heavydog

So, writetoreply have added the Digital Britain report on their website. They’ve also included the ability to allow anyone to comment (the comments are unmoderated, but spam is filtered) on the report at a paragraph level! So you can make comments on each paragraph. More from writetoreply:

Dear Lord Carter,
Drawing on inspiration from the Power of Information Taskforce Report (beta) [ http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/poit/ ], in which members of the public can comment on individual sections of that report, and in response to your statement in Digital Britain - The Interim Report that you “welcome feedback and comments on this interim report, before 12th March 2009″, we have republished “Digital Britain - The Interim Report” in a way that supports commenting on the report at the paragraph level at http://writetoreply.org/digitalbritain/.

Within a few hours of becoming publicly accessible on February 4th, 2008, comments started appearing on the site, with the site itself receiving several hundred visitors within just the first two days of availability.

We hereby invite you to consider comments made on Write To Reply’s Digital Britain site as comments made to you in response to Digital Britain - The Interim Report.

They’ve created an RSS feed of the comments for Lord Carter to view, and if he can’t do that, they’ll print it out and deliver it for him.

You can read more here: Digital Britain Interim Report (on writetoreply.org)

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Peter Ainsworth MP
East Surrey

Monday 2 February 2009

Dear Peter Ainsworth,

I have recently read that the Counter Terrorism act 2008 is set to become law on the 16th of February. As a photographer, I find one section of it particularly worrying and was hoping you might clarify what it actually means.

Section 76 states that it will now be a crime to “…elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been - …
… (iii) a constable,”

Now, I’m not entirely sure what “elicits or attempts to elicit information” really means as it’s wrapped in fine film of politiease making it slightly ambiguous.

This could be used to arrest and imprison a photographer for 10 years for nothing more than taking a picture of a police constable ( or an ex-police constable…).

This is wrong. Given the recent case of the BART police officer Johannes Mehserles killing of Oscar Grant in the US and the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes on the tube, it is now more important than ever that we be allowed to record the day-to-day activities of our police officers. The police wield an incredible amount of power over the people that help pay their wages (you and I, the citizens of this country (not that I think you wouldn’t know that, it just sounded good)). Being able to record their activities and make them accountable for their actions (as I’m quite sure they record ours) is an important right and empowers us to ensure they conduct themselves, on our behalf, responsibly.

While I understand the need to have the Counter Terrorism act and specifically these points to protect the people who protect us, I’m concerned it can be abused; either intentionally, or because the already muddy water on what photographers can and can’t photograph will become muddier.

Yours sincerely,

Mike Pearce

What has the bible got to do with BECOMING A PRESIDENT FOR FUCKS SAKE!

See it here: Boston Big Picture, Inauguration

This appeared in my feed today:

We urge you to write to your MP straight away via http://www.WriteToThem.com - don’t wait. The Bill is being rushed through Parliament, even as we write. It contains a number of controversial provisions, but to the casual reader appears mainly to be about reforming inquests and sentencing.
As it progresses, NO2ID will be publishing more information but it is crucial that every MP realises how dangerous the information sharing clauses in the Coroners and Justice Bill really are. This will only happen if YOU tell them.

Read more, right here: NO2ID

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Peter Ainsworth MP
East Surrey

Monday 26 January 2009

Dear Peter Ainsworth,

Before reading the rest of this email, please read Part 8 (clauses 151 - 154) of the Coroners and Justice Bill.

Then please OPPOSE the enormous enabling powers of the “Information Sharing” clause.

Please also demand that the clause be given proper palimentary scrutiny before anything else happens.

This affront to privacy has to be squashed. As far as I can tell, this clause allows the government access to any data held about me in any form for any reason.

Are we really moving towards a country described in George Orwells 1984? Or am I just being a paranoid crazy? Who knows. Maybe you do? Maybe no one does?

Finally, I’m getting pretty cheesed off (yes, CHEESED off, I feel that strongly) that these things are being sneaked out of parliament under the guise of other bills, has this government got something to hide? A master plan to turn the country into a Police state perhaps?

Please do something about this and let me know if I can help. I’d love to as it’s getting up my nose now.

Yours sincerely,

Mike Pearce

I saw this group on Facebook, this is lifted from there:

On the 16th of May 2008 the High Court ruled that MPs’ expenses must be published under the Freedom of Information Act.

This Thursday, MPs are voting to change the law to keep their expenses secret after all, just before publication was due and after spending nearly a million of your pounds and seven months compiling the data.

Your MP may not even know about this proposal (it was sneaked out under the Heathrow runway announcement). Please take a few minutes to alert them to this attack on Parliamentary transparency and ask them to vote against the measure.

Join the group here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=50061011231

Read more here: http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/17/6-days-to-stop-mps-concealing-their-expenses/

This is my letter, make sure you write your own.

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Peter Ainsworth MP
East Surrey

Monday 19 January 2009

Dear Peter Ainsworth,

I expect you’re a busy fellow and I also suspect this may not be the first email you’ve received on this subject (at least I hope not) and that you know about it anyway, so I shall keep this brief.

I’ve just learned that on Thursday, parliament will vote on whether or not MPs should have to declare their expenses. I would like you to vote on my behalf that yes, MPs should have to declare their expenses like everyone else.

Along with millions of other people, I help to pay the wages of MPs and I want to know my money is being used for good and not to pay for an MPs windows to be cleaned, or their lawn to be mowed.

I would also like to register my distaste at the information being published at the same time as the Heathrow 3rd runway news and a debate about Gaza - sounds like someone was trying to hide it.

TheyWorkForYou.com shows all things you vote for and to date, you’ve voted (mostly) how I would. As my elected representative in Parliament, I hope you will vote against this Order.

Yours sincerely,

Mike Pearce

… haven’t posted in a while. Dave says I should post more often. Here’s a post.

“Evolution is a change from a no-howish, untalkaboutable, all-alikeness to a somehowish and in general talkaboutable not-all-alikeness by continuous sticktogetherations and something-elseifications.”

WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910)

As the last vestiges of worth slowly drain from my soul, I’m left with nothing but the searing sensation of heartburn that has failed to be extinguished due to the flammatory nature of a stiff brandy or four. I’ll go and humiliate myself on the sofa infront of a never ending stream of whitewashed youth culture vomiting from my television like so much bloodied bile. After a while I’ll fail to care as my carcrash anxiety and pseudo-intellect vapourise in a cloud of buggeration. Just in time I’ll stop short of a masterwork and wish that I’d never started, or never finished or simply never have been.

Strangley though, I’ll wake to the sound of the dustbin men clanging the lids of my waste disposal, the death nell of the man who works by day, sleeps by night and is fulfilled by nothing except the continued drain on my financial health by those things which are made a neccesity. This fulfilment changes a man and will eventually have eroded so much of my very core that nothing will remain save the tortured, bleached and sunburnt warrior I have come to know as my heartfelt need to be wanted.

Someday I’ll look back on the future I might have had a wish I’d never seen the pictures roll by the boarded up windows of my towerblock of desire. It’s not much to ask and I’ve wasted so many opportunities to complete what is recognised to be a missed Nirvana but never quite attained.

The dreams I had a realised in other dreams and the waking hours are merely the nightmares I must endure before time is up and I must disembark for pastures not.