the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

so how much public money do we think went to some godawful private contractor like capita to develop this not-fit-for-purpose app

The government has its own digital service, launched a few years ago, which I assume was responsible. It's one of the few things they've chosen to do in-house over the last few years.

Just so they can fuck everything up and say: See I told you outsourcing is more efficient than big govt.

It won’t be the Government Digital Service. They’ve got a strong objection to apps and prevent departments building them whenever they can. More likely a Home Office Digital project that was pushed out to look like something whizzy was happening.

what on earth is their problem with apps?

Apps are bad (if largely because you have to port for more than one OS) when you can just have an actually v good website like gov.uk (certainly compared to the old directgov days) to handle processes like this.

but surely what you want to achieve is for people to be able to access services in the way that feels most user-friendly to them?

Which I would've thought would be a website that can be accessed by almost everyone everywhere based on technical and UX standards established over decades. I did used to work (alarmingly underpaid compared to gov.uk contractors) for the Civil Service for a few years though so perhaps I would say that :)

This has been doing the rounds today

https://i.imgur.com/M1VBPH9.jpg

i'm not saying that a website can't be accessed and it's usually my first choice but it's not the preferred medium of lots and lots of people whose online experience is almost wholly app mediated

that feels roughly right to me, though the trust/unitary board doesn't much influence editorial decision-making

the politics side of bbc news feels particularly untethered from the almost obsessive caution that tends to obtain across the rest of the corporation

xpost

but it's not the preferred medium of lots and lots of people whose online experience is almost wholly app mediated

Make a website that looks a bit more like an app? Everybody's happy. I fear this may be one of those 52-48% kinda scenarios tbh

Everyone saying Yvette Cooper did so well with her question attacking May demonstrating continued inability to get it.

Good thread:

Commentariat love citing Yvette Cooper as delivering better #PMQs than Corbyn (dare I suggest... groupthink?) but it's weird here. Of *course* Cooper's failure to oppose, as shadow home sec, the 2014 Act that enabled deportation of Commonwealth ppl, left May a straw to clutch at. https://t.co/IhLkuFQMSX

— CarolineJMolloy (@carolinejmolloy) April 25, 2018

From that article the app problem seems to be more of a hardware issue, that the phone has to read the chip in the passport, and iPhones only allow that functionality for Apple Pay?

I don't see how b) affects the BBC directly, but I guess. Few of the people in a) would have direct (or even indirect) effect on the people in c).

I think it's much, much, less about deliberately subverting the BBC (this is not a government capable of that sort of subversion) and much more about the media landscape in the UK, the talent pool and how the BBC hires from both.

All three of those things are changing pretty fundamentally right now. And it hasn't escaped notice in the BBC that younger audiences are feeling disenfranchised. I think signs of change will start being visible soon.

otm, partic your second graf stet

tbf, and i don't hold with conspiracy theories either, the post - that guy's BBC insider credentials weren't exactly earthshaking btw - posited an influence started under Cameron rather than this shower

Hope you're right stet.

and there is a hard to shake feeling even amongst non-conspiracists like me that the current BBC's news agenda is pretty hostile to the Corbyn Project

next you'll be trying to tell me the impartial BBC are still actually vetting their political staff.

i don't think the bbc are necessarily so much consciously, actively hostile as just the institutional spectrum of 'mainstream' political views is pretty narrow, centre-right, and rarely internally examined

Chakraborrty was posting something the other day about BBC staff being vetted by the MI5 up to the 90's and how they are still strictly "no comment" when asked if they do their own vetting these days.

Don’t need to vet these days. They just ask which school they went to: pic.twitter.com/rsVxUzPGhX

— Randall Northam (@RandallNortham) April 22, 2018

FWIW BBC News site editor has explained to protesters recently their choices and what's behind them in some cases: https://twitter.com/suttonnick/with_replies

The way Rudd and May keep effectively saying "don't blame us, the public wanted tougher action on illegals" just makes me want to see another unprecedented gathering of solidarity in Parliament Square ASAP.

xp we vet ilx on a similar basis

if it was all about school ties and nepotism, I guess Milne would running the show!

massive xps

On apps and the government, here's a post that explains the reasoning. 5 years old, but a lot of it still stands up imo.

otoh the situation has changed: mobiles are (at a guess) 60%+ of traffic now, people are even closer to their phones, and the implicit audience of senior government types who say 'we should make an app!' has quieted down - they've been taught it's not a shiny deliverable that they can knock out quickly. There's probably more room soon for work there - like apps probably make sense for repeated tasks needing authentication and payment (eg tax - and I think HMRC do have some kind of app) - but tbh getting the fundamentals right matters more (fix shit underlying services).

And the Home Office thing… looks a bit like they've recycled part of a side-project from 2013:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/20/home_office_slips_out_android_passport_reader/

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/25/damian-green-dismissed-windrush-citizenship-pleas

May's loyal former deputy, Immigration minister + leek geen dirty old man was blaming the immigrants themselves as far back as 2011 for her horrible reign as HS. He'd probably get a bye on ILM for being a half man half biscuit fan!

"the immigrants" sorry I meant UK citizens, just brain-fuck following the words immigration minister!

I see some of Yvette Cooper's tough on immi' posturing around the time of the leadership election takes a bit of a shine of her "hero" performance against Rudd yesterday.

off

before that even, back in 2012 she was showing she could match May for "toughness" on foreigns.

I’m here to end the Yvette Cooper rehabilitation tour. There’s a reason I called her Poundland Theresa during the original leadership challenge. pic.twitter.com/OGO1De5GGO

— Congolesa “Fire @Jack” Rice (@judeinlondon2) April 26, 2018

I just retweeted that. Suspect Cooper didn't even believe it the first time round and it was part of their facile and self-defeating triangulation policy, but she does tend to serve the prevailing winds as far as public anger goes. The idea that anyone in the Labour 2014 team saw this disaster coming is pretty spurious as well.

really loving Congolesa's work lately

I felt starstruck when I got a like from her the other week!

If Rudd doesn't walk, the next scandal brewing up for her will be the Indefinite Detention one, although as has been mentioned - this one might not cause as much outrage with the good old G.B.P. as Windrush. But it really ought to.

and don't forget she only had a majority of ~300 at the last GE so her political career looks fairly precarious rn

in the long term i mean

whoops

The ministry of housing is investigating allegations that a member of staff met men though a “sugar daddy” website and discussed her work with an undercover reporter.

According to the Daily Mirror the woman boasted of knowing “everything” about the housing minister, Dominic Raab, and that she knew his “every move”.

The employee met twice with an undercover journalist posing as a wealthy businessman, including at a five-star hotel less than a mile from the House of Commons.

At the end of each meeting she was paid £750, the paper said.

The ministry for housing, communities and local government launched the investigation amid concerns that the woman’s actions could pose a security risk.

There is no suggestion that Raab was aware of the woman’s actions, or use of the “sugar daddy” website.

This is pretty appalling from the Mirror, imo.

They're publicly shaming a woman, outing her as a sex worker, and inevitably getting her sacked - and the only thing she's supposedly done wrong professionally is gossip about her awful boss. There's no obvious security risk.

As if 95% of their work, and the work of all lobby journalists, isn't getting people to say indiscreet things they shouldn't.

if her boss was just some private-sector shithead i'd be inclined to agree, and i'm not usually inclined to support the work of the daily mirror, but surely there is a fairly obvious security risk from a minister's aide broadcasting their detailed knowledge of his movements to strangers who could easily use it as blackmail material

I dunno, if the choices are that on the one hand she actually provided some information and the Mirror have decided to play it down (just saying that she boasted of knowing stuff is not the same as saying what she knows), and on the other hand someone at the Mirror spotted an opportunity to expense getting his rocks off..

I agree with SV’s general points about the shaming of the woman but cash getting someone physical access to a minister’s office is unquestionably a security risk.

It doesn't seem like she shared anything about his movements. You could argue that she'd be open to blackmail, and could have her security clearance revoked on that basis, but the reason they've conducted the sting is clearly to get someone on tape talking about how much they hate him.

There's no suggestion that she gave anyone access to his office - just joked about how it would be fun.

it sort of reads like they were hoping to get some dirt on raab themselves, went undercover, but the best they could get was what he likes to eat for lunch at Pret, so they.... burned their source? weird

not like a tabloid to play the sex scandal angle

would be ironic if the housing minister's pa had to turn to sex work to pay her rent

more ropey Rudd backtracking after saying deportation targets never existed yesterday.

“The immigration arm of the Home Office has been using local targets for internal performance management. These were not published targets against which performance was assessed, but if they are used inappropriately, then I am clear that this will have to change.”