back to article Straw bends on Coroners & Justice data-sharing proposals

Justice Minister Jack Straw has bowed to the inevitable and announced the withdrawal of provisions for data-sharing from the Coroners’ and Justice Bill, presently before parliament. This occured at some point in the last seven days. Lack of a precise date for this act of Ministerial euthanasia may be attributed to the lack of …

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  1. General A. Annoying
    Flame

    "positive abuse"!!

    WTF?!

    Since when was there anything *positive* about abuse, particularly "by government using data to model our lives in ever greater detail"?

    As for Clause 152 being 'dead', like any good zombie, it wont 'die' properly until you cut it's head off.

    Which sounds like a good idea if we're talking Straw, Smith, Harman etc.

  2. Secretgeek
    Thumb Up

    Not much to say except...

    I'm liking this turn of events. A lot.

    Good point with the caveat as well.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    People would happily entrust more of their data to government

    Totally unjustified generalisation there IMO. as far as I am personally concerned the Government can have only what it can wring out of me by force, nothing else on principle.

    (Fuck the greater good, freedom comes at a price).

  4. Dave

    Which planet am I on?

    I woke up on the wrong planet a few days ago when I heard that David Blunkett had come out against giving the government greater control. Now I find that the government has apparently dropped the nasty bit of the bill, so I'm obviously adrift in the universe again. Which way to Earth, please?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    btw

    What about the more depressing (and mentally retarded) clause that makes drawing equal to cp? The whole bill needs torching.

  6. Richard Rothwell
    Thumb Up

    A small but important victory

    I think that the efforts of NO2ID have achieved an important victory, but as you say constant vigilance will be necessary. A careful watch will have to be kept on all the legislation that is put before parliament.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    infact

    There was an article on the news this morning that highlighted the WTF How did you get there? Reality of government thought process.

    6 woman are on average murdered by partners and ex partners in the UK. (Interestingly 1 in 4 woman suffer somekind of abuse - apparently - and 1 in 6 men. Now those figures really arn't that far apart but you'd have thought that no men were ever assaulted - apparently for some reason it's unacceptable to abuse a woman but just dandy to abuse a man- but anyway that's another rant.

    So they're going to have some random review into the matter of physical abuse in the home and how it can be eased/prevented and about the sexualisation of children and teenagers in the media.

    Wait WTF how did we get there? How did we go from beating your wife and kids to sexuality of underage people? "ARGH I SAW A KIDZOR IN TEH MAG IN SWIM SUIT NOW I BEAT YOU UGLY HO!" I mean wtf O.o. Although it is pretty classic western think nowdays.

    You can just see the plan being "right, we'll make a law making it illegal to beat woman - sure shut up I know it's already illegal but you can never have enough laws right? Anyway we'll tack on this law about the representation of underage characters in the media at the same time, they need to be wearing big brown dresses, and face masks, we can't have any of their legs showing either." Before you know it we're back in the Victorian ageas, but without the joys of opium dens, hookers and random murder to get us by.

    Recent examples of classic westthink

    Cartoon loli make men child raping monster! It's obvious isn't it.

    To be honest I think British men must all be so f---ing stupid, so utterly incapable of making decisions, control our desiresm, and we evidently have no clue as to reality and fantasy, we shouldn't be allowed out of our homes! And god forbid we go abroad where all those pictures and different ideas expose our frail minds to lustful desires we have no chance of controling!

    It's like Raping and killing women is bad, so we'll ban extreme porn. WTF How did you do that?

    Being a vicious child molester is bad, so we'll ban drawings, and maybe writing. HOw o how do your weak f---ing brains even function? And you're the same dumb s--ts who home a child abuser with a foster family that has preteen children you dumb turgid s--ts!

    Erck it's all about making a loud noise, just like that psycho Harriet Harmen "court of public opinion" man why doesn't she just get some pitch forks and burning torches.

    Tshhh.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    BCS doing something useful?!?

    Struth, the BCS doing something positive. There was me thinking they were a bunch of old academic or mainframe duffers.

    Continue with this and it might be worth considering joining. Although that won't be possible as I don't have 20 years of COBOL experience.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @ Dave

    Don't worry Dave, you can be safe in the knowledge that you're on the same planet. The story might have been reported as "Blunkett has Damascene conversion about civil liberties" but of course the truth of the matter was nothing of the sort. More here - although the sheer amount of spin on show would make any bowler unplayable :

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/24/civil-liberties

  10. Andrew Baines Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    In the right direction

    My wife had her tax record edited to some random address. No idea who did it, or how. Imagine if this data sharing had been in place - all her govt records would now be changed.

    We need poor data sharing in govt just to stop them messing it up before we notice.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A rare moment of pleasure

    Unusual and pleasing to see a story featuring a piece of government bend-over-and-take-it-like-a-man legislation and a rare outbreak of common sense, all in the same place. If this happens a couple of hundred more times it might be possible to photograph Canary Wharf without an armed response unit showing up, and send an email without the cleaner at the local council offices knowing who it was sent to.

    Now, if the entire government self-euthanised in parliament square, my day would be made.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Like the end of any good horror movie

    This proposal will come back, leaping out of the shadows in a different bill or statutory instrument. The only way we'll know it's dead is when New Labour is interred with a stake through its heart.

  13. Dan
    Thumb Up

    @infact

    Brilliant rant! Sir/madam, I salute you...

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Sounds Like Good News

    Sounds like good news. I'm still opting out of the NHS Summary Care Records, though.

    It can only be a matter of time until the government come up with data sharing in another form. Perhaps, rather than allow sharing, they'll choose to permit interdepartmental remote access instead, so they can say it's not sharing, but just sensible access to unshared data. The result would still be a massive, distributed database by (an ineffective suggestion of) stealth.

  15. kissingthecarpet
    Pirate

    Re:Like the end of any good horror movie

    It will never die- why will anything change when the party in govt. changes? - I used to think exactly the same thing when Thatchler was in power, but look how things turned out. Once you open Pandora's box etc. etc.

    Until there's another paradigm shift like the one in 1945-8 forget it mate...

  16. Tim

    u-turns

    So, yet another (albeit welcome) u-turn by this hopeless govt.

    <continue rant>

    I have noticed that this has been an increasing trend over the last couple of years, with the culmination so far being last autumn's (pre-) budget statement that was merely a long list of things "the govt has decided not to introduce". Presumably this is all due to them clutching at any passing policy then throwing it aside when they have finally understood it's implications, however it does mean that they waste a huge amount of time ultimately achieving absolutely nothing. On which note, I will follow this with a list of Gordon & Alastair's top 5 achievements, feel free to add any I have overlooked.

    Ah, I cannot think of any. Hmm.

    Tim#3

  17. ElFatbob

    mmm...

    'Clause 152 is dead - but be warned, that doesn’t mean it won’t sneak back in the autumn under some different guise'

    No doubt tagged onto some bill dealing with agriculture or the like....

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    re: BCS doing something useful?!?

    Despite its pretence, the BCS is an industry body. It claims to represent academics, while having nothing to do with them.

  19. Graham Marsden

    So...

    ... we hear from the government a reponse that translates as "Shit, lads, we've been rumbled", but with undertones of "never mind, we'll sneak this crap in later when they've all forgotten about it or they're distracted by something else!"

    The only way this sort of nonsense will be stopped for good is when we get rid of this Control Freak Government once and for all.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's not gone!

    They'll just change it's name and push it through regardless, like their fellow euroNazis did with the european constitution

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    (untitled)

    Perhaps the govt can be persuaded to drop the proposal to hold inquests in secret (ie, do away with inquests) for cases where national security is involved (ie the plods have murdered another innocent bystander)?

    God knows, the govt got enough help from the coroner in the Stockwell case, what with telling the jury what verdicts they could bring in. What more can they achieve in secret?

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bad Legislation x Lots = Incompetent Government

    Yet another bill modified after massive opposition. The government don't even seem to put a lot of thought into laws anymore. If this government was a company employee he would've been told to shut up by now.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @ u-turns

    you missed err thingy and err you know,

    nope you're right cant think of anything

  24. John Smith Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    And let remember a few other things that did'nt go their way

    42 days detention. Fail

    Nationwide ID cards by now. No

    ID cards for all airport workers. No

    ID cards for 2 airports. They wish.

    I'll raise a glass to the BMA, BCS, and NO2ID (who did an interesting briefing) for Stirling work.

    Other posters are right. They'll (try) to stuff this in another Bill its completely irrelevant to (a tactic they seem to have learned from our merkin friends).

    Her Wackiness has tasted blood with ID cards for foreign visitors

    Contactpoint remains the nearly ideal nonces shopping system,

    The scum bag civil servants who drafted this crap are still ready to spew this disease into the ear of the next incumbent.

    Doing your job well is one thing. Stuffing draconian provisions with massive implications for data security into an unrelated bill is another.

  25. Frumious Bandersnatch

    It's not a real revolution

    until people lose their heads. Just saying.

  26. Wayland Sothcott

    Labour was supposed to be the antidote to Tory

    Posters tend to say that we will get rid of this bunch and get the Tories in who will reverse all this crap. Things have gradually got worse. Who thinks they will gradually get better. Who thinks there will be a sudden huge crisis that will swing it?

  27. Guy Herbert
    Pirate

    To be fair...

    "Stuffing draconian provisions with massive implications for data security into an unrelated bill is another."

    The entire bill is a gallimaufry of unrelated draconian provisions with massive implications, only one part of which is half relevant to its title. The half-relevance being to "coroners" - none of it has any relationship to "justice", except perhaps the ochlocratic torches-and-pitchforks variety.

  28. John Smith Gold badge
    Coat

    Jack Straw has bowed to the inevitable

    Funny how every thing seems "inevitable"

    The world wide victory of organised labour over capitalism predicted by Marx as historically inevitable.

    The collapse of communism in Russia due to economic melt down and contradictions.

    A relatively small group of people initally believed both premises. At first. Numbers on both changed over time.

    One was right.

    I strongly doubt the answer was anything but obvious to most of the people involved, even those on the inside.

    If a group can convince the general public that all efforts to oppose them are worthless and futile (no matter how weak they actually are) they can win and do whatever they like.

    Whe you hear someone say "we must do this" or "we simply can't do that" ask yourself is that in your best interest or their best interest.

    You can guess what DVD's in my side pocket.

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