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UK to depart from GDPR

lawgazette.co.uk

291–300 of 659 posts

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#291
post #97

I hope the UK follows through with its 'Singapore-on-Thames' plan, which requiring losing regulatory harmonization with the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore-on-Thames

I was pretty disappointed after living three years in Singapore and witnessing the uglier underbelly of the country that the UK decided that's what it wanted to become almost as soon as I got home. Moreover, they don't want to copy any of the successes - e.g. their public housing system or strict "you WILL go to prison if you overcharge" price controls on medical care. They just want the tax haven, deregulation, an u…

On the balance, Singapore is much more free in the economical sphere than the UK, so if the UK did copy ALL of its policies, it would become more much economically competitive and see more rapid economic development.

As for exploitation of workers, Singapore has seen massively more wage growth than the UK over the last 50 years, so I don't equate a free labor market with exploitation.

I will add that there are important ways in which the UK is more conducive in the long run to a free market and free society than Singapore, but at least in the short run, Singapore's simulation of a free market economy has been offering more practical liberty and working better at raising living standards.

Ideally, the UK would maintain its pluralistic and democratic core, while adopting Singapore's economic policies.

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#292
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aus's acceptance of authority: * Lockout laws * Jaywalking laws * Weaker environmental protests than UK, despite Aus lagging the rest of the world on environmentalism. * Mandatory helmet laws. * Illegal to perform DIY electrics, e.g. change a plug. * International travel currently banned. To leave Australia at the moment would require either exemption, or I relinquish citizenship. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005…

> Illegal to perform DIY electrics, e.g. change a plug. ?? As someone moving to Australia in a few months, I feel like this is something I ought to know about... > International travel currently banned. This is the same in many countries, including the UK right now.

"DIY (do it yourself) electrical work is dangerous and illegal." https://www.nsw.gov.au/topics/electrical-safety/in-the-home#...

Arduino is fine.

> This is the same in many countries, including the UK right now.

Yes, true in UK during the past 1-2 months of national lockdown?

Aus's has been the case for 12 months.

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nigel Farage made it clear that he wouldn't accept 52-48 as being decisive: "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the Remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-3630668...

Of course, and that would have been absolutely fine. Democracy is to be able to campaign for what you believe in. But equally, politically, and democratically, it is not tenable to call a referendum (which is something quite rare in the UK) and then to ignore the result. So the reality is that the government and Parliament had to abide by the result even if the referendum was legally not binding. Now people are of co…

"Now people are of course free to campaign for the UK to join the EU."

Or to campaign to leave the UK - which I suspect is a more achievable and sensible option. I'd doubt if the EU would want the UK back anyway.

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#294
post #244

Now we got rid of the EU protections the Tory govt is going to stripmine the country for cash. Imagine the desire for wealth and power at the expense of others being defined as a mental illness that needed treating instead of giving these cunts more power.

What did the EU stop the Tory government from stripmining?

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#295
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aus's acceptance of authority: * Lockout laws * Jaywalking laws * Weaker environmental protests than UK, despite Aus lagging the rest of the world on environmentalism. * Mandatory helmet laws. * Illegal to perform DIY electrics, e.g. change a plug. * International travel currently banned. To leave Australia at the moment would require either exemption, or I relinquish citizenship. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005…

> Illegal to perform DIY electrics, e.g. change a plug. ?? As someone moving to Australia in a few months, I feel like this is something I ought to know about... > International travel currently banned. This is the same in many countries, including the UK right now.

Aus is great though, for other reasons.

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#296
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it inevitable that the UK will become like America? There are plenty of independent Algo-States that are nothing like it. Australia, New Zealand, Canada for example. This comment seems to be borne out spite more than any kind of logic.

It's not inevitable, but the current government appears to move in that direction intentionally. - The EU exit was, among other things, accused of being a way to relax regulation and legislation to degrade product standards to a US-like level. Chlorinated chicken was a big item on everyone's discussion agenda a while back. This is now evidently happening. - The government is severely underfunding the NHS, despite pay…

The US is hardly some low regulation capitalist utopia. The US regulatory code is enormous. Plenty of self-proclaimed "Europeans" think it is, but in my experience they often know relatively little about the issues in question and are just parroting cultural talking points they picked up elsewhere.

Indeed, you seem to admit that here, when you state that you got your views of what British people believe from your "news bubble". For example you think everyone else thinks the NHS is awesome, because left-wing journalists told you that's what everyone thinks. One day you'll talk to a Brit outside of that bubble and get a real shock to discover they aren't enamoured with the NHS at all. Remember, nobody has copied the NHS model. Nobody! The rest of the EU looked at it and thought the UK was crazy to do that, they all went with far greater private sector involvement. The NHS is a socialist anachronism and plenty of people would love to move to a more standard social insurance model, but even expressing such an opinion results in nasty, vicious attacks by the left, so people quickly learn to just stay quiet about it.

Quite possibly one day there will be a referendum on this and the same sorts of people whose minds were blown by Brexit will have their minds blown a second time by the degree to which people vote against the NHS.

Likewise for rail. The UK just had a vote on that: Corbyn had very few identifiable policies but re-nationalisation of rail was one of them. Voters rejected that agenda on an a-historic scale. Again, if it ever became a topic of serious political debate like the EU did before the Brexit referendum, you'd be shocked at how little support nationalisation would end up having. Ridership was in decline for decades before privatisation. The moment they were privatised that trend went into reverse and ridership started climbing again, until it reached new records pre-COVID. Ticket prices were rising because the newly privatised railways became so popular (limited supply+growing demand=rising prices).

Regulation: Whilst the US is not a low regulation zone by international standards, the EU is even worse. I love this headline, UK leaving GDPR. Hell yes. Another brilliant move by the UK post-Brexit, the latest in a string of them. GDPR is a disastrous "law", in quotes because it barely qualifies as a law at all in the traditional sense when you read it. Laws are meant to explicitly state what they disallow but the GDPR is so vaguely worded it could be interpreted to mean almost anything. Just on basic constitutional grounds, junking it is a smart move.

But there are practical benefits too. GDPR imposes staggering costs on businesses to deliver dubious 'benefits' which approximately nobody outside of the reflexive "it's EU so it must be good" bubble actually cares about. There has been no mass migration away from US tech firms at any point, GDPR implementation changed basically nothing about the online experience and the EU's various attempts to legislate tech firms away from domestic markets just made it impossible to create local competitors. Beyond being banned from some local US newspapers and forcing yet more privacy popups everywhere, GDPR has been largely impact-free.

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has a similar privacy law in California they must support, and many companies have presence globally, so they are having to deal with this in the following ways, like many others. GDPR has given a 50M EUR handslap to Google and similar to some other large companies[1] while seriously hurting smaller companies with existing custom web applications for whom they may not even have someone on staff to modify those…

It's actually fairly easy to be GDPR compliant almost by default, TBQH. It either takes a lot of effort or a lot of laziness to somehow end up non-compliant.

Removing or anonymizing PII in a large system not already designed for PII removal or one you don’t have resources to manage can be painful.

Companies of all sizes can have a lot of PII and code that’s not GDPR compliant, and it’s non-trivial to fix that. When asked by a user to remove PII, the removal is sometimes incomplete at these companies. Even the process of incompletely the removing PII wastes time; the users requesting PII removal often didn’t even do business with the company, in my experience.

Companies of all sizes but often small companies hire out development of web apps that keep PII and may not have someone permanently on staff to maintain it to make the changes needed to allow users to remove their PII.

I’d go so far as to say that I’d intentionally not work with users if I knew they would be painful to work with, leaving me with nothing but a legal requirement to wipe their asses because they used my old site. I hope that EU didn’t intentionally do this to hurt small businesses and foster new startups within the EU to brunt the cost of this stupid, stupid law.

I’m a privacy advocate.

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#298
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Illegal to perform DIY electrics, e.g. change a plug. ?? As someone moving to Australia in a few months, I feel like this is something I ought to know about... > International travel currently banned. This is the same in many countries, including the UK right now.

"DIY (do it yourself) electrical work is dangerous and illegal." https://www.nsw.gov.au/topics/electrical-safety/in-the-home#... Arduino is fine. > This is the same in many countries, including the UK right now. Yes, true in UK during the past 1-2 months of national lockdown? Aus's has been the case for 12 months.

Is it only 1-2 months? Feels like an eternity...

Current lockdown started on the 4th of Jan, and the travel restrictions came in then. We also had lockdown part 2 back in November, for the whole of November, lockdown part 1 from April-June last year, and various degrees of lockdown in between with regional variations...

I've lived in Aus before, and I agree it's great for many reasons, am looking forward to being back.

On the electrical thing, I know there are some restrictions on what you can do in the UK - putting in new circuits, adding new lighting circuits etc. I've pushed the boundaries a bit here AFAICT by fixing a lighting circuit* and swapping a few single sockets for doubles. Other work like putting cat 6 in the walls I did myself without a thought. Looks like I need to take a look at the regs.

( * the light switch in our bedroom somehow flicked between "one bulb on" and "two bulbs in series", with no off setting )

(oh wow, you're right, I can't change a light fitting, or even legally change a plug from UK -> Aus without breaking the law. Will have to buy new cables where I can, maybe change one or two plugs before I leave!)

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a large chunk of them have pretty much not agreed Yes, but a far larger chunk has. Every country gets the leaders it deserves and the UK is no exception.

Tbh simply based on the amount of elderly voters that died since it's likely that majority is gone by now. At least so I've read in some article months ago. All things considered it was relatively close so not exactly a far larger chunk. I don't have any spite towards the British people but I do hope that the EU will act in EU interest which means facilitating the return of financial services that shifted towards Lon…

From 2018:

"there are some demographic trends that will influence opinion in future. These changes will tend to pull British public opinion in a pro-European direction, and should be sufficient to produce a majority of 52%-48% for ‘Remain’ in 2021"

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/05/01/demographic-trends...

Re: UK to depart from GDPR

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not inevitable, but the current government appears to move in that direction intentionally. - The EU exit was, among other things, accused of being a way to relax regulation and legislation to degrade product standards to a US-like level. Chlorinated chicken was a big item on everyone's discussion agenda a while back. This is now evidently happening. - The government is severely underfunding the NHS, despite pay…

The US is hardly some low regulation capitalist utopia. The US regulatory code is enormous. Plenty of self-proclaimed "Europeans" think it is, but in my experience they often know relatively little about the issues in question and are just parroting cultural talking points they picked up elsewhere. Indeed, you seem to admit that here, when you state that you got your views of what British people believe from your "ne…

I feel like I've lost a few brain cells reading that.
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