Posts by I ain't Spartacus 10158 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009
anothercynic,
What do you mean? Why does a political party not have legitimate interest in communicating with its membership, both for fundraising and campaigning? That's what it's for as an organisation, and presumably why its members joined in the first place.
Obviously sharing their data with Uncle Tom Cobley and all is another matter entirely.
I'd be surprised if they even need consent under GDPR. If they've got a well-written data protection policy (no laughing at the back there!) then as a political campaigning organisation they could claim permission under the legitimate interests bit of the regs. You're only supposed to use consent where not consenting is a genuine option - but surely a party should expect to campaign to its members?
As I understand it, there are lots of shennigans within Labour over database access. Allegations that Unions passed on their newly signed-up member lists to favoured candidates (Ed Miliband and then Corbyn) during the leadership campaigns, and only reported those new memebers to the Central party at the last minute. So that their candidates got a better go at it.
I've also read that Corbyn's campaign kept the database after the first leadership election and used it as the basis of the Momentum mailing list. Though they may have been able to argue that they'd got consent from the people that went on that list, as people who actively joined their leadership campaign.
Not that I'm suggesting this is just a Labour problem. The Conservatives used to be less organised, because local constituency parties were much more independent of Central Office - but I'd imagine that's changed in the new era of Facebook campaigning. I suspect we need a full invesitgation into what parties do with their data, but don't know if it will happen. Obviously we know about some of the stuff the leave campaign got up to (eg Dominic Cummings), but who's betting that the Remain campaign didn't grab data off all three main parties, as the leadership of all 3 were pro Remain. Actually didn't the Lib Dems get a slap on the wrist over that?
The problem is also that the parties aren't that well funded, and have a lot of different people involved in campaigns. So I can imagine their systems are very shoddy, and loads of people have access. In the case of Labour for example the Unions can sign up members and register them - which is even more organisations with access. Plus all the volunteer campaigners - and whatever third party companies get signed up.
Doesn't Apple's new generation of iPad Pro already have this bending feature built in?
I'd happily have a phone with the form factor of something like a Nokia Communicator. When in phone mode a mini touch screen or jog wheel to select the contact to call - and open up to use da big screen. Then it fits more nicely in your pocket. But I wouldn't want to pay all that much for such slight convenience.
Are we? Surely if HP are suing, then they're paying court costs. Or Lynch will if he loses. I don't know if the fees cover the whole costs though. It's even possible we're making a profit. Though I doubt it would be enough to cover the costs of the serious fraud squad's time from their previous investigation.
Oddly enough we're actually a major an exporter of m'learned friends' services. Many contracts between Russian companies for example are done under London law, so they can access the UK courts system when there's a disagreement. Given that whoever's best connected to the governemt at the time will win in Russian courts. Plus there's lots of judges and ex-judges who moonlight as part of arbitration agreements.
So, the conclusions I draw from all of this are the following:
1. Pluto is a nut
2. The red panda is a planetessimal
3. The giant panda is a legume
4. The zebra is a horse in pyjamams
5. Hippos are incredibly angry that they can't have bacon, and are dammed if they'll miss out on lovely meat.
big_D,
In that case, the EU would not have a single market. The point of the single market is that one company in one country can do one lot of paperwork to sell to anyone in the single market. If you now have to do separate paperwork for each country, then you've destroyed that frictionless single market.
Also the EU doesn't have a sales tax, it has VATs. And VAT is not applied where the sale taxes place, but where the company is. So for example Amazon sell a lot of stuff from Amazon S.a.r.l. which I think is their Luxemburg company, because VAT rates there are lower, so they can out-compete shops and online stores based in countries with higher VAT rates. Equally when Apple sell phone to French retailers, they'll do it at Irish VAT rates - which those companies will reclaim via EU VAT rules, and those shops will then sell at French VAT rates if they're in France. I don't know if Apple have one EU online store, to take advantage of the VAT rules as Amazon do, or have one in each country.
VAT isn't a transaction tax. It's basically a sales tax with more complex paperwork. VAT and sales tax are paid by the final customer of a product, as stated by someone else.
There's an argument (tax incidence) that most of corporation tax falls on a mixture of a company's shareholders and customers. A company like Apple that mostly has control of its prices can pass tax costs on to customers, one that doesn't really control prices (most food companies say) will have to pass it on to shareholders in lower profits. So in the case of Apple a VAT or a corporation tax would have similar results - at least theoretically...
To be an economics nerd, a transaction tax is something very different. It's usually a very bad idea as it penalises more complicated supply chains - because by nature a transaction tax is charged on all transactions of a certain type. So if you make something complex and are buying and selling loads of small components then you're going to pay transaction taxes on each of those - and that compounds up to meaning the tax is higher than the sales price. Or in reality, nobody makes complex stuff because tax makes it uneconomic. VAT is charged on all the transactions in a supply chain too, but the point is business reclaim that VAT - it's netted off against their VAT bill, so that's why VAT isn't a transaction tax.
Note the EU was talking of having a financial transaction tax, but this was considered a bad idea because it would be very costly for pensions and might destroy the market in eurozone government debts - and thus risked destroying the Euro.
note that they've been working on a simple trade agreement with the EU for two years now and with a couple of months left the entire parliament is running round in circles screaming that everyone else is a damn "remainer"
Version 1.0.,
This is not true. Negotiations on a post Brexit trade agreement started in about July, and have produced a 25 page document that basically says "I dunno. But we'll make our best endeavours to try and agree something before the UK is forced into the backstop in a couple of years."
I suspect this is why May's deal got voted down quite so catastrophically badly. Because of the lack of any effort made to sell the downsides of the deal with the future upsides. It makes the argument that the Commission have negotiated in bad faith all along pretty hard to counter.
That was entirely the EU's choice. The Commission insisted on the timetable. They insisted on delaying everything until an exit cost was agreed - before even talking about the rest of the withdrawal agreement. Then refused to even discuss the future relationship until the withdrawal agreement was broadly agreed - despite the fact that the backstop would be irrelevant in many scenarios post Brexit, and so all this pain could have been saved.
Now to be fair, the Commission had good reason. They wanted a united front from the 27, who might all want different things from the future trading deal. So they didn't want their own disunity to cause a no-deal Brexit. Because there are areas like fishing that could cause France or Spai to veto everthing, if done together - and then they'd be blamed for a disorderly Brexit.
But the refusal to even look at things in parallel has caused the current situation. Because the backstop can't be sold without some promise that it won't be permanent. And there's no point in it if it isn't - so there has to be an obvious way to a future deal that still protects the Irish border. And with the EU being as obstructive to a deal as they have been - that can't be "trust us we'll use our best endeavours to agree..." Especially as President Macron has publicly said that he can force Britain into the backstop if they don't give France access to their fishing grounds - and Wayand (Barnier's deputy) has said that there's no way out of the backstop but permanent customs union and this can be used as leverage to control British trade policy in the future.
If we'd had an honest attempt by both sides to come to an agreement acceptable to both sides (I'd argue May's been broadly honest but incompetent), then we'd be most of the way to a deal by now. But it looks to me like the Commission may have over-played their hand, and undermined May so much that the only choices now are for them to publicly back down or no deal to happen automatically. The other option is remain, but I don't think there's even a majority in Parliament to force a second referendum - let alone to cancel Article 50 without one.
Rich11,
The supermarkets are selling our food to us. They are responsible for what they sell. And they can still vet their supply chain. This is the basis of how existing customs "trusted trader" schemes work already. If they conspire in shipping in shit goods, then we can throw the book at them.
I'm talking about a temporary measure for a few weeks while people sort out supply chains.
And remember the Romanian horsemeat scandal came about because we already were sharing a customs union with other countries that had lower standards So the EU is not some panacea. Plus as I undersand it, those horses have been eaten already. It was a one-off situation caused by a change in Romanian law that farms could no longer use horses and carts on the roads - so a bunch of horses rapidly became uneconomic and then became dinner.
Brexit (deal or no deal) is going to disrupt supply chains. And the insistence of the Commision that they wouldn't even talk about the future trading arrangements has made that more of a problem. But I would suggest pragmatic solutions, rather than dogmatic ones.
That's what happened at Stalingrad. The fatsos did OK*, and the weakslim starved. According to Anthony Beevor analysis has been done of casualties. Those supply officers of a more paranoid type stockpiled food in the Summer/Autumn, expecting Winter problems. And shorted the rations to their troops a little. Others lived for the day - and passed all their food out. Sadly once surrounded, HQ shared the remaining food equally, so the units that hadn't saved food - got the benefit of having their cake and eating it.
*For a given value of OK, given that this involved POW camps in Siberia.
To quote from Paul Krugman on this subject, if you're unable to maintain your import standards, you simply reduce your standards until you can.
So at Brexit transition time, you shorten your customs queues by allowing in a bunch of goods uninspected - and just check a random few. With instructions to customs to not inspect anything perishable unless they have good reason.
Problem solved. You'll get a bit of extra fraud of course, but given the alternative is bad - this is a small price to pay.
Then they could partner up with some academics - or news organisations they choose to trust.
But this is Facebook, and they aren't trying to be open and honest. They're a bunch of lying sacks of shit, led by a lying sack of shit. So that's how they'll operate. Until they get a good shafting by governments, which can't come soon enough.
Erm, haven't the MPs already voted so that we leave with no deal on March 29th at 11pm? Isn't that the problem, after all? There's a majority in Parliament who'd like to stay in the EU, but having contracted it out to a referendum there's not a majority to overturn that result. In fact from analysis I've seen, there's not even a majority to hold a referendum to cancel Brexit. The numbers look to only be just shy of 300 - and that's assuming Corbyn can be persuaded to whip Labour to vote for one. Which I don't think he wants to do.
The problem as I see it is that MPs views aren't even close to representing the voters' ones - which makes it really hard for them to act because they risk doing massive damage to democracy or pursuing policies they don't believe in. Hence it's hard to come to any decision.
The other problem is that all sense of compromise seems to have gone out the window. Too many "remainers" now seem to be playing for the big win, rather than going for an acceptable second-best. So rather than settling on trying to get a Norway-style EEA deal 2 years ago and sticking to it, they're now hoping to totally cancel Brexit. Obviously they've got a chance of winning - but that also massively raises the risk of a no deal. Which they tell anyone who'll listen will be a catastrophe.
On t'tother hand a lot of the moderate leavers seem to have set their minds on no freedom of movent, when there's almost certainly a majority in the country to leave the political bits while staying in the single market - and at least that gives everyone some of what they want.
I also think you're being massively unfair to May when you say:
ssentially trying to coerce MPs to vote for her disastrous deal becuase No-Deal would be even worse, but it seems unlikely to succeed when there are better, common-sense options on the table
There aren't any better deals on the table, as you put it. There's May's deal or nothing. The EU aren't offering anything else. To get to any deal that involves leaving requires signing some version of May's deal, or leaving with no deal and starting from scratch. There's a chance that the more awful parts of the backstop can be sorted - because as things stand the alternative is going to be no deal, and the EU say they'll then insist on a hard border in Ireland. The road to the EEA / "Norway option" also leads via May's deal - though with that as the agreed future direction the backstop could be re-written - but might not be because Norway aren't in the Customs Union.
Your other alternative is to remain. MPs can do that themselves, without a referendum - now the ECJ have ruled. But they don't dare - and rightly so. But there's not even a majority amongst them for holding a referendum. And that's not necessarily because they're all deceitful, it's because quite a few of them are pretty worried about the results of doing that. It may be what they settle on in the end - but it won't be easy. And may not give them (or you) the result they want...
A.P. Veening,
Surely "just strictly following rules and regulations without any pragmatism" is one of the definitions of being petty? In general it also needs to be a subject of little importance - and that does pretty much cover the .eu domain. I don't recall ever having used it except to go to the Commission's website, for example.
John 98,
That's only true if they actually check that addresses are real, and not just PO Boxes. Which I very much doubt.
The real traceability on domains is surely the payment records. But if you're up to nefarious business, they won't lead back to you either. If they were serious about PC plod, then there would have to be checks. When you get a Belgian identity card for example, not only do you have to go to the town hall to fill out forms, you then get a knock on the door from PC Plod to make sure that you actually reside at the address you've just given. Then they stamp the word foreigner over your face and issue your card.
This is just a bit of pointless pettiness, to little purpose but fortunately with very little impact on most people who can either work round it or ignore the .eu domain (as most people do already). After all they're proposing different rules in the case of a no deal or a deal, which given we're not doing anything reciprocal with our domains (whose rules don't change) does rather suggest they could leave it a year, or until the relevant domains expire with no great difference made.
This is a ludicrous idea. It's obvious what we do.
Every couple of months we inject one astronaut with a different disease. Say the common cold. This gives a nice work-out for all their immune systems. We then pack them a box of hot honey and lemon drinks plus tissues or perhaps a small hoover to clip over the nose and hoover up the bogey to avoid it floating around the ISS... You know it makes sense.
It could just be boredom. The immune system is all sad and lonely with nothing to do in a sealed can as far as humanly possible from 4-year-olds, aka cute plague carriers.
Plus the stress of an environment that's never silent, where sleep patterns are disturbed and lack of gravity is messing with many of the body's other systems.
Anon Custard,
I'm impressed. We've got a salesman who is rather adept at reading upside down. Which can sometimes be rather useful... For which reason when I used to work in the buying department of a retail company - we were under instructions not to bring sales droids to our desks. That's what meeting rooms are for, even if it's a tad less convenient.
A friend of mine is a furniture designer. And impressed me when sketching out ideas for improving my kitchen over dinner. As he was able to describe his suggestions, while simultaneously drawing them upside down so I could get his point. But I suspect that's much easier than writing the wrong way up.
Back in my primary school days, the local education authority got all creative, and bought me a CCTV system for reading. It was a 21" TV (massive cathode ray of course this was the 80s) with a TV camera pointed downwards onto a lit roller-table on the right. The table surface was mounted on a 2-axis thing on ball bearings, so you could roll the relvant bit of your book underneath the camera. You then had to zoom to the appropriate magnification (I seem to remember it would do at least 20x), focus and read away.
This was as an alternative to the unweildy 5x magnification reading glasses I still use today. You'll have seen the sort of thing used by surgeons doing close up work (glasses with small telescopes on the front).
Anyway the idea was I could read books without glasses - but actually moving them around on the tray was more awkward than using my reading glasses. I've found a similar thing with large print, the paper's too huge and the books are incredibly heavy.
But the reason for the story was trying to write. Instead of hold paper on desk in front of you and write, it was hold pen about where a mouse would be if you have a very long keyboard (with num pad). Then look at screen directly in front of face, and wield pen 18" to the right of you. It's very weird. Takes a lot of practise. Did mean I had no problems with mouses later on though.
As a bonus, with a fine tipped pen, I could get my handwriting so small, that nobody could read it - unless they used the CCTV or a magnifying glass...
The German Stosstruppen had lots n' lots o' grenades. Bags of the things. I'm not sure how safe it is running round with a sack of high explosives - but then I guess "safe" is a relative term.
Not only did the BEF do a lot of combined arms - but they also had a plan that was basically WWII Blitzkreig. It was called Plan 1919 or something, and devised in Haig's HQ by JFC Fuller. Who I think was a colonel in planning at the time. It called for re-constituting some of the cavalry units (that had been fighting on foot since 1915), plus lots of tanks and armoured cars. And the plan was to blast a hole in the German front lines with tanks and creeping artillery barrages - so the troops were just doing mop-up with much lower casualties. Then leapfrog more units through the hole to do the same to the secondary lines. Then break cavalry and armoured cars into the German rear (tanks were way too slow) - and send them off with lots of air support to interdict reinforcements and attack artillery and HQs - while the heavy forces expanded the breach in the German lines and slogged on slowly trying to capture troops.
Not sure it would have actually worked against a decent opponent. As the technology wasn't quite there yet. Radio comms weren't yet up to it - and there was none of the relatively fast mobile artillery, ammunition and fuel resupply trucks that you really need for an effective offensive armoured unit. Plus the planes at the time had very light weapons loads.
But interesting that the cliche of Haig as an incompetent dinosaur isn't actually true. Despite what Blackadder says. Turns out he had a cunning plan...
Mark Thomas had an excellent protest going against the laws on registering demonstrations in advance with the police. He had a group of people doing demos in Parliament Square. On one they iced their demands on cakes. Another was 10 x 5 minute demos in sequence, where he had a banner caddie with his different demands in a wheelie bin - and their ten stamped permission forms laminated and glued to the inside of the lid.
He did a brilliant Radio 4 comedy about it - and it was the proper way to protest against an absurd law - by being absurd in return.
After all it was only brought in to get rid of that Brian whatsisname who protested in Parliament Square over iraq for years on end, and it turned out it didn't apply to him, because his protest had already started and English law isn't normally retrospective. Doh!
I'd say you use the concentrated brine to make bacon? Oh... Hang on...
I'd imagine you release it back into the sea. Once mixed, it's a tiny increase in salinity - which will be countered by the water you extracted being returned at some point as rain or treated waste water. Getting it to mix being the harder part.
Doesn't going for a heavy vehicle mean ordinary launches will be more expensive. While there aren't all that many heavy launches happening nowadays. Though I accept that big cuts in prices might create some extra demand.
Or is the plan to beat Musk to the punch and launch a bigger capsule that can open up and swallow everybody else's, then return them to one's extinct volcano of choice?
Uber were always going to get their license back. They just had to sign up to the stuff they hadn't been doing before, like passing on criminal accusations made about their drivers to police. It's not like the requirements were particularly onerous or anything.
This is rather different. The law isn't on Google's side in this case. They'll appeal I'm sure, but they'll lose. And eventually they'll have to change their behaviour or pull out of the EU marketplace - which they won'to do because the profits are lovely.
I'm sure they'll up their spend on lobbying, but it's too late, the GDPR is passed. And the EU is very slow to re-write laws - because it takes so long to agree them in the first place. The GDPR will take well over a decade to change, if there was the will to do so - which there isn't.
jmch,
That was just France. Once one European data protection authority has ruled against you, the chances increase of the others doing so. And they can keep fining you if you don't come into compliance.
Companies can't keep paying multi-millions in fines.
Also they can be fined on a percentage of turnover. Google "only" made about $12.6 billion in profit in 2017, on that turnover of $111. So once the fines go into the millions, and start to add up, they'll really start to notice.
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