Posts by Gareth Jones 2 20 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Dec 2009
According to the Beeb, Tim Kelsey, NHS England's national director for patients and information, said "Can I be categorical? No one who uses this data will know who you are."
However, if we hop over to NHCIC's web site and look at it's scale of charges* we see "Standard extract – containing personal confidential data" for a mere £2,782. It also lists "Patient status and/or tracking" as a "Product".
Maybe Mr Kelsey "mis-spoke". Or maybe we are just being lied to. Anyone want to let this bunch have all your medical records so we can find out?
*(www.hscic.gov.uk/media/12443/data-linkage-service-charges-2013-2014-updated/pdf/dles_service_charges__2013_14_V10_050913.pdf)
From eureferendum.blogspot.co.uk
<quote>
Now this may be a coincidence, but don't we have a Data Retention Directive, otherwise known as Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006?
Isn't this the directive which requires member states to oblige providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks to retain traffic and location data for between six months and two years for the purpose of the investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime?
And didn't the EU commission last year start a review of the rules, with a view to proposing an improved legal framework? Wasn't that then followed by a proposal for a comprehensive reform of the system?
Then, a few months later, up pops the UK government with some proposals of its own. Are we supposed to believe that this is a complete coincidence? Does anyone believe that, with data retention being an occupied field, the British government is working entirely independently, and has not consulted with the commission on this?
</quote>
Perhaps, like the VAT on pasties, another case of HMG pretending it's in control when really it's the EU wot dun it?
We have too much regulation already. Compulsory insurance feeds an industry of insurance companies, ambulance chasing lawyers, insurance databases, etc. and we the law abiding get royally fleeced. Compulsory third party insurance is only of use to the third party when the first party is actually insured - uninsured driver = no pay out.
So let's turn it round - get rid of compulsory insurance, insure yourself against getting run over/into if you wish. Insure yourself against getting sued by someone you ran over if you wish, but not if you don't. Result - insurance premiums drop dramatically due to lower demand, lawyers starve, road accident victims are no more or less maimed than before. Maybe we can put the lawyers' fees saved into a crash victims payout pot?
Wishful thinking I know when we have a parliament stuffed with lawyers, and an insurance industry big enough to buy them all, even at £250k a pop - but let's not inflict these requirements on cyclists eh? Let's just be glad that they are still a little bit more free than the rest of us.
I'd recommend that you have a bit of a read of both "Climategate" archives and then make your mind up.
The HARRY_READ_ME.txt is well worth a look for anyone who is at all software biased, and you might want to do a bit of research into what the story is behind the "Mike's Nature trick ... to hide the decline" (hint: it does not refer “hiding the fact that global temperatures had been falling” – although that is what the BBC’s Environment Correspondent Richard Black and others have reported.
You might be surprised at what you learn ;-)
IMHO "Passive Drinking" is yet another deliberate corruption of language, designed to make something seem worse, or scarier, in order to justify greater powers, larger budget, political advantage, etc.
Other examples: "Waste Crime" (illegal dumping), "Identity Theft" (impersonation), "Road Rage" (driving like a c**t), "Environmental Crime" (littering)...
Would that be the same as the "97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming" that turned out to be 75 out of a sample of 77 (carefully selected out of a much larger sample so as to give the right answer)?
And, yes, I did read the source paper to check whether those nasty sceptics were telling the truth when they pointed this out.
Or maybe you're quoting a different source - if so can you provide a link?
BTW: I used to believe in global warming till I started checking some of the claims. I'm sure that lots of other technical people have had a similar change of mind.
It seems whether you respond by agreeing with all the questions, or by disagreeing with all of them, it ends up by telling you that you're a "Liberal" - whatever that means in Canada.
According to smalldeadanimals:
Cliff van der Linden, one of the four University of Toronto graduate students who, along with "some of Canada's top political academics," spent months preparing Vote Compass:
"People might be surprised at where they end up....they voted a certain way all their lives, and then, suddenly, they answer these questions truthfully and honestly, and at the end of the day, maybe they're closer to another party."
That Liberal thing - must be just the way the questions are arranged - of course the CBC wouldn't try to influence voters or anything, any more than the BBC would...
Dear news media:
Remember back in the '50s and early '60s, when we set off something like 900 atomic bombs in Nevada?
And how we just let the fallout blow wherever and it landed all over the eastern US?
And how it wiped out life as we know it and all that was left from Colorado to the Atlantic were six-legged rats battling two-headed cockroaches in the glowing ruins?
Yeah. Exactly. So shut up with the panic already.
(h/t Tamara K via small dead animals)
Unfortunately, much of this poison is still in the system.
I'm currently asking for 200 quid’s worth of property legal advice from a Cambridge firm of solicitors. They are asking for "two forms of ID - passport or photo drivers licence + proof of address" due to "new legislation". Probably they mean the 2007 money laundering regulations, which (if you read the yards of regulations/guidance) don't apply to 1-off small transactions of less than 15,000 Euros (and why not GB£, I ask?).
We are still being conditioned to respond "of course" when asked to show our papers, and I suspect I will soon be looking for a different law firm – recommendations anyone?
Compliance breeds subjugation, do not comply.
They were first invented in the 1930's but are also in current production. The CAA G-INFO site lists quite a few examples on the UK register (about a dozen by Ken Wallis and 9 Mangi M16s), and there is a M16 up for sale on the AFORS site at the moment for a mere £56k. They are classed as Gyroplanes, not microlights, so to fly one you need a PPL(G), not a microlight licence. Had a fly in one last year, well cool but out of my price range. Have a look at gyrocopterexperience if you want more info. Black (Gyrocopters) - obviously.
"we're spending money to improve the environmental impact of our civilisation (a good thing to do anyway, if we get our money's worth. "
But we aren't. You can use the IPCCs figures to see temperature rise as a function of CO2 increase (supposing they are correct in their AGW hypothesis). If you work out what temperature rise might be prevented by the full implementation of all of what would have been the Copenhagen commitments, you'll see that it's down in the noise.
Yet, to stave off a minute amount of (hypothesised) warming we get carbon trading whereby Tata can claim $$$ carbon credits for closing Corus steel and more $$$ for opening a new plant in India. And we get increasing starvation as food crops are diverted to bio-fuels. And you and I get to pay a lot of hard earned cash to do nothing useful.
I write as someone who used to believe in Al Gore's inconvenient truths and Mann's hockey stick - but when you start to dig you find too many holes and bad science to maintain that belief.
It's an increasingly common theme - some bureaucrat, paid for by the taxes of thoes of us who actually work for our living, justifies its existance by inventing a scheme to charge us for something we already have, or take it away altogether. This time it's VHF radio, used to improve flight safety, last time it was the "sky grab" arround Stansted, or Norwich airport. They pay more of our tax money to consultants, who produce a 160 page report, and out it goes for consultation. The proposed victim of the scheme (us) then has to spend more time and money trying to fight it off. And even if they get told to FOAD the first time (as here, or with mode S transponders), they just use it as an excuse to spend more of our money, and back they come like the undead clutching a new version ...
The consultation has closed on this one, but more info on the Light Aircraft Association web site http://www.lightaircraftassociation.co.uk/Consultation/ofcom.html
Happy Christmas!
Seems to me that the debate on man made global warming, emissions trading, etc is missing the point. It dosn't really matter whether Bifra, Mann, et al faked the evidence, what Gore and Pachauri stand to make out of carbon trading, or whether the climate is warming or cooling. The point is that "things change" - climate changes, new diseases, new ploitical regimes, etc. The less slack there is in the system, the less able the system to cope with change.
Human populations and economies are continuing to grow in a finite world and so I'd expect them to become more vulnerable to changes. The sensible thing to do would be to start lookin at how to cope with a range of changes, instead of trying to prevent just this one - which may or may not be caused by man anyway. I don't expect politicians to be able to do this, but in the long run I expect that the problem will sort itself out anyway - in the same ways that overpopulations generally do.
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