Tomb breaks silence on DataGate
A few points we need to remember. The civil service had seen massive expansion since Labour's time in office. That's why all sides of the political debate welcomed Brown's decision to shoot the Tory's fox by make a culling of his own, pledging to plough the money into front line services else where, announced shortly before the last general election. How much this policy has to do with this latest crisis is unknown at this stage, however the principle of cutting bureaucrats in order to maintain the extra funding to front line staff in the key public sector areas is one that the public think is an excellent idea; we should remember that amid the tabloid fury about DataGate.
I can understand why this policy has made civil service union leader Mark Serwotka in particular very bitter and twisted towards Labour - how could he not be overcome with irrationality when his people are being cut whilst all the other unions have seen massive increases in pay and staff. That doesn't automatically mean the policy is wrong for the country though. He is running a vested interest group with narrow concerns; he if were to ask the TUC if Labour is doing a good job for working people overall, he would get an emphatic positive answer. You can't please everybody I'm afraid.
On top of that, Serwotka is a bit of a far left fanatic (he was spotted speaking at the SWP Respect conference last weekend) who is on record stating that strikes are automatically good because they happen rather than because they achieve anything - a moronic concept. And he has tried, unsuccessfully, to bully the other unions into adopting this ruinous madcap position. I'm sure the tomb understands why the bulk of the unions are sensible and intelligent enough not to be taken in by this sort of dangerous nutteristic stance.
3 comments:
Who cares about Serwotka? What I care about is that the government abandons its thoroughly wrong headed plans for the National Identity Register. I already have the means to identify myself - it's called a passport or a driving licence. The biometrics are a busted flush. The government is intending to capture them in travel agents & post offices so that's the 'gold standard' in identity management. Biometric scanners are expensive and won;t be implemented everywhere and a lot of the data is very useful to fraudsters with or without the biometrics. Datagate shows the risks around relaxing the data protection act to allow willy nilly data sharing between government departments. How much worse it would have been had the NIR been leaked where records on dozens of systems could potentially have been compromised. Let's hope this policy is flushed down the toilet, from which it should never have emerged in the first place!
As this scandal has shown, the government already has an array of all our details. Therefore whilst I can see an argument against ID cards on the basis of cost, I cannot see the basis of any principled opposition to it.
If you're worried about data going missing, or a dictatorship taking over and using our detail to oppress the masses, this current situation proves it can happen anyway, so what's the big fuss?
The big fuss is that it is not needed.
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