The issue here in the UK (and, I suspect, the rest of the world) is that our politicians are some of the most technically inept people on the face of the planet. I doubt if one of them could even install Windows on a blank PC if you gave them a written guide. And its not just IT that they don't understand. Look at how many government projects have either failed, been massively over-budget or delayed by decades, because our political masters wouldn't now how to screw in a light bulb without a diagram to help. (HS2? Hinckley Point?)

I look at our Houses of Parliament and I see front benches packed with people who have gone straight from university debating societies to front line politics without ever touching the real world. The back benchers are mostly lawyers and barristers.

I've no doubt there are one or two amongst them who are genuinely trying to act in the interests of their constituents, but they are drowned out by the noises coming from the majority.

People refer to the "Ship of State". Before you become Master of an ocean going vessel, or Captain of an airliner, you have to go through years of intense training. Yet we allow people to run the country just because they want to - and that, surely, makes them the least suitable ones for the job!

Until we can devise a political system where our leaders are forced kicking and screaming into office, with the promise of time off for good behavior, I can't see things improving.

Rant over!

Even the ones who have had a passing acquaintance with the real world are desperately out of their depth because they never had knowledge of the things they're expected to govern even before they ran, terrified, from the real world.

Instead they now listen to the voices which shout loudest and or have the deepest pockets to provoke "moral outrage", our country is governed by volume not majority.

You're right. In any debate on this the question "What's the most dangerous thing you can do online" should have been asked and the answer "Share your personal details" would have been in the top 1 IMHO.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this policy it shouldn't have been put in place until the government had implemented proof-of-age process for all its citizens. I'm no expert on this, but it could have been based, say, on public/private key verification and since the gov has, effectively, got all your information (driving licence, passport, tax & social security accounts, etc.) then it wouldn't have required sharing any more data with the gov than they already have nor been a huge burden to sign up for and the dodgy website would only see a public key or app-created token or whatever. Also - they're going to have an ID app soon*, so that would help. Only once this had been developed, tested and rolled out should they have implemented their (pointless) policy.

* As one of my old bosses used to say, "That's not a date in the calendar".

until the government had implemented proof-of-age process for all its citizens

Do you mean one of the usual suspects implemented it?

the politicians are useless but it's Civil Servants chasing promotions & possible directorships as wellas the multitude of Constituencies fishing for work for their other clients that are the real problem.

why the hell else do we have so much shit in our waters & why do firms like Carillon manage to get so much public sector work while big consultancies audit their accounts knowing they're going to explode?

We the plebs pay for this shite & these companies make $$$$ from our tax money.

I'd be interested to see which donors or consultancy customers firms like Yoti & alike a filled with

The problem is that no politician of any colour likes data because politicians work on beliefs, not facts. Facts are threatening to politicians and, by extension, their sponsors and funders. When professor Nutt said that taking ecstacy was statistically no more dangerous than horse riding he was sacked. For telling the truth. The government didn't even have the bollocks to make a case for banning one activity and allowing the other. They certainly didn't have the bollocks to tell the truth and say that drugs policy is set by the right-wing press, not by data. They just sacked* him to pacify the Daily Telegraph.

It's no wonder that civil servants keep their heads down in these circumstances.

*effectively.

Politicians work on brown envelopes and polls.

it's Civil Servants chasing promotions

Well yeah. If you stop awarding annual increments and freeze pay so that they take a real-terms pay cut, then people will move jobs more frequently to avoid their income being devalued year-on-year.

Big brain Osborne didn't understand that. Trying to shrink the CS through natural attrition and early-retiring your most experienced staff off is also going to leave your younger and mid-level CS without mentors and bleed off that hard-won experience. Of course it was totally impossible to see this coming.

The idea was to make it impossible to hire talent on CS wages, creating the perfect pretext for outsourcing. You can’t pay £150k for an in-house specialist, but you can magically find £250k for the “usual suspect” consultancy - who will source the same talent from their own pool and skim off a tidy profit. And just to make sure the middleman is permanent, along comes IR35, neatly stopping the public sector from cutting them out.

Surely not, next thing you know someone will claim you need to be a qualified accountant to run the treasury...

Surely not, next thing you know someone will claim you need to be a qualified accountant to run the treasury...

They already are aren't they?

What we need is some economists. Not the lunatic Austrian schoolers of course, but someone middle-of-the-road or slightly Keynes-leaning who isn't afraid to invest (dirty word, I know) in the infrastructure that we've been deferring maintenance and renewal on for 40 years.

stop your insanity!! britain doesn't invest! it offshores everything and sells off it silver to foreign firms & governments. i mean why should the british people be allowed to own their own infrastructure when you can sell it cheap to Chinese firms that are "totally independent " from the winnie the pooh lookalike?!

i mean better to have all that expertise handed off to other countries.

the civil service & governments over the last 40 years can genuinely fuck themselves. i posted on linkedin about how dumb arse civil servants would rather pay £2000/day for a foreign tax dodging consultancy rather than 800/fay for a local contractor such would actually cost them 1/2 that as they get all the tax back.

why have energy water power generation paying all their profits into the treasury when all of that sweet sweet captured market money can be sent offshore tax free

Politicians do not understand things. It's not within their job description or their capabilities. Hence we get mindless legislation that can be circumvented by readily available tools that they also do not understand, or even know of.

Sunnak's incompetent shower may not even have cared. It was blatantly obvious that they would be out of power any minute, and forcing through useless legislation with a view to trying to look good may have been more appealing than doing nothing; the fallout was never hung to be their problem. Starmer's equally incompetent shower don't have much incentive to do anything about it - they're busy enough trying to limit the fallout from their own stupidity, and anything that reflects badly on their predecessors is an advantage. Besides, they don't understand it either.

Looks like we're stuck with the Act for quite a while.

The Laughable Online Safety Act (LOSA) is quite an achievement. Yoof can readily access all manner of graphic violence, knife crime, guns, gangs, brutality, exploitation, routinely dangerous driving etc etc, all still readily available in movies on streaming services because they'll be using their parents single log in credentials, and government can and will do nothing about that.

Yet retards like the overwhelming majority of our parliamentarians believe these fragile young people will be eternally corrupted if they see a pair of knockers on t'internet. Arseholes.

So they try to "ban" the internet for under 18's. What happens when they drop the voting age to 16 here in the UK? 16 year old's cannot buy fags, buy lottery tickets, drive, "use" the internet fully, and yet can vote? How does this all work. Politicians are ALL Brainless Numpties.

It works by ensuring that 16 & 17 year olds see only the information required to decide to vote for the incumbent.

...in a Dropbox (which may be replicated on approved, secured laptops) and on MSTeams ."

I'm sorry, what?

Might as well say it is stored on a secure thumbdrive found at a bus stop.

Prohibition gave us Hot Rods.

Let's see where this one leads to.

"Hot Rod"? Is that some reference to 70's pron?!?

Scene - Bored and lonely housewife approaches plumber whilst he's working and asks "Can I give you a hand with your Hot Rod?" - Bow Chicka Wow Wow!

--------> Mine's the one with the mullet, the tash, and the Hot Rod in the pocket!

From someone who used to work in education IT I can tell you that kids find ways around blocks, it was a constant battle to stop them being able to get passed the filters on the schools internet. And once a loophole is discovered it is widely circulated among teens, so Im sure that they all now know if they want to view blocked content to just download a VPN app and use that.

Id be very suprised if there aren't already apps in development that will let you use a photo of someone over 18 to bypass those AI guess your ages checks. Like how some people worked out that Death Standing game photo mode could be used to get around it.

Of course then the mumnet 'won't someone thing of the children' crowd will then say we need to ban VPNs because its allowing their darlings to get around the ages checks. Perhaps if those shouting for more blocks and bans actually came off the internet themselves and spent time with their kids they could do some actual parenting?

Use Their ID website. I looked at my local mp's driving licence. It has his address on it. This is doxing mp's. Its both wrong and dangerous.

Any learning experience is useful. This might provide a learning experience for MPs.

and funny.

It has his address on it. This is doxing mp's. Its both wrong and dangerous.

You apparently don't realise that when someone stands for election to public office, their nomination form (including address) is published by the body administering the election for that district/ward/constituency (usually the local council/election officer).

This applies to MPs and Local/County Councillors.

Local authorities have been doxxing candidates for decades!

This site (which now appears to be down) does make it a smidge easier I'll grant you, but it's not releasing private or secret information - this data is already public.

Apologies I didn't know that.

"It has his address on it. This is doxing mp's."

You apparently didn't even read the FAQ on the website either. The address is random. It appears to be the same for every MP.

Why can't the crazies at Mumsnet actually PARENT their kids, instead of lobbying the government to do it for them!

The plan for the online safety act came from Carnegie UK.

https://carnegieuk.org/online-harms-resource-page/

This was not the result of some grass roots campaign by bored mumsnetters screeching about 'won't someone PLEASE think of the children!'. This is a full-blown NGO steering the govt.

This sort of thinking has been bouncing round government thinking since at least 2015 (ironically the 8th centenary of Magna Carta). Both the main parties have espoused it which is why I'm unable to vote for either of them.

Governments have been keen to set quotas for various groups. Perhaps setting a quota of 25% of ministerial posts to require a STEM degree would be one of the most useful that could be adopted.

Have you ever heard any government suggest that any of their policies are a failure? Failures are only ever pointed out by the opposition or in retrospect.

Count on the current government to double down on this pointless exercise rather than roll anything back.

Politicians don't care that these policies won't work. What they want is to look as people who act to protect children. To look, not to be. What does matter is the public perception of the biggest number, not the opinion of the IT crowd. We all know in IT this kind of law is inefficient, stupid and dangerous. But this law wasn't made to be efficient, this is PR with a pinch of puritan dogmatism.

Potemkin policy designed to enrich middlemen while achieving nothing.

Potemkin policy

Hey, I've got nothing to do with such policies!

Please add: any similarity to actual members living or dead is accidental and unintentional.