Or: or why the drains are blocked:

Context: “Cookie licking is the act of claiming something as something only you can do, but without actually doing it. (Note: This is considered a bad thing.)“

Sometimes public authorities lack the resources to deliver their proper functions (austerity) but cannot admit to this (legal obligation) and so persist in holding responsibility for a task they will never deliver (regulatory inspections once every 200 years). This means that alternative delivery by community groups and individuals is also prevented as the public authority has ‘licked the cookie’ of the task.

This is worse than straightforward responsiblisation where a public authority makes individuals or groups responsible for something the authority should be doing, as in this ‘licked responsiblisation’ those responsiblised are denied even the acknowledgement of their unsought responsibility. Hence, they are stuck waiting for help that will never come, unable to make alternative plans. This is why the drains in Glasgow are blocked and the streets unswept.

I can see two ‘solutions’ to this: The first is to adequately resource public authorities to deliver their statutory functions (unlikely in the UK with the government of the week). The second is for public authorities to admit failure (embarrassing) and enable individuals community groups to take full responsibility for parts of problems (to give them the cookie). For example, in Paris residents can formally take on responsibility for gardening small sections of public green space and do something more interesting with it than the local council could.

The ideal is probably to do both, to resource public authorities to fulfil their function, and for those authorities to have the flexibility to hand over responsibility for small bits of their work to community groups and individuals that demonstrate the ability to deliver something better than the public authority is required to.

The climate emergency requires rapid system change to enable widespread and speedy adoption of more efficient and better ways of doing things. Governments should get on and do that, individuals should prioritise making them do that. However, while most of the victim blaming of individuals “your fault for not doing enough” is micro-consumerist nonsense, there are some choices that those with sufficient means and desire can make. Before starting doing any of the things on this list, write to your elected representatives. This post is about those things that worked for me and a couple of things that did not work for me.

No car. While all the adults in my household have driving licenses, we have never owned a car and have repeatedly refused offers of “free car” from others. We could never have afforded our mortgages if we also had to pay the running cost of a car. Instead we have made use of car clubs, Zipcar, Enterprise, and now Co-wheels, which has the best coverage in Glasgow and is not blatantly out to get you like Enterprise is. We also hire cars when we need them for a week or so and this works out much cheaper than running a car and means we have one when we need one. Cycling is our main means of travel with bus and train doing most of the rest and we only need a car at all a handful of times a year. Choosing to live in an area with (relatively) good public transport helps as if I cannot cycle to work for some reason I have multiple public transport options.

Electric cargo bike. We have an electric cargo bike which removes the need for a car and has very low running costs, can move all sorts of things, and cope with Glasgow’s steep hills. These have started to take off in Glasgow with parents moving children and businesses delivering packages. In Scotland interest free loans are available from the Energy Saving Trust.

Hopefully no flying. I hope never to fly again and have not flown for several years. This can be a bit difficult as an academic and I may eventually be forced to fly somewhere, but the option of not doing so is becoming easier. Train and ferry to the European continent works pretty well and looks to be improving with more sleeper train provision. Further afield, well, I try to make choices that avoid that being necessary.

Local veg box delivery. We get most of our fruit and veg from Locavore and this was particularly great during lockdown as we knew they had a reliable supply of food (direct relationships with local suppliers) and so no issues with panic buying at supermarkets. They also handle all the complexities of making sure the food is environmentally friendly as possible so I can just trust them to handle all of that for me. Locavore also have a filling up shop which cuts down on packaging.

Reusable glass bottle milk delivery (including of oat milk). Another great help during lockdown and removes a huge amount of plastic waste. Oat milk tastes great and is my preference for most milk purposes and is also available in glass bottles.

Reduced meat and dairy. We are not quite vegan yet but have progressively cut down on meat and dairy and it really is not that hard. There are now substantially more appetising options and we have a wide range of tasty recipes to use. Locavore’s veg box means we keep experimenting and trying new things. Glasgow has some truly excellent food and that includes plenty of vegan options.

Bars of shampoo. Removing the shampoo plastic bottle waste by using bars of shampoo instead has worked just fine but some are rather better than others so don’t give up if the first one you try does not work well for you.

Reusable rub on deodorant. Replacing my previous aerosol can with Wild’s reusable applicator and compostable cardboard cartridges of deodorant has worked well and removed the use of both propellants and hard to recycle cans.

Second hand stuff. I have been particularly disappointed with the quality of clothes bought new recently from supposedly reputable shops, which fall apart before the older clothes they were supposed to replace. Pleased with some second hand purchases that seem like they will last longer than current products bought new. Why buy new when there is older stuff, which is better (and yet cheaper)?

Mending things and keeping things longer. We try to keep using things until either we do not need them (then give them/sell them to someone who can use them) or they break, at which point we try to mend them. I consequently have a box full of bits of electronics I need to get around to mending and regularly fix other kinds of item. I have been much more conscious about trying to buy things that will last and be repairable recently and am very pleased with my Fairphone 3+ in that respect.

Borrowing rather than buying. The Southside Tool Library means that there are a lot of tools that I don’t need to buy as I can just borrow them.

Swapping things with neighbours. Lockdown has been great for this with active local online communities of people to take away things you do not want and provide all sorts of useful things you do need, usually for free.

Less Christmas gifting. Getting a smaller number of nice things people actually want for a smaller number of people means less stress and less waste.

Shopping local. In a city like Glasgow there are loads of small local independent shops with great products within easy reach by walking or cycling and this reduces travel requirements and builds the local economy. Some local shops experimented with online stores during lockdown but this did not work that well.

Avoiding unnecessary packaging. This is often quite difficult (and requires proper government action) but filling up shops helps and more recently there are often much better options as companies realise it is something customers want.

Less chemical cleaning products. Mild eco friendly cleaning products or just a vinegar&water or bicarbonate of soda mix are often quite sufficient for cleaning.

Things that did not work so well

Green energy supply. It turned out that Bulb was not as green as it made itself out to be, which was very frustrating to discover. When choosing suppliers it was indistinguishable from Ecotricity on eco credentials but much cheaper in price. Turns out that was because Ecotricity was doing things properly. When the dust settles on the current energy crisis I will try again but no one wants new customers at the moment.

Eco toothpaste. Some eco toothpastes are rather less good as toothpastes than standard commercial options and if you do not realise they are missing vital ingredients (fluoride) then you may gain an additional visit to the dentist and so destroy any gains of not using toothpaste tubes. Will likely try again but burnt once.

Things currently under evaluation

Replacing shaving foam can with shaving cream and brush. Going OK so far.

Retrofitting home for improved insulation. Excited about Loco Home Retrofit‘s work in this space. Some success so far filling gaps with sheep wool insulation (so nice to work with) and replacing a broken blind with an energy saving one.

Sometimes people feel powerless, like their individual action does not matter. That is not true, it matters tremendously and it is enormously powerful, I am going to explain one of the reasons why.

When you make a decision it is not just you making that decision, it is also people like you making the same decision for similar reasons. No one exists in isolation or acts alone, every individual is part of many overlapping, interconnected, and interdependent groups, most of which they are not even aware of. When you make a decision you make it based on how you think and what you know (consciously or not). Other people like you will be in similar situations and make the same decision, you make it together.

This means that every action you take does matter because it is not just you, it is people like you doing the same thing. Your individual action might be tiny, but your collective action might be huge. If the only thing stopping you is that you do not think it will make a difference because it is just you, then do it, if you do it then other people will too, if you do not then they will not. You have the responsibility to make the decision and to do the thing, but in doing it, you will not be alone.

There are lots of reasons to vote and this is only one of them, but you should.

There is a dark side to the fact that you are not just yourself, you are a community, and that is that if others control the inputs to your community and target them carefully for every group, then you are not yourself, you are theirs.

Think carefully, think twice, install an ad-blocker and make your decision.

 

Now that sounds horribly patronising, which it is, and so this academic is going to get off his ivory tower with his simplistic notions and go and do some work.

The primary purpose of the EU is peace in Europe (particularly between EU members). War is expensive and so the secondary purpose of economic prosperity is well served by the primary purpose.

The pursuit of peace makes he EU act in strange and seemingly inefficient ways: Parliament gets on a train and travels to a different country. Development teams are split in half with hundreds of miles between them. Research funding is contingent on moving to a different country or collaborations between institutions in multiple countries. All of which seems rather inefficient due to the overheads of travel and communication, at least when considering only the immediate purpose of each activity.

However, considering the pursuit of peace it makes perfect sense and is much more ‘efficient’. By mixing people up and having them experience different countries, barriers are broken down. It is much harder to dehumanise and demonise people you know well and are your friends. The EU tries to tie people from all its nations so tightly together with bonds of love and friendship (and commerce and mutual dependence) that they might never again go to war.

We could learn something from that within our own nation for addressing the deep divisions between our different regions and social groups.

We must also consider how we will actively and systematically pursue peace in Europe and the wider world from outside the EU.

A substantial factor in my feelings of despair at Brexit is guilt. I could have done more, and, given the result, should have done more. I voted, but more was required.

Anger with those who lied and misled, with those who failed to do enough. That leads however to being angry with myself.

Those who have made this mess have a duty to fix it, but that does not just mean Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. It also means each one of us. While those who behaved badly during the campaign should be held to account, the only people we individually need to hold to account are ourselves. For me at least that is painful.

You might say that no individual insignificant person like me could make a difference. However, in a democracy I am an instance of a group of people. There are other people like me and so we are both individually and collectively responsible for our actions. If I decide individually to act in one way then it is likely that, independently, other people like me will decide to act in the same way.

Hence, even though I voted to remain, I still have to bear some personal culpability for the overall leave vote.

The United Kingdom of England and Wales will not be great in power but it could yet be great in love.

It will not be able to lead as it formerly could when it was a great power, but it could enthusiastically follow when other countries or supranational organisations like the EU lead in good directions.

It will not have the military power to wage war but perhaps it might help maintain peace.

 

It will be a long road back from fear and division, from racism and xenophobia, to tolerance, peace and love. Let us begin.

I am leaving Google and similar companies cloud services and moving to my own infrastructure for my personal data. This process is going to take a while and I am going to document it here to make it easier for others. However the obvious question is why move from free cloud services which already exist and are easy to use to paying for my own infrastructure and configuring it myself? Well partly I do not want to be the product any more which is being sold, I want to be the customer not merely a user who is being sold to advertisers. Since there is no way to pay Google to stop selling me I have to go elsewhere. I could go to someone like MyKolab which claims to care about privacy and do things properly – and people who cannot roll their own probably should think about it – but I get better guarantees from rolling my own and it should be a good learning experience.

Also Snowden. My aim is to make it such that if anyone (including state actors) want my data, then the easiest way of gaining access to it is to come and ask me nicely, we can discuss it like civilised people over tea and cake and if you make a sensible argument then you can have it. If not come back with a warrant. I am not a criminal or a terrorist and I do not expect to be treated like one with all my communications being intercepted. My data includes other people’s personally identifying information (PII) and so can only be disclosed to people who they would expect it to be given to for the purpose for which it was provided. That does not include GCHQ etc. and so I am not following the spirit of the Data Protection Act (DPA) if I make it possible for other people to obtain it without asking.

Similarly some of my friends work for Christian, environmental, aid or democracy organisations, sometimes in countries where doing so is dangerous. Information which might compromise their security is carefully never committed to computer systems (such operational security has been common in Christian circles for 2000 years) but sometimes people make mistakes, particularly when communicating internally in ‘safe’ countries like the UK. However no countries have clean records on human rights etc. and data collected by the ‘five eyes’ is shared with others (e.g. unfiltered access is given to Israel) and there are countries who are our allies in the ‘war on terror’ but which also persecute (or have elements of their security forces who persecute) minorities or groups within their country. I might in some sense be willing to trust the NSA and GCHQ etc. (because they have no reason to be interested in me) but I cannot because that means trusting 800,000 people in the US alone, some of whom will be working for bad governments.

Similarly while our present government is mostly trying to be good if frequently foolish. It is very easy for that to change. So we need to ensure that the work required to go from where we are to a police state is huge so that we have enough time to realise and do something about it. Presently the distance to cover in terms of infrastructure is far too small, being almost negligible. It is our duty as citizens to grow that gap and to keep it wide.

So I am going to try and find solutions which follow best practises of current computer security, following the principle of least privilege and using compartmentalisation to limit the damage that the compromise of any one component can cause. I am going to document this so that you can point out the holes in it so that we can learn together how to do this properly.

Maybe some of this might even help towards my PhD…

Summary: The architecture for David Cameron’s filtering plans is wrong and has a negative consequences, however there are alternative architectures which might work.

There has been much news coverage about David Cameron’s plans for opt-out filters for all internet users in the UK. With opt-in systems barely anyone will opt-in and with opt-out systems barely anyone will opt-out and so this is a proposal for almost everyone to have a filter on their internet traffic. Enabling households to easily filter out bad content from their internet traffic is useful in that there are many people who do want to do this (such as myself[1]). However the proposed architecture has a number of significant flaws and (hopefully unintended) harmful side effects.

Here I will briefly recap what those flaws and side-effects are and propose an architecture which I claim lacks these flaws and side-effects while providing the desired benefits.

1. All traffic goes through central servers which have to process it intensively. This makes bad things like analysing this traffic much easier. It also means that traffic cannot be so efficiently routed. It means that there can be no transparency about what is actually going on as no one outside the ISP can see.
2. There is no transparency or accountability. The lists of things being blocked are not available and even if they were it is hard to verify that those are the ones actually being used. If an address gets added which should not be (say that of a political party or an organisation which someone does not like) then there is no way of knowing that it has been or of removing it from the list. Making such lists available even for illegal content (such as the IWF’s lists) does not make that content any more available but it does make it easier to detect and block it (for example TOR exit nodes could block it). In particular it means having found some bad content it is easier to work out if that content needs to be added to the list or if it is already on it.
3. Central records must be kept on who is and who is not using such filters, really such information is none of anyone else’s business. They should not know or be able to tell, and they do not need to.

I am not going to discuss whether porn is bad for you though I have heard convincing arguments that it is. Nor will I expect any system to prevent people who really want to access such content from doing so. I also will not use a magic ‘detect if adult’ device to prevent teenagers from changing the settings to turn filters off.

Most home internet systems consist of a number of devices connected to some sort of ISP provided hub which then connects to the ISP’s systems and then to the internet. This hub is my focus as it is provided by the ISP and so can be provisioned with the software they desire and configured by them but is also under the control of the household and provides an opportunity for some transparency. The same architecture can be used with the device itself performing the filtering, for example when using mobile phones on 3G or inside web browsers when using TLS.

So how would such a system work? Well these hubs are basically just a very small Linux machine, like a Raspberry Pi and it is already handling the networking for the devices in the house, probably running a NAT[0] and doing DHCP, it should probably also be running a DNS server and using DNSSEC. It already has a little web server to display its management pages and so could trivially display web pages saying “this content blocked for you because of $reason, if this is wrong do $thing”. Then when it makes DNS requests for domains to the ISP’s servers then they can reply with additional information about whether this domain is known to have bad content and where to find additional information on that which the hub can then look up and use to as input to apply local policy.
Then the household can configure to hub that applies the policy they want and it can be shipped with a sensible default and no one knows what policy they chose unless they snoop their traffic (which should require a warrant).
Now there might want to be a couple of extra tweaks in here, for example there is some content which people really do not want to see but find very difficult not to seek out, for example I have friends who have struggled for a long time to recover from a pornography addiction. Hence providing the functionality whereby filter settings can be made read only such that a user can choose to make ‘impossible’ to turn off can be useful as in a stronger moment they can make a decision that prevents them being able to do something they do not want to in a weaker moment. Obviously any censorship system can be circumvented by a sufficiently determined person but self blocking things is an effective strategy to help people break addictions, whether to facebook in the run up to exams or to more addictive websites.

So would such a system actually work? I think that it is technically feasible and would achieve the purposes it is intended to and not have the same problems that the current proposed architecture has. However it might not work with currently deployed hardware as that might not have quite enough processing power (though not by much). However an open, well specified system would allow incremental roll out and independent implementation and verification. Additionally it does not provide the services for which David Cameron’s system is actually being built which is to make it easier to snoop on all internet users web traffic. This is just the Digital Economy bill all over again but with ‘think of the children’ rather than ‘think of the terrorists’ as its sales pitch. There is little point blocking access to illegal content as that can always be circumvented, much better to take the content down[2] and lock up the people who produced it, failing that, detect it as the traffic leaves the ISP’s network towards bad places and send round a police van to lock up the people accessing it. Then everything has to go through the proper legal process in plain sight.

[0]: in the case of Virgin Media’s ‘Super Hub’ doing so incredibly badly such that everything needs tunnelling out to a sane network.
[1]: Though currently I do not beyond using Google’s strict safe search because there is no easy mechanism for doing so, the only source of objectionable content that actually ends up on web pages I see is adverts, on which more later.
[2]: If this is difficult then make it easier, it is far too hard to take down criminal website such as phishing scams at the moment and improvements in international cooperation on this would be of great benefit.

Mass surveillance of the citizens of a country allows intelligence services to use ‘big data’ techniques to find suspicious things which they would not otherwise have found. They can analyse the graph structure of communications to look for suspicious patterns or suspicious keywords. However as a long term strategy it is fundamentally flawed. The problem is the effect of surveillance on those being watched. Being watched means not being trusted, being outside and other, separate from those who know best and under suspicion. It makes you foreign, alien and apart, it causes fear and apprehension, it reduces integration. It makes communities which feel that they are being picked on, distressed and splits them apart from those around them. This causes a feeling of oppression and unfairness, of injustice. This results in anger, which grows in the darkness and leads to death.

That is not the way to deal with ‘terrorism’. Come, let us build our lives together as one community, not set apart and divided. Let us come together and talk of how we can build a better world for us and for our children. Inside we are all the same, it does not matter where we came from, only where we are going to and how we get there.
Come, let us put on love rather than fear, let us welcome rather than reject, let us build a country where freedom reigns and peace flows like a river through happy tree lined streets where children play.

I may be an idealist but that does not make this impossible, only really hard, and massively worth it. The place to begin is as always in my own heart for I am not yet ready to live in the country I want us to be. There is a long way to go, and so my friends: let us begin.

In 2014 there will be a referendum in Scotland on whether Scotland should be an independent state and leave the Union. Frankly I find it ridiculous that the question is even being asked as the answer is so clearly no. Essentially nothing is gained that could not be gained by internal reorganisation within the UK and much is lost.

Personally I was born in Scotland and have lived slightly less than half my life there, the rest being spent in England and some of my great grandparents were Scottish. However I have always lived in Britain and always been British. I am one of the significant number of people who would need dual nationality if Scotland were to become independent because we simply do not fit into the ‘English’, ‘Welsh’ or ‘Scottish’ categories, only in ‘British’.

All the arguments I have heard in favour of independence which are valid such as those which have convinced a slim majority of Scottish Green Party members are not in fact relevant to the question of independence. Rather they relate to the debate on the localisation of different powers at different scales from national to local. Obviously the positioning of park benches should not be done by act of the UK parliament and NHS policy should not be determined individually on a ward level – there is an appropriate scale for different decisions to be made at. There is a very interesting debate on what should be decided at what scale and I think a great deal of room for improvement on this. However none of that is relevant to the question of Scottish independence – or if it is it is just as relevant to the question of independence for the Highlands.

The only issues relevant to the decision on whether Scotland should break the Union are ones which must be decided at the national level and could not be devolved to Scotland. Fundamentally the only issues which then apply are international ones, all domestic issues can be reorganised as we like and the rest of the world does not need to know or care but the interface we provide to the world is that of the nation.

So only international issues matter to the debate on independence, and an independent Scotland would leave both Scotland and the rest of the UK worse off in many different ways and not make things better in any way. Currently the UK punches above its weight in international affairs, Scotland would not gain that and the rest of the UK would lose it. For example the UK has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This is justifiable for more than just historical reasons (Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Lybia) but only tenuously and without Scotland it would be hard to justify it continuing to have a seat. Currently the UK is big enough that when it is necessary for something to be done on the world stage (take action on climate change, stop genocide etc.) then the UK can go ‘Well we are going to do this, who is with us?’ we don’t have to persuade a whole bunch of countries to act in lockstep with us, we can lead[0]. Obviously we then need to persuade other countries to follow us but it is possible to try to lead. I think it is easier to persuade people to follow if they can see that you mean it by your actions than when it can only be words because action is impossible without their help.

Similarly within the EU the UK has a fair bit of influence (for all that David Cameron tries to throw that away). We will not gain any more by being two countries rather than one, Scotland will probably need to reapply for membership post-independence and that might take a few years of sitting out in the cold. Currently when a country needs to take a lead on an issue the UK can do that. It would be hard to see Scotland doing so to the same extent and the rest of the UK’s hand would also be weakened.

A Union was made and formed Great Britain, whatever the perceived legitimacy by current standards of the people involved in making that Union the fact remains that it was made. That was not a temporary treaty or a fair weather thing. That was and is a permanent covenant thing. A sickness and in health, in good economic times and in bad, in peace and war for all time and without end thing. As such it should not be lightly broken. I fail to see what the pressing issue is as to why Britain cannot continue as it is. Some bad things happened in the past long before I was born, why does that even matter? The future is ours to decide and the past remains unchanging whatever revenge is taken for past evil actions they are not undone.

The breaking of a Union would also be a permanent and unalterable thing, not a decision to revisit in 10, 50 or 100 years if it does not work out but one made with finality for all time. While right now the world is a fairly safe place to be as a rich nation [1] that might not always be the case, it certainly has not always been the case. There are many reasons to be uncertain of where the world as a whole will be in 50, 100 or 300 years, let alone thousands of years. This is a decision which needs to be made considering such time-scales rather than just temporary political circumstances.

There have been times when we have stood together when we would not have been able to stand alone. There was a time, still just in living memory when the UK stood alone in Europe, a light against the darkness. Stood and lasted until others came to our aid but only by a very thin margin. Perhaps as allies we could have stood together and lasted, but perhaps disagreements and infighting would have weakened us and a darkness might have fallen across the world. For 300 years we have stood together, one nation against all adversities. Our soldiers have fought together against various foes, bled and died for us, for Britain as much for the mountains of Scotland and Wales as for the hills of England. Should we betray them?

This Union has been sealed with blood in more than one way, in those years people have moved freely between the two and married in each place, there is no real division by race any more. Not that divisions by race really have any meaning any more. What does the colour of the skin matter or where your great great grandparents came from. You are still human.

What then divides us? Not race for there has been much movement between the two. Nor language for British English is spoken in both and variation is greater within each than between them. Nor of geography for the border has been drawn at various places at different times. While different parts of the landscape of each are beautiful in different ways there are places in both where it is hard to tell a Scottish hill for an English or Welsh one and more difference between the Highlands and the Central Belt than between the Central Belt and other parts of England. Nor economics for while the statistics might be different for Scotland as a whole from England as a whole, parts of Scotland match closely with parts of England. You will find places where manufacturing died in both, where tourism is the main industry, where there are high-tech companies or a strong service industry. Is then all that divides us old grudges, memories of past wrongs? Then know this: this is a fallen broken world and the mistakes made by countries and people are many and varied and the depth of the evil that is committed knows few bounds. For life it is necessary to forgive, and to ask for forgiveness: To strive once again to build a better future out of the broken fragments of the past. Fundamentally we are better together and long may we be so.

[0]: Iraq was a terrible illegal mistake but that was not our idea, we were following rather than leading. We also lack the courage to lead as we should on issues like Climate Change.

[1]: To a first approximation no one dies from terrorism in rich nations, our security services do a rather good job at stopping that sort of thing. We should try fixing our road collisions problem that kills many more people.