Parlez~me~'n~Tory

Rightly wry, satirically right

Back on 25th March I blogged about Ed Balls and the privacy policy on his Website that breached the Data Protection Act.

I made comment that I would seek to report this infringement by 11th March. It is perhaps encouraging that today (2 days before the deadline) I have received the following via e-mail:

—–Original Message—–
From: Ed Balls
Sent: 09 March 2010 11:11
To: Gary Stuart Wicks
Subject: RE: Feedback from Ed’s Website

Dear Gary,

Thanks for your email. We are currently reviewing the site content, and will update it where appropriate.

Best wishes,

Kate

Kate Williams

Office of Ed Balls MP

________________________________

From: Gary Stuart Wicks [mailto:xxxxxxx@gmail.com]
Sent: Fri 26/02/2010 08:18
To: Ed Balls
Subject: Feedback from Ed’s Website

This mail comes from the http://www.edballs.co.uk/index.jsp?t=contactEd page of the website.

Name: Gary Stuart Wicks
Email: xxxxxxx@gmail.com
Telephone No.:
Comments: Good morning.

Last evening whilst viewing your Website I noticed a number of discrepancies within your Privacy Policy and, I believe a number of areas whereby your site breaches the Data Protection Act 1998.

I took the liberty of writing a blog post to highlight the said discrepancies and areas I believe that may cause you problems.

It is extremely important that ALL (especially Government) websites, businesses and those gathering personal data do so with a full commitment to the DPA and that they fully understand their legal obligations.

This is not a partisan witch hunt but the beginning of research to discover how many government affiliated sites fail to meet their own legislation in an endeavour to bring EVERYBODY up to the same standard.

My blog post that relates to this issue can be located at the following URL:

http://www.wicksie.com/blunder/ed-balls-mp-plagiarised-his-mates-homework/

You will notice the 14 day deadline prior to any action being taken such as reporting the issue to the DPA and the ICO to facilitate your work to correct this “oversight”

If you wish to contact me with regards this issue then please do so via the address given or comment directly on the blog post.

I look forward to a swift resolution of these breaches.

Best regards
Gary Stuart Wicks

It would seem we have a partial success on our hands for common sense and more importantly for what is RIGHT.

I am not counting my chickens just yet but rest assured I shall continue to monitor the situation and report back accordingly.

I do cede that Ed’s office has taken the first positive step to rectification of this matter.

Today Dr Liam Fox MP has written to Sir John Chilcott requesting that Gordon Brown be recalled to clarify his evidence.

Dear Sir John,

Since Gordon Brown’s session last Friday (5 March 2010) two former Chiefs of the Defence Staff (Admiral Lord Boyce and General Lord Guthrie) and a former Chief of the General Staff ( General Sir Richard Dannatt), all highly respected men of great integrity, have made public statements completely contrary to, and directly challenging, what Gordon Brown said during his session regarding resourcing and equipping our Armed Forces.

‘There is a strong case for you to recall Gordon Brown for further testimony in front of your inquiry after the upcoming General Election.

‘I fully understand why you do not want your inquiry to be involved with party politics but I do think that it is important to get the truth in this matter even if this cannot happen until after the election.

Yours Sincerely
Dr Liam Fox MP
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence

The case for seeking this clarification?

Lord Guthrie

‘The military wanted to do many things but because of his attitude they were unable to fund properly the Strategic Defence Review (1998) which the Cabinet had approved, especially at a time when other departments were being showered with money.

The Ministry of Defence received the bare minimum from the chancellor, who wanted to give the military as little as he could get away with. The increases that we had in budget were small and did not take into account the above-inflation cost rises of defence….He ‘cannot get away with saying, “I gave them everything they asked for.” That is simply disingenuous’ (The Daily Telegraph, 6 March 2010).

Lord Boyce

‘He’s dissembling, he’s being disingenuous. It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed. There may have been a 1.5 per cent increase in the defence budget but the MoD was starved of funds’ (The Times, 6 March 2010).

General Dannatt

‘In front of Chilcot, he did not address the issue of the underlying underfunding of defence that has been endemic since the Strategic Defence Review of 1997/98.

Implementation of that otherwise excellent Review was hobbled from the start by the Treasury under Gordon Brown not only not fully funding the outcome of the Review, but imposing a three per cent year on year efficiency savings target. To that deficient baseline needs to be added the reopening of the MoD’s budget in 2003, a re-examination of the rules and the effective removal of a £1 billion year on year – what Sir Kevin Tebbit referred to as “guillotining” of the defence budget… Furthermore, despite the Government increasing the headline figure of the defence budget on an annual basis, the uplift to match general inflation was below that of defence inflation, which habitually runs at several percentage points higher.

So the net effect over recent years has been that the real value – the purchasing power – of the defence budget has decreased every year, and the pressure on the MoD and the Armed Forces has increased’ …no amount of rewriting history can compensate for the years when he neither understood defence properly nor was persuaded to pay for it fully’ (The Sunday Telegraph, 7 March 2010).

Seem pretty clear to me!

UPDATE at foot of post:
Whilst waiting for #bbcqt to begin this evening I was wandering around the darkened corners of the Web and settled upon the Website of Ed (I am a bully) Balls – edballs.co.uk.

It’s not a riveting read to be honest so I do these things so that you don’t have to and if you wish to buy me a beer sometime for that gesture then I shall be most grateful. Anyway, I digress…

Whilst considering Ed’s arrogance and his outright refusal to answer any of my 42 questions I have posed him on Twitter I decided to visit his Privacy Policy to see how “robust” [his favourite word of late] it actually was. What I found is below:

Privacy Policy

IP addresses and log file data

The Labour Party site does not automatically capture or store personal information, other than logging the user’s IP Address or the location of your computer or network on the Internet, for systems administration and troubleshooting purposes. (If you are connected to the Internet you have an IP address, for example an IP address might read “154.198.99.9″). We also use IP addresses in the aggregate to track which pages people visit in order to improve the quality of the site.

Data collection and use

You may be asked for personal information if you complete one of the forms on this site. Please see below the information we ask for and what this information is used for.

In each case we will only use the information about you for the purpose for which you provide it. The Labour Party does not sell or disclose this information to outside organisations or individuals, nor transfer it outside the United Kingdom. You may remove or change your details at any time. You have right of access to your personal information held on our files by written request to the data protection officer (address below) and on payment of an administration fee.

Site registration and email service (to receive Ed Balls newsletter)

When you register onto the site or subscribe for Labour eNews we ask you for contact information (such as your name and e-mail address), geographic information (such as your postcode and constituency), and other details about you and your interests. This is used to help us provide you with information to match your interests. We may also use it to alert you of campaigns you may be interested in and events happening in your area.

You can remove your name at any time from our e-mail subscription list by sending an unsubscribe request.

If you are registered onto the site, you can edit your registration and enews subscription details at any time through your personal on-line form. If you have not registered on the site and you wish to change your contact email address you need to unsubscribe from our mailing list and sign up again using your new information. If you are registered on the site as a member and you use the site to change your registration details (eg. address or email address) this information may also be used to update your membership record on the Party’s membership database to ensure it is up-to-date and accurate.

Cookie

A cookie is a tiny text file that is stored on your computer. We may use cookies in order to tailor your experience on our site according to the preferences you have specified. However we will only access the information that we stored in your cookie file. We will not access any information stored in a cookie by other websites. Our cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information.

Information on children

We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under the age of 16 without permission.

Links to other sites

Our site contains links to other sites and servers. The Labour Party is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites.

How we protect your information

Our website has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of the information under our control. Our server is located in a locked, secure environment.

Choice/unsubscribe

We provide you the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us easily and promptly. Our unsubscribe requests are processed weekly.

Correcting your information

If you need to correct the information you provided us with when you subscibed to our e-mail list, you can do so through your personal form provided on-line. If you need to change your e-mail address, you can unsubscribe from our mailing lists and sign up again using your new information. Or if you have registered with a username and password you may change your details at any time via the login page without needing to re-register.

Contacting us about privacy

If you have any questions about our privacy policy, the information we have collected from you online, the practices of this site or your interaction with this website, send an email to: ed@edballs.com or telephone us on 01924 898158.

You can also contact us at the address displayed on every page of this site.

We will continue to evaluate our efforts to protect your information and will update our privacy policy whenever necessary.

I won’t blame you for not bothering to read that but I shall pull out a few snippets for your delectation:

IP addresses and log file data
The Labour Party site does not automatically capture or store personal information

The Labour Party does not sell or disclose this information to outside organisations or individuals, nor transfer it outside the United Kingdom

When you register onto the site or subscribe for Labour eNews

We may also use it to alert you of campaigns you may be interested in and events happening in your area.[what Normanton???Come on Ed]

If you are registered on the site as a member and you use the site to change your registration details (eg. address or email address) this information may also be used to update your membership record on the Party’s membership database to ensure it is up-to-date and accurate.

Links to other sites
Our site contains links to other sites and servers. The Labour Party is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites.

Our server is located in a locked, secure environment.[no Ed, it isn't!]

In case you haven’t understand from the above Ed is either pretending to be the Labour Party as a whole or he has stolen the Privacy Policy from the Labour Party Website.

Is he equal to the Party? He may think he is…

I have reproduced the LabourParty.org.uk original Privacy Policy below so you can compare for yourself.

IP addresses and log file data
The Labour Party site does not automatically capture or store personal information, other than logging the user’s IP Address or the location of your computer or network on the Internet, for systems administration and troubleshooting purposes. (If you are connected to the Internet you have an IP address, for example an IP address might read “154.198.99.9″). We also use IP addresses in the aggregate to track which pages people visit in order to improve the quality of the site.

Data collection and use
You may be asked for personal information if you complete one of the forms on this site. Please see below the information we ask for and what this information is used for.

In each case we will only use the information about you for the purpose for which you provide it. The Labour Party does not sell or disclose this information to outside organisations or individuals, nor transfer it outside the United Kingdom. You may remove or change your details at any time. You have right of access to your personal information held on our files by written request to the data protection officer (address below) and on payment of an administration fee.

Site registration and email service
When you register onto the site or subscribe to our emails, we ask you for contact information (such as your name and e-mail address), geographic information (such as your postcode and constituency), and other details about you and your interests. This is used to help us provide you with information to match your interests. We may also use it to alert you of campaigns you may be interested in and events happening in your area.

Joining the Party and renewing your membership online
We collect the required information in order to check you meet the conditions of and help you fulfil the opportunities provided by membership of the Labour Party. At your option, we ask for additional information such as gender, date of birth and trade union membership to help us provide a better membership service to you.

To volunteer (pledge your support)
We ask for your contact details, postcode and information on the type of volunteer work you are interested in. This information helps us identify suitable volunteer opportunities for you within the Party. Your details will be forwarded to the appropriate local or regional party officer who can then contact you.

Donating to the Party
The information we ask for is used to process your donation and, if you donate more than £200, to check that you are on the electoral register. If you donate more than £1,000 to a Labour Party unit (eg. Constituency Labour Party) or more than £5,000 to the Labour Party nationally in the course of a calendar year, your name and the amount of your donation will be reported to the Electoral Commission for publication on their public register of donations to the Labour Party. Donation Information will be stored on our membership database and used to keep you informed of Labour news, campaign and other opportunities to support the Party.

Cookie
A cookie is a tiny text file that is stored on your computer. We may use cookies in order to tailor your experience on our site according to the preferences you have specified. However we will only access the information that we stored in your cookie file. We will not access any information stored in a cookie by other websites. Our cookies do not contain any personally identifiable information.

Information on children

The Labour Party does not process any personal details from individuals under the age of 15 without parent/guardian consent. Details of under 16s are processed for membership purposes only.

Links to other sites
Our site contains links to other sites and servers. The Labour Party is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites.

How we protect your information
Our website has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of the information under our control. Our server is located in a locked, secure environment, with a guard posted 24 hours a day. When you contribute online, we use a secure server to protect your credit card number and other personal information during transmission. The details are transmitted through Thawte to ensure absolute security.

Choice/unsubscribe
We provide you the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us easily and promptly. Our unsubscribe requests are processed weekly.

Correcting your information
If you need to correct the information you provided us with when you subscibed to our e-mail list, you can do so through your personal form provided on-line. If you need to change your e-mail address, you can unsubscribe from our mailing lists and sign up again using your new information. Or if you have registered with a username and password you may change your details at any time via the login page without needing to re-register.

Contacting us about privacy
If you have any questions about our privacy policy, the information we have collected from you online, the practices of this site or your interaction with this website, please contacy us by clicking here or telephone our call centre on 08705 900200.

You can also contact us at the address below:
E-campaigns team
Labour Party
39 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0HA

Our data protection officer can be contacted at the following address:
Melanie Onn
Labour Party
39 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0HA

We will continue to evaluate our efforts to protect your information and will update our privacy policy whenever necessary

Quite simply Ed Balls has stolen this text and used it on his own site.

Even if he attempts to claim he had permission to use this then it shows that anybody who has given information such as e-mails etc via edballs.co.uk has no legal assurance that their information will be held and used correctly.

I put it to you, Ed Balls, Sir that you MUST change your Privacy Policy to correctly reflect the Website content you present.

Your failure to do this in a timely fashion (and I suggest that timely fashion is 14 days from today so I am putting a deadline of 11th March 2010) will result in both you and your Website administrator being reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under a breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA).

I welcome your suggestions as to how you propose to do this.

—–
UPDATE: After writing this last night I was amazed when I logged into Twitter this morning to find a number of people seemingly unaware of how important this little find is and how little awareness of the Data Protection Act there is out there and what you can expect of how your data is held and used.

The “Tweets” that awaited me this morning ranged from “when will you get a life” through “a moment to tedium” to “get back to fighting the good fight on the issues that matter” and “absolutely spot on, but what does the DPA do”.

Well, as for fighting the good fight and getting onto the issues that matter, this does matter, this matters a great deal. There are millions of businessmen and women, businesses, civil servants and the like out there slushing around on a daily basis having to ensure their wares meet the regulations set out within the DPA and further constraints set out by the ICO so why not expect that a Crown Minister complies with the law of the land?

If you have given your details via the Ed Balls Website I repeat you have no assurance of how that data is treated, the DPA exists to protect you and your data.

The Privacy Policy on the site is misleading and incorrect. I am prepared to bet good money on the fact that Ed Balls uses a standard commercial host and to make the statements he is making I would like very real proof of evidence, or at least I would had I been churlish enough to give my data over to his site.

I have contacted Ed Balls via his Website to inform him of his non-compliance and await a reply.

Yesterday was a weird day. Not weird as in freaky but just a tad odd.

It all started by me Tweeting a few very valid comments about DAVID WRIGHT then I got a message via Twitter stating that I had been “unfollowed” by a Labour supporter because of my “#fauxoutrage” over Mr Wright.

I put it to the chap that it was not a faux outrage and I was personally offended that I had been called a Scum Sucking Pig [David Wright later confirmed he "meant" the Tory party not its supporters were Scum Sucking Pigs....but he didn't really mean that as he didn't really send the Tweet did he!]

Anyway, the chap decided not to accept that I or other members of the Party could be offended and attempted to turn it on his head and started to go headlong into a monologue of how David Cameron had lied about his vote on gay adoption. I told the chap that if he had lied then that was wrong but that the subject did not affect me personally and so therefore I do not have enough knowledge of the subject and therefore cannot comment further. He continued…

Even engaging with other members of the Tory party via Twitter to continue his insistence that this was all somehow Cameron’s fault. He refused to accept that I was genuinely outraged and accused me of not caring over an issue because it did not personally affect me.

I invited the individual to grow up and stop cheapening the debate with false words attributed to me and further invited him to refollow me as and when he sees fit. I received no apology and I don’t expect this to be anytime soon. Which is a shame because despite his constant “labour are never wrong” attitude he is on the whole an “ok” follow providing you can see through some of his daft debating points.

Anyway, the point of this blog is not meant to be a discussion of yesterday but to make a plea to the little people of Twitter/Blogosphere and the big people of Twitter/Blogosphere whatever their Political belief.

That plea is: If you have a PPC in your constituency you wish them to enter politics with enthusiasm and belief, you wish them to represent you to the best of their ability, you expect them to sometimes vote against their party, not in protest but because they genuinely believe in something. You expect them to have the power of individual thought. The same goes for a sitting MP, you expect them to have the power of individual thought.

Dear voter, please afford the PPC, the MP and the whole of the Twitter world/Blogosphere the power of your individual thought. If you wish to spout a party line without your own thoughts then there are plenty of places for that, the hustings even, your own rallies perhaps. But when you are attempting to engage with others of the same and differing persuasions why not try expressing your own thoughts. Try it, see how it goes, you never know you may actually like being an individual that stands out from your crowd.

Oh, and to make yesterday even weirder I predicted Man Utd would win 2-3 when they were already 1-0 down!

If a picture paints a thousand words then please obey the wishes of our country.

Labour ISN'T working

Let’s get one thing clear. Minimum pricing on alcohol will NOT solve the problem of binge drinkers and underage drinkers.

What it will do is unfairly penalise the average man or woman in the street. The moderate drinker will now face having to pay extra for their favourite tipple in this misguided act.

A binge drinker will continue to do just that, binge their way through with little care or consequence to their family or outsiders.

An underage drinker will continue to obtain their illegal gains through the same channels but with increased sporadicity. Nobody will be safe.

Let’s face it, this idea is a tax hike by A N Other name designed to hit taxpayers in the pocket in an attempt to curb their enjoyment of a glass of wine at the end of a long hard working day. The ridiculous argument that the moderate drinker will be no worse than 11p per week off under the new scheme is just that, ridiculous.

What’s fundamentally wrong with this idealism is that the underage drinker doesn’t even pay tax let alone own the cash they are purchasing their alcohol with.

The Telegraph highlights a report Minimum pricing on alcohol should be introduced as successive governments have failed to tackle Britain drinking culture

The select committee, chaired by Labour MP Kevin Barron, says that setting a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol, to curb excessive drinking in England, could save more than 3,000 lives a year

The average moderate drinker would pay just 11 pence more per week for their alcohol if a minimum price of 40 pence per unit was set, the report said.

Alcohol can be bought for just 10 pence per unit – less than a bottle of water – in some stores, the report said.

That may be but the moderate drinker does not purchase meths or what other cheap crap you can bottle or can.

The moderate drinker by and large purchases to their pallet and that means wine, beer or spirits that are significantly higher in price and quality than mentioned.

Also, I believe we cannot leave it to the market to police. Simply the supermarkets will gang up on those with more cash in their pockets and lump the unfair levy on their choice of vintners special whilst keeping the Diamond White or Tenants Super Strength at rock bottom (just above the minimum price fee) as a loss leader.

One thing this report gets right is that is IT IS successive Governments that have failed to tackle the problem in the same way that it is successive Governments that have been the cause of this problem, namely:

Tony Blair 1997 – 2001
Tony Blair 2001 – 2005
Tony Blair 2005 – 2007 Gordon Brown 2007 – 2010

It was Tony Blair and the Labour Government that introduced the 24hr drinking licences within the UK, again as another tax earner. It was the Labour government that promoted a self obsessed drinking culture.

The problem we have in this country that has been heavily promoted not just in the past 12 years but largely in that timeframe is that there is a large number of people that wish to get ‘tanked up’ before hitting the club or bar they’re heading to. The reason? Because the drinks in that establishment are priced way too high, and what does this new proposal suggest?

I am not for one minute suggesting that prices are dropped across the country or establishment but merely suggesting that a sensible pricing regime is enforced.

When I was the age of clubbing I would not get tanked up prior to the event (often referred to as the ‘pre-lash’) but I would enjoy the time whilst it happened. Yes, I would often drink what I could in the time given at the bars before the club and what i could afford in the club but that is not what occurs today.

Many are the times when people start in the afternoon on cheap low quality alcohol or good quality alcohol they ‘acquire’ in a deliberate attempt to get ‘tanked up’ prior to even hitting the first bar.

Part of the problem is due to the massive closure of local pubs in this country under the current Government but I see little effort from the Cabinet and its representatives to change that any time soon.

I grew up in a pub from the ages of 11 to 16 and as an avid member of the darts team I would visit many pubs throughout the course of the year and see that those pubs were community based, in fact the whole scene was one of community. That has long since gone.

We, in this country need to reinvigorate the local pub scene so that the local public community and the local service community can work together from a local base (the pub) to police the local issues and to control the problems of the local people.

Going back to the supermarkets and their loss leaders this is not an issue in some areas such as Northern Ireland as they are not permitted to display Buy One Get One OFFers or even to supply them, also, alcohol is less visible in stores in NI compared to mainland UK. Maybe that helps? Maybe there are other issues with their culture that affect this issue instead?

Whilst we are on the subject of mainland UK and non-mainland UK why not consider this rather dramatic fact: ‘Fifteen of the 20 areas in the UK with the highest alcohol-related death rates between 1998 and 2004 are in Scotland, and the top five are all Scottish’.

Does that tell us something about the price of alcohol or something about the community within those Scottish regions?

I reiterate that this is not the issue you may think it is. If someone steals to fund their habit this will not stop them.

If they feel they have to have their fix then this will not help them and their family will suffer further.

Please think again.

This is a very short post as I am about to examine the contents of a rather nice bottle of Shiraz.

In June David Cameron reopened the Parliamentary Candidates’ List and invited applications from all walks of life. I pondered whether I should apply for a few weeks and then took the plunge.

I was most impressed by the honesty and very generous praise given to me by my nominated referees in the process and sat back with a recommended date of hearing back in July.

July came and went. In August I e-mailed CCHQ and was told they would get back to me eventually. Today, was eventually…

The rejection letter is nice enough and pleasant in its tone and content making a few standard suggestions (all of which I already undertake or have researched and am in the process of undertaking) but the words

I am sorry to have to tell you, therefore, that we are not able to invite you to undertake further assessment at this time. We are, however, still very interested in you…

still hurt, so very much

Quite simply the previous paragraph tells a story of too many applicants for too few places on the remaining Parliamentary Assessment Boards.

What is the measure of a Conservative?

I believe it is to receive this rejection letter at 11AM and at 3PM hold a meeting with the regional chairman of the Association with regards to an even more active role for me within the Party to ensure we turn the South-West from orange to BLUE in a few months time.

Dave, I take rejection quite well, even from a bloke!

Here’s a thought…

A few days ago Ian Craig, the chief schools adjudicator, recommended a range of new penalties to be introduced to punish parents who break school admissions rules by giving false addresses, fibbing about their ‘real’ address and moving house just to personally gain from the postcode.

Fair enough, I can understand that. But who is it that’s behind this mandate?

None other than the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls MP who along with his wife Yvette Cooper MP according to the Telegraph’s MP’s expenses research ‘flipped’ their homes a number of times

After being elected to Parliament for the first time in 1997, Miss Cooper, now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, designated a modest property in her constituency of Castleford, west Yorkshire, as her second home, and began claiming mortgage interest payments on her parliamentary allowances.

In May 2005, after Mr Balls was elected MP for Normanton, Miss Cooper “flipped” her second home to the family house she shared with her husband and their three children in south London. The couple both began claiming a half share of the £1,466 mortgage interest, a sum of £733 each compared with the £530 she had been paying in Yorkshire.

Two years later, in May 2007, the couple moved again, to a larger, £655,000 property in north London which they designated their second home. Their mortgage interest payments increased to just over £1,031 each.

They also put the bill for the £2,000 cost of removal vans and men on their parliamentary expenses.

…and just in case you thought they were hard up

Yvette Cooper

Job: Chief secretary to the Treasury

Salary: £141,866

Total second home claims

2004-05: £19,428

2005-06: £14,234

2006-07: £15,995

2007-08: £12,219

Ed Balls

Job: Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families

Salary: £141,866

Total second home claims

2004-05: Not elected

2005-06: £13,618

2006-07: £15,979

2007-08: £12,219

I put it to you Mr and Mrs Balls, you potentially gave false addresses, fibbed about your ‘real’ address and moved house just to personally gain from the postcode.

You are no better than those you seek to suppress.