Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Larch]

Similar in Austria with Vienna.

Germany is a bit of an anomaly. Berlin is a big center, but you have Hamburg not far behind, plus Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart.

Germany was what I had in mind as a bit of an exception to the rule, due to Berlin not having the dominant role as a city that other capitals have (I guess that Munich plays a bit that role, but in a particular way), as well as the fact that lots of large industries are located in pretty small cities due to historical reasons.

Italy is also peculiar as Rome is not the economic engine of the country either, with that role being fulfilled by Milan, and with plenty of small industries in mid sized cities all over the north.

[Sheilbh]

Germany was what I had in mind as a bit of an exception to the rule, due to Berlin not having the dominant role as a city that other capitals have (I guess that Munich plays a bit that role, but in a particular way), as well as the fact that lots of large industries are located in pretty small cities due to historical reasons.

Italy is also peculiar as Rome is not the economic engine of the country either, with that role being fulfilled by Milan, and with plenty of small industries in mid sized cities all over the north.

Striking that in Western Europe they're countries that unified/formed comparatively late too.

In Germany's case the Cold War division and Western capital in Bonn are probably also big factors.

[The Larch]

Germany was what I had in mind as a bit of an exception to the rule, due to Berlin not having the dominant role as a city that other capitals have (I guess that Munich plays a bit that role, but in a particular way), as well as the fact that lots of large industries are located in pretty small cities due to historical reasons.

Italy is also peculiar as Rome is not the economic engine of the country either, with that role being fulfilled by Milan, and with plenty of small industries in mid sized cities all over the north.

Striking that in Western Europe they're countries that unified/formed comparatively late too.

In Germany's case the Cold War division and Western capital in Bonn are probably also big factors.

Yeah, I think that a case could be made that because of their late unification their capitals don't have the overwhelming dominance that other countries' ones have. Also, it also means that there are plenty of mid size cities with pretty respectable economic bases of their own developed independently of the capital.

For Germany I think it can be taken for granted that division completely screwed up Berlin and its role within the country. Maybe with no partition it'd be a much more dominant city in Germany than it is nowadays.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah and I suspect the fact that the Western capital was Bonn and not, say, Frankfurt or Munich probably stopped either of them becoming dominant in the West.

[Sheilbh]

I mentioned this before as an example of UK regulations actually being able to impact big tech in a way that I wasn't particularly expecting - it's interesting from both a post-Brexit point of view but also from a general regulating big tech angle. Alex Hern has been pointing out that all these companies are changing their policies and it's not in response to UK regulation, it just happens to perfectly align with it

I also wonder if we'll see this shape regulation in the EU. When GDPR was being developed the UK pushed the idea of "codes of conduct" because they are quite a big thing here. But UK courts where there are similar common law traditions regularly look at how courts in other jurisdictions - Australia, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong etc - have handled similar issues. Sometimes they disagree but they are considered "persuasive", similarly they will look at other national courts enforcing EU law when looking at European law. The government are consulting on amending data protection laws in the UK but currently our law is exactly the same as GDPR and I wonder if European courts might look here, for example, on children's data because there's a detailed code issued by a regulator or following the now Supreme Court class action against Google - it wouldn't be binding but it might be persuasive to see how another jurisdiction with substantively the same law applies it:

Britain tamed Big Tech and nobody noticed
The Age Appropriate Design Code – now the Children's Code – has caused huge global changes. Not that tech platforms want to admit it
Britain tamed Big Tech and nobody noticed

In the battle between Big Tech and Big Government, the former has historically held the advantage. For years it has innovated and grown while politicians feebly attempt to bring it to heel – often too late to make a difference. We're finally starting to see big governments fight back in Australia, across Europe and with anti-trust investigations in the United States. But it's a lower-key legislative push that has made the biggest inroads into Big Tech's dominance. And the platforms themselves are loath to mention it.

The Age Appropriate Design Code looked like a limp bit of legislation when it was laid before parliament in June 2020. It was a code of practice developed by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) – itself not known as the most powerful enforcer of rights – because it was required by the 2018 Data Protection Act. In all, 15 headline standards of age appropriate design were drawn up, and companies were required to follow them "to ensure their services appropriately safeguard children's personal data and process children's personal data fairly."

The code requires privacy settings to be high by default for children, to collect and retain only the minimum amount of data on users, and to have geolocation switched off and an opt-in option. Nudge techniques to encourage children to counter any of these settings are banned, while parental controls need to be implemented in a way that a child can understand.

At the time it didn't merit much coverage, and companies were given a grace period of around a year to implement its requirements. "This has very much gone under the radar," says Andy Burrows, the head of child safety online policy at the NSPCC, a children's charity. But now that time is upon us, with the code launching on 2 September, its real impact can be seen.

That impact is unexpected, even to those with a hand in helping bring it into existence. "One of the things that's quite amusing about the Age Appropriate Design Code is that it was a compromise," says Ben Greenstone, founder of Taso Advisory, and an advisor to the government between 2014 and 2019, who worked under successive digital ministers near the end of his tenure in government. Baroness Kidron, chair of 5Rights Foundation, a child-focused charity, refused to support the UK's Data Protection Bill – later to become the Data Protection Act – as it passed through parliament. The government needed her support to pass the bill, so they offered her a sop.

"Government does this more than I think it'd like to admit," says Greenstone, "where it accidentally conceives of a policy as a way to allow something to pass." It was a classic case in government, he explains: people weren't fully across the entire field, and had a tough bill to get through parliament. So they tacked on a relatively simple amendment requiring the ICO to develop a code for approval. "It doesn't get everyone thinking: 'Oh god, this is going to be terrible.' But once it's reasonably foreseeable, if you're not compliant with the Age Appropriate Design Code, you're probably not compliant with the GDPR. And if you're not compliant with the GDPR, you'll have a metric shit ton of fines. So you have to do it."

And tech companies have done it – not that they'll publicly admit the code is the reason. A slew of changes by major techology companies in the last few weeks, from TikTok's control over direct messaging for those under the age of 18 to Google's offer of a right to be forgotten for teenagers who find images uploaded by parents or guardians in search results, to Instagram's change on August 30 to ask users their age, have all been designed to adhere to the incoming code in the UK, which has since been renamed the Children's Code. "All of them are announcing important safety protections," says Burrows. "And all of them are curiously omitting the principal reason for them – the fact that this regulation is coming in."

None of the platforms have explicitly mentioned the imminent code in their announcements of new features – by design. "They're saying: 'We're doing this because we think it's important'," says Greenstone. "You get a PR win in every country that isn't the UK, and you comply to the UK." Burrows thinks that the lack of acknowledgment of the code when announcing the new features and policy changes is due to fear. "The UK is putting down a marker here about how to regulate and how to take some bold steps to protect children from the range of online harms." If Big Tech makes an explicit public link between their changes and the code, it emboldens other legislators to take similar strident action – chopping down the power of Big Tech.

Greenstone is less certain whether major technology platforms are cowering, however. "I don't think it's a chink in Big Tech's armour," he says. "It's a slightly annoying administrative cost, but [they'll think]: 'It makes it significantly harder for anyone to compete with us.'"

Nonetheless, each of the changes made by the major tech platforms has an underlying principle, says Burrows: trying to engineer a culture change in the companies where children and their rights are seen as an important constituent group of users – not just in terms of the commercial return organisations can get from them, but also in protecting them. "This is a really important step," he says. "It's a step along the journey. But it's not the end destination."

However, it's clear that the changes have come about because of pressure from the UK to adapt to the new rules – and that's shocked those who thought the UK was a relative minnow in might when it came to bringing tech firms to heel. "It's proved more possible to make meaningful change than many companies like to think," says Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, who studies children's rights in the digital age. Livingstone believes the arrival of the Children's Code has highlighted two things that weren't anticipated when it first came into existence. "One, to protect children you had to make changes to the entire internet, and two, that data protection has become a means of managing personal safety," she says. "In both those regards, people have been a bit taken aback, but that's just the nature of the internet now."

The platforms have followed the letter of the law because they know that doing so is important in the UK. However, that doesn't explain why they haven't simply integrated the required changes in the UK only, and kept their products and services the same elsewhere. "I think they can see the writing on the wall," says Livingstone. The UK's movements are part of a broader shift by governments globally to try and crack down on the power of major technology companies and tame them, and the platforms recognise that. "If you look at all the debate around online companies and how ethical or otherwise they are around data about children, if you're already making the changes in the UK, you should just do it globally because it doesn't change your service," says Greenstone.

Of course, the challenge is whether any missteps under the code are actually adjudicated on by the ICO – something Burrows and Greenstone are both waiting to see. "It said it's going to tackle where it sees the greatest sources of harm, and there'll be keen eyes here in the UK and in California to see how quickly off the mark the ICO acts," says Burrows. Greenstone points to the fact that the ICO has said it's going to take a gently-gently approach, indicating that the lack of concrete action speaks volumes about the ability of the ICO's 800-strong workforce to come up with meaningful legislation.

Nonetheless, Big Tech's new moral compass around children is welcomed – and whether they choose to admit it or not, Britain's Children's Code, designed to appease an obdurate peer to vote for a piece of legislation struggling to make it through parliament, has changed the way platforms approach underage users.

Livingstone has been surprised with the way her peers in the world of child rights have been swept up and hired by major technology companies. "They hire us, and then those folk assure us it's in their business interest that they want to do the right thing," she says. "'We want to help families and be supportive of society. We have your values at heart.' That has become their PR style. What they have invested in it, I don't know. Maybe they do really fear the power of governments."

Worth noting re the ICO's investigations - this tends to be their approach. When they announce a policy change or detailed guidance their tends to be a bit of a grace period where they see their role as educating and supporting industry, then once they consider it mature they move onto investigation and enforcement. But they do only have 800 staff (which is the best resourced data protection regulator in Europe) and they are now facing proper challenge by companies.

They announced huge fines a couple of years ago, there was then about a year of back-and-forth and they ended up actually formally issuing fines that were a fraction of that because they are now able to fine companies enough that is worth those companies time instructing barristers and heavily litigating every decision and get judicially reviewed if they don't like it. But I think that's something all of the regulators are facing across Europe - historically they're not very well resourced, they're now policing the biggest companies in the world and they will face litigation/appeals at every single corner now.

[Duque de Bragança]

Yeah and I suspect the fact that the Western capital was Bonn and not, say, Frankfurt or Munich probably stopped either of them becoming dominant in the West.

Frankfurt am Main was supposed to be the capital in 1949, furthermore a more central location.
Munich was never seriously considered IIRC.

[Sheilbh]

I have always wondered when "a teenage debating society is the proving ground of future politicians" would lead to a story like this:

Revealed: Michael Gove's sexist jibes, racist jokes and homophobic slurs
Exclusive: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster made the comments in Cambridge Union debates in the late 1980s and early 1990s
Holly Bancroft

Michael Gove made crude sexual comments, joked about paedophilia within top levels of government and used a racist slur in a series of remarks in his 20s, The Independent can reveal.

The Cabinet Office minister also described Prince Charles as a "dull, wet, drippy adulterer" in speeches at the Cambridge Union while he was a student and after his graduation while working as a journalist.

In apparent attempts at humour, Mr Gove referred to people colonised by the British as "fuzzy wuzzies", accused former Tory minister Sir Leon Brittan of being a paedophile, and made a string of sexual jokes at the expense of Conservative minister Lucy Frazer.

The Duchy of Lancaster, who has been tipped for the positions of either Foreign Secretary or Home Secretary in a potential reshuffle, also described Margaret Thatcher's policies as a "new empire" where "the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner" and said gay people "thrive primarily upon short-term relations".

Mr Gove made the comments – which were met at the time by cheers, stunned laughter, and shouts of "shame" – at three evening debates at the Cambridge Union in February 1993, December 1993 and winter 1987, recordings of which came to light this week.

By 1993 Mr Gove had forged a career in television at the BBC, working on its now-defunct politics programme On the Record, and had performed on Channel 4's short-lived comedy programme Stab in the Dark.

In February of that year, Mr Gove made a number of comments about then European Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, speaking in favour of the motion "This House would rather have a degree from the university of life".

Imagining an exchange between the two men, Mr Gove said Sir Leon told him: "[Leon] said: 'Cambridge taught me an appreciation of music. And in particular an appreciation of the mature male soprano voice."

Sir Leon also told him, Mr Gove imagined, that there was "no sound sweeter" than a young boy's voice breaking, apart from the sound of that same boy involved in a sex act.

Sir Leon was a key cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government and, before his death in 2015, was targeted by Scotland Yard in a VIP sexual abuse investigation triggered by the testimony of fantasist, Carl Beech. The allegations against Sir Leon were found to be false, and Beech was sentenced to 18 years for perverting the course of justice and fraud.

Mr Gove went on to joke about reporting Sir Leon to "special branch" and saying that he "now satisfies his desires in the Bois de Boulogne and various other Brussels hang outs."

In the December of 1993 he made a speech in support of the motion "This House prefers a woman on top".

Mr Gove boasted that current justice minister Lucy Frazer, who had invited him to speak, was "actually capable of tempting me into bed with her" and implied one college's entire rugby club had had group sex with her.

He then referred to her "preference for peach-flavoured condoms," and said she had done "remarkably well" to come from "the back streets of the slums of Leeds".

The Independent understands that Michael Gove and Lucy Frazer were not romantically involved, and his descriptions were purely fictitious.

In 1987, when Mr Gove was in his final year at Oxford University and president-elect of the Union, he spoke in favour of the motion "This House believes that the British Empire was lost on the playing fields of Eton" as part of an Intervarsity debating competition at the Cambridge Union.

In making his case, he used a racial slur, saying: "It may be moral to keep an empire because the fuzzy-wuzzies can't look after themselves.

"It may be immoral to keep an empire because the people of the third world have an inalienable right to self-determination, but that doesn't matter whether it's moral or immoral."

Referring to the practice of British rule, Gove said that "Eton took the cream of the colonial system, it took fettered foreigners and it turned them into gentlemen."

"Fettered" is a term that is used to describe people, often slaves, who have been restrained with chains or manacles, typically around the ankles.

He later went on to describe the economist John Maynard Keynes as a "homosexualist", adding: "Many of us are familiar with the fact that homosexuals thrive primarily on short-term relations."

The speech also included Mr Gove's opinions on Margaret Thatcher's policies, which he described as "rigorously, vigorously, virulently, virilely, heterosexual".

He continued: "We are at last experiencing a new empire: an empire where the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner.

"At last Mrs Thatcher is saying I don't give a fig for what half of the population say because the richer half will keep me in power. This may be amoral, this may be immoral, but it's politics and it's pragmatism."

Mr Gove, who became an MP in 2005, also said the Prince of Wales was an example of how university education makes people boring. He referred to him as "a dull, wet, drippy adulterer whose romantic conversation is dominated by lavatorial detail."

Another jibe was made at the expense of the then president of the Union, with Mr Gove saying: "Putting you in charge of the Cambridge Union was rather like putting Slobodan Milosevic in Serbian high command in charge of a rape crisis centre."

More recently, in 2017, when appearing on the BBC's Today programme, Mr Gove joked that being interviewed by the presenter John Humphrys was like going into Harvey Weinstein's bedroom – "You just pray that you emerge with your dignity intact." Mr Gove later apologised, saying it had been a "clumsy attempt at humour."

The Liberal Democrats have called for Boris Johnson to consider whether Mr Gove should remain in the Cabinet, in light of the comments.

Wendy Chamberlain MP, Liberal Democrat Chief Whip, said: "Michael Gove should be ashamed that he ever thought these things, let alone said them. These inappropriate and racist remarks are not befitting of a government minister, not befitting a journalist, in fact not befitting anyone.

"The Prime Minister should consider whether this is the type of person that deserves to be sat around the cabinet table. However, given Boris Johnson's own history of disgraceful remarks, I expect this will be another shameful issue he lets go unchallenged."

Mr Gove and Ms Frazer declined to comment.

He still uses a few of those devices - I seem to remember one in 2010 about putting Ed Balls in charge of the country's finances was a bit like putting King Herod in charge of the Department for Education.

[Jacob]

Nice of them to take the time to explain what "fettered" means.

[The Brain]

Nice of them to take the time to explain what "fettered" means.

I wouldn't have guessed that the article was aimed at mouth breathers.

[Josquius]

I have always wondered when "a teenage debating society is the proving ground of future politicians" would lead to a story like this:
He still uses a few of those devices - I seem to remember one in 2010 about putting Ed Balls in charge of the country's finances was a bit like putting King Herod in charge of the Department for Education.

In the current political climate alas this is Conservatives +2 pts.

Though I do think this is very much a vision of the future what with everything you ever said increasingly been recorded for all time. We already saw that with that dodgy MP in Sheffield a few years back (no, not Clegg, the other one).

[Zanza]

@Sheilbh: Just read that text on the Children's Code. Very interesting and a welcome change. Shows that we need more such regulation and better watchdogs. Criminally underfunded in Germany and the EU.

It's an interesting conundrum for the Tories - on the one hand their policy actually does something good, on the other hand it is regulation, which is against their ideology...

[Josquius]

Driver shortage update- local bus company around my hometown is suspending a bunch of services due to being hit by it.
Its really terrible for the elderly people who rely on these busses to live their lives....
But there is definitely an aspect of brexit kharma at work.

[Sheilbh]

@Sheilbh: Just read that text on the Children's Code. Very interesting and a welcome change. Shows that we need more such regulation and better watchdogs. Criminally underfunded in Germany and the EU.

Yeah - my experience is companies try to follow European law in this area (and I'm sure this applies to other areas), which is generally good. But they don't really fear European regulators because they are under-resourced. They're afraid of the SEC or the FTC knocking on the door but not, generally an EU regulator - not least because a lot of EU regulators don't actually have the almost law enforcement powers that American ones do. This has been slightly fixed in the UK - the ICO didn't have the powers it needed for a sort of emergency investigation of Cambridge Analytica but the law's been updated so they now do.

In data specifcally there's a sort of way for European regulators to cooperate but if you have a base in Europe that makes decisions then that's your lead regulator for the entire EU. So for Amazon it's Luxembourg's regulator, for Apple, Facebook and Google it's Ireland. Obviously they have quite small regulators and they're taking on some of the biggest companies in the world who will fight every point - and they are setting the regulatory agenda for those countries across Europe. It's a problem.

I've no doubt the regulators are doing a good job and really trying - but they just don't have the budget or the people to effectively regulate the sectors they need to as well as do all the other stuff. I was at an event maybe two years ago with the UK regulator and she explained that the big cost she hadn't anticipated was litigation - they then announced an intent to fine BA and Marriot collectively I think £300 million for breaches. The final decisions were, I think, only about £30-50 million. Some of that was covid (especially as both companies are in the travel sector) but the other bit, reading the decisions, was you could tell they'd both had lawyers involved and had gone through every possible minor procedural issue/failure to follow an internal policy that they could use to challenge the decision at judicial review. The fines were agreed to avoid judicial review and it was the first try so there were procedural issues - but that's going to be the nature of issuing fines in the hundreds of millions or billions when, across Europe, the maximum used to be €500,000.

It's an interesting conundrum for the Tories - on the one hand their policy actually does something good, on the other hand it is regulation, which is against their ideology...

Yeah. So it's not really their policy would be my suggestion of why it's good.

The UK in data protection and a few other areas basically has a thing for regulators issuing - or approving - codes of conduct for specific sectors or circumstances. So in this area I know the ICO has to prepare a few codes of conduct, which they consult on (Children's Code, data sharing, direct marketing and data protection and journalism), but they've already flagged that they'd like the travel sector to develop a code of conduct for approval (especially airlines and airports). I think there are similar codes of conduct for equalities law and what you need to do to be compliant for equal treatment of disabled people for example.

I think technically they're not law so a breach in itself isn't illegal. But it's the regulator setting out how they interpret the law in that sector/those specific circumstances and it's something the courts consider. So if you've not followed a code, you need a very good reason to the regulator why that isn't a breach of GDPR and why their interpretation doesn't apply to what you've done. And I think if you don't follow the code that's considered an aggravating factor when they're deciding on fines.

So maybe the way to get more good policies is for the government to decide on fewer policy issues

[Tamas]

Brexit controls on food and animal products that were due to come into effect in January are being postponed until July 2022 because of the potential impact on businesses, the British government has announced.

It is also delaying paperwork required from 1 October for imports of food and animal products including dairy, eggs, honey and composite products such as lasagne and pepperoni pizza.

Despite pleas from the National Farmers' Union and the Food and Drink Federation that such postponement would give European exporters a commercial advantage over British firms, the government decided it had no choice because of "pressures on global supply chains".

Yeah right it's because of the pandemic. All external borders ground to a halt during it everywhere, right.

What incompetence. Just the external border would be bad enough, but it is only applying for British business exporting. Importers can still come in like we were EU members.

[Zanza]

Makes sense. The Tories are enemies of Leninism, so they go with control is good, trust is better. Surprising really when the Leave motto was to take back control. But I already saw Brexiteers arguing that because the British unilaterally decided not to control imports it is actually showing that Brexit works. By the way, do you remember they claimed to be ready for a no deal Brexit?