@openpolicy.bsky.social
I think and know about open government and freedom of information. All posts in a personal capacity, RTs ≠ endorsement. Born at 323 ppm
Excellent Guardian piece on Aadhar, India's digital ID system, that captures the dilemma extremely well. Digital-by-default methods create huge convenience for some, double-down on social exclusion for others, and it is easy for their scope to rapidly expand www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...
14.10.2025 05:31 — 👍 95 🔁 64 💬 4 📌 6‘Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, said that the current legal framework allows UK authorities to “impose excessive limits on freedom of assembly and expression, and risk overpolicing” in a letter sent to the home secretary.’
14.10.2025 09:35 — 👍 4 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Read my two letters to the #UK:
1. Protests: I call for a review of the legal framework and the reconsideration of provisions in the Crime & Policing Bill that could restrict freedom of assembly.
2. Trans people: I warn against exclusion&zero-sum approaches
👇#HumanRights
www.coe.int/en/web/commi...
This is why surveys of the "average Kiwis" fail. High average trust and experience scores often mask the reality of domination for marginalised whānau, families and their communities.
13.10.2025 20:52 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Standard trust and confidence surveys often focus on the "average Kiwi." But what if this average hides a more important truth? To truly understand the trust and confidence we have in the state, I'd suggest we need to look not at the average, but at the experience of the most vulnerable.
13.10.2025 20:47 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Very cool and awesome that Congress can pass a law which functions as intended but 60 years later an unelected, unaccountable 9-member superlegislature can just say "Nah" and poof the law doesn't exist anymore.
13.10.2025 17:45 — 👍 253 🔁 91 💬 10 📌 2
Lies, lies and damned statistics…
open.substack.com/pub/aecnz/p/...
And when unenforced, data protection is less an obligation than a choice; one which creates a conflict of interest for the organisation - between human rights/welfare and convenience, cost-savings or competitive advantage; which do you think will prevail?
13.10.2025 12:06 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0Data protection law is only effective at preventing data harms to the extent that it is applied diligently and in good faith, by people with a genuine desire to protect others; even when it is inconvenient, unprofitable or complicated to do so.
13.10.2025 12:02 — 👍 15 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0
Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."
www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...
BBC News explain that because of Brexit, Brits will be photographed and have their fingerprints taken when going into the EU, as the UK now is a third country
BBC News forget to explain that the UK helped create these rules when we were part of the EU because we wanted stronger border control
In Dec 2019 @albomp.bsky.social told the Chifley Research Centre Conference audience “We don’t need a culture of secrecy. We need a culture of disclosure” and then committed to “Reform #FOI laws so they can’t be flouted by Government”.
Exactly who’s failed? #auspol
Words matter, they really do…
and the BBC cant play ignorant, they know this…
www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/bias...
I feel like I misunderstood what they meant by back on track
12.10.2025 18:09 — 👍 150 🔁 44 💬 12 📌 5
Sunday reading:
I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.
This week’s piece:
we need to abolish this shit
12.10.2025 06:42 — 👍 16416 🔁 4669 💬 688 📌 359They also need better subs. Surely ‘European Union’ in this headline is a typo for ‘Daily Telegraph’?
12.10.2025 12:52 — 👍 34 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
Green graphic of a large crowd at a protest Text reads: Half a million march for Palestine Signs read: Stop Arming Israel Gaza Stop Genocide Free Palestine End the siege
More than half a million people marched for Palestine in central London yesterday.
As long as Israel continues to oppress the Palestinians, we will continue to resist them.
Free Palestine 🇵🇸
Proscribe the IDF ❌
Home cooked paella.
Home made paella for some people’s Sunday lunch.
12.10.2025 13:21 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Miriam Margolyes is just a warrior woman. That's the post.
She said it all.
And yet in the UK soooo many people are not eligible for a Covid jab. If they want one they need to stump up £90-£99 (as I will next week)
11.10.2025 08:17 — 👍 7 🔁 4 💬 3 📌 0
“There appear to be very few levers the government has available to recover anything close to the £122m…. The whole case stands as a further indictment of the ‘VIP lane’ & the flawed, wasteful procurement of PPE during the pandemic.”
@transparencyuk.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Ideally Labour should not be trapped by financial bullying of bond markets and OBR. Resuscitate Keynes if you can do it you can afford it. Real resource availability is the crucial constraint. Financial orthodoxy primarily favours the wealthy
Important piece about Republican disinformation passed off as "bad memes" #polcomm
11.10.2025 09:08 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0To ask a pakeha majority to remove representation of an indigenous minority is ongoing white supremacist colonisation. #nzpol
11.10.2025 06:52 — 👍 171 🔁 67 💬 13 📌 2Glad it went well.
11.10.2025 07:21 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Well McNulty’s tepid approval of her in his voting guide on Reddit won’t have harmed her either.
11.10.2025 07:20 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0If you haven’t seen it already – I imagine almost everyone already has, but you can watch it again 😊 – this makes for excellent watching with a beer 🍺 or wine 🍷, or juice 🧃. They are Juice Media, after all! ⬇️
11.10.2025 04:30 — 👍 10 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
