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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Antifrank on the GE2020 prospects for Tim Farron’s Lib Dem

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    runnymederunnymede Posts: 2,536
    Yes there is a good reason we don't grant the powers of 'law and order' carte blanche to do 'whatever it takes' to stop crime, as they would no doubt prefer.

    My grandmother (bless her) used to think anyone who was arrested must be guilty as otherwise the police wouldn't have done it. There is a whiff of that kind of naivety here...
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    Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited November 2015

    You seem to think some code of conducts written in the bill will be 100% adhered to and that this data will be safely and securely handled. People are always the weak link the chain. It takes just one rogue employee or one moron..

    One thing I certainly can't be reasonably accused of is ever saying that anything is 100% perfect. As always, this is about balancing the need to give the police, security services and fraud investigators the powers they need, balanced against concerns of privacy, civil liberties generally, and cost.

    FWIW, if you [hypothetically of course] visit dodgy (or even respectable!) porn sites, your privacy risk is much more at the website than in the bowels of GCHQ. You presumably realise that most websites keep a full log of accesses.
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    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302
    edited November 2015
    Also, I have no issue with the spooks spying on people. The whole Snowdon stuff, I was AND...thats their job. What did people think that massive building in the South West that gets billions pumped into does all day.

    But they have a good record of keeping secret / sensitive stuff, well secret and whose only job is to listen in on terrorists / nation states / etc.

    The plod, the NHS, the CPS, HMRC, etc are massive organisations, staffed by people who are nowhere near as well vetted as GCHQ (I went to uni with a guy who works there and even the fact we went for a curry every week got brought up among the masses of background checks) and whose general standing can't be compared.
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    Cyclefree said:

    At work I'm the one who has access to emails and calls for investigative purposes and it is very very tightly controlled and I have to jump through hoops to get it etc. So I have some understanding of what is needed to carry out investigations. And we don't allow the office nurse to read emails nor the canteen people nor the building maintenance people to read them, which is what her "and others" seems to entail.

    That's simply not the case. The whole Bill is full of controls and explicit rules as to who can authorise this stuff and for what purposes, and (if I've understood correctly, admittedly only on a quick skim of a 300-page document), there will also be Codes of Practice for each department.
    On a related note I think you were incorrect about what data is to be retained. Whilst only the top level URL can be accessed without a warrant, that is not the limit of the information the Home Secretary can require the ISPs to retain.

    Section 71 relating to retention notices states:

    "(2) A retention notice may—
    (a) relate to a particular operator or any description of operators,
    (b) require the retention of all data or any description of data,
    (c) identify the period or periods for which data is to be retained,
    (d) contain other requirements, or restrictions, in relation to the retention
    of data,
    (e) make different provision for different purposes,
    (f) relate to data whether or not in existence at the time of the giving, or
    coming into force, of the notice."

    So as it stands the ISPs can be required to retain all data for a year but the more detailed data can only be accessed via a warrant.
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    Plato_SaysPlato_Says Posts: 11,822
    The RSPCA strutting around in pretend police uniforms and prosecuting little old ladies springs to mind here.

    And they're finally paying for it.
    runnymede said:

    Yes there is a good reason we don't grant the powers of 'law and order' carte blanche to do 'whatever it takes' to stop crime, as they would no doubt prefer.

    My grandmother (bless her) used to think anyone who was arrested must be guilty as otherwise the police wouldn't have done it. There is a whiff of that kind of naivety here...

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    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251

    @Cyclefree - The list in Schedule 4 is pretty straightforward for the most part - spooks, police, fraud investigators etc. It seems to include all the various ambulance services as well, and the person who can authorise it seems to be the officer in charge of the control centre, so it's obviously something to do with urgent operational purposes. I don't know what the reason is, but it's pretty silly to jump to the conclusion that it's not a sensible reason.

    Richard: you assume the best of people in public life. Which is a nice quality to have.

    It's not one I share. My perspective is doubtless shaped by my experiences and my work.

    It is very very very hard to keep a secret. This is not to do with procedures and controls. It's just that human beings, once they know something, find it hard - unless they have been trained, properly trained - not to reveal it, even unwittingly. And it's one reason why you have to limit the numbers of people who do know stuff. The more people know the greater the chance that the information they know will leak out.

    Allowing lots of bodies to have access just in case and then saying that there are controls in place and it will be fine and if they do something wrong they can be prosecuted is much too lax an approach. Relying on controls is too weak, however good the controls. There is a delusion in pretty much every organization that controls are everything. Get them right and you're sorted. And it's nonsense. They help but they are not everything. Not giving the information out in the first place, not making it accessible is the key.

    By saying in the legislation that organisations such as HMRC and ambulance authorities can have the information you are creating a presumption that if they ask they should get. No-one will ask the question: "Should they get?" It will be: "Have they jumped through the necessary hoops to get?" The focus will be on process rather than substance. That's why we need to debate and get clear answers on the substance now. Not to be told that there is a good reason if only we'd thought of it.
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    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,913

    The Lib Dems impressed me with their spirit just after the election when Twitter was full of talk about the Lib Dem fight back and how many new members they had recruited. But then Corbyn comes along and increases the Labour membership by more than the whole of the Lib Dems put together. They might well have expected some kind of boost from a left wing Labour leader. But that hasn't materialised either. They do still have the pavement politics approach up their sleeve. They must have some great expertise in that after all. But that is a long slog and they are starting from a pretty low base in local government. If I were a Lib Dem I'd be thinking about buying a comfy pair of shoes and getting out on the doorsteps. And I'd probably forget about Westminster and focus on the local town hall.

    It might pay off for them. The right kind of crisis could still make them the best port in a storm.

    In the meantime, the lack of a popular centre party has at least enabled Labour to have its first radical left wing leader without immediately losing a shedload of votes. The right kind of Liberal revival could even get Labour into Downing Street. But the biggest effect of the collapse of the centre is to give the Tories a very comfortable electoral position.

    Pretty much matches my own thoughts. Local elections, the Welsh and Scottish elections are the place too start. There will be a lot of active Remain campaigning too.

    LD votes are coupled together. Almost always in the last 50 years when Labour have gained Westminter seats, so did the LDs. I think Lamb would have been better for the fightback, but a tough one for anyone.
    The first thing the LDs need to do is to understand why they lost so much support 2010-5 and to take responsibility for it.

    At present they seem to think it was all terribly unfair and they did the right thing, which is clearly not how the voters see it. Much as Labour they need to accept and own their mistakes.

    Then they need to rebuild an activist base. The Ashdown generation of activists that drove the party forward from the early 1990s has one election left in it.
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    runnymederunnymede Posts: 2,536
    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.
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    On a related note I think you were incorrect about what data is to be retained. Whilst only the top level URL can be accessed without a warrant, that is not the limit of the information the Home Secretary can require the ISPs to retain.

    That's [I think] already the case, isn't it? Obviously if there's an investigation going on it's reasonable to ask ISPs to keep specific data.
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    watford30watford30 Posts: 3,474
    edited November 2015

    Also, I have no issue with the spooks spying on people. The whole Snowdon stuff, I was AND...thats their job. What did people think that massive building in the South West that gets billions pumped into does all day.

    The Met Office? Churns out useless weather forecasts and Climate Change falsehoods.

    The Doughnut is in the West. Not too far from the Midlands really.

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    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548
    Jonathan said:

    The Lib Dems impressed me with their spirit just after the election when Twitter was full of talk about the Lib Dem fight back and how many new members they had recruited. But then Corbyn comes along and increases the Labour membership by more than the whole of the Lib Dems put together. They might well have expected some kind of boost from a left wing Labour leader. But that hasn't materialised either. They do still have the pavement politics approach up their sleeve. They must have some great expertise in that after all. But that is a long slog and they are starting from a pretty low base in local government. If I were a Lib Dem I'd be thinking about buying a comfy pair of shoes and getting out on the doorsteps. And I'd probably forget about Westminster and focus on the local town hall.

    It might pay off for them. The right kind of crisis could still make them the best port in a storm.

    In the meantime, the lack of a popular centre party has at least enabled Labour to have its first radical left wing leader without immediately losing a shedload of votes. The right kind of Liberal revival could even get Labour into Downing Street. But the biggest effect of the collapse of the centre is to give the Tories a very comfortable electoral position.

    Pretty much matches my own thoughts. Local elections, the Welsh and Scottish elections are the place too start. There will be a lot of active Remain campaigning too.

    LD votes are coupled together. Almost always in the last 50 years when Labour have gained Westminter seats, so did the LDs. I think Lamb would have been better for the fightback, but a tough one for anyone.
    The first thing the LDs need to do is to understand why they lost so much support 2010-5 and to take responsibility for it.

    At present they seem to think it was all terribly unfair and they did the right thing, which is clearly not how the voters see it. Much as Labour they need to accept and own their mistakes.

    Then they need to rebuild an activist base. The Ashdown generation of activists that drove the party forward from the early 1990s has one election left in it.
    One could say the same of Labour understanding why they lost votes!

    At the LD leadership hustings these things were pretty widely discussed.
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    Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited November 2015
    Cyclefree said:

    Richard: you assume the best of people in public life.

    No, I don't. I recognise that powers get abused, out of laziness or bad habit or occasionally outright malice. After all we've had many disagreeable cases over the last fifty years of police officers lying in court, or beating people up, or arresting them without good reason, or trying to stitch them up. Is that an argument for not having a police force, or denying them the power of arrest? No, of course it isn't, because you have to balance the risk of misuse of power against the harm if the power is not available, as well as ensuring the best controls and checks you can.
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
  • Options

    You seem to think some code of conducts written in the bill will be 100% adhered to and that this data will be safely and securely handled. People are always the weak link the chain. It takes just one rogue employee or one moron..

    One thing I certainly can't be reasonably accused of is ever saying that anything is 100% perfect. As always, this is about balancing the need to give the police, security services and fraud investigators the powers they need, balanced against concerns of privacy, civil liberties generally, and cost.

    FWIW, if you [hypothetically of course] visit dodgy (or even respectable!) porn sites, your privacy risk is much more at the website than in the bowels of GCHQ. You presumably realise that most websites keep a full log of accesses.
    I am well aware that not only the sites I visit potentially can track me, but others I jump to and of course the likes of google harvest all the search info (although again they claim it is anonymised etc). But that is one reason why I use things like a VPN.

    And I am not exactly confident in sites or my ISP or any company with my personal data. I am glad I wasn't a Talk Talk customer for instance. Data security in general is woeful.
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    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,913

    Jonathan said:

    The Lib Dems impressed me with their spirit just after the election when Twitter was full of talk about the Lib Dem fight back and how many new members they had recruited. But then Corbyn comes along and increases the Labour membership by more than the whole of the Lib Dems put together. They might well have expected some kind of boost from a left wing Labour leader. But that hasn't materialised either. They do still have the pavement politics approach up their sleeve. They must have some great expertise in that after all. But that is a long slog and they are starting from a pretty low base in local government. If I were a Lib Dem I'd be thinking about buying a comfy pair of shoes and getting out on the doorsteps. And I'd probably forget about Westminster and focus on the local town hall.

    It might pay off for them. The right kind of crisis could still make them the best port in a storm.

    In the meantime, the lack of a popular centre party has at least enabled Labour to have its first radical left wing leader without immediately losing a shedload of votes. The right kind of Liberal revival could even get Labour into Downing Street. But the biggest effect of the collapse of the centre is to give the Tories a very comfortable electoral position.

    Pretty much matches my own thoughts. Local elections, the Welsh and Scottish elections are the place too start. There will be a lot of active Remain campaigning too.

    LD votes are coupled together. Almost always in the last 50 years when Labour have gained Westminter seats, so did the LDs. I think Lamb would have been better for the fightback, but a tough one for anyone.
    The first thing the LDs need to do is to understand why they lost so much support 2010-5 and to take responsibility for it.

    At present they seem to think it was all terribly unfair and they did the right thing, which is clearly not how the voters see it. Much as Labour they need to accept and own their mistakes.

    Then they need to rebuild an activist base. The Ashdown generation of activists that drove the party forward from the early 1990s has one election left in it.
    One could say the same of Labour understanding why they lost votes!

    At the LD leadership hustings these things were pretty widely discussed.
    It may have been discussed at the leadership hustings, but by conference it was back to how unfair it was and Clegg meeting voters who felt sorry for them.

    You are absolutely right, Labour needs to go through the same process.

    And ultimately, the two parties need each other.
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    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251

    Cyclefree said:

    At work I'm the one who has access to emails and calls for investigative purposes and it is very very tightly controlled and I have to jump through hoops to get it etc. So I have some understanding of what is needed to carry out investigations. And we don't allow the office nurse to read emails nor the canteen people nor the building maintenance people to read them, which is what her "and others" seems to entail.

    That's simply not the case. The whole Bill is full of controls and explicit rules as to who can authorise this stuff and for what purposes, and (if I've understood correctly, admittedly only on a quick skim of a 300-page document), there will also be Codes of Practice for each department.
    On a related note I think you were incorrect about what data is to be retained. Whilst only the top level URL can be accessed without a warrant, that is not the limit of the information the Home Secretary can require the ISPs to retain.

    Section 71 relating to retention notices states:

    "(2) A retention notice may—
    (a) relate to a particular operator or any description of operators,
    (b) require the retention of all data or any description of data,
    (c) identify the period or periods for which data is to be retained,
    (d) contain other requirements, or restrictions, in relation to the retention
    of data,
    (e) make different provision for different purposes,
    (f) relate to data whether or not in existence at the time of the giving, or
    coming into force, of the notice."

    So as it stands the ISPs can be required to retain all data for a year but the more detailed data can only be accessed via a warrant.
    Codes of Practice.... Give me strength. There were Codes of Practice and policies and procedures aplenty in every bank through all the years when appalling stuff was happening. Enought codes and policies to wrap every planet in the solar system and have paper left over.

    And you know what, no-one read it. Too much of it. Too much to take in. They skimmed it. They were trained on it and they forgot it. If you think a code of practice will stop someone in HMRC from accessing information they shouldn't have, think again. This is the organization which lost all our child benefit details on a disc. This is the organization which can't answer the bloody phones. I'll bet they have codes of practice for security and dealing with customers. And a fat lot of use they will be. Only a bureaucrat thinks that a code or a procedure makes any difference to how people behave.
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    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,302
    edited November 2015
    watford30 said:

    Also, I have no issue with the spooks spying on people. The whole Snowdon stuff, I was AND...thats their job. What did people think that massive building in the South West that gets billions pumped into does all day.

    The Met Office? Churns out useless weather forecasts and Climate Change falsehoods.

    The Doughnut is in the West. Not too far from the Midlands really.

    Not to be pedantic but afaik Cheltenham is classed as being in the "South West" region.

    http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/beginner-s-guide/eurostat/south-west--england-/index.html
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    On a related note I think you were incorrect about what data is to be retained. Whilst only the top level URL can be accessed without a warrant, that is not the limit of the information the Home Secretary can require the ISPs to retain.

    That's [I think] already the case, isn't it? Obviously if there's an investigation going on it's reasonable to ask ISPs to keep specific data.
    This relates to the blanket capture of all web browsing for a year. It is not the same as a targeted inquiry of an individual.

    There is one other point that needs to be considered here:

    You (or whoever said it earlier) was quite right regarding where the risk of information being leaked is greatest. It is obviously not GCHQ (at least I would bloody hope not!). It is going to be anywhere huge amounts of user data of a sensitive nature is kept. We are now in the process of setting up a hackers paradise where a skillful theft of data could expose thousands of people to potential blackmail. Talktalk and Ashley Madison have shown that this is possible. It is pretty much a given that within a year or two of these retention laws coming into effect one or more of the major ISPs will have been hacked and that data will be in the public domain.
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    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548
    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    A Doctor and an Agency Nurse at my Trust were convicted of manslaughter today. It sounds pretty accountable to me. A very sad case and several lives ruined.

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    Plato_SaysPlato_Says Posts: 11,822
    Don't forget Sony being very embarrassed.

    On a related note I think you were incorrect about what data is to be retained. Whilst only the top level URL can be accessed without a warrant, that is not the limit of the information the Home Secretary can require the ISPs to retain.

    That's [I think] already the case, isn't it? Obviously if there's an investigation going on it's reasonable to ask ISPs to keep specific data.
    This relates to the blanket capture of all web browsing for a year. It is not the same as a targeted inquiry of an individual.

    There is one other point that needs to be considered here:

    You (or whoever said it earlier) was quite right regarding where the risk of information being leaked is greatest. It is obviously not GCHQ (at least I would bloody hope not!). It is going to be anywhere huge amounts of user data of a sensitive nature is kept. We are now in the process of setting up a hackers paradise where a skillful theft of data could expose thousands of people to potential blackmail. Talktalk and Ashley Madison have shown that this is possible. It is pretty much a given that within a year or two of these retention laws coming into effect one or more of the major ISPs will have been hacked and that data will be in the public domain.
  • Options

    You (or whoever said it earlier) was quite right regarding where the risk of information being leaked is greatest. It is obviously not GCHQ (at least I would bloody hope not!). It is going to be anywhere huge amounts of user data of a sensitive nature is kept. We are now in the process of setting up a hackers paradise where a skillful theft of data could expose thousands of people to potential blackmail. Talktalk and Ashley Madison have shown that this is possible. It is pretty much a given that within a year or two of these retention laws coming into effect one or more of the major ISPs will have been hacked and that data will be in the public domain.

    That is certainly a reasonable concern to raise. I don't know how this is going to work, but I imagine the data will be kept on dedicated servers supervised by the security services. At least I would hope so - it's a good question to ask.
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    Plato_SaysPlato_Says Posts: 11,822
    Was that the manslaughter mixed up patient story?

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    A Doctor and an Agency Nurse at my Trust were convicted of manslaughter today. It sounds pretty accountable to me. A very sad case and several lives ruined.

  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,823

    Jonathan said:

    The Lib Dems impressed me with their spirit just after the election when Twitter was full of talk about the Lib Dem fight back and how many new members they had recruited. But then Corbyn comes along and increases the Labour membership by more than the whole of the Lib Dems put together. They might well have expected some kind of boost from a left wing Labour leader. But that hasn't materialised either. They do still have the pavement politics approach up their sleeve. They must have some great expertise in that after all. But that is a long slog and they are starting from a pretty low base in local government. If I were a Lib Dem I'd be thinking about buying a comfy pair of shoes and getting out on the doorsteps. And I'd probably forget about Westminster and focus on the local town hall.

    It might pay off for them. The right kind of crisis could still make them the best port in a storm.

    In the meantime, the lack of a popular centre party has at least enabled Labour to have its first radical left wing leader without immediately losing a shedload of votes. The right kind of Liberal revival could even get Labour into Downing Street. But the biggest effect of the collapse of the centre is to give the Tories a very comfortable electoral position.

    Pretty much matches my own thoughts. Local elections, the Welsh and Scottish elections are the place too start. There will be a lot of active Remain campaigning too.

    LD votes are coupled together. Almost always in the last 50 years when Labour have gained Westminter seats, so did the LDs. I think Lamb would have been better for the fightback, but a tough one for anyone.
    The first thing the LDs need to do is to understand why they lost so much support 2010-5 and to take responsibility for it.

    At present they seem to think it was all terribly unfair and they did the right thing, which is clearly not how the voters see it. Much as Labour they need to accept and own their mistakes.

    Then they need to rebuild an activist base. The Ashdown generation of activists that drove the party forward from the early 1990s has one election left in it.
    One could say the same of Labour understanding why they lost votes!

    At the LD leadership hustings these things were pretty widely discussed.
    Both Labour and Tory have some 'unthinking voters'. The LDs have almost none of these.

    Labour has fallen back on that base and is basically rebuilding itself from scratch. If any PBer wishes to nail down a Labour policy that'll appear in the next GE I'll happily match fivers.

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    JEOJEO Posts: 3,656
    An interesting and informative article. Thanks for writing it.
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    Danny565Danny565 Posts: 8,091
    Farron is far from the full shilling, but I really struggle to see the argument that Norman Lamb would've been better at getting attention than him.
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    rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024

    Was that the manslaughter mixed up patient story?

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    A Doctor and an Agency Nurse at my Trust were convicted of manslaughter today. It sounds pretty accountable to me. A very sad case and several lives ruined.
    I guess this story
    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-34722885
    Does sound very sad for all involved.
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,214
    felix said:

    Danny565 said:

    Tim Farron ✔ @timfarron
    Make no mistake the Liberal Democrats will fight any attempt to bring back the so-called Snooper’s Charter under a different name.

    Lol - back to the unelected Lords Mr. Farron. I thought the article above was quite good and it's clear to me the LDs made the wrong choice with Farron as leader.
    Farron at least has a chance of winning Labour tactical voters, Lamb would have been Clegg 2
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    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251
    edited November 2015

    You (or whoever said it earlier) was quite right regarding where the risk of information being leaked is greatest. It is obviously not GCHQ (at least I would bloody hope not!). It is going to be anywhere huge amounts of user data of a sensitive nature is kept. We are now in the process of setting up a hackers paradise where a skillful theft of data could expose thousands of people to potential blackmail. Talktalk and Ashley Madison have shown that this is possible. It is pretty much a given that within a year or two of these retention laws coming into effect one or more of the major ISPs will have been hacked and that data will be in the public domain.

    That is certainly a reasonable concern to raise. I don't know how this is going to work, but I imagine the data will be kept on dedicated servers supervised by the security services. At least I would hope so - it's a good question to ask.
    But when the data is released to someone who needs it, where is that going to be stored? And when it is shared with other people, again, where will it be stored? The minute it moves from your secure supervised server it is vulnerable. A control is only as good as its weakest point.

    You don't even need to hack it to get it. You find someone within the organisation who has some weakness and you exploit that to get hold of the information. That's why criminal gangs target the control rooms and print rooms and other unglamorous bits of banks and anywhere where there is valuable information.

    The vast majority of people in these organisations are not vetted at all. There is your main control weakness right there.

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    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548

    Was that the manslaughter mixed up patient story?

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    A Doctor and an Agency Nurse at my Trust were convicted of manslaughter today. It sounds pretty accountable to me. A very sad case and several lives ruined.

    This one:

    http://m.leicestermercury.co.uk/Jack-Adcock-trial-Doctor-guilty-manslaughter/story-28113634-detail/story.html

    The mixup over DNR status happened after the point of no return.

    I have no direct knowledge of the case, but for what is in the papers.

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    JEOJEO Posts: 3,656

    You seem to think some code of conducts written in the bill will be 100% adhered to and that this data will be safely and securely handled. People are always the weak link the chain. It takes just one rogue employee or one moron..

    One thing I certainly can't be reasonably accused of is ever saying that anything is 100% perfect. As always, this is about balancing the need to give the police, security services and fraud investigators the powers they need, balanced against concerns of privacy, civil liberties generally, and cost.

    FWIW, if you [hypothetically of course] visit dodgy (or even respectable!) porn sites, your privacy risk is much more at the website than in the bowels of GCHQ. You presumably realise that most websites keep a full log of accesses.
    The websites in question will only record your IP address though, and won't be able to connect that to an individual name that could be leaked. Under the present system, a hacker would need to break into both the website's stored data and also either your ISP, or another website where you had left personally identifiable information. Under the new law, the hacker just needs to hack into one place. I would like to think some sort of safeguard could be made that the retained data on websites visited is held on a different server to that connecting IP numbers to personal information.

    I would also like to see judicial warrants rather than executive warrants, as that would bring us into the norms in the Western world, and ideally that would apply to the domain name as well as the sections of the website you browsed. I'm glad that local authorities have been excluded from the information, but I'd like to see this extended to most government departments outside the security services.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,214
    edited November 2015
    Quinnipiac GOP National Poll

    Trump – 24% (25)
    Carson – 23% (17)
    Rubio – 14% (9)
    Cruz – 13% (7)
    Bush – 4% (10)
    Christie – 3% (2)
    Fiorina – 3% (12)
    Kasich – 3% (2)
    Paul – 2% (1)
    Huckabee – 1% (2)
    Santorum – 1% (0)
    Jindal – 0% (0)
    Graham – 0% (0)
    Pataki – 0% (1)
    Gilmore – 0% (0)
    Undecided – 9% (9)

    General Election

    Carson – 50%
    Clinton – 40%

    Rubio – 46%
    Clinton – 41%

    Christie – 46%
    Clinton – 41%

    Cruz – 46%
    Clinton – 43%

    Clinton – 46%
    Trump – 43%

    vs. Sanders

    Carson 51% (49%)
    Sanders 39% (39%)

    Rubio 47% (–)
    Sanders 41% (–)

    Christie 45% (–)
    Sanders 42% (–)

    Cruz 45% (–)
    Sanders 44% (–)

    Sanders 46% (47%)
    Trump 44% (42%)
    http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2299
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,214
    WBUR New Hampshire

    Trump – 18% (22)
    Carson – 16% (18)
    Rubio – 11% (2)
    Kasich – 10% (9)
    Christie – 8% (2)
    Bush – 7% (9)
    Cruz – 6% (5)
    Fiorina – 6% (11)
    Paul – 3% (4)
    Jindal – 1% (0)
    Huckabee – 0% (1)
    Santorum – 0% (0)
    Graham – 0% (1)
    Pataki – 1% (0)
    Gilmore – 0% (0)
    Undecided – 11% (14)
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2016/WBUR_NH_Nov_2015.pdf
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,214
    Jeb Bush to drop out before Christmas?

    This politician is feeling the pressure of the GOP Presidential race. A source close to his campaign tell us: "You won’t hear anybody from [the campaign] say it out loud, but he is panicking. It kind of sucks, but he really doesn’t handle pressure well. He just doesn’t have the stomach for it. Good at whining and crying. Not so good at fighting." Does he have enough money to hold out? "[The financial situation is] not good. There isn’t as much there as people think. If he drops out, the big money goes back to the Super PACS, and he’s burning through the rest of it so fast, we don’t think there will be much of anything left." So, is he going to drop out before the next debate? "No, he will be participating in the next debate, but he’s been given a number to reach [in the polls]. If he doesn’t jump 4 full points in the next six weeks, it’s over, and he’s done by Christmas. It would be too embarrassing for him to get killed in the primaries."
    http://blindgossip.com/?p=74667
  • Options
    Danny565 said:

    Farron is far from the full shilling, but I really struggle to see the argument that Norman Lamb would've been better at getting attention than him.

    I think the argument is that Lamb could play to the sensible centre in a way that Farron won't, and that with Corbyn on one side for now, and an unknown quantity on the other come 2020, that gap is there to be exploited.

    As you say, you still have to be able to exploit it and while Lamb was an excellent minister and I assume is a very good constituency MP given that he kept his seat, neither of those are qualities a party leader needs.

    The question is what Farron and the Lib Dems bring to the table that no-one else does.
  • Options
    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,913


    The question is what Farron and the Lib Dems bring to the table that no-one else does.

    Same as ever. They can beat the Tories where Labour can't.
  • Options
    MP_SEMP_SE Posts: 3,642
    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
  • Options
    Cyclefree said:

    But when the data is released to someone who needs it, where is that going to be stored? And when it is shared with other people, again, where will it be stored? The minute it moves from your secure supervised server it is vulnerable. A control is only as good as its weakest point.

    You don't even need to hack it to get it. You find someone within the organisation who has some weakness and you exploit that to get hold of the information. That's why criminal gangs target the control rooms and print rooms and other unglamorous bits of banks and anywhere where there is valuable information.

    The vast majority of people in these organisations are not vetted at all. There is your main control weakness right there.

    But that's no different to any other information held by the police, fraud investigators etc.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,204

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    A Doctor and an Agency Nurse at my Trust were convicted of manslaughter today. It sounds pretty accountable to me. A very sad case and several lives ruined.

    Most of all, the lives of the family of the boy who died.

    I suffered years of pain due to medical malpractice. He got away with it; there was little 'accounting'. I would like others to be spared the same pain.

    How can we best detect and retrain, or at worst sack, poor doctors?
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,214
    Boris slashes Osborne's lead as next Tory leader after the tax credits row in a new Conservativehome poll of Tory members

    Osborne down 9% to 23%, Boris up 7% to 21%
    http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2015/11/next-tory-leader-poll-the-tax-credits-row-hits-osborne-his-vote-slumps-as-boriss-soars.html
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    rpjs said:

    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
    You are correct that the plane was owned by an Irish lease company and had Irish registration. It was known to have had "heavy" maintainence known as a D check last year, but since then it has been with the Russian airline. Irish investigators are involved along with French, German, Americans and Russians, assisting the primary Egyptian investigation.

    The maintainence records will certainly be of interest, let's just say that Russian airlines operating old planes are not exactly known for fixing problems on planes quickly when they occur. The plane was 18 years old and had a lot of cycles (takeoffs and landings, hopefully the same number of each!), the D check would have included a very good look at the repair made to the tail after an old accident in which the tail hit the ground on landing.
  • Options
    SquareRootSquareRoot Posts: 7,095
    HYUFD said:

    Boris slashes Osborne's lead as next Tory leader after the tax credits row in a new Conservativehome poll of Tory members

    Osborne down 9% to 23%, Boris up 7% to 21%
    http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2015/11/next-tory-leader-poll-the-tax-credits-row-hits-osborne-his-vote-slumps-as-boriss-soars.html

    Another voodoo poll of no merit.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    edited November 2015
    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251

    Cyclefree said:

    But when the data is released to someone who needs it, where is that going to be stored? And when it is shared with other people, again, where will it be stored? The minute it moves from your secure supervised server it is vulnerable. A control is only as good as its weakest point.

    You don't even need to hack it to get it. You find someone within the organisation who has some weakness and you exploit that to get hold of the information. That's why criminal gangs target the control rooms and print rooms and other unglamorous bits of banks and anywhere where there is valuable information.

    The vast majority of people in these organisations are not vetted at all. There is your main control weakness right there.

    But that's no different to any other information held by the police, fraud investigators etc.
    So the argument boils down to this, then: we have lots of your information already which we can't keep secure. But don't worry about us having even more of your information, which will make the stuff we already hold even more valuable to us and others, because it won't be any less secure than what we've already got.

    Colour me unimpressed.

    The more information you have, the more valuable it is. The more valuable, the greater the risk that it will be targeted. Therefore you should be aiming to make it even more secure. Not the same. The risk/reward ratio is now greater.

  • Options
    OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,823

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    A Doctor and an Agency Nurse at my Trust were convicted of manslaughter today. It sounds pretty accountable to me. A very sad case and several lives ruined.

    Most of all, the lives of the family of the boy who died.

    I suffered years of pain due to medical malpractice. He got away with it; there was little 'accounting'. I would like others to be spared the same pain.

    How can we best detect and retrain, or at worst sack, poor doctors?
    Surely the way back for a Doctor should be pretty hard. If she (just as a change) was so unthinking in the first place that patients were endangered then I can't imagine that I'd ever want her as my GP.

    The profession of GP is though going to be a dying one. I see a specialist for my teeth for example. He calls himself a dentist. At that level of detail I should pay about 50 medical bills.

    I guess at some point that we'll have medical managers. We're going to have to pay. Possibly through our noses, but then we'll need another bill.

    Cave rentals is the market to be in!

  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251
    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.

  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,087
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    But when the data is released to someone who needs it, where is that going to be stored? And when it is shared with other people, again, where will it be stored? The minute it moves from your secure supervised server it is vulnerable. A control is only as good as its weakest point.

    You don't even need to hack it to get it. You find someone within the organisation who has some weakness and you exploit that to get hold of the information. That's why criminal gangs target the control rooms and print rooms and other unglamorous bits of banks and anywhere where there is valuable information.

    The vast majority of people in these organisations are not vetted at all. There is your main control weakness right there.

    But that's no different to any other information held by the police, fraud investigators etc.
    So the argument boils down to this, then: we have lots of your information already which we can't keep secure. But don't worry about us having even more of your information, which will make the stuff we already hold even more valuable to us and others, because it won't be any less secure than what we've already got.

    Colour me unimpressed.

    The more information you have, the more valuable it is. The more valuable, the greater the risk that it will be targeted. Therefore you should be aiming to make it even more secure. Not the same. The risk/reward ratio is now greater.

    One argument that also seems to come up sometimes is 'It's not that big a deal, it's only x, not y' where y is some totalitarian level comparison and implying x is inconsequential, when if it was, they wouldn't want it in the first place.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,204
    Sandpit said:

    rpjs said:

    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it

    was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
    You are correct that the plane was owned by an Irish lease company and had Irish registration. It was known to have had "heavy" maintainence known as a D check last year, but since then it has been with the Russian airline. Irish investigators are involved along with French, German, Americans and Russians, assisting the primary Egyptian investigation.

    The maintainence records will certainly be of interest, let's just say that Russian airlines operating old planes are not exactly known for fixing problems on planes quickly when they occur. The plane was 18 years old and had a lot of cycles (takeoffs and landings, hopefully the same number of each!), the D check would have included a very good look at the repair made to the tail after an old accident in which the tail hit the ground on landing.
    Did this airframe have a lot of cycles? If so, that makes the tail repair even more suspicious (ISTR the JAL aircraft that crashed from this sort of failure had done many short hops, meaning many pressurisations and depressurisations).

    A Hawaiian flight caused authorities to take pressurisation/depressurisation cycles into account as well as airframe hours.

    It was quite amazing that the plane managed to land safely after the damage.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.
    You're not wrong there, one particular three-day heads of department retreat to come up with mission statements and next year's strategic goals does stick in the mind! At least in most private sector organisations the incompetent eventually find themselves fired, and they are only wasting their shareholders' money, rather than yours and mine!
  • Options
    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,913
    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.

    Personally seen more waste in the private sector, all the above and more. No wonder productivity is so poor. Some of the biggest source of waste are projects to cut waste.
  • Options
    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    A Doctor and an Agency Nurse at my Trust were convicted of manslaughter today. It sounds pretty accountable to me. A very sad case and several lives ruined.

    Most of all, the lives of the family of the boy who died.

    I suffered years of pain due to medical malpractice. He got away with it; there was little 'accounting'. I would like others to be spared the same pain.

    How can we best detect and retrain, or at worst sack, poor doctors?
    Obviously the family are the most affected, but not the only ones affected for life.

    As I get more senior, I become more aware of these issues. They are not easy to address, and the revalidation process is a futile box ticking business that does not address the issue.

    The boy was admitted to a paeds assessment unit and assessed by a junior doctor (note that she was a British Graduate) and an Agency Nurse. The admission was on a Friday morning so plenty of senior help about.
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251
    edited November 2015
    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    But when the data is released to someone who needs it, where is that going to be stored? And when it is shared with other people, again, where will it be stored? The minute it moves from your secure supervised server it is vulnerable. A control is only as good as its weakest point.

    You don't even need to hack it to get it. You find someone within the organisation who has some weakness and you exploit that to get hold of the information. That's why criminal gangs target the control rooms and print rooms and other unglamorous bits of banks and anywhere where there is valuable information.

    The vast majority of people in these organisations are not vetted at all. There is your main control weakness right there.

    But that's no different to any other information held by the police, fraud investigators etc.
    So the argument boils down to this, then: we have lots of your information already which we can't keep secure. But don't worry about us having even more of your information, which will make the stuff we already hold even more valuable to us and others, because it won't be any less secure than what we've already got.

    Colour me unimpressed.

    The more information you have, the more valuable it is. The more valuable, the greater the risk that it will be targeted. Therefore you should be aiming to make it even more secure. Not the same. The risk/reward ratio is now greater.

    One argument that also seems to come up sometimes is 'It's not that big a deal, it's only x, not y' where y is some totalitarian level comparison and implying x is inconsequential, when if it was, they wouldn't want it in the first place.
    Exactly. They want it because it's valuable. Not maybe on its own, though it may be. But because put with other information it's another bit of the jigsaw. But then they say that we shouldn't worry because it doesn't matter. And the sheer dishonesty of that really rankles with me.

    Better to argue why it's needed - show rather than tell - and spend at least as much time and energy showing how carefully they will use it and protect it.

    The government are acting like a dodgy antiques dealer pretending that the old lady's vase is just some bit of old crockery she can let them have for next to nothing when in reality it is a Ming vase he's desperate to lay his hands on because he can make a mint out of it. Next thing she knows she finds her "old pot my Len bought me on our honeymoon" being sold for millions by some wideboy who knicked it from the dealer.
  • Options
    mattmatt Posts: 3,789

    Sandpit said:

    rpjs said:

    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it

    was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
    You are correct that the plane was owned by an Irish lease company and had Irish registration. It was known to have had "heavy" maintainence known as a D check last year, but since then it has been with the Russian airline. Irish investigators are involved along with French, German, Americans and Russians, assisting the primary Egyptian investigation.

    The maintainence records will certainly be of interest, let's just say that Russian airlines operating old planes are not exactly known for fixing problems on planes quickly when they occur. The plane was 18 years old and had a lot of cycles (takeoffs and landings, hopefully the same number of each!), the D check would have included a very good look at the repair made to the tail after an old accident in which the tail hit the ground on landing.
    Did this airframe have a lot of cycles? If so, that makes the tail repair even more suspicious (ISTR the JAL aircraft that crashed from this sort of failure had done many short hops, meaning many pressurisations and depressurisations).

    A Hawaiian flight caused authorities to take pressurisation/depressurisation cycles into account as well as airframe hours.

    It was quite amazing that the plane managed to land safely after the damage.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
    Russian maintenance, at least of aircraft flying internationally, is in my experience fine. Heavy maintenance will be reserved against and given the airline's economic position, I'd expect the lessor to keep a close eye on maintenance records. Unless it was an ACMI contract, which it wasn't, the lessor would not be responsible for maintenance. That it was on the Irish register would have been for tax and repo reasons: Ireland is a party to a major international registration treaty, Russia isn't. Much of Alitalia's fleet used to be registered in Ireland as people had views on the Italian courts and national airlines, Given location etc I would suggest explosive decompression and structural failure following a bomb: the bulkheads have been alluded to but a D Check is equivalent to a complete strip of all parts. TBH, given age and model I'm surprised that they did that rather than parting out.
  • Options
    MP_SEMP_SE Posts: 3,642
    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    Box ticking is fine to a degree, however, I have come across so many middle managers whose sole purpose it seems is to think of new boxes which are to be ticked.

    Instead of say, someone being provided with a document to read, they now have to not only read it but also fill out a form to confirm they have. This results in countless hours being spent chasing people for the form. It is these kind of inefficiences which cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds per year.
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251
    Sandpit said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.
    You're not wrong there, one particular three-day heads of department retreat to come up with mission statements and next year's strategic goals does stick in the mind! At least in most private sector organisations the incompetent eventually find themselves fired, and they are only wasting their shareholders' money, rather than yours and mine!
    Not in banks they're not!!
  • Options
    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,913
    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.
    You're not wrong there, one particular three-day heads of department retreat to come up with mission statements and next year's strategic goals does stick in the mind! At least in most private sector organisations the incompetent eventually find themselves fired, and they are only wasting their shareholders' money, rather than yours and mine!
    Not in banks they're not!!
    It's not just banks.
  • Options
    RobDRobD Posts: 59,022

    Sandpit said:

    rpjs said:

    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it

    was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
    You are correct that the plane was owned by an Irish lease company and had Irish registration. It was known to have had "heavy" maintainence known as a D check last year, but since then it has been with the Russian airline. Irish investigators are involved along with French, German, Americans and Russians, assisting the primary Egyptian investigation.

    The maintainence records will certainly be of interest, let's just say that Russian airlines operating old planes are not exactly known for fixing problems on planes quickly when they occur. The plane was 18 years old and had a lot of cycles (takeoffs and landings, hopefully the same number of each!), the D check would have included a very good look at the repair made to the tail after an old accident in which the tail hit the ground on landing.
    Did this airframe have a lot of cycles? If so, that makes the tail repair even more suspicious (ISTR the JAL aircraft that crashed from this sort of failure had done many short hops, meaning many pressurisations and depressurisations).

    A Hawaiian flight caused authorities to take pressurisation/depressurisation cycles into account as well as airframe hours.

    It was quite amazing that the plane managed to land safely after the damage.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
    Good reason to keep your seatbelt done up. The only fatality was a stewardess who was sucked out of the cabin. Lovely.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024

    Sandpit said:

    rpjs said:

    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it

    was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
    You are correct that the plane was owned by an Irish lease company and had Irish registration. It was known to have had "heavy" maintainence known as a D check last year, but since then it has been with the Russian airline. Irish investigators are involved along with French, German, Americans and Russians, assisting the primary Egyptian investigation.

    The maintainence records will certainly be of interest, let's just say that Russian airlines operating old planes are not exactly known for fixing problems on planes quickly when they occur. The plane was 18 years old and had a lot of cycles (takeoffs and landings, hopefully the same number of each!), the D check would have included a very good look at the repair made to the tail after an old accident in which the tail hit the ground on landing.
    Did this airframe have a lot of cycles? If so, that makes the tail repair even more suspicious (ISTR the JAL aircraft that crashed from this sort of failure had done many short hops, meaning many pressurisations and depressurisations).

    A Hawaiian flight caused authorities to take pressurisation/depressurisation cycles into account as well as airframe hours.

    It was quite amazing that the plane managed to land safely after the damage.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
    From memory that JAL 747 had more cycles than Boeing had previously seen on that type. Most 747s fly long haul, but the Japanese were flying them short haul on very busy domestic flights.

    The A320 family only ever fly short haul, the Sharm-St Petersberg leg was actually quite a long sector for that type, at just over 5 hours. The A321 has additional fuel tanks in the fuselage under the wings, and even the ability to add another tank in the rear cargo hold for more range. The former tank would have been used on the accident flight as the fuel when they left was higher than the capacity of the wing tanks. Source: the PPRuNe thread that's now 1,000 posts long in pages of 20 and really difficult to find anything that you read a few days ago!
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251
    Jonathan said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.

    Personally seen more waste in the private sector, all the above and more. No wonder productivity is so poor. Some of the biggest source of waste are projects to cut waste.
    Agreed. They can be the worst: money spent on consultants to work out where to save money. Not paying for bloody consultants would be a start. Then they sack the people who do the work and rehire from agencies or as consultants the same people at twice the amount. But as they're not permanent staff the entity can claim to have reduced headcount even though its staffing costs have gone up.

  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,027
    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.
    You're not wrong there, one particular three-day heads of department retreat to come up with mission statements and next year's strategic goals does stick in the mind! At least in most private sector organisations the incompetent eventually find themselves fired, and they are only wasting their shareholders' money, rather than yours and mine!
    Not in banks they're not!!
    Banks have all the reward of the private sector with all the risk of the public sector though ^_~
  • Options
    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548
    Omnium said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    A Doctor and an Agency Nurse at my Trust were convicted of manslaughter today. It sounds pretty accountable to me. A very sad case and several lives ruined.

    Most of all, the lives of the family of the boy who died.

    I suffered years of pain due to medical malpractice. He got away with it; there was little 'accounting'. I would like others to be spared the same pain.

    How can we best detect and retrain, or at worst sack, poor doctors?
    Surely the way back for a Doctor should be pretty hard. If she (just as a change) was so unthinking in the first place that patients were endangered then I can't imagine that I'd ever want her as my GP.

    The profession of GP is though going to be a dying one. I see a specialist for my teeth for example. He calls himself a dentist. At that level of detail I should pay about 50 medical bills.

    I guess at some point that we'll have medical managers. We're going to have to pay. Possibly through our noses, but then we'll need another bill.

    Cave rentals is the market to be in!

    The Doctors career is over. She was not training to be a GP, but was actually a fairly senior paediatric specialist Trainee. The boy had been sent in by the GP to the paeds assessment unit so had done their bit properly.

    The failings of the DR and Nurse are manifest, but questions should be asked about the supervision of the Dr (she must have been signed off for her earlier years of training) and the management of the ward staffing. Having worked myself with inadequate supervision as a junior and in poorly staffed units, I do think "there but by the grace of God..."
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,214

    HYUFD said:

    Boris slashes Osborne's lead as next Tory leader after the tax credits row in a new Conservativehome poll of Tory members

    Osborne down 9% to 23%, Boris up 7% to 21%
    http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2015/11/next-tory-leader-poll-the-tax-credits-row-hits-osborne-his-vote-slumps-as-boriss-soars.html

    Another voodoo poll of no merit.
    It does seem to reflect the impact of the tax credits row anyway
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251
    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    Box ticking is fine to a degree, however, I have come across so many middle managers whose sole purpose it seems is to think of new boxes which are to be ticked.

    Instead of say, someone being provided with a document to read, they now have to not only read it but also fill out a form to confirm they have. This results in countless hours being spent chasing people for the form. It is these kind of inefficiences which cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds per year.
    Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

    People work to fulfill the target i.e. showing they've read the doument rather than making sure they have read and understood the document and acted on it. So people read their Codes of Practice and tick a box saying this but don't actually understand them let alone change their behaviour, because this is neither measured nor, crucially, rewarded.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    edited November 2015
    RobD said:

    Sandpit said:

    rpjs said:

    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it

    was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
    You are correct that the plane was owned by an Irish lease company and had Irish registration. It was known to have had "heavy" maintainence known as a D check last year, but since then it has been with the Russian airline. Irish investigators are involved along with French, German, Americans and Russians, assisting the primary Egyptian investigation.

    The maintainence records will certainly be of interest, let's just say that Russian airlines operating old planes are not exactly known for fixing problems on planes quickly when they occur. The plane was 18 years old and had a lot of cycles (takeoffs and landings, hopefully the same number of each!), the D check would have included a very good look at the repair made to the tail after an old accident in which the tail hit the ground on landing.
    Did this airframe have a lot of cycles? If so, that makes the tail repair even more suspicious (ISTR the JAL aircraft that crashed from this sort of failure had done many short hops, meaning many pressurisations and depressurisations).

    A Hawaiian flight caused authorities to take pressurisation/depressurisation cycles into account as well as airframe hours.

    It was quite amazing that the plane managed to land safely after the damage.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
    Good reason to keep your seatbelt done up. The only fatality was a stewardess who was sucked out of the cabin. Lovely.
    There's a few dozen cabin crew injured every year by turbulence. Usually necks, arms and legs from when they hit the ceiling then thrown back onto the floor. Look at this list, it's one incident a week adding up to a couple of hundred injuries this year alone! Always keep your seat belt on!
    http://avherald.com/h?search_term=Turbulence&opt=0&dosearch=1&search.x=0&search.y=0


  • Options
    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,913
    Cyclefree said:

    Jonathan said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.

    Personally seen more waste in the private sector, all the above and more. No wonder productivity is so poor. Some of the biggest source of waste are projects to cut waste.
    Agreed. They can be the worst: money spent on consultants to work out where to save money. Not paying for bloody consultants would be a start. Then they sack the people who do the work and rehire from agencies or as consultants the same people at twice the amount. But as they're not permanent staff the entity can claim to have reduced headcount even though its staffing costs have gone up.

    Consultants, aarrgghh! The kings of the B Ark.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    Pulpstar said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Sandpit said:

    MP_SE said:

    Sandpit said:

    runnymede said:

    you assume the best of people in public life...

    We should of course assume precisely the opposite.

    Quite. People in the public sector also have an aversion to being held accountable for problems when they do occur. I don't remember the last time I heard of a public servant being sacked (properly sacked, with loss of pension etc. ) rather than taking early retirement, moving sideways into a different role, or resigning with large payoff - only to reappear somewhere else in short order.
    Working in the public sector has been one of the most painful experiences I have ever had to endure. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to listing all of the major issues I encountered. Incompetence and stupidity/lack of common sense would rank very highly.
    The vast majority of my experience has been in the private sector, when I have come across the public side as a supplier, they seemed way more interested in the bureaucracy than actually delivering the project.

    They almost didn't care if the system actually worked, as long as all the boxes were ticked and the project plan adhered to. And meetings. Meetings about meetings. Meetings about decisions that concluded without the decisions being made. etc etc. Projects that in the usual private sector environment would be 10 days took 3 months, billable daily! They had all this budgeted for but didn't seem to care that they were spending public money in about the most inefficient way possible!
    That may well be true. But the private sector is well able to waste money, tick boxes, have meetings about everything and nothing (meetings are the practical alternative to work, I find), come up with pointless mission statements, issue documents that consist of words in no discernible order and making no sense in any language known to man and so on.

    There are those who do. And those who talk about doing. The latter vastly outnumber the former.
    You're not wrong there, one particular three-day heads of department retreat to come up with mission statements and next year's strategic goals does stick in the mind! At least in most private sector organisations the incompetent eventually find themselves fired, and they are only wasting their shareholders' money, rather than yours and mine!
    Not in banks they're not!!
    Banks have all the reward of the private sector with all the risk of the public sector though ^_~
    :+1 I was going to suggest it was a legacy from when they were making too much money to care about their overheads, but I prefer your comment!
  • Options
    Y0kelY0kel Posts: 2,307
    In the interests of proportionality based on parliamentary seats do we get the same number of articles on the DUP as the Liberal Democrats?

    Just a note on that Russian airliner, clearly the contrary information out of Egypt and Moscow at the start of things smacked of serious confusion between facts and official desire for a certain sentiment from both countries. The Russians now acknowledge a malicious incident is viable. A few days ago they were flat in denial. The US stating one of its satellites picked up a heat explosion is another hint that something went bang rather than a part falling off.

    All its down to now, is what.

    IS are due their say. Big Chief Baghdadi is rumoured to be releasing some kind of missive very soon (who knows by cassette maybe) and the guess is that its about this.
  • Options
    Cyclefree said:



    Agreed. They can be the worst: money spent on consultants to work out where to save money. Not paying for bloody consultants would be a start. Then they sack the people who do the work and rehire from agencies or as consultants the same people at twice the amount. But as they're not permanent staff the entity can claim to have reduced headcount even though its staffing costs have gone up.

    Only in some businesses. In many industries consultants are used specifically because of the cyclical nature of the business and because they can be got rid of so easily. When business is good the consultants are used to do the work and most of the time do a better job than staff because failure to perform means they are quickly replaced. As soon as a downturn comes along or the business is at a point where they are planning rather than executing projects they can dump their consultants with very little concern about process or redundancy and keep a core staff to allow the business to tick over until they need to upman again.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    edited November 2015
    Ireland and Netherlands joining in the suspension of flights to Sharm. Suggests that the British government know something about how the plane came down (But don't want to interfere in the investigation).

    Not looking good for Egypt's tourist industry, if that goes what else do they have?
  • Options
    RobDRobD Posts: 59,022
    Sandpit said:

    Ireland and Netherlands joining in the suspension of flights to Sharm. Suggests that the British government know something about how the plane came down (But don't want to interfere in the investigation).

    Not looking good for Egypt's tourist industry, if that goes what else do they have?

    It all went downhill after pyramid building went out of fashion.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,214
    Sandpit said:

    Ireland and Netherlands joining in the suspension of flights to Sharm. Suggests that the British government know something about how the plane came down (But don't want to interfere in the investigation).

    Not looking good for Egypt's tourist industry, if that goes what else do they have?

    A military dictatorship, just in case anyone thinks of complaining!!
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    Yanks joining in now.

    CNN)[Breaking news alert, posted at 3:08 p.m. ET Wednesday]

    The latest U.S. intelligence suggests that the crash of Metrojet Flight 9268 was most likely caused by a bomb on the plane planted by ISIS or an ISIS affiliate, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter. The official stressed that there has not been a formal conclusion reached by the U.S. intelligence community. "There is a definite feeling it was an explosive device planted in luggage or somewhere on the plane," the official told CNN's Barbara Starr.
  • Options
    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,087
    Y0kel said:

    In the interests of proportionality based on parliamentary seats do we get the same number of articles on the DUP as the Liberal Democrats?

    As in so many ways, NI plays by its own rules.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,204
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    rpjs said:

    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it

    was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
    You are correct that the plane was owned by an Irish lease company and had Irish registration. It was known to have had "heavy" maintainence known as a D check last year, but since then it has been with the Russian airline. Irish investigators are involved along with French, German, Americans and Russians, assisting the primary Egyptian investigation.

    The maintainence records will certainly be of interest, let's just say that Russian airlines operating old planes are not exactly known for fixing problems on planes quickly when they occur. The plane was 18 years old and had a lot of cycles (takeoffs and landings, hopefully the same number of each!), the D check would have included a very good look at the repair made to the tail after an old accident in which the tail hit the ground on landing.
    Did this airframe have a lot of cycles? If so, that makes the tail repair even more suspicious (ISTR the JAL aircraft that crashed from this sort of failure had done many short hops, meaning many pressurisations and depressurisations).

    A Hawaiian flight caused authorities to take pressurisation/depressurisation cycles into account as well as airframe hours.

    It was quite amazing that the plane managed to land safely after the damage.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
    From memory that JAL 747 had more cycles than Boeing had previously seen on that type. Most 747s fly long haul, but the Japanese were flying them short haul on very busy domestic flights.

    The A320 family only ever fly short haul, the Sharm-St Petersberg leg was actually quite a long sector for that type, at just over 5 hours. The A321 has additional fuel tanks in the fuselage under the wings, and even the ability to add another tank in the rear cargo hold for more range. The former tank would have been used on the accident flight as the fuel when they left was higher than the capacity of the wing tanks. Source: the PPRuNe thread that's now 1,000 posts long in pages of 20 and really difficult to find anything that you read a few days ago!
    Thanks for parsing PPrune for me! I've been too busy today to read that thread.

    But AIUI the plane had been owned and operated by many different entities over its life. What sort of service patterns did it have before?
  • Options
    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548
    edited November 2015
    Sandpit said:

    Ireland and Netherlands joining in the suspension of flights to Sharm. Suggests that the British government know something about how the plane came down (But don't want to interfere in the investigation).

    Not looking good for Egypt's tourist industry, if that goes what else do they have?

    I have not long got back from Istanbul (and while there were plenty of police and security at sites and airport, I did not think them very thorough or systematic). I am glad to have seen it, but would not plan to take a holiday in any Middle East or North African country for the forseeable. Too many loonies. I shall stick to the Isle of Wight (though a little tempted by a rail journey through Ukraine).
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    edited November 2015
    LOL at the reply to @AndyJS showing that PPRuNe and PB share a sense of humour. :D

    Originally Posted by AndyJS View Post
    Is security known to be lax at Sharm el-Sheikh?


    Indeed, and in other news:

    "Pope may be Catholic"

    "Evidence of ursine faecal deposits in the woods"
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024

    Sandpit said:

    Ireland and Netherlands joining in the suspension of flights to Sharm. Suggests that the British government know something about how the plane came down (But don't want to interfere in the investigation).

    Not looking good for Egypt's tourist industry, if that goes what else do they have?

    I have not long got back from Istanbul (and while there were plenty of police and security at sites and airport, I did not think them very thorough or systematic). I am glad to have seen it, but would not plan to take a holiday in any Middle East or North African country for the forseeable. Too many loonies. I shall stick to the Isle of Wight (though a little tempted by a rail journey through Ukraine).
    Oman is very nice at this time of year, or the Dead Sea resorts in Jordan.

    Ukraine rather cold now until Easter. I'd love to do the Chernobyl trip but Mrs Sandpit would like us to have completed the family before she'll let me go there - and she's Ukranian!
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    Arsenal stinking up the CL as per. Keep on coining the £.

    not jealous of course.
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    ydoethurydoethur Posts: 67,542
    RobD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Ireland and Netherlands joining in the suspension of flights to Sharm. Suggests that the British government know something about how the plane came down (But don't want to interfere in the investigation).

    Not looking good for Egypt's tourist industry, if that goes what else do they have?

    It all went downhill after pyramid building went out of fashion.
    Yes, after that they lost the point.

    (Sorry, couldn't resist!)
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    edited November 2015

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    rpjs said:

    watford30 said:


    I wouldn't fly on a Russian built aircraft, or one leased and maintained by a Russian airline.

    AIUI it wasn't maintained in Russia, it

    was maintained in Ireland by its leasing company. That's why it carried an Irish not a Russian registration.
    Did this airframe have a lot of cycles? If so, that makes the tail repair even more suspicious (ISTR the JAL aircraft that crashed from this sort of failure had done many short hops, meaning many pressurisations and depressurisations).

    A Hawaiian flight caused authorities to take pressurisation/depressurisation cycles into account as well as airframe hours.

    It was quite amazing that the plane managed to land safely after the damage.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
    From memory that JAL 747 had more cycles than Boeing had previously seen on that type. Most 747s fly long haul, but the Japanese were flying them short haul on very busy domestic flights.

    The A320 family only ever fly short haul, the Sharm-St Petersberg leg was actually quite a long sector for that type, at just over 5 hours. The A321 has additional fuel tanks in the fuselage under the wings, and even the ability to add another tank in the rear cargo hold for more range. The former tank would have been used on the accident flight as the fuel when they left was higher than the capacity of the wing tanks. Source: the PPRuNe thread that's now 1,000 posts long in pages of 20 and really difficult to find anything that you read a few days ago!
    Thanks for parsing PPrune for me! I've been too busy today to read that thread.

    But AIUI the plane had been owned and operated by many different entities over its life. What sort of service patterns did it have before?
    The plane was previously on the French register and flying with Middle Eastern Airlines MEA out of Cairo. Not sure of exact cycles and hours as yet, but lots and many respectively. It's 18 years old.

    For anyone not wanting to read the whole pprune thread, a good summary of what is known so far is at: http://avherald.com/h?article=48e9abe4&opt=0 (Today's updates are in yellow boxes)
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    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Ireland and Netherlands joining in the suspension of flights to Sharm. Suggests that the British government know something about how the plane came down (But don't want to interfere in the investigation).

    Not looking good for Egypt's tourist industry, if that goes what else do they have?

    I have not long got back from Istanbul (and while there were plenty of police and security at sites and airport, I did not think them very thorough or systematic). I am glad to have seen it, but would not plan to take a holiday in any Middle East or North African country for the forseeable. Too many loonies. I shall stick to the Isle of Wight (though a little tempted by a rail journey through Ukraine).
    Oman is very nice at this time of year, or the Dead Sea resorts in Jordan.

    Ukraine rather cold now until Easter. I'd love to do the Chernobyl trip but Mrs Sandpit would like us to have completed the family before she'll let me go there - and she's Ukranian!
    I had next summer in mind for my railway tour! I am quite keen to see that side of the Carpathians and Lviv. Oman was lovely in Feb when I was there some years ago, but not enough to draw me back. I am done with Muslim countries for a bit.
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    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548

    Arsenal stinking up the CL as per. Keep on coining the £.

    not jealous of course.

    We shall see how the Foxes get on in the CL next year!
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    Scrapheap_as_wasScrapheap_as_was Posts: 10,060
    edited November 2015

    Arsenal stinking up the CL as per. Keep on coining the £.

    not jealous of course.

    We shall see how the Foxes get on in the CL next year!
    fine with me - Labour's front bench would put on a better display in the CL than the gunners do year in, year out.
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    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548

    Arsenal stinking up the CL as per. Keep on coining the £.

    not jealous of course.

    We shall see how the Foxes get on in the CL next year!
    fine with me - Labour's front bench would put on a better display in the CL than the gunners do year in, year out.
    I think that we will have dropped down the table a fair bit by the new year, our fixtures from 28 Nov to 29 Dec are pretty tough to get our current 2 points per game from. Hope to still be top half though. It feels strange to not be worrying over relegation or promotion. It is 20 years since we were a comfortable mid table prospect.
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    JEOJEO Posts: 3,656
    Ukraine is hellishly corrupt. Expect to be hit up for bribes on a regular basis.
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    kle4kle4 Posts: 92,087
    edited November 2015
    JEO said:

    Ukraine is hellishly corrupt. Expect to be hit up for bribes on a regular basis.

    If I'm visiting a country which is pretty corrupt I hope they are at least unsubtle about it with tourists - I'd hate to be treated poorly for not picking up the signals that a bribe is expected and they get angry.
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    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,661
    On topic - stick a fork in them, they're done. Doing the 'party of in' thing come the referendum will do them no good either in my opinion. I can't see the EU emerging more popular from this referendum, win or lose. There will be an empty hollow feeling that perhaps we should have had the balls to vote 'out'. Same as in Scotland.
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    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,251

    Cyclefree said:



    Agreed. They can be the worst: money spent on consultants to work out where to save money. Not paying for bloody consultants would be a start. Then they sack the people who do the work and rehire from agencies or as consultants the same people at twice the amount. But as they're not permanent staff the entity can claim to have reduced headcount even though its staffing costs have gone up.

    Only in some businesses. In many industries consultants are used specifically because of the cyclical nature of the business and because they can be got rid of so easily. When business is good the consultants are used to do the work and most of the time do a better job than staff because failure to perform means they are quickly replaced. As soon as a downturn comes along or the business is at a point where they are planning rather than executing projects they can dump their consultants with very little concern about process or redundancy and keep a core staff to allow the business to tick over until they need to upman again.
    Fair enough. I was thinking of my business where they are generally a flaming nuisance.

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    FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195
    Really interesting Antifrank, thank you.
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    Good evening, everyone.

    Mr. Taffys, as it should be. Labour were bloody useless on energy, the Coalition prevaricated, and now we're in some trouble.
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    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548
    kle4 said:

    JEO said:

    Ukraine is hellishly corrupt. Expect to be hit up for bribes on a regular basis.

    If I'm visiting a country which is pretty corrupt I hope they are at least unsubtle about it with tourists - I'd hate to be treated poorly for not picking up the signals that a bribe is expected and they get angry.
    I have travelled pretty widely, but not paid a proper bribe. I did buy a CD from a Malawian customs officer for $10 once. It is not bad at all. I am not sure if was a bribe or a bit of an entrepaneurship!
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    AnneJGPAnneJGP Posts: 2,869

    On topic - stick a fork in them, they're done. Doing the 'party of in' thing come the referendum will do them no good either in my opinion. I can't see the EU emerging more popular from this referendum, win or lose. There will be an empty hollow feeling that perhaps we should have had the balls to vote 'out'. Same as in Scotland.

    Seems to me quite possible that the EU as it is now won't survive the migrant crisis. If the weather turns the humanitarian problem into a humanitarian disaster, what are we going to do?
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    taffystaffys Posts: 9,753
    ''Mr. Taffys, as it should be. Labour were bloody useless on energy, the Coalition prevaricated, and now we're in some trouble. ''

    British energy policy is a complete mess.

    The great pity Mr Morris is that people in industry, from Redcar to Ballymena, are paying with their jobs.
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    dr_spyndr_spyn Posts: 11,291
    taffys said:
    Front page of FT as well.
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    F1: apparently Hamilton's attacked Schumacher:
    https://twitter.com/JunaidSamodien_/status/661155711527854080

    Not classy.
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    FloaterFloater Posts: 14,195

    I think the killer sentence here is 'They seem largely to have been forgotten about.' It's going to take a long time to recover, and I think it can only be done by new faces - Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Danny A etc already seem like figures from another age.

    Whether it can be done by Tim Farron is unclear to me. I'm inclined to think not, but we shall see.

    To be fair my local councillors (lib dems) work really hard and seem well regarded.

    Mind you I still did not vote for Sir Bob - and I really wanted to but the thought of Labour sneaking back in was to much to bear.
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    foxinsoxukfoxinsoxuk Posts: 23,548
    taffys said:

    ''Mr. Taffys, as it should be. Labour were bloody useless on energy, the Coalition prevaricated, and now we're in some trouble. ''

    British energy policy is a complete mess.

    The great pity Mr Morris is that people in industry, from Redcar to Ballymena, are paying with their jobs.

    Sticking up the price of electricity doesn't save the planet, it just exports British manufacturing.

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    Mr. Foxinsox, quite. To satisfy the terribly concerned but not terribly clever, we axe out own emissions by reducing jobs and harming industry, exporting the economic advantage to another country which chugs out more pollution than we would and therefore doesn't decrease global pollution at all.

    It's a masterclass in empty-headed delinquency masquerading as environmental responsibility.
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