badgerx16

Given the independent wealth of the Royals, especially with the tax dodging that the Duchy of Cornwall carries out, perhaps the Civil List could be trimmed as a gesture given the austerity everybody else is going through.

Wrong side of the bed this morning ?

But she married well ;-)

Exactly how many tourists get to see the Queen ?

TBH I'm not bothered by this, but I suspect that in reality if we had an honest referendum you would find a much larger minority voting republican. This result is as much to do with the timing, take the same poll after the next Royal scandal. Ah, but that's the problem - you can't avoid it.

A survey of Chelsea Pensioners and Daily Express reading retired bank managers ?

Unless the network you are on also bans proxies.

But maybe just one TV channel's news output could be set aside for those of us who don't want to hear the latest news about who has wished the baby well, nor watch vox-pops with people who have camped out for a week outside the hospital ? Or maybe they could have a 'red button' republican option to suppress the "glad tidings" ?

How to avoid filters, lesson #1; http://hidemyass.com/proxy-list/

As long as they skip Chuck I'm not bothered about who comes next.

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/porn-blocks-edging-away-from-active-choice "....Cameron's advice is just plain bad and misleading".

One small ISP's response : Active choice is not a choice The government wants us to offer filtering as an option, so we offer an active choice when you sign up, you choose one of two options:- Unfiltered Internet access - no filtering of any content within the A&A network - you are responsible for any filtering in your own network, or Censored Internet access - restricted access to unpublished government mandated filter list (plus Daily Mail web site) - but still cannot guarantee kids don't access porn. If you choose censored you are advised: Sorry, for a censored internet you will have to pick a different ISP or move to North Korea. Our services are all unfiltered. Is that a good enough active choice for you Mr Cameron? ( Edit : this 'choice' is actually now on their order page ). http://aa.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html

Open up your browser of choice, go to your search engine of choice, and type in the search term 'porn', ( be careful no to accidentally include the word 'child' at the same time ).

Regardless of who tries to bring this in there is no way it will deliver what they want, attempting censorship of the Internet is a forlorn hope unless you go the way of Saudi Arabia or China, and even there the people find ways around the blocks. As usual it's a headline grabbing blanket solution to a problem involving a small minority of offenders. CEOP and the IWF should be boosted, quite rightly, to tackle the child abuse issue, but most websites directly delivering this material are already blocked by ISP's, based on an IWF watchlist. The serious traffickers in this material use heavily encrypted systems and secure communications to attempt to avoid detection. If you choose to buy a 'top-shelf' magazine you don't have to give your name, home address, and IP address before you buy it, but this legislation will require you to effectively do just that before you access www.playboy.com. Also, as I said earlier, who defines pornography ? If somebody posts a picture on FACEBOOK of their 18 month old child naked in a paddling pool, is that offensive ? EDIT : a good basic Q&A with some of the pros and cons : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23403068

It's the wrong solution to the wrong problem. The law is perfectly adequate already in defining 'illegal' material, although the Government has cut the funding to the organisation policing it. As for preventing access by children, it just won't happen - they already know how to use anonymising proxies based in the states or elsewhere to circumvent access controls; I had to make a change to our systems this morning as another 'loophole' was brought to my attention.

Give them time.

DC wants to introduce 'family friendly' filters - so where's the plan to block access to content that contains violence, racism, guns, offensive (non)-comedians, or even smug politicians pandering to Daily Mail headline writers ?

No, it is everything that falls into Whitehall's definition of pornography. Child porn is already illegal - it is against the law to view it, even accidentally. Depictions of sexual violence are also, in my understanding, already illegal - covered by the Obscene Publications Act.

This is one of the most stupid, sensationalist, narrow minded, fascist policies that Camoron has come up with, ( and that is speaking professionally - part of my job is controlling Internet access for schools and public access networks ). 1) Define pornography. Will the match day threads with the scantily dressed nuns fall on the wrong side of the line ? 2) Who controls the categorisation process for websites - will it be CESG ? Will all ISPs use the same list ? 3) How does a site that is incorrectly blocked appeal and get white-listed ? ( We had an automatic supplier issued update to our systems a few years ago that blocked access to all broadsheet newspapers ! ) 4) Will they expect to be able to inspect the 'opt-in' lists ? 5) It will not stop the creation or distribution of child pornography by the dedicated perpetrators, which is done by use of VPNs and secure communications systems. Other technical controls need to be used by CEOP, etc, to counter this issue. 6) No filtering system is 100% effective, the only way to block Internet problems totally is to disconnect from it. 7) In my experience, most 15 year old boys are able to find ways around Internet controls anyway. One easy way is to use an anonymous proxy based outside the UK. It will be interesting to see how the ISPs respond.

We need a Government, I don't care what colour, that will stand back and stop interfering - 3 years of no new education dogma, policies, strategies, or experiments. My wife has worked out that you would need to add at least 5 hours to the school week to fully comply with all of the latest mandatory lessons and testing.

"In the 2006 tests half the students were not asked any reading questions but were allocated "plausible" reading scores to help calculate their countries' rankings." So our current education policy is driven by a formula where the data is made up !!!!!!

tsr2 ?

According to Twitter, and repeated on the BBC, the 24th abandonment was Jack Bauer. ( Nasty one - looks like he went into a barbed wire fence ).

But even the P-51 Mustang only became effective once coupled to a Rolls Royce engine.

Do you honestly think they'd be able to pass a more orthodox Conservative agenda as a minority administration ? The LDs have always been very uneasy in supporting what HAS got through, make it more right-wing and it'll be the Tories vs everybody else. The coalition, with all the necessary compromises, is here until this Parliament has run it's full term - then the fun begins.