Britain ordered to destroy its database of innocents' DNA
The deplorable British policing practice of storing the DNA of suspects who've been exonerated or never even charged has been found to be illegal by a European court, and now the database must be destroyed. Remember the kid who was going home on the tube in 2005 and was mistaken for a subway bomber, taken into custody, apartment raided, all data on his computers copied, and his DNA stored forever -- even though the police admitted it was all a misunderstanding? Well at last his DNA should be removed from the database.
The court said there was a particular risk that innocent people would be stigmatised because they were being treated in the same way as convicted criminals. The judges added that the fact DNA profiles could be used to identify family relationships between individuals, meant its indefinite retention also amounted to an interference with their right to respect for their private lives under the human rights convention.Christ that Jacqui Smith is a piece of work. Remember, come the next election: a vote for Labour is a vote for the party that thinks 1984 is a manual for statecraft.The case provoked an expression of disappointment from the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and the promise that a working party, including senior police officials, will report back to Strasbourg by next March on how the government will comply with the judgement.
"The government mounted a robust defence before the court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice. The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgement."
17 judges, one ruling - and 857,000 records must be now wiped clear (Thanks, beep1o!)
the latest
latest episodes
No kidding. Every time her name appears in print, it seems to be associated with some kind of atrocity against civil liberties or human decency in general.
perhaps something will come to her one day.
should really note that Conservatives are worse. the Liberals are the only ones who talk about civil liberties and they have almost no chance of getting in.
Man on pink corner - I can't think of a single home secretary in the last thirty years of whom that couldn't be said.
It's amazing to me the extent to which Ms. Smith flies under the radar internationally. She really is the UK's Dick Cheney.
Tak - can we assume you're already familiar with the layout of the Home Office drains?
Wow, this is so encouraging to hear that there might actually be some small tincture of justice still left in the world!
@Ian Holmes
I'm sure there's lot you can say against the Conservatives but on this subject they most certainly aren't worse than Labour - they support today's ruling:
http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2008/12/DNA_database_must_be_put_on_a_statutory_basis.aspx
Stated policies of theirs on their websites include:
Scrapping ID cards and taking steps to prevent the misuse of surveillance powers by local authorities.
Also remember David Davis fighting a by-election purely on civil liberty issues?
That said, I'll concede they aren't as strong on civil liberties as the Liberals - but until we get some voting reform to stop the vast majority of us being disenfranchised by the first past the post system (which only the Liberals want), the Liberals won't get in.
Gah, reads badly. Meant to say only the Liberals want voting reform (viz Proportional Representation). Tis a tad ambiguous as written.
Oh, for an edit button.
ain't saying nuthin
Note not strictly "British policing practice" but English, Welsh and Northern Irish policing practice. The noble Scots do not even keep records on everyone convicted but only on those convicted of the most serious offenses and then only for a limited time.
The noble Scots http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/30/police-raid-79yearol.html
A small step forwards after a long sprint backwards.
This is on quite encouraging, I do wonder what it will mean for the states planned imposition of ID cards, having already introduced them for Asylum Seekers and a week ago for non-EU workers and students. Got yours yet Cory?
Not voting for labour will not really make any difference to the ID cards scheme. The British state has been trying to impose cards on the British people since the end of rationing in the 1950's. It has been succesfully resisted every time until now.
The reason behind the retaining of DNA from inoocents was always a preliminary to te introduction of the ID database. Both this retention of data and the ID scheme itself serves no purpose other than mving us into a panopticon society where we are constantly watched and our gaolers are civil servant and bosses.
#8: And that's the major conundrum of current British politics. An election has to happen soon, and Labour are so unpopular they're almost certain to lose. Meanwhile, the Tories are looking more left than Labour.
Whether this could actually be true remains to be seen. The pessimist in me says that when the Tories get in (as is looking fairly inevitable), they'll turn around and start being worse than Labour on personal freedoms. The optimist says that the Tories will suddenly become the new centre-left party, with Labour remaining in their current centre-right position. (This is not unprecendented - the U.S. Republicans used to be far-left slave liberators.) The whimsical dreamer says that maybe the Lib Dems (or a new social democratic type party a la the original Labour Party) will suddenly swoop to power.
It's a strange time, and the election, when it comes, will be very, very interesting.
Can you blame them Sammich?
Can't be too careful where the Devil Weed is concerned now can we?
That said, I'm glad to see the EU finally evolving into a positive force. They're even lifting the ban on crooked cucumbers.
Note that the court pointed out the stigma of being on a 'database of criminals'. Labour's position is that once everyone's on the database, there'll be no more stigma.
Joy.
Woo. Sanity in government. Sweet.
Lots of people seem to be laying this at the door of Jacqui Smith, as if it were all her idea. The truth is that there has been a succession of nutso Home Secretaries under NuLabour - John Reid, David Blunkett, Charles Clarke. Although, plotting the current trajectory, we might expect to see Vlad the Impaler appointed at Jacqui Smith's replacement.
I find this all very puzzling. I grew up in a family where my siblings were involved in pretty radical left wing politics. My sister was with her boyfriend at the picket lines at the 1980s Eddie Shah newspaper dispute. Leaving the protests and heading back to the car, they were charged by riot police in a side street and she was heavily beaten with riot sticks. I remember as a boy seeing her black and blue bruised back. Fast forward to now, one of her old friends from then is a Minister, and she happily parrots the party line on law on order. A generation of Labour activists who experienced first hand police brutality under the Thatcher government are happy to hand over even more power to a police force that thinks it knows best and that basic human rights are optional in a time of "war".
Oh dear, I seem to be ranting...
"...bringing people to justice." Note the newspeak - not "bringing criminals to justice", but "people", like, anyone and/or everyone.
I don't have any particular trust in the Conservative party, or any politician for that matter. It's the system that is broken, in that it seems to produce self-serving MPs.
That said I think that there is a good chance that a massive vote against the Labour party at the next election may be seen as a vote against authoratarianism, and the next party in power may take that as a hint.
So if -- like me -- you don't normally vote, have a think about that idea. Maybe voting for a party you don't trust is actually a good idea this time around.
[This has been a political broadcast by the can't-be-b*ggered party.]
"a vote for Labour is a vote for the party that thinks 1984 is a manual for statecraft."
What a deplorable thing to say, given the alternative. You pedagogue, you.
"a vote for Labour is a vote for the party that thinks 1984 is a manual for statecraft."
I am so completely sickened by the prospect of the next UK general election that the only viable option my brain can come up with is to ignore it altogether.
While I cannot bring myself to vote Labour given their recent track history; their increasing support for privatisation and free-market economics; and their abuse of civil liberties, I will certainly NOT be voting Conservative.
The Tories are not more left-wing than Labour, and I find it hard to imagine that they ever will be. I think the most recent proof of this was the vote on IVF rights for lesbian couples, in which Conservative MPs unleashed some truly horrible bigotry against homosexual parents and voted overwhelmingly to prevent lesbian couples gaining access to IVF. Labour, for all their flaws, voted down the proposals to restrict access.
What the UK needs, and will conceivably never get, is a system of proportional representation. It works in Scotland more or less, and would not leave us all stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Personally, I'll be voting Green, as our constituency has the best chance of electing the first ever Green MP to Westminster (Caroline Lucas, the Green leader). Yes, the Tories will probably get in, but what's the alternative?
The truth is that there are several pressures on every Home Secretary. They receive all of their briefings from the permanent staff of the Home Office, who, it has been confirmed in recent years, essentially give policy rather than options (I can't find a link for the story but I think it was in the Independent originally. I read it in The Week, which can't publish online as it reprints stories for other publications). In addition there is a perceived obligation upon the Home Secretary to be seen to be tough in the areas covered by their remit. The separation of the Home Office and Justice Department under Jack Straw was done as an attempt to reduce the influence of the permanent secretarial staff.
Labour have been particularily bad because of their ongoing obsession with the use of technology, so the citizens of the UK get scanned and stored and tracked probably more than anyone else in the west. They're also very receptive to the needs of the security forces and there has been a feeling that the government is kowtowing rather too much to the police in many areas, going as far as allowing them to arrest, search and interrogate a member of Parliament in his own office last week, which is really an appalling breach of Parliamentary privilege but that is being underplayed as a necessity of 'national security', a phrase which is inevitably rolled out when there isn't a justifiable explanation for the actions of the security services.
But don't think for a minute that the Conservatives won't act in the same way in power. They have what is called the 'luxury of opposition' in which they can be as populist as they want in order to win potential votes, but as soon as they swap sides in Parliament they find find themselves with the same advisors and the same pressure to act tough as the current government. It's something that the new boy in Washington is finding out very quickly, which is why he has ended up being surrounded by the same faces, because they know how the system works. The UK government doesn't, and has to learn again when the parties change sides, and so they take their advice from the people who actually do run the country, who aren't elected and whose only ambition is to retire on their full salary pension to a nice place in Surrey.
Well - hurrah for Europe! At least that final check against the dumbfoundingly authoritarian impulses of UK politicians exists.
does anyone have a sample of Jacqui Smith's DNA? i wish to leave it at a crime scene.
Aye do not forget us most Northern folk have our own laws based not upon the sword of justice but that the scales should be balanced.
There is Scottish Law, Scots and Gaelic tongue, we have a Parliament and as much Brent Crude per head as the Saudis.
Our noble leader Eck the Fish opposed the current Blairite Quagmire.
Perhaps though it is hardly my place some Angles need to remember their Kingdoms of Northumbria and Anglesea and cease their feckled skivvying to the Roman rule by Bowler Hatted Yes Minister and easy bought (or easy blackmailed) unelected leader the Fascist Brown and his cohorts looking to cash out like Haliburton with directors jobs in Us Database companies.
Damn their wars and blood soaked money lets trade on a spit and a shake till Whitehall withers - vote in another lot and see what promises they keep once the phone tappers of Whitehall and Langly whisper dark nothings in their craven ears.
What about the Poll tax which brought down Thatcher when the Scots marched on London ? Still there this tax on my heid not my hearth or wage. The act of union was broken then when the poll tax was imposed on Scotland First and solely. What use is a vote given to breakers of promises - a vote should be a contract enforcable upon a manifesto sworn as an oath. Step up majesty, reign in your ministers to do their duty or else get of your high chair.
The party system is delegation not representation it is a blight upon democracy. WHo voted for a Whitehall whip? WHat use is votes? Unvoted Lords, old Status Quo they alone have stood against this Federal Fascist State and took the long view that the British should be free folk ruled by consent not an easily hacked run database no doubt outsourced to the USA with traitor Blunket on the Board.
Rememberance, Fighting Fascism not laws Kristalnached but Universal Healthcare, a house and a basic share of the common wealth not a means tested state database dole prohibition against enterprise and work and police targets filling jails with absent parents had up on petty vice. Encourage enterprise dont crack down on Benefit cheats following poor folk home and to the chippy where they scratch extra cash.
The consensus of the daily mail and telegraph is fake, the moral mojority is a lie, distatful consent is manufactured by foriegn media moguls and democracy here is a party state sham.
Am I the only person who thinks that the British are in the right? It sounds like this blog is full of hysterics, and the decision by the European court sounds like the most limp-wristed thing in the world.
@MADEOFSTONE:
"The British"? You mean the UK Government, presumably, as opposed to the nation of people who occupy England, Scotland and Wales? (Even that is incorrect, since this doesn't apply to Scotland).
Regarding whether or not the UK government's repeated proposals for storing increasing amounts of biological and personal information about the populace is right or wrong: what value do you see in such proposals?
@24, monstrinho_do_biscoito (a sample of Jacqui Smith's DNA):
even better...
Calling someone a pedagogue (sic) is not a rebuttal.
I've been ordered to start carrying a mandatory RFID-based biometric card because I'm an immigrant. They've suspended habeas corpus. They've given police power to stop law-abiding citizens from taking photos in public. They've banned public protest at Westminster. They're attempting to create a law that forces all of us to show papers. They've allowed local authorities to use anti-terrorism powers to hunt people who put out their bins at the wrong time. Tell me again why Labour is a party that's anything less than "deplorable"?
Yay for the ruling... but the cat's out of the bag. Betcha those deleted records get squirreled away somewhere (and if not, there's at least the backups, and archives of the backups: an upkilt photo of me is stashed forever in data vaults underneath Zurich -- data spreads, duplicates, and it's damn hard to stop).
We're in the middle of the birth of a post-privacy society, and because we're the infants, it's baffling and scary and we can't see how it will work out. But it will work out.
"But it will work out."
How do you know that?
@ #28 CORY DOCTOROW:
Cory, I know it's technically none of my business, and you're obviously under no pressure to answer, but are you considering voting Conservative?
How do you get your head round the contradictions and dead ends of the UK political system?
I for one will be moving back to Scotland asap.
"The government mounted a robust defence before the court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice."
I also had a problem with this line, as did an earlier commenter. Politics and marketing go hand in hand. She neglects to state the WHOLE truth, so that it sounds like she actually has an ethical argument. That mean ol' liberals are forcing them to stop using DNA and fingerprinting in criminal investigations, when the ruling says nothing to the effect.
Getting rid of evidence collected from innocent people is perfectly ethical and does not stop police or investigative powers from using DNA and other id markers in the pursuit of justice, in fact, using these markers to prove someone innocent as well as guilty is the pursuit of justice. There's no reason to hold onto the evidence after the person is exonerated.
Do people like her just assume everyone is guilty in the world and therefore potentially liable for prosecution?
This "Everyone is guilty until proven innocent" attitude has become more and more prevalent amongst the higher ranks of the Labour Party in the last 10 years.
I always felt a bit sorry for Charles Clarke, book-ended as Home Secretary between mad, weird David Blunkett and rabid bulldog John Reid. He always looked distinctly uncomfortable spouting Blair's paranoid offence-as-defence doggerel.
Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell's portrayal of him as a wee mouse was always quite appropriate.
Regardless, this restrictive, paranoid and stubborn approach to national security and society in general is not something I recognise in the roots of the British Labour movement.
Which makes me wonder - where did it come from?
This made me smile:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/
It may be just my view (I am a UK national) but I feel often that our gov't are just pandering to the masses. The need that seems to be inherent in a huge percentage of society to blame somebody for all the countries ills.
The sad truth seems to be that such a huge proportion of our population is happy to live with its head down, hands in pockets muttering "It won't happen to me". As long as no-one is personally inconveniences right now, they don't care.
And by the time they do care (and they will) it's too late.
I do have some hopes - I seem to remember a Daily Mail news [sic] article lambasting the id cards. When they're on the bandwagon, there's a chance even the un-informed will take note.
Although I too am wondering if Scotland will let me imigrate. After a point C. Stross made recently, it might be a safer refuge!
The problem is that the Tories were so reviled (and not without reason) that for a decade, Labour had a free pass of being the Lesser Evil, regardless of what they did. The Blairites actually had a policy of "outflanking" the Tories on the right.
If Labour get back in after this, it will be because of people who can't bring themselves to ever vote Tory again.
Alas I fear the ruling is meaningless at the moment.
Look at what Jacqui said about it carefully, "The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgement."
She's clearly saying they will continue to take DNA, and keep DNA. "The existing law will remain in place." She will clearly not comply with the judgement at this time.
Frankly I doubt the EU has the balls to force her to comply with it either.
-abs is pleased at the ruling, but very sceptical that it means anything at all in a practical sense.
"I do have some hopes - I seem to remember a Daily Mail news [sic] article lambasting the id cards. When they're on the bandwagon, there's a chance even the un-informed will take note."
Yes, but I wouldn't put it past the Tories to implement similar policies should they come into power, and in that case the Daily Mail will be behind them all the way.
"If Labour get back in after this, it will be because of people who can't bring themselves to ever vote Tory again."
That is definitely a big part of it. But it's also because the Tories don't represent a desirable alternative to Labour. They're not significantly different on economic and defence issues, they're likely to be a LOT less green, and they're much worse on social justice issues and immigration (e.g. their recent damning of "multiculturalism" which had to be read to be believed...).
Like I said, I can't find a way to look at it without screaming internally, so I'm gonna ignore it.
Just another to say
1) if you have to stay in this country, and are lucky enough to be a citizen of it, vote green. It's slowly rising in popularity, unlike some countries isn't controlled by larger left wing parties, and I can see places like the south west getting only greener, and a green councillor + a council opting in to the sustainable communities act could make all the difference at least on local issues.
2) I'd rather "open source" (cc-by-dna?) the dna database than destroy it. Not ideal but at least it would pre-empt having something that only police, serco, sodexho or local authority binmen could use. Can we start an opendnadb.org site for swabs? upload your spit!
They receive all of their briefings from the permanent staff of the Home Office, who, it has been confirmed in recent years, essentially give policy rather than options (I can't find a link for the story but I think it was in the Independent originally.
This is especially troubling. It is the job of a minister (in consultation with the PM and caucus) to determine the terms under which policy will be set. If a staff fails to provide options, it is the job of the minister to demand that they do. To not do so smacks of laziness or incompetence. I'm not sure which is worse: that the Labor government is deliberately putting policies such as this into place, or that they are simply unable to formulate alternatives to the policies handed to them by their deputies.
I have recently had several arguments with my mother (a very dedicated, old school social democrat in Canada) along the lines of what Graham Anderson describes with his sister. My position is that the grafting of Labour social policy onto Thatcherite economics and law & order measures has been deeply flawed and will ultimately prove a failure. As the economy collapses and the social programs fall by the wayside, all that will be left is the apparatus of state coercion (just in time for the inevitable popular uprising).
Or do the English simply like the stick too much?
"Or do the English simply like the stick too much?"
Traditionally, the English only like using the stick.
JOKE.
From TFA:
The Home Office acknowledged yesterday that its plans to extend the retention of DNA to low level, so-called non-recordable offences, including littering and minor traffic offences were now dead in the water.
Really? Really? The UK gov was planning on collecting DNA for littering and parking violations? Wow. That's a level of craziness I'm not used to encountering. That's right up to bat-shit crazy, which is pretty close to the top of the scale. I live in the UK and read the news daily; why didn't this get more attention in the mainstream UK news?
Here's a thought. I had a friend who as a child could take actual fingerprints and make fake ones using common housefhold supplies (rubber cement?). I saw a documentary showing how you could take the picture of a print, and using a printer and household items, make fake prints. I'd like to know if you have a sample of someones DNA if you can PCR to produce quantities of it to plant on a crime scene ?
a visit to a hospital, a barber, a dentist, a manicurist would all provide opportunity. If they have go through several thousand samples to eliminate them it should buy enough time and uncertainty for your purposes.
#32 - Because the spread of information is, IMO, inevitable and unstoppable. And people aren't just going to accept badness that it may produce. People always find ways to work with change. That's what we humans do.
This probably sounds like a Singularitarian manifesto, eh? :)
So is there anywhere in the world that isn't violating the rights of their people to a greater and greater degree each day? How's New Zealand doing?
This is fantastic news.
Mostly because I work on the database and this decision will remove mostly old records that require extra code. :)
Dennel @8:
Taken me a while to reply.
First up, disclaimer: I haven't lived in the UK for 5 years, so apart from reading the papers now & then, I don't know much about Cameron.
However, I remember plenty about Thatcher: banning teh gay books from the libraries (Clause 28), censoring a political party (Sinn Fein) from TV, banning the book "Spycatcher", putting Clive Ponting on trial, throttling the satellite feed out of the Falklands, bugging the unions, banning various political memoirs, etc etc.
Post-Thatcher, the tories kept at it, e.g. introducing the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, which removed the right to silence, initiated the expansion of police powers to take DNA samples and perform stop-and-searches, and criminalized squatters, ravers, travelers, eco-activists and hunt saboteurs.
Tories? Pro-civil liberties? YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY KIDDING ME.
This is not to mention all the global human rights atrocities the 1980's tory party fostered round the world: supporting apartheid South Africa and Pinochet's Chile, for example, or cheerfully funneling cash to the mujahedin on behalf of the CIA (circumventing the legal restrictions in place in the US; see "Charlie Wilson's War"... the book, not the movie).
I do remember David Davis fighting a by-election on civil liberties, but I don't recall a massive show of support from his own party on that issue. Rather, I recall mutterings from his backbenchers that it was a PR stunt. The guy had just run for leadership of the party and failed.
It does appear that Cameron is now trying to capitalize on the issue, but let's face it: this is hardly in their DNA. Frankly it's about as convincing as their newfound embrace of environmentalism.
The tory party has always been about corporate freedoms; you would have to be extremely naive to think that they really give a wet toss about individual liberties, unless it involves fox-hunting or the right to fly one's private jet.
I have to say I think this is one issue where Cory is talking out of his hat. It's easy enough to bash labor, but let's see him advocate for an actual alternative. I'm sorry, but lambasting Labor while giving the opposition a pass just suggests that you do not know any better. Check out some history, Cory! My guess is that voting out Labour for the Tories is going from fryingpan->fire as far as civil liberties are concerned.
one other thing i have to add. you're all damn crazy if you think you can hold this off for anything more than a few years. look at the cost of DNA sequencing. It is dropping faster than Moore's law. That's right, I said *faster*. Look at companies like 23andme.com. There will be dozens like that within the decade.
It is my professional opinion (I do bioinformatics) that within 10 years, no legal safeguard whatsoever is going to impede the googlesphere (or the security-industrial complex, take your pick) from collecting your DNA whether you like it or not. Putting legal hurdles in the way of governments will become irrelevant. Protesting about ID cards will be equally irrelevant. They're going to know damn well who you are; they won't need ID.
I'm sorry. I know this is bleak. I would like to think there is a way to fight it. But I can't help feeling you're on the wrong side of technological history. When DNA sequencing is as cheap as photography, how are you going to stop it? Indeed, if I have a *right* to take your picture and store it on my hard drive, some people might well argue that I have a right similarly to record your genetic photograph.
It's all rather like the people back in 1798 who complained about William Pitt introducing the income tax. Undoubtedly income tax is an invasion of privacy. But try stopping it now! Cory, it would be great if your complaints do something. But like I say, you're fighting a tidal wave here.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=GboRa4Ge2NM
All I say is, 80s Tories != 00s Tories (necessarily, anyway) - how much are Blair/Brown like Foot/Kinnock? I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until I see what Cameron does as PM (still wish it was Portillo in charge, personally).
Margaret Thatcher is a senile old woman who hasn't been in power for eighteen years; anyone not voting Conservative on the basis of her record is a fool. The party has changed, partly in response to Labour changing, and partly because it's simply got so many new and different members and MPs.
The Conservatives have been making all the running on civil liberties in recent years, the conservatives.com site lists seven major campaigns - opposing ID cards is one of them. That's not a policy that can easily be backed out of. As well as that there's been:
- The welcoming of this ruling, and general opposition to the database
- David Davis by-election (which was supported by the party leadership)
- The defeat on 90day detention and effective neutering of the 42day detention law, to the point where the police called it 'useless'
- Boris Johnson's effective removal of the (now former) Metropolitan Police Commissioner from his job.
Individual freedom has always been a right-wing policy, and the left has always favoured top-down statism, but at the next election people with a vote shouldn't be thinking in terms of left or right, or evil Labour, nasty Tories, fluffy LibDems or flag-waving SNP, we should all simply be making the choice based on which candidate in our seat has the best chance of getting the current government out.
Ewamm @55:
I disagree. Look at FDR's Four Freedoms: freedom from want is a left-wing policy, freedom from fear is probably evenly split, and I'd say that the left are doing better on freedom of religion at this point.
Really? Looks to me like an awful lot of the present Conservative leadership cut their teeth under Thatcher. Cameron himself has said he's a big Thatcher fan,
that she rescued Britain from despair and was one of the "towering figures of the past 50 years".
Daneel @54 asked "how much are Blair/Brown like Foot/Kinnock" but there was a very clear ideological split between New & Old Labour, corresponding to their abandonment of Clause IV. Not that I think it was a good thing, but the point is that it was a clear rejection of their past, and the main reason why they were successful in persuading people that they were "New". I do not see any similar clear Conservative rejection of Thatcherism. Just vague statements that they would like to be more fluffy.
Cameron, as Obama is rumored to have commented, is a lightweight. The idea that we should just, as Ewamm puts it,
is violently irresponsible. Vote LibDems by all means if you care about civil liberties, as they have always been strong on this issue, and they are much better than Labour. But voting Tory for the single issue of civil liberties makes almost exactly as much sense as voting Tory for the single issue of the environment. They're really not all that convincing on either.
So they opposed a few unpopular Labour policies, big woop. (Remember when Labour opposed the poll tax in opposition? Did that make Labour the anti-tax party?)
The Tories have not sufficiently distanced themselves from the policies they put in place the last time they were in power, 15 years ago, which essentially laid the foundation for what Labour is doing now. Again, vote LibDem by all means; they've always been strong on this issue; but Cameron's Tories are just blowing in the wind.
Regarding my comment @52, it may have sounded a little defeatist, but I essentially agree with AndyGates @32 and @48. we need a new privacy model based on concepts like information leakage and the mitigation thereof.
One of my favorite Cory Doctorow quotes is this:
Here's my modified version: Any privacy-model that depends on your bases not being copied is just dumb. DNA sequencing is falling exponentially in price, and we leave a huge billowing trail of it everywhere we go. It is ridiculous to think that we can stop this DNA from being sequenced: eventually there will be a sequencer in every phone.
At the same time, I completely agree that the Labour Party's authoritarian and anti-libertarian tendencies are disgusting. (As noted above, I am however completely unconvinced that the Conservatives would be anything but worse; the LibDems are the only ones who can be trusted on this.)
Takes one to know one, perhaps? (Joke!) I agree, he certainly is - but that seems to be what the masses want. Hague has substance and ran rings around Blair in debate but was roundly rejected by the electorate, seemingly because he doesn't have any hair.
Irrelevant to this thread, but personally, I still agree with the poll tax; I've never seen a good reason as to why the cost of getting your bin emptied by the council should vary either with your salary or the value of your house.
Your criticism of Ewamm's comment is unfair; without PR, our only option when trying to remove an unpopular government is to vote for the candidate with the best chance to remove the local MP (assuming said MP be a member of the ruling party, otherwise it makes little odds either way). Voting with your conscience is a luxury afforded to those lucky people who won the postcode lottery that decides whether your vote is a waste of time or not.
As an aside, what do you want the Conservatives to do in order to distance themselves from Thatcherism, or are they eternally damned in your eyes?
Daneel @58
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax#Arguments_for_implementation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
If you accept arguments for progressive taxation for services that are in the common good, it is then counterproductive and convoluted to start picking off services that should not be progressively taxed because they are on one side of an arbitrary line that you draw between "common good" and "individual good". (Sure, the council emptying bins is good for you, but it's good for your neighbourhood too.) Furthermore, taxes that discourage poorer people from registering to vote are clearly anti-democratic.
Sure, if removing the unpopular government is all you care about (and not, say, what government you're actually replacing it with) then go ahead and vote tory, libdem, green, BNP, whatever works.... (admittedly, including BNP in this list is almost Godwin-esque snark; I am of course not suggesting you vote them, or equating them with any of the others; my point is that "voting out the current government", while a powerful periodic force in two-party politics, is hardly a great end in itself; see "frying pan" and "fire")
Well, on the single issue of civil liberties, they'd have to come up with an actual platform (c.f. the LibDems) and not just cautiously oppose unpopular Labour policies after they've tested the wind. This is pretty straightforward: I would simply weigh what they're offering now against what they actually did last time they're in power (along with the philosophy underpinning all that: what they now believe, and what they now say about what they did before. cf Labour and Clause IV). Opposing ID cards and the DNA database, or fighting one by-election against draconian terror laws, or saying "I'm a big fan of Thatcher but I'm not really a Thatcherite because I'm not all that strong on ideology", is laughably insufficient -- especially in view of the fact that last time they were in power, they passed the violently anti-liberty 1994 Criminal Justice Act (actively sponsored by the current Tory leaders or their mentors) and introduced even more draconian anti-terror measures (e.g. censoring Sinn Fein). So that is a pretty simple equation.
More broadly, your question requires a much longer answer, but it essentially comes down to the same thing: weighing their promises against their record. Simply claiming to be a "compassionate conservative" is nowhere near enough (George Bush also claimed this). Again, I'd weigh their promises against their record. Last time they were in, they slashed public funding for science, universities, schools, social workers, trains, local education authorities, mental health care, etc etc. A few vague promises about needing to "care" more does not stack up against this, and in some cases the contradiction is actively repugnant. For example, their scapegoating of social workers (after they ran the profession down systematically for years) is repellant.
I will be voting LibDem, who obviously have no national record (not in living memory anyway), but they do have good local & European records and a solid history of coming up with some of the better ideas that the other parties have then taken and implemented. And they haven't trashed public services (like the Tories) or civil liberties (like Labour).
Sorry if you think it's unfair of me, but I think anyone who claims that the Tories are a completely different party simply because a few years have passed, and that we should therefore just ignore their record because they have to be better than Labour, is talking utter tripe and does not realize the continuity that exists within a political party. As bad as Labour are on civil liberties, I do not think that this is a reason to throw them out without considering what we are replacing them with. In particular, consider what the Tories did to our education system. By all means, replace them with something better, but it has to be something better.
Fairy snuff. You won't convince me on progressive taxation because I'm a misanthrope with no social conscience. I only feel obliged to pay taxes for services I personally receive/have received - viz education, armed forces, national insurance etc. I can't accept that ability to pay more = obligation to pay more. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is anathema to me. Paying more than my share seems to me like my money is being taken off me to give to someone who would otherwise steal it from me out of need (and I'm only half joking) - even if it's in society's best interests I object to it, it feels little better than outright theft. What can I say, I'm one of Thatcher's children :-)
As an example, I fully intended to vote Lib Dem last time because I leaned their way on most things aside from taxation. Then I did the sums and worked out that their local income tax would have cost me twice what I was paying in Council Tax, and I felt that I was getting ripped off to start with. There probably wouldn't have been that much disparity but owing to the ludicrous house price inflation in recent years I can only afford a Band A house, so the gap is accentuated.
I believe that it's at least partially true that the reason Conservative administrations have to slash public services is because Labour deliberately bloats them to reduce unemployment
by creating unnecessary jobs (which also creates a culture of dependency of employment in the public sector gives those working in said jobs a vested interest in voting Labour).
Anyway, I can't stand Cameron, because he's entirely focussed on getting power for its own sake, rather than for what he can achieve when he gets there (as was Blair). I don't believe that he will 'revert to type', because that assumes he actually has an ideology he wants to act on, and I don't believe he does. If I'm unfairly maligning him he should put up some real policies - if he did and Labour 'stole' them, what would that matter? It's the laws that get passed that matter, not which party implemented them.
Cameron is so scared that policies like offering genuine tax cuts, reducing public spending to something sustainable, cutting the size of the public services to only what they need to be, or reintroducing Grammar schools nationally will make him an easy target for criticism that he refuses to - he'd polarize opinion and he'd rather pretend to be all things to all men for as long as possible. Accordingly, I, as a natural Conservative voter, can't see a single good reason to vote for him. He offers me precisely nothing. No previous Conservative leader in my lifetime has appealed to me less.
I would like to vote Lib Dem, because I want to send a signal that I want PR and genuine protection of civil liberties and I want to break the two party hegemony we're stuck with. I refuse to believe that the political spectrum is defined by the gap between Brown and Cameron. We need genuine choice, not just a series of indistinguishable centre-right parties.
Trouble is, there's little point in doing that in my constituency because my Labour MP is in a pretty safe seat and the Lib Dem candidate has precisely zero chance of coming anywhere except third. The Tories held the seat until 1997 so they might be able to win it back. You may not like holding your nose and voting in a negative fashion against someone rather than for someone, but our first past the post system mandates it.
So there's my dilemma; throw my vote down the toilet by voting Lib Dem, or vote for a Conservative party I don't like, but which might win, and would be marginally more palatable than the current lot, at the cost of sending out a message that I agree with the way they're going about things, which I certainly don't.
Seems like your dilemma re voting is either to vote to send a message you believe in (LibDem) or to achieve a result that is the lesser of two evils (Tory).
Personally my view is that your vote has near zero probability of actually swinging a result (Minnesota senate race aside), but as a message, it is always effective. Of course this view comes in for some flak from time to time (e.g. when Bush won in 2000, Nader voters were regarded by Democrats as outright satanists). But I think mostly, all you are ever doing by voting is sending a message, and fixating on arbitrary collective goals (like unseating a particular MP) is pretty much a delusional fantasy of grandeur for an individual (it's different if you are an activist and therefore actually have a chance of changing a mass result). Anyway, that's just me. I've never much liked tactical voting.
Regarding the tax thing, I don't see it as "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" so much as that the relationship between money and utility is non-linear for the individual: giving up 1% of your income is going to hurt you a lot more than someone for whom first-class airfares are chump change, and a lot less than someone who's on the breadline. By recognizing this, you can persuade the electorate as a whole to fund much better services -- such as education, research, policing, etc (which the private sector simply could not provide, lacking the economies of scale) -- than if tax was set at a flat percentage rate or a fixed sum (in which case you would get truly minimal services, since the majority of people are poorer than you and would not accept the same rate you would; therefore you would suffer, because the extra wealth in your pocket would be insufficient to buy comparable services for yourself). So it is realpolitik, no doubt about it. No-one is patriotic about taxes, as Orwell said. But I believe you when you say that I can't convince you, so I won't bang on the drum ;)
ack, obviously I meant that the other way around. (or did I)