the unenviable position this week of actually agreeing with Nadine Dorries about something. But don’t worry, it was a short lived affair.
Now despite the fact that I appear to be one of the few lefties she hasn’t yet blocked on Twitter, I’m not renowned for holding Dorries in any high esteem (see here for example), so you can imagine my surprise when she tweeted this:
…and I found myself nodding along.
Yes she’s right, the political new media is dominated by men – in fact it’s something I’ve been intending to write about for a while now.
continue reading… »
LC briefing: Lie detectors – where your money is going
For this LC briefing, using Freedom of Information requests, I can tell you exactly how much taxpayers’ money has been spent on the trial to date and exactly where this technology is being used to vet benefits claimants.
If James Purnell’s department did decide to roll out this system nationally, one company could, within the next five years, build an effective monopoly over the processing of welfare benefit claims worth tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of pounds a year.
So here’s the breakdown, and a little surprise I uncovered last week…
LC briefing: DWP on Trial – a quick update
Yesterday, the Guardian technology supplement carried a story that covers a part of our briefing, specifically the threat of a libel action by Amir Liberman/Nemesysco against two Swedish reseachers who published a paper criticising the ‘lie detector’.
continue reading… »
LC briefing: Lie detectors – how it all started
Time for some background to this story. The public sector business services contracts company Capita are behind the DWP trial. In fact all the local authorities involved in the trial have IT services and outsourcing contracts with Capita. This notice verifies that.
In November 2004, Capita acquired the full shareholding in an insurance claims investigation company called Brownsword Ltd from private equity investors, ISIS Equity Partners. In buying out Brownsword, Capita also acquired an exclusive 10 year licence, from another company (DigiLog UK) for what DigiLog calls its ‘Advanced Validation Solutions’ – this is the same system that the DWP are trialling and at the heart of that system lies the controversial ‘voice risk analysis’ software we’ve been investigating.
As some readers have already noted, this software-based system, which its developer calls ‘Layered Voice Analysis’ (LVA), was developed from a patent filed in 1997 by an Israeli national, Amir Liberman, and is currently owned and marketed by Liberman’s company, Nemesysco. DigiLog UK is Nemesysco’s UK agent and distributor.
So far, we’ve referred to this system as a ‘lie detector’, but in fact, Nemesysco makes a number of much more expansive claims for its technology on its website.
continue reading… »
LC briefing: editor’s note
Last year Hazel Blears MP (in)famously said most blogs did little to ‘add value’ to our political culture. If by ‘value’, Blears did not mean bloggers doing research into government initiatives and occasionally exposing them for the gimmicks they are, then she probably won’t be pleased with our briefing either.
Today, coincidentally, David Hencke asks if James Purnell is the worst social security minister ever: I’d say he is in contention for the worst Labour minister ever given how empty his initiatives at the DWP have been. His plans to trial lie detectors to tackle benefit fraud will eventually be exposed as one of those vacuous stunts.
First a bit of background.
continue reading… »
Liberal Conspiracy briefing: Exposing the DWP’s lie detector testing
Hello LC readers I have a treat for you. Today we start publishing the first of our briefings – a document I’ve been working on for the past month or so. It’s not coming out all at once because there are some legal and other issues still to be resolved. But in coming days and weeks, more will be revealed.
Our focus is on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and in particular its recent decision to use lie detection technology to catch out benefit claimants.
We think that this is not only unethical, but the technology itself is so prone to error as to be useless for the purpose for which is it supposedly intended. So why is the DWP spending over a million pounds promoting it across local authorities? Has it done research into its drawbacks and limitations? If yes, then why is it still using it?
CIC: Why don’t more people get into politics?
If this whole business of debating the CLG white paper, ‘Communities In Control’ is starting to make you feel like you’re losing the will to live then take my sincere advice and steer clear of the Chapter (7) on ‘Standing For Office’.
The chapter kicks off by pointing out that women, ethnic minorities and under 25’s are heavily under-represented on local councils as elected members compared to broad population demographics, after which we discover that bears really do shit in the woods and that they suspect that the Pope may possibly be a Catholic.
The proposed ‘solution’ for this problem is a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Women Councillors Taskforce, which already exists, and all usual nonsense about training, mentoring, shadowing, networking and outreach events that gets thrown in the pot by the government devoid of genuinely innovative thinking.
continue reading… »
CIC: How to complain to councils
All this week, Liberal Conspiracy will finish reviewing the Communities in Control White Paper launched by Hazel Blears recently.
Chapter Six of the Communities in Control White Paper is entitled “redress” and details proposals about what should happen when the public aren’t happy with a service.
The chapter’s introduction starts with the suggestion that the country is not in the bad old days of “wait of many weeks for a phone to be installed” and follows up with three statistics, one in five people complain to their council every year, only 34 percent of those people are happy with how that complaint is dealt with but 55% of people believe this service is better than what they receive from the private sector.
continue reading… »
CIC: Toying with elected Mayors
All this week, Liberal Conspiracy will finish reviewing the Communities in Control White Paper launched by Hazel Blears recently.
The purpose of Chapter 5 is to outline “how people can hold officials to account through new powers of petitioning, and ways in which we will establish more visible and accountable local leaders by encouraging more powerful elected mayors”.
Their intention is to raise visibility of existing scrutiny functions, particularly Overview and Scrutiny Committees (OSCs), and encourage councils to consider new approaches to scrutiny. Ways this could be done include having large scale public forums or making committee meetings more accessible by moving them out of the town hall and into the community and having webcasts.
continue reading… »
CIC: Are petitions the way forward?
All this week, Liberal Conspiracy will finish reviewing the Communities in Control White Paper (link corrected) launched by Hazel Blears.
Chapter 4: Having an Influence, deals with the enhancement of the right to petition and also discusses ways to encourage electors to vote. But it covers a lot of other things too.
The chapter also tells us what this is not about.
We are not proposing government by petitions, nor are we suggesting that the role of elected representatives in taking difficult decisions should be undermined. But, we do believe that stronger petition powers will enable more people to have their voice heard and help elected representatives do their jobs better.
This is at least clear cut.
Frankly, this chapter should have been at least two, or probably three or four separate sections. It tries to cover too many topics under the catch all heading ‘Having an Influence’ and even the introductory paragraph does not, at least in my view, do justice to the depth and breadth of the subject matter.
continue reading… »
CIC paper: Access to information
Liberal Conspiracy is publishing a series of discussions about the government’s Community Empowerment White Paper. This is a summary of the third chapter.
Chapter 3: Access to information
How can I find out information in a way I understand and can use?
Information is power say the paper, and a lack of information leads to powerlessness. Jargon can ‘alienate, confuse and frustrate citizens’ and be exclusionary. Barely half of local authority residents feel that their council keeps them very or fairly well informed about the services and benefits it provides.
The Internet is a powerful information delivery system but those without online access should not be forgotten. Information across the range of issues is being made available via the likes of NHS Choices. The government wants to support the use of new technologies.
A ‘Digital Mentor’ scheme in deprived areas will support groups to develop websites and podcasts, to use digital photography and online publishing tools. Community radio can have a unique role in working within communities.
Comments
continue reading… »
CIC paper: Can British citizens become ‘active’?
Liberal Conspiracy is publishing a series of discussions about the government’s Community Empowerment White Paper. This is a summary of the second chapter.
Chapter 2: Active citizens and the value of volunteering
The government wants to “make it easier to be involved in voluntary and community activity” and proposes:
Volunteering
- Community Allowance pilots – paying people to do community work without losing benefits.
- Job Centres to help people do volunteer work.
- £2m more to support people with disabilities.
Mentoring
- Developing a strategy for extending mentoring
Citizenship
- A review of citizenship education in schools.
- a ‘Take Part local pathfinder programme’, offering information and training on being an active citizen for adults.
continue reading… »
Is the ‘Community Empowerment’ plan any good?
Liberal Conspiracy is publishing a series of discussions about the government’s Community Empowerment White Paper. Hazel Blears said blogs are not constructive enough; this is the first such project where readers have volunteered to review different parts of the paper. Consultation on this paper is due to end soon.
I’ve been asked to kick off with an overview of the principles which inform the strategy. Other authors are covering the points related to particular chapters and local authorities.
The aim of the white paper is “to pass power into the hands of local communities so as to generate vibrant local democracy in every part of the country and give real control over local decisions and services to a wider pool of active citizens.”
Unlike some government white papers, there is no ‘one big idea’ in the white paper, for better and for worse. Instead there are lots of smaller ideas, which are grouped under the headings of being an active citizen, accessing information, influencing local decision-making, holding decision-makers to account, getting redress when things go wrong, standing for office and community ownership and management of local services.
continue reading… »
Abortion Rights: A delay not a setback
So, efforts to update the UK’s existing abortion law through amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill appear to have ended in a politically expedient cop-out and some of the worst excuses in living memory, despite bill having originally been drafted in such a way as to allow, if not invite, the submission of abortion-related amendments.
Oh well, at least it saves me the bother of pointing out the belated Field-Dorries amendment, which proposed that a joint ‘grand committee’ of 17 MPs and Peers would ruminate on the subject of abortion for 9 months before bring forward recommendations that parliament would be required to enact within two years is a complete and utter constitutional nonsense – parliament cannot be bound, in advance, to a future course of action even by a unanimous vote of both houses let alone by the deliberation of ad hoc committee.
Meanwhile… continue reading… »
I blame the lazy liberal media
Both Polly Toynbee and Cath Elliott have written good pieces for the Guardian on this government’s failure to stand firm on HFE Bill amendments and follow through with a progressive pro-choice stance that should be the cornerstone of any vaguely left-wing government.
Instead, as Ms Toynbee rightly points out, New Labour has become scared of Nadine Dorries MP and the tons of supportive, misleading propaganda that has poured from the Daily Mail and Telegraph. Which begs me to wonder why the hell there wasn’t an equally vicious counter-attack in the left-liberal press. Why haven’t the Guardian or the Independent asked the sort of questions about Nadine Dorries MP and her campaign that we have on this blog?
Partly, I’m beginning to agree with the feminist complaint that the male-dominated left actually ends up saying very little on issues like abortion. They’re out there campaigning against the war in Iraq but when a bit of solidarity is needed with women from Northern Ireland, the comrades are busily inspecting their shoes. Liberals especially, too afraid to touch an issue like abortion for fear of offending anyone, have barely attempted to go on the counter-attack in the media.
The Channel 4 documentary that exposed Nadine Dorries’s close links to the bigoted, fundamentalist Christian organisation: Christian Concern For Our Nation, offered a veritable feast for an angle that could be used to ask questions about how was funding Ms Dorries’s campaign and why she was hiding her true agenda on abortion and smearing journalists like Ben Goldacre. What did we get? Uncomfortable silence, and some bleating now the vote has came up again. I admire the right on this regard: they have ideological positions and they’ll run happily run a quasi-propaganda campaign to support it. The left-liberal press is on the side of public opinion and has a ton of bullshit to shoot down, and they still can’t do a good enough job to push their case. No wonder New Labour is in retreat.
Sins of Omission
Over the last year or so, perhaps the defining characteristic of the anti-abortion lobby’s ‘contribution’ to the public debate surrounding the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has been their willingness to resort, increasingly, to tendentious and disreputable lines of argument.
Why this has happened is relatively easy to understand.
The major problem facing the anti-abortion lobby is that, for all their efforts to poison the public debate in support of their prohibitionist agenda, public support for the principle that women have the right to access safe, legal, abortions services remains rock solid at around 65-70% in any reputable poll. If nothing else, the majority of the British public understand that the alternative to legal abortion is not no abortions but a return to unsafe backstreet abortions will their attendant horrors.
The ‘moral’ argument for prohibition has been lost and lost decisively and its because of that, that anti-abortionists have turned, instead, to a stream of extremely specious and sophistic arguments about the supposed ‘rights’ of the foetus and to the wholesale misrepresentation and bastardisation of medical and scientific knowledge about pregnancy, foetal development and abortion. continue reading… »
Our complaint against Nadine Dorries MP upheld
A few months ago I submitted a complaint, with the help of some Liberal Conspirators to the Parliamentary Standards Commission against Nadine Dorries MP. In short, it was regarding her blog. Last weekend I had a response.
The most relevant parts of the letter stated:
The rules of the house, however, do require Members to make a clear distinction between websites which are financed from public funds and any other domain. At the time of your complaint, Mrs Dorries’ website did not meet that requirement. Nor was it appropriate that she use the Portcullis emblem on the weblog given its contents. And the funding attribution on Mrs Dorries’ Home Page should have been updated to reflect that the funding came from the Communications Allowance and not from the Incidental Expenses Provision.
To these three technical aspects, our complaint was upheld. But, the Commissioner adds:
continue reading… »
Dishonesty Dorries Rides Again
If there’s one thing worse than a cover-up, its a badly executed cover-up, and you’ll find no better example of the latter if you take the time to visit the website of Nadine Dorries.
To give a quick recap of the story so far, a short while back, Sunny put forward a formal complaint to the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards in regards to Dorries’ ‘blog’ – i.e. the bit of her website that used to have a comments facility until she got caught making false allegations about Ben Goldacre in a parliamentary committee report.
The complaint, itself, raised two basic issues.
continue reading… »
Dorries facing Standards investigation – updated
I’ve already broken this development over at The Ministry, due to LibCon being offline for a while this afternoon, but I can now confirm that Nadine Dorries is being asked to give a formal response, by the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards, to the complaint lodged by Sunny a little under a month ago in regards to her apparent failure to observe parliamentary regulations relating to the content of her official website, which she appears to fund from her parliamentary allowances.
The complaint, which is being dealt with under the new Communications Allowance regulations, alleges that Dorries’s personal ‘blog’, which is incorporated into her official website and which, it appears from the home page, is/was funded using the Incidental Expenses Provision, breaches regulations governing the content of websites funded from parliamentary allowances and the use of the House Emblem, i.e. the official portcullis device.
continue reading… »
It was Dorries wot lost it!
It came down to the crunch, and after everything, not even the 200 supporters Nadine Dorries said she had bothered to turn up to vote for a reduction in the abortion limit to 20 weeks. All the hype about the vote being close turned out to be bluster, with the amendment being rejected by a majority of 142, 190 votes for to 332 against. All the attempts by Dorries to turn to complete emotion, raising the issue of the baby boy she witnessed struggling to breathe once again during the debate, after saying that she hadn’t wanted to use it, have failed.
This was after she said that Labour MPs were supposedly on a three-line-whip to “attend” so that they knew which way they were to be expected to vote. Desperation doesn’t even begin to cover it.
continue reading… »
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
|
66 Comments 20 Comments 13 Comments 10 Comments 18 Comments 4 Comments 25 Comments 49 Comments 31 Comments 16 Comments |
|
LATEST COMMENTS » Blackberries posted on Complete tits » Shatterface posted on How bad is the feline obesity crisis? » Shatterface posted on Complete tits » McDuff posted on Why I'm defending Ed Balls over immigration » damon posted on Complete tits » Sunny Hundal posted on Complete tits » sunny hundal posted on Why don't MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours? » Lee Griffin posted on The Labour leadership's token contender.. and it's not Diane Abbott » dan posted on Defend the urban fox! » Richard W posted on Boris rise for Living Wage left of Labour » Julian Swainson posted on How many cabinet MPs went to private schools? » sally posted on Complete tits » Joanne Dunn posted on How many cabinet MPs went to private schools? » Lovely Lynnette Peck posted on How many cabinet MPs went to private schools? » Nick posted on Why don't MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours? |
