Journalist, editor, analyst and trainer on computing, government, climate and data
Team GB’s medal-winners from Rio 2016 come from all over the country and beyond, as this interactive map of those winning individual medals shows. (Click on a circle for data on each medal-winner.)
Continue reading “Dev-Olympics Rio 2016 medal table: East of England triumphs”
Last week, Computer Weekly published my article headlined ‘MI5 staff repeatedly overrode data surveillance rules’. This was one of several interesting stories contained within the documents released by Privacy International in late July which I rounded up in the article, another being specific statements by GCHQ, MI5 and SIS (or MI6) in witness statements that they do not retain bulk personal datasets of medical records, from the NHS or anywhere else.
Tweeting this attracted a fair bit of attention, including some querying the careful language quoted in the article. Given the interest, here are the sections regarding medical records from each of the three agencies, all from this document which contains the three witness statements. By bulk personal datasets (BPDs), the agencies mean untargeted data covering a lot of people, most of whom will be innocent – the haystack rather than just the needles. Continue reading “Those GCHQ, MI5 and SIS NHS medical record denials in full”
The technology bosses I spoke to last week for The Register were largely dismayed by the Brexit vote. Some are personally affected, as non-British EU citizens waiting for confirmation that they can stay. Others are starting to deal with the issues; LMAX Exchange boss David Mercer emailed all his staff, including about 30 European IT employees, saying he would get them visas if necessary.
Many of the worries of technology firms, along with other high-skill sectors such as healthcare and academia, would be soothed if immigration for skilled Europeans was to remain relatively easy. Theresa May is making it clear that Britain is not keen on an EU deal that retains complete freedom of movement. But the government could achieve its goals of cutting mass immigration by allowing some industries plenty of latitude to hire across the EU – and perhaps from the likes of Australia, Canada and New Zealand – while tightening up on unskilled jobs. Continue reading “Brexit doesn’t have to mean Techxit”
London voted to stay in the EU, by 2.26m votes to 1.51m. But it didn’t do so consistently. A majority in five outer boroughs voted to leave, with Havering’s 69.66% being the 12th highest leave vote of any of the 382 areas counted. Several of capital’s remain-voting areas did so very strongly, with Lambeth (21.38%) being second only to Gibraltar and the third to eighth places in the list being taken by other inner-London boroughs.
This map shows the range of this 48 percentage point difference. A lot has been made of the divide between the capital and other parts of England and Wales, but the capital is more divided than any other region or nation despite the fact that unlike all the others it consists of a single urban area. Even the East of England, which includes some of the strongest leave-voting areas on one hand and strongly remain-voting Cambridge on the other, had only a 46 point gap. Continue reading “Map of the month: the Brexiteers of London”
My piece for The Register on early reactions to Brexit and Theresa May’s new government, based on interviews with 10 companies, finds that a few have already decided to move new investment away from the UK. Nothing major, and none talked about shifting existing work from Britain; but there is a lot of worry about the supply of European techies being closed off.
Adam Hale, chief executive of Fairsail, says: “If we can’t hire the right number of people, or it becomes harder to hire EU nationals, our only alternative will be to offshore some or significant amounts of development.” On a more personal level, some people who run start-ups are thinking about whether they belong elsewhere. Daniel Rovira, a London-based Swedish national who runs Itcher, is thinking about Barcelona: “You feel a little bit not wanted in a country you came to think of as your home,” he says of Britain. Continue reading “Brexit: tech firms start moving investment from UK”