Harriet Harman website hit by recession?

I've just been corresponding by email with Jon Worth, the Labour blogger who looks after Harriet Harman's personal website and blog.

It would appear the site is offline and I was curious why. Jon has let me know, presumably so I wouldn't speculate it had something to do with the ongoing Speaker story.

Apparently the hosting company has gone bust which I found particularly ironic as it probably happened due to the recession caused by the Government to which Harmen is essentially deputy leader.

Did Mr Speaker mislead the House?

Machiavelli believes so. As he notes the Police said,

"The officers informed the Serjeant at Arms that the provisions of Section 8 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act required that they first seek consent of the person who occupies or controls the premises where they believe evidence may be found."
Letter: Assistant Commissioner Robert Quick QPM MBA to the Home Secretary, 3 December 2008, in House of Commons Library Deposited Papers.

However, the Speaker said yesterday that,

the police did not explain, as they are required to do, that the Serjeant was not obliged to consent, or that a warrant could have been insisted upon."

If you are required to SEEK consent, it necessarily follows that there is no OBLIGATION to give it. Does this not place the Speaker on flaky foundations?

UPDATE: The following letter from the Police to Harriet Harman argues that the law was followed in their view.


Document via Guido via Wikileaks.
Note: For Iain Dale, the tag is "Damien" and not "Damian" and I can't be arsed to change it. I'm illiterate and proud!

The Great Mortgage Insurance Swindle - Brown 'lies' to Parliament

As Politcal betting notes with the picture to the right, Gordon brown won the headline war today with his surprise mortgage announcement. "Mortage help" and "middle class" in the same sentece on the Daily Mail and Telegraph will have made him pleased as punch.

Nevermind of course that bankers are briefing that they've been bounced into something they didn't agree with, with one blaming Mandelson saying,

"You can tell Peter Mandelson’s back in town... The press are being briefed before we’ve even been properly consulted."

What surprises me is that the reporting of this has missed the minor flaw which makes it brilliance just another great big sleight of hand con job.

The big fanfare is that eight banks - HBOS, Abbey, Nationwide, Lloyds TSB, Northern Rock, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC - have signed up to this, although as already mentioned, there are muttering that they've signed bugger all agreements as yet, so it may still fall apart.

What though I am finding astounding is how easily the words of Brown are taken on face value and no one spots the blatent elephant in the room, or alternatively the 'lie'. For example, according to Philip webster of the Times,

Eight big lenders, accounting for 70 per cent of the market, have signed up to the £1 billion plan.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail says,

It covers more than 90 per cent of all home loans

The Scotsman says,

Eight major lenders, responsible for 70 per cent of the UK's mortgage market

And the Guardian

eight lenders had so far signed up to the scheme, including HBOS, Nationwide, Abbey, Lloyds TSB, Northern Rock, Barclays and HSBC. Between them they represent around 70% of the mortgage market.

So we have 70% to 90% of the market share of mortgages. Where did that figure come from? Well that would be the Prime Minister himself who said in the Commons,

The lenders include HBOS, Nationwide, Abbey, Lloyds TSB, Northern Rock, Barclays and HSBC — already 70 per cent. of the mortgages that are held in this country.

The figure of 70% is a "lie". The banks, and by that I mean all banks, not just these eight, had, as of July 2008, £635,130 million of the £1,214,148 million worth of mortgages held in the UK.

That's 52.2% of mortgages that are from all the banks in the UK. The other 47.8% belong to Building Societies and specialist mortgage lenders such as building society subsidiaries and securitisations. The last time the banks (and again I mean all bank not just the eight mentioned) held close to that market share was 2002 when they held 69.3% of the market.

Since then the specialist mortgages lenders, which include building society subsidiaries and securitisations, has increased its share to 30.6% whilst the banks have dropped to the already mentioned 52.2%. Even if one is generous and accepts that all 52.2% of mortgages will be covered by Brown's latest plan, that still means just short of half the mortgage holders in the country are not included. Thus the Great Mortgage Insurance Swindle is complete.

Stand up in Parliament, propose a special package for the "middle classes" and throw out a figure that is simply not true. The result is a policy which is not really motivated by the need to protect people, it's about getting the "Brown helps out middle classes" narrative out there and pushing the Damien Green story off the top billing.

I'm not sure which is worse. The fact that Brown stood up and basically threw out a bogus figure about the market share in mortgages of eight banks, or the fact that the papers all seem to have reported it as gospel without checking the figure first. "Rescue deal for a million homeowners" my arse! At best it's probably half that and even then you have to be on interest only with one of eight banks.

UPDATE: Slight correction made. The number of mortgages has been changed to the outstanding value of mortgages in million pounds. Apologies, misread legend on table. Market shares remain correct.

UPDATE II: Noted in the comments that Nationwide is not a bank. Correct, missed it. However their market share was reported by them in Novemebr as falling to 5.6% from 6.2%. That means the overall share of the eight remains at highest 58.8% but more likely lower when other banks come into play. That still remains significantly less than the 70% that Brown claimed in Parliament.

Source: Building Societies Association and Bank of England - September 2008

Does Jill Pay live in a box?

I ask this question simply because I cannot believe the words "do you have a warrant?" failed to pass the Serjeant at Arms' lips.

I have nothing more to add.

Is Tony Benn removing the signs then?

I see the Queen's Speech contained the news that there will be a bill brought forward to create open access for all members of the public to the coastlines of Britiain. I wonder if this means the Envitronment Secertary Hilary Benn has agreed with his Dad to remove the "no public footpath", "private garden" and "please do not trespass" signs at their family home of Stansgate Abbey Farm in Essex?

UPDATE: Apparently the Government intends to "strengthen Parliament" which is kind of funny given the news fo the last week etc etc.

EU wants to trojan PCs for remote search?

A rather worrying, but also amusing story appeared on the Register the other day saying that the EU is looking at the possibility of using torjan remote searches on people's computers in order to tackle cyber-crime.

As El Reg notes, there are practical problems with trying to do this however much politicians might want to.

For starters, infecting the PC of a target of an investigation is hit and miss. Malware is not a precision weapon, and that raises the possibility that samples of the malware might fall into the hands of cybercrooks.

Even if a target does get infected there's a good chance any security software they've installed will detect the malware. Any security vendor who agreed to turn a blind eye to state-sanctioned Trojans would risk compromising their reputation, as amply illustrated by the Magic Lantern controversy in the US a few years back.

Absolutely.

Releasing the Police video was silly

Having just watched the video released by the Tories last night showing the police in Damien Green's Palace of Westminster office I have to say it was a pointless and pathetic video of huge proportions. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't think the police action in this case - especially putting at risk the confidentiality of Green's communications with his constituents - was "over the top" and constitutionally questionable*.

However, the video quality, especially the performance of the shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve was really hackneyed. The result being that the charge of "false outrage" and "political opportunism" becomes more salient. On that point though I should add that those who argue of "synthetic outrage" and "crocodile tears" on the grounds that such outrage didn't exist 25 years ago are doing themselves an intellectual disservice and taking their readers for idiots.

Anyone who argues that the words of a politician from political party A are inconsistent with the views expressed by political party A 25 years previously is at best disingenuous, and at worst a complete fool. It's the equivalent of blaming your parents for having you when you face misfortune. The conflation of an individual today with the views of their party 25 years previously is crap basically.

Clearly there is no doubt that Tory MPs, along with Lib Dems and some Labour are mightly pissed off at this. However, the Tories reaction to it, which was measured at first, has, thanks to the video, simply upped the ante to a point where they just look like moaning teenagers and worse still will allow those idiots arguing of false outrage argue it even more.

Having said this, there has to be a debate in the Commons about where the line should be drawn on Police action and the manner it should be carried out in the Palace of Westminster. The issue is a hot one that needs to be clarified, but as I say, thanks to the video release by the Tories it is in danger of backfiring horrifically.

Yes, there are questions that need to be answered about who knew what and when. Yes, if the Home Secretary didn't know then the question "why didn't she know" has to be answered too. And yes, perhaps there should be some sort of legislative actions to clarify the offence of "misconduct in public office" and its status in statute (which I beleive is also in question).

However, releasing a video where the shadow Home Secretary looks so wooden on the matter was a massive mistake in my view, especially when the so-called footage merely involves Andrew Mackay walking in and being asked to leave immediately. It's hardly action-packed ransacking of an office.

As I've already said, don't mistake this post for saying that the issue is not an important one that has opened a can of worms. Clearly the defintion - or atleast the understanding - of parliamentary privilege is now in question. The sanctity of the Palace of Westminister is also involved. And there is the wider question about Government in relation to leaks that, according to reports, are not covered by the Official Secrets Act.

The issue I have personally is that the video release actually belittles and undermines the importance of those questions and could actually blowback on the Tories atr a time when the questions they, and others, are raising are vitally important.

* I use "constitutionally questionable" with caution here. I have heard differing views from constitutional experts about whether parliamentary privilege can be extended to leaks and the like based on different precedents.

Celia Barlow TV?

Turn on, tune in, drop out?


For some reason I see the "TV" bit after her name and wonder whether it might be interpreted as something other than televsion. Such images and video would infect the mind and require bleach to clean out.

I wonder how many hits from Google she will get from people looking for a transvestite?

Star Wars vs Star Trek

Apple tells its users to get anti-virus

Sssssh say it quietly lest anyone hear, but you know how Apple's OSX is invisible to viruses. You know how their advertising makes much of knocking Windows for being crap and vulnerable to viruses (which it is)? Well Apple have quietly announced on its support forum that,

encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult. Here are some available antivirus utilities.

Have they done a special deal with some software providers or is that naughty people are getting wise about how to penetrate the Church of Jobs? The latter if far more likely than the former.
Via Slashdot
Note 1:Yes the link is to a trojan not a virus. Point stands.
Note 2: This post exists purely because I love Mac bashing as their zealots are worse than Linux ones :)