[micro-control 4] some eu plans for england and beyond

The disintegration of privacy within the sphere of the EU comes next post. This post just restates many things already known vis a vis England and might disappoint, in that it presents not a lot new.

So, first up, we're all agreed, aren't we, that the EU has England broken into nine administrative divisions, as seen on the map above? The only question is, post-Lisbon, when precisely this starts.

These nine regions, along with the Scottish and Welsh regions, have already entered the educational field both at senior level and junior as the current situation.

Further information is available here, here, here, and here, just to post a few. [Some government site links might not now work as they have been progressively deleted.]

Each region is a discreet adminstrative area with its own assembly already in situ, ready to activate. This much is easily accessible from government docs on the web. Winston Leonard commented, on October 15th, at my site:

You have to remember that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will disappear under the EU Constitution, with Brussels dealing with Foreign affairs, policy, and overseas embassies. In all probability, the Senior official concerned will be the one relocating to Brussels in 2010.
Same rule would apply to International Development, another area that will lose out to Brussels. So who will relocate? Malloch-Brown, or Milliband, or both?

The move to regionalization needs to be pretty well completed by post 2009 and it can be better observed in local issues, rather than at the national level, for example, on roads:

The new plan will be to let local governments price or otherwise regulate their bits of the road network as they see fit. So far the main example of this is the London congestion charge, which is enforced by using controversial Automatic Numberplate Recognition (ANPR) technology to track vehicle movements.

Predictably, in the wake of recent clownish "carbomb" attempts, the government has granted terror police routine access to the London tracking system. This has confirmed the widely-held view that no matter the initial purpose of any vehicle-tracking technology, it will swiftly become an automated surveillance tool.

Naturally, once the populace is aware of what is happening, there will be a great deal of unrest - the blogosphere transferred to the general community but this has been factored in. An example is Lisbon itself:

Poland also wants to make sure that the charter of fundamental rights, which guarantees the right to strike among other measures, cannot apply in domestic courts. This is an opt-out already secured by the UK. Some in Brussels have questioned its legality but David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, termed it “silicon-sealed”.

The aim is to have the reform treaty ratified by all 27 member states ahead of elections to the European parliament in 2009.

To enforce both it's "entity" as a continental bloc and to snuff out local dissent, the Merkel initiated pan-EU militsia is already in training. And translated from the original here:

It will be the opening day of the command of Central European Gendarmerie (Eurogendfor), intranazionale new force established by the European Union in order to carry out "police missions in operations of crisis."

They'll naturally need some operational theatre of war for training so:

The EU is to examine the possibility of deploying a 3,000-strong force to Chad to contain spill-over from the Darfur conflict in neighbouring Sudan, foreign ministers agreed on Monday.

All of which is fine, of course, if the EU is a philanthropic and trustworthy body which looks after the best interests of its citizens. If that's the case, then the administrative infrastructure being rushed into place, with Common Purpose leadership, is in the best interests of all.

The litmus test, it seems to me, is whether you can believe the word of the EU. Ellee Seymour throws some light on that here, referring to Mandelson’s reneging on ACP trade agreements in favour of regional agreements.

Do read the whole piece to get some sort of idea how you feel about EU transparency and honesty.

Those whio have not already sighed and clicked out might be interested in one take on what the eventual plan entails. I don't mean the EU-ization of what was once Britain but the overall plan.

This is as good an article as any but the heading summary below does not do justice to the full explanation given at the site. Again, do read the whole thing. The process goes something like this:

1st Signpost: The Registration of Populations

2nd Signpost: The Creation of a Global Identification System

3rd Signpost: The Creation of an Infrastructure for the Global Surveillance of Movement

4th Signpost: The Creation of an Infrastructure for the Global Surveillance of Electronic Communications and Financial Transactions

5th Signpost: The Convergence of National and International Databases

6th Signpost: The Spread of the "Risk Assessment" Model

7th Signpost: Security-Force Integration and the Loss of Sovereign Checks and Balances

8th Signpost: The Corporate Security Complex

9th Signpost: The Erosion of Democratic Values

10th Signpost: Rendition, Torture, Death

Do you think this has gone off the deep end? Well, let me go further. The type of incompetence revealed by Dizzie in the losing of 15 000 personal records by courier I simply do not accept as accidental. Please see part 2 of this series.

Notes

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

[racism] we need to be careful about its definition

That promised article is coming but first, more controversy [H/T Witagamenot] on immigration:

Cameron was irritated by the behaviour of Hastilow, who will contest the marginal seat of Halesowen and Rowley Regis, which the Tories must win if they are to regain power, after he mounted a strong defence of his article. 'It is in line with Conservative policy,' he told The Observer. 'Uncontrolled immigration will do this country great damage. In the last 10 years we have had more or less uncontrolled immigration.'

But Hastilow won strong support from his local Tory association. 'Most certainly, yes,' said Mary Docker, chairman of the Halesowen and Rowley Regis association, when asked by The Observer if she would stand by Hastilow. 'He is a down-to-earth man who talks to people and doesn't talk at them. He is representative of the views of many Black Country people.'

My view is quite simple, you might say oversimplistic but I'd disagree:

If the racial, religious or national grouping has a history of non-assimilation into the local culture, then prospective immigrants need one-by-one scrutiny and interview as to their absorption into alien sub-communities within the larger nation.

This should also apply to those who have already got through the net.

If the grouping has a history of assimilation [e.g. a Canadian settling in Britain], then they get fast tracked but are subject to the usual police checks, vocational suitability etc.

Just seems common sense to me.

[facebook part 2] run for your lives

I recently wrote a piece on Facebook, commenting on their delisting of bloggers who don’t use their real names. It now looks more insidious than first thought.

I said that I was thinking of unsubscribing and Ian Grey said one can’t – only de-activate but can re-activate at any time. Let me put that again:

When you sign up to Facebook, they have you in and you can not unsubscribe! You can unsubscribe from applications, discussion groups etc., you can unsubscribe from e-mail notifications but you can’t unsubscribe from Facebook itself – there is no mechanism.

This immediately gave me the shivers because it looks no different to those webpages where, the moment you enter, they lock you in and give you no navigation out until you’ve been through a series of other intrusive pages.

I want out and I want out now! I looked around to see what the web said:

Facebook, America’s number two social network behind MySpace, launched a redesign and two new features early this morning, allowing a user’s activities on the site to be tracked.

My guess is that if they’d allowed Facebook users to turn this feature off, most of them would have done so.

What’s odd is that most of Facebook’s recent additions have been extremely smart.

And ...

Facebook is commonly referred to as Stalkerbook, due to its many features that allows you to track people in your network, especially when you are friends with those people.

On September 5, 2006 Facebook altered the default logged-in screen to be the "News Feed," a new feature that lists every action that every Facebook friend of yours makes on Facebook.

And finally, Ian Parker:

Just remember who funded the building of Facebook and why it is there.

It was funded by DARPA's Information Awareness Office, and is there to collect information about you and build a profile on you.

Thats why they dont like pseudonyms.

Their site for those with concerns is here and when there, look down near the bottom of the page and see the group mentioned.

I’m outta here … or I would be if there were a mechanism to do so, which there isn’t.

[oh so wild] the importance of being english

These Weblog Awards, [there's a little banner top left for those who'd care to cast their vote], have had one unexpected spin-off.

Whereas some men have had their potency called into question and some their intelligence, hitherto I’ve only had my height called into question … oh, and my receding hair … well, yes … also my sanity at times … but I digress.

It appears that now, as a result of these double-edged awards, my origins have also been called into question. Wounded to the heart.

An esteemed rambler, uber-blogger, mother of note and lady of spotless virtue has asked the simple question: “Are you a UK blog, James?”

How to answer that, avoiding a simple yes or no?

Is Croydonian a UK blogger? He seems to blog on everything from France to Sweden. Is Tuscan Tony a UK blogger? Is Tom Paine, of questionable Facebook status, who blogs on the England he holds dear but doesn’t actually live there?

To rephrase the question – what constitutes a UK blogger? That he is permanently resident in the UK? If so, where does that leave Tim Worstall or Welshcakes Limoncello? Or Praguetory for that matter?

Or is it that he blogs on specifically UK matters, to the exclusion of all others? Where does that leave Bryan Appleyard or Ian Appleby? Where does that leave the girlbloggers like Liz Hinds and Wife in the North, [whom I understand is in the south right now], who blog on home related matters [and a bit of Rugby]?

Perhaps my crime is to pay too much heed to the Americans and to be too au fait with their affairs, barring football and baseball, which immediately label me non-American. Perhaps my premiership winning Aussie football team raises suspicion, as does my clear familiarity with matters Vancouver.

Is Colin Campbell an Aussie? Is JMB a Canadian or an Aussie? And what on earth is Lady MacLeod?

Or my French language posts, concerning Sarko, Segie and undergarments – do they put me out of contention as a sturdy oak and does this also put out L’Ombre?

What is, in fact, a UK blogger?

The Witanagemot seem to have come to terms with my Englishness, the Cross of St George group, of which I am involved, labelling me “an English Expat”, an epithet I am comfortable with.

Is it that I fail to appreciate the minutiae of daily life in the UK and can’t recite the lists of current pollies? After all, these awards aren’t for “political bloggers” – they’re for “bloggers”.

Further - these are supposedly prestigious stateside-based awards, centred in Florida and under scrutiny by the State Dept and other interested groups. Those top ten UK blogs were the top ten in American eyes. In UK eyes, I’m way down at N124.

Is it that I'm not over there currently, as I'd wish to be, clubbing, swapping asides in the idiom? I do touch on matters UK most days but not party politics – more Common Purpose and other nefarious nasties which the average Brit knows little of as yet.

To come clean at the death, my ancestral home is in the West Riding, snuggled up against Ilkley Moor, baht ‘at. You’d never pick it from either my writing, my accent or my dialect; [now I've lost all the Londoners with whom I lived for three years].

Your ladyship, this is all the explanation I fear I can give. I pray that it should suffice and that your smile shall once again alight on my fevered brow.

[2007 weblog awards] voting now open

Click on pic to vote.

The awards are now open and you can vote once in 24 hours. Should you wish to vote for my little blog or indeed, for another, click on the pic above.

[cartels] free trade or restraint of trade

In the wake of the largest fine in Australian corporate history handed out to packaging giant Visy, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graham Samuel said cartels were "a cancer on the Australian economy" and an "insidious attack on consumers" and said criminal penalties should be imposed on those found guilty.

History has been punctuated by attempts to control them such as the 1890 Sherman Act:

The Sherman Act provides: "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal".[2]

The Act also provides: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]"

But it could be equally argued that the legislation is restraint of trade in itself. And at what point do mergers and takeovers become illegal? The whole thrust of business is to combine and strengthen and though asset strippers are a scourge, resulting in cries to ban the practice:

In an interview with the BBC, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said he shared the concerns of Britain’s general trade union GMB which voiced fears over a growing number of venture capitalists investing in UK firms only to strip them. "We want policies that make sure the objective of investment by private equity fund, for example, is to rescue them, to maintain as many jobs as possible, not to asset strip them," he said. This is ironic as Labour has been the recipient of donations from equity specialists that have been criticised by unions for their approach to certain businesses.

What happens when the government, e.g. the NHS, gets into the practice?

The government has been accused of orchestrating a £345m sell-off of former hospitals in one year in an attempt to balance the NHS budget. The value of the sales is 14 times the previous year's total.

Tough call, this one because should their be constraint on capitalism? This is not covered by the Free Trade/Fair Trade argument. Even if one argues for Free Trade, are we referring to cross border tarrif reduction and if so, what would be the effects?

The Congressional Budget Office says:

… the arguments for and against FTAs extend beyond their net economic effects on the United States to considerations of foreign policy and tactics for achieving multilateral free trade …

and:

Critics worry, however, that the pursuit of free-trade agreements could divert the world from multilateral negotiations and lead to the development of rival trading blocs centered on the United States, the European Union (EU), and Japan. Indeed, the EU has negotiated a number of FTAs in recent years.

In a world of outsourcing, how can legislation from national assemblies have any jurisdiction over those of outsourced countries? There seems to me to be very much a move towards blocs and this has political ramifications, especially regarding the EU.

How could the Sherman Act operate in the context of more globalized trade? And what relevance does a corporate affairs fine have on a major operator - surely it's window dressing?

Example of the thrust against the survival of small businesses was my screenprinting business. It was in a healthy state, orders were coming in and it looked rosy until some I was asked to tender for an indoor sports centre's team shirts.

My little firm could only do the job at near cost and still a large international printing firm undercut it by half by not only mass printing but supplying the shirts as well from one branch of their operation.

Diddums, you might say - that's just business and it certainly put me out except with customers who weren't aware they could approach this company to get their shirts for half the price. That was one of the key reasons I dropped it - it was unsustainable.

Should the small to medium businessman have any protection and if so - isn't this restraint of trade? Isn't this propping up unprofitable enterprises, as with CAP?

Still pondering on this one.