[HN Gopher] UK to depart from GDPR
___________________________________________________________________
UK to depart from GDPR
Author : bencollier49
Score : 403 points
Date : 2021-03-12 09:43 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lawgazette.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lawgazette.co.uk)
| ur-whale wrote:
| > UK to depart from GDPR
|
| Good for them.
|
| Looks like in the UK there will be a lot less time wasting
| clicking on useless "Accept all cookies or else" disclaimers pop-
| ups.
| Nemo157 wrote:
| Just block them in your ad blocker, because they must be opt-
| in, by not interacting with them you are asserting your right
| to not be tracked.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| These useless pop-ups are only there because the GDPR wasn't
| enforced properly. The majority of tracking consent popups you
| see are not compliant with the regulation. A compliant pop-up
| should make the opt-out option as easy to use as the opt-in
| option.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Hmm, this would be good for business if it had never been an
| issue. It looks like the plan is for this to just be a divergent
| set of regulations which is not particularly of any general
| utility.
|
| Maybe if they harmonize along CCPA or something it would be of
| value.
| lucasnortj wrote:
| Yes! We've finally taken back control of our data!
| earnubs wrote:
| Link says Government sent a "first signal of its intention",
| title says "UK to depart".
|
| Comments skip straight to how dumb we all are.
|
| :shrug:
| thinkingemote wrote:
| It's like this for most stories and subjects to be honest. It's
| just that technology news has more people knowing what's
| actually going on.
| turkey99 wrote:
| ICO pretty much said they were only going to enforce it like
| previous data protection laws anyway.
| jpxw wrote:
| Good riddance. GDPR is an insane, Byzantine mess of legalese,
| which maps poorly onto reality.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| > Good riddance. GDPR is an insane, Byzantine mess of legalese,
| which maps poorly onto reality.
|
| Have you even read it? The GDPR is a quite straightforward
| piece of legislation.
| danmur wrote:
| Any time 'adequate' is the bar it's not great
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| One of the most obvious political impacts of Brexit is that the
| government will feel obliged to demonstrate some kind of benefit.
| Since real benefits are difficult--verging on impossible--to
| find, it seems likely the government is going to head in the
| direction of fabricating benefits. So - slash some regulation,
| present it as "freeing up business", and ignoring the wider
| impact.
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| ,Meanwhile one of the architects of the GDPR, German MEP Axel
| Voss, last week called for the regulation to be updated to take
| into account developments such as blockchain technology...'
|
| What does that have to do with personal data? Sounds like keyword
| stuffing
| tremon wrote:
| Blockchain data is immutable after it's been signed. If PII
| ends up in blockchain data, which is not unthinkable for e.g.
| financial transactions, there is no way to comply with data
| deletion requests, which the GDPR mandates.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| Axel Voss wasn't even one of the GDPR's architects. He was
| trying to kill it before it was born.
| smartbit wrote:
| Documentary _Democracy: Im Rausch der Daten (2015)_ [0] gives
| insight in the some of the main characters _during_ the GDPR
| negotations. It films behind closed doors where the real
| negotiations took place. Highly recommended for anyone
| interested in EU politics and in particular for those with
| interest in privacy.
|
| Quotes from Alex Voss in today's Financial Times [1]
|
| [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5053042/
|
| [1] https://archive.is/P1gqZ
| [deleted]
| flimflamm wrote:
| Should we just switch to France as a main language in the EU
| countries? Oui.
| benbristow wrote:
| Can we get a rid of the cookie notifications next? They're so
| annoying and usually end up conflicting with Adblockers and
| breaking pages because they're not fully blocked.
| glsdfgkjsklfj wrote:
| elitist nonsense.
|
| They ought to be annoying. so sites that do not track you for
| advertising can just add your cookie when you actively sign in,
| without the annoying popup on first visit, and receive more
| traffic because they are less-annoying.
| benbristow wrote:
| Get real, most sites aren't going to do that when they can
| get away with putting a modal/banner up. It's the end-user
| that gets the brunt.
|
| Most of the modals are full of dark patterns that basically
| force you to accept the cookies etc. unless you go through
| multiple different screens and checkboxes.
| kmlx wrote:
| the lightest of articles based on a single quote.
|
| we'll wait for the actual documents, but in the meantime:
|
| 1. does this mean no more cookie stuff, and no more "click here
| to accept" modals? if yes, then it's a huge win. years of useless
| clicking, and countless Mwh will be saved in the long run.
|
| 2. will this mean no more protections whatsoever? this is not so
| great imo, and sincerely impossible in today's world of Big Tech
| legislation (especially in the highly litigious Europe).
|
| 3. what about the right to forget? will they touch that part as
| well?
| tomelders wrote:
| GDPR should have been implemented as a standard that browser
| vendors should implement. e.g.
|
| ``` window.getPersonalDataPreferences() ```
|
| It should only prompt the user to submit their preferences if no
| preferences were detected, or a specific permission is required
| to allow certain features.
|
| People may argue that everyone will just turn everything off
| everywhere and forget about it, and I would argue "so what?".
|
| The burden of GDPR has been dumped on the wrong people and has
| become so tedious to administer it's basically useless and a
| massive waste of time and energy.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The GDPR is not a cookie law. It's not even an internet law.
|
| The GDPR applies when _any_ processing of _any_ data is done
| regardless of context.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| We had that in the form a "Do Not Track" header and not only
| did nobody obey it, but malicious actors actually used it as an
| extra fingerprinting vector to track you even more.
| oytis wrote:
| Well, we'll see. The pandemic has shown that tracking can be a
| huge economic advantage - and it's likely not the last pandemic
| we encounter. OTOH targeting adtech can redirect resources to
| some more potentially useful areas.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| I don't think GDPR applies to governments anyway, does it?
| oytis wrote:
| But you don't necessarily want tracking infrastructure being
| built by governments completely, that would be pretty
| inefficient. As far as I understand the China case at least
| (I'm not an expert here though, and have never been to
| China), it's largely started with a commercial app (WeChat).
|
| Not to say that the necessary technology (big data, ML etc.)
| is to a great extent driven by commercial applications - and
| businesses should have economic incentives to develop them
| further.
| krageon wrote:
| It does not and it never has.
| libertine wrote:
| Of course it does, and they are liable for it.
| Daho0n wrote:
| It does. For example there're GDPR compliance info and
| access to delete etc. your info in all Danish governmental
| databases that aren't for national security or covered by
| GDPRs legitimate interest. You could argue if it works 100%
| but saying it doesn't cover and impact government isn't
| true.
| ewidar wrote:
| It depends on what you mean:
|
| GDPR does not prevent EU government from handling their
| citizens personal data for bureaucracy.
|
| However a good example of GDPR applying to the government is
| the COVID tracking app built by (for?) the French government,
| which still has to provide ways to opt out from tracking +
| clean your personal data.
|
| I think that's what the GP was talking about.
| sseneca wrote:
| Huh. I guess this'll be what pushes me to finally figure out a
| proper backup system for my server, so I can trust it with all my
| photos etc, and remove them from "The Cloud"
| corobo wrote:
| Now we got rid of the EU protections the Tory govt is going to
| stripmine the country for cash.
|
| Imagine the desire for wealth and power at the expense of others
| being defined as a mental illness that needed treating instead of
| giving these cunts more power.
| aembleton wrote:
| What did the EU stop the Tory government from stripmining?
| corobo wrote:
| Data, did I comment on the wrong thread?
| aembleton wrote:
| No, I don't think you did.
|
| Why didn't the EU prevent the UK from selling/sharing 1.6
| million patient records in 2016?
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2086454-revealed-
| google...
| corobo wrote:
| Got me good there. What a fun conversation this was.
|
| Consider me zinged. I knew you were setting me up for
| something.
| [deleted]
| drusepth wrote:
| While GDPR's intentions were good, the implementation is
| hilariously vague/wide and has had a chilling effect on small and
| large businesses worldwide since going into effect (not to
| mention the additional costs immediately levied on every business
| to develop, verify, and maintain GDPR infrastructure).
|
| I'm sure this is a minority opinion on HN but I'm glad to see
| some countries pulling back, especially in light of recent calls
| to expand GDPR even further (!).
| danpalmer wrote:
| I'm broadly in favour of any consumer protective legislation like
| the GDPR, but I feel that the GDPR has been misinterpreted by
| many, in both directions.
|
| Those who ultimately respect user privacy and want to do the
| right thing are often paralysed by process and making sure that
| they absolutely can't be sued, rather than being able to show
| respect for data and best practices but still getting things
| done.
|
| Those who ultimately don't respect user privacy use it as an
| excuse. They plaster their services with GDPR notices, and then
| ignore the spirit of the law and sweep up all the data they want,
| regardless of whether they need it or should have it, but of
| course this is invisible to users so nothing happens about it.
|
| I wonder if this disconnect comes from the enforcement? I'd like
| to see a few high-profile cases that set out some precedents for
| what is and what isn't a breach of GDPR.
| choeger wrote:
| Don't forget the people that use it as an excuse to not do what
| they simply don't _want_ to do. "Sorry, we cannot contact you
| via email, GDPR, you understand? You have to come to us and
| have an awkward sales talk in order to get your trivial
| information."
| khalilravanna wrote:
| > too many businesses and organisations are reluctant to use data
| - either because they don't understand the rules or are afraid of
| inadvertently breaking them
|
| I'm sure they'll feel _much_ better when there's _yet another_
| set of rules and laws they'll have to follow. Oof.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _new information commissioner to focus not just on privacy but
| on the use of data for 'economic and social goals'._
|
| Congratulations Britons, your data's back on sale.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It's not surprising considering this is the same government who
| used such data to create targeted campaigns to win the
| referendum in the first place.
|
| edit: wow that's a lot of downvotes in a short space of time.
| Maybe I should back my point up with some evidence to prove I'm
| not talking out of my arse (though it was widely reported at
| the time so I'm surprised anyone would disagree with me):
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44966969
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| I wonder if we will now see a situation where British companies
| will be forced to move their cloud out of GB, to i.e. Ireland
| if they want to do business with the rest of Europe ?
|
| The thing is, even though the GB decides to ditch GDPR, they're
| still bound by it if they want to do business with the rest of
| Europe, just like the US is bound by it.
| alphadevx wrote:
| 100% this. Already happening (I moved all of mine from London
| to Frankfurt last year, fully expecting this to happen). DCs
| in the UK will suffer.
| nicbou wrote:
| It's already happening. I work with a few affiliate
| platforms, amd many of them sent an email requesting me to
| update my invoices. They moved to Germany or some other EU
| country.
| [deleted]
| dageshi wrote:
| Sure, but the large number of businesses who are UK only
| won't have to deal with it.
|
| Instead of frontloading compliance for any new venture, they
| can build for the UK first then work on compliance if and
| when they go for EU business.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| With the difference that companies can now move Britons into
| the cohort of users whose data you can sell and do things
| with you probably didn't quite consent to in any meaningful
| way. And as Europeans we will probably get a couple more
| websites that will just tell us to sod off (in proper British
| English parlance now) because of our data protection laws.
| You know, the kind of message that already pops up when you
| search for some recipe and end up on an American website with
| good SEO or some topic featured on a local news outlet in the
| US.
| mmrezaie wrote:
| We are counting on this. Actually investments in Sweden for
| data centers has rissen more than 20-40 percent at the normal
| rate.
|
| I know that some purchases of cloud services are halted for
| now to be sure about this. Data movement is going to be
| increasingly an important matter. It should have been from
| the begining but here we are.
| Jonnax wrote:
| So with a quick search online, I found this site:
|
| https://incountry.com/blog/data-residency-laws-by-country-
| ov...
|
| _Organisations which receive and hold any of regulated data
| types to follow the GDPR requirements. According to GDPR,
| companies have to keep the data secure inside the EU and if
| the data is to be transferred outside of the UE, then it can
| only be transferred to countries or organisations that have
| signed up to equivalent privacy protection. "_
|
| So the EU has all the power here to say that the UK doesn't
| meet their standards and require businesses to transfer their
| data.
|
| However, I would guess that most international organisations
| would have already moved their EU customer data out of the
| UK.
|
| There were years of uncertainty with the Brexit negotiations,
| keeping data in the UK would have too much risk.
|
| Plus many other countries have data residency laws, so it's
| not like a foreign concept to international businesses.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Is anyone surprised?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this.
|
| On the one hand, I think GDPR is a great step towards stopping
| companies hoarding your data and holding you hostage to it. On
| the other, main GDPR change is those awful 'hand over data /
| pretend you're not' dialogue boxes. When I'm feeling strong, I
| look for the 'reject / object / blah' box, but often I don't find
| it in me to resist anymore.
|
| So maybe it's not awful they're reshaping GDPR.
| beforeolives wrote:
| This won't be a change aiming to improve your web browsing user
| experience. It will likely be a change to reduce your rights
| and legal protections.
| martin_a wrote:
| The GDPR sets a pretty straight border for this.
|
| No active (this does NOT include "by using this site you
| accept...") approval = no permission to collect data and give
| it to third parties.
|
| That's the law. But we'll still need some hard work and hefty
| fines to make everyone obey it.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Right - the law sounds good. But it's not the practice I see
| on the t'Internet.
| martin_a wrote:
| Then push it!
|
| I've done this before and there are active cases running
| with the regulatory offices in Germany.
|
| It's a slow process for sure but it'll get faster and words
| will spread, that people are using their rights.
| krageon wrote:
| > often I don't find it in me to resist anymore.
|
| All you need to do is not say yes. The easiest way to do this
| is filter cookiebars/walls/whatever in as many places as you
| can. Without an answer, the answer is no.
| bawolff wrote:
| The cookie boxes are silly and hardly represent informed
| consent. It should be the browsers job to do this.
|
| I remember it used to be a thing in the netscape navigator days
| until everyone got sick of it.
| m12k wrote:
| 'too many businesses and organisations are reluctant to use data
| - either because they don't understand the rules or are afraid of
| inadvertently breaking them'
|
| TBH I'm glad companies stay away from my data if they don't know
| how to get consent, store data securely, or even what those
| things mean.
| downandout wrote:
| _TBH I 'm glad companies stay away from my data if they don't
| know how to get consent, store data securely, or even what
| those things mean._
|
| "Storing data securely" and "getting consent" are both wildly
| different from full compliance with the onerous requirements of
| GDPR. You can do both of these things in absolute good faith
| and still be in violation. Unless you have a team of legal
| scholars working for you, odds are that you are in violation of
| at least one provision of this massive, unwieldy legislation -
| no matter how respective of user privacy you are.
|
| That is why the UK is abandoning it. GDPR, as written, is a
| business-killing mess.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Yes this sounds like a great thing
| lanevorockz wrote:
| This is an illusion, only thing that happened is that you only
| get access to websites if you give away your GDPR consent. I
| love the ignorance of people over here thinking that GDPR is
| nothing more than just that accept button that people click in
| order to get access to the websites.
| dundarious wrote:
| That is a huge and often unacknowledged factor. However,
| there are small (smaller than many think) victories even in
| having those click barriers -- a few percent more people can
| choose not to click. And unrelated to the GP's point and your
| response, but the ability to ask for all your data is a huge
| benefit.
| [deleted]
| rlpb wrote:
| > ...you only get access to websites if you give away your
| GDPR consent.
|
| If a model box only has "I consent" and "Learn more" buttons,
| then I don't consider clicking on "I consent" to mean freely
| given GDPR consent. Since it's the only reasonable way of
| viewing the website, and the GDPR doesn't permit a consent-
| wall, it's non-consent, and any use of my personal data
| following that event remains illegal.
|
| It's not a problem with the GDPR; it's a problem with the ICO
| failing to put a stop to this.
| dheera wrote:
| If there is a modal box I usually right click and get rid
| of the modal box with dev tools.
|
| That way I never gave any consent.
|
| Nowadays I have browser plugins that do that for me, but
| same idea.
|
| In any case I block cookies on all sites except for a few
| whitelisted ones so big "ha" to them if they think they can
| cookie me up. "Functional cookies" my ass. The sites work
| just fine without them.
| anoncake wrote:
| Do you really think those websites actually check if you
| "gave consent" before tracking you?
| dheera wrote:
| It feels good to not agree successfully in the lack of a
| "I don't agree" button. I block their cookies anyway. :)
| I need to find better ways to mess with their
| fingerprinting though, or maybe throw back some bogus
| cookies at them with badly-formatted data instead of
| blocking them.
| pasabagi wrote:
| Is this something people do? Is it possible for a user to
| edit a cookie in a malicious way? Do servers typically
| trust cookies they have placed on a user's machine?
| Nursie wrote:
| > only thing that happened is that you only get access to
| websites if you give away your GDPR consent
|
| Well that seems untrue, as someone that regularly either
| outright declines, or goes through and chooses "functional
| only".
|
| I do occasionally see websites that say "we no longer serve
| the european market". That's a shame but it's up to them.
| Macha wrote:
| Yeah, the only sites I really come across that do that are
| local/regional US news sites, which by their nature I'm not
| really _that_ interested in, I've just been linked from
| reddit/HN.
| kalleboo wrote:
| > _thinking that GDPR is nothing more than just that accept
| button that people click in order to get access to the
| websites_
|
| I know of small companies that before GDPR didn't really
| consider the implications of private data at all. They'd just
| let their SQL databases grow forever (mark as delete and have
| "script to actually delete the data" as a TODO that never
| happened), had random backups lying around on dev machines.
|
| GDPR forced them to actual define policy, start deleting old
| data that was no longer relevant, strip private data from
| developer test sets.
|
| It was a bit more work, and adds a small bit of friction, but
| these are still important things!
|
| Forcing cooks in restaurants to wash their hands after using
| the bathroom also adds friction to the process but is
| similarly important.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _GDPR forced them to actual define policy, start deleting
| old data that was no longer relevant, strip private data
| from developer test sets._
|
| That is the theory. The reality is that many small
| businesses don't even know the GDPR exists. Others are not
| complying because they think they will get away with it,
| and they are probably right. The rules are so ambiguous in
| some important ways that even those who do intend to comply
| might not actually be compliant and won't find out until a
| regulator intervenes. And all of that together means that a
| small business that does try hard and become compliant is
| at a significant competitive disadvantage.
|
| To be clear, I am a firm believer in strong privacy
| protections, and my own businesses seek to be in the latter
| category. But the GDPR is flawed in important ways, and
| future regulation deviating from it is not necessarily a
| bad thing. Obviously it depends on whether the deviation is
| of the selling-out or the fixing-problems variety. Though
| admittedly, with the current UK government, I fear the
| former is much more likely.
| asymmetric wrote:
| In what important ways is the GDPR flawed?
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| You are conflating GDPR and the annoying cookie dialogs.
|
| GDPR regulates, among other things, how information is stored
| and deleted on servers. I have worked at multiple companies
| in both Europe and the US who take this very seriously and
| has definitely altered their practices based on this.
|
| For example, pre-GDPR, we would "mark as deleted" but not
| delete. Now we delete.
| harperlee wrote:
| The website accept button is not in the GDPR. [EDIT: it's a
| different law]
|
| GDPR covers way more requirements regarding data management.
| You need complete control over the lifecycle of sensitive
| data, exhaustive documentation of data transformations, you
| have concrete obligations regarding disclosure of incidents,
| data removal, limitations of for what data is used, user
| consent management, and the obligation to have people
| personally liable (which is big, just look at AML regulations
| to see the effect when not only the fuzzy concept of "the
| company" is liable).
| macinjosh wrote:
| It does not matter since it is a consequence of the GDPR
| anyway. Regulators can't just push aside negative
| consequences of their regulations by simply saying "that's
| not what we meant nor the outcome we wanted". This is why
| regulations fail. Regulators think they are providing
| incentives for good things and disincentives for bad
| things. In reality, they are just perverting incentives. To
| fix those problems more rules are added, and the cycle goes
| on. Pretty soon you have a foot high stack of regulations
| that small business owners can't afford to consider or
| follow so they just don't exist at some point.
| harperlee wrote:
| Sorry for not being clear: my point was not "the law does
| not explicitly ask for the button, that's just a
| misapplication" but more something like "the button thing
| is another completely different law, GDPR has way more
| topics and thus when you say 'I love the ignorance of
| people over here thinking that GDPR is nothing more than
| just that accept button' I disagree wholeheartedly".
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I was thinking - people are mixing up
| GDPR with the "cookies law" that mandated the [Accept
| All]/[Maze of Settings] choice on all websites that want to
| use cookies. The cookies mess was pre-GDPR.
| switch007 wrote:
| I have never observed a non-techie do anything other than
| blindly click the call to action (i.e. agree to everything).
| The entire scheme seems sneakily designed to actually
| encourage users to give more and explicit consent, avoiding
| the situation where consent was a grey area. It seems to have
| been spun to a great extent.
| kalleboo wrote:
| > _The entire scheme seems sneakily designed to actually
| encourage users to give more and explicit consent_
|
| The law itself says that the default option should be to
| opt-out. Any site that doesn't have precisely equally
| prominent "agree to all" and "deny all" buttons violate the
| GDPR.
|
| The problem seems to be in the complete lack of
| enforcement.
| devonbleak wrote:
| My biggest annoyance lately is having to go set my cookie
| preferences on every. single. site. If only there was some
| sort of browser standard that I could set in the
| preferences there and sites would just obey it....
| thwarted wrote:
| Remember P3P?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P
| knorker wrote:
| You mean like how we've been able to set cookie behavior
| in the browser since cookies were invented?
|
| Konqueror even had "confirm cookies" as default for a
| while back then.
| ysavir wrote:
| I think they're referencing the Do Not Track header.
| knorker wrote:
| Ok. So we already have do not track and cookie control.
| So what the hell is the EU doing?
| Lapoino wrote:
| At least in SAP (german softwarecompany 100.000 employees) we
| have to follow gdrp very stricktly and we do.
|
| I don't know if that was the case before gdrp but we have to
| centraly clarify if and when we store user data, what we do
| with it and we have to show that we can delete user data if
| requested.
|
| Not sure how far small companies go through this thow.
| closeparen wrote:
| Consider lawful basis. Does your processing fall under the
| lawful basis you think it does? Who the hell knows. Making an
| educated guess as to what the regulators and courts will think
| is legal scholarship, one of the most expensive professional
| services money can buy. And even if you get billed for hundreds
| of hours of the most premium legal minds thinking about it they
| can still be wrong.
|
| Words like "reasonable" and "legitimate" in the law are not
| something it is safe for a layperson to reason about. They have
| specific meanings depending on the nuances of case law,
| judicial understanding of legislative intent, ideological
| leanings of the judge you happen to draw, etc.
|
| No company is competent at this, some just have enough money at
| stake and enough to spend on lawyers that they're willing to
| risk it.
| Nursie wrote:
| That's why the first line of remedy is to help the company
| achieve compliance. Good faith on the part of the company
| goes a long way too.
|
| The law is not like code. Thank god.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| Law is not like code but the GDPR is so vague and open to
| interpretation that it gives almost no real guidance and
| instead puts you at the whims of whatever the current
| enforcer thinks.
| Nursie wrote:
| It gives plenty of guidance and the 'enforcer', if one
| ever appears (vanishingly unlikely) is bound to be
| collaborative rather than adversarial, at least in the
| early stages.
|
| I really don't get the fear mongering over this.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| Several companies have already been fined by the various
| country level data protection authorities that enforce
| the GDPR. So I'm not sure what you're talking about.
| loopz wrote:
| So? Is it better they leave security holes wide open,
| share private data or don't practice data minimization.
| klingon77 wrote:
| Apparently those supporting GDPR would rather have the EU
| fine Google than to ensure small businesses can survive and
| be productive with technology, even when the fine to Google
| is a small amount compared to how much Google makes in the
| EU. Makes perfect sense, no?
| labawi wrote:
| Is that a sarcastic comment?
|
| Because GDPR allows for liquidating fines, even for Google.
| I believe it has a cap of 2% annual global turnover, per
| infraction, or something similar.
|
| Problem is, GDPR is not enforced. I haven't heard of small
| companies being investigated, let alone having any fines
| imposed, even when blatantly violating GDPR.
| klingon77 wrote:
| It's the law, and it places undue burden on small
| companies that may not have the technical resources to
| modify their site/apps/data as expected, as many of them
| contracted out the work initially at great expense.
|
| An email address is considered PII, so if users request
| their data be deleted, the small business is honest and
| says they can't, and the user and others raise this to
| the government, you think that small company won't be
| fined? That company, worried about doing things
| illegally, may end up giving a bunch of money to a
| contractor to fix their application- and for what? To
| allow users to request that their email address be
| anonymized or removed? That's stupid.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| If a small business cannot delete customer email address
| from their database, then it does not deserve to survive.
| It is not a rocket science and it is not unaffordable to
| have this functionality even in a custom solution.
| labawi wrote:
| I think you are describing very hypothetical situations.
|
| If you know how to get a company fined, could you please
| share, so I can report _and have action taken_ against
| companies that violate and misuse personal data?
| kaftoy wrote:
| Here(1) you have a tracker with (most) fines due to
| breaking GDPR. In my country there is a local office (all
| EU states must have one) and all citizens can file online
| complaints. In 2-3 weeks we get feedback. Real feedback.
| I have seen electricity companies being fined for sending
| the electricity bill to the wrong person by e-mail,
| thereby violating personal info security. It's all on
| this website.
|
| (1) https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
| klingon77 wrote:
| Since you want everyone to be fined, why not start with
| YCombinator? You can ask them for a list of all of their
| PII removal requests and to see proof that it was all
| removed.
|
| I'm sure that'll go over well.
|
| Then maybe you can submit an Ask HN to see how many
| startups will self-report to you.
|
| There are over 26M small businesses in the EU. You'd
| better get started...
|
| By the way, GDPR isn't just about misuse of PII, it's
| about use of PII after it's been asked to have been
| removed; and most sites use email addresses as usernames
| which are PII, so that's all over the application logs,
| comments, etc. and when people submit a PII removal
| request, you can't share or store the PII in the request
| itself, so better not use Slack, email, etc. and
| accidentally refer to the PII to be removed. If you do
| and need to follow-up again with clean-up, don't refer to
| it then either, or you could get stuck in a endless loop
| of PII removal. Also, how do you know you removed the PII
| of the user who didn't specify all of it I'm the removal
| request? You ask them for it- but does that allow the PII
| they sent at that point to be kept? I don't know!you know
| why? Because it's not fucking defined in the law clearly
| enough. What if they requested removal of data that
| wasn't their PII?
| clort wrote:
| Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it
| doesn't happen..
|
| https://gdpr-fines.inplp.com/list/
|
| https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| There's nothing written in GDPR that would prevent a small
| business from surviving and being productive. It's also
| important to understand that the law enforcement is
| business friendly in general: if you don't do stupid thing
| intentionally, but occasionally make a mistake, no one will
| punish you.
| jsty wrote:
| > And even if you get billed for hundreds of hours of the
| most premium legal minds thinking about it they can still be
| wrong.
|
| And that's if you can get said legal minds to take a firm
| position in the first place, instead of the more usual five -
| six figure "maybe"
| dkersten wrote:
| Most of these companies wouldn't know how to make much use of
| the data anyway. My experience working with companies and
| analytics (even did an analytics startup some years back) is
| that they haven't a clue about how to actually use it and just
| heard that more data is somehow better.
|
| That to me sounds like they're most likely to sell the data,
| since they don't know how to use it themselves. Better these
| companies have less data, not more.
| sharperguy wrote:
| In practice though with the GDPR, sites either just 403
| everyone in the EU to avoid complying, or just shower you in
| javascript cookie notifications, making your browsing
| experience more bloated, slow and insecure.
| joostdevries wrote:
| Are you in the EU? I'm a developer in the EU and that is
| patently not true. Developers have to have mechanisms in
| place to delete gdpr data when required and not store data
| that's not required for you goals. In my experience gdpr
| puts a real and meaningful curb on the strong impetus to
| gather everything and sell it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Developers have to have mechanisms in place to delete
| gdpr data when required and not store data that 's not
| required for you goals_
|
| Purely anecdote, but zero companies I know in Germany,
| Italy or France are doing this. (The ones in Switzerland
| are.)
|
| There is a cosmetic fix that produces an email so there
| is something to show a regulator if they come knocking.
| The logic being investing anything more than that is a
| crap shoot, given nobody knows how each of the EU's 28
| data regulators will interpret the rules.
| nolok wrote:
| You must work with some pretty poorly organised
| companies. I work with a lot of French, Belgian and
| German companies and they pretty much all have proper
| procedures and tools for this.
|
| In France in particular the right to access/change/delete
| any and all data a company has on you was there long
| before GDPR (by decades) so most serious company are well
| used and prepped for it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _pretty poorly organised companies_
|
| They range from start-ups to national champions, but I
| won't disagree with you on the poor organization of most
| European companies point. Everyone one re-papered
| existing systems to some degree of compliance. Given
| nobody agrees on what full compliance is, they're all
| right in their own ways.
| nolok wrote:
| I wasn't making a point about European companies in
| general but about the ones You work with personally.
| Because they don't seem to be like the usual norm for
| European companies, that do have procedures and tools for
| this, unlike in your experience.
| yoz-y wrote:
| The companies in France in worked for all did substantial
| work to comply with GDPR.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Everyone did substantial work. But the net effect was
| making binders of policy and PowerPoint presentations.
| It's an "impress a regulator" scheme. Not a hard
| requirements test, nor a private liability one.
| the_duke wrote:
| Many companies invested a lot of time.
|
| But from what I have seen, most of that time was spent on
| the legal and policy site, not on actually implementing
| the technical changes required to properly handle, store
| and delete data.
|
| I can absolutely guarantee you that the overwhelming
| majority EU companies could not properly carry out a GDPR
| deletion request.
| dtx1 wrote:
| That's great news if any of these companies cannot or
| won't reply to your GDPR Deletion Request you can grab a
| default payment of at least 1k Euro just for that. Please
| name them, maybe i hit the jackpot with one of them
| kergonath wrote:
| French companies do this. They did it before GDPR mostly.
| nolok wrote:
| Agreed, the right to access/change/delete any and all
| information a company stores on you predates GDPR by
| decades in France. It's not a new thing.
| kaftoy wrote:
| Also pure anecdotal, I have had GDPR interactions with
| EPIC Games (asked them to delete my account) and Blizzard
| Entertainment (asked them to retrieve my data). Both went
| well. The interaction with EPIC was manual, I had to send
| an email and got back what it looked like a personalized
| e-mail. Account seemed to be deleted.
|
| With Blizzard it went a bit different. They do have
| online automated tool to download your own data, but with
| a twist: they refused to provide what they consider
| security risk information. They did provide a lot of data
| (even years old chat logs) but did not provide the
| information I was looking for: list of processes running
| on my PC, which they scan periodically, as an anti-
| cheating mechanism. I went further and filed a GDPR
| infringement complaint to the national office but it
| failed. Last option was to sue, but I gave up.
|
| Both Epic and Blizzard are US based.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The GDPR is not a law that only regulates the internet.
|
| The GDPR applies to _all_ processing of _all_ personal data
| regardless of whether that 's pieces of paper in a filing
| cabinet or an entirely online social network.
| candiodari wrote:
| That's not true unfortunately. It has a blanket exception
| for anything remotely government related (meaning
| government itself and anyone the government authorizes),
| and in fact guarantees far _more_ and wider access to
| your most sensitive data, not less. And it allows the
| government to authorize whoever they please to not just
| keep more data about you, tighter and more closely linked
| together, but to keep this from you, and to prevent you
| from doing anything about it. Which, since the process
| now exists, they have prodigiously used.
|
| Insurance? Private doctor? Youth services? Family (or any
| other) court? Pharmacy (in most of Europe)? Police (even
| in the most trivial of cases, and without judicial
| approval, and of course without verification or recourse)
|
| Worse than that: the exception goes further than merely
| keeping data as well. Insurance company wants to
| change/add to your medical record? Immediately? Doctor?
| Court? Police? All can change your medical file, both
| adding and deleting (sometimes limited to what they added
| themselves). YOU want to change it? Not possible!
|
| Weird since insurance company access to your data, and
| "the right to be forgotten" was one of the main selling
| points of this legislation, but since insurance companies
| are semi-government in almost all of Europe these days, a
| _lot_ of them fall into the blanket exception.
|
| And of course, you yourself ... cannot access this data.
| You cannot see it (sorry "you can, unless there's a
| reason not to let you see it", wanna bet there's always a
| reason?). For particular parts (espectially names, for
| example which doctor put something there about you are
| kept secret from you). Thankfully these institutions hate
| eachother, so there is some protection left because if
| anyone wants this data, they have to file requests in 5
| different places. But there is no more legal protection
| against this happening.
|
| It is now _far_ easier, in the Netherlands, to get a
| serious crime stricken off your judicial record than,
| say, getting a doctor or pharmacist 's claim that you
| falsely came in for a heart problem out of your medical
| file, say to threaten or attack them for painkillers, or
| even just getting the name of which doctor put that there
| (and of course such misleading information can kill you
| if you ever really do have a heart problem, and god help
| you if you need pain killers or ...)
|
| GPDR protects you from Amazon offering you gift ideas for
| your kids' birthday if you object to that. You want a
| mental health stay 40 years ago to not be used in a
| family court case against you? THAT it makes MUCH easier.
| Faking such a thing _and_ using it in a court case
| against you, that, too, it makes a lot easier.
| _vertigo wrote:
| I've never heard this criticism of GDPR before, and a
| couple of cursory Google searches didn't yield anything
| supporting what you're claiming. Do you have a source for
| that?
| candiodari wrote:
| In English, for example:
|
| https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
|
| As for the "you can't get data removed or even access
| it", here's some specific examples:
|
| https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
|
| https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio...
|
| Like everywhere else, medical and "social work" data (and
| keep in mind that both the medical and social workers can
| lock people up for extended periods of time, even in
| isolation. Extended means decades, even until death, and
| that under circumstances that are justified using records
| on which that applies. You can't access, remove or change
| that data, but it _can_ be used to lock you away legally
| indefinitely)
|
| Insurance:
|
| https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-
| protectio... (NHS is the insurer in Scotland.
| Essentially, ANY data that can be used for legal purposes
| (whether to sue you or to defend itself or any decision
| it made) is exempt from GPDR. No matter how personal the
| data. Technically this may even cover publishing such
| data.
|
| I realize this is for one specific part of Europe, but
| there are analogues everywhere. And, frankly, look at the
| size of that list. It's only the beginning, on the left,
| click open, "right to X" and there's yet another list of
| exemptions.
| foepys wrote:
| How does it make it more insecure?
| dheera wrote:
| Not sure GP's meaning, but just guessing here, maybe it
| trains people to hit "I agree" to everything without
| understanding, so when they get an actually security
| warning they just click right past it.
| malka wrote:
| Gdpr means you need to have a disagree button. Just click
| it for everything
| dheera wrote:
| (a) not everyone has a disagree button today
|
| (b) many people make the disagree button small, hard to
| see, or require clicking through multiple screens to get
| to
|
| GDPR really should have dictated "agree" and "disagree"
| be of equal visual weight and button styling and dictated
| disagreeing to be a 1-click action.
| dkersten wrote:
| GDPR doesn't dictate anything about styling or anything,
| it just says you have to ask for consent, you're not
| allowed to bundle consent with anything else (eg you
| can't say that I have to give consent for me to be able
| to use the site) and IIRC it does even have a clause
| about consent having to be asked for in a clear
| understandable form.
|
| I'm pretty sure that everyone doing our (b) is not
| compliant at all. The problem is that GDPR isn't being
| enforced very well.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Or just avoid the site completely. xkcd doesn't shower me
| with such popups, neither does hackernews.
| quest88 wrote:
| Companies still need some basic data for whatever problem
| they're solving, right?
|
| As an example, let's say I want to launch a blogging
| platform. You need some basic tables (data) like User, Posts,
| Tags, etc. I'd consider this data the business needs for core
| business. Does there need to be some GDPR compliance thing?
|
| Anecdotally a dumb app I built I was worried about EU
| visitors and just wanted to block them instead of figure it
| out (yea yea maybe that's not the right approach but I'm sure
| the sentiment is common).
| sorokod wrote:
| "Does there need to be some GDPR compliance thing?"
|
| Sounds like you have to learn something before starting a
| business.
| jfengel wrote:
| Unfortunately, that's a big cultural shift that a lot of
| people appear to be having trouble with.
|
| We all really enjoyed the days when we could throw
| together a project and focus on the fun parts. Then came
| all of the other things we should worry about -- security
| and scaling, which are at least technical problems, but
| then things like privacy, moderation, and even legality.
|
| It's fun to put up a file-sharing service; it's less fun
| to think about the fact that it can be used to share
| child porn. It's fun to have a new chat site with no
| filters. It's less fun when people use it to plan crime.
|
| We don't want to face that. We want to make it Not Our
| Problem. And here, now privacy is another one. We used to
| just gather up user data and we didn't plan to sell it or
| lose it so why did we care?
|
| The Internet is a lot less fun than it used to be. Or
| rather, we just managed to ignore a lot of the problems,
| usually because we weren't the ones affected by them. And
| so we didn't fix them ourselves, so laws got passed
| instead, which are never as good as what we'd have come
| up with ourselves.
|
| So yeah, it's time for people to learn stuff before
| starting a business. That's no fun. Too bad.
| sorokod wrote:
| Not disagreeing but would say this: people's personal
| data is not a resource to be mined in a for fun or for
| profit projects without consequences.
|
| It wasn't always like this, but it is now and for very
| good reasons.
| dkersten wrote:
| > Does there need to be some GDPR compliance thing?
|
| Yes. GDPR is about data protection. If you want to do
| business in its jurisdiction, then you need to know the
| laws.
|
| In general, GDPR states that you cannot store anything that
| isn't strictly necessary, unless you outline what you want
| to collect and what it will be used for in your data
| policies. You are not allowed to use it for _anything else_
| and once its no longer needed for the outlined use, it must
| be removed. Personally identifiable information has some
| additional rules (and its important to note that anything
| could become PII if combined with something else, that
| would, together, allow for someone to be identified).
|
| My own (EU-based) country's data protection websites
| states:
|
| 1. _Everyone has the right to the protection of personal
| data concerning him or her._
|
| 2. _Such data must be processed fairly for specified
| purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person
| concerned, or some other legitimate basis laid down by
| law._
|
| 3. _Everyone has the right of access to data which has been
| collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it
| rectified._
|
| 4. _Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control
| by an independent authority._
|
| _This means that every individual is entitled to have
| their personal information protected, used in a fair and
| legal way, and made available to them when they ask for a
| copy. If an individual feels that their personal
| information is wrong, they are entitled to ask for that
| information to be corrected._
| justapassenger wrote:
| Did you read the law and then work on complying with it?
|
| Spirit of the law is great. Implementation and end result is a
| typical bureaucracy mess, with not much benefit for end user,
| that functions mostly as a way for government to have a
| leverage over companies for non-compliance, whenever they want
| to put pressure on them.
| hrktb wrote:
| While there are byzantine parts, I think it has been a net
| positive for the user.
|
| People focus mostly on the cookie popups, but forcing
| companies to delete data after the user stopped using the
| service for too long, or even giving a legal stand on users
| requesting their data to be deleted wouldn't have happened
| any other way I think.
|
| In a lot of european countries GDPR came on top of other
| existing customer protection, but it helped make companies
| think about compliance as needed for continued business,
| instead of something akin to properly filing random local
| paperwork.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| "that functions mostly as a way for government to have a
| leverage over companies"
|
| Which is why you NEVER comply: you get exemptions.
| melomal wrote:
| I can honestly say that I think it made little to no difference,
| across the board. The requirements etc have not been fulfilled by
| most companies, why bother.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > have not been fulfilled by most companies
|
| I think you need to back that up with credible numbers.
|
| GDPR was and has been a massive kick in the backside for
| companies large and small in the UK. I certainly know from
| talking to my past client base and current network, which is
| from a fairly broad spectrum of organisations, they treated
| GDPR compliance pretty seriously. Hell even my local village
| pub made sure they were in compliance, despite just having a
| manual paper based guest register.
| distances wrote:
| Absolutely was a big topic. Company I worked for at the time of
| the change took it very seriously, and all parts I saw were
| adapted accordingly.
| james-bcn wrote:
| If you work in enterprise it absolutely has made a big
| difference.
| killtimeatwork wrote:
| I work in an large euroepan enterprise and our GDPR
| compliance is... absymal. And we're not even investing that
| much into becoming more compliant. My impression is that the
| board is in a state of denial, as doing GDPR properly would
| probably cost us billions.
| username_my1 wrote:
| there is usually annual report by some law firms talking
| about the state of GDPR, and so far the EU or states hasn't
| been keen on charging high fines as the law suggest instead
| closer to slap on the wrist kind of fines for
| transgressions that sounds big when you read the law.
|
| I think most corps by now realize that and are willing to
| live with the risk rather than lose a lot of data and
| introduce a lot of processes.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > My impression is that the board is in a state of denial,
| as doing GDPR properly would probably cost us billions.
|
| It may cost some money, but not that much by far. The
| reality is that in the long term, you'd save some as well
| by virtue of having clearer, cleaner and simpler processes.
| killtimeatwork wrote:
| > virtue of having clearer, cleaner and simpler
| processes.
|
| We are a large bank, most of our processes are decades
| old and are an impossible mess. For reference, we have a
| total of around 5000 systems running in the bank... Till
| GDPR and also some post-2008 regulation, I guess the
| strategy was to mostly accept the mess we're in (it's
| basically an absolutely extreme version of technical and
| organizational debt), with some targeted initiatives to
| make some areas slightly cleaner. Now, GDPR would require
| a major redoing of a lot of stuff, most of which is not
| really redoable - who wants to touch critical code
| written in COBOL, which is powering the significant parts
| of economies of a couple of European countries? I suspect
| most of the world's top20 banks are like that. In this
| realm, full GDPR compliance (for example, the right to be
| forgotten, when the data is copied willy-nilly across
| 5000 apps, with no one knowing exactly where and how the
| data flows) is a fantasy that could only be enforced by
| multibillion fines.
|
| It's essentially similar problem to global warming - till
| recently, all of bank's depratments were solving problems
| locally, but now a new threat (global warming/GDPR
| legislation) requires global coordination, which is
| extremely costly given that the bank was basically not
| designed for it.
| himinlomax wrote:
| There's no reason for a bank to be particularly impacted
| by GDPR. That makes no sense.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Exactly, once Europe realises that the USA's 2018 Cloud Act
| makes its *impossible* for every USA registered cloud
| provider, every Office 365 account, every Google doc, every
| Gmail account, and every Dropbox account to be GDPR
| compliant, it will just quietly fade away.
|
| A nice idea, but no one will care that much.
| Daho0n wrote:
| All those are "fading away" in every area of enterprise I
| have seen that deal with private data. When GDPR is
| causing US states to follow suit and create GDPR-like
| laws I'd say it is the US's woefully bad privacy laws
| that are fading the most. Of course I don't believe for a
| second that it will matter inside the US but that is not
| the EU's problem.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| With secret FISA courts, the is no way you will ever be
| able to know.
|
| You have no idea who they have approached, nor what they
| have asked [= insisted] for.
|
| And to be clear, because of the CLOUD Act, this reaches
| all EU citizens on US owned platforms.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Sadly this is the state of things which is why privacy
| shield isn't there anymore.
| tubularhells wrote:
| Big talks for a throwaway account.
| dependsontheq wrote:
| That my be true - but I work with a lot of companies and
| they way the legal departments are hunting down problems
| has changed dramatically.
|
| I have customers that are asking "Do we really need this
| kind of data".
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Also:
|
| "Did we do a PIA?"
|
| "Is this a data leak and should we contact their privacy
| officer?"
|
| These are common questions now. GDPR changed a lot of
| things. The basic idea that you'd just send and receive
| any data you have that seems useful from a technical
| standpoint to third parties and see what you would
| actually end up using is gone. Step one is as you say:
| "do we really need this kind of data?"
| ethbr0 wrote:
| This, 100%.
|
| GDPR and California et al. turned data privacy from a
| _technical-moral_ issue into a _legal_ one.
|
| And healthy companies have a robust, empowered legal
| department to keep them on the right side of the law.
|
| When Technical Architect says "We shouldn't do this," few
| listen. When General Counsel says "We can't do this,"
| things change.
| l33tman wrote:
| Please tell us the name of that European enterprise that
| breaches the GDPR and we can put the EU enforcement
| procedures to a test :) Let's call it an experiment..
| tubularhells wrote:
| YCombinator does business in Europe and doesn't adhere to
| GDPR on HN, for a start.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I helped build a GDPR compliant system for container shipping
| crew personnel details that included passport photos and other
| sensitive details. GDPR was actually helpful in that it asks
| you to treat personal data as if it's as important as credit
| card data. We did this and consequently if you had a a database
| dump or backup you'd be really hard pushed to extract any crew
| information from it and getting at passport copies was even
| more difficult. I think it's a very well thought through spec
| and eventually those companies ignoring it will get burned one
| way or another.
|
| Edit: removed needlessly aggressive "That is a lie" opening
| gambit.
| Daho0n wrote:
| If you deleted those first four words your comment would read
| much better and likely not be downvoted :)
| andy_ppp wrote:
| True - I should have been less aggressive in my comment,
| I'll remove it!
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| You should've been at FAANG when GDPR hit like a ton of bricks.
| Compliance probably cost those companies hundreds of millions
| each, pretty much everything was affected.
| [deleted]
| marcorx wrote:
| GDPR has not much to do with cookies, and more to do with how
| your data is captured and used. Most of the "annoying" cookie
| banners and popups are related to the e-privacy regulation [1].
|
| I am not sure this will have a significant impact, as UK will
| have to comply with GDPR if they want to to reach European
| customers.
|
| [1] https://www.activemind.legal/gb/guides/eprivacy-regulation/
| dash2 wrote:
| YIPPEE.
|
| Does this mean no more of those stupid little popups every time I
| see a site? HOORAY.
|
| Does it mean less absurd bureaucracy and non-jobs? GREAT.
|
| As for data privacy... does anyone seriously think that Facebook
| was stopped from collecting data due to GDPR?
| lanevorockz wrote:
| That is true, it's pure naivety to believe GDPR changed
| anything. It enforced cookies to ask for permission and a few
| billions in extra bureaucracy. I don't get why people want to
| live in a Kafka novel
| La1n wrote:
| I work in the privacy field. I can tell you that after GDPR
| the multi national I work for has become a lot more
| careful/aware about data privacy. We went from collect
| everything and just store it, to actually having limitation
| of data collected and how long they are stored.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| From my experience, unless I'm missing something, they're
| annoying because they're not that well implemented, maybe even
| on purpose?
|
| Sites where I have granted access keep asking me to re-grant no
| matter what. Sites where I have denied do the same (although
| here I would expect it, not that I agree, since I already
| clicked "no").
|
| And actually it's cool, sometimes you go to some docs and
| there's 33 "essential" cookies for the well functioning of the
| website (for a paid product) from which 30 are trackers.
|
| Others, like wetransfer will show them as non-essential when
| receiving a file, but about the same amount of trackers, and
| this is ok, it's well defined and they're not trying to trick
| me into clicking "accept essential cookies" with 30 trackers
| tackled on them.
|
| Perhaps one day we can start blacklisting those who don't
| implement a correct consent cookie form from the internet and
| dns wouldn't resolve for those non-compliant domains.
| dash2 wrote:
| I think you're absolutely right. But I also think it was
| predictable. If we trusted the companies to do the right
| thing, we could have done that without GDPR. So OK, they live
| off advertising, they want to track, so now they just use
| dark patterns. What's next? Yet more regulations about
| exactly how to show this fundamentally annoying consent
| question? I just want to browse the internet!!!
|
| Sometimes people talk about technological solutions to social
| problems. I think here the tech solution (like tracker
| blocking) kind of works, like I can use it on Firefox or
| Safari and it doesn't waste my time; and the legal solution
| is a failure.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| But that forces you to install a plugin that you would need
| to review the code for which can even be more harmful than
| tracking - not saying it is, but if ToS are cryptic for a
| common person, reading the source code of a plugin more so
| (given that browsers don't offer a way to block what kind
| of information they provide - with exception of location -
| which should be something essential, but then perhaps
| google would stop developing chrome which in terms of
| functionality/performance has done great for pushing other
| things).
|
| For me this is a question of privacy, I'm ok with ads, but
| you don't need this to show me ads. It's not a problem that
| FB has a face recognition pipeline capable of linking me to
| any image posted in their platform and that a state
| sponsored agency could use, and track me throughout
| internet while logging me around, and which emails I open,
| and my location individually, and then my chats and
| probably WhatsApp too now, and instagram likes.
|
| The problem is when you connect all these systems, with
| everything else and suddenly you can derive almost a 24/7
| coverage of the life of an individual. If you and another
| person meet and both are carrying their phones then it's
| easy to sort of connect the remaining dots, specially in
| light of all other data points captured, security
| surveillance (public and covert), etc. And this is not
| problematic by itself, it's problematic when it becomes a
| system that is available to be used by whatever powers that
| sit in a position to use them. Today it might not be
| nefarious but you don't know if tomorrow is the same, but
| once there it might be difficult to revert the situation.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| Facebook and google takeout only exist because of gdpr.
|
| Right to delete (not just deactivate) your account only exists
| due to gdpr.
|
| Right to opt out at all only exists because of gdpr, and many
| companies do actually stick to it.
|
| That many don't follow the spirit of the regulation is not
| really the fault of the regulation. Thing is its not been
| tested much in the courts yet, but the cases have really
| started last year so hopefully more enforcement incoming.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Google Takeout existed for many years before GDPR was even a
| thing:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Data_Liberation_Front
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > google takeout only exist because of gdpr.
|
| I doubt that since takeout precedes gdpr by several years.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| I guess Facebook can use the additional profit they'll make on
| UK citizens to pay for fines they incur in the EU
|
| https://www.decisionmarketing.co.uk/news/facebook-sets-aside...
| shrew wrote:
| Ah this is the best bit! Because many companies cater for a
| global audience, us Brits will STILL have to endure the stupid
| little popups AND we'll have no protection or recourse from
| privacy invasion! Can't wait! /s
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I don't think you're right at all. The US is the dominant
| online market. China is second. Neither have the stupid
| popups, so why wouldn't the UK just get added to the list of
| 'places we don't need to show it'?
|
| Have you ever tried browsing many US news sites? They block
| the entire EU from even seeing their content. That's how much
| they care about their in-GDPR users. The idea that people
| cater to a global audience by just implementing the EU rules
| for everyone is patently false. If the UK diverges, it's free
| revenue to just add it to the whitelist, basically.
| shrew wrote:
| Okay, fair point, they might just re-include the UK in
| whatever exclusion list they have and that'll be that. But
| since GDPR came into force, others have followed suit,
| several other countries have begun implementing similar
| legislation.
|
| This is anecdata, so fair warning, but over the last year
| (at a guess) I've noticed many US sites, FAANG companies
| but also smaller sites too, all flashing cookie/data
| protection type popups at me where they didn't previously.
| I've assumed that's because they need to comply with the
| CCPA which came into force last year, though it's totally a
| guess. I suppose their geoIP tracking may've just improved
| and spotted I'm in a GDPR country.
|
| When does this type of legislation reach a point of
| critical mass where the UK is simply behind the curve and
| most companies just show the popup by default?
|
| From a development perspective, having a whitelist or
| varying set of conditions per country adds complexity, I
| could very easily see a development decision being made to
| use GDPR as the common denominator and just code once for
| that, knowing that'll cover the company globally. Sure if
| your business relies on tracking and serving ads, then you
| may accept the additional complexity to behave different
| for different countries, but it still becomes a development
| decision that didn't have to be made before, and it's one
| with diminishing returns as legislation on privacy
| tightens.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I'm pretty sure those hyper-annoying multiple-popup flows
| that happen on YouTube, Google search, etc. are
| completely localized.
|
| Yes it adds complexity, but the size of the markets and
| companies involved means there's a massive leverage
| effect. If you get 1,000 people landing on your homepage,
| small changes in conversion don't justify engineering
| time or complexity, true. If you've got billions of
| users, engineering cost pales in comparison to the
| revenue gain from even a marginal improvement in
| conversion rate, so it gets done.
| shrew wrote:
| Very true, for a big company, the time may well be worth
| it, particularly for the likes of FAANG where they have
| UK branches of their company.
|
| I suppose my only counter left would be "is the UK market
| alone worth the complexity?" Having split off from
| Europe, and in-fighting among ourselves to the point
| where we may see the UK itself splitting up again in the
| next decade. Is it really worth adding additional
| complexity for a comparatively small market when
| companies could simply target the continent of Europe as
| a single market, regardless of EU membership, and
| probably reach a similar audience with a similar
| conversion rate.
|
| I'm probably being overly cynical and only time will
| tell, but I just don't feel the UK alone commands the
| importance to have things its own way, so to me being
| lumped in with the EU as the lowest common denominator
| seems inevitable.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I think it will just depend whether the UK starts
| aligning with the US, say, or goes off to have it's own
| esoteric regulatory environment. In the latter case,
| yeah, it seems likely some companies will just not
| bother.
|
| The UK does get advantages from being an Anglophone
| country though. That's one of the issues with the EU
| single market: it sounds great in theory--a unified
| regulatory system that lets you attract customers from
| the whole EU. In practice though, you start having to
| consider whether Poland or Lithuania or wherever is worth
| localizing for.
| jonplackett wrote:
| The idea of GDPR was good, the execution was poor. All those pop
| ups in your way and you end up just hitting 'ok' anyway because
| it takes so long to figure them out.
|
| And big companies seem to completely ignore it anyway. Take
| twitter - all they have is a banner along the bottom that says:
|
| "By using Twitter's services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and
| our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for
| analytics, personalisation, and ads."
|
| and a close button. How is that consent?
| dkersten wrote:
| The pop ups are not usually complaint though. So its not that
| the execution was poor, but rather that the enforcement is
| poor.
|
| Also, your Twitter quote shows another issue: conflating GDPR
| with the Cookie directive. They are two very different laws.
| GDPR is concerned with personally identifiable data and data
| protection, the cookie laws are concerned with tracking users
| online. GDPR applies to all data (not just websites), the
| cookie laws deal with what websites can do. They are not at all
| the same thing. The popups you see tend to be for the cookie
| law, because GDPR doesn't require anything like that. Both do
| require consent (opt-in) though, but both also have exemptions
| for data and cookies required to provide the service.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Ok thanks for the clarification.
|
| Twitter are specifically saying that they're going to use
| cookies for a bunch of things there that are not necessary -
| like ads. So how is that allowed?
| dkersten wrote:
| Its not, unfortunately enforcement is... seriously lacking.
| mavhc wrote:
| Practical outcomes of GDPR: You can't search old emails. Your
| website lists 100 companies you send data to. Someone will
| randomly waste your time asking for all information you have
| about them. You have to click Accept cookies on every website you
| visit 100s of times a day, wasting your life.
|
| Things it didn't fix: Data leaks.
| freddybobs wrote:
| GDPR is generally a good thing IMHO.
|
| It seems this can only lead to
|
| 1) Rolling back to pre GDPR, where user data is largely a free
| for all 2) The UK having it's own 'unique' rules
|
| Neither which seems very good for users and/or businesses.
|
| Perhaps the point here is to make some kind dubious 'look what we
| can do because of brexit' argument. When the reality is that
| 'freedom' has a reality which is more negative than any positives
| it might have.
| Jonnax wrote:
| "...culture secretary Oliver Dowden said he would use the
| appointment of a new information commissioner to focus not just
| on privacy but on the use of data for 'economic and social
| goals'.
|
| ...Dowden said that under the regime 'too many businesses and
| organisations are reluctant to use data - either because they
| don't understand the rules or are afraid of inadvertently
| breaking them'."
|
| However this would only be in relation to UK data. If they want
| to do business with EU citizens, then businesses have to comply
| with GDPR.
|
| Seems pretty myopic.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| I somewhat miss the days when the corruption was at least
| somewhat veiled.
|
| No-no of course we don't want to sell your data for profit, that
| would be ridiculous. Clearly it is just our corporate sponsors
| who will be doing it for us!
| kzrdude wrote:
| Money has become the main objective, and it's poisoning us.
| Money is a means to an end, not the end itself.
|
| The nation (any country) needs to have human goals - not
| economical goals for their own sake - but a better life for us,
| for us all.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And I want to say that's fine, but it's the methods involved.
| Recently, a LOT of decisions have been made that (to me,
| armchair internet guy) seem to be aimed at short-term gain.
|
| Like Brexit, the people benefiting most from it are already
| well settled, they're working on their short- to mid-term
| plan to earn a lot of money before retiring to their private
| island or estate or whatever. They live outside of the
| negative consequences of their decisions.
|
| Meanwhile, the rest of the population will have to suffer
| through the consequences for the foreseeable.
|
| Tl;dr, policy optimizing for short term individual gain
| instead of long term sustainable gain. And the long term gain
| would be so much more better as well.
|
| All of the countries currently under a short term gain
| capitalist regime could be so much better for their
| inhabitants. Wealth, socialist policies, comfort, safety,
| stability, etc is all in reach. But instead the people at the
| top - who already live a very comfortable and privileged life
| so they don't see and never will see the problem - choose
| short term personal gain for them and their 1% friends.
| aloisdg wrote:
| That why we cry when countries are compared by GDP...
| m12k wrote:
| "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
| measure"
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| > I somewhat miss the days when the corruption was at least
| somewhat veiled.
|
| Oh, nonsense. People disagree with you politically. That
| doesn't make it 'unveiled corruption'. What a lazy way to
| think.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| Corruption might be the wrong word. But 'disagree
| politically' suggests that what voters think matters, instead
| of what financial contributors desire. Every political
| decision has winners and losers. This one seems heavily
| biased towards the 0.01% of people directly financially
| incentivized, while the rest has to deal with the breach of
| privacy and the social effects of hyper targeted
| advertisement ( a case can be made that this includes things
| like the QAnon bubble )
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I disagree. Most startups and other small businesses, for
| example, are not run by the 0.01%. And yet, the data
| ecosystem is often key to their success. Targeted ads are a
| boon to hairdressers and multi-billion-dollar conglomerates
| alike. Just because something happens to enrich the top
| end, doesn't mean it's of no use to everyone else. We
| shouldn't avoid doing overall beneficial things because the
| rich will tend to benefit more. The rich benefit more from
| almost everything. We might as well say no to building
| roads because it provides for Bezos' delivery empire.
| coddle-hark wrote:
| > Targeted ads are a boon to hairdressers
|
| Are they? Are targeted ads really increasing the number
| of hairdressers and/or making them more profitable?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Our government is happily funneling millions of public money
| into murky contracts with companies that often barely exist.
| It is corruption. The tory party has no ideology.
|
| What a lazy way to think
| dbetteridge wrote:
| I can handle political disagreement just fine.
|
| But there is a systemic and widely recognised issue in the UK
| with the government flagrantly handing out public money
| without due diligence or fair recourse.
|
| Selling citizens data for profit is just another data point.
|
| https://medium.com/shit-britain/the-bumper-uk-
| conservative-g...
|
| https://thejist.co.uk/politics/a-list-of-alleged-
| conservativ...
|
| https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/how-the-tories-
| no...
|
| https://sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-crony/
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Believing that companies should be allowed to exploit data
| for profit is a political position, not corruption. Same
| for most of the things discussed in your links. Just
| because you might find something callous, or otherwise
| objectionable, doesn't make it corruption.
|
| It's also not inherently corruption when a (group of)
| companies go to a politician and say "we think X would be
| good" and the politician goes on to support X. Even if X is
| profitable for the companies. Many things that are
| profitable are also good for wider society.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Yep, never heard of corruption in Italy before. The Mafia was
| created just a year ago right after Brexit
| user-the-name wrote:
| Why are you talking about Italy?
| rusk wrote:
| They are trying to use the prevalence of organised crime in
| one nation to justify corruption in another. It's called
| "comparing yourself downwards".
|
| Kind of like the drunken neglectful husband who pats
| himself on the back for not beating his wife like some guys
| he sees on TV.
| vmception wrote:
| I honestly get giggles from how unprepared they are culturally
| for what becoming America-like will do to them.
|
| Does anyone else?
|
| American-like but with no negotiating leverage and having burned
| all the bridges to the other economic unions.
| aidos wrote:
| Not that I voted for this, but what's done is done. And now
| that it is, I'd personally like to take the wins where we can
| get them.
|
| Hoping we see the light, and the blight that is the cookie law
| goes the way of the dodos.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| The cookie law is like those plaque disclosing tablets you
| can chew to figure out if you are brushing right.
|
| If your teeth turn out blighted all blue/purple, you
| generally don't blame the tablets. ;-)
| aidos wrote:
| Ha! Following your analogy ... then you just discover that
| everyone's teeth are purple and you're struggling to
| concentrate on what they're saying because it's
| distracting. Meanwhile, nobody's teeth got any cleaner.
|
| It's really just theatre and on balance it makes the
| internet a crummier experience.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Actually, there's plenty of people with white teeth.
|
| Meanwhile, the intent is to avoid the people with purple
| teeth until they learn to brush responsibly. ;-)
|
| (Or if you truly must interact with them: use a lot of ad
| blockers and privacy tools; because you know what you're
| getting into)
| aidos wrote:
| I'm totally good with there being laws about this as I
| too want to see less tracking and data sharing. But the
| implementation is terrible and anybody who thinks that
| it's fixed anything at all is just kidding themselves.
|
| I would rather bad actors were punished and enforced
| cookie banners were eliminated.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Well, that's why the GDPR tried to get rid of them. Of
| course people now put up GDPR barriers ;-)
|
| It's really hard to legislate against something that some
| people really want to do :-/
| aidos wrote:
| I think we can both agree on that. People have reacted
| somewhat negatively to my original comment, but I suspect
| cookie banners have done more harm than good on balance.
| It's one of those things where the spirit of the movement
| got lost.
|
| We were discussing something in a similar vein the other
| day regarding a security form for an enterprise contract
| and my reoccurring response was "officially or actually?"
| There tends to be a big gap between official compliance
| and what was originally desired.
|
| Many years ago I worked with a mega mega corp that
| required a complex form with every change request, but
| they still ran my script that escalated my database
| permissions because they ran it as root.
| physicsguy wrote:
| GDPR only came in two or so years ago, it's hardly out of
| living memory that we had standards more like the US
| [deleted]
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I have many British friends who were absolutely against this, I
| also know a former boss who was very public about his Brexit
| vote and like many of those who voted for it, will be too old
| to have to deal with the consequences of this decision.
|
| If anything I think it is rather unfair to hear people from
| other EU countries treating this process as something along the
| lines of 'suits them' and 'they've made their bed'. When in
| reality a large chunk of them have pretty much not agreed to
| any of this but are still set to suffer the consequences.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > If anything I think it is rather unfair to hear people from
| other EU countries treating this process as something along
| the lines of 'suits them' and 'they've made their bed'.
|
| From my perspective, it's more like "it was inevitable". The
| people pushing for Brexit would never give up. So the choice
| was either leave now, or keep talking for the following
| years/decades/centuries about how the evil EU oppresses the
| UK, and how everything in UK would be perfect if only...
|
| In some way, it reminds me of dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
| I was not happy about that either, but realistically, the
| choice was either do it now, or keep forever listening to
| voices on both sides about how all problems are caused by the
| other half and everything would be perfect (though probably
| disastrous for the other half) if only...
|
| Once you have a major fraction of your population -- and it
| doesn't make a difference whether it's 48% or 52% --
| believing they are being oppressed, it becomes unfalsifiable.
| Every time something bad happens, you have an explanation
| ready, and it doesn't matter whether it makes sense or not,
| believing that it is all someone else's fault is always
| popular.
|
| If the lesson from Czechoslovakia applies here, at the end
| none of the prophecies of heaven or hell came true, both
| sides continue living their boring lives. The only change is
| that now when something bad happens, this one excuse is no
| longer available.
|
| So, my guess is that after Brexit, the life in EU will more
| or less remain the same, and the life in UK will more or less
| remain the same, with the exception that "everything would be
| perfect if only EU stopped interfering with our perfect
| country" will disappear from political speech.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| _" everything would be perfect if only EU stopped
| interfering with our perfect country" will disappear from
| political speech._
|
| That doesn't seem to be disappearing. My guess is we will
| be hearing a lot more about the EU for the foreseeable
| future.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| One or two election cycles, but afterwards it will be too
| boring to hear the same excuses.
|
| Soon after dissolution of Czechoslovakia, people in
| Slovakia blamed Czechs for all kinds of things. (We had
| an agreement that neither side will use the old federal
| flag; they kept it. We had an agreement that the national
| treasure will be split proportionally; they decided to
| keep it all. Plus a few more things. I am sure the other
| side also had their complaints.) A decade later, after
| most politicians from that era retired, no one mentioned
| this anymore. People who were not yet adult during the
| federation simply don't care; it's ancient history for
| them, like complaining that your garden does not have
| nice flowers because dinosaurs once stomped on it. Yeah,
| but what did _you_ do about it _since then_ ; you had
| enough time to do something, right?
|
| I feel like an old person just for mentioning the old
| issues. Similarly, ten or twenty years later, Farage will
| be just some uncool old grandpa no one cares about. It
| may be hard to imagine, but it will happen.
| krageon wrote:
| > a large chunk of them have pretty much not agreed
|
| Yes, but a far larger chunk has. Every country gets the
| leaders it deserves and the UK is no exception.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Tbh simply based on the amount of elderly voters that died
| since it's likely that majority is gone by now. At least so
| I've read in some article months ago.
|
| All things considered it was relatively close so not
| exactly a far larger chunk.
|
| I don't have any spite towards the British people but I do
| hope that the EU will act in EU interest which means
| facilitating the return of financial services that shifted
| towards London since they joined and not letting the UK and
| whatever the borderdeal ends up as serve as a loop to
| ignore single market regulations.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| From 2018:
|
| "there are some demographic trends that will influence
| opinion in future. These changes will tend to pull
| British public opinion in a pro-European direction, and
| should be sufficient to produce a majority of 52%-48% for
| 'Remain' in 2021"
|
| https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/05/01/demographic-
| trends...
| blibble wrote:
| Leave would likely win by a bigger majority if the
| referendum was repeated today, because the UK didn't
| collapse on leaving
|
| also add the EU's disastrous vaccine procurement scheme,
| combined with its attempt to obscure its total
| incompetence with petulant nationalistic flailing
| user-the-name wrote:
| Not really. 37% of the electorate at the time voted for
| Brexit. The rest have not really "agreed" to it. Also,
| since then, many people have come of age who did not get to
| vote in the election.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I didn't get to vote in the original election to _join_
| the EU, so can we re-run that one too?
| callamdelaney wrote:
| I'm 24 and voted for brexit. In fact I campaigned for it and
| would do so again. It's really a very poor form to resort to
| the "dumb old racists voted for brexit hurr".
| tubularhells wrote:
| I have two sincere questions.
|
| What were your reasons behind your decision? What economic
| class are your parents in?
| gmac wrote:
| OK, so the problem is that I find it basically impossible
| to understand how a well-informed and rational person could
| come to the conclusions you've come to.
|
| The EU isn't perfect, but you'll struggle to argue that it
| hasn't expanded peace, prosperity and human rights across
| the continent. This is motherhood-and-apple-pie stuff.
|
| Arguments in favour of Brexit thus tend to boil down to
| immigration and 'sovereignty'.
|
| There's a consensus amongst economists that immigration
| makes us financially better off. That makes it hard not to
| ascribe a strong desire to cut immigration to a powerful
| desire for ethnic homogeneity and/or a powerful dislike of
| foreigners. Those things are very close to racism.
|
| Meanwhile, the 'sovereignty' Brexit delivers is almost
| wholly illusory. In practice, we'll get to choose which of
| the big players to take the rules from. That's going to be
| either the US (which hardly anybody actually wants -- most
| Brits value our health service, non-toxic food and drinking
| water, holiday pay, and so on -- and also isn't very
| helpful, because the US is far away) or the EU (whose
| decisions we used to play an outsized role in, but no
| longer have any influence over).
|
| It would be hilarious -- if it weren't tragic and a little
| terrifying -- that the ones in charge of 'taking back
| control' are also the ones stifling parliament, suppressing
| voting, and attacking academics, judges and the rule of
| law. As far as I can see, the only ones taking back control
| are the rulers, and the only ones they're taking back
| control from are the other citizens of the UK.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I voted remain but would vote leave if we were to ever
| have another referendum. The reason being is that it's
| clear to me now the direction that the EU is going in
| (removal of the nation state, EU army).
|
| Actually I think after seeing the vaccine rollout by the
| EU, many more Brits would vote to leave.
|
| It's interesting how events have turned out.
| dijit wrote:
| Generally, though, I'm less scared of continental armies
| that I'm a citizen of.
|
| It's the other continental armies (China, America,
| Russia) that worry me more.
| [deleted]
| blibble wrote:
| > Actually I think after seeing the vaccine rollout by
| the EU, many more Brits would vote to leave.
|
| > It's interesting how events have turned out.
|
| it's more or less the same as every other crisis the EU
| has had to deal with: it ends up being handling extremely
| poorly
|
| the EU is more or less good at one thing: trade
| negotiations
|
| everything else it ends up involved with has pretty much
| been a disaster (sovereign debt crisis, migrant crisis,
| last days of yugoslavia, vaccine procurement, Russia,
| etc)
| SonicTheSith wrote:
| The mistake the EU did with the vaccine rollout is that
| it was talking to long instead buying. Otherwise
| something that needs to be taken into consideration is
| the following.
|
| Right now we have a global pandemic so all countries
| world wide are affected. And unless the whole world is
| vaccinated we won't get past it since the chance that
| mutations occur that all possible immune against our
| vaccines increases the more people get infected.
|
| Currently there are 4 Producing Vaccine "producing"
| countries/groups
|
| USA, UK, EU, Russia and China.
|
| From these 5 groups only the EU and China are exporting
| vaccines. I am unsure about russia. And the Chinese
| vaccine is also not that widespread outside China. But I
| know that the EU even supplies Canada and Mexico with
| vaccines, while the USA and the UK have export bans. That
| is one of the reasons why vaccinations are slow in the EU
| in addition to being slow last year with ordering.
|
| So while they have great numbers at home concerning the
| amount of people vaccinated. It is morally debatable
| whether or not that is the correct approach for a global
| problem.
| fuoqi wrote:
| >I am unsure about russia.
|
| You can easily find this information online. The
| following picture is pretty clear: https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Sputnik_V_COVID-19_vaccine#/me...
|
| Also Russia is quite open about licensing the vaccine
| production technology to other countries, e.g. one of the
| countries which will soon start manufacturing it
| domestically is Italy.
| mypastself wrote:
| Other than the US export ban, I haven't managed to find
| any strong online evidence for your claims. Both Russia
| and China seem to have exported (or plan to export) large
| quantities of vaccines. And according to the European
| Commision, the UK does not have a ban in place, at least
| not officially.
|
| My theory is simply that, at this point in time, the EU
| countries are insufficiently well linked and coordinated
| to face a crisis on this scale with the efficiency of
| something like the US, due in part to the variety of
| cultures, languages and political philosophies within the
| bloc.
| aembleton wrote:
| > that the ones in charge of 'taking back control' are
| also the ones stifling parliament, suppressing voting,
| and attacking academics, judges and the rule of law.
|
| Do you really want them to have an influence across the
| whole of the EU? By leaving, our dysfunctional
| politicians lose influence which will help with the peace
| and human rights that you mentioned earlier.
| gmac wrote:
| I'm in the UK, so you got me: it seems I take a somewhat
| self-interested view on human rights! More seriously,
| though, the UK used to be a major world advocate for
| human rights, so UK human rights going down the pan
| probably isn't great for human rights worldwide.
|
| Peace takes two sides, so it's hard to argue that having
| your dysfunctional politicians run unchecked isn't going
| to lead to worse outcomes across the board.
|
| Edit: maybe you were joking? Ha ha.
| aembleton wrote:
| No, I am not joking. Our politicians running unchecked
| isn't great for us, but at least they are no longer
| disrupting and influencing the whole of the EU.
|
| If we had remained then, what would the EU have prevented
| them from doing so far? Would they have stopped the
| corruption with regards to the Covid contracts? I guess
| we would have to keep GDPR, but then GDPR might have been
| stronger in the first place without the UKs influence.
|
| > the UK used to be a major world advocate for human
| rights
|
| Yes, but we aren't any more and our press freedom index
| is quite low by EU standards.
| willmw101 wrote:
| > the UK used to be a major world advocate for human
| rights
|
| >Yes, but we aren't any more
|
| Have you got a source for this?
| aembleton wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/sep/22/uk-failing-
| on-ma...
| willmw101 wrote:
| Seems far from definitive, especially given the scale of
| the claim you're making, to be quite honest. I'll do some
| research of my own and link back if I find anything more
| substantial as I'm actually sympathetic to your original
| point even if I think the evidence you provided is weak
| at best.
| [deleted]
| Nursie wrote:
| > The EU isn't perfect, but you'll struggle to argue that
| it hasn't expanded peace, prosperity and human rights
| across the continent.
|
| Is it necessary for the UK to stay in for this peace to
| continue? Would you like to talk to some of the southern
| states about the expansion of prosperity that has come
| along with monetary union?
|
| > There's a consensus amongst economists that immigration
| makes us financially better off.
|
| In aggregate, not individually. Great for those of us in
| the middle classes, but I have a lot of sympathy for
| those who see their low wages effectively pegged to
| minimum wage, and who have to compete for those minimum
| wage jobs with a huge pool of people.
|
| We have stories of fruit and veg going unpicked because
| labour can't be imported as easily, and the few brits who
| enquired about the work wouldn't do it, they wouldn't
| live on the farm and work long days for the lowest
| possible pay. This speaks to me of industries in dire
| need of reform, propped up by the importation of those
| willing to accept standards nobody should have to accept,
| because of a disparity in wealth between countries.
|
| Was leaving the EU the right way to go about fixing this?
| Probably not, but to sweep these issues under the rug or
| worse, call people racist because of them, was
| counterproductive.
| gmac wrote:
| > There's a consensus amongst economists that immigration
| makes us financially better off.
|
| >> In aggregate, not individually. Great for those of us
| in the middle classes, but I have a lot of sympathy for
| those who see their low wages effectively pegged to
| minimum wage
|
| There are two arguments here:
|
| 1. If an aggregate gain isn't being redistributed so
| we're all better off, that's a failure of the tax and
| benefits systems that politicians could (and I believe
| should) address.
|
| 2. But aside from that, there's good evidence that
| immigration simply doesn't hurt those earning least. See
| Esther Duflo, for example: studies "all come to the
| conclusion that the effect of low-skilled migration on
| low-skilled wages is zero".
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1pZfFY132Q
| aembleton wrote:
| > "all come to the conclusion that the effect of low-
| skilled migration on low-skilled wages is zero"
|
| I haven't watched the video yet. But does she address the
| BoE paper? https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-
| paper/2015/the-impac...
| Nursie wrote:
| I've not time to watch a video now, but I would say that
| your second point isn't universally accepted - https://mi
| grationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/th...
|
| "Empirical research on the labour market effects of
| immigration in the UK suggests that immigration has
| relatively small effects on average wages, with negative
| effects on low-paid workers and positive effects on high-
| paid workers."
|
| I'm going to presume that page is well sourced as it's
| associated with Oxford University.
|
| I don't disagree that many of the reasons people voted
| for Brexit were things that could have been addressed by
| the UK government in various ways. But they weren't, and
| Brussels Buck-passing was practically a parliamentary
| sport. Perhaps that can end now.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| > Is it necessary for the UK to stay in for this peace to
| continue?
|
| Maybe - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreeme
| nt#Brexit
| imtringued wrote:
| >In aggregate, not individually. Great for those of us in
| the middle classes, but I have a lot of sympathy for
| those who see their low wages effectively pegged to
| minimum wage, and who have to compete for those minimum
| wage jobs with a huge pool of people.
|
| The solution is to create more jobs, not shrink the
| population. The idea that you get free labor and don't
| take advantage of it so backwards. It's only working
| because it's a psychological trick. In aggregate you are
| worse off.
|
| Literally every country suffering from an underutilized
| workforce should just utilize it, even if artificially.
| Restricting immigration is basically equivalent to a
| waiting strategy where you just hope that the competition
| (e.g. China) runs into labor shortages and thus your own
| labor surplus no longer becomes a liability. It works but
| it's so slow that if you were the politician of a waiting
| nation you should rightfully be criticized for doing
| nothing.
|
| >We have stories of fruit and veg going unpicked because
| labour can't be imported as easily, and the few brits who
| enquired about the work wouldn't do it, they wouldn't
| live on the farm and work long days for the lowest
| possible pay. This speaks to me of industries in dire
| need of reform, propped up by the importation of those
| willing to accept standards nobody should have to accept,
| because of a disparity in wealth between countries.
|
| This is where things get absurd. You are complaining that
| all those immigrants are stealing all the farm jobs with
| impossibly low pay but at the same time you never cared a
| single bit about those jobs and would never do them
| yourself?
| Nursie wrote:
| > Literally every country suffering from an underutilized
| workforce should just utilize it, even if artificially
|
| Is this not just the broken window fallacy?
|
| > Restricting immigration is basically equivalent to a
| waiting strategy where you just hope that the competition
| (e.g. China) runs into labor shortages
|
| I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make
| here?
|
| Are you trying to say that in order to compete on the
| world stage you need a surplus of low/underpaid labour?
| Why is that good for the people that find themselves in
| that surplus?
|
| > You are complaining that all those immigrants are
| stealing all the farm jobs
|
| I'm doing no such thing. Please re-read my post after
| discarding some of your preconceptions.
|
| I'm saying the pay and conditions attached to those jobs
| are wholly unreasonable. That they should not be run like
| that in the first place, immigrants or no.
|
| Those companies were only viable because people could be
| flown in from places where there were lower expectations
| on working conditions and enough of a wage disparity that
| it made it worthwhile for those workers to be paid the
| minimum. They were often made to live in cramped
| conditions in temporary accomodation on-site, in a way
| that's totally incompatible with (for instance) a family
| life. That's not a good thing. That sector needs reform.
|
| (Yes, immigration law was hiding this and contributing to
| wage suppression. I am in no way accusing any class of
| people, immigrant or otherwise of "stealing jobs".)
| dash2 wrote:
| > OK, so the problem is that I find it basically
| impossible to understand how a well-informed and rational
| person could come to the conclusions you've come to.
|
| That is indeed a problem, but it is your problem. If 48%
| of people support _anything_ , there must be _some_
| reasons for it.
|
| You're right about the consensus among economists. At the
| same time, 10 years ago there was a consensus about the
| virtues of free trade. Then Autor et al. wrote "The China
| Shock" and other similar papers, and, well, now there's
| not a consensus any more. Also, economics isn't immune to
| bias. Are papers showing a link from immigration to low
| wages, or crime, or reduced trust, likely to get a fair
| hearing?
|
| Is desire for ethnic homogeneity close to racism? It
| seems to be very widely shared - including among
| impeccable liberals. See the evidence on white flight in
| Kaufmann's _Whiteshift_. Homophily is close to a human
| universal, so it 's not obvious that it is wrong, or
| stupid, to prefer others like ourselves.
|
| If we trade we have to accept rules. But now we get to
| choose which, right? As you say, if we don't like US
| rules on chicken, we can trade that off against the
| costs. The value of tying ourselves to the EU depends on
| how you view its future. There's a fair case that it is
| an aging, sclerotic continent that can only make money by
| imposing fines on US tech companies. I don't say that's
| the only perspective that you can make.
|
| Lastly, the UK is a democracy. The EU, hardly (see Perry
| Anderson's recent essays in the LRB for a fairly
| comprehensive account). Democracy sure has its flaws, but
| doesn't the threat of the boot encourage politicians to
| get things done? In this context, the contrast between
| the UK's vaccination program and the EU's is telling.
| imtringued wrote:
| >You're right about the consensus among economists. At
| the same time, 10 years ago there was a consensus about
| the virtues of free trade. Then Autor et al. wrote "The
| China Shock" and other similar papers, and, well, now
| there's not a consensus any more. Also, economics isn't
| immune to bias. Are papers showing a link from
| immigration to low wages, or crime, or reduced trust,
| likely to get a fair hearing?
|
| Physical reality: Factories are in China we don't have to
| work in the EU to get manufactured stuff! The Chinese are
| working their butts off for us and we are making them
| rich in the process!
|
| Anti free trade idea: Chinese people working their butts
| off for us should be illegal. We would rather work
| ourselves and prefer expensive domestically produced
| products (if you did, why make the "inferior" competition
| illegal?). We don't need high skill jobs, low skill work
| is just as important!
| gmac wrote:
| > That is indeed a problem, but it is your problem. If
| 48% of people support anything, there must be some
| reasons for it.
|
| Sure, and I think the most palatable conclusion is that a
| very large number of people are not well informed. If you
| look at UK news outlets -- what they choose to report,
| how they choose to report it, and the interests of the
| people who own them -- this doesn't stretch credibility
| very much.
|
| > Also, economics isn't immune to bias. Are papers
| showing a link from immigration to low wages, or crime,
| or reduced trust, likely to get a fair hearing?
|
| Yes, I believe they are. I am wary here of Michael Gove's
| quasi-fascist rhetoric of having "had enough of experts".
|
| > it is an aging, sclerotic continent that can only make
| money by imposing fines on US tech companies
|
| The big tech companies are too large and too powerful to
| be safe for democracy (or indeed for healthy forms of
| capitalism involving genuine competition). I would like
| to see more action taken against them everywhere. The EU
| is large enough to stand up to large corporations of this
| sort. The UK outside the EU is not.
| aembleton wrote:
| > The UK outside the EU is not.
|
| Why not? Australia is smaller and just stood up to them.
| orwin wrote:
| Two points here:
|
| 1/ You're right, UK is big an rich enough to make them
| cave a little, and is also speaking english and have a
| good diplomatic reputation, that will help.
|
| 2/ Australia is a weird country and have weird
| politicians, i don't think any western country could've
| done the same on their own.
| dash2 wrote:
| >> Also, economics isn't immune to bias. Are papers
| showing a link from immigration to low wages, or crime,
| or reduced trust, likely to get a fair hearing?
|
| >Yes, I believe they are. I am wary here of Michael
| Gove's quasi-fascist rhetoric of having "had enough of
| experts".
|
| Heh.... I'm an economist. Trust me on this one.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Most of the EU countries have worrying powerful and
| popular nationalist political parties which are on the
| rise.
|
| The UK is actually the exception to the growing hate and
| nationalism in Europe!
|
| The benefit of UK in Europe was that it helped curtail
| the exscesses of the continent. I worry for the EU now as
| it seems more toxic after Brexit than before.
| aembleton wrote:
| > The benefit of UK in Europe was that it helped curtail
| the exscesses of the continent.
|
| The main representation of the UK in the EU parliament
| was from UKIP, a nationalistic political party that
| formed a grouping with other nationalists.
|
| By leaving, the UK has reduced the size of that
| nationalistic group.
| gmac wrote:
| > The UK is actually the exception to the growing hate
| and nationalism in Europe!
|
| Are you in the UK? I find this a rather peculiar view.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| When was the last time you read about the BNP or
| Combat18? UKIP has gone. Where is the political party
| that is far right?
| dijit wrote:
| The conservatives have become much more right wing in
| recent years (recent being around 6 years) as the
| moderates are being removed and former UKIPpers are
| turning blue.
| gmac wrote:
| So the really hard right is diminished, but that's
| arguably because the pretty hard right took on its
| rhetoric on immigration and is currently in power.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| The Conservatives are "pretty hard right"?
|
| LOL
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _The EU isn 't perfect, but you'll struggle to argue that
| it hasn't expanded peace, prosperity and human rights
| across the continent. This is motherhood-and-apple-pie
| stuff._
|
| The ECSC then EEC did that, and of course NATO, ECHR,
| Schengen and various other institutions and agreements.
| The EU came into existence much later and claimed credit
| for things that were set in motion decades before. Noone
| would have voted to leave the EEC, the EEC was great.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| I think the fact that dumb old racists voted for Brexit
| doesn't preclude that dumb young people also voted for it.
| They're probably less racist though.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| This isn't the racist angle, It's the angle where the
| "consequences" are the only worthy consideration.
| Eszik wrote:
| I mean, 73% of the 18-24 and 62% of the 25-34 voted remain,
| whereas 60% of the 55+ voted leave. Statistically, it's a
| pretty valid point.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| 73% of 18-24 year olds say they voted remain, but did
| they actually show up? Also did they vote remain because
| it's cool or did they actually have some other reason?
| Eszik wrote:
| > 73% of 18-24 year olds say they voted remain, but did
| they actually show up?
|
| I haven't done the math, so I won't make assumptions, but
| I would bet the percentages from the polls roughly match
| up with the actual results from the referendum
|
| > Also did they vote remain because it's cool or did they
| actually have some other reason?
|
| That's an entirely different point, you're just moving
| the goalposts now. The question isn't whether young
| people were justified in voting remain, the question is
| did they vote remain.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I really don't want dive into these discussions, the "dumb
| old racist" argument is your own and not in any of my
| comment.
|
| Your own example is a single datapoint and according to the
| vote statistics you are a de facto minority in your age
| cohort.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/graphics-how-the-uk-
| voted-eu...
| SirHound wrote:
| So we know you're young.
| noir_lord wrote:
| I was strongly remain, 48% of us where, if the vote had been
| a year later it could quite easily have been 52/48 the other
| way.
|
| One wonders if remain had one if the leave campaign would
| have accepted "The vote was clear, put up with it and shut
| up".
|
| I completely understand why EU governments would be
| absolutely fed up with the UK government though.
|
| Sadly my generation (40 and younger) are going to have to
| live the consequences of something _we_ didn 't vote for (49
| and younger voted remain getting more strongly remain as you
| go younger) - it's absolutely frustrating.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _49 and younger voted remain getting more strongly remain
| as you go younger_
|
| Yeah, but unfortunately only 64% of the under 35 year olds
| bothered to turn up, while in the older age groups the
| turnout was much higher (80% for 35-64, 89% for over 65).
| That was probably a result of many (including the polls)
| thinking that the "Leave" side didn't have a chance of
| winning, same as many US Democrat supporters (also
| supported by the polls) didn't think Trump could win. The
| US voters got to correct their mistake four years later, no
| such luck for the UK voters unfortunately...
| dijit wrote:
| The vote was held the same day as Glastonbury, just after
| university terms ended.
|
| So the students (18-24) that could vote had to be:
|
| A) living with parents during studies, or registered to
| vote at parents place while not living there full time
| (illegal) -- or! Live full time on their own, which is
| rarely
|
| and
|
| B) to not go to Glastonbury, one of the largest festivals
| in the UK for young adults.
| ferongr wrote:
| If someone chose to go to a leisure activity instead of
| voting in a very important referendum that supposedly
| decided the future of the nation, then their vote was not
| worth much in the first place.
| dijit wrote:
| Most people assumed remain would win and were lax in
| voting.
|
| Hindsight being what it is tells us this was foolish, it
| that's how it was.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Students are allowed to register at their home and term-
| time addresses.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/electoral-register
|
| > It's sometimes possible to register at 2 addresses
| (though you can only vote once in any election).
|
| > For example, if you're a student with different home
| and term-time addresses, you may be able to register at
| both.
| azornathogron wrote:
| Don't worry; when you get older you'll become more
| conservative. And you'll be irritated by all the young
| folks of that future time who are shouting at you for your
| bad opinions and ignoring your experience and claiming you
| should be stripped of your vote, because, after all, you'll
| be dead soon anyway, so your opinion shouldn't matter.
|
| (I say this with tongue firmly in cheek, but I do think
| there is _some_ truth to the idea that people broadly get
| more conservative as they get older)
| arethuza wrote:
| Nigel Farage made it clear that he wouldn't accept 52-48 as
| being decisive:
|
| _" In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business
| by a long way. If the Remain campaign win two-thirds to
| one-third that ends it."_
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-
| referendum-3630668...
| callamdelaney wrote:
| The difference is that the referendum was stacked against
| leave in every conceivable way. For example, the remain
| campaign had PS6m more to work with. On top of this the
| government spent PS9m on pro remain leaflets and social
| media advertising.
|
| Add onto this the fact that the government wheeled out
| every 'expert' it could find to constantly cry about how
| bad brexit would be - most of them were lying (Mark
| Carney, George Osbourne in particular told lies of the
| most astounding nature - for example that brexit would
| cause more damage to the economy than WW2? Think about
| that for a minute.).
|
| If anything the establishment was stacked against brexit.
| gmac wrote:
| I already wrote a lengthy reply to one of your other
| comments. I don't have the time or energy to write a
| detailed rebuttal to this one, and I'm beginning to
| wonder whether you're arguing in good faith.
|
| But on your WW2 point, I did think about it for a minute.
|
| Britain fought WW2 for 6 years, 1939 - 1945. Brexit has
| no known endpoint. Imagine that even 10% of the trade
| impacts we've seen since the end of the transition period
| on 1 January persist. Then you can quite easily calculate
| how many years it will take to damage the economy more
| than WW2. Off the top of my head, I don't know if that's
| 6 years, or 60 years, or 600 years. But there's certainly
| some finite number that will do it.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Those statistics were later revised by the Bank of
| England, after the damage was done obviously, so I guess
| you're wrong.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| It's also worth considering that the UK economy in 2021
| is larger than it was during WW2, so a small percentage
| impact in the present day would be a bigger absolute
| value than the same percentage applied to the past
| economy.
| arethuza wrote:
| I'm Scottish, so I know exactly how "Project Fear" works!
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| Actually, the referendum was stacked against Remain, as
| Leave covered every single possible variation of not
| being in the EU, and at no point had to define anything
| except being "Not Remain"
| dash2 wrote:
| I don't think that's a stacked decision. There's no way
| to specify _exactly_ what each of two options will
| entail. (If you don 't believe me, take a look at a
| California ballot pamphlet.) Of course Leave was gonna be
| more uncertain - but normally such uncertainty plays
| against you in referendums, where the status quo tends to
| win. If Remain didn't pin Leave down, then that's the
| fault of their campaigning, not the setup.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Playing on this uncertainty was a conscious decision by
| the pro remain Conservative government of the time.
| People would ask 'what will happen after we vote brexit?'
| the natural reply: 'nobody knows' - well why not?
|
| It was clearly reckless to hold a vote on something
| without a plan on how it was actually to be implemented
| or even what it might look like; and there were calls for
| the government to do some investigation here and publish
| a report or some such document - the decision not to do
| so was in order to sow that uncertainty.
| Nursie wrote:
| Yes that was more or less an explicit choice from Cameron
| IIRC - if we come up with a plan for what happens
| afterwards, that plan may reassure people that Brexit can
| work out OK, and play to the other side.
|
| So no plan. Genius.
| arethuza wrote:
| Even Dominic Cummings said at one point there was a
| strong case for a second referendum to decide what form
| Brexit should take (note NOT a re-run of the first
| referendum).
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Not just Dominic Cummings[0] but also Jacob Rees-Mogg[1].
|
| I think it would have been democratically unconscionable
| to not have had "No Brexit" as an option on a second
| referendum, but that would have required a relatively
| complicated ranked voting system, and arguably it would
| have made more sense for the first referendum to have
| been set up that way instead.
|
| I suppose the alternative would have been for Remainers
| to boycott the hypothetical second referendum, and hope
| that the number of votes for the different Brexit options
| summed to substantially less than the number of votes for
| Brexit in the initial referendum.
|
| [0] https://www.markpack.org.uk/150719/dominic-cummings-
| second-r...
|
| [1] https://metro.co.uk/video/jacob-rees-mogg-suggests-
| holding-s...
| Nursie wrote:
| And the different versions of remain? Remain but keep
| British exceptionalism? Remain but go all in? Remain but
| work towards a superstate?
|
| There was no single, set-in-stone outcome on either side.
|
| I voted to stay in, but the remain campaign was far from
| honest.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Farage could continue campaigning if he wishes, but its
| not up to him.
|
| It's also apparent to me that the remain camp _did_ keep
| fighting Brexit tooth & nail much like Farage might
| have, so I guess we have symmetry.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Of course, and that would have been absolutely fine.
| Democracy is to be able to campaign for what you believe
| in.
|
| But equally, politically, and democratically, it is not
| tenable to call a referendum (which is something quite
| rare in the UK) and then to ignore the result. So the
| reality is that the government and Parliament had to
| abide by the result even if the referendum was legally
| not binding.
|
| Now people are of course free to campaign for the UK to
| join the EU.
| tim333 wrote:
| With hindsight I think there should have been two parts.
| 'Do you want to leave?' and then having looked into the
| details "ok here's the deal - you still want to go
| ahead?" I don't think many people were really voting for
| the present mess.
|
| Bit like buying a house - you want it? Ok, well do a
| survey... it has a bit of dry rot - you still want it or
| shall we look at other options?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| My preferred way for a referendum to work would be to
| have everybody be able to change vote at any time for any
| reason for a year, and the referendum only ends if the
| vote is on the same side for a continuous year.
|
| This would smooth out the issue of sampling the decision
| at one exact point.
| arethuza wrote:
| "Now people are of course free to campaign for the UK to
| join the EU."
|
| Or to campaign to leave the UK - which I suspect is a
| more achievable and sensible option. I'd doubt if the EU
| would want the UK back anyway.
| tim333 wrote:
| Or just individually leave the UK. I find the thing kind
| of depressing. It's not even as if the leave voters seem
| happy. It seems more of a my life's crap - lets destroy
| this EU membership thing - oh my life's still crap. Apart
| from Boris - at least he got to be PM and seems fairly
| cheerful. Perhaps the lies on a bus were worth it.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Nice how uneducated people are over here, it's mostly a bunch
| of californians thinking that they understand what Europe is.
| machinelabo wrote:
| I am appalled at the level of discussion here. Nationalism,
| both from EU, US and UK side is tiring, this flame war needs to
| be shut down. This not what HN is for folks.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| In terms of economy why not? The USA is equal in GDP to the
| entire EU, and it seems much more efficient to deal with them,
| an actual country, than 27 odd countries whom all have their
| own agenda and are masquerading as one country.
|
| Of course it's very fashionable on the internet to shit on
| brexit. "haha brits be dumb cus independent" - I can only
| imagine what sort of insecurity you're dealing with about your
| own country that you have to resort to this.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Yes, "In terms of economy" why not.
|
| Just ignore every other benefit of the EU to make your case.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| I'd suggest that there aren't any other benefits of the EU.
| SirHound wrote:
| As a Brit living in it I would tend to disagree. By the
| way if you're a leaver I've been looking for someone to
| cover the additional costs you've voted to put on me, DM
| if interested.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Ah yes, the common myth that before the EU nobody could
| live in any other country which is now a constituent of
| the EU.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It incurs real costs. Brits have _no idea_ how expensive
| it is to immigrate legally to the UK, or other EU
| countries from outwith the EU.
| SirHound wrote:
| It isn't a myth, there's a marked difference between
| having the right to live somewhere and merely the
| possibility.
|
| Before, it was my right to live in the Netherlands. Now,
| it is just a possibility.
|
| Thanks to the Withdrawal Agreement, because I already
| live here, I was given the "right" to apply for a
| residency, which like 99% of applicants, I received. I
| can now enjoy that for 5 years, after which I will need
| sponsorship from a company.
|
| This sponsorship is a key difference, which anyone who
| has moved to the US can attest to. When your continued
| existence in a country is contingent on workplace
| sponsorship the power dynamics between you and your
| employer are really quite different.
|
| In addition, it's one thing for me in a skilled
| occupation to be able to leave the country. But I have a
| friend whose boyfriend may be coming here on an art
| scholarship. She isn't in a skilled occupation. Before,
| she would have had the right to come here too. Now, I'm
| pretty doubtful that she'll be able to join him.
|
| At 24 and probably unlikely to ever leave the UK I
| wouldn't expect you to understand any of this. But it is
| the lived reality, previously of every British person
| leaving the EU and now every British person who leaves
| the UK.
|
| Edit: But of course, I'm not the first person to explain
| this to you, and it's not the last time you'll bray to
| the cheap seats with this mischaracterisation.
| bb123 wrote:
| I agree. I didn't vote for Brexit but it is hard to see how
| the pro-Brexit crowd haven't been vindicated with the vaccine
| roll out.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Why can't I upvote this?
| zimablue wrote:
| Britain handled corona one of the worst in the world, the
| vaccine thing does seem like a genuine good news story but
| it's bolting the door after the old people are all dead. Go
| back, look at the excess death rates, the extra preparation
| time the Uk squandered and the rhetoric at the time. Our
| ruling class have the blood of hundreds of thousands of
| dead on their hands and it's astonishing that the entire
| British public is mollified by getting vaccinated a couple
| of months early, when the damage is already done.
| bb123 wrote:
| My point wasn't that COVID was handled well, although I
| think there are more factors than government at play (It
| would be pretty hard to argue that the US govt has
| handled COVID better than the UK, so why is there death
| rate so much lower?).
|
| My point was that it is plain to see that the vaccine
| roll out in the EU has been mired by competing interests
| and slow bureaucracy, which is _exactly_ what the
| eurosceptics were claiming is wrong with the EU in 2016.
| Thus the vindication.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Much of the delay that the EU experienced can be
| attributed to the stricter scrutiny and liability
| conditions it applied to the vaccines, and the fact that
| the UK paid more per dose in order to jump to the front
| of the queue.
|
| If anything, this vindicates the Remainers who claimed
| that the UK government would become more deregulated and
| more beholden to corrupt interests.
|
| The EU was faced with an almost impossible set of
| constraints, either leaving the poorer countries to fend
| for themselves (and being portrayed as not caring about
| its ideals of unity and equality), or forcing the richer
| countries to vastly overpay for the doses of the poorer
| countries (and being portrayed as a wasteful drain on
| successful economies).
|
| Of course, it is in the interests of rich countries to
| help people in poor countries get vaccinated so that they
| don't become breeding grounds for new variants,
| especially if those countries have important trade links
| and free movement with said rich countries, but
| unfortunately people can get quite selfish during a
| crisis and not see the bigger picture. This is why we
| can't have nice things.
| Nursie wrote:
| The UK got a several-week headstart on the EU, announcing
| various partnerships, particularly with Oxford/AZ, before
| the EU even began their process. (Yes, I am aware that
| purchase orders were signed at different times, but the
| UK secured funding and supplies back in May last year,
| when the EU didn't begin its process until June)
|
| Talking about "queue jumping" or "corruption" really
| seems to be rooted in bitterness or just anti-UK
| sentiment.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > corruption
|
| Actually I thought I had written "corporate interests",
| but I guess that was a Freudian slip.
| SirHound wrote:
| We wouldn't have been required to join the EU for the
| vaccine scheme if we were a member, and were offered to
| join when we weren't. So I don't see how it is relevant.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| GDP - the most gamed and politicized metric on earth.
| Battling it out at the top of gamed metrics with unemployment
| rate.
|
| We'll see if this is still the economic "gold standard" to
| compare countries when China overturns the US in GDP.
| imtringued wrote:
| He said equal which is fair. After all there are lots of
| (relatively) poor countries in eastern Europe hat are part
| of the EU.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP
| )
| [deleted]
| tubularhells wrote:
| GDP doesn't matter for export/import. You don't know anything
| about these things, so why comment?
| bb123 wrote:
| Why is it inevitable that the UK will become like America?
| There are plenty of independent Algo-States that are nothing
| like it. Australia, New Zealand, Canada for example.
|
| This comment seems to be borne out spite more than any kind of
| logic.
| pm wrote:
| Australia is fast adopting some of what I consider some of
| the less useful aspects of American culture, not to mention
| our political class revelling in their overt corruption and
| willingly opening the back-door for the rest of 5-EYES.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| It's not inevitable, but the current government appears to
| move in that direction intentionally.
|
| - The EU exit was, among other things, accused of being a way
| to relax regulation and legislation to degrade product
| standards to a US-like level. Chlorinated chicken was a big
| item on everyone's discussion agenda a while back. This is
| now evidently happening.
|
| - The government is severely underfunding the NHS, despite
| paying it lip service. Some accuse the government of doing
| this as a form of sabotage, so that the service quality
| degrades and the private sector can swoop in as the saviour.
| This is controversial because:
|
| a) Brits are very proud of the NHS as a nation (or at least
| that's the dominant narrative in my news bubble)
|
| b) The privatisation of British rail has been a disaster -
| ticket prices have skyrocketed, and service quality took a
| nosedive in some areas.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" b) The privatisation of British rail has been a
| disaster"_
|
| Privatisation has not been perfect, but only someone who
| does not remember the old days of British Rail in the 1980s
| and 1990s would consider it a disaster. It's true that
| fares are high, but service levels and passenger numbers
| are both far above the British Rail days. (UK rail
| passenger numbers reached an _all time_ record in 2019)
|
| Prior to Covid, many of the busiest lines were operating
| near their capacity limits, so setting fares any lower
| would just cause even more severe crowding. And fares, of
| course, generate revenue to reinvest into expanding
| capacity.
|
| In any case, UK rail operators are now de-facto
| nationalised due to Covid. This has been recognised by the
| ONS, with rail operator's debts now counted on the
| government balance sheet.
|
| _ONS recognises full nationalisation of the UK railways:_
| https://www.ft.com/content/1baa6b50-47ba-416e-b172-90a77a34
| c...
| dharmab wrote:
| Here's a well-sourced rebuttal to your statement that
| privatization benefits revenues:
| https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k?t=591
|
| TL;DW revenues and passenger numbers are demonstrably
| lower with privatization than when nationalized. Unlike
| other industries, the UK's franchise privatization model
| is not subjected to free market forces, allowing rail
| companies to win contracts by underbidding only to fail
| to meet their targets.
| dspillett wrote:
| It's a bit unfair to compare to that era of British Rail
| when at that point it had been run into the ground by
| under-funding and other bad government decisions, in part
| (my inner cynic shouts loudly) to make privatisation look
| more attractive as an option.
| rainingmonkey wrote:
| > Prior to Covid, many of the busiest lines were
| operating near their capacity limits, so setting fares
| any lower would just cause even more severe crowding.
|
| This isn't the vindication of privatisation you seem to
| think it is. Passenger numbers (and fares) are hitting
| records, and the operators are still using the exact same
| rolling stock as in 'the old days of British Rail'.
| Privatisation has led to massive corporate profits at the
| taxpayers' expense, without providing the investment the
| railways need.
|
| How is it that half of the UK's private operators are
| subsidiaries of other countries' nationalised operators?
| When the East Coast Mainline was renationalised (after
| the franchise holder claimed it was impossible to run
| profitably), it jumped from the most expensive line with
| the least customer satisfaction to the line with the
| highest customer satisfaction.
|
| The 'bad old days' of British Rail were because of
| persistent underfunding, not the ownership structure. The
| UK state spends more on railways today under a privatised
| system than they did when the entire system was
| nationalised.
|
| https://www.bringbackbritishrail.org/
| youngtaff wrote:
| > and the operators are still using the exact same
| rolling stock as in 'the old days of British Rail'
|
| Some are, some aren't - Cross Country had plenty of new
| rolling stock when they were Virgin owned, and GWR have
| replaced many of the 125s in the last 5yrs
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" This isn't the vindication of privatisation you seem
| to think it is."_
|
| I'm not suggesting it is. I'm saying that privatisation
| has not been a _disaster_ , which was the OP's claim. If
| privatisation was a _disaster_ , passengers would not
| have flocked to the railways in record numbers.
|
| > _" the operators are still using the exact same rolling
| stock as in 'the old days of British Rail'"_
|
| This isn't true in the vast majority of cases. With very
| few exceptions (like a few remaining HSTs), you'd be hard
| pressed to find any train operating into London that
| dates back to British Rail. Many routes have been through
| multiple rolling stock upgrades since the BR days!
|
| But note that rolling stock is not something that the
| operators have much control over anyway. Upgrades are
| decided/determined by the Department for Transport as
| part of the franchise terms. So if you do find yourself
| on an ancient train on some regional route, that's really
| the government's fault, not the operator's.
|
| > _" How is it that half of the UK's private operators
| are subsidiaries of other countries' nationalised
| operators?"_
|
| Nationalised operators tend to have low costs of capital,
| so can potentially bid lower for franchises than private
| competitors who are likely to be paying higher interest
| rates. They also already have management experience in
| running large railways, which helps to support their
| bids.
|
| > _" The 'bad old days' of British Rail were because of
| persistent underfunding, not the ownership structure."_
|
| I think this is partially true.
|
| > _" The UK state spends more on railways today under a
| privatised system than they did when the entire system
| was nationalised."_
|
| Yes, but again, passenger numbers have increased
| dramatically in that time. In 2019, the UK's total rail
| subsidy (including Network Rail spending) was 3.97p per
| passenger mile. That's just about as low as it's ever
| been since at least 1980.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Alright, but how can you nationalize these businesses under
| EU laws and regulations?
|
| I'm rather sure your Labor party (at least Corbyn) was
| constantly attacking EU/Brussels and often dutch for
| neoliberalism.
|
| If your political position is re-nationalisation then it's
| easier to do it outside the EU unless you think the
| Conservative party stays in power forever.
| DanBC wrote:
| > so that the service quality degrades and the private
| sector can swoop in as the saviour. This is controversial
| because:
|
| There are a couple of other reasons:
|
| The Lansley reforms were about increasing non-NHS
| provision. They mostly failed because private providers
| simply can't do the job for the money the NHS gets paid.
|
| Where we see private provision (for example, specialist
| commissioning in mental health services, or learning
| disability and autism services) we see _terrible_ standards
| of care. Winterborne View, Whorlton Hall, St Andrews, are
| all non-NHS providers. Cygnet Health have had a bunch of
| inadequate CQC reports.
| thu2111 wrote:
| The US is hardly some low regulation capitalist utopia. The
| US regulatory code is enormous. Plenty of self-proclaimed
| "Europeans" think it is, but in my experience they often
| know relatively little about the issues in question and are
| just parroting cultural talking points they picked up
| elsewhere.
|
| Indeed, you seem to admit that here, when you state that
| you got your views of what British people believe from your
| "news bubble". For example you think everyone else thinks
| the NHS is awesome, because left-wing journalists told you
| that's what everyone thinks. One day you'll talk to a Brit
| outside of that bubble and get a real shock to discover
| they aren't enamoured with the NHS at all. Remember,
| _nobody_ has copied the NHS model. Nobody! The rest of the
| EU looked at it and thought the UK was crazy to do that,
| they all went with far greater private sector involvement.
| The NHS is a socialist anachronism and plenty of people
| would love to move to a more standard social insurance
| model, but even expressing such an opinion results in
| nasty, vicious attacks by the left, so people quickly learn
| to just stay quiet about it.
|
| Quite possibly one day there will be a referendum on this
| and the same sorts of people whose minds were blown by
| Brexit will have their minds blown a second time by the
| degree to which people vote against the NHS.
|
| Likewise for rail. The UK just had a vote on that: Corbyn
| had very few identifiable policies but re-nationalisation
| of rail was one of them. Voters rejected that agenda on an
| a-historic scale. Again, if it ever became a topic of
| serious political debate like the EU did before the Brexit
| referendum, you'd be shocked at how little support
| nationalisation would end up having. Ridership was in
| decline for decades before privatisation. The moment they
| were privatised that trend went into reverse and ridership
| started climbing again, until it reached new records pre-
| COVID. Ticket prices were rising _because_ the newly
| privatised railways became so popular (limited
| supply+growing demand=rising prices).
|
| Regulation: Whilst the US is not a low regulation zone by
| international standards, the EU is even worse. I love this
| headline, UK leaving GDPR. Hell yes. Another brilliant move
| by the UK post-Brexit, the latest in a string of them. GDPR
| is a disastrous "law", in quotes because it barely
| qualifies as a law at all in the traditional sense when you
| read it. Laws are meant to explicitly state what they
| disallow but the GDPR is so vaguely worded it could be
| interpreted to mean almost anything. Just on basic
| constitutional grounds, junking it is a smart move.
|
| But there are practical benefits too. GDPR imposes
| staggering costs on businesses to deliver dubious
| 'benefits' which approximately nobody outside of the
| reflexive "it's EU so it must be good" bubble actually
| cares about. There has been no mass migration away from US
| tech firms at any point, GDPR implementation changed
| basically nothing about the online experience and the EU's
| various attempts to legislate tech firms away from domestic
| markets just made it impossible to create local
| competitors. Beyond being banned from some local US
| newspapers and forcing yet more privacy popups everywhere,
| GDPR has been largely impact-free.
| years3500 wrote:
| Why can't people see that US is socialist? It has
| socialism for the rich. One of the most public glaring
| examples were the gigantic bailouts in 2008. Socialism
| for the rich is a regular thing in the US.
| anoncake wrote:
| Because "socialism for the rich" as a term doesn't make
| any sense.
| years3500 wrote:
| I think I get what you are saying, it doesn't make sense
| at first. But it's quite a popular way of making sense of
| society, power etc
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_for_the_rich_and_
| cap...
| sweetdreamerit wrote:
| It is interesting to see that european countries, who
| have national health systems, tend to have an higher life
| expectancy than the U.S. [0] Maybe the opportunity to
| live longer and healthier can be considered a sort of
| socialist anachronism. [0]
| https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-
| expectancy/
| Normille wrote:
| >The NHS is a socialist anachronism
|
| Always makes me laugh when Americans use "socialist" as a
| derogatory term. A huge number of people in Europe
| [myself included] are proud to consider themselves
| "socialists".
| arethuza wrote:
| To be fair the founder of the NHS did see it as a
| socialist:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan
|
| _" Illness is neither an indulgence for which people
| have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be
| penalised, but a misfortune the cost of which should be
| shared by the community."_
| arethuza wrote:
| To be clear: if the NHS is socialism (and I think it is)
| then I'm happy to have _some_ socialism in my country.
| nix23 wrote:
| Yeah must be a bad thing being a society who helps each
| other...like a family probably would..terrible TERRIBLE
| :)
| sanity31415 wrote:
| Are you a national or an international socialist?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| 1) I think the NHS is a red line for many people in the
| UK, whereas criticising the EU has been a national sport
| since before there was an EU. I think you are misinformed
|
| 2) left wing journalists? For what newspaper? The UK
| newspaper industry is dominated by right wing papers. I
| think international readers may get there wrong idea
| about it because they see the guardian online... because
| the guardian is free it gets shared a lot. If you want to
| see a typical British newspaper try the Daily Mail (Don't
| take this as a recommendation!)
|
| 3) The idea that the Corbyn election defeat was mostly
| about rail nationalisation is one of the most absurd
| things I have ever read.
|
| 4) The businesses I work with spent trivial sums on GDPR.
| m101 wrote:
| This comment was very unfairly down-voted in my opinion.
| I've noticed that hackernews often down-votes some
| interesting comments.
|
| I would say that most people will not vote against the
| NHS though. They may vote to reform it or get it more
| money, but they will not mostly vote to get rid of it.
|
| The NHS is an upside down version of the US healthcare
| system. In the UK the political system is hijacked by the
| population to keep doctors wages low. In the US the
| political system is hijacked by the healthcare industry
| in order to keep healthcare wages high.
| TheButlerian wrote:
| Based and based pilled.
| james-bcn wrote:
| I feel like I've lost a few brain cells reading that.
| macinjosh wrote:
| What a thoughtful response /s.
| james-bcn wrote:
| Well, I could have spent time creating a post linking to
| refuting data, but do you really think it would make any
| difference to the thu2111's opinions?
| thu2111 wrote:
| Thanks for making my point for me about how the left
| react to discovering what other people believe.
| arethuza wrote:
| I'm sure some people in the UK believe those things -
| just not very many.
| pydry wrote:
| >For example you think everyone else thinks the NHS is
| awesome, because left-wing journalists
|
| Or because 87% of Britons polled said that they are very
| proud of it.
|
| >you'd be shocked at how little support rail
| nationalisation would end up having.
|
| 56% in favor. 15% actively against. Majority support even
| by members of the party that was most against it.
|
| >The NHS is a socialist anachronism
|
| This is a popular view among investors & high net worth
| individuals. The US system is _extraordinarily_
| profitable as a mechanism for parasitic wealth extraction
| and UK based investors are not blind to this. They want
| some sugar too.
|
| Nonetheless even UK right wing papers owned by those very
| people shy away from this view. 87% is above the
| threshold where they feel comfortable contradicting the
| popular view.
|
| Rail nationalisation was below that threshold and the
| barclay brothers owned telegraph, for instance, would
| attack the idea with savage abandon of a rabid dog.
| gadders wrote:
| Let's not forget that approximately 20% of all UK COVID
| cases were caught in hospital. Not exactly the envy of
| the world.
|
| FWIW, I think we should keep the NHS and have it free at
| point of use. However, I don't really care how that
| service is provided - government employees, private,
| whatever - as long as the service is good.
| pydry wrote:
| It's been getting steadily albeit very slowly worse for
| years. The Conservative government has been following a
| variant of the privatization handbook for over a decade
| now: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/tsa-as-
| example-of-pr...
|
| Overall costs have not been going down much but various
| parts of the service are given to contractors who do a
| worse job at a higher price and take a fat cut. Richard
| Branson notably has done this. The PPE fiasco that caused
| much of the spread of COVID was largely because of this -
| much of it was bought and didn't arrive:
| https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/ppe-scandal-
| procur...
|
| Nonetheless people's emotional impressions of the service
| tend to have a lag. Your Mother's cancer treatment from 9
| years ago will have a much bigger effect on your
| impression of the institution than statistics about how
| well it is doing now.
|
| Eventually it will be privatized entirely as a "fix" for
| the problems caused by privatization and the costs will
| skyrocket.
|
| Just like the cost of my railway season ticket to London
| or a trip to the doctor in the US.
| cranekam wrote:
| > Let's not forget that approximately 20% of all UK COVID
| cases were caught in hospital. Not exactly the envy of
| the world.
|
| Do you have a source for this? How does it stack up
| against other countries? Is it possible a greater share
| of people were hospitalised and thus the number of
| infections at hospitals was higher as a result?
| thu2111 wrote:
| _56% in favor. 15% actively against. Majority support
| even by members of the party that was most against it._
|
| When Cameron first called the referendum Remain was in
| the lead. When topics are debated thoroughly in the
| public sphere and serious campaigns are run, people's
| opinions can shift pretty dramatically. That's why
| politicians campaign.
|
| Nobody has ever spent time campaigning to keep railways
| privatised in the UK because the Conservatives have
| always chosen to fight elections on other issues, whilst
| Labour have made nationalisation a priority for years. If
| people were asked to make a direct decision on this and
| there was competent campaigning involved, I am very sure
| nationalisation would lose. The arguments are weak.
|
| _87% of Britons polled said that they are very proud of
| [the NHS]_
|
| The same poll showed even more people are "proud" of the
| fire brigade, although there's nothing special about the
| British fire service. They are also more "proud" of the
| post office than Oxford or Cambridge universities. All
| that poll says is that people tend to answer "proud"
| (whatever that's interpreted to mean) when asked about
| institutions which they frequently interact with and are
| rarely exposed to any criticism of.
|
| Just like with the railways, British people are not
| exposed to serious debate about the NHS. The
| Conservatives have, for now at least, given up trying to
| debate it because they prefer to be a centrist party and
| because Labour consistently exploit people's emotions by
| conflating the NHS with healthcare. For instance the left
| will happily imply that any criticism of the NHS (a
| bureaucracy) means hatred of nurses and loving of cancer,
| or other nonsense.
| colourgarden wrote:
| > Please don't use Hacker News for political or
| ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
| aasasd wrote:
| I don't even have any stakes in this argument, but:
|
| > _All that poll says is that people tend to answer
| "proud" (whatever that's interpreted to mean) when asked
| about institutions which they frequently interact with
| and are rarely exposed to any criticism of._
|
| You just wrote above:
|
| > _One day you 'll talk to a Brit outside of that bubble
| and get a real shock to discover they aren't enamoured
| with the NHS at all._
|
| > _plenty of people would love to move to a more standard
| social insurance model_
|
| Probably should choose one: either people have an bad
| opinion of NHS, or they don't.
| pydry wrote:
| >Just like with the railways, British people are not
| exposed to serious debate about the NHS.
|
| They're exposed to investor dogma like yours on a daily
| basis from most of the investor owned media (telegraph,
| the mail, etc.). It isn't quite as vehement as yours
| because they know the limits of what their audience would
| accept but their owners views are broadly in line with
| yours.
|
| It's a bit hard to attack an institution that cured your
| readerships' mother's cancer, for instance, and not lose
| their trust. They learned this lesson the hard way.
|
| >For instance the left will happily imply that any
| criticism of the NHS (a bureaucracy) means hatred of
| nurses
|
| They'll state that a below inflation pay rise does that
| because it does. They tried to supplant it with a weekly
| "clap a thon" instead. Cringeworthy.
|
| Although, it's not strictly nurses investors and the
| investor backed government hate it's nursing _unions_ ,
| among other impediments to parasitic US-style profit
| driven value extraction.
| iso1631 wrote:
| >The NHS is a socialist anachronism
|
| I believe the NHS funding and operational model is
| similar to that used by military veterans in the US.
| gadders wrote:
| You realise that salad in the UK is already chlorinated,
| right? I don't see that being an issue. It's just
| protectionism.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/09/chlorine-washed-
| chicken...
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _The government is severely underfunding the NHS, despite
| paying it lip service_
|
| Have you ever known any government departments that don't
| howl about being underfunded? The NHS is the 4th largest
| employer in the world, 1.3 million employees to provide
| healthcare to a nation of 67 million.
|
| The Labour Party is currently claiming that NHS spending
| will be cut next year... because the emergency funding for
| the Covid situation won't be made a permanent part of its
| budget!!
| iso1631 wrote:
| > The NHS is the 4th largest employer in the world, 1.3
| million employees to provide healthcare to a nation of 67
| million.
|
| Yet taxpayer funding for health per head of population in
| the UK is lower than
|
| France
|
| Germany
|
| Sweden
|
| Switzerland
|
| And get this -- THE USA
|
| In 2009 - so before Obamacare came in, the US government
| spent $3,700 per person on healthcare. Not per person
| covered by medicare and military, per citizen.
|
| The UK spent $2,700, and everyone was covered.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Spending is irrelevant, the success lies in outcomes. You
| brought the US up, and it's a good example here: very
| high costs, poor outcomes.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Outcomes of a health system are tricky to measure
| compariatively, let alone put a dollar value on, which I
| guess is why people like them. Broadly though, UK,
| Germany, France, Sweden health systems tend to have the
| same ballpark. UK has always cost far less than those
| countries though.
| [deleted]
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| And the coverage sucked. The care provided by the NHS is
| very poor while paying its employees very little and
| forcing to work with garbage equipment.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _The care provided by the NHS is very poor while paying
| its employees very little and forcing to work with
| garbage equipment._
|
| Doctors and administrators are very well paid. Even
| nurses are when you factor in the pension. The only
| genuinely underpaid staff in the NHS are its cleaners who
| are the REAL frontline against infectious diseases.
| Didn't see them doing many Tiktok dances however, too
| busy with real work.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > The privatisation of British rail has been a disaster
|
| Train company profits count for about 2% of the total cost
| of the ticket, and (pre covid) the network carried more
| than twice as many passengers as it was under BR - nearly 2
| billion journeys a year vs a steady 800m in the 70s through
| 90s. in terms of distance, pax-km
|
| 1970 36b 1980 35b 1990 40b 1997 42b (end of BR) 2010 64b
| 2018 81b
|
| Since 1997 that's a 90% increase.
|
| France has increased 40% since 1997, Germany by 60%.
|
| Fares have increased, but this is a reflection of the cost
| shifting to the passenger and away from the taxpayer. In
| 2009/10, franchised train operating companies were paid
| PS275m to run the services (and another PS3b was spent on
| the network those trains run on)
|
| By 2015-2016 that operating subsidy had gone, and instead
| the TOCs paid PS1.2b/year to operate their trains (some
| areas like Northern and West Midlands were still
| subsidised, but South West trains and Southern were paying
| their operating dues and paying for the tracks they run on)
|
| It doesn't make sense to justifiably complain about
| overcrowdning (high demand) on one hand, but complain about
| high prices on the other. There is competition to rail if
| the price was too high -- driving, coaches, flying, not
| traveling, but the fare is obviously at the right level to
| result in record levels of travel and relatively low
| subsidy.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I'm not sure where you're getting your figures from.
| Here's a more representative view:
|
| https://fullfact.org/economy/how-much-does-government-
| subsid...
|
| Government subsidies have _tripled_ since privatisation
| and fares have risen by 20% after inflation.
|
| That doesn't seem like a win for efficiency. And of
| course it's the customer who bears the cost - which
| aren't just economic, but also social, because good
| public infrastructure reliably offers many-multiple ROI
| for economic activity in general.
|
| And the question remains - how would BR have fared
| (ha...) with those generous subsidy levels instead of the
| very constrained resources it was forced to operate with?
|
| Not only has privatisation been very expensive and poor
| value in real terms, it also destroyed one of the UK's
| biggest engineering employers and R&D development
| cultures.
|
| The HS125 is still one of the most popular trains today.
| Experimental APT tilting technology was _given away_ to
| European companies and then _sold back_ to the UK in the
| form of foreign-built tiling trains.
|
| Those could easily have been designed and built in the
| UK. There were also losses in signalling research -
| essential for maximised efficiency - and in network
| integration.
|
| So it absolutely does make sense to complain about
| overcrowding and high prices when a nationalised network
| would have been cheaper to run, better value, and also
| more advanced technologically.
|
| Of course this ideologically unpossible. Even so.
| Ideologues need to explain why jobs were lost, safety was
| trashed, engineering and R&D skills were off-shored _in
| addition_ to higher subsidies and uneconomic fares.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Those specific figures come from the sheet "Rail subsidy
| per passenger mile by Train Operating Company (TOC): DfT
| franchised train operators: 2015/16"
|
| Note this importantly doesn't include Scotland, Wales,
| Merseyrail (public) or TFL (public)
|
| Rail subsidy jumped after railtrack was replaced with
| nationalrail, and the legacy of decades of underfunding
| in rail under BR was apparent. That underfunding is
| obviously going to happen under a tory government
| interested in cutting short term costs. You can see that
| as of 2015 subsidy per passenger mile was about the same
| as it was in the 80s and 90s[0]
|
| Rail subsidy is split into two parts
|
| 1) Track costs 2) Service costs
|
| Your figures are including major capital expenditure -
| specifically HS2 and Crossrail, so not really comparable
| with subsidies in the 70s and 80s when there weren't
| massive capital programmes and expansion.
|
| I'm less concerned about track maintenence costs or track
| capital costs -- that's like the government paying for
| road maintenance or new motorways - it's good. It's the
| service subsidies that interest me. Basicalyl how much is
| the taxpayer using to subsidise rail travellers (who tend
| to have higher income and higher wealth than average),
| and during the 6 years I have data on, those dropped by
| PS1.4 billion.
|
| Remember that under BR there were competing sectors -
| intercity, regional railways, network southeast, all of
| which were shit. Now there are competing franchisees,
| some of which are shit, but we often get a choice (Virgin
| vs Chiltern vs London Midland for London-Birmingham, XC
| vs TFW for Crewe-Bristol, etc. This means more choice and
| cheaper fares for me, the passenger).
|
| In 2015/16 the franchise "GTR (Thameslink etc)" pays
| PS278m for the privilige of running trains through
| central London. Meanwhile Northern, which have very few
| routes that pay their way, get paid PS122m from central
| government. You could argue that Grant Shapps would be
| better running these services, I'm not convinced.
|
| Effectively Brighton->London commuters are subsidising
| rural travellers in Yorkshire. You could argue this
| shouldn't happen, and those commuting into London for
| high paying jobs should have cheaper fares, at the
| expense of fewer services in the North. That's a very
| Thatcherite view, but that's ok, everyone's entitled to a
| view.
|
| APT predated privitisation by 2 decades so I'm not sure
| what that has to do with anything. Virgin ordered the
| class 390s.
|
| It sounds like you don't like the state of the rail
| industry in Britain in the 80s and 90s, which is
| reasonable. It's hardly the fault of privitisation didn't
| start until 1993 and didn't begin operation until about
| 1997
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisa
| tion_of...
| [deleted]
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _Train company profits count for about 2% of the total
| cost of the ticket_
|
| Considering that this is about the same as inflation and
| less than the usual annual ticket price increase which is
| decided in part by the government, I strongly suspect
| that this number is an accounting exercise more than
| anything else.
|
| There's also the profits made by the trains leasing
| companies as many TOCs lease their rolling stock
|
| > _There is competition to rail if the price was too high
| -- driving, coaches, flying, not traveling_
|
| There's no real competition for most commuters around
| London at least. The trade-off is rather with the cost of
| housing.
|
| It makes perfect sense to complain about overcrowding for
| that reason and because pay a lot of money for their
| tickets, indeed.
|
| People commute by train because it's the least bad option
| and/or the only viable option. That does not mean that
| it's good or that there is real competition.
|
| If the number of trips has been increasing I think that
| the main drivers are the concentration of jobs within
| London and the booming housing costs: People live further
| and further away and have to commute by trains.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Yes, the leasing companies make a fortune. On the other
| hand they take risk in tying up capital.
|
| I'm no fan of the franchise system - especially when
| companies like Virgin East Coast get out of the
| obligations if they don't make enough money, but rail is
| stronger now (well 2019) than it has been since before
| the motor car was created, and the strength coincided
| with the franchise system coming in.
|
| > People commute by train because it's the least bad
| option and/or the only viable option. That does not mean
| that it's good or that there is real competition.
|
| We haven't seen the same growth in other European
| countries though. And it's not just commuting into London
| -- long-distance travel has ballooned too - hence the
| need to build HS2.
| youngtaff wrote:
| I'm not sure train leasing is a profitable as a it was
| when BR was privatised and Porterbrook et al owned all
| the rolling stock
|
| What seems to happen now is the manufacturers e.g.
| Hitachi lease the trains to TOCs complete with
| maintenance plans built it.
|
| Think Eurostar was the first model of this in the Uk
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _We haven 't seen the same growth in other European
| countries though_
|
| In cities like Paris, public transport has huge capacity
| and is cheap (and in Paris employers have to pay half
| your season ticket).
|
| Lower growth there does not mean that we're doing better,
| it means that we're starting from lower... And the UK has
| had a robust population growth as well.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > in Paris employers have to pay half your season ticket
|
| That sounds awful - so I effectively get a paycut if I
| walk or ride to the office?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I don't understand how you can interpret it as either
| awful or a paycut if you don't take public transport...
|
| If you buy a season ticket (at least a monthly ticket) to
| commute between your home and office you send a copy to
| HR and they have to refund you half of it.
| Nursie wrote:
| That sounds like a massive incentive to hire very
| locally!
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It's cheap enough that employers don't bother (and anyway
| it's usually not possible to...). So, no, it's not a
| "massive incentive".
| medium_burrito wrote:
| In fairness to the UK, they probably aren't going to become
| 80% foreign real-estate scams, 20% resource extraction. Well
| not the latter, at least.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I have no idea why but the EU/Brexit is one subject where HN
| comment quality falls apart. I would have assumed most people
| here are Americans, so not really emotionally invested in
| their 'side'. But this comment section is full of Twitter hot
| take type stuff.
| brmgb wrote:
| To be honest, there is little emotional investment in
| Europe regarding Brexit. People wanted to be done with it
| as the process was wasting valuable union time and there
| was a feeling it was needlessly draging on but from what I
| have seen Europeans actually care very little about the UK.
|
| Brexit mostly was and remains a domestic issue which is why
| it's such a touchy subject on HN where there is probably a
| significant number of Britons commenting.
| avian wrote:
| > there is little emotional investment in Europe
| regarding Brexit
|
| As someone from the continental Europe, this is not at
| all my experience, but I'm sure this depends on the
| specific social bubble I'm in. There are plenty of people
| around that had their lives complicated because of it,
| enough that most people I know have very strong feelings
| about it.
| orwin wrote:
| In my rural/coastal bubble, people seems to believe than
| UK homeowners will suddenly have to sell their properties
| and that prices will drop, and are pretty much happy
| about brexit. I know it won't happen, but hey, at least
| its cheap joy and hope.
|
| But mostly, no one cares.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _I would have assumed most people here are Americans, so
| not really emotionally invested in their 'side'_
|
| Similar to how broadly views on Trump outside of the US
| tended to be similar, when people have some distance from a
| debate they do tend to fall down on one "side".
|
| I presume by "Twitter hot take" you just mean "takes I
| personally disagree with", right?
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Foreigners and foreign countries can be proxies for
| domestic arguments. My favorite example is how the ancient
| Romans would talk about the non-Roman "barbarians." It
| might be they described them as they were but it's more
| likely they used them to make a point about what was wrong
| with their contemporary Roman society.
|
| The barbarians are good, loyal and brave. They don't spend
| their time with cultural frivolities like theater, bathing
| and running a shop.
| [deleted]
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| I hope you realise you're also describing your contribution
| to this debate.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I don't. I think I've noted some egregious comments and
| posted opinions, yes, but my complaint isn't about people
| having opinions. It's about, for example, the top level
| comment being gleeful about the sky falling without
| really having any valuable content. Or another which
| lazily dismisses this as corruption with no further
| engagement needed.
|
| "I think it's hilarious that Britain will fail. Who
| agrees?" is not really what I consider a good seed
| comment. It's fine to think Britain will fail, but at
| least provide something for people to discuss with you.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| Using quotes to paraphrase your own interpretation of
| what OP posted (and then ignoring the last sentence which
| had more meat) is exactly the kind of low value comment
| you're talking about.
| thu2111 wrote:
| No, his post is on-point and worthy of discussion, or
| meta-discussion if you like.
|
| HN comments on anything EU or Brexit related during the
| morning/early afternoon CET, i.e. before America wakes
| up, show the ugly truth underlying EU ideology. The
| comments are filled with spite, anger, hatred and anti-
| British, anti-capitalist sentiment. This reflects the
| type of discourse that has been routine in the media and
| politics of EU member states over the past five years.
|
| I do believe that one of the major reasons the UK voted
| to leave was the realisation that other European
| countries were not in fact friendly allies as the Remain
| campaign tried to portray, but rather arrogant and
| complacent takers that saw the UK as a resource to be
| exploited and abused. Whilst in public EU leadership
| tried to stay on message, way too often the mask slipped
| and the truth was revealed. Examples:
|
| French ex-President Francois Hollande on Brexit: _" There
| must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a
| price [for leaving]"_
|
| EU negotiators when they thought the UK would accept the
| previous withdrawal agreement: _" We got rid of them [the
| British]. We kicked them out. We finally turned them into
| a colony, and that was our plan from the first moment"_
|
| Guy Verhofstadt: _" The world order of tomorrow is not a
| world order based on nation states or countries. It's a
| world order that is based on empires"_
|
| An anonymous German ambassador: _" There is no shortage
| of acrimony. I don't think there will be any
| circumstances under which there will be anything other
| than a Brexit cold war."_
|
| And their demands during the negotiations were of similar
| spirit. Sadly these attitudes are not merely confined to
| the hallways of EU institutions - it is worse, it appears
| to be endemic amongst the population. It is a
| totalitarian attitude: bend the knee to the mighty group.
| Give in completely, or we will crush you into submission.
| Americans may find it shocking but it's no surprise to
| those of us who have lived through it directly. The good
| news is that now the UK is out and the Rejoin campaign
| has died in its crib due to the EU's vaccine disaster, EU
| ideology will gradually fade away there with time, as it
| did in other countries that opted not to join at all.
| orwin wrote:
| I think you're reading way to much into this. Most people
| don't care. I have a friend from my school that went to
| work in the UK around 2015, even he doesn't care (he is
| making a lot of money though thanks to brexit so he only
| care that the online services equivalence negotiations
| stay unclear or at least not done after June). We might
| have cared in 2018, its 2021 now. We are ready, we do
| have border checks, we do have 3rd party ruling applying
| to UK resident, a trade agreement.
|
| Also the quotes are from "Blind's man brexit", and if
| anybody is interested, this is probably the best
| geopolitical book i've read so far, and it is not at all
| limited to the four quotes.
|
| The quote about the colony is in the opening, and what's
| funny is that less than 5 pages later, Barnier complains
| about the English cherry picking. Is this something
| that's taught in "public" schools in England?
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| Game of Thrones has really seeped into the consciousness
| of a certain type of person. This obsession with knee
| bending...
| gadders wrote:
| >>I do believe that one of the major reasons the UK voted
| to leave was the realisation that other European
| countries were not in fact friendly allies as the Remain
| campaign tried to portray, but rather arrogant and
| complacent takers that saw the UK as a resource to be
| exploited and abused.
|
| This is certainly the case in the way the EU tried to
| treat the UK after their own COVID vaccination programme
| descended into farce.
| ploika wrote:
| I actually think it's because so many people here _are_
| Americans that the hot takes on the EU don 't fall foul of
| the "no political battles" rule as often as they should.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| The same thing happened with Trump, and American flashpoint
| politics more generally.
|
| Note that it's morning in Europe, and as such there will be
| lots of British/European people around, for whom Brexit is
| a bigger deal.
| bb123 wrote:
| I think given the timezone difference, most people on here
| this time of day are probably in the UK/Europe. I guess the
| emotive nature of the subject is showing through.
| tubularhells wrote:
| Australia is very much like the US, and worse in many
| regards. You just have no idea about any of it.
| bb123 wrote:
| In the spirit of keeping these comments high quality I'd
| love engage with you about this. Why do you think that? I'm
| actually a dual citizen of the UK and Australia and I have
| to say my experience is that neither country is anything
| like the US. (Beware when assuming you know who you're
| talking to on the internet ;) )
| dansimau wrote:
| I grew up in the city in Australia. Once when I crossed
| the road (as a pedestrian) at a red light, a police
| officer on the other side of the street stopped me and
| gave me a warning for jaywalking. Before I had walked, I
| had looked both ways and deemed it safe; there was no
| traffic and no other pedestrians waiting.
|
| (In my mind: I am just a person on planet Earth, trying
| to get from position A to position B, less than 5 metres
| away).
|
| Having now lived in the UK and Netherlands for over 10
| years, I feel this would never happen here. I would
| expect this in the US though (so I rarely jaywalk on the
| few times I have been there).
|
| I tell this anecdote as an example to my friends when I
| try to describe how Australia has a mix of influences
| from both Europe and the US.
| Chmouel wrote:
| As someone who was doing the other way around (hey dan!)
| working in australia coming from france i always find it
| weird how australian could accepts almost everything from
| the government with not much contestation,
|
| I remember when there was a law who passed thru in
| Australia where every small company could fire anyone on
| the day (it wasn't the case before, i think there was a 3
| month period or something).
|
| The law passed and the only comments I could get from
| colleague at that time (not from you dan ;)) was "humm
| okay then"
|
| In france there would be riots for months and years if
| such law passed.
| Nursie wrote:
| Honestly I think France is somewhat exceptional there,
| with the rioting for workers rights.
|
| I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it does seem
| unusually French.
|
| From what I can tell the workers rights situation in
| France really does dissuade some companies from setting
| up there.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, France is possibly an extreme case here, but in
| most developed countries this would be pretty unthinkable
| (assuming it really is a law that just allows small
| businesses fire people without notice in normal
| circumstances; firing people without notice for gross
| misconduct or due to liquidation is generally allowed,
| though in the liquidation case the employees would then
| usually be creditors for the notice pay that should have
| been paid in most places).
| Nursie wrote:
| Yeah I agree it's not good. I was disturbed enough to
| hear about "at will" rules in the US and that seems like
| more of the same.
|
| I think there would be a lot of noise in the press about
| it here, but I don't think riots in the streets would be
| part of it!
| kmeisthax wrote:
| France's exceptionalism was that people had _time_ to
| riot. Most countries drown their precariat in work and
| cortisol. France has shorter weekdays so even well-to-do
| people can protest. This is no longer exceptional to
| France; the pandemic has dramatically increased the
| number of Americans who are both unemployed and have the
| resources to protest. That 's why we get riots every few
| months and why those riots are not unique to one
| particular political movement anymore.
| Nursie wrote:
| > Having now lived in the UK and Netherlands for over 10
| years, I feel this would never happen here
|
| Weird, as I met a dutch woman in Australia, from
| Maastricht, who was deathly afraid of crossing the road
| at the wrong time because where she was from she could
| get in trouble for that.
|
| Whereas I lived in WA for a couple of years and never saw
| anything like it.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| As a person living in an east coast city in the USA I can
| assure you - no worries just sprint across the street; no
| one cares.
| dkersten wrote:
| I've been yelled at by police in Germany for crossing the
| road without a pedestrian crossing, but Germany is rather
| unamerican over all. So I think getting yelled at for
| jaywalking isn't really much of an indicator for a place
| being American.
| bb123 wrote:
| Haha yes, "revenue based policing". Australia is pretty
| bad for that. I once got a $300 speeding fine for doing
| 1kph above the limit. In general though I think policing
| in Australia is still very different to the states.
| Police in the US inspire fear. They just don't in the UK
| and Australia.
| chocmilk wrote:
| > Having now lived in the UK and Netherlands for over 10
| years, I feel this would never happen here.
|
| It wouldn't happen in the UK because jaywalking is not a
| crime in UK.
|
| Quiet Australians accept authority moreso than UK folk.
| dash2 wrote:
| > Quiet Australians accept authority moreso than UK folk.
|
| This is so far from my stereotype of Aussies that I feel
| sure it must be a troll, designed to bring out a legion
| of shirtless, shrimp-barbecuing cobbers, turning the air
| blue with their feelings about authority.
| chocmilk wrote:
| Aus's acceptance of authority:
|
| * Lockout laws
|
| * Jaywalking laws
|
| * Weaker environmental protests than UK, despite Aus
| lagging the rest of the world on environmentalism.
|
| * Mandatory helmet laws.
|
| * Illegal to perform DIY electrics, e.g. change a plug.
|
| * International travel currently banned. To leave
| Australia at the moment would require either exemption,
| or I relinquish citizenship.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Cronulla_riots was
| the last riot involving shirtless shrimp barbecuing
| cobbers. Not a proud moment.
| Nursie wrote:
| > Illegal to perform DIY electrics, e.g. change a plug.
|
| ??
|
| As someone moving to Australia in a few months, I feel
| like this is something I ought to know about...
|
| > International travel currently banned.
|
| This is the same in many countries, including the UK
| right now.
| 4cao wrote:
| >> International travel currently banned.
|
| > This is the same in many countries, including the UK
| right now.
|
| It isn't really. Many countries barred non-resident non-
| citizens from entering but only a couple went to the
| extent of attempting to prohibit their own citizens from
| _leaving_. The latter restriction is far more draconian.
| Nursie wrote:
| > only a couple went to the extent of attempting to
| prohibit their own citizens from leaving
|
| OK then, but the UK is currently one of those places.
| Without good reason it's currently prohibited.
|
| ANd I honestly don't have a problem with it, we're in the
| midst of a pandemic. :shrug:
| chocmilk wrote:
| "DIY (do it yourself) electrical work is dangerous and
| illegal." https://www.nsw.gov.au/topics/electrical-
| safety/in-the-home#...
|
| Arduino is fine.
|
| > This is the same in many countries, including the UK
| right now.
|
| Yes, true in UK during the past 1-2 months of national
| lockdown?
|
| Aus's has been the case for 12 months.
| Nursie wrote:
| Is it only 1-2 months? Feels like an eternity...
|
| Current lockdown started on the 4th of Jan, and the
| travel restrictions came in then. We also had lockdown
| part 2 back in November, for the whole of November,
| lockdown part 1 from April-June last year, and various
| degrees of lockdown in between with regional
| variations...
|
| I've lived in Aus before, and I agree it's great for many
| reasons, am looking forward to being back.
|
| On the electrical thing, I know there are some
| restrictions on what you can do in the UK - putting in
| new circuits, adding new lighting circuits etc. I've
| pushed the boundaries a bit here AFAICT by fixing a
| lighting circuit* and swapping a few single sockets for
| doubles. Other work like putting cat 6 in the walls I did
| myself without a thought. Looks like I need to take a
| look at the regs.
|
| ( * the light switch in our bedroom somehow flicked
| between "one bulb on" and "two bulbs in series", with no
| off setting )
|
| (oh wow, you're right, I can't change a light fitting, or
| even legally change a plug from UK -> Aus without
| breaking the law. Will have to buy new cables where I
| can, maybe change one or two plugs before I leave!)
| bubblethink wrote:
| This page is tragically funny. It ends with 'You should
| never attempt to carry out any electrical maintenance
| other than changing a light globe.'
| chocmilk wrote:
| Aus is great though, for other reasons.
| tubularhells wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Dual-national UK/Aussie here (ethnically a "Pom" then).
|
| It's definitely true. Australia loves the smack of firm
| government and is quietly very, very authoritarian.
|
| There's an Aussie term "Wowsers" [0] which is
| fascinating, as there is no British equivalent term. It
| often feels like the Wowsers and the Larrikins [1] are
| fighting an endless battle for Australia's soul. The
| Wowsers _always_ win.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wowser [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrikin
| arethuza wrote:
| I can recommend the Juice Media Honest Government Ads for
| just that topic!
| vmception wrote:
| Mostly due to shock.
|
| The shock of their financial sector leaving.
|
| The shock of getting pitiful trade negotiating.
|
| Being unprepared with anything to offer for negotiating
| leverage.
|
| The domestic identity further polarizing and inability to
| form consensus.
| sanity31415 wrote:
| The shock of being well ahead of the EU on vaccinations?
| dijit wrote:
| Broken clocks are right twice a day. Though I agree that
| involving both the military and the NHS has resulted in
| being enormously successful at rolling out the vaccine.
|
| Let's hope that the NHS gets properly funded and doesn't
| get privatised. Because the US vaccination rollout is a
| shambles.
| sanity31415 wrote:
| If a broken clock can succeed on the greatest test of
| governing competence in a generation then what does that
| say about the EU's failure?
| bb123 wrote:
| Is it? They're about 4th globally, and way ahead of the
| EU.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >the US vaccination rollout is a shambles
|
| Japan: You guys have vaccines?
|
| In all honesty, this statement is fairly close to being
| hilariously wrong. The US vaccinates more people per day
| than any other country in the world. The reason why the
| UK has a higher per-capita vaccination rate is A) there's
| less of you to vaccinate, and B) the UK isn't doing two
| doses. The former makes the rollout easier - there are
| countries like Israel where they're close to vaccine herd
| immunity as they simply needed fewer doses. The latter is
| a calculated risk only _somewhat_ supported by the
| available medical data. I don 't expect every country to
| adopt First Dose First, especially if they've already
| given two doses to high-risk populations that would
| benefit from getting half their protection sooner.
|
| Trust me, there's plenty of other things you can harangue
| the US about all day - vaccines aren't one of them.
| Nursie wrote:
| We're doing two doses! Just with a larger gap in between.
| Yes, the data is patchy but so far it's coming back as
| approx 75% protection from one dose, and identical (or
| even slightly boosted) protection after the delayed
| second dose compared to the shorter schedule.
|
| I trust "the math" that shows a better population outcome
| there, even though individuals will have higher risk
| profiles this way.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _The shock of their financial sector leaving._
|
| You speak in the past tense but this hasn't actually
| happened and shows no signs of happening in terms of banks
| relocating jobs and capital. If anything London is getting
| stronger.
| pydry wrote:
| #1 The UK has habitually towed the line on most American
| endeavors in a deferent way. The invasion of Iraq was one
| extremely clear example. The phrase "special relationship"
| which is bandied about a lot embodies this deference.
|
| #2 The UK has departed from the trading bloc it does 60% of
| its trade with. It desperately needs new trade deals outside
| of it. Since America is the biggest economic bloc outside of
| Europe and because they're big and we are small they have the
| leverage and that means we start abiding by their rules.
|
| #3 There were plans leaked on how this would be done with the
| NHS (e.g. deliberately hamstringing the NHS's ability to
| negotiate drug prices). They kept them secret from the
| public.
|
| To be frank, your comment seems borne out of a kind of appeal
| to moderation rather than particular knowledge of UK domestic
| politics.
| bb123 wrote:
| The idea that U.K. tows the line on US endeavours in a way
| that countries like Canada and Australia don't is absurd.
| Canada and the US share an enormous border and it's often
| joked that Canada is like USA-lite. As for Australia - you
| may be right, as they're too busy towing China's line
| instead. (Although that didn't stop them going into
| Vietnam).
| pydry wrote:
| The idea that they don't also tow the line IS absurd and
| I would never claim that.
|
| Nonetheless you can measure each country's contribution
| to the Iraq War as a rough proxy for how much they
| supplicate. The UK contributed by far the most of the
| three while Canada's involvement was minimal.
| Normille wrote:
| There's fierce a competition amongst many countries of
| the world to see who can shove their tongue furthest up
| the USA's arse. The UK may be out in the lead [through
| sheer long-term dedication to the cause, if nothing
| else]. But the equally supine devotion of countries like
| Australia, NZ, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Iceland [and
| several others] shouldn't be under-estimated.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| I upvoted Normille's comment to offset the downvotes. It
| may have been crudely put but it's not wrong - at least
| in the case of Ireland, the country I know best.
|
| For as long as I can remember, the Irish government has
| been quite deferential towards the US, e.g., allowing the
| use of Irish airports (mostly Shannon, a civilian airport
| - but also Casement Aeorodome, the headquarter of the
| Irish Aer Corps) by US military to carry troops, weapons
| and - quite possibly (aircraft were never inspected) -
| victims of "extraordinary rendition". Every year, our
| Taoisigh (prime ministers) are always eager to have a
| photo opportunity with the US president on St. Patrick's
| day.
|
| I'm guessing that this is mostly to attract Foreign
| direct investment into Ireland from US multi-national
| corporations as can be seen by our notably low rate of
| corporation tax - and the government's unwillingness to
| accept the tax income that the EU considers to be owed to
| us by Apple. Neo-liberalism has been the dominant
| political ideology over the past few decades with one
| former Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) famously
| declaring that Ireland was (ideologically) closer to
| Boston than Berlin. This dominance left Ireland
| particularly vulnerable when the 2008 financial crisis
| eventually hit us - without the widely touted "soft
| landing".
|
| However, the relationship isn't all bad: a number of US
| administrations - particularly Bill Clinton's - helped to
| bring about the end of armed conflict in Northern
| Ireland. That was probably the most important political
| achievement in the recent history of Britain and Ireland
| (one that Brexiteers, sadly, don't seem to care about or
| have forgotten about).
| bananapub wrote:
| australia goes along with america's stupidity all the
| time. iraq, afghanistan...Australia introduced
| _conscription_ of Australians to go to help the US with
| vietnam.
| pydry wrote:
| Australia is critically reliant upon shipping which means
| it needs the support of the world's most dominant naval
| power.
|
| That unfortunately means sending kids to die in Vietnam.
| adflux wrote:
| We'll see.
|
| Seems like not being part of a larger "union" has allowed them
| to start vaccinating at 3 times the pace of its European
| neighbours. Historically, power removed further from the people
| does not benefit the people. There are very few "economies of
| scale" in politics. As the system grows larger, accountability
| becomes more difficult and decision making is harder and
| harder.
|
| Nice example is Iceland. after the 2008 crash.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-31/welcome-t...
| kawsper wrote:
| If the UK was not leaving the EU, the country may have chosen
| to follow this "common strategy" and move at the same pace as
| other members. However, it is not a legal requirement.
|
| https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-vaccine-brexit/
| adflux wrote:
| I am not talking about the speed of vaccine approval. The
| only thing I am seeing is that the UK is vaccinating at an
| incredible pace compared to even the richest European
| countries.
| klingon78 wrote:
| The US has a similar privacy law in California they must
| support, and many companies have presence globally, so they are
| having to deal with this in the following ways, like many
| others.
|
| GDPR has given a 50M EUR handslap to Google and similar to some
| other large companies[1] while seriously hurting smaller
| companies with existing custom web applications for whom they
| may not even have someone on staff to modify those to be GDPR-
| compliant.
|
| Small businesses like others must determine what PII is, how to
| anonymize it, and how to remove it when users request their PII
| to be removed. PII could be in their server logs or other
| locations that are inaccessible to most employees of the
| business. Backups might be excluded from PII scrubbing, but so
| much is unclear.
|
| Let's also talk about what it doesn't protect. PCI, not GDPR,
| attempts to provide protection for cardholder data. GDPR
| doesn't protect against PII that was previously shared. Nor
| does it protect from data being stolen, unless the user had
| their data removed prior.
|
| [1]- https://dataprivacymanager.net/5-biggest-gdpr-fines-so-
| far-2...
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| It's actually fairly easy to be GDPR compliant almost by
| default, TBQH. It either takes a lot of effort or a lot of
| laziness to somehow end up non-compliant.
| klingon78 wrote:
| Removing or anonymizing PII in a large system not already
| designed for PII removal or one you don't have resources to
| manage can be painful.
|
| Companies of all sizes can have a lot of PII and code
| that's not GDPR compliant, and it's non-trivial to fix
| that. When asked by a user to remove PII, the removal is
| sometimes incomplete at these companies. Even the process
| of incompletely the removing PII wastes time; the users
| requesting PII removal often didn't even do business with
| the company, in my experience.
|
| Companies of all sizes but often small companies hire out
| development of web apps that keep PII and may not have
| someone permanently on staff to maintain it to make the
| changes needed to allow users to remove their PII.
|
| I'd go so far as to say that I'd intentionally not work
| with users if I knew they would be painful to work with,
| leaving me with nothing but a legal requirement to wipe
| their asses because they used my old site. I hope that EU
| didn't intentionally do this to hurt small businesses and
| foster new startups within the EU to brunt the cost of this
| stupid, stupid law.
|
| I'm a privacy advocate.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| So you are saying:
|
| * A company is holding PII in a system they don't have
| the resources to manage .
|
| * The software is insufficiently secure to hold that
| data.
|
| * The company appears to be even be holding data on
| people that didn't even do business with the company.
|
| * This is in-part caused by the (sub)hiring of companies
| that also were not scrupulous with PII in the past.
|
| You say that this hurts said company, and they are going
| to stop doing that.
|
| I'd say this is the exact intended effect of the law. Not
| so stupid after all!
|
| Meanwhile, for people who scrupulously and ethically
| avoided collecting extraneous PII in the first place; I
| think the GDPR provides no great additional burden.
| klingon77 wrote:
| An email address is PII. Given that many preexisting
| systems used email addresses as usernames to identify
| users, let's say a small business in 2015 hired a company
| to create a web app which let a user create an account
| using their email address and it put the email address
| into a log file with that user's activity. The contracted
| developer finished the site, which cost 25000 EUR, much
| more than the business could afford to spend on tech
| another ten years. If this company gets 500 GDPR requests
| and cannot remove the PII because they don't have the
| skill or money, should that company be fined? Should it
| shut down? What if there were 14 million companies with
| the same problem?
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| You could always have a corner case of course...
|
| In this company, is there a solid technical reason why
| the log couldn't get rotated and/or aggregated and/or
| truncated to begin with?
|
| Those are fairly typical things you might want to
| configure to do with a log; GDPR or no.
| katbyte wrote:
| So peoples PII should be just sitting there unregulated
| because companies can't afford to clean up their privacy
| messes?
| imtringued wrote:
| I understand the economic downsides of GDPR. If you
| abolished it with the intention of gaining international
| competitiveness I would consider it an acceptable trade.
| I'm still split on whether GDPR really accomplished all
| that much.
| drstewart wrote:
| If "by default" you mean starting from ground zero, that's
| an almost meaningless statement.
|
| If the government passed a law requiring all housing to be
| be built to code to survive a magnitude 9 earthquake in a
| region where there are no earthquakes, and every house
| needs to be retrofitted, would you say the burden is low?
| After all, if you start from scratch without a house there
| is no requirement to do anything! And building a new house
| is much easier, after all!
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| That would be fair enough.
|
| But this is more like trying to explain why your attic
| has strengthened beams that were not on the original
| (default) architectural drawings, and gosh what are all
| those bags of white powder doing there?
|
| The government doesn't even make it illegal, mind. You
| just need to explain why, if someone asks politely.
|
| ( https://goo.gl/maps/UgRPhuxfXoezDJHB9 so this business
| still wouldn't get in trouble. )
| seanhandley wrote:
| I live in the UK and, like 49% of the turnout, I did not vote
| for this. Trade blocs rely on geographical proximity to be most
| effective but this whole thing is an ideologically motivated
| change, rather than one rooted in pragmatism.
|
| Giggle count: zero.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Was it not already?
|
| I find that many of the quintessential problems of the U.S.A.
| were inherited from the British Empire and seem pervasive
| throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. England too has a district
| based system, leading to close to a two-party state, and a
| common law legal system where the judge and juror are often
| more powerful than the letter of the law.
|
| If anything, the U.S.A. remedied some of the unusual quirks of
| common law legal systems. -- I was recently acquainted with
| knowledge that in both the U.K. and Australia, a criminal
| defence attorney would, when his client confess to the crime to
| him, almost certainly recommend that he be released, and that
| latter seek new counsel, and that the new counsel be kept in
| the dark, as apparently the system is designed such that a
| criminal defence attorney is completely handicapped in
| defending his client, know he of the latter's guilt. -- this is
| less so the case in the U.S.A., which is rather unique for jury
| trials, and in most civil law jurisdictions there is no reason
| not to confess to one's attorney.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| They get to asset strip the country before anyone realises
| right?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It's more like an 'Asianization' than an Americanization, hence
| the whole 'Singapore on the Thames' idea. It's adopting the
| business practices and regulations of the US and a very
| paternalistic, centralized state.
|
| The US for all the lack of controls that citizens have over
| business at the very least has a very federalised (in the Euro
| sense of the term), distribution of power, whereas Britain is
| pretty much governed from London.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| The EU as a political union exists a little over a decade, if
| anything the UK never adapted to it.
| arkitaip wrote:
| You should teach history at college.
| asutekku wrote:
| But they benefited from the EU in a way which is no more
| possible.
| imtringued wrote:
| I hope this is a typo and you mean to write "The EUR as a
| monetary union".
|
| The euro is truly an unremarkable currency and I'm not sure
| that the EU would be much worse without it. It's equally
| likely that the EU would have done much better without the
| euro. I can't blame the UK for avoiding the euro.
| HugoDaniel wrote:
| Mistaking the EU, the political union as an evolved form of
| the Rome treaty, with Euro, the coin. All that with the tone
| of absolute certainty and authority.
|
| Hacker News has reached new lows :(
| junippor wrote:
| HN has always been bottom of the barrel. Bunch of people
| repeating memes to each other.
| [deleted]
| dataduck wrote:
| Come on, that's not fair. The EEC was a very different
| beast to today's EU. The modern form of the EU could
| certainly be argued as starting with the Treaty of Lisbon.
| orwin wrote:
| Maastrich yes, Lisbon? It only set into laws stuff that
| were already existing and done, as well as provisioning
| for "unexpected stuff" (brexit art 50 was provisioned in
| the treaty of lisbon i think).
|
| But the treaty of Lisbon changed almost nothing in
| reality. At least, not enough to warrant the birth of
| "Modern EU"
| dataduck wrote:
| Perhaps Maastricht might be a _better_ place to draw the
| line. But it 's not like the changes at Lisbon were
| trivial; for example, changing unanimous voting to
| majority was a qualitative change in the character of the
| organization. My argument is that the GP by lanevorockz
| was pretty obviously referring to Lisbon, and that the
| reply by HugoDaniel seemed quite disingenuous in that
| light.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's one of the issues on the internet nowadays; people
| use their soapbox to present a thought as fact. Even if
| they're being called out on it and proven wrong, the
| statement is made and a seed is planted in someone's brain.
|
| It's like newspaper headlines that say X, but (have to)
| nuance it in the article itself. Except that Twitter
| doesn't support articles, so it's only headlines.
| reader_mode wrote:
| Yeah we saw the mighty EU negotiation leverage with COVID
| vaccine...
|
| UK market is large enough to stand on it's own and EU has been
| grossly incompetent in public for a while now. There's going to
| be downsides for sure but becoming "America like" is not going
| to be one of them.
| tomelders wrote:
| You're cherry picking.
| oytis wrote:
| It is a huge cherry though, and I believe we're yet to see
| the full economic effect of EU lagging behind US and UK in
| vaccinations.
| inops wrote:
| Which is exactly what is done with Britain. News item,
| queue "they get what they deserve". How about the EU gets
| what it deserves for being a undemocratic, big bungling
| bureaucracy?
| acta_non_verba wrote:
| This is exactly the kind of situation Government is for.
| Protecting its people from a foe that can only be defeated
| at a national level.
|
| The European Union has categorically failed, and if it
| survives this, it will need huge amounts of change.
| reader_mode wrote:
| No I'm not - EU is the least relevant big player on the
| global scale, economically and militarily - mostly because
| it's such a weak union of extremely diverse countries with
| weak common identity (as demonstrated by squabbles at any
| crisis - financial, COVID, immigration, etc.)
|
| It makes sense for smaller countries like mine (Croatia)
| because of free travel, easier access to a larger market,
| lower cost of doing business, and truly being too small to
| negotiate good terms on a global scale. It probably makes a
| lot less sense for UK which can negotiate it's own terms
| with other global powers that fit them much better.
|
| I have no doubt there will be many negatives to Brexit, but
| as demonstrated by COVID situation there's a huge
| opportunity for UK - for example I suspect they can secure
| better trade deals with the US without having to worry
| about the protectionist interests pushed by other EU
| members.
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| Who said they're becoming America-like. More like Canada,
| Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc. like.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Not even - we will become a right wing basket case with a
| brand new nuclear weapons system and a failing economy and
| zero safeguards about those in power. This lot are bad but
| there is the possibility of something much much worse.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| Clearly there are only two possibilities. Being in the EU
| or being a "a right wing basket case with a brand new
| nuclear weapons system and a failing economy and zero
| safeguards about those in power". There are no other types
| of country.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I wasn't clear in my comment - I think the decision
| making to avoid compliance with the EU (even when it is
| sensible) is going to cause big problems for the UK
| economy and if that get's really bad the public seem
| determined to vote for more and more right wing
| governments out of fear. I think it's a reasonable
| concern with the lack of safeguards in the British system
| of government.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| I think you're being a bit sensationalist. E.g. people
| mock 'Singapore on Thames' but do you really think
| Singapore is a right-wing hellscape? It has many of the
| same systems the UK does.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| You could hardly call it a democracy.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Poland is the latter while remaining in the EU. Just
| without the nukes.
| boomskats wrote:
| It's unclear whether the 'they' you refer to are the British
| people, or the class of ruling individuals who know exactly
| what they're doing and are set to profit immensely.
|
| (I'm aware that all sounds quite America-like already)
| sverhagen wrote:
| I have no doubt you're right, but I'm just not familiar with
| the specific details. What are some real ways they stand to
| "profit immensely"?
| shubb wrote:
| There are some theories in the UK that are close to
| conspiracy theory.
|
| Many leading brexit proponents are rich people who made
| their money from the collapse of the soviet union and have
| assets largely outside the UK. One conspiracy theory is
| that they are attempting to crash the UK economy in order
| to buy the dip, make money from shorts and the sell off of
| state assets.
|
| Another conspiracy theory is that brexit has an ideological
| basis in the idea of the soverign individual - related to
| the idea of the randian hero, the idea is that as states
| weaken in power, rich people will be able to transcend
| citizenship and attain some kind of libertarian utopia
| where they can do what ever they want. One of the leading
| brexiteers dad wrote a book about it which apparently has
| some following, but maybe people are just surprised that
| right wing politicians want a smaller state.
|
| There is also an idea that the UK and its dependencies
| (e.g. virgin islands) are a tax haven. A lot of brexit
| money came from US activist billionaires and hedge funds,
| but a lot of it came from very rich russians who fled tot
| he UK in the 1990s with huge amounts of money that Russia
| say was stolen visa corruption and other criminality. The
| theory is that brexit was a response to EU money laundering
| and tax evasion rules that would have linked these rich
| criminals to their money to its sources, leaving them open
| to russian legal challenge. The theory is that for those
| people, brexit was a means to escape the net.
|
| In my opinion, the role these factors played is probably
| overstated - brexit was primarily a backlash against
| globalisation and change, and a protest against the UK
| status quo by parts of the population that didn't believe
| they benefited enough from it, much like the election of
| Trump in the US.
| 7_my_mind wrote:
| There was no grand conspiracy and no master architects of
| chaos. It was simply a meme that got out of hand. It
| started out as a sentiment, a set of ideas that I would
| call liberal chauvinism. Then anti-immigration got on
| board. Then the Tories tried to win the anti-immigration
| folk back, but instead got swallowed by the BREXIT
| movement, along with a big chunk of Labour.
| propertymagnate wrote:
| This seems pretty much it to me.
| benwad wrote:
| Lowering taxes, lowering regulatory and environmental
| standards, and undoing workers' rights legislation can all
| increase the wealth of those who are already wealthy. I'm
| not saying all of those things are in the pipeline, but
| they've all been proposed by pro-Brexit politicians (and
| this article is one example of lowering regulatory
| standards).
| gadders wrote:
| I think there is a case to be made that not all
| regulations are good regulations, and the UK can perhaps
| move faster than the EU - for instance by permitting
| genetically edited (via CRISPR) food to be grown and
| sold.
|
| Do you know what does help keep the wealthy wealthy? A
| ready supply of cheap labour from outside the UK.
| gobsmacked wrote:
| > lowering environmental standards
|
| This is much talked about but so far I've only been
| seeing the opposite. Since brexit, the UK has so far
| banned fish trawling in the North sea, banned live export
| of animals, banned the import of fois gras, and created a
| much more environmentally friendly alternative to the
| EU's (absolutely atrocious) common agricultural policy.
|
| > lowering regulatory standards
|
| I'd argue that not all regulation is good regulation,
| e.g. the GDPR
|
| > Lowering taxes
|
| This is could feasibly happen and you could say it
| already is by looking at the way the tories have further
| rigged the housing market and stamp duty post-covid. But
| I fail to see what that has to do with the EU really. I
| don't know a lot on this subject though.
|
| > undoing workers' rights legislation
|
| I can see this one happening sadly. Am I not right in
| saying though that a lot of workers rights come from the
| judiciary, not the government? Example:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56123668
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Privatising the health system is the elephant in the room
| that's been talked about a lot.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| The Conservatives aren't stupid enough to privatize the
| NHS. It's a straw man argument - the NHS, much like the
| EU, is irrationally loved by the common voter and only
| Labour can get away with privatizing it, having
| perpetuated the complete myth that they are in some way
| its defenders while, according to them, the evil
| conservatives always have some corrupt plan to sack it
| off.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Oh and second amendment style gun rights too
| dash2 wrote:
| I find it very hard to believe that that would be a
| popular policy in the UK. Got evidence?
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Farage mentioned it and decent proportion of Brexiteers
| would go for it.
| sofixa wrote:
| Yeah, even policemen rarely have guns in the UK, allowing
| everyone to have one would be lunacy.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| You know we can own shotguns and full power rifles (303)
| in the UK.
|
| Thankfully the armed police have very stringent training
| in the Uk.
| gadders wrote:
| And even larger I think. A chap I spoke to at lunchtime
| has a .308 for deer hunting.
|
| What we can't have is pistols, apart from 20 or so people
| in the Olympic pistol shooting teams.
| sofixa wrote:
| Yes, you can, but you can't buy them at Tesco with zero
| paperwork.
| Izkata wrote:
| Nor can you in the US (you need to apply for a permit and
| pass background checks), so not sure what your point is.
| bodelecta wrote:
| Absolute nonsense. Only a few days ago it was the 25th
| anniversary of Dunblane, a massacre that will never be
| forgotten and out of which the snowdrop petition forced
| the government to have some of the strictest gun laws in
| the world. Who in the UK looks at the US and thinks "yes,
| we should have more guns"?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not actually an EU competence. Brexit is irrelevant to
| gun law and some EU countries are fairly liberal.
|
| (Is this another one of those issues where someone is in
| favour of Brexit because they think the EU prevents
| something that is nothing to do with them, because
| they've been lied to by the UK press again?)
| simonh wrote:
| For a start the people who actually rule - the MPs in
| parliament - are predominantly remainers. When it comes to
| business leaders, they're as divided as everyone else. A lot
| of businesses do extensive trade with the EU and stand to
| lose. The finance industry particularly risks losing a lot of
| business, although there are some sectors of it that might
| gain it's mostly through trading on short term volatility.
| They'll cash out before they're stuck in the same boat as
| everyone else.
|
| The basic premise of the "it's an establishment stitch up"
| argument is that Britain will be weaker and poorer, but the
| establishment will end up with a much, much bigger slice of
| the smaller pie such that they gain overall. It's not clear
| to me how that's supposed to work though. How is this pie-
| grab supposed to work as the pie itself shrinks? Some people
| might manage to pull it off, but the whole establishment
| class as a group?
|
| Anyway, this whole premise flies in the face of who we know
| voted overwhelmingly for Brexit - ordinary British voters,
| many of them up north and from working backgrounds - even as
| the actual political parties, majority of MPs and most
| business leaders were arguing against it. The evidence for an
| establishment stitch up rests on a few very specific data
| points, like the fact that Jacob Reese Mog and some of Nigel
| Farage's hedge fund friends have already and will continue to
| do quite well out of it. They're hardly "The Establishment"
| as a whole though. They're just some of the people I was
| talking about trading on volatility, and hardly
| representative of the financial sector as a whole that is
| getting screwed over by losing passporting.
| arethuza wrote:
| "the MPs in parliament - are predominantly remainers."
|
| The Conservatives have a majority and are there any
| Remainers left in that party - I thought most of them had
| been purged before the last election?
| robin_reala wrote:
| Ken Clarke isn't going anywhere.
| Nursie wrote:
| You know he's retired, right?
|
| Interesting guy, my opinion of him changed (for the
| better) when I found out he presented a regular Jazz show
| on the radio.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Wow, OK, I've been out of the UK for too long.
| Nursie wrote:
| Yeah, didn't stand for re-election last time around. He
| was the father of the house anyway, and at the age of 79,
| with the conservative party ripping the UK out of the EU
| I think he must have decided he was too old for this
| nonsense and didn't want to be part of it anyway.
| petercooper wrote:
| Many flipped to the "winning" side.
|
| My MP still has posts on her blog about how ardently pro
| EU she was and how she believed staying in the EU was the
| best idea. Not long after the referendum and May coming
| in, she was fully behind Brexit and ready to do whatever
| it takes. A lot of Tory MPs will just go with the
| prevailing wind on everything and this is also how they
| stay in power because being progressive is not a vote
| winner in a broadly (small c) conservative country.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| > Many flipped to the "winning" side.
|
| And the ones that didn't were purged
| simonh wrote:
| We're talking about how the decision was made. At this
| point most of them have resigned themselves to the fact
| it's happened and we need to get on with it, as have I
| frankly.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > the people who actually rule - the MPs in parliament -
| are predominantly remainers
|
| This is false, because every time it was presented for a
| vote Leave won. If the majority were Remain, Brexit would
| necessarily not have happened.
|
| As for the alleged ordinary voters, what did they want out
| of it and what are they actually getting out of it?
| gmueckl wrote:
| That's also not the whole story. The House of Commons was
| completely divided on the issue to the point where the
| Remainers couldn't find a common position and any
| proposal going roughly in their direction was shot down
| by the other parties in their own camp because it somehow
| didn't represent their exact idea of staying close to the
| EU. It was so bad that the House had long phases where
| literally everything that might have meant the slightest
| bit of progress was consistently and summarily voted
| down. If this divide hadn't happened, Leave would have
| had a much harder time. They did play very dirty
| procedural tricks on the House of Commons as it was to
| try and force things their way.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Most of the "business" leaders who where pro brexit where
| outliers or ecentric's (Wetherspoons guy) and of course
| wealthy media tycoons.
|
| The vast majority of the city and other business leaders
| where asleep at the wheel - what they should have done is
| had a quiet word with Harry Peirce (MI5) at the club about
| these dangerous subversives.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Most of the "business" leaders who where pro brexit
| where outliers or ecentric's (Wetherspoons guy) and of
| course wealthy media tycoons._
|
| I have always wondered how true this is. It is certainly
| a common claim, but anecdotally I know several small
| business owners who I am fairly sure voted Leave because
| they didn't agree with EU-style regulation such as the
| subject of today's discussion. And this is in the
| Cambridge area, which overall was literally the most pro-
| Remain place in the entire country. Most of those people
| did not talk much about their views on Brexit in public
| because of the peer pressure, which I think was
| unfortunate. Even if few minds might have been changed in
| either direction, it would have been better for the
| issues to have been properly debated.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| > or the class of ruling individuals who know exactly what
| they're doing and are set to profit immensely.
|
| I'm really not sure about that. I agree that may be the case
| with some of those ruling individuals. My impression is that
| Johnson doesn't believe in anything, except his personal
| interest and profit.
|
| Others in that cabinet, however, really appear to be true
| believers.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > Johnson doesn't believe in anything, except his personal
| interest and profit.
|
| > Others in that cabinet, however, really appear to be true
| believers.
|
| My impression is that they all have those same beliefs -
| their personal interest and profit.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Which is silly (silly on Bojo's part, I mean) to set the
| country on a path to economic decline and cultural
| irrelevance because why be a king of an impoverished
| country instead of being a citizen in an advanced
| economy?
|
| (Clarification: I'm exaggerating for rhetorical effect.
| The UK won't become impoverished or really stop being an
| advanced-economy, but it's still going to be far poorer
| (in a total GDP and PPP sense) than it would be had this
| whole Brexit business never happened.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Why is everyone so sure about your last paragraph? You
| could say the same for the EU block and even have more
| historical evidence of supranations falling apart.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > have more historical evidence of supranations falling
| apart
|
| Debatable. But even if the EU was - or was not - a
| tightly integrated federated state, I'm far more
| concerned about the UK withdrawing itself from the
| world's largest free trade bloc. I see it heading towards
| either economic protectionism (bad in the long-term) or
| getting into a race-to-the-bottom (potentially even
| worse).
| gobsmacked wrote:
| > either economic protectionism (bad in the long-term) or
| getting into a race-to-the-bottom (potentially even
| worse)
|
| That's a strange thing to say. Globalisation is usually
| criticized as a race to the bottom. The opposite of that
| is protectionism, which you say is bad. So which one are
| you in favour of?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| My impression with politics is that after years of doing
| it, politicians easily confuse ideas being popular and
| 'worth supporting'.
|
| A bit like a supercritical fluid, where transition between
| liquid and gas occurs spontaneously.
| jleask wrote:
| 48% of us realized this
| hnlmorg wrote:
| This is the thing that pissed me off the most about the
| referendum. The result was touted as an overwhelming majority
| but in fact the percentages are well within the margin for
| error on a poll that wasn't very well defined from the outset
| (ie what "leave" meant was different for different people).
|
| The only thing the EU referendum conclusively demonstrated
| was how easily manipulated people are by the media they
| consume.
| tim333 wrote:
| There were more remainers than leavers at the time of the
| referendum. It's just the young ones couldn't be bothered
| to vote. I mean I know that's how elections work but the
| "leave is the clear will of the people" stuff was guff.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I see angry Europhobes on Twitter being responded to with
| "you won get over it" quite a bit these days...
| Hitton wrote:
| I think it was fitting, considering how UK joined the EU in
| the first place (look up Maastricht Treaty if you don't
| remember it).
| hnlmorg wrote:
| No it's not fitting. You don't make trillion pound
| economic, social and political decisions based on the
| whim of a popular vote. At least not unless you have
| powerful allies in the media and a personal interest to
| gain. Which is the real crux of the referendum was about.
| It was never about us regular folk and entirely about the
| self interests of those in charge. We were just pawns in
| a much larger game of power.
|
| Let's back that claim up with some examples:
|
| Why the referendum was called in the first place? Cameron
| never wanted a referendum but did so as an attempt to
| unify the Conservative party because with the right wing
| opinions fragmenting between multiple parties the Tories
| were starting to lose dominance (more parties within a
| set demographic on a first past the post electoral system
| means fewer votes for any particular party within that
| demographic). When the Conservatives had a near monopoly
| in the centre and right wing policies it meant that left
| wing parties could never catch up due to how fragmented
| they are (Green, Labour, SNP, local independents, etc) so
| left wing voters have always had to vote a little more
| tactically and go for the party most likely to win in
| their area and hope for a coalition. So the original goal
| for the referendum wasn't about addressing European
| issues but instead about monopolising the right wing vote
| which was getting fragmented by nationalist parties.
| Cameron assumed it was an easy win and that he could curb
| the tide of MPs leaving his party for more nationalistic
| counterparts. He's even gone on record stating this and
| how it turned into an epic own goal.
|
| With regards to whether we would have been better off in
| or out of the EU -- frankly that's one argument I don't
| want to get drawn into because, frankly, nobody actually
| knows. Most of the arguments on both sides of the debate
| were FUD and the most honest point anyone made was _"
| it's complicated and we don't really know for sure."_
| aembleton wrote:
| All of the parties apart from the SNP promised a
| referendum in their manifesto. The Green party and the
| Liberal Democrats had it in theirs for about a decade.
|
| The referendum was advisory, so it would have been
| possible for parliament to vote not to enact article 50.
| But parliament voted for it.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > _All of the parties apart from the SNP promised a
| referendum in their manifesto. The Green party and the
| Liberal Democrats had it in theirs for about a decade._
|
| Not all the parties did. Labour, for example, also
| didn't. The Greens have always been fiercely pro choice
| so a referendum falls within their remit and LibDems have
| often flip flopped around the issue of Europe depending
| on what seems the most popular alt-vote at the time. Then
| you have the right wing parties who are naturally
| nationalistic. But many of the left-wing nationals (like
| SNP) were pro-Europe.
|
| This is all moot though because my point wasn't who
| supported the EU but rather the Tories motives for the
| referendum.
|
| > _The referendum was advisory, so it would have been
| possible for parliament to vote not to enact article 50.
| But parliament voted for it._
|
| Indeed. But that is another tangential point too. I do
| have opinions as to why it wasn't treated as an
| "advisory" vote but those are just opinions so I'll
| refrain from clouding the debate.
| aembleton wrote:
| > I do have opinions as to why it wasn't treated as an
| "advisory" vote but those are just opinions
|
| I'd like to hear them!
|
| Thanks to your comment I re-checked the Labour party
| manifesto for the 2015 general election and you are
| right. They do mention a referendum but only in the case
| of a transfer of power from Britain to the EU:
|
| "Labour will legislate for a lock that guarantees that
| there can be no transfer of powers from Britain to the
| European Union without the consent of the British public
| through an in/out referendum."
| thinkingemote wrote:
| The same argument has been heard from Trump and his
| followers. Stolen votes, manipulated people.
|
| What we need is respect for democracy.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > _The same argument has been heard from Trump and his
| followers. Stolen votes, manipulated people._
|
| I wasn't complaining about stolen votes. Nobody was
| suggesting election fraud had happened with the EU
| referendum.
|
| Manipulated people, sure. But there is evidence of that
| with many of the claims made during the campaigns being
| proven false (like the Brexit bus slogan and like many of
| the ads reported here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
| politics-44966969). There is actually a lot of documented
| evidence about the misinformation that happened during
| the referendum on both sides of the debate
| (https://constitution-unit.com/2016/08/23/fact-checking-
| and-t...) but it didn't seem to make any difference
| because you'd often see the same FUD repeated (both for
| and against Europe) when chatting to people -- be it
| social media, TV/Radio call in shows or regular face to
| face conversations with family and friends, etc.
|
| The question of our EU membership was such a complex one
| that even many experts were littering their statements
| with caveats and disclaimers. So it wasn't really a topic
| I'd have expected the layperson to be informed enough to
| make a good judgement of. And the targeted ads on
| platforms like Facebook, plus the aforementioned
| deliberate misinformation campaigns did little to help
| the situation. So I do think it's fair to call out the
| result of the referendum as being within a margin of
| error.
|
| I do agree there have been parallels between the EU
| referendum and Trump's campaigns (both of them in fact).
| But you also do need to be careful not to dismiss the
| credible claims of bad practice because some egotistical
| oaf also happened to make wild made up claims too.
| There's definitely a sliding scale of misinformation
| where some items aren't technically inaccurate but are
| worded in a way that intentionally misinforms the reader
| (a practice often seen in click-bait headlines) but on
| the other end of the scale you'd have statements that are
| very clearly bullshit (like the Hillary child sex ring
| "scandal").
|
| It's fair to say the last 5 years has been a real low
| point for my trust in the democratic process.
|
| > _What we need is respect for democracy._
|
| I agree but that respect has to be _earned_ from the
| campaigners rather than blindly given by the voters.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| When Trump was first elected, the Democrats were calling
| foul play and blamed Russian influences saying it wasn't
| a valid election.
| Nursie wrote:
| I may be wrong, but hasn't Russian interference been more
| or less proven now? Trump couldn't be tied to it, but it
| seems like it was there.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Perhaps - I'm not American so I've not been following it
| that closely.
|
| My point was that the first side which started claiming
| faulty elections wasn't Trump.
| Nursie wrote:
| I think that's probably not true either - Trump was
| claiming fraud at every turn, in the republican primaries
| as far back as Feb '16 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2016/feb/03/donald-trump...
|
| He also made repeated claims of "large scale voter fraud"
| in the lead up to the presidential election of that year.
|
| I also feel there's a real difference between "we have
| evidence Russia's been up to something, and think Trump
| may be involved" and "Everything that goes against me is
| stolen! You can't trust _anything_! "
|
| > I'm not American so I've not been following it that
| closely.
|
| Neither am I, but from what I can tell the Mueller report
| came back saying it didn't have enough to pursue, or
| really link Trump, but something was definitely up.
| Various Trump supporters went to jail over that report
| IIRC as well, having lied. Very murky dealings.
| Nursie wrote:
| > within the margin for error
|
| What do people mean when they say this?
|
| The referendum wasn't a statistical exercise that sampled a
| subset, so the idea of "error" seems really oddly applied
| here.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Good question. There's a few reasons I use that phrase
| and I agree with you that, from a statistical
| perspective, it isn't the correct usage of the term:
|
| - There was a lot of misinformation spread (on both sides
| of the debate). So people were voting for issues that
| didn't apply.
|
| - There were a lot of protest votes from people who
| assumed "Remain" would win and who also did want to
| remain but wanted to voice disagreement with the
| government and/or concern about unconditional
| relationships with the EU.
|
| - There options were too vague. "Remain" largely meant
| keeping the status quo but some read it to mean including
| countries like Turkey (who were extremely unlikely to
| ever join the EU anyways). Likewise "Exit" meant
| different things to different people. Some people wanted
| a "hard exit" (no EU trade deal). Some people wanted to
| stay connected to the EU but to have a revised deal.
| People were voting for the same options but expecting
| different outcomes.
|
| And as a result of this there had been a high number of
| people voice regrets about the vote they had cast in
| post-referendum opinion polls.
|
| Sadly we will never know just how accurately the results
| reflected peoples true opinions because all calls for a
| follow up vote had been literally laughed at. However
| subsequent general elections have demonstrated just how
| far from settled the debate was.
| Nursie wrote:
| I can accept that there were confounding factors which
| may have affected the result and how enduring a picture
| of UK attitudes it might be. I wonder if any referendum
| could be 100% free of those factors?
|
| I just object to the use of the phrase - there is no
| margin for error here, it forms the full picture of how
| the population voted, not an estimate.
|
| People use this phraseology, and I've even seen the term
| "not statistically significant" bandied around as well,
| to try to say that no conclusions could be drawn, as if
| it's a scientific paper with a sample in it.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| If you acknowledge the results are not a 100% reliable
| indicator then there is a margin for error. The key
| difference is whether you look at it in the context of
| "This result is reflective of what the majority _want_"
|
| or "This result is reflective of what the
| majority _voted for_"
|
| The latter isn't always the same as the former in cases
| where information isn't clear or where the poll options
| are too vague. Both of which plagued the EU referendum.
|
| I do get your point that "margin for error" is a
| statistical term and it is not technically being applied
| correctly here. But the crux of what that term refers to
| does still apply to the former context above.
|
| As for why the context matters: because every conversion
| that happened since focused on the former point with MPs
| even coining the phrase "the will of the people" yet the
| people's "will" was still unclear.
|
| That all said, I don't think there is any way such a
| referendum would have worked on a topic as diverse and
| complex as our relations with the EU.
| Nursie wrote:
| > If you acknowledge the results are not a 100% reliable
| indicator
|
| But they are a 100% reliable indicator of how people
| would vote, because they did vote that way. And I'm
| really not sure it's valid to start second guessing that
| what people actually wanted is different to that, because
| you then have to second guess every vote and really,
| where does thaty leave democracy?
|
| > That all said, I don't think there is any way such a
| referendum would have worked on a topic as diverse and
| complex as our relations with the EU.
|
| Very much agreed.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > _But they are a 100% reliable indicator of how people
| would vote, because they did vote that way. And I 'm
| really not sure it's valid to start second guessing that
| what people actually wanted is different to that, because
| you then have to second guess every vote and really,
| where does thaty leave democracy?_
|
| Normally I'd agree. But as I said, there were concerns
| going into the vote that the options were too vague and
| as a result opinion polls post-referendum showed that a
| considerable number of people voted for options that
| didn't support their opinion.
|
| This wasn't a typical poll where you vote for a party to
| entrust or a narrowly defined set of options. This
| referendum was vague and poorly defined. In cases where
| that's been a problem in Europe those respective
| countries have then responded with second referendum
| after communicating clearer information, reviewing the
| poll options and taking other measures to ensure they
| accurately capture public opinion. Instead the UK called
| a general election and as a result muddied the
| conversation even further with topics like education and
| healthcare.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| So, all the Brexit opposed politicians are against this?
| jdlyga wrote:
| What does the UK want to do, make some commonwealth free trade
| zone? That would make sense. But it seems like everyone wants to
| go in their own directions, including parts of the UK.
| varispeed wrote:
| Not sure why people treat GDPR as dogmatic ultimate privacy law.
| This is a bit laughable. The giants violate it as they please and
| people are now taught to click boxes without reading its contents
| and agreeing to who knows what. I think the result is quite the
| opposite of what was intended as it also added few more vectors
| of attack that didn't exist before. Only advantage I can see is
| that some services now offer data download. I hope UK will come
| up with something much better.
| fundatus wrote:
| This feels like one of those things where Post-Brexit-Britain
| simply HAS to do something different. Just for the sake of it.
| Sovereignty and all that. The fact that many online businesses
| will probably still cater to EU citizens and will therefore still
| follow GDPR rules doesn't matter. Those companies will end up
| with two slightly different sets of rules and it will just be
| annoying.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The problem becomes one of enforcement.
|
| If you're an online business established outside of the EU with
| no presence in the EU then as long as you abide by the data
| protection laws of your own country I don't see how an EU
| country's data protection authority could do anything to you.
|
| This is a general issue online where sites and potentially
| services can be reached and used globally whilst each country
| basically cannot do anything outside of its own borders.
|
| The part of the GDPR that says that the regs apply worldwide as
| long as the individual is in the EU is not really realistic in
| many actual situations.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I mean this of course means EU data won't be able to be stored on
| British servers as I understand it. More barriers to trade, it's
| like this government is trying to destroy the economy...
| 02thoeva wrote:
| Not quite, the EU and UK have a draft adequacy agreement in
| place. Should be signed by the time the transition period ends.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Can you supply a link - the UK would need something like GDPR
| in law (which we currently have rolled over) for the EU to
| recognise our laws... it seems like it would be difficult and
| pointless to change to something that slightly differs from
| the GDPR only to have to implement all of it's concerns for
| EU data anyway...
| 02thoeva wrote:
| The very article we've commented under makes this point,
| but if you want to see the specific agreement: https://ec.e
| uropa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Okay well if that is the case I'm less concerned!
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| As far as I understand it, it currently can't be hosted in the
| UK anyways. As the requirement is to store the data within the
| EU.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I thought the data could be exported to any country whose
| laws offer the same level of protection.
| theelous3 wrote:
| You can store it wherever you want, so long as you're in
| compliance.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > You can store it wherever you want, as long as you're
| in compliance.
|
| From a GDPR standpoint, compliance means that the country
| where the data is stored has an agreement with the EU AND
| you must have enforceable and strong, negative
| consequences for the foreign party in your contract.
|
| The EU can only make such an agreement for a foreign
| country if the data protection laws are sufficient. I do
| not know whether or not the UK laws are considered
| sufficient, but without any such agreement, you cannot
| assume that you can just store EU personal data in the
| UK.
|
| With the death of Privacy Shield and its siblings, this
| first requirement isn't even the case for the US anymore
| as the US will not guarantee the safety of EU citizens'
| information from things like the patriot act. However, I
| haven't seen any country complain about storing data with
| Google, Amazon or Facebook yet so I don't think this rule
| will be enforced any time soon. Technically, though,
| storing PII in a foreign, non-EU country without the
| necessary requirements is still very much illegal with
| the full suite of fines available to the data processing
| agencies.
| 02thoeva wrote:
| There is a draft adequacy agreement between the two which
| should be signed before the end of June when the
| transition period ends: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/p
| resscorner/detail/en/ip_21_...
| romanovcode wrote:
| This is not true. For example sensitive data for German
| company must be stored in Germany, not Ireland.
| theelous3 wrote:
| It is true. If this is the case for Germany, it is
| Germany's own doing and outside the scope of gdpr.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| If we were able to agree to those rules I'm sure we could
| strike a deal with the EU. This has always been the name of
| the game right - if you play by each set of rules and align
| the EU probably sees that as a net benefit and lets countries
| align, for eaxample Switzerland can still host EU personal
| data, from the article:
|
| "Fortunately, Switzerland, along with 12 other non-EEA
| countries, has received an "adequacy decision" from the
| European Commission. An adequacy decision is a recognition of
| the strength of Switzerland's data protection law."
|
| https://www.termsfeed.com/blog/gdpr-switzerland/
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| To 99% of internet users, GDPR has meant nothing except extra
| popups, blocked access to some websites, and an additional
| regulatory burden.
|
| In some cases bad actors exploited GDPR for fraudulent purposes -
| eg. requesting a full account deletion in the event of a ban.
| They can then recreate the same account with the same data.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I don't think that's true. I've watched a complete about face
| by companies when faced by the GDPR. Previously the attitude
| was to collect and store as much data as possible "just in
| case" it was later useful. With GDPR, management is suddenly
| aware of the legal liability of storing this data, and it's
| generally only stored if it's actually needed.
| anilakar wrote:
| I can play that courtroom drama game, too!
|
| Right to restriction of processing is not right to restriction
| of storage. Trying to re-register with your banned e-mail
| address is consent to processing and subsequent refusal to
| serve the person.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| That like claiming "For 99% of consumers food safety
| regulations means nothing but annoying 'use by date'!"
|
| Just because the effects are not obvious to a layman, doesnt
| they aren't there
| ur-whale wrote:
| Thank you for the protection we've never asked for. Now, can
| you come and change my diapers for me ?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I never asked for rigorous safety legislation around fire
| safety, infrastructure safety, etc. I'm still glad they
| exist though.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In New York, the Free Market gave us fire escapes built
| out of wood before regulations came around.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Just because you don't care about your privacy and the way
| companies handle your data doesn't mean others should
| suffer the same date. As for changing your diapers, there
| are services for that, too.
| piokoch wrote:
| For me the biggest flaw of GDPR that it does not distinguish
| between something done as a business to make money and something
| done non-profit, as a hobby project, etc. GDPR killed forums,
| etc. everything moved to Facebook groups, where people agree to
| whatever Facebook wants.
|
| Who will create forum for a community if one has to deal with all
| the bureaucracy, "right to be forgotten", data accuracy checks,
| data export request, gathering consents, being responsible for
| bugs in some forum software if there will be data leak and risk
| huge fines if something is not done correctly.
|
| Another issue is vagueness of the regulation. What exactly is
| data processing/controlling? If kids leave they clothes in
| kindergarten or school, can clothes be signed with kid first and
| last name (so it is easier to find lost items)? Is school a
| processor or controller of kids' PII in that case? Probably not,
| but who knows what will happen if someones signed hat will be
| stolen?
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| The GDPR only regulates automated data processing and manual
| data processing where a "filing system" is used, so you
| kindergarten doesn't "process" children's data just because
| they write the children's names on their coats... In general I
| think you're exaggerating a lot of the problems, many forums
| are still alive and kicking and most forum software has been
| updated to accommodate the requirements of the GDPR (which
| aren't very difficult to implement in any case).
|
| The centralization of the web on very few commercial platform
| has many reasons, data protection is probably the least
| important and might even be a counter-force in my experience.
| bornelsewhere wrote:
| If you do not have resources to take care of PI then perhaps do
| not gather and store it in the first place?
|
| Forums do not necessarily require personal information to
| exist.
| j-pb wrote:
| Except that a commonly used user name is already "personal
| information". And your eMail address you've used to register
| to the forum. And the IP address that you use to access the
| forum.
|
| AND EVEN THE RANDOM UUID THAT YOU ASIGN TO USERS ON YOUR
| FORUM BECAUSE YOU'VE GIVEN UP AND ONLY IDENTIFY USERS BY THAT
| AND THEIR PASSWORD.
|
| In effect everything where a user has to input something
| instead of being just a recipient, or where the user is
| connected to any persistent identifier contains PI according
| to GDPR.
|
| Say bye bye to most kinds of technical server logs used to
| debug stuff, to your database, and storing stuff in general.
|
| The only way to be truly GDPR compliant if you followed the
| law to the letter would be to just provide TV and Teletext
| service via radio waves.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Forums died a decade ago. Everyone moved to Facebook, Reddit,
| Discord, etc. This is not a GDPR problem.
| coding_unit_1 wrote:
| The guidelines are pretty clear on what processing is, what
| data it covers and who controllers are in those circumstances.
| The biggest flaw I see is people don't read them and assume
| _any_ data in _any_ context is bound by it and it becomes a
| stick to beat everything with when it 's not required.
|
| I'm afraid your example is a prime case of that - leaving a hat
| at school that happens to have your name on it clearly doesn't
| fall within the remit of data processing under GDPR, it's a
| strawman (straw boater?) argument
|
| I also don't agree it's a bad thing to make no distinction on
| size of company, doing so would leave a grey area of when a
| thing becomes "big enough" to transition from outside to inside
| scope and therefore gaps in the enforcement.
|
| If you want to build a hobby forum, you're free to do it
| without requiring my personal data. If you want to collect my
| data for analysis or marketing then I absolutely want you to
| abide by the rules and look after it even if you're a lone
| programmer in his basement.
| lm28469 wrote:
| What kind of personal data do you need to store for a forum ?
| For what purpose ?
|
| > Who will create forum for a community if one has to deal with
| all the bureaucracy, "right to be forgotten"
|
| Most forums are created with softwares handling everything,
| virtually nobody creates a forum from scratch with his own tech
| stack.
|
| > If kids leave they clothes in kindergarten or school, can
| clothes be signed with kid first and last name (so it is easier
| to find lost items)? Is school a processor or controller of
| kids' PII in that case?
|
| People asking these kind of questions are either trolling or
| making their life much harder than necessary.... The text is
| pretty simple if you read it in good faith and don't act like a
| 6th grader who doesn't want to do his homework and pretend he
| doesn't understand the question...
|
| Do you think GDPR is aimed at facebook &co storing millions of
| users data without the immediate business need nor the consent
| for it ? or at kindergarten kids who have their name written on
| their clothes ?
| j-pb wrote:
| > Most forums are created with softwares handling everything,
| virtually nobody creates a forum from scratch with his own
| tech stack.
|
| If you don't host the forum yourself you need a data
| processing agreement with the hoster to be GDPR compliant. If
| you want to load the user image from Gravatar, you need a DPA
| with Tumblr. Good luck with that.
|
| Reading contracts and laws in good faith is a pretty bad idea
| if you don't like being sued and loosing. Always read laws in
| a way as if someone was going to use it just to ruin your
| day.
| nicbou wrote:
| I'm not sure why it should do that. Data is data.
|
| In the end though, you don't have to go crazy about it, because
| there is zero chance of enforcement over small pebbles.
| gampleman wrote:
| A school most certainly already is a data controller as it has
| way more PII than just your kids name.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| I hope the UK follows through with its 'Singapore-on-Thames'
| plan, which requiring losing regulatory harmonization with the
| EU:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore-on-Thames
| pydry wrote:
| I was pretty disappointed after living three years in Singapore
| and witnessing the uglier underbelly of the country that the UK
| decided that's what it wanted to become almost as soon as I got
| home.
|
| Moreover, they don't want to copy any of the successes - e.g.
| their public housing system or strict "you WILL go to prison if
| you overcharge" price controls on medical care.
|
| They just want the tax haven, deregulation, an under the thumb
| easily exploited workforce working themselves half to death and
| handouts to their friends.
| dageshi wrote:
| Healthcare is paid via taxes, so how does one overcharge it?
| pydry wrote:
| Healthcare is largely paid via a forced savings account,
| not via taxes. It's the same account you'd use to buy
| property, for instance.
|
| The price controls also apply to medical tourism.
|
| In theory this kind of thing should show up on those
| economic freedom indices but they're so enamored of
| Singapore's lavish aid to foreign investors that they tend
| to look past this stuff (especially since it mostly just
| applies to locals).
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| On the balance, Singapore is much more free in the economical
| sphere than the UK, so if the UK did copy ALL of its
| policies, it would become more much economically competitive
| and see more rapid economic development.
|
| As for exploitation of workers, Singapore has seen massively
| more wage growth than the UK over the last 50 years, so I
| don't equate a free labor market with exploitation.
|
| I will add that there are important ways in which the UK is
| more conducive in the long run to a free market and free
| society than Singapore, but at least in the short run,
| Singapore's simulation of a free market economy has been
| offering more practical liberty and working better at raising
| living standards.
|
| Ideally, the UK would maintain its pluralistic and democratic
| core, while adopting Singapore's economic policies.
| pydry wrote:
| >On the balance, Singapore is much more free in the
| economical sphere than the UK
|
| Singapore is massively more favorable to investors and this
| gets charactized as "free".
|
| Forced savings accounts with strict rules about how you can
| use the money are pretty much the antithesis of economic
| freedom, for instance, but it won't show up in economic
| freedom indices. The Economist is squarely aimed at foreign
| investors with moolah to invest, not Singaporean toilet
| cleaners pissed off that they can't access their CPF.
|
| >As for exploitation of workers, Singapore has seen
| massively more wage growth than the UK over the last 50
| years
|
| As for exploitation of workers, Russia has seen even more
| wage growth than the UK in the last 20 years (somewhwre
| between 60-150% I think?).
|
| Would you like to endorse the lack of exploitation of
| Russian citizens or retract your statement?
|
| >Singapore's simulation of a free market economy has been
| offering more practical liberty and working better at
| raising living standards.
|
| Ironically it's been the deliberately anti free market
| stuff they've done which has boosted living standards the
| most. The HDB program is practically Soviet both in
| inspiration and nature and dragged the citizens out of
| shantytown kampongs and led to an exceptionally well oiled
| and competitive private property market that brings a huge
| inflows of capital.
|
| This is in addition to the Winsemius plan.
|
| >Ideally, the UK would maintain its pluralistic and
| democratic core, while adopting Singapore's economic
| policies.
|
| Ideally none of that. It's their economic policies that are
| partly what made it such a nasty place for me to work in. I
| was so glad to come home.
|
| Just my 2 cents as somebody who lived under the "investors
| uber alles" regime.
| kmlx wrote:
| > They just want the tax haven, deregulation,
|
| no matter how much I like this idea, this will never happen
| in a European country unfortunately. there's just too much
| baggage of big state and other nonsense.
| mhh__ wrote:
| So we throw away our relationship with a trading bloc that is
| 0km away to do things we already do but spun to make Brexit
| look palatable before the people who voted for it are already
| dead?
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Let's be honest, it's not up to the UK alone. The EU still has
| strong world influence and they will try to stop it at any
| cost.
| viraptor wrote:
| Why do you think so? What do you think EU has to gain from UK
| doing badly? And I mean in practice, economically - we're way
| past the time "told you so" is relevant.
| auganov wrote:
| If the EU cannot show there's a big exit cost it may not
| last too much longer. Economic growth is so lackluster all
| across the EU, including new entrants, that few people (who
| looked at the data) genuinely believe EU membership is a
| GDP booster. EU's next best bet is to play into the fear
| that exiting will bring about economic ruin. This works
| particularly well on newer members who may not be on good
| terms with core EU countries. Their fear wouldn't
| necessarily be missing out on benefits but getting slapped
| with sanctions.
| viraptor wrote:
| We already saw the big exit cost. Tariffs will apply
| where trade deals are missing. I'm not sure who you
| expect to use sanctions - EU won't slap anyone with
| sanctions just because they left EU. Have a look at
| https://sanctionsmap.eu/ for situations where sanctions
| have been applied.
| auganov wrote:
| There's nothing interesting going on with UK's economy.
| Seems pretty indistinct from the rest of Europe.
|
| No, I do not think EU would really do major sanctions,
| but I do think it's something some fear and I do think
| it's a fear the EU plays into. Many in ex-Soviet and ex-
| Soviet-satellite countries see EU membership as the
| guarantor of access and lasting ties with not just
| Western Europe but the "free world" in general (as in not
| being part of the Russia/China/Iran/+ club). Even in the
| UK you see some semblance of this sentiment despite being
| rather ridiculous. In countries that have a fairly recent
| history of being excluded for no good reason it seems all
| the more compelling.
| aerosmile wrote:
| Just an observation that we seem to have two camps here: one camp
| correctly noting that GDPR was a net positive for the users, and
| the other camp correctly noting that GDPR was a net negative for
| startups and SMBs.
|
| I am surprised that nobody is realizing that what's bad for
| startups and SMBs is also ultimately bad for the users, just on a
| longer timescale (with an equally long reversal period).
|
| I remember the US Congress grilling Zuckerberg back in 2018, and
| him responding that he's certainly willing to make amendments,
| but if you tie his hands too much, someone from China will swoop
| in and bypass all regulations. Everyone scoffed at that, and less
| than 3 years later, TikTok is unstoppable despite Facebook's best
| efforts. While users' privacy has benefited from Facebook's
| downfall, their privacy has never been at more risk with the rise
| of TikTok (I do realize that TikTok's servers are in the US and
| Singapore, but let's not fool ourselves - the ByteDance
| leadership would be quickly replaced if they refused a data
| request from their government). I would consider this a net
| negative for the users, and particularly for the US as a country.
|
| Just another example proving that the paradox of tolerance [0] is
| a real thing. If you get too tolerant too quickly, you end up
| with a less tolerant outcome.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| fumblebee wrote:
| > "too many businesses and organisations are reluctant to use
| data - either because they don't understand the rules or are
| afraid of inadvertently breaking them"
|
| This is a deeply depressing take if the conclusion is to scrap
| GDPR. Is this true for 'data' in the general sense, or actually
| only true in the murky cases where there's an opportunity to use
| and abuse our personal data.
|
| In my book, that implies that GDPR is working exactly as we hoped
| it would.
| Daho0n wrote:
| I'm willing to bet that this:
|
| >The UK has the freedom to strike its own partnerships, he
| said, and he would announce priority countries for data
| adequacy agreements shortly
|
| will be an announcement that the US has adequate data
| protection.
| remus wrote:
| This is obviously reading the tea leaves a bit, but I didn't
| get the impression they are looking to scrap GDPR. It seems to
| me that they just want to relax things a bit so that businesses
| don't feel so threatened by it.
|
| Overall I think GDPR is a very positive thing, but from the
| government's perspective if they could keep the adequacy
| agreement in place with the EU while still relaxing some of the
| current GDPR legislation then that would be a big win for them,
| especially from a political point of view as it would be some
| much-needed validation of their brexit strategy: "Look! We have
| all the benefit of being in the EU [via the adequacy decision]
| but we get to make our own rules! Go us." I could imagine them
| doing something along the lines of greatly reducing the maximum
| fine, for example. Big fines are typically not being issued, so
| they likely wouldn't see it as a big loss.
| dtf wrote:
| Well say goodbye to EU data adequacy. Although to be honest it
| probably wouldn't have survived the first court case given the UK
| state's addiction to snooping.
| remus wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see what changes they actually propose.
| Id assume they would want to avoid threatening the EU adequacy
| decision so would go with some changes that would score them
| some points with businesses but without materially affecting
| contents of the current legislation.
| jjcon wrote:
| > UK state's addiction to snooping
|
| GDPR has nothing to say on state snooping and if you think
| Germany or plenty other members aren't.... I've got some bad
| news for you
| [deleted]
| elorant wrote:
| Let the spam kings rejoice.
| [deleted]
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Seems there's a reason reputable news outlets aren't reporting
| this:
|
| > The government has sent a first signal of its intention for UK
| data protection laws to part company with the EU's General Data
| Protection Regulation. In a Financial Times article last week,
| culture secretary Oliver Dowden said he would use the appointment
| of a new information commissioner to focus not just on privacy
| but on the use of data for 'economic and social goals'.
|
| So we don't know the UK is going to depart from the GDPR, but
| despite that, this website is reporting that it will.
| Daho0n wrote:
| But we do:
|
| >The UK has the freedom to strike its own partnerships, he
| said, and he would announce priority countries for data
| adequacy agreements shortly
|
| Either he recant that comment or announce a country (the US I
| bet) that doesn't have an adequacy agreement with the EU. You
| can't have it both ways. If he does announce a list that isn't
| the same as the EU's they'll have scrapped GDPR.
| fmajid wrote:
| It's worth mentioning the UK-Japan free-trade agreement already
| exempted data flows to Japan from GDPR (and from there they can
| be laundered to the USA):
|
| https://edri.org/our-work/uk-japan-trade-agreement-violates-...
|
| As Boris Johnson said, "The UK won't immediately send children up
| the chimneys or fill beaches across the country with raw sewage".
| Emphasis on "immediately".
| macinjosh wrote:
| At least the UK is one European country with its head screwed on
| straight.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| With respect, this is not what the article means.
|
| The UK has an equivalence agreement with the EU, which unlike a
| trade agreement can be rescinded quickly (something like 4
| weeks). This means that we have to have equivalent provisions to
| continue to handle data about EU citizens.
|
| so the UK might be "departing" from GDPR in name, it won't be in
| substance just by this act.
|
| This of course assumes the the UK is acting rationally.
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