A new bill of rights?

 Betrayal, laws, Magna Carta  No Responses »
Nov 092011
 

Friday see’s the end of the consultation period for our new bill of rights, or as Mr Cameron would have it our bill of rights, as he seems to be unaware of the existing documents which form our constitution (H/T Captain Ranty):

Our rights can be found in the Magna Carta of 1215, 1229, 1297, the Declaration of Arbroath 1320, the Bill of Rights 1688, for Scotland we have the Claim of Right 1689, the Act of Settlement 1701, the Act of Union 1707, the Human Rights Act 1998 and several international and European Acts also provide some protection.

Given that our Parliament as currently formed can not bind successive Parliaments any Bill of rights they come up with won’t be worth much, unlike our existing bill of rights

The Devils Kitchen is minded that most of these charters have been eroded to next to nothing already, though many would argue that this isn’t possible we’ve just been tricked into thinking they have – and it’s quite within our grasp to reassert them. However his point that a written constitution as would be constructed by our current incumbents would be a terrible thing is one that’s hard to argue with. Given the degree with which they are enamoured with the EU the chances that it’s move us more towards the view that everything not allowed is forbidden (rather than the current everything not forbidden is allowed) would seem quite likely.

The question I find niggling at the back of my mind with this move to create a new bill of rights happening at the same time as they want to tinker with the Act of settlement and everything that’s tied into. As His Grace observes most people don’t care about this, and playing jenga with the foundations of our Parliament and laws is only likely to cause the whole edifice to come crashing down. Usually I take the view that one shouldn’t attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance, but the Government have advisor’s, and lawyers and other such that are notionally wise in these matters. Which makes ignorance less likely, though malice is a scarier idea and one that has me reaching or my tin foil hat. In the unlikely event we get asked (they’ve done so well with referenda so far)if we want these ancient laws changed I doubt the significance will be explained, we’ll just awake to find we’ve abandoned hard one rights and removed what scant limits there are on our Government. Our Government seems determined to tug at the threads that hold the land together, and bind their hands however loosely but once they’ve unravelled the Union of this land who’ll stitch it back together? The EU?

There’s still to join in that consultation.

Update My late submission to them below the line:
Continue reading »

 Posted by Giolla at 18:51  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Breaking the seal

 Civil Liberties, laws, religion  1 Response »
Sep 012011
 

Over in Ireland they are apparently going to remove the legal protection afforded to things told in the confessional – for the sake of the children of course. At the moment it’s just in the case of someone confessing to “sexual abuse” where there is planned to be mandatory reporting required.

Now I’d hope that the Irish clergy will have the courage of their convictions and not break the seal of the confessional and suffer prison terms if it comes to that as from a religious point of view that it s the correct thing to do. Now that priests will have to report such things is the headline but the BBC goes on to say:

“Anyone who fails to declare information about the abuse of a child could face a prison term of five years.”

If that’s actually accurate then that also covers solicitors and therapists and doctors, who if I recall correctly also don’t have to pass on information to the authorities if told about wrong doing by their clients – and that phrasing covers far more than outright confessions. The whole privileged information thing, and that smaller note seems to me to be a whole thin end of a wedge type thing. After all once it’s established that one sort of crime is worthy of breaking the various long held rules of confidentiality a degree of mission creep would seem rather inevitable. So mandatory reporting of all offences, and with a five year penalty for not reporting probably best to report anything even said in jest just in case it turns out not to have been a joke.

If it flies in Ireland, anyone want to hazard a guess as to how quickly it’ll be tried over here?

 Posted by Giolla at 09:40  Tagged with: , , ,

A flight of fancy

 Civil Liberties, climate change, smoking  No Responses »
Aug 032011
 

Polar bear smoking on a block of iceHaving had occasion recently to journey to the fair city of York I picked up a copy of New Scientist to read on the train back home, and came across a few articles that were rather interesting, so in the order in which I encountered them.

The first concerned the ethical problems for anti-addiction drugs – now obviously helping people beat an addiction is a good thing. The drugs described though are vaccines that prevent you getting a high from the drugs, and as the article observes there is the risk that this will just cause addicts to take much larger quantities to get the same high. Nestled within the article between heroin and cocaine and talk of Amy Winehouses death was that they’d also done clinical trials of a nicotine vaccine. Now I’m no scientist* and this is just a flight of fancy but surely vaccines are normally administered before you get ill as a preventative so wouldn’t the more logical use of these drugs be to give them to children to prevent them acquiring the addictions in the first place? Now that’ll be a fun arms race kids Vs the vaccines as they experiment to find out what will still get them high, followed no doubt shortly after by huge law suits when it turns out the vaccines interfere with vital medical drugs.

The next article concerned the use of smart phones to augment CCTV monitoring, the chilling subtitle on the article really says it all:
“These networks will give the government eyes and ears in a thousand places at once”
The general thrust of the article is that with so many sensors on all those smart phones why not get them to report back to the state what’s going on. The two current examples are innocuous automatic detection and reporting of pot holes and GPS jamming signals. But ti rapidly starts talking about making some level of state desired monitoring compulsory by legislation as there are “major public safety issues at stake”. Once that’s done of course requiring additional monitoring devices to be added or getting extra data back will be a terribly easy and seductive idea for most governments. Again a small suggested idea is using bluetooth and such to identify and track stolen handsets, of course an application that’s doing that could very easily also be used to track the movements of phones belonging to “people of interest” (anarchists perhaps), and another suggest again moving from public safety to individual monitoring is that maybe in future your phone could check if you’ve had too much too drink or taken drugs the Government doesn’t like. As it says unless clear principles and checks are in place mission creep will happen, I’d suggest that if we let them even start down this road mission creep will happen regardless – no doubt due to unusual or extreme circumstances as a temporary measure or some such.

The final article I think answers a question that has been puzzling LegIron, why are smoking related diseases increasing as smoking decreases. The answer global warming!

“Air pollutants emitted decades ago are coming back to haunt us. As the Arctic warms, persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, trapped in snow and ice are being re-released. This unwelcome return has been suspected for sometime but is now confirmed by 16 years’ worth of data.

POPs travel around the globe on winds, build up in food and water supplies and accumulate in animal body fat. They have also been linked to serious human health problems, including cancer and can be passed from mother to fetus….”

Now if I’ve understood previous anti-smoking “science” that article surely adds up to dangerous levels of tobacco smoke being trapped in the Arctic and now being released due to man made global warming!!(Is it global warming this week or climate change?). Which can only mean it’s going to get far far worse as we melt back through time to the days when everyone smoked everywhere and all died of cancer before they were 5. At least following LegIrons excellent lead I’ll wager you could convince an awful lot of people that that’s what’s happening.

*Actually not entirely true I’m a few retakes short of being a scientist

 Posted by Giolla at 23:46  Tagged with: , , , ,

Squaring a circle

 Civil Liberties, extremism  2 Responses »
Jul 152011
 

Something that is rather puzzling me at the moment is the seemingly normal unevenness in the application of “law” and the acceptability of protest. I know it’s not really that surprising, and isn’t news but a few things have crossed my vision in the last week which do seem to suggest that we (in a collective national sense) have rather lost the plot. Most recently Orphans of Liberty report that a council has refused to give the EDL permission to lay a wreath at a memorial, and rightly asks the question since when did you need the councils permission to lay a wreath? Meanwhile Harry’s place reports that “hope not hate” are trying to get an EDL march banned in Tower Hamlets, that well known bastion of moderate Islam. Hope not hate, having been remarkably silent about the recent stickering of that area with Islamic anti-gay stickers. The comments on Harry’s place are well worth reading to see a decent fsking of both the petition and hope not hate’s general attitude. Including the well observed comment that EDL are filling a vacuum left by no one directly addressing the problem of militant Islam. Whilst the EDL may not be the solution so far no one has offered anything better.

Yet there seems to have been far less said about the alleged plans of “Muslims Against the Crusades” to set up Sharia zones reportedly to begin in Waltham Forest. Is this because it’s all just so much hot air coming from the Islamic quarter, has anyone seen the stickers supposedly put up in Walthamstow? It’ll be interesting to discover if a quiet attempt at the creation of areas hostile to those that Islam doesn’t approve of, if not full blown Sharia areas, is actually going on? Has their march taken place yet? if it hasn’t perhaps we’ll see the like of hope not hate calling for such marches to be banned any day now.

 Posted by Giolla at 22:18  Tagged with: , ,

NotW protests and bloggers

 bloggers  No Responses »
Jul 142011
 

Having dragged myself away from both work and the Tour for a little bit, I discover that there’s been a bit happening this last week.

The big story as far as the papers were concerned seems to have been the NotW getting caught out doing the same sort of stuff the rest of them all do. Though it’d seem that New International really aren’t the worst of them that prize goes to Trinity Mirror, but they of course aren’t run by the “evil” Murdochs. So there are fewer calls for the government to stamp on them, which rather ignores that much like Tesco and other “evil” companies they make money because people buy what they’re selling. Don’t want a Tesco to stay open never shop there stick to your local shops even when it’s less convenient, don’t want Murdoch don’t buy any of his product not just NotW, but anything published by Harper Collins and no films produced by 20th Century Fox either or any of his other brands – oh and write to the firms that advertise with them and then boycott them as well. Can’t do that then I guess they’re probably not that evil really.*

Whilst many are clamouring for the demise of the main stream press (or at least Murdoch’s bits of it) and it has in many cases failed us – I wonder what might replace it as we need something to tell us what’s going on in the world (and provide that vital coverage of the Tour). I’m not sure we’re quite ready for the complete take over by the citizen journalist – at least till we have much better aggregators. Blogs are excellent for opinion (and in the case of this blog recycling other peoples opinions), but so far at least they don’t provide the mix of coverage possible by the mainstream press. None of which is to say they haven’t picked up and broken important stories, and discovered things the mainstream press hasn’t – just that at the moment the value seems to be more in picking up and high lighting stories the established media for one reason or another would rather not touch.

Having said that I’m not sure that the internet is ready to take over from the mainstream press, I think that maybe the powers that be think we’ve made enough of an inroad already. For on the back of this “scandal” which it seems likely that every journalist and politician was well aware of but hoped we’d not notice our glorious leader wants more control of the press. Now come people might say the press needs taming, but do you really want our politicians having any control over one of the more effective mechanisms by which they’re kept to account? Do you think the expenses scandal would have been reported if the MPs had over sight of the press? It’s not working so well in Hungary, at least not as far as the opposition press are concerned. Lets also think how such press responsibility legislation might affect us humble bloggers. Obviously you’d have to have some body with which “the press” was registered, either on a publication level or maybe down to an individual level. Want to be a reporter register with the ministry of truth. This creates a bar for anyone wanting to start a new paper or even become a reporter, and I doubt that a registered press would touch a story from a non-accredited reporter. Beyond that there would then be a legal divide between the citizen journalist (blogger) and the “real” press – would unregistered reporting become an offence or merely a slur to discredit unwelcome stories from the internet? If the mainstream media start supporting more powerful regulation of the press by the state then I’d say watch out for it being used to suppress reporting by anyone not in the club.

* I personally don’t think there are actually that many evil companies and if you actually avoided dealing with all of the ones that are apparently widely considered evil and everything they had shares in or who advertised with them etc. Well you’d pretty soon not be able to use any large company, and probably very few small local ones. Just how far does the saint of “evil” extend?

 Posted by Giolla at 21:09  Tagged with: , , ,

Happy Birthday Magna Carta

 activism, Civil Liberties, Magna Carta, Monarchy  4 Responses »
Jun 142011
 

Magna Carta of 1215Today is the 796th anniversary of the first great charter – the magna carta of 1215. Now some people think that it’s pretty much a busted flush these days, having been all but entirely repealed. Others seem to think that it’s irrelevant because we’re now a parliamentary democracy though the evidence suggests that despite them changing our passports to say “citizen” rather than “subject”* we are still actually a constitutional monarchy. Just because parliament acts like it’s supreme (and sadly the monarchy lets it) doesn’t make it so, just as just because parliament would like us to think they can repeal the very charter that created them doesn’t make it so. Though of course in our day to day lives we are in the position of the scrawny kid arguing with the school bully about how they can’t just make up the rules “because they say” – we may be right but our nose is still going to get bloodied and our lunch money stolen.

On the counter argument it’s worth noticing that even the corrupt troughers have of late appealed to Magna Carta and they weren’t told to go away because it’s all been repealed, instead the courts said it didn’t offer them the protection they hoped for. Surely if it was all nicely repealed as people would have us believe the courts would have just said so:
“Sorry old chap, that’s just not the law any more”
That they didn’t do so in such a public case is very telling, and it’s not just in that case other cases keep cropping up suggesting that the Magna Carta is alive and well. If as the evidence suggests we are in fact still a constitutional monarchy and that parliament can’t actually repeal charters and treaties that pre-date it – much as they’d like to or failing that have us believe they can. Then several things follow from that one of the more interesting being that Captain Ranty and his fellow travellers in lawful rebellion are in fact in the right.

This doesn’t mean that they won’t get a bloody nose, or that the state won’t trample all over them if they feel so inclined. But it does mean that they are right, and it’s always worth fighting for what’s right. It may not achieve much and it may mean travelling with a bunch of people that currently sometimes come across as well a bunch of loons, but then again not so long ago talking about global elites got you an instant tin-foil-hat and that’s changing. So joining the lawful rebels in being right may not achieve much, it needs to be done carefully as it will likely flag you up as a trouble maker, and thus asking for a bloody nose – but it does look like it’s the right thing to do. Just don’t be surprised when a corrupt government with scant concern for tradition or the rule of law ignores the rule of law when it tells you that your ancient rights won’t protect you. That though surely is all the more reason to fight for them. You may just be a gnat irritating the giant, but enough gnats can make that giant uncomfortable and get it to move and if there’s enough of them they’re damned difficult to swat. I’ll be getting my paper work in order shortly, just two letters left to send.

* I’m actually really quite annoyed about this.

 Posted by Giolla at 23:47  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Considering Wikileaks

 activism, anonymity, Free Speach, internet, Sparticus  2 Responses »
Dec 062010
 

Wikileaks has today released what is reportedly a fairly obvious list of facilities that the US considers to be of strategic importance. Which to me raises the question of what purpose the leak serves. Wikileaks presents itself as serving public interest, but what public interest is there in releasing the sort of list that anyone who was interested in could probably produce on their own? As observed over at Harry’s place it’s not exactly a major security issue, but it’s not exactly helpful – either for the security forces or on the grounds of public interest. With some past leaks the public interest angle is obvious, but the positive benefit of this leak is harder to see, except maybe to save some conspiracy theorists and rival spooks a few hours work.

When looking at the recent leaks in particular it’s worth remembering the early mission statement of WikiLeaks:
“Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations.”

This list of facilities is hardly unethical, the other days leak of cables didn’t seem to cover much if anything unethical (though there were some exceptions) and again nothing much that a moments thought wouldn’t cause a reaction of “No shit Sherlock!”. The leaking of the cables no doubt did cause some embarrassment and will make life more awkward at diplomatic talks, just as freinds betraying confidences would make things more awkward next time you go to the pub. Wikileaks are obviously being selective in what they leak which means one has to wonder what their objective is, are all the leaks coming only from the US or is that they are only interested in publishing US material. Perhaps Wikileaks agenda is merely to garner publicity for Wikileaks and feed into a martyr/hero complex, but as soon as we accept that we are getting a select feed of documents based on an unknown criteria we have to ask what the agenda is – in the same way we should question a government press release or article in the MSM. We should possibly also question the motives behind those leaking the information and what other agendas those leaks might serve. As soon as we deal with this sort of information we have to filter it through the murky and complex lenses of the intelligence services (Wikileaks could after all be being used as the modern equivalent of operation mincemeat).

However and it is a large however the visible and public reaction to these seemingly not terribly serious leaks is quite informative for the rest of us and highlights what might be brought to bear on other uncomfortable sites (though again of course if as the state you wanted to add legitimacy to a leaks site to make it more believable you would have to go all out to shut it down knowing you’d fail). So regardless of the motives of the sites invovled it’s worth looking at their weapons and how to react to them, as we’re still in the early rounds of this particular struggle, and the MSM globally is paying attention. the attacks on Wikileaks are multi pronged and are problems we’re all vulnerable to, to greater or lesser extents, if the state so chooses.

And that’s just the easily recounted issues, and whilst many of the actions are being carried out by private companies and as long as they’re not breaking their contract it’s their choice, but it should make us aware of how vulnerable our networks are to the actions of a small number of “key service providers”.

The fight back to respond to some of these issues has been impressive and again can be used by anyone the state might take a dislike to. There are now:

All of which helps to render the actions of the state futile, assuming they actually want Wikileaks shut down rather than say just discredited.

For me Wikileaks isn’t the poster child I’d like for fighting the battle for free speech on the internet, and I do question their motives, but the battle they’re fighting could one day be the battle we’re all fighting (especially if the actions of WikiLeaks provides the excuse the powers that be want to lock down the internet for all of us). However it is the battle we have and if we don’t test our defences and develop our strategies now then when we need them and a better cause comes along we’ll be firmly on the back foot. As the Daily Mash so wonderfully puts it:
JUST BECAUSE WE’RE CRUSHING WIKILEAKS, IT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NEXT, SAY GOVERNMENTS

 Posted by Giolla at 18:36  Tagged with: , , , ,

Chicken little or salami slicing

 Civil Liberties, conformity, ranting, smoking  No Responses »
Oct 212010
 

Tin foil hat area
Something that I’ve been struggling with for a while is how to respond to the apparent constant salami slicing of our freedoms without sounding like chicken little, and I’m increasingly convinced that it cant be done.

The problem is the creeping nature of the beast as so well expounded by Leg Iron

“The Creeper is a slow and insidious technique. On trains, it started with one no-smoking carriage. On buses, it started with smokers at the back and upstairs on the double deckers. It was not a new technique even then because, as the Filthy Smoker’s post reminded me, it had already been used – and is still going – on seat belts.”

The problem is as Leg Iron expounds that each individual step seems quite reasonable and well nothing much to object to then the scope increases or there’s a bit more compulsion and on it creeps. If at any point an idea is objected to too strongly it’s just shelved for a bit until the noise dies down then brought back, each time fewer people object as it got dropped the last time and the objectors looked like loons. Or the idea is floated by some thing tank or pressure group not anyone in power so why object to some random idea being floated by some random group, except it gets people used to that idea, then it becomes normal and the people that object are seen as reactionary and a bit bonkers.

So we now have people calling to ban smoking in cars for the children (not houses yet…), people being arrested for selling legal products, a call to ban alcohol advertising before 9pm (remember when tobacco was advertised on tv?), not to mention calls for controls on knives, salt, fat and having fun generally – or if you must have fun perhaps you could just not breed? None of this is of course aimed at ordinary people.

This could all be just unrelated puritanism and empire building or it could be about controlling the population, it is after all much easier to control people that have done something wrong or can be accused of it. But at that point it I start reaching for my tinfoil hat, as I really don’t think the government or any organisation is that organised. Of course if they were they’d want us to think they weren’t.

I have though I think reached a plausible answer, it isn’t planned it just the organic natural direction in which the state tends to head unless constantly challenged. Assuming the best of intentions from everyone in the state unless curtailed it’s always going to head towards authoritarianism as it’s made up of people that want to improve things, that think they know best, and we just need convincing. Each step could be taken in good faith but just like with us that just makes the next step seem reasonable, if we just get people to stop doing X then Y lives will be saved that must be a good thing! We select our leaders to be risk adverse and so we end up with a nannied controlled curtailed country.
The problem is of course that a risk adverse culture much like a risk adverse person won’t achieve much and will collapse.

So all that said I think all that one can do is accept that sometimes you maybe should be wearing a tinfoil hat and certainly people are going to thing you should be, but keep responding to every kite flown no matter how many times it gets hauled back in for later. With luck eventually enough people will realise they’ve been denormalised and kick the state back down for a while. Unless of course we’ve finally managed to select so well for the risk adverse that the majority really do want every aspect of their lives controlled*.

* I’m sure I read similar fears very recently but I can’t remember where so sorry no link.

 Posted by Giolla at 19:16  Tagged with: , ,

Paranoid triangulation

 bloggers, Civil Liberties, internet, laws, taxes  1 Response »
Sep 222010
 

A couple of unrelated articles caught my eye a bit today and led me to wonder just how unrelated they really where, or rather to ponder the impact of both of them coming to pass.

Old Holborn highlighted the NUJ calling for state support for the vital democratic work of “proper” journalists. Rather than deal with their work not generally being worth much they like us all to be taxed and then given vouchers to give to “proper” news outlets. I figure this actually has a reasonable chance of getting implemented in some form, as it’s a neat way for the state to give journalists a bung and make them more dependent on the state. Exposed politicians expenses? That’s not the sort of thing a “proper” news outlet does, no more vouchers for you. The Journalists would be quite happy as the direct link between vouchers and payment probably wouldn’t last that long (due to the huge amount not being used) and once that link was broken they could sit back and publish state and corporate puff pieces whilst collecting their democracy dividend. The benefit for the state is obvious, even more control over a sometimes awkward press and of course more bureaucracy which would have to be paid for.

Meanwhile over in the US they’ve a new bill to give them the same sort of rights to block websites as our very own digital economy act does. Just like our version this allows “copyright holders” or at least large companies (as you can bet they won’t enforce any of it for content stolen from individuals by the MSM) to have domains pulled and ISPs forced to block any site which share “protected content”. I imagine wikileaks may somehow fall foul of that sooner or later. Of course as so much of the internet is still based in the US, the US aren’t stopping at just blocking sites nope, if you’re upsetting American copyright holders and have a top level domain (.com, .org etc.) then they’ll just freeze your domain. Even if what you’re doing isn’t illegal where you are.

So on the one hand you’ve got the mainstream media, asking for the state to support them out of taxes rather than compete against independent content/news providers, whilst at the same time the state is taking ever more draconian steps to remove anyone from the internet that upsets their MSM pals. Now putting on my best tin foil hat, and allowing for the fact that neither the state nor the MSM seem to be able to grasp the (currently) cheap cost of entry for on line publishing and the power of distributed systems, it does look rather like a concerted effort to stop the internet being an effective tool of the people. Once more they’re trying to shove the genie back into the bottle and regain the control of information that both the state and MSM have lost.

 Posted by Giolla at 19:49  Tagged with: , , , ,

The coalition of the purple

 activism, election, politics  3 Responses »
May 292010
 

Purple People Eater Now as promised/threatened I’m afraid I’m returning to the matter of the “take back parliament” coalition. Firstly though a correction to my earlier post in that Mark Ross appears to have no connection to Ekklesia except they published a puff blog for Take Back Parliament, so sorry about that.

Anyway onto looking at how they all sort of hang together, I’ve had to be quite restrictive in this as other wise it all spins out into far too wide a web very quickly. so I’m sticking to only looking at one or two degrees of separation. I’m also having to use a rather horrid table as being fairly new to this presenting this information in a useful fashion is quite tricky.

So anyway hopefully this will make sense and shed some more light on the Take Back Parliament coalition, who doesn’t seem to be that keen on open and transparent or that bothered about foreign influence on our democratic system.

This table just tracks down those groups listed at the bottom of Take Back Parliament and pulls out odds and sods of possibly interesting information. Before we get to that though a few facts about “Take Back Parliament”.

Take Back parliament
is co-ordinated by Mark Ross, Head of Campaigns for POWER2010
the media campaign/website appears to being run by Blue State Digitial a mainly American company but with a UK subsidiary BLUE STATE DIGITAL UK LIMITED (Company No. 06873977).

Now onto that coalition:

Coaltion member Controlled by Supporters/Partners in common Client of
Power 2010 The Democratic Reform Company Ltd
Company No. 07087541
Lord David Trevor Shutt of Greetland
  • OBV (Operation Black Vote)
  • BASSAC
  • NEF (New Economic Forum)
  • Electoral Reform Society
  • Compass
  • Unlock Democracy
  • Open Democracy
  • Ekklesia
  • 38 Degrees
 Blue State Digital
Electoral Reform Society ELECTORAL REFORM SOCIETY LIMITED
Company No. 00958404		 - Blue State Digital
APC
SoapBox
Enoughs Enough Domain registered via an anonymising service - Athenaeum Limited
Ekklesia EKKLESIA LIMITED
Company No. 05831226		 - -
AVAAZ.org Domain registered by a private US individual – Ricken Patel,
organization founded by
Move On and Res Publica		 - -
Compass Neal Lawson
Jon Cruddas		 - SoapBox
Open Democracy OPENDEMOCRACY LIMITED
Company No. 03855274
previous: POWER AND DEMOCRACY LIMITED
  • Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
    - Lord David Trevor Shutt of Greetland
  • The Tinsley Foundation
 -
OBV Charter 88
  • Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
  • Electoral Commission
  • Home Office
 SoapBox
Vot for a change Electoral Reform Society
  • John Sauven, Greenpeace
  • Neal Lawson, Compass
  • Ken Ritchie, Electoral Reform Society
  • Pam Giddy, Power Inquiry
  • Wes Streeting, NUS
  • Peter Facey, Unlock Democracy
  • Richard Grayson, Social Liberal Forum
  • Benedict Southworth, World Development Movement
  • Dr Matthew Sowemimo, Director – Social Liberal Forum
  • Katherine Rake, Fawcett Society
 Blue State Digital
SoapBox
Unlock Democracy Unlock Democracy
Company No. 02440899
Formerly:
09/07/1991 CHARTER 88 LIMITED
02/05/2008 CHARTER 88
  • Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust
  • Enoughs Enough
  • Electoral Commission
  • European Commission
  • Poverty & Environment Trust
 SoapBox
Hang em Open Democracy Ekklesia -
BASSAC
Charity number: 1028784
Company number: 2869337		 - Novas Scarman -
Greenpeace Without knowing just which bit of Greenpeace not even attempting this
Friends of the Earth - - -
Fawcett society
Charity No: 1108769		 - - -
Democracy Matters
Charity No: 1108769		 Titus Alexander – Novas Scarman Group
  • BASSAC
  • Novas Scarman Group
  • The Democracy Trust
  • Unlock Democracy
 -
Social Liberal Forum James Graham (Secretary and website manager) is currently the Campaigns and Communications Manager for Unlock Democracy - -
National Union of Students Not attemtping this one either
Muslim Council of Britain
charity 1084651		 Not attemtping this one either
British Muslims for Secular Democracy
Company No. 05905516		 - - -
World Development Movement WORLD DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT
Company No. 02098198
WORLD DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT TRUST LIMITED
Company No. 03188734
charity 1064066		 - APC

So there you have it quite a cosy coalition, not quite sure about the grass roots element of it, but there you go.

Just to have a quick look at some of those names, I’ve already mentioned Blue State Digital – who also have as a client those well known “grassroots” campaigners “38 Degrees”. Soap Box are apprently “communications agency for think tanks, campaigns, politicians and NGOs” with an interesting client list, so a lot like BLue State Digital. The other interesting one which cropped up in a few of those groups DNS records was APC – The association for progressive communications who apparently help grass roots movements like say “the elctoral reform society” and have an intersting list of funders.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with any of this as such, it’s just a tad obscure and international and not that much that speaks of a ground swell of popular non-activist self-interested involvement. The grass roots bit of thier campaign appears to have gone a bit quiet , despite there still being no-sign of PR on the political agenda, just fixed term parliaments with AV.

Anyway in the interest of our new open and transparent plotics, that’s how the take back parliament campaign and its coalition roughly fit together – at just a very few degrees of seperation.

For those that are interested this data mainly came from domain registration look ups, the various groups websites and then lookups at Companies House, The Charities Commission and the FSA Mutuals Registrar.

 Posted by Giolla at 18:01  Tagged with: , , ,
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