John Hemming's Web Log

I was surprised given the Green Party's opposition to Fracking that Caroline Lucas did not vote against the Infrastructure Bill on Monday evening. The point about the infrastructure bill is that although there was no specific vote as to whether or not to change the laws on trespass for Geothermal Energy and Fracking, there was an opportunity to oppose the bill as a whole. The Bill did include good things like a cycling and walking strategy, but there were also things that one would have expected the Green's to oppose in addition to Fracking. The final 3rd reading question can be seen being put here (7 hours 23 minutes and 56 seconds from the start of the video) . No one was there who shouted no.

The FT have a useful information page which gives the 10 year interest rate on government debt . The rates are particularly low in the Eurozone apart from Greece at the moment.  The UK is also particularly low. I will extract the current figures for future reference: Ten year government bond spreads Country Latest yield Spread vs bund Spread vs T-bonds Australia 2.43% +2.08 +0.70 Austria 0.46% +0.10 -1.28 Belgium 0.66% +0.30 -1.08 Canada 1.36% +1.01 -0.37 Denmark 0.47% +0.12 -1.26 Finland 0.41% +0.05 -1.33 France 0.58% +0.23 -1.15 Germany 0.36% -- -1.38 Greece 10.48% +10.12 +8.74 Ireland 1.15% +0.79 -0.58 Italy 1.64% +1.29 -0.09 Japan 0.28% -0.08 -1.45 Netherlands 0.43% +0.07 -1.31 New Zealand 3.20% +2.84 +1.46 Portugal 2.38% +2.02 +0.65 Spain 1.44% +1.09 -0.29 Sweden 0.71% +0.35 -1.03 Switzerland -0.02% -0.38 -1.75 UK 1.43% +1.07 -0.31 US 1.73% +1.38 -- T...

There has been a growth recently in the number of reports of exploding Manhole Covers.   One in Tyseley exploded yesterday on the Warwick Road close to Tyseley station yesterday.  There are quite a few press reports about this including a video of a little girl who was almost hit by the cover. The detail is in various press reports including this one. I have been down to look into it.   When it exploded the lights went off with a power surge in at least one local shop.  That would imply that the explosion was linked to power supplies in some way.  However, the cover that flew off was actually from the telecoms manhole.  There were three manholes close together.    National Grid (gas) were down to look at the gas supplies and that was not an issue. There has been a growth in such explosions from under 10 a year a few years ago to over 60 last year.  The normal cause is from decaying insulation caused by water on power cables. I have wr...

Well ... that's not what they are presenting it as.   Instead they are talking about banning encryption.   See here . When I say I am a cryptographer I mean that I implemented the second version of the SSL (now TLS) encryption system in the world after Netscape back in 1995.  I have written the software for RSA encryption. What would it mean to ban encryption? Well the most obvious use of encryption is for web interfaces with the https:// type of URL.   http:// is hyper text transfer protocol (without encryption) and https is with encryption. Properly implemented it is secure.  It is used for Hotmail (now outlook.com), facebook, twitters and all electronic communications including online banking. If you want to find out whether you are using encryption or not just look at the url. Hence if they are aiming to ban encryption then they want to stop all e-commerce as well because it all uses encryption.

Questions have been raised as to the modifications In Division 130 as to the basis upon which a decision by a public authority can be quashed by judicial review. The change introduced by the Crime and Court Bill means that apart from a few exceptions if the court is asked to quash a decision because of procedural flaws it is not to do so if the decision if when remade is highly likely to result in a not substantially different outcome.    The few exceptions relate to the "exceptional public interest". The difficulty is that for decisions that are subject to judicial review (which does not apply to primary legislation of course) the simple fact that judicial review has been applied for can introduce a long period of delay.  That delay in itself can harm the public interest.  Hence to apply a filter at the permission stage which means that applications for judicial review that are unlikely to result in a final change to the decision are rejected at that stage then...

There is a lot of confusion about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the NHS. The NHS Confederation has produced a dedicated web page Here relating to TTIP. My own view is that the NHS should be kept out of TTIP. I don't personally believe that it is in TTIP at the moment. On the NHS Confederation Web Page there is a lot more information. I will extract one part of this below, but really people should read the web page (referred to above) if they are interested in more information. Specifically on the web page it says: "Jean-Luc Demarty, Director General for Trade at the European Commission, wrote to Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair of the House of Commons Health Committee, on 11 December 2014, giving further, more explicit assurances that the EU intends publicly-funded health services to be excluded from the TTIP agreement. Publicly-funded services delivered by private, or third sector organisations will also be protected. EU practice is that ...