God, written like that it would definitely have no effect, everybody would fall asleep by the end of the first sentence.

*considers going* thank you.

I briefly wondered if you meant my post, hopefully my second thought that you meant the Lords reports is correct?

You won't defend barricades with slogans about "executive and legislative restraint", but it seems to be a good sentiment.

Yes, I meant the Lords report :) sorry.

I can imagine some dusty fellow standing up in his tweed, infinitely slowly, balancing on his sticks, his gravy-stained Eton tie hanging from his shirt like a damp union jack in some god-forsaken, rain-drenched island territory, him ponderously putting on his half-moon glasses, coughing belabouredly taking a deep, wheezy breath and beginning:

We regard privacy and the application of executive and legislative restraint to the use of surveillance and data collection powers as necessary conditions for the exercise of individual freedom and liberty. Privacy and executive and legislative restraint should be taken into account at all times by the executive, government agencies, and public bodies.

It's bizarre that the House of Lords, a largely unelected body which reeks of patronage, and has aristocratic and theocratic remnants, has time and again proved the best bastion against the situation being even worse than it currently is.

I don't find that bizarre at all. The Lords are picked randomly by accidents of birth, and have generally done nothing to deserve to be there or to deserve not to be there. It makes sense that they'd be better than people who've devoted their lives to political power-grabbing and fighting for re-election.

I have welcomed each defence of liberty by the Lords with relief but not much surprise.

If New Labour succeed in substituting clones of themselves for the Lords, we're doomed.

Most of the Lords are not now hereditary (though I'll accept that the political culture there may well date back to a time when more were).

The working members of the House of Lords aren't (for the most part) there by accident of birth. They're the former great and the good.

What they are is unelected, and this is their great virtue. Once in the Lords, you've got life tenure and you don't have to worry about upsetting the people who are actually running the country.

(No, that doesn't mean Labour. It's the hypocrites running the Daily Mail and the like. Both Labour and the Tories are way too scared of the yellow press to do the right thing.)

The other thing about the Lords is that they embody trememendous political inertia. They're not replaced, they just receive a slow trickle of new members form successive administrations.

I find myself less irked by the existence of the House of Lords if I refer to it in my head as "giant building of tribal elders".

Yes, that's a more hippy-friendly way of putting it.

S.

Indeed, I've come to really appreciate the technocracy of the Lords. It's effectively a reviewing chamber full of some of the best political, commercial, legal and scientific experts in the country. The Parliament Act that makes it at least finally accountable to a democratic body is important, but so is the convention that the PA isn't used lightly.

However, it still irks that there is significant patronage associated with the Lords. I don't have a good solution on how to select Lords without patronage and without the downsides of democratic pressure. I don't want a fully elected second chamber, the lack of pressure to be re-elected is important, but I also don't want it to be a reward for party doners.

Arguably the mechanisms of patronage are far more important in becoming an MP, or at least in getting to the front bench. Especially since the role has become "pager-driven waldo of Mandelson".

"When in that House M.P.’s divide,
If they’ve a brain and cerebellum, too,
They’ve got to leave that brain outside,
And vote just as their leaders tell ’em to."

W.S. Gilbert, Iolanthe, 1882

I am currently being alternately amused/annoyed that the government have asked for personal details about my family because of what my brother-in-law has volunteered for (not sure how open I should be in an unlocked post!). And if they found out *that* on their own, then surely they could've found out *that*.

The squirrel is a strange species.

A lot of it could have been stuff that my mum and brother could remember between them.

k

I agree with your feelings, and opinions.

I'm not sure I see much hope in an organisation like The Convention providing much help, though. Do let me know how it goes, though, (perhaps write it up on your lj), as I'd be pleased to be proved wrong.

To me its scope doesn't seem nearly sufficiently broad, nor creative. The presence of people like AC Grayling are kind of hopeful, but I couldn't see the meat in what he was saying.

Sponsorship by newspapers, which it's possible to argue are a major component in the lifecycle of fear worries me. As does the focus on the state, when private sector security/information services like Google and BT are also important.

This doesn't seem nearly creative enough, to me. I want to know what our "smartest guys in the room" are thinking about it.

* Is it the industrial economic pressure to develop into a single rational entity that's enabling security services to use identity as a proxy for intent and free will? Will the overwhelming pressure on the will, of monitoring of identity mean that there's a rise in action where will is not embodied by an individiual, in the way that non-geographic resistance became prominent after the development of wide-area weapons?

* To what extent can the role of computing machinery, and bureaucracy in general, as applied to identities be seen as a major influencing factor on the efficient committal of genocide in a historical context?

* What can be learnt from the East German experience? Is there samizdat which is relevant. What are some survivor's stories?

* What is the mechanism of fear and self-censorship? What is its psychological impact.

* How is resistance possible? How can it be morally justified or otherwise? etc.

* loads of stuff I couldn't possibly think of.

It's all usual suspects at the moment: people in the broadly political sphere. There's is the generation which lost its courage, really. Despite all the madness of Maggie, we didn't give in to fear. This lot have. They're the ones who slept on the job.

I think it's worth paying about as much attention to the current shower of pundits, politicians, prominent lawyers, etc, as it is to bankers on the exact and infallible science of credit rating!

I've thought for a while about perhaps writing some essays on various related subjects, but I'm not sure what good that would do, either. But I am greatly disturbed by it all.