What you are telling me in effect is that all the exchanges I have are ultimately disingenuous with the MP. It also tells me that the MP represents the party and not me (as they are acting as nothing more than a glorified public relations officer).
This undermines the entire point of the process and only further degrades public trust.
Here on the other side of the pond, writing our so-called Representatives to complain, produces the same kind of result. If your rep has a (D) by his or her name, you'll get back one form-letter, and if your rep has a (R) by his or her name, you'll get back the other form-letter. There's no attempt to address the points you might bring up. You write--and they respond back with their pre-baked talking points.
A politician is like ROM: Once it's written, that's it, you have to swap it out with a different ROM if you want even one of its lines of programming changed.
What you describe is the representative democratic system. Misunderstanding is the source of any distrust. It is frustrating to write to an MP only to be given boilerplate in return. But setting your expectations and continuing to advocate for your point of views is the only way to participate. One letter won't change anything, and how could it? There are other people writing opposing points of view. It's taken in the aggregate.
The "coordinated corporate fascists" (your words not mine) are providing a platform where I can challenge the the state and be seen by potentially millions of people.
The response is the same boilerplate responses I used to get when I used to write to my MP. This is why I just gave up emailing my MP. You are essentially pleading with someone to reverse their previous position when they have no incentive do to so.
Most content websites that are managed by a organisation such as a council/government or are usually driven by some CMS software. Updates are usually done by a content/social media team. These people are also posting the updates to twitter.
It isn't the late 90s/2000s anymore where people are uploading HTML files over FTP.
> Presumably many customers pay with a debit/credit card already so there's some PII on file?
Yes. But I think most of the zero logs providers will remove the identifiable payments details after a certain about of time. e.g. Mullvad have a specific policy relating to what is stored and retention time (I am not affiliated with Mullvad, I just use their service).
> Even better, they could have created a non-governmental agency to exchange tokens and urls to prevent the privacy issue of the government knowing which sites people are visiting.
The privacy issue would still exist. They can tie your online activity directly to these tokens.
not with a non-governmental agency doing the exchange. All they would see are tokens going out. You would need the non-governmental agency to share the urls with the government agency for the activity to be tied directly which would undermine the entire purpose of that architecture.
> You would need the non-governmental agency to share the urls with the government agency for the activity to be tied directly which would undermine the entire purpose of that architecture.
Which would absolutely would happen. The authorities will ask the non-gov agency for the details and they will be provided.
that's like stating that there's no value in creating a financial regulator to set interest rates because the government will just tell them to set them to whatever they demand.
Firstly, I didn't even mention what the value might be. I simply pointed out that the "independent organisation" would not really be independent. Which means it won't protect anyone's privacy. Which undermines the entire point of having it. Therefore it has no value.
Secondly, it is the central bank that sets the interest rate. In the UK that is the Bank of England. Secondly the government sets their mandate. They have a mandate of keeping the inflation at 2%. One of the mechanisms they to control inflation is the interest rate.
Moreover the "Chair of the Court of Directors" (the Chairman) of the Bank of England is appointed by the Crown (the King) at the advice of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The government both sets the mandate and effectively selects the Chairman. So while they don't directly set the interest rate, they do set the mandate and who runs the Central Bank.
BTW the Bank of England is failing to keep the inflation rate at 2% (and for some time) as it is currently 3.4%. So we can see how well that is going.
We've not had a black wednesday since this change. It has value because governments cannot be trusted to directly control interest rates. The indirection has value, politicians are forced to spend political capital in order to wrest control.
> So we can see how well that is going.
Still better than black wednesday and Norman Lamont.
I was actually directly addressing your comment about the your independent org for these identity tokens. There is no value because it cannot guarantee privacy. Therefore it has no value (at least not to me).
Secondly you seemed to not understand who set the interest rate but you are now confident in telling me about the perceived benefits of having a central bank set the interest rate. Which tells me that you just looked this all up about 10 minutes ago.
> It has value because governments cannot be trusted to directly control interest rates.
Neither can the central bank. As they are failing at their mandate of keeping inflation at 2%. The reported inflation rate is probably lower than the actual inflation rate due to CPI calculation wankery.
> The indirection has value, politicians are forced to spend political capital in order to wrest control.
To who does it have value? It doesn't benefit me (or most regular people) to have a 2% inflation rate and relatively low interest rates. It eats away the value of my savings. I now buy Gold (it hit a record high price today) and the value of my Gold and Silver has more than doubled in 3 years.
> Still better than black wednesday and Norman Lamont.
Saying it is better than a total crash isn't saying much.
Instead we have a gradual devaluing of the currency, many consumer goods are of far poorer quality (I repair my own vehicle and it is often better to get a reconditioned part than a new one), there is also "shrinkflation".
If we had a crash I actually think it would at least provide a wake up call and spur some real meaningful change.
It appears that you have not yet learned the lesson that perfect is the enemy of good. Just because a system doesn't meet your high expectations, doesn't mean it doesn't have value.
I'm also having trouble squaring your keen interest in the economic woes of inflation combined with your desire to have a stock market crash. Perhaps you are unaware of your bias given your portfolio, wishing to enact misery upon millions for your own personal gain. The last big crash was a major contributer the second world war, so be careful for the "meaningful change" you wish for.
> Which tells me that you just looked this all up about 10 minutes ago.
you should learn the etiquette round here, cos that ain't it. Either treat fellow commenters and their perspectives with a modicum of respect or go back to facebook. BTW, that was a swing and a miss, I lived through that period.
Don't misunderstand when I don't reply or even read your next response. Its because I don't want to talk to you anymore, because you're not interesting.
> It appears that you have not yet learned the lesson that perfect is the enemy of good. Just because a system doesn't meet your high expectations, doesn't mean it doesn't have value.
That isn't what you are proposing. What you are proposing is something which has no value. I've told you why it is pointless. Saying it "has value" repeatedly doesn't change the fact that it is pointless.
> I'm also having trouble squaring your keen interest in the economic woes of inflation combined with your desire to have a stock market crash. Perhaps you are unaware of your bias given your portfolio, wishing to enact misery upon millions for your own personal gain. The last big crash was a major contributer the second world war, so be careful for the "meaningful change" you wish for.
I love it when people accuse me of wishing harm on others. I would prefer not to have to buy gold/silver and rather just put cash in my savings.
I told you why a big crash might be preferable (in the long term). Sometimes a bit of a reset and a big disaster will bring long term positive change as things will actually be fixed properly.
> you should learn the etiquette round here, cos that ain't it. Either treat fellow commenters and their perspectives with a modicum of respect or go back to facebook. BTW, that was a swing and a miss, I lived through that period.
You obviously didn't understand what you are talking about. It such a basic mistake. I pointed it out and then you pretended to understand how it worked. So it was obvious you looked up it up after my reply. Whether or not you lived through the period is irrelevant.
So complaining about my supposed lack of etiquette is simply a deflection. You could have just admitted you were wrong.
> Don't misunderstand when I don't reply or even read your next response. Its because I don't want to talk to you anymore, because you're not interesting.
So when you throw insults at people (calling me boring) it is okay, because you are doing it. Gotcha :D. I love double standards.
the UK already forces ISPs to hold a database of the hosts you have visited in the last three years. By implementing the laws in the way they currently are doing undermines their own legislation by pushing UK users into having a tangible reason to hide their their browsing patterns from UK networks by funneling their traffic through VPNs or other proxies to avoid age gates.
Tin foil aside, my issue is that they're not even good at what they're trying to do. Their policy is inconsistent with their aims and lacks technical strategy. You think they're worried about dissenters when in practice they're more worried about elections in 2029 and whatever pearl clutching users post on mumsnet.
> the UK already forces ISPs to hold a database of the hosts you have visited in the last three years. By implementing the laws in the way they currently are doing undermines their own legislation by pushing UK users into having a tangible reason to hide their their browsing patterns from UK networks by funneling their traffic through VPNs or other proxies to avoid age gates.
People had tangible reasons before having to avoid age-gates. You should not have people spying on your online activity.
> Tin foil aside, my issue is that they're not even good at what they're trying to do. Their policy is inconsistent with their aims and lacks technical strategy.
Good, I don't want them to be good at what they are doing.
> You think they're worried about dissenters when in practice they're more worried about elections in 2029 and whatever pearl clutching users post on mumsnet.
They can be be worried about both. They are capable of being concerned about two different things at the same time.
> If you do not agree with an amendment then write to your MP, write to the ministers concerned. If you do not tell them your concerns they will not know.
It is an utter waste of time. MPs already know about the concerns. They don't care. I wrote to my MP about many of these concerns in the past. You either get ignored, told you are enabling pedos, told there will be protections put in place (ignoring the whole point is that I don't trust the government), or you get a boilerplate reply.
Moreover The vast majority of people (unfortunately this includes people in my own family) have been propagandised to agree with all iffy censorship, monitoring and other spooky nonsense the UK state engages with.
I don't think it is really a fair test because I doubt the browser is going to use any of the video decoding hardware that maybe available. I suspect if you used something native then any video decoding hardware would be used correctly.
This undermines the entire point of the process and only further degrades public trust.