Edinburgh, Glasgow and other cities are distributing the funds to drivers who answer a series of questions online, submit ID, and supply bank account and sort code details.
In Aberdeen, things are not quite so straightforward.
Aberdeen City Council’s handling of the grant is being reviewed by central government and data protection agencies following Aberdeen Voice’s investigations.
Drivers here are told they can only apply electronically, must open a user account on the city’s website to access the application, and must submit a bank’s official statement showing a month’s worth of transactions.
A central government spokeswoman said:
“The requirement for the bank details is an SG condition but that is just literally account number and sort code so people can be paid into their account. Our guidance states that drivers must provide bank account details and local authorities can request appropriate additional evidence to determine eligibility.”
As a Glasgow city council spokesman we contacted added:
“The webpage doesn’t say that transactions within the account have to be shown, only the name, address, account number and sort code. A bank statement with redacted transactions is therefore acceptable.”
A spokeswoman from the Information Commissioner’s office said unofficially that she would redact transactions if asked for a statement.
ACC will neither back down from nor explain its position. The type of statement an account holder can print off themselves is not accepted; the bank must issue an official statement to satisfy ACC.
Should anyone think it is not a big deal to hand a month’s worth of financial transactions over to ACC, AV is pleased to remind readers that in 2018 ACC was investigated for a massive data breach when it sent personal details such as salary and NI numbers to third parties.
In 2019, it was reported by Jon Hebditch of the Press & Journal that the city’s computers were hacked no fewer than 15 MILLION TIMES.
Why does ACC need to see what a driver is buying and where they are spending their money?
A driver approached us who sent in their unredacted bank details and they advise they have had two attempted identity thefts following their application. Of course, this may be wholly coincidental, but it highlights the need for privacy.
Many banks, mobile companies, credit card companies will sometimes ask for details of a previous transaction in order to verify the identity of a phone caller. Anyone who gets hold of a bank statement can make an identity theft bid.
Data protection laws say personal data must not be collected unless it is required for a specific transaction, and must be destroyed once it is no longer needed. Once a driver proves who they are, their eligibility and their bank name, account number and sort code, there is no need for that driver’s financial transactions to be seen by anyone.
The question is, why does Aberdeen City Council think knowing a driver’s bank transactions is any of their business or relevant for issuing a grant once the driver establishes identity and eligibility?
Many drivers are understandably unhappy then that ACC wants sight of the applicant’s individual bank transactions. Derek Davidson told AV:
“I wasn’t aware transactions could be redacted. My understanding was that if you did this it could affect your claim being processed.”
Who in ACC will see this data and whether or not it will be destroyed as soon as it is no longer needed are unclear.
What is clear is that ACC does not need to see any personal transaction details to pay people money they are due. AV is trying to get the council to remove this intrusive, potentially illegal invasion of privacy.
After several attempts by AV to get ACC to explain its invasive requirement, we have received a list of rules and regulations, and an assertion that central government did not specify how to handle the roll out.
The city was asked if it will now follow Glasgow’s example (other councils allow redaction too, we understand) and let drivers conceal their individual bank transactions. No answer to this simple question was offered.
If the city does reverse its policy, we will advise. However, as ACC is dragging its feet since it was first approached, and we know drivers are in great need of the money, it may well come too late.
An Information Commission Office spokeswoman commented:
“As mentioned we can’t give a judgement before knowing the full facts and being able to establish formally what information the council wants, how it is being used, what their privacy policy states etc. If someone complains to us then we would look at the detail and possibly make further enquiries if necessary.
“As per our statement, if people are concerned about how their personal data is used they can raise it with ACC and then the ICO.”
We urge anyone with data protection issues to issue a complaint both to ACC and the Information Commissioner – here is the link again to their complaints procedure: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/, and here is ACC’s chief executive’s email address: chiefexecutive@aberdeencity.gov.uk
AV will be happy to hear from anyone impacted by the issues arising.
Aberdeen Voice maintains that the city’s press office has the ability to check with every department, and could have learned more about the issue if it needed to.
We will try to find out why it chose not to do so and why it is choosing to doubt AV’s story.
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Not only has lock down stopped most of the journeys people would have made, but the city’s draconian and Byzantine laws, which stopped city businesses making and receiving deliveries and which created arcane one-way traffic systems, prevented people from making swift in-and-out taxi journeys to buy essentials.
“If you are eligible for a grant your local authority will get in touch with you, starting from week commencing 18 January 2021. You do not need to contact them.”
Derek Davidson, 57, of Bridge of Don, has been a driver for 21 years. Mr Davidson told Aberdeen Voice:
“The grant will help drivers pay fixed costs such as car loans and insurance which were not included in the grants given by the U.K. government. The Scottish government were clear that these grants would be administered by the council and paid out by the 31st January.”
Three key points from the Scottish government website are: that an applicant’s council will need your bank details, that the scheme started week commencing 18 January, and that correspondence can be by phone, email or letter.
An Aberdeen City Council told Aberdeen Voice otherwise, claiming:
* the scheme only started on 26 January.
* an official bank statement be supplied – despite a driver’s private financial transactions having nothing to do with their eligibility. A print out from logging into your account is not acceptable.
Applicants should not need to supply more than their bank name, sort code and account number once they have proved they are eligible and submitted ID.
This official bank statement requirement will also delay payments while applicants write to their bank to get an official statement (many banks convinced customers to opt out of paper statements long ago for environmental and cost-saving reasons).
ACC demands that all correspondence be handled electronically.
As Mr Davidson points out – not everyone has email and not everyone has a home computer.
Once an applicant gets the official statement from their bank, they apparently need to scan it to comply with ACC’s email only directive.
ACC seems to require drivers to open an account on the city’s website before they can even access the application form.
(NB The Scottish Information Commissioner is looking into ACC’s attempts to make FOI requesters sign up – those who want to make requests should insist on the freedom not to sign up, and/or use the website whatdotheyknow.com to lodge FOI requests.)
This extra layer of unnecessary bureaucracy will mean every time a user is logged in, a trail of what they have accessed on the ACC website will come to exist.
Not everyone who does FOI requests or who wants to apply for a grant they deserve wants ACC to be able to know what they are looking at for instance. There is no legal requirement on those who want to correspond and do business by letter to fall in line with ACC.
If, as some correspondence sent to drivers indicates, avoiding paper, letters is somehow a Covid-19 safety measure, then surely school teachers and staff must not touch any paper either.
Mr Davidson said:
“I’m not sure why the council would need to see the drivers’ bank statements as it is an invasion of privacy in my opinion. All they needed was our sort codes an account numbers. It is also wrong that people are excluded if they don’t have an email address.
“The council undertook to administer the grants and should have had adequate procedures in place to ensure every driver was included. I’d be interested to know what happens to any unclaimed money.
In terms of eligibility, our tax records show we have been paying our way as taxi drivers and that should have been all the proof they needed for distribution of the grants.”
Central government advises it will look at how ACC is handling the administration of this grant.
ACC doubled-down when AV requested clarification on why they seem to diverge from the central government’s information on the grant. A spokesman said:
“The terms agreed through Cosla and SLAED is for all Local Authorities to administer the funds through an online application process – every local authority has done so.
“The application form was published on the council website on 26 January [2021] and we contacted drivers the same day.
“Local authorities are required to be assured of the validity of any supporting information requested in determining eligibility for a grant.
“Every local authority requires details of the applicant’s bank statements to verify this is a legitimate applicant and not a third party using the licence and name of a driver. The Council has a privacy notice for the data handling process in respect to the scheme which is published on the website.”
AV will update further once central government advises. We will be happy to hear from any drivers who are impacted.
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“Crazy how white Republicans got other white Republicans scared of Muslims and Mexicans when all along they needed to be scared of other white Republicans…” – Cyrus McQueen, author, Tweeting Truth To Power: Chronicling Our Caustic Politics, Crazed Times, & The Great Black & White Divide.
“Anti-vax conspiracy theories and COVID-19 denial are gateway drugs that introduce well-meaning people to the far right. Before they know it, large numbers are hooked on QAnon.”
– George Monbiot
Trump spent decades inciting violence, culminating in rioting and deaths in Washington DC on 6 January 2021. Now he says he won’t condone violence (or is that what he’s really saying?)
Suzanne Kelly, Aberdeen Voice contributor and campaigner explains why the leopard has not changed his spots.
Armed, angry white men and women were invited by Trump to a rally in DC. Trump told the mob to march on the capitol and he’d be with them (he wasn’t).
The warning signs were ignored. The violence was pre-planned, orchestrated. The National Guard was held at bay. Five people are dead, more were injured.
Trump watched the violence unfold on TV; he would not speak to aids or answer requests to stop the forces he invoked.
His after-the-fact denunciation of ‘political violence’ is perversely being taken as a call to arms by the extremists – who are openly calling for more such events. His impeachment is essential; he is a danger to us all.
Signs of his disordered mental state, his contempt for people and the environment were visible at Aberdeenshire’s Menie Estate before his election. Aberdeen Voice, Tripping up Trump, Aberdeenshire councillors including Martin Ford, Debra Storr, Paul Johnston and film maker Anthony Baxter all could have attested this man was the last person to be put in charge of a multicultural country.
Aberdeen Journals Ltd told you Trump was going to bring 6,000 permanent jobs and millions into the local economy annually and ‘enhance’ the irreplaceable environment.
Fast forward, and there are less than 93 permanent jobs, the course is permanently in the red, and the unique SSSI areas are destroyed.
Aberdeen Voice’s many calls over the years to local and national officials and official bodies as to where he got the money for the purchase from fell on deaf ears.
Here are some of my thoughts on why Trump is in power, why people still believe him, and what we need to address in order to stop more carnage.
Trump: the most damaging, divisive president ever.
It takes honour and integrity to own mistakes and Trump has neither quality. His youth included allegations of draft-dodging (he was healthy enough despite alleged bone spurs to play collegiate basketball) and sending in ringers to take exams in his stead.
He is credibly accused of preventing non-white people from obtaining leases for his Manhattan properties. He wanted the innocent, framed ‘Central Park Five’ to be executed.
His fondness for capital punishment saw him reinstate the death penalty; as rights watchers will tell you, many US death row inmates were denied due process, have mental health issues, and some have been found to be innocent after their execution. Some were black – convicted on circumstantial evidence by all-white juries.
Trump has invoked violence many times, whatever he may be saying now.
Trump told an assembly of police that it was OK with him if they harmed suspects.
He called for hecklers at his rallies to be ‘roughed up’.
He called journalists – the very people tying to tell the truth about the man –‘enemy of the people’ and said they should be ‘roughed up’.
When I spoke on The O’Reilly Factor about my petition to ban Trump from the UK under our hate speech laws, I was cut off before making many of my points and with no warning: but the last point I got in was that Trump planned to execute terrorists and their relatives. I still can’t believe this didn’t shock more people.
America is supposed to stand for justice, not ex-judicial execution of innocent people.
Trump is a racist (the KKK endorsement of his 2016 bid for the presidency is a clue); he lacks empathy, and will deceive without remorse. He has no regard for law, fairness or human life. He frequently calls for violence and fails to speak out against it when it comes from the far right and the white supremacist: his lack of condemnation encourages them.
Hate speech, racism, neo-Nazism: how the ignorant, angry and easily-led are funnelled
Claiming Muslims should be banned from air travel ‘until we figure out what the hell is going on’, Trump threw unjust suspicion on Muslims, including the seven to 14 million Muslim Americans.
This was not a dog whistle; this was Trump prejudicially linking all Muslims to terrorism. Those who thought my desire to ban him for hate speech might do well to remember his ban which unfairly harmed many. And as any observer of American terrorism can confirm, most of America’s terrorists have been white males.
Hate crimes are at their highest levels for 16 years according to the FBI.
Responding to Trump’s many calls to hate and violence, people like William Celli decided to build bombs to target Muslims. Trump’s comments about Mexicans and Hispanics have led to many assaults; in one case two suspects told police ‘Trump is right’.
Trump fanatic and would-be bomber Cesar Sayoc targeted Democrats and CNN. His defence lawyers wrote that:
“in this darkness, Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump.”
Sayoc ‘Found light’ in Donald; sadly, so do many disaffected people, opportunist evangelical preachers, the NRA, GOP climbers, and racist groups like the KKK.
David Duke is the ridiculously-titled ‘grand wizard’ of the KKK. It endorsed Trump as their presidential candidate, and Duke said the Charlottesville rioting which took Heather Heyer’s life was ‘a turning point’.
From the time Trump said of the white supremacist march ‘there are fine people on both sides’, he’d given a clear signal he would condemn neither violence nor racism. He deliberately fanned those flames, even if he didn’t manage to overthrow the government.
It’s Christianity Jim, but not as we know it.
There is no doubt that MAGA rallies created a community of like-minded Trump followers. These events called together every person who wanted a saviour, and the extremist evangelists used the far-right version of Christianity that these Trump acolytes had been raised on.
Artwork showing Trump as a Christ-like figure (as if); photos showing Trump surrounded by adoring televangelists – all this helped those who were already trained to be obedient to their preachers be obedient to the man their preachers endorsed and called saviour. It made Sayoc a terrorist.
The lunatic hypocrisy of claiming to be a follower of Jesus while simultaneously toting semi-automatic weapons, chanting ‘lock her up’, assaulting rally hecklers, and calling for death to the press doesn’t occur to any of these people. Their preachers are asking for donations, not soul-searching.
Here is a hilarious take on her absolute madness of Paula White
Compliant? The evangelical child in some of these sects grow up believing by constant reinforcement they are the only people who will be saved, that the superior race is white, and the superior sex is male.
Home-schooling is prevalent, and I believe plays more of a part in the radicalisation of people than many will admit.
The girl children? Many are trained to be subservient like our rushed-through newest Supreme Court Justice Coney Barrett. For many extremist evangelists, girls are to get married, be servants and be fruitful and multiply. Sex before marriage is strictly out.
All these QAnon extremists protesting about invented satanic child abuse? They need look no further than child marriage, legal in 46 states. When was the last time a QAnon protestor targeted this abuse?
Do these evangelists and Trump really believe one of their key recruitment planks – that all abortion is wrong? Trump asked his girlfriend to get one. Trump also raped Ivana per her written statement by the way. Very Old Testament.
If I had my say, every school age person would spend at least a few months in a non-home-school setting to mix with children of other backgrounds. Ensuring no one is schooled only in a vacuum might help end the vilification of other religions, other races and nationalities.
If nothing else, the evangelical girl child could be shown it is illegal to be married off against her will, and she can have a career other than as a mother.
And if I ran the world, there would be no marriages in America for anyone under 18, and all parties under age 21 would have to be seen alone before the ceremony to confirm they are not being coerced, and offered support if they are.
Tele-preachers and the NRA also insist an AK is a ‘God-given right.’ The hell it is.
Gun culture: how the NRA fuels paranoia.
A Senate subcommittee declared the National Rifle Association to a Russian asset, awash with Russian money. NRA chiefs gave illegal operative Russian Marina Butina and Putin pal Alexander Torshin access to members of Congress.
What was once an educational tax-exempt organisation now pumps tens of millions of dollars into Congress, some of that from Russia.
It will not brook any changes to US gun law. NRA-funded Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prevented the Senate from voting on bipartisan gun law bills. Did America’ founders know automatic weapons existed – yes, as the NRA says, claiming all guns should be legal.
Did the founders have weapons that could kill 58 and wound 527 others from a great distance as we tragically saw in Las Vegas? No.
Should every incel, every angry racist own an assault rifle?
The NRA says yes.
The parents and loved ones of the over 40,000 shot in 2019 and 2020 say no.
In terms of ‘cancel culture’ – gun deaths cancel thousands of voices each year, and Mitch McConnell cancelled the Senate’s right to even vote on the matter. If he were confident the American people and the Senate did not want gun laws changed, he would have let the two bills be heard.
There is supposed to be a well-regulated militia: instead we had teen Kyle Rittenhouse driven to a protest by his mother where he killed.
‘Do you wanna be in my gang?’ Psychological manipulation.
Lonely? Friendless? Not promoted at work? Involuntary celibate? QAnon wants You.
A whole world of similarly-damaged souls awaits and you will be welcome, whether or not you’re a preposterous self-styled shaman who live streams from mom’s basement. If you’re feeling the financial pinch, it can’t be because of people like Trump, paper billionaires whose many bankruptcies have sent small businesses to the wall; it must be because a woman or a non-white person ‘took’ your job.
It is easier and cheaper to get recruited by QAnon than it is to either get mental health help, get involved with making positive change, or make real friends in the real world. The USA needs urgent medical health care reform, the kind Trump has tried to dismantle.
I have done as much of a dive into this culture as I care to. In fringe websites the insurrectionists share whispers of violence to come on Biden’s inauguration day.
Some think Trump is the messiah. They are happy, some of them, to wear Nazi regalia – and in doing so align themselves with the horrors visited on adults and children alike, despite QAnon using the fictitious pizzagate child abuse conspiracy as a recruitment tool.
The message seems to be that Nazi concentration camps were either invented or the children abused and murdered on an industrial scale somehow don’t count (viz the detestable ‘Camp Auschwitz’ shirt and Nazi symbolism worn by the insurrectionists).
However, invent a child abuse scandal now 100% discredited involving Satan and Hilary Clinton, and crying people will take to the streets holding signs about pizza parlours and baby-eaters while sporting a swastika tattoo.
These people don’t seem aware Trump did all he could to catch teen beauty queens naked at his pageants, or that he’s accused of many cases of sexual assault. There is no logic, no joined up thinking.
These echo chambers that sprang up following Q Anon’s overdue defenestration from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook reinforce the camaraderie, the anger of these misfits. They goad each other into more and more extreme views and actions. Something needs to be done.
As I am writing, Reuters confirmed that the mob intended to ‘capture and assassinate’ members of Congress. We must find, arrest, try every single one of these people.
Hate Speech.
Enacting laws concerning hate speech – like the UN and many countries have will help stop the abuse which has led to violence throughout this country’s history.
This is nothing to do with freedom of speech. The right to free speech has many exemptions. The founding fathers foresaw some of the potential future misuses – but none of them can have dreamed of it being used to remind Jewish people of the horrors of Auschwitz.
Trump spurred me to try to ban him from the UK under our hate speech laws. As a New Yorker living in Aberdeen, watching this man being treated as a star made me feel ill.
I knew of his discriminatory policies, his greed, his xenophobia. I didn’t care if I looked like a fool. Over 586,000 people agreed with me and we got a debate.
Who knows? We might even have got the Home Secretary to apply the law to a billionaire that had already been applied to more than 100 other hatemongers.
In the end, the night before the debate, MP Paul Flynn, slated to chair the debate decided to call the press to slate my petition (without letting me know he was doing so). ‘We might make Trump a martyr’ he told me. Parliament did deliver a good smackdown – but the Home Secretary did not apply the law to Trump.
JK Rowling made a joke about the petition at a New York literary gathering.
I was invited to write a riposte piece, and I did so, even knowing all of Harry Potter fandom would attack me to support her. I wonder if she sees the difference between hate speech and free speech now; I’d like to hope so, having been the target of hate speech herself of late.
What I didn’t get is that in her books the magical government was being taken over and most people were afraid to stand up to the spread of hate speech, but there you go.
Every time someone flies a confederate flag; every town that has a memorial to a civil war figure who tried to preserve slavery is a declaration of hate to black citizens from white supremacists. Every glorification of those who slaughtered Native Americans is a hate crime. I can’t shake the feeling that while all this division rages, the billionaires are laughing at the rest of us.
Billionaires like Trump (wherever his money is actually coming from; happily, there are signs it may be drying up).
If a Native American child or an African American child cannot wear their hair in a way reflective of their culture in school, then why are we letting people wave symbols celebrating slavery or concentration camps in gestures designed to intimidate and provoke fear and anger? I don’t understand.
The speech turns to violence, and these symbols have power.
If anyone wants to cry how unfair it is Trump’s been removed from social media for repeated rule breaking, fake news and hate speech, think again. He’s deliberately gagged people with lawsuits, confidentiality agreements (even extending to cooks in Scotland) and used his massive press connections to mock and ridicule opponents from Biden through to farmer Michael Forbes.
Can we please make Justice blind again?
Some of the argument against doing so aside from Flynn’s Chamberlain-esque appeasement was ‘Trump may be president someday’.
This alarming use of future potential is seen in America, where it gets many privileged white male offenders released from serious charges eg Brock Turner.
What if we had banned him from the UK? Would the GOP still have seen him as being presidential material? Perhaps not. Would things have been worse had the UK banned Trump? Worse how? – I’d like to know.
We’re seeing more flawed illogic applied to the insurrectionists by their sympathisers in the GOP: ‘Don’t impeach Trump, it may make insurrectionists angry’.
They are already angry. And armed. The law is not supposed to care how rich you are or if applying the law equally to all will make white supremacists angry.
The self-styled shaman is being given the organic meals in prion he demanded because of his ‘religion’. Meanwhile, as noted by various Native American groups, when Native people wind up in US jails, they are absolutely laughed at and ignored.
Symbols of hate belong in the trashcan.
The confederate flag shows the bearer approves of slavery, and wants it back.
Statues of confederate generals towering over parks and town centres show deference to the people who tried to preserve slavery and contempt for descendants of slaves.
A swastika patch or tattoo, or a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ shirt shows the world the bearer hates everyone who’s not a Nazi.
A MAGA hat suggests the wearer wants to ‘Make America Great Again’. It shows support for a KKK-endorsed white supremacist who ridicules minorities and incites violence against virtually everyone who is not a white male. It is the symbol of the Trump rally, a sign you would suspend your logic and values (if any) to be part of a mob.
The far right, the conspiracy believer, etc have also commandeered symbols of the crusaders, arcane symbols and invented symbols. This is all part of the ‘I need to be in a crowd and be one of the mob’ mentality we saw running through the Capitol.
Can we chuck these and other such inflammatory, hate-provoking emblems now? Other countries have.
We don’t need miseducation.
If there were a better, balanced system of education that also taught tolerance and life skills (I mean, we even have people who now believe you can fall of the edge of our flat world), we would all be better off.
It would not be so easy to convince people that Bill Gates is a reptile from another dimension who is trying to forcibly inject nanobots and trackers by unleashing a fake virus scare.
When I was in school, I remember ages devoted to names and dates of the Revolutionary War. About a quarter of that amount of time was spent on the history and culture of the rest of the world. Mistake. It was later I learned of the atrocities committed against Native Americans (including by Lincoln) and slavery.
When we studied slavery in school – and this I remember to my dying day: we read two different accounts of women who had been plantation slaves.
One was entitled ‘Lordy Them was Awful Days’ and she told of being whipped and salt being rubbed in her wounds. The other woman said slavery wasn’t so bad: I kid you not. And then we moved on.
It was as if every coin has two sides – a flaw seen in current day news reporting.
Slavery does not have another side. We also had in our textbooks the horrific photos of lynched black Americans, with white people standing under them socializing. Did my teacher explain how horrific this was? If so, their words are lost on me though that photo remains burned in my head.
Do the confederate flag-wavers even know what the reality was for so many? Do they even want to? A better, complete education that shows America’s many flaws could help. Teach logic, how to frame arguments, critical thinking, and how not to be a racist.
What are we going to do today? Pending violence.
As mentioned, I’ve been going on these twisted far-right sites to see what is going on. These people do think, as reported in the news, that Trump wants more violence and has sent secret messages to QAnon in his latest word salad of a speech.
They and others point to his saying ‘I cannot emphasise that there must be no violence…’ as a call to arms.
With Trump having established that he is barely literate, we don’t know what he actually meant. Hilariously, he says he can never condone violence, despite having called for violence on many occasions.
However, the conspiracy theory force is strong with these insurrectionists.
Some claim he tapped out in Morse Code the letter ‘Q’. Really? The man can’t spell ‘coffee’.
These people are looking for signs. If you look for signs, the brain will find them even where they don’t exist. A decent education could have taught the ‘I saw the Virgin Mary in my slice of toast’ brigade how the mind works to create images and patterns, but there you go.
These people want a violent, bloody revolution. They want to take over America. They are using internet sites to make their plans. Many of them are police and/or former armed forces members (we need a Venn diagram of white supremacists who have been in the police and who have needlessly killed non-white suspects).
Some of their helpers are congresspeople. They cannot win, but they can certainly harm and kill.
Ignoring them and hoping they will disappear is not an option. I am not an expert, but I think my suggestions have some merit for the future. The present needs to be the focus now.
In my opinion, we need to: immediately declare QAnon, the KKK, other hate groups terrorist organisations and remove terrorism supporters from Congress. Any congressperson/police officer who gave the insurrectionists help must be removed from office and charged.
No one gets into Congress without going through the metal detector. No guns get into Congress.
Every single insurrectionist from Trump down to the last one needs to be charged with all applicable charge from sedition and insurrection through destroying federal property.
We need to shore up what the 1st and 2nd Amendments mean.
We need to change the laws so there are no more Kyle Rittenhouses.
Anyone who is in QAnon or the KKK is not fit to be in law enforcement or law-making, and needs to be removed from office. We need more scrutiny of how these ideas are getting into the heads of the violent, and address the root causes (extremist evangelism, poverty, poor education etc).
We cannot just forget this happened and heal without cleaning up the source of infection and getting rid of the poison. We need to have Biden and Harris stabilize our country and Make Hate Hateful Again.
Unfortunately, we need to do this about 80 years ago at a minimum. But let’s start today.
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With thanks to Kenneth Hutchison, Parliamentary Assistant to Dr. Eilidh Whiteford.
Banff and Buchan MP Eilidh Whiteford has hit out, after a leaked UK Government document indicated that fishing is not considered a ‘high’ priority in the upcoming Brexit negotiations.
The document, reportedly leaked by a UK Government source to The Times, was circulated late last year, and indicates that fishing does not make it into a list of ‘high-priority industries’ which would benefit from firm UK negotiating positions.
This list of high-priority sectors includes banking and finance, automotive industries and textiles.
Other sectors which are set to be relegated along with fishing include chemicals, steel, oil and gas, telecoms, and medical industries.
Speaking after the document’s release, Dr Whiteford said:
“If this leaked memo is genuine, it demonstrates quite definitively that the Conservatives’ attitude to fishing has not changed since Edward Heath’s day. The industry is still very much ‘expendable’. From this document, it is quite clear that all eyes in the negotiations will be on banking and finance, and the automotive and aerospace industries.
“Fishing is, once again, being lined up as a pawn to be traded away by the Tories. I have already written to the Secretary of State, Andrea Leadsom, seeking her own comment on this document and asking for assurances that fishing will not serve as a sacrificial lamb for concessions elsewhere.”
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With thanks to Andrew Linklater, Director of Buckny Hydro
The new regime of business rates in Scotland has marked out hydropower for “special punishment”, threatening to end independent development of schemes north of the border, Scottish industry representatives at Alba Energy have warned.
Small hydro-businesses now face an increase in rates of up to 650%, with bills on some sites rising to as much as a quarter of their total turnover.
With some operators facing insolvency, others have been left to calculate the cost of a future in which renewable energy ceases to be financially sustainable.
An average hydro scheme such as the 500kW Buckny Hydro in Perthshire has seen its draft valuation rise from £32,000 to £93,000, a sum that represents 29% of its overall turnover.
The worst hit schemes have seen increases up to seven times their original value, with rateable valuations of up to 50% of turnover. The 1.9MW Ederline scheme on the banks of Loch Awe had a previous valuation of £98,000, now revised upwards to £405,000.
Many in the hydro industry fear that the Scottish Government has abandoned its green agenda. In 2015, while attacking the UK Government for removing subsidies for renewable energy, SNP ministers removed their own system of support. Alba Energy, representing hydro operators in Scotland, accepted the loss of rates relief and argued that the industry should pay its fair share, in line with other businesses.
What Alba says it cannot accept, however, is the “sudden, exponential increase” in valuations now being applied to hydro by assessors – out of all proportion to the economic realities of these sites. While many businesses in Scotland have suffered relative increases, hydro operators are preparing for bills to double, treble, or quadruple.
Martin Foster, Chairman of Alba Energy, said:
“We are not seeking special treatment. We want to know why we have been singled out for special punishment. Hydro is the original renewable energy source: the cleanest, most efficient, least obtrusive and longest-lasting. Yet the Scottish Government has facilitated a rates regime that will cripple the independent hydro industry it once claimed to support – while leaving the big energy companies unaffected.”
Alex Linklater, director of Buckny Hydro, said:
“The new rates regime contradicts the Scottish Government’s own energy strategy. Hydropower is not merely crucial to this strategy; it has brought significant growth to some of our remotest rural communities. As independent operators find themselves threatened with punitive levels of taxation, we are seeking Government support, until a longer term solution is agreed.
“All Alba is asking for is an equitable model of valuation, one that will allow our industry to remain financially viable, while paying its fair share of rates.”
Scottish Assessors responsible for the revaluation have refused to publish a clear account of the method they are using to calculate the new valuations for hydro. Alba is calling on the SNP Government to rectify an indefensible lack of transparency in the light of “extreme perversities” resulting from the assessors’ system.
Alba will be assisting members to pursue formal appeals against valuations for hydros which have been hit by “off the scale” increases. But Government attempts to deflect criticism onto the appeals system, administered by the independent assessors and funded by local authorities, are being met with skepticism.
An appeal against the Tayside Valuation Board, brought in 2012 (which argued that the assessor had, even then, applied a flawed approach to small hydro) is still awaiting a second determination by the Tayside Appeals Committee – after nearly five years.
For further information contact Martin Foster at Alba Energy, pelton242@icloud.com, 07500 902531, or Alex Linklater, alexlinklater@mac.com, 07956 303 580
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Fears of another sell-out of the fishing industry grew this week with the publication of the UK Government’s White Paper on leaving the EU.
Chairman of Aberdeenshire Council’s Fisheries Working Group and Fraserburgh SNP councillor Charles Buchan said the brief mention of fishing in the White Paper, which has only 75 pages, gave him great concern that the UK Government was gearing-up to repeat the sell-out of the fishing industry first perpetrated in the 1970s.
Commenting on the development, Cllr Charles Buchan (pictured) said:
“I’m very uneasy about what has been announced in the Tory Government’s White Paper and I know that the Prime Minister’s comment last week about Spanish fishermen has made many people in the industry fearful about what may be coming down the line.
“The bottom line here is that the UK is leaving the EU and I fully support efforts to make the best possible deal from that situation as we can. The SNP has long-argued to leave the CFP and that will be extremely beneficial to the industry – it represents a “sea of opportunity” as the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation have said.
“What we don’t want or need is for that opportunity to be traded away by the Conservative Government as it did in 1972 because it thinks it can safely use fishing as a bargaining chip in its negotiations. The pronouncements of the last few days from Westminster make me very fearful we are about to see history repeat itself and we must stop that from happening for the sake of our coastal communities.”
A Scottish Office memo dated 9 November 1970 famously said in relation to the negotiations being conducted by the then Conservative UK Government:
“in the wider UK context, they [the fishermen] must be regarded as expendable“.
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With thanks to Kenneth Hutchison, Parliamentary Assistant to Dr. Eilidh Whiteford.
The SNP MP for Banff and Buchan, Eilidh Whiteford, has called for the UK Government to come clean to Parliament following the revelations that the Prime Minister knew of a failed Trident test just weeks before a vote on renewal of the UK’s WMDs last year.
PM Theresa May refused four times on Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show to answer the presenter’s question on whether she knew about the test failure before the vote was taken.
Parliament voted to renew the deterrent, which experts believe could cost more than £200bn.
SNP MPs opposed the renewal, while Labour were divided. Each missile is estimated to cost £17m, and only five tests have been carried out since the year 2000.
During an Urgent Question to the Defence Secretary yesterday, Michael Fallon MP refused to confirm the details of the failed test, whilst a US Official confirmed the information to CNN.
Dr Whiteford said:
“Whilst the Defence Secretary was refusing to confirm any information during today’s Urgent Question, a US official briefed news channel CNN on the details of the failed test mission.
“It is simply not acceptable that the UK Government has not come clean on the facts of this failure, but US press outlets have received an update from officials in the White House.
“The Prime Minister has real questions to answer about why parliament has not learned about this failure until now, despite knowing the about the failure when she came to Parliament to force a vote on the renewal of the deterrent.
“Notwithstanding the immorality and expense of weapons of mass destruction, capable of incinerating cities, the Government’s stonewalling of legitimate questions about whether the system is working properly only fuels concerns about Trident.”
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Ransomware attacks are on the rise; corporations and individuals find their computers suddenly locked until a ransom is paid. The risks to data on such attacked computer systems are serious. Suzanne Kelly used a Freedom of Information request to uncover that the city council experienced a cyber attack.
Despite the city holding data on all 225,000 Aberdeen citizens and area businesses, a malicious ransomware attacker managed to breach the city’s anti-virus and firewall protections.
Ransomware attacks happen when ‘phishing’ emails or spam links allow a programme into a computer system which then locks data away, until the owner of the system pays a ransom or manages to bypass the attack.
The City had been asked:
“Has your organisation ever been the victim of a ransomware attack which meant that an external hacker encrypted a PC or device or network within your organisation and demanded payment in order to decrypt the device?”
They answered that there was one such incident in the past 12 months.
The City had to remove all software from the relevant device; a spokesperson advised:
“We re-imaged the device. Re-imaging is the process of removing all software on a computer and reinstalling everything.”
A subsequent FOI request will be made to determine if the responsible person or persons were identified, what the cost was to the city, and whether any data could have been accessed, if so what data, and what were the circumstances that allowed the ransomware in.
The City did not record how much money the attacker demanded as a ransom.
The City did not notify the authorities, although blackmail of any kind is a criminal offence, and citizens’ data could have been compromised. Computer World magazine warns that UK institutions are not taking ransomware threats seriously:
“Cyber criminals simply have to infect computer systems with malware designed to lock up critical data by encrypting it and demand ransom in return for the encryption keys.
“The occurrence of ransomware attacks nearly doubled, up by 172%, in the first half of 2016 compared with the whole of 2015, according to a recent report by security firm Trend Micro.
“Ransomware, the report said, is now a prevalent and pervasive threat, with variants designed to attack all levels of the network.
“Cyber criminals spearheading these attacks are creatively evolving on a continuous basis to keep enterprises guessing,” said Raimund Genes, chief technology officer at Trend Micro.
“Ransomware is typically distributed through phishing emails designed to trick recipients into downloading the malware, or through app downloads and compromised websites.”
“In order to prevent people becoming victims, Police Scotland is advising every computer user to ensure they are running the latest versions of security software; have their data backed up regularly to cloud services or devices not connected to their computer; be extremely vigilant about opening any unsolicited email; and visiting websites you are not familiar with, or do not have a business need to access.
“For businesses, Cyber Essentials is a new Government-backed and industry supported scheme to guide businesses in protecting themselves against cyber threats, and further information can be found by clicking on http://www.cyberstreetwise.com/cyberessentials/ “”
With thanks to Kenneth Hutchison, Parliamentary Assistant to Dr. Eilidh Whiteford
Banff & Buchan MP Dr Eilidh Whiteford has welcomed the release of the SNP’s Alternative Queen’s Speech at Westminster, saying it offers “a real alternative to Tory austerity.”
The Queen’s Speech today will highlight the Conservative Government’s legislative agenda for the coming year, and will likely include increases to tuition fees at English universities, and a weakening of the prerogatives of the Lords – where the Government has suffered a string of recent setbacks.
Speaking in advance of the Speech, Dr. Whiteford said:
“We now have a situation where the UK Government has failed to meet its own targets on key economic indicators. Debt, deficit, borrowing, productivity, innovation, trade, exports – you name the target, the Tories have missed it. Austerity has choked off economic growth – and the UK’s trade deficit is now at its worst position since 2008.
“The upshot of austerity is that, inevitably, it’s the poorest in society who pay the most. We’re calling for a modest – 0.5% – increase in public spending, which would help mitigate the worst impacts of austerity, and boost economic growth.
“The only way to tackle the deficit is to grow the economy, and it’s a lesson this Government has singularly failed to take on board. Choking off investment when it’s needed most is economic madness.
“With Labour mired in in-fighting, the SNP represents the only real alternative to a Tory Government. We want a fairer country, and that’s what we’ll keep fighting for at Westminster.”
Other proposals in the SNP’s Alternative Queen’s Speech include:
measures to boost exports
a Fair Tax Bill to crack down on tax evasion
a real Home Rule Bill, including devolution of social security, corporation tax, broadcasting and resource management
reform of Westminster, with replacement of the House of Lords by a democratically elected second chamber
an end to arms exports to Saudi Arabia.
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[Aberdeen Voice accepts and welcomes contributions from all sides/angles pertaining to any issue. Views and opinions expressed in any article are entirely those of the writer/contributor, and inclusion in our publication does not constitute support or endorsement of these by Aberdeen Voice as an organisation or any of its team members.]
With thanks to Kenneth Hutchison, Parliamentary Assistant to Dr. Eilidh Whiteford
Women campaigning for fair pensions ‘deserve a fair hearing’, according to the SNP’s Pensions Spokesperson, Dr Eilidh Whiteford. The comments come following a meeting between MPs and campaigners representing Women Against State Pension Inequality.
WASPI represent thousands of women born in the 1950s, who have now been hit twice by increases to the retirement age.
To date, the UK Government has announced no compensatory schemes for those who will lose out as a result of the changes.
While the SNP believes that the state pension age should indeed be equalised, the party has criticised the manner in which the UK Government has implemented its changes, in the face of significant opposition from opposition parliamentarians and civil society.
Speaking after the meeting with WASPI campaigners at Westminster, Dr Whiteford said:
“It is profoundly unfair that these ladies have worked their whole lives, only to be told that their retirement age is being raised not once, but twice. They deserve a fair hearing from the UK Government.
“The UK Government has railroaded these changes through parliament without heeding the real impact this will have on women born in the 1950s. Stephen Crabb’s statement to parliament seems to indicate that there’s still no change whatsoever to the Government’s position.
“Constituents affected by these changes should be assured, however, that I and my fellow SNP MPs will continue to keep pressure on the Tories to look again at how these changes are implemented.”
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[Aberdeen Voice accepts and welcomes contributions from all sides/angles pertaining to any issue. Views and opinions expressed in any article are entirely those of the writer/contributor, and inclusion in our publication does not constitute support or endorsement of these by Aberdeen Voice as an organisation or any of its team members.]
By Suzanne Kelly.
By Suzanne Kelly.
Armed, angry white men and women were invited by Trump to a rally in DC. Trump told the mob to march on the capitol and he’d be with them (he wasn’t).
Banff and Buchan MP Eilidh Whiteford has hit out, after a leaked UK Government document indicated that fishing is not considered a ‘high’ priority in the upcoming Brexit negotiations.
With thanks to Kenneth Hutchison, Parliamentary Assistant to Dr. Eilidh Whiteford.
Despite the city holding data on all 225,000 Aberdeen citizens and area businesses, a malicious ransomware attacker managed to breach the city’s anti-virus and firewall protections.