I’ll never vote Conservative but I’ve also now completely lost faith in Labour. Seems every other week something like this comes out, CCTV, monitoring your internet, police and council officer anti terrorism powers, detention without charge, DNA, photographing us but not them, hasseling protesters and press, billions set-aside for new databases, the list goes on and a lot of it is pushed through so called environmental bills. At least when Miliband was in charge.

Still not sure if it’s the Ministry of Information or Police empire building or some other hidden agenda, either way the Gov has clearly got impaired judgement when it comes to measures against potential terrorist threats.

Talk of practicalities or effectiveness or data leaks are red herrings, the issue here is the Government has failed in their responsibility to protect our liberties. And lost our trust, well mine anyway.

If you’ve got the time, have a listen to this fella – not sure what to make of it myself

http://www.tpuc.org/node/558

tinribz – Member
I’ll never vote Conservative but I’ve also now completely lost faith in Labour.

Which way will you vote then (and why not Conservative?)

Just please don’t stop voting: that way Labour WILL get back in!

Is there a real & viable alternative to the Conservatives? As far as I’m concerned the Libs are still a wasted vote, Labour will end up taking away what ‘rights’ we have left and the Conservatives will do what they always do and protect themselves and those of their ‘class’.

Three party politics isn’t working. But what’s the alternative?

I’d never vote Tory

After what they did to my & other families in this part of the world in the early 80s will remain unforgivable for me & many others for a long time yet.

Spain has similar rules too

really? last time I went (2005) – to Menorca – I don’t recall anything like that.
It was a “package” holiday – the tour operator did everything in exchange for money and name/address details.

Does that mean the tour operator fills in all that stuff? without asking your permission?

Or do you sign it away when you accept the Ts & Cs? I mean, how many of us really really read the the Terms & Conditions, apart from the bits about cancellations, refunds (or lack of), etc

right that’s it. after this summer’s trip to Canada, I’m not ever ever ever going out of Yorkshire again. except to visit the in-laws.

Spain has similar rules too

Similar rules to the US & Oz that is – where you must supply advanced travel information in an electronic format before you travel there – not similar to what the UK gov wants to do in recording who leaves

Spain only brought the rule in last year

will remain unforgivable for me & many others for a long time yet.

This doesnt make sense to me – the past is the past, if they currently offer a better alternative to Labour then why not vote for the better alternative? That, to me, is senseless. Cutting off your nose to spite your face etc. I dont care how you vote but to choose based on past policy is very odd in my mind.

Back to the original point, what happens if you change your plans mid travel (i.e. backpackers etc?)

but to choose based on past policy is very odd in my mind.

Yes, it’s always best not to learn lessons from the past.

How otherwise, could history ever repeat itself ?

Both parties have issues that have been learned from, assuming that voting for one of them will cause a repeat of it is rediculous. Using that mentality you must really distrust Germans.

Gosh, am I wrong to mistrust Nazis and fascists ?

Best give them another chance then – they might be a bit nicer next time …..

Using that mentality you must really distrust Germans

well if Chamberlain had distrusted them a bit more…

however, not all Germans are Nazis & fascists. We have plenty of those of our own 🙁

Dunno if this is UK’s implementation of pan-EU rules being implemented for all air (and ferry?) travel, that got blown out of all proportion?

Am i right in thinking there’s no border check between NI and Ireland? If so I’ll gladly travel via Dublin+Belfast between UK and Elsewhere.

Glad I live in Schengen area now. Can travel by road from the Gib-Spain border all the way to Estonia through half of what was behind iron curtain or a war zone not so many years ago, with border controls about as strict as between England and Scotland. But going to/from my own home country I feel I have to justify/prove my reasons for returning.

Never voted Labour. Never will.

I watched a repeat of Top Gear earlier today where Clarkson compared Brown to Stalin, seems he was right, one of Stalin’s policies was restrict movement of Russias population.
This government has damaged MY country so badly I’m afraid for my childrens future. Its frightening that I could get into trouble to the tune of 5k for not filling out a form before I go on holiday FFS!!!!
Anybody who votes Labour after this lot is a complete **** kent, end of chat. I mean whats going on? this isnt what New Labour was sold to us as is it????

Maybe Clarkson should stand for Parliament, that would save us!

Cue civil service job adverts for’Travel Plan Co-ordinators’,@ £80k plus bonus….

I watched a repeat of Top Gear earlier today where Clarkson compared Brown to Stalin

So I’m not the only one who watches repeats of Top Gear to get an in-depth political analyses of the current situation in Britain today – Cool 8)

Gosh, am I wrong to mistrust Nazis and fascists ?

Best give them another chance then – they might be a bit nicer next time …..

Bad analogy, but same essential point. There’s plenty of stupid things been done by labour, just as the conservatives, so why stick by one and not the other?

There’s plenty of stupid things been done by labour, just as the conservatives, so why stick by one and not the other?

I think you need to put that question to Uplink – he’s the one who said, quote :

“After what they did to my & other families in this part of the world in the early 80s will remain unforgivable for me & many others for a long time yet.“

Personally I don’t see a problem with his statement but apparently you coffeeking, are under some bizarre impression that the Tories have said, “We are sorry for what we did in the early 80s, we should never have done those things, we made mistakes, and we will never pursue those sorts of policies again”.

The question was essentially to Uplink, but you jumped in with a similar comment…

I’m not under any impressions, but I’ve yet to see Labour apologise for any of its mistakes either. Political parties rarely apologise for their mistakes, usually trying to hand off the blame to the previous government. Thats normal. The point is that the only things that they (the current leadership and members) can be held accountable for, should they get into power, would be their policies in any preceeding election campaign. Previous form, decades ago, could be held well and truly against both parties.

Labour is so yesterday so I am voting for other party in the next election. Not sure who yet as I am a swing voter.

So some terrorists are trying to blow us up and now we are all being “quarantined” WTF! Shouldn’t that be the other way round?

Just like the present economy climate … the rich mess it up and the ordinary folks pay for it. WTF!

I think the world has gone mad again.

🙄

winstonsmith do you work for eds or the other big company doing government IT projects. Just wondered as I know a few people working on them in Newcastle (DWP, HMRC?)

christ no! i work very much on the other side, giving benefit advice to individuals. i’m scared of my privacy being eroded and worried about the infringement of personal rights and freedoms. i just don’t see this as being that big (aside from collecting credit card details). saying it’s 53 pieces of information collected each time sounds a lot, but it’s probably just 53 fields in a database: ie, mr winston smith is 3 data fields/pieces of info, not 1

lots of countries’ immigration procedures collect info on you and the purpose of visit. i just don’t think this is that sinister

Yes winstonsmith, mr, winston and smith are indeed three columns in a database, but it would appear that you didn’t bother to read the other fifty or so column names…

If you can’t see how this is sinister, I really don’t think you can be intelligent enough to hand out advice to anybody about anything.

You appear to have learned to love Big Brother just as your namesake did.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading on this over the weekend and the powers that they have to collect and store information and the potential uses for what they now want to collect in addition to their existing record keeping are bloody scary.

If this goes unchecked we’re no more than 2 – 3 years away from the logical next step in the expansion of the scheme which is adding DNA to the travel database ‘in the interests of increased security’.

From there it’s a very short leap to profiling of travellers and then we’ll see the restrictions come into force “I’m terribly sorry Sir, your profile suggests that you aren’t of the right socio-economic class to be allowed overseas travel. Might I recommend Skegness”?

We’re seeing the early stages of the removal of our right to free travel which is a very early stage of them putting up internal checkpoints and borders. The scary thing to my mind is that they snuck the early groundwork for these laws and restrictions through with the anti-terror bills after September 11th (and those they implemented before hand) – the London ‘Ring of Steel’ for example – you can expect them popping up all over the Country.

I know this sounds like the paranoid rantings of a conspiracy theorist but think about it – it’s all happening! 10 years ago if you’d been told that your surfing habits and emails were going to be monitored and stored for ‘security purposes’ you’d have laughed – and now it’s happening. Same with text messages and IM sessions, the technology is in place (and in some cases being used) to monitor phonecalls.

Any freedoms we still have are an illusion, and are rapidly fading.

*polishes tin foil window screen*

And another thing:

“The e-Borders scheme has already screened over 82m passengers travelling to Britain, leading to more than 2,900 arrests, for crimes including murder, drug dealing and sex offences. e-borders helps the police catch criminals attempt to escape justice.”

Travelling TO Britain. Not from it.

Do we now meet the requirements to claim political asylum I wonder? Surely this is a valid fear of harrassment and persecution by the Government.

Your having a laugh. How can Labour even manage/filter all the information? Impossible, sounds like a Think-tank/consultancy sold them the idea and is now planning a huge IT project to manage this….

Labour really are absolutely incompetent. Nick Leeson should become a Government advisor.

As far as I’m concerned the Libs are still a wasted vote

I never understand this point of view. I for example have a LibDem MP and a LibDem local council. If you like their policies, vote for them.

The e-Borders scheme has already screened over 82m passengers travelling to Britain, leading to more than 2,900 arrests, for crimes including murder, drug dealing and sex offences. e-borders helps the police catch criminals attempt to escape justice.

So, what’s the betting that the vast majority of those 2900 arrests where people who hadn’t paid parking tickets…

With 82 million people screened only 2900 arrests is a shocking clear up rate. Doesn’t justify the expense or the time they’ll need to invest in the scheme.

If they want to make the borders secure then expand the IRIS scheme they’ve got at Heathrow but make it for outgoing as well as incoming. I’d happily have my retina scanned and attached to my passport file so there could be no doubt it was me using my documents. Of course, if they did that then they wouldn’t be able to collect all the sneaky bits of information they want for the Police databases.

I’m beginning to wonder who’s in charge of who – the Police running the Government or the other way around. Aren’t they supposed to serve US?