Richard's Kingdom

Privacy, security and politics in the digital era

Tag archive for ‘uk’

Your Freedom

The Government has launched a consultation on reducing the burden imposed on our lives by the state. The Your Freedom website has been live for about a week and has already collected an incredible number of ideas, comments and suggestions. In fact enthusiasm has been such that the site has struggled to stay online thanks [...]

Quantifying compromise

Yesterday the Government announced a “Freedom or Great Repeal Bill” to undo the worst excesses of Labour authoritarianism. If many of the policies therein seem familiar it’s because they seem to have been cherry-picked from the Freedom Bill that the Liberal Democrats put together for the Convention on Modern Liberty last year. After the publication [...]

That light at the end of the tunnel? It’s liberty.

The new Conservative-Liberal coalition Government today announced it intends to pass a “Freedom” or “Great Repeal” Act. This will:

Scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the ContactPoint Database.
Outlaw the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
Extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to [...]

Clegg’s dilemma

The United Kingdom has a hung Parliament. The 2010 general election left the Conservatives as the largest party however they are 20 seats short of an overall majority. Therefore a coalition Government must be arranged.
The prospect of a government of national unity* – a coalition including both the Conservatives and Labour – is conspicuous by [...]

A personal political journey

I voted for the Tories in 1997. It was my first ever election, I was 18, and the Conservatives had been in power my whole life. I knew nothing about politics and I educated myself about neither the parties’ policies nor the local candidates. I voted Tory because I feared the unknown: the huge change [...]