Off in the distance

Reading this BBC article, it does sound as though senior Scotland Yard ossifer John Yates is looking at the end of his career. He's thus far denying covering up the worst of the news International privacy hacking allegations, but in doing so, he has come directly into conflict with the Crown Prosecution Service as to what advice they gave him at the time.

The advice basically was whether it was an offence at all to hack into a voice-mail box if there were no unheard messages within. Yates rather astonishingly says he was told that the hacking per se was not illegal unless the hacker listened to messages that the owner themself hadn't yet heard.

So, the prosecution would have to prove that there were unheard messages, and since that could be difficult, a prosecution could not be guaranteed.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I rather feel that this is one of those cases where the court would rather assume that the hacker had, in getting access, had the opportunity to listen to messages, and that it would then be for the hacker to prove that he did not hear any fresh messages, rather than for the prosecution to prove that he did.

In other words, if Yates had been doing his best to avoid having to prosecute, this is the sort of argument he might have used to justify such avoidance.

I do rather think that someone, somewhere, should have written something down.

Oh dearie me, I think I need more popcorn.

Look at the following table:

Oliver Heald	Conservative	26,995	53.5	+5.5
Hugh Annand	Liberal Democrat	11,801	23.4	+3.1
David Kirkman	Labour	8,291	16.4	-11.9
Adrianne Smyth	UK Independence Party	2,075	4.1	+0.8
Rosemary Bland	Green	875	1.7	+1.7
Richard Campbell	Independent	209	0.4	+0.4
David Ralph	Your Right To Democracy Party Limited	143	0.3	+0.3
Philip Reichardt	Independent	36	0.1	+0.1

Yes, this is a case where the leading candidate increased his vote, the former second place collapsed into third place, and the previous third place rose to second place.

So how does the Swingometer report this multifaceted situation?

A 1.2% swing from LD to CON.

So how is this calculated?

It's half the difference in the winning party's change in vote and the second party's change in vote. In the case where two main parties contest a constituency, if the winner has a vote rise of 5%, and the loser has a loss of 4% (with the rest disappearing off to the marginal parties), then the difference is 9%, and the swing is 4.5%. This is a reasonably meaningful measure, giving some indication of the proportion of voters deserting one party for the other.

But what we have here is not a two party fight, but more a three party one. Both first and second place parties increased their vote. So although the calculation is (5.5% - 3.1%)/2, giving that 1.2%, the implication of the calculated swing that 1.2% of voters deserted the LDs for the Tories is quite blatantly false.

As noted here, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4664398.stm, it looks like Parliament is no longer Tony's bitch.

This time, it's the Commons that passed Lords amendments to the stupid bill on Religious Hate. Stupid not because the intent was wrong, but because the wording made any mockery of religion into a hate crime.

"Is it now LibDem policy to lie until you're found out?"

Never let it be said that my ex-brother-in-law is subtle.

Hmm, his Wikipedia article is a little thin.