Posts by johnB 128 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007
Greed, pure greed. They've already been (very) well paid once to do the work & now want paying again.
As Court dicta effectively change Statute law, and such dicta are based in part on lawyer's submissions, this argument adds up to a tax on the citizen seeking to read the laws he / she is bound by. Just pure greed from an already very well remunerated section of society.
W95 gave me a half-way decent screen interface;
W98 gave me easy access to the Interweb;
XP gave me the use of USB (or was it the other way round ?);
Vista gave me...a prettier screen ?
What's the in it for me to migrate to W8 ?
Please will someone (preferably not from MS) tell me ?
"There have been cases..." Typical politician use of unsupported "data" to justify sticking their nose into other peoples business.
It's a pity these self-appointed busybodies can't get it through their skulls that if someone wants porn, they'll find it. Always could, always will.
But that doesn't justify interfering with the other 99%+ of the populations PC's.
And even if the technology could be effectively fitted (unlikely), who would determine what was OK & what was not ? Wacki Jacki's hubby ?
Don't forget that IR35 also gets tax into the govt's coffers - via PAYE - faster than as a dividend from the service company. But that's only a tiny crumb of comfort for Gordo. The whole IR35 is now exposed as just another anti-business ploy.
Yet another example of how the civil service will come up with any figure to support whatever bandwagon is currently being spun by useless ministers.
Roll on the election. The sooner the better.
Politcians pass the Freedom of Information Act.
Politicians decide it doesn't apply to them. High Court says they don't understand the Act of Parliament they passed.
Politicians then decide they need time to "review their claims" (i.e. actions that your & my employer would reward via form P45).
Newspaper publishes the unsanitised version of the claims.
Politicians decide the appropriate action is to call in Plod.
You couldn't make it up.
The programe is dead - if technical aspects don't kill it, the dumping of NuLab at the next election certainly will.
In the meantime, we're paying for civil servants to continue to work on a scheme that'll not see the light of day, nor will it hold the said civil servants accountable for how they dribbled away taxpayer funds. You can see why they want it kept on life support. Better than working on something where thay may be held to account one day.
I understand the reason waqui doesn't get much support from her colleagues is she has a marginal seat & it's expected she'll be booted out at the next election.
The frightening thing about that is she may go back to her day job, which I understand was teaching. Just who would want her teaching their kids ?
Just when will these clowns get it - there's no need for paper documents to be taken out of the office. Full Stop. Period. End of matter.
If they simply must - because they are so "important" that they can't do their work whist at work -then there's encrypted laptops.
The argument "if you've done nothing wrong...." simply isn't good enough.
Over the years, politicians have enacted so many laws that it's impossible for us all to be 100% law-abiding or for the police to enforce them all. So in practice it boils down to which laws the police choose, or are leant on, to enforce.
What the cameras do is create a library of potential offenders that the authorities can trawl through at their leisure safe in the knowledge that they'll be able to find <something>
This is an approach that Kafka would recognise & the Stasi approve of.
IMHO if someone at HMRC / MoD / <enter your preferred organisation> faced the prospect of some time at Her Majesty's pleasure we wouldn't have these problems - they'd be sorted pronto. One senior guy taking an early bath (HMRC) isn't quite in the same league as a view though prision bars.
And for good measure, wouldn't a similar regime for hospital managers help focus their minds on making sure their customers didn't catch MRSA ?
No, its not weird at all.
The version on the Intranet is the full version. The bits the public aren't allowed to see are replaced with the standard disclaimer & the resultant sanitised version is put out on the Internet. That keeps the page structure. No need then to try & keep two versions of the same thing in synch - the public can quote from the actual guidance given to staff: "Page nn of NIM123456 says that "etc., etc.,". Just another example of customer service from HMRC.
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