https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4wgpdllleo
Starmer at odds with Trump in biggest disagreement yet
captain_spalding said:
:)
The Government Paid O2 to Monitor 25 Million Phones to Track EV Drivers. Nobody Asked Permission.
The Department for Transport commissioned O2 to trawl the web browsing habits and movement data of 25 million devices, including children’s, to identify electric vehicle owners. The study cost £602,000, ran for two years, and was quietly published this week.
Somewhere in the past two years, a version of you was being identified, tagged and tracked by the British government based on whether you visited an EV-related website twice in a month.
Not a suspected criminal. Not a person of interest to law enforcement. A driver who looked at a car charging app or browsed an EV comparison site on their phone, and was consequently flagged by a government-commissioned surveillance programme that tracked their movements across Britain using mobile network data. Children were included. Passengers were included. No individual consented to any of it. Nobody was told it was happening.
A report published this week by the Department for Transport has laid bare the details of a project commissioned in 2023 under the Conservative government, run through mobile network operator O2 and concluded in April 2024 just before Labour came to power. The study cost £602,000 of public money, drawn from the government’s Evaluation Accelerator Fund. Its stated purpose was to produce a “comprehensive evaluation and understanding of the uptake and usage of electric vehicles.”
The methods it used to achieve that purpose are the story.
What O2 Actually Did
O2 runs the mobile infrastructure used not only by its own direct customers but by Sky Mobile, Tesco Mobile, GiffGaff and Virgin Mobile. The study swept up all of them.
The identification method was blunt: anyone who visited EV-related websites or used EV-related apps at least once a month across two separate months was flagged as a probable electric vehicle owner. That criterion does not describe a car owner. It describes someone who was curious about electric vehicles, was researching one, was a passenger in one, or happened to click a link. Browsing habits were trawled, per The Telegraph’s original reporting. Web history and app records were processed. Children over the age of 12 were not excluded.
Once individuals were flagged, O2 began tracking their physical movements using mobile network location data, the same infrastructure used to triangulate position from which mobile signals are transmitted and received. That data was then supplied to the Department for Transport in what both O2 and the DfT describe as “anonymised and aggregated” form. Neither party released the specific technical details of what anonymisation meant in practice.
O2’s spokesman said the project was “entirely lawful” and that the company complied fully with the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR. The DfT said the project was lawful and that all data transferred to officials was stripped of individual identities and locations. Civil servants in the DfT’s Advanced Analytics Division and Social and Behavioural Research unit managed the project.
The Technical Limitations the Government Did Not Advertise
The most revealing section of the DfT’s own published report is also the least quoted in the political coverage.
After two years and £602,000, the department concluded that mobile data could not directly be used to provide information about charging behaviour or travel times. The specific questions the study was designed to answer, where EVs are kept overnight, trip frequency, origin-destination patterns, charging locations, were not answerable from the data collected. The report notes that mobile data may be useful for monitoring overarching trends, but the granular operational intelligence the study sought was beyond what the technology could deliver.
The government spent two years tracking 25 million devices, including children, without consent, using methods described by critics as equivalent to law enforcement surveillance techniques, and concluded that the data was too imprecise to answer the questions it was designed to address.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MotorBuzz/comments/1rj7zss/the_government_paid_o2_to_monitor_25_million/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7o
Dozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7oDozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
The Chaps won’t be happy, won’t be happy at all.
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7oDozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
So are they going to get rid of the other people with inherited governmental positions?
Peak Warming Man said:
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7oDozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
The Chaps won’t be happy, won’t be happy at all.
Interestingly there will still be a couple dozen Lords Spiritual.
I wonder if eventually there will be an elected HOL.
The Rev Dodgson said:
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7oDozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
So are they going to get rid of the other people with inherited governmental positions?
Steady, steady …
dv said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
dv said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7o
Dozens of hereditary peers are set to lose their seats in the House of Lords, after the passage of a bill that will end a parliamentary role dating back hundreds of years.
Peers passed the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill after ministers offered a compromise to end a long-running dispute with opponents of the reform.
The majority of hereditary peers, who inherit their titles through their families, were abolished in 1999 under the last Labour government and this bill gets rid of the last remaining 92.
- – -
Speaking of Lords Temporal…
So are they going to get rid of the other people with inherited governmental positions?
Steady, steady …
isn’t the technofascist plan to remove any kind of biological inheritance from power structures altogether
SCIENCE said:
They’ve obviously had a sleepover.
Not AI
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5789383-florida-bill-to-ban-marrying-first-cousins-fails-to-pass/
A win for traditional values
dv said:
A win for traditional values
wait are we saying that these traditions are taking them back to their colonial era
making the world safer one bomb oil tanker theocracy at a time
Four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community ambulance service have been set on fire and destroyed in London in what police say is an antisemitic hate crime. The Metropolitan Police have launched an investigation into the incident which occurred in Golders Green, a largely Jewish neighbourhood, in the early hours of Monday morning, local time. Explosions were heard in the area around the Machzike Hadath synagogue and police say that was due to gas canisters onboard the Hatzola Northwest ambulances.
beautiful
‘River of raw sewage’ pours down UK street with ‘biohazard’ faeces flooding road and path
Horrified residents in Stoke-on-Trent were left to clean up after raw sewage including poo, toilet paper and nappies poured down their street when drains overflowed during heavy rain
SCIENCE said:
beautiful
‘River of raw sewage’ pours down UK street with ‘biohazard’ faeces flooding road and path
Horrified residents in Stoke-on-Trent were left to clean up after raw sewage including poo, toilet paper and nappies poured down their street when drains overflowed during heavy rain
Liquid gold.
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:beautiful
‘River of raw sewage’ pours down UK street with ‘biohazard’ faeces flooding road and path
Horrified residents in Stoke-on-Trent were left to clean up after raw sewage including poo, toilet paper and nappies poured down their street when drains overflowed during heavy rain
Liquid gold.
Texas T
Cymek said:
roughbarked said:
SCIENCE said:
beautiful
‘River of raw sewage’ pours down UK street with ‘biohazard’ faeces flooding road and path
Horrified residents in Stoke-on-Trent were left to clean up after raw sewage including poo, toilet paper and nappies poured down their street when drains overflowed during heavy rain
Liquid gold.
Texas T
The commentators out there are calling it brexshit.
SCIENCE said:
Cymek said:
roughbarked said:
Liquid gold.
Texas T
The commentators out there are calling it brexshit.
As they should.
I wonder what effect Trump’s newfound distaste for all things British will have on the prospects of his ‘Reform’ and his fellow travellers in thrall of Farage.
Nigel Farage’s biggest problem? Donald Trump
Ben Quinn
Political correspondent
Nearly a quarter of voters cite Reform leader’s support for US president as main reason against voting for his party
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/31/nigel-farage-reform-biggest-problem-donald-trump
Nigel Farage to snub US conservative conference brought to UK by Liz Truss
Exclusive: Reform UK will be ‘steering well clear’ of CPAC event in July, source says, as will senior Tories
Helena Horton and Ben Quinn
Tue 31 Mar 2026 21.11 AEDT
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/31/nigel-farage-snub-us-conservative-conference-cpac-uk-liz-truss
New YouGov poll for Great Britain (ie excluding NI)
Reform 23%
Green 19%
Con 19%
Labour 18%
LibDem 12%
SNP 3%
Cymru 1%
It’s mad that they are still using First Past The Post when the voters are like this, but anyway. There’s an opportunity for the leftward side of the table to clean up, if they coordinate well.
dv said:
New YouGov poll for Great Britain (ie excluding NI)
Reform 23%
Green 19%
Con 19%
Labour 18%
LibDem 12%
SNP 3%
Cymru 1%It’s mad that they are still using First Past The Post when the voters are like this, but anyway. There’s an opportunity for the leftward side of the table to clean up, ifthey coordinate well.
that’s
alleged
well chuff along, hurry up then