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During the "Internet Governance Forum" last month I wrote that we need to leave the internet alone if we want to foster human rights, instead of governments trying to regulate it and using it as yet another stick with which to beat non-compliant governments with bad records on human rights. I said that the internet was a tool of democracy and human rights because clever public spirited people like the folk behind "anon@penet.fi" many years ago would invent things that allowed people to express themselves and get information without censorship.

And so, only a few weeks later, it's nice to hear about...

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web censorship 'bypass' unveiled:

There is growing concern about web censorship

A tool has been created capable of circumventing government censorship of the web, according to researchers.

The free program has been constructed to let citizens of countries with restricted web access retrieve and display web pages from anywhere.

Interestingly, if there had been strong regulation of goings on out here in the internet, the sort of peer-to-peer sharing techniques that are being used in this little censorship getaround would probably have never been invented. They are the techniques that were once created to allow sharing of copyrighted material or even computer malware. A case, if ever there was one, I'd say, of two wrongs combining to make a right after all.

In other news today comes the idea that bloggers need some kind of "voluntary code" of conduct...

BBC NEWS | Politics | Voluntary code for blogs 'needed':

The flow of content "should not be regulated by any government"

Blogs and other internet sites should be covered by a voluntary code of practice similar to that for newspapers in the UK, a conference has been told.

Press Complaints Commission director Tim Toulmin said he opposed government regulation of the internet, saying it should a place "in which views bloom".

But unless there was a voluntary code of conduct there would be no form of redress for people angered at content.

Nonsense. The article goes on to say that Technorati estimate that every day 10,000 new blogs are created and 1.3 million articles produced. Which means that in total I keep an eye on just about two per cent of just one day's increase in the number of blogs. There's your code of conduct right there - I will read those that interest me or make sense and discard the rest, even if I ever find them. I find them by recommendation from others or through searching for specific things and then assessing on the basis of recent postings how useful they will be to me.

Besides, for years, complainants have actually had the upper hand - it's relatively easy to get a website taken down even now because ISPs are scared of action against them that they will happily censor whole sites rather than investigate the veracity of complaints against them. The fact that we now have these social sites and large blogging platforms that will probably have more backbone and stand up to such complaints is evening that out a little.

...and is not "liberal" either.

There are often attempts by ministers (Jacqui Smith is mentioned in Sunday's Independent for example about the recent prisoner data loss) to shirk their responsibility for government cock-ups. There are also left wing commentators who crow that these incidents are clear proof that "neo-liberal" policies of "privatising" government functions are evil and should be stopped; that the "free market" does not work in the public sphere.

But I don't consider such contracting out of work as either liberal nor as implying that ministers are no longer responsible for their incompetence. Nor, even, are they truly "privatisation". To me the doctrine that says some things are better done by profit motivated companies (or other, non-government organizations) does not mean merely sub-contracting to a government service level agreement.

Yes, such arrangements may save on costs or similar. But all they are doing is delivering the same policies and procedures designed by government. This is the "corporatisation" of government. It is inherently protectionist - the government grants usually monopolistic contracts to firms, sometimes even, like Capita, that started life as a bunch of civil servants deciding they could do better for themselves by making a profit out of what they do.

No, real privatisation, so called "liberalisation" of government functions, should mean the state divesting themselves completely from interference in that policy area. For example, just because DVLA contracts out its computer systems and administration does not mean the registration and licensing of vehicles and drivers has been "privatised". Not bothering with a DVLA at all and allowing insurance companies to work out ways of ensuring the drivers and vehicles they are prepared to insure comply with what they consider to be safe would be. i.e. a different way of working, free from government entirely, and open to proper competition where new ideas and ways of achieving similar ends can be developed. Finding new structures, free from the dead hand of government to do the things we need, rather than what politicians think we ought to need.

Similarly with ID cards or passports - it is not "privatising" simply to contract out the development and implementation of a government policy to profit making firms. Indeed, this is anathema to true economic liberals - for it is corporate welfare, money for old rope if you like. My idea from yesterday about getting rid of government validated passports entirely and instead letting people buy their own guarantee of identity if and when they need one using a new mechanism such as digital certificates would be liberal; the true privatisation of functions the state previously chose to regulate and deliver itself.

And of course, such liberalisation may not end up being delivered by "for-profit" corporations at all.

So Jacqui, stop trying to hide from your responsibilities. You have cocked up just as surely as if the person with the memory stick were your permanent secretary. You are incompetent. Indeed doubly so - for not only have you failed to do your job, but you've even failed to make sure the simpler option - getting someone else to do it for you is done properly.  You should go.

James Graham has a piece on openDemocracy on policy making in the Lib Dems, in which, amongst other things, he bemoans the lack of local involvement in policy making:

That isn't to say that the quality of debate at Lib Dem conference isn't high; the problem is the level of debate up until that point. "Consultation" such as it is involves a three hour debate on the Sunday morning before party conferences followed by a narrow window of opportunity to make written submissions. In many cases the working group will have already pretty much decided 90% of the paper by that point. Local parties as an entity contribute very little to policy overall; very few have regular policy discussions, let alone formal ones which actually feed into the process. Indeed, Unlock Democracy research suggests that of the three main parties, the Liberals discuss policy less than either of the other two at a local level, despite the much greater power their local parties theoretically wield.

Coincidentally this came up in a fringe session at Saturday's South Central regional conference chaired by Chris Marriage, chair of the South Central regional Policy Committee. I had a few things to say at it which I think would help address this apparent lack of localised discussion, and since I got all excited about it, I went straight out and got two signatures on a nomination form to be on the regional policy committee and hey presto! was returned unopposed.

I observed that with the new system of calling on a standing panel and not advertising individual policy working parties at a federal level there is, if anything, even less of an opportunity for individual members to get involved just in an area they have an interest in. Further, there seems to be ever less opportunity for local parties and other bodies to get policy motions debated at conference. Some would say this is just a function of having ever more business to conduct at busy conferences and others perhaps more cynically that FPC/FCC don't want so many "oddball" motions slipping into a carefully media managed conference agenda.

It was stressed that in theory at least regional policy committees were there to set policy for that region rather than being a regional branch of FPC, and that much is accepted, for the moment. But need it be that way? Could we have a mechanism where regional policy committees have a remit to help develop policy making capacity at local party level and then filter local submissions and champion them up to federal level?

Chris suggested that perhaps there ought to be a place as of right for a representative of each region on FPC. I think that is not possible - FPC is already big enough. But perhaps what there could be is a committee - perhaps meeting just two or four times a year - of representatives from each regional policy committee that could have some presence from FPC and a right to submit ideas (and fully worked up policy papers if available) into the FPC process.

Here in Oxford East we do have policy discussion type meetings - "Pizza and Politics" and so on - and I am somewhat shamed to say I have not yet made it to one. They seem at the moment mostly to be a vehicle for explaining and debating existing policy. I think an early one though sought to debate the Tax Commission I consultation paper before it went to conference and feed into that process.

I hope I'm not pre-empting my first meeting of the regional policy committee but I think I would like to make this a task of mine on that committee - to get in touch with local parties and try to get them to do more "blue sky thinking" with their members with the aim of getting the best of locally generated policy ideas and championing them up to federal party and federal conference level - to give local parties another shot at getting their ideas debated in the big tent.

Would someone give me a job developing ideas for the future. Here's another one I prepared earlier:

It seems that the transmission loss problem is a little less daunting using High Voltage Direct Current - I work out that southern Morocco to London would involve about a 7% transmission loss in a more or less straight line over land. Sounds like it has potential to me.