What is fair?

I have been reading about the governments plans to stop child benefit for people earning more than about £44K per year and more specifically people's reactions to it. Ignoring the fact that it is a single individual earning more than 44K rather than the joint earnings of a household (although how do you find that out in modern-day marriage-less Britain?) I am interested in people over-using the word "fair". It's not fair, it's not fair!
What is fair? In a totally un-moderated market, I would earn as much as I can. Add in the idea of government and we have to pay taxes. If you pay by a flat percentage, already the system can be accused of being "unfair". If we all benefit more-or-less equally from the government services, why should I pay twice as much as someone who earns half as much money? So OK, let me accept that a percentage is not unreasonable, we then look at various other factors. We have a tax code which gives us £7000ish tax-free each year. This means that the less you earn, the less tax you pay (you pay tax on a lower percentage of your salary) is that fair? Then there are benefits which are paid to various people out of work totalling a large percentage of tax money, why should I have to pay for all the people who don't work? Is that fair? Then we have to gall to raise the tax rate above a certain amount (more than I earn btw!) so that people who are fortunate to earn lots of money have almost half of that taken away to pay for things which other people are using - is that fair? I am single and rarely have any medical help, is it fair that I am paying for a household worth of rubbish collection, schools and elderly care that I don't use while others who earn nothing are getting £1000s of benefits from my taxes?
It seems that "fair" to most people is that if I get more, that's fair but if I get less that isn't fair. "It isn't fair that someone earns a million pounds per year" (although most people wouldn't give their money away if they earned that much!) "It isn't fair that these government proposals hit the poorest the hardest" (despite the poorest already getting a massive load of free benefits.
Here's a newsflash - life isn't fair. I have so little money after paying my bills, I'm worse off than many low-income families despite earning more than the national average wage. The day when someone on benefits has more disposable income than me is pretty sad but I count my blessings and soldier on. I just wish all these "it's not fair" people would shut up and take responsiblity but a state benefit system will never encourage that to happen, only when people have to give in order to receive will they appreciate something and have the self-respect that they have earned it.

Budget Deficits and the unfairness of government

I was reading a Peter Oborne column about the challenge that the new government faced. Well a challenge would be walking up Kilmanjiro while this is more like the north face of the Eiger in pyjamas.
He said that the current amount that was being overspent was equivalent to around £500 million per DAY. Yes, every day, we are spending around £500M more than we get into government coffers. This equates to around £600B per year and how does anyone reduce that? Well the government have already announced £6B worth of savings but incredibly, despite this being a huge amount, it doesn't sound much compared to £600B but presumably some of that must be projected and could be removed on paper before any money is spent but still.
That makes me then realise how unfair government is. A government can basically run up a massive bill by spending too much, grabbing all the "look at us supporting the NHS/education" headlines and then leave the next government to have to clear up all the mess. The amount we spend on interest every year could replace the whole rail network practically! They then suffer the childishly ignorant headlines of some of the media such as the Daily Mirror whose headline was basically, "vote for the Tories and they will cut all the important spending" as if that decision was taken for no other reason than presumably to give money to rich people! Probably my biggest regret of the recent election was that many people in the country still either believed the half-truths of the Mirror or simply decided that it is only worth voting for people who will give you the benefits you want regardless of the knock-on effect.
Whether you like the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition or not, at least they understand that we need to reduce wasteful government spending that ballooned under Labour and encourage businesses so that they can employ all these people who bemoan the lack of jobs. They have an impossible task and possibly will need to raise income tax but then alas, after 5 years, no doubt everyone will accuse them or incompetence and Labour will be handed another clean set of finances to go and spend again grabbing all the headlines.
What can be done? No idea but I would like some regulations that can legally prevent government from borrowing when the economy is strong and from creative accounting that would be illegal in the real world. hmm

The idiots are at it again - Data Loss

Here we go again, someone at Barnet Council decided to store unencrypted data about school children on CDs and USB sticks which were then stolen in a burglary and are out at large. Just another example of the incompetence that exists at every level in our public services related to the protection of data.
Firstly, the council say that the person in question has been suspended but why aren't they jailed? Why do we still not take data protection seriously. More importantly, the council says they have now blocked external drives to prevent this - why wasn't this already the case? Why, when there could be a simple 2-sided document on data protection sent to all public services in the country, was this a reactionary measure rather than a proactive one? Why do companies still assume that people can be trusted to do do something properly? People are not perfect, they do not always understand what they are doing, they sometimes act maliciously or to make their life easier so quite simply you must prevent people as far as possible being able to circumvent protection tools.
Interestingly, the data in its normal form was encrypted so the council presumably partly understood what they were doing but didn't go far enough.
"An independent review is underway". What's the point? We have enough of these already, let me give you some free very obvious advice and pass this onto the IT Services division of the Cabinet Office:
"Put together a small team of experts in IT security and decide what all public services must adhere to in terms of data security. Imagine all scenarios, lay them out, send the document to all public departments and make them follow it at pain of prosecution" Why is that so hard?

Government's Challenge or Government's Making?

I read the following on the BBC News today: "He added that the deterioration emphasised the scale of the fiscal challenge still facing the government, with Chancellor Alistair Darling facing growing calls to act more quickly to tackle the deficit."
Interesting how people can put a spin on things. When you read this, you think that somehow a financial problem jumped onto the government without warning and they face a challenge to deal with it. However, most people know that the government have been spending more than they have for years and years and the so-called 'challenge' is simply the rod that the government made for its own back. I never really understand how this is allowed to continue and then left for the next government to deal with. Isn't there a point at which someone has the power to order the government to cut spending?
It all seems unfair, any new government will have to cut spending massively to keep things afloat and they will of course be accused of being a government that doesn't care about things like the welfare system, education and the NHS (the big money 3). So Labour gets all the "we spent loads on important systems" headlines and the next government inherits austerity.
Typical isn't it!

Government says no to encryption

I feel the need to rant again because of the stupidity endemic in our current government. I don't think it is a political disagreement just another example of incompetence. This article here relates how information obtained from RIPA (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers) does not require encryption as it is handled and passed around. According to our government, who of course excel in every area of IT, it would be "impractical" to require this burden and the existing systems of "physical security", "security procedures", "staff vetting" and "training" are considered suitable for the job. This again clearly demonstrates that the government have no idea what they are talking about. Most security leaks appear to be related to a common theme: humans make mistakes. They leave stuff lying around, they get their properties burglarled, things get dropped, mislaid and criminals who want this information often obtain it without any input from employees of these systems. In which cases none of the so-called adequate measures does anything. The only way to prevent accidental disclosure of information is to make it exceedingly hard to do (i.e. encryption or inability to move the data outside of a closed network). People disboey procedures to save themselves time, they often ignore the fit-for-purpose hardware and transport stuff around in the Demilitarised Zone and as for staff training and vetting, it doesn't really add security, it is small and cheap operation that actually adds very little benefit.
They also miss an important point that actually encryption is extremely simple even using free tools. Even if what they used was not US Military Spec, it would be better than nothing!
Maybe one day the government will emply someone who actually knows about the departments they are managing. I won't hold my breath!

So Gordon is sorry then?

I read that Gordon Brown has apologized for the treatment of Alan Turing who was prosecuted for homosexual activity and committed suicide 2 years later. Gordon reckons that "while Mr Turing was dealt with under the laws of the time..." he also says, "his treatment, of course, was utterly unfair". Excuse me but who on earth is Gordon Brown to decree that all of the politicians and public petitioners of old who brought in these laws are all wrong and he is right? Why is it "of course" that liberal laws are correct and conservative ones are not?
Regardless of the actual law in question and whether I or he as an individual agrees with it, the job of the government is to execute government now not for the past. Unfortunately there aren't any of these people who died for whatever laws they used to have to appear in parliament and give Gordon Brown another tongue lashing like he usually gets in PMs Questions every week.
The government's ego knows no bounds. The wise man would have said, "sorry but what happened happened under another government in another time and I am not in a position to undo that".
Does Mr Turing deserve a posthumous honour for his work? By all means. The honour is for his achievements not his personal life whether that was 'illegal' or not but Brown, try running the country properly before muddying the waters of everything that comes your way!

Sleep walking into the ID Card State

I was reading with continued disbelief today that the government are still pressing in with the ID card scheme amongst their totally unfounded claims on the benefits: That they will help prevent terrorism and keep illegal immigration under control as well as preventing fraud.
Why is it that our system of government doesn't allow somebody to tell them to stop lying and have a ruling that means they can no longer make misleading statements without independently having them verified. For instance, despite a lot of academic work, many creationists are considered charlatans and misleaders and they have done a million times more homework than the government. How can they be allowed to make statements based on opinion or biased reports, have we not learnt anything? We will sleep walk into ID cards despite the lies unless we make more effort to tell our MPs what we think of their hair-brained schemes.
Terrorism? Well I believe all the people who have committed serious terrorist offences in the UK either have permission to be in the UK or are known to police already. ID cards no use there. Illegal Immigration? Well even without ID cards it is easy to find these people with enough staff and willing, Oh yeah and the ability to deport when caught, none of which is actually true. ID cards make no difference there. Fraud? Well seeing as you will be able to get them made at thousands of high-street places, how on earth do you prevent somebody from doing a little sideline in dodgy ID cards? There is absolutely no way to prevent it. Legal deterrents as we all know do not stop everyone from committing crime, it might persuade a few people if they knew the sentence would actually be passed.
Criminal!!

Securing Data

I was just reading AGAIN about the loss of personal data by a government contractor who copied the data to a USB stick and then lost it. What I don't understand is the amount of lethargy the government and others have had when it comes to understanding 2 things: 1) Security sensitive data is NOT the same as data in normal unimportant documents like many email etc and should not be treated thus and 2) It will NEVER be enough to rely on people following procedures to ensure safety or security in ANY scenario, let alone one that involves people's actual identity.
Security sensitive data (SSD) is treated like most data. It is stored in a database, many of which can't distinguish between someones bank details and their favourite colour. It is then possible to back it up to file, move it between computers, send it to external drives and in some cases read it physically from the disk with no encryption to break. What is needed is simply a linking up of various software vendors to agree on a new type of data in software systems and databases. This data will always be encrypted and can be forceably restricted to, for instance, only be allowed to live on a nominated server(s) and not be allowed to be copied onto an external drive. This would be defined by the person who creates the data so that even if it is sent to an external contractor, the safeguards would not be able to be removed (although presumably if the contractor wanted to copy the data off the screen somehow into another document that would be possible). Sure it would be quite a bit of work but with the amount of investment in these large systems and the potential cost of information loss, you would think that the powers that be would have finished this by now. This also mitigates the second point which is for one reason or another, people don't always follow a process, either at all, or 100% correctly. Somebody is covering for someone else's job, a new starter doesn't understand the ropes, communication is misunderstood, costs are cut etc, etc. By securing the data itself in a way that is coherent across platforms, peope don't have to remember not to write it to CD because the data will not let them do it. With basic tools like mandatory encryption and password protection, even if the data is mislaid, the chances of it being useful are very slim.
Come on everyone - sort it out!!

NO2ID !!

I went to see the NO2ID cards website yesterday and it was interesting to read about the various to-ing and fro-ing in government circles about the whole thing. For some reason the whole idea of ID cards disturbs me, not because I have anything to hide but they really are so far off the mark for the situations they are suppose to resolve. I have listed a few below but there are many reasons why it is a bad idea:
1) The system will be ludicrously expensive. The NHS IT system is already over 10 billion pounds and it isn't finished and only relates to people with medical history! Our government has spent so much money that it would be like borrowing £50K from the bank to buy a 4 x 4 when we only earn £15K per year!
2) The government depts have shown a massive incompetence when dealing with our data. No way I want to trust them with any more, espcially data that is valuable.
3) Identity information, once stolen, cannot be changed without having eye and finger transplants. The risk is too great.
4) It is impossible to say with any certainty that the data will be safe. Just like a dam, one breach and it could all be gone. What happens when we get accused of crimes or screwed up with our finances because of mistakes in the system? The government will shrug their shoulders and be totally unaccountable just like they are with everything else.
5) There are thousands of illegal immigrants here who are not caught and when they are, are not deported for other reasons. ID cards will not change that situation one little bit.
6) The extra trust you would be given by having an ID card means criminals with the ability to forge them or get them by deception would have more access to various systems and locations in which to commit crimes.
7) Most people won't be able to check the validity of an ID card anyway so it has limited value as any sort of proof of ID.
8) Once they are introduced there is every possibility that the requirement will creep and more and more things will require ID cards, even if they are introduced on a partial or volunteer basis, once they are in, they will certainly increase in use.
9) Because most governments are incapable of admitting mistakes, once the system is in and paid for to the tune of 10s of billions of pounds, there is no way that they government would accept it was a waste of money and scrap it. Also, there is no way to prove its real value until the full price is paid, the government would always insist it will be better when it is finished.
10) It's just a rubbish idea that the government have come up with that most Joe public have no way to stop and no say. Stop pretending that the government care about what you think and do something about it. Write to councils, write to MPs sign up to NO2ID and vote for a party that will scrap the whole ludicrous idea!