

UK'S shadow Internet minister says she is "particularly stupid" - edent
http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/11/helen-goodman-mp-is-particularly-stupid

======
DanBC
Has the author considered that she's just playing devil's advocate?

I wish more people would consider the effect on clueless users when they
implement something.

This bit, in particular:

>Jonny Shipp: If you talk to your Service Provider, they’ll help you, I think,
mostly.

>Helen Goodman: How do you talk to them?

Is a valid point. Many people don't know who their internet provider is, nor
how to talk to them. And, be honest here, how many people have had a useful
experience when calling an ISP tech support?

She's trying to say that regular people cannot filter their own machines, and
thus someone else (the government) needs to do it for them. But we should use
that to say that she cannot understand why we cannot do it for them; that
government sanctioned filtering will fail in many ways and be harmful; that
the best thing to do is set up a quango and a help line and give away
filtering software for PCs; (combine that with a malware scan and maybe the UK
can reduce the ridiculous number of trijanned machines we have).

Having said all this, she actually is stupid and clueless, and in it's scary
if she has any power over IT.

~~~
Avenger42
> Many people don't know who their internet provider is

Shouldn't that be pretty simple to figure out? Even if "figuring it out" is
along the lines of "I didn't know who 'Comcast' was, so I stopped paying them,
and then my TV and internet shut off."

~~~
estel
When you're paying a single provider for a phoneline/TV/Internet you might not
think of them as your "Internet" provider.

------
bobsy
I do not find this surprising. I think a lot of MP's are somewhat unqualified
for the role they do. I think it is scary that politicians are put in charge
of thousands of employees and billion pound budgets without having to have any
experience managing in the first place.

MP's are in charge of procurement. Take defense. If you have no experience
procuring weapons / aircraft / whatever how do you know you are getting a good
deal? Sure there are advisers and whatever but surely before you approve say a
£10B pound submarine project you should know something about submarines, who
builds them and what is a reasonable figure to pay?

I feel as well that one person cannot be responsible for such a broad range of
topics like "Culture, Media, and Sport" which the Internet inevitably falls in
to.

Regarding the point about "children are more technically aware than their
parents" I think it is invalid. I think as a parent you need to involve
yourself in your children's lives. You need to get up to speed with what is
current. The excuse of "I'm old" or "I'm not hip / tech savvy / whatever"
doesn't fly. It really isn't difficult to ask Google how to filter web
content. Just as it wasn't difficult for me to phone up my TV provider and ask
how I hide the adult channels on my TV.

You don't need to be a genius to work a computer. You just need to apply
yourself a tiny little bit to do whatever it is you are trying to do.

~~~
DanBC
You make the decision, but you base that decision on advice from impartial
civil servants.

That's why it's important that civil servants are protected from unscrupulous
dodgy MPs, and allowed to do the real work while the MP just signs off the
contracts.

Most of the big decisions take much longer to go through than the MPs term in
that position anyway.

> It really isn't difficult to ask Google how to filter web content.

For some people it is difficult. Google try making it as easy as possible.
Filter sellers try making it as easy as possible (they have financial interest
in doing so) and yet we know it's still hard.

> Just as it wasn't difficult for me to phone up my TV provider and ask how I
> hide the adult channels on my TV.

I tried this. The only way I could get an answer was to use their Usenet
support group. Already they've prevented many people from getting a response.
When I asked the question they said it was impossible to do so. All the
channels are (I assume) subscription only, but they're in the menus.

> You don't need to be a genius to work a computer. You just need to apply
> yourself a tiny little bit to do whatever it is you are trying to do.

You don't need to be a genius to be a ballet dancer. You just need to apply
yourself a tiny little bit to do whatever it is you are trying to do.

~~~
nvarsj
> You don't need to be a genius to be a ballet dancer. You just need to apply
> yourself a tiny little bit to do whatever it is you are trying to do.

Come on now, this is a false equivalency. It's far easier to use a computer
than be a ballet dancer.

~~~
debacle
If you pretend to be a ballet dancer when you know nothing about ballet
dancing, you're pretty freaking stupid.

When you are the country's authority on ballet dancing, you're grossly
negligent and should be fed to mice.

~~~
aes256
Secretaries of State are not intended to be authorities on their respective
subjects. The decisions they make are typically completely abstracted from any
technical matters, and they have a wide range of expert opinion to call upon
when necessary.

You could apply the same criticism to pretty much anyone in a managerial
position.

I can guarantee you there are high-ranking executives in leading IT companies
who have less practical knowledge of computing than the average 13-year-old.

------
toyg
>> for this best to work, particularly when children are more technically
aware than their parents, they know how to get around better than mum and dad,
that actually there has to be something which is really simple and which kind
of delivers itself to your door

So basically, when children are smarter than us, we should invoke a higher
power to keep'em in their place. Where did I hear that before...

(and this from the "progressive" party, you can imagine how bad the others can
be. We're all doomed.)

~~~
adnam
Since when was the Labour Party "progressive"?

~~~
JonnieCache
_> when was the Labour Party "progressive"?_

1918-1995

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clause_IV>

~~~
mibbitier
Is nationalisation of the entire economy to state ownership really
"progressive"? That clause has some pretty nasty overtones IMHO.

~~~
billyjobob
You may not be familiar with the history of nationalization in Britain.
(Apologies if you are.) We used to have many nationalized industries. They
didn't work very well, but their prices were cheap. The Tory party and the New
Labour party privatized these industries, and now they work even less well,
and also charge very high prices and make massive profits for the prime
minister's friends while still relying on massive taxpayer subsidies. So for
us in Britain a return to nationalization would indeed be progressive.

~~~
mibbitier
If we hadn't privatised industries like British Leyland, British Steel, etc
etc etc, we would be bankrupt and in the grips of unions.

Maybe you weren't born when this was going on, but "prices were cheap" is
idiotic. British leyland, British steel, etc etc were some of the most loss
making, unproductive industries. If by "prices were cheap" you mean "were
massively subsidized by the government so we were paying through the nose for
them anyway", then agreed.

Look at the 1970s. Strikes. Union action. Rubbish piling up on the streets,
and power cuts. That is what nationalization means.

Since privatization, how many times has your water supply or energy supply
failed?

Even the worst privatization (British Rail) is arguably far better than it was
before privatization.

One of Thatchers biggest achievements was to take on the millitant socialist
unions, and she won. Overwhelmingly. She set us free from their grip.

"Profit" shouldn't be a dirty word. I love companies to make profits when they
provide a good service. What I dislike are millitant unions striking for
endless pay and pension increases, whilst at the same time providing a
horrible service.

I hate to descend into politics, but you are presenting as "fact" what is
actually a very biased and extreme left wing view, which thankfully is pretty
outdated in the UK now.

~~~
toyg
>> If by "prices were cheap" you mean "were massively subsidized by the
government so we were paying through the nose for them anyway"

Correction: _higher-band taxpayers_ might have been paying through the nose.
People paying less tax (i.e. the less well-off) were paying less.

>> Even the worst privatization (British Rail) is arguably far better than it
was before privatization.

{{POV}}

Besides, the privatized UK rail network is shambolic when compared to
(officially or de-facto) nationalized companies on the Continent.

>> One of Thatchers biggest achievements was to take on the millitant
socialist unions, and she won. Overwhelmingly. She set us free from their
grip.

{{POV}}

I hate to descend into politics, but you are presenting as "fact" what is
actually a very biased and extreme right-wing view, which thankfully is
getting less and less popular in the UK now.

~~~
mibbitier
> Correction: higher-band taxpayers might have been paying through the nose.
> People paying less tax (i.e. the less well-off) were paying less.

Ah yes, because as long as it's those nasty greedy rich people overpaying for
inefficient state monopolies, that's fine?!!

If it's considered "extremely right-wing" to believe in the freedom for
individuals to own property, free enterprise free market, and smaller
government without state monopolies locking out competition, then I guess I'm
a right wing extremist.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> "extremely right-wing" to believe in the freedom for individuals to own
> property

You are conflating removing "the freedom for individuals to own property" with
state-run railways and healthcare? Seriously? You just lost all credibility
with me.

~~~
mibbitier
If you nationalize everything, and run everything as a state owned monopoly,
then individuals can no longer own companies.

That was the extreme position of the Labour party.

 _Obviously_ some things need to be state owned. I would say that health care,
just like the police service would be one of them. Railways are debatable.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
So clause 4 goes further than I thought:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clause_IV>

But there are several positions here:

a) The actual behaviour of the UK Labour in most of the second half of the
20th century. i.e. Essential services nationalised, state players in strategic
industries, and private enterprise for the rest. Wanting to nationalise the
corner shop _would_ be an extreme position.

b) The stated goals of clause 4.

c) State ownwership of all businesses. To see how this is different from b, I
refer you to the abovelinked article.

d) removing "the freedom for individuals to own property" (your phrase). I
have lots of property that isn't corporations. I'm sure you do too. People own
houses, cars, laptops, clothes, teaspoons, etc.

to conflate _b_ with _d_ as you have done is a cartoonish strawman.

~~~
mibbitier
Socialism is just a path to Communism.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
No it is not, and it is "extremely right-wing" to believe that. It's more
moderate to believe that things are what they are, not what some scaremonger
tells you they are going to turn into some day.

It may be true that the path to communism first goes to socialism. But ... so
does the path to socialism. Democratic countries can and do become more and
less socialistic over time, in effect debating how socialistic they want to be
at the polling booth. They don't turn into communist dictatorships.

Do you for instance, believe that equality of marriage, allowing gay people to
marry each other, will lead _inevitably_ to marriages involving three people
and a horse? Would you argue against equality of marriage on that basis? It's
the same kind of illogic.

------
spindritf
She may be dumber than a brick but of all Internet communities I would expect
HN to sympathize with the point she's making. Are we seriously entertaining
the notion that googling for a piece of software then downloading it from some
unknown source and installing on your computer with privileges to inspect
network traffic is proper user experience just because we don't like the idea
of an Internet filter?

~~~
ANTSANTS
That's not a problem for a government agency to solve, that's a problem for an
OS vendor to solve with proper sandboxing and a clean permissions system.

Are you seriously arguing that it is acceptable to allow your government to
censor and (even more) trivially monitor your internet connection for, well,
_any possible reason,_ let alone one in support of a policy that wouldn't be
particularly effective even in the best case scenario at achieving its goal?

~~~
ZoFreX
> Are you seriously arguing that it is acceptable to allow your government to
> censor and (even more) trivially monitor your internet connection for, well,
> any possible reason, let alone one in support of a policy that wouldn't be
> particularly effective even in the best case scenario at achieving its goal?

No, they aren't, and nowhere in their comment do they do this. This is a clear
false dichotomy argument on your part.

------
estel
It's a gross over-simplicication to say that the shadow minister for culture,
media and sport is the "Internet Minister". Whilst the internet definitely
comes under this department, in a year that this department was also
responsible for delivering the Olympics, I don't know why I expect her be any
more knowledgeable about the Internet than Archery.

~~~
objclxt
Indeed - the submission headline is particularly stupid (in case it changes,
right now it reads "UK's Internet Minister is particularly stupid, can't use
the net".

It's not the fault of this MP, it's the fault of the entire government (both
present and previous) for setting up a department with such a huge remit. The
Minister for CMS is responsible for the arts (film, stage, fine art, etc),
sport (public funding thereof, etc), and media ( _everything_ under the sun:
radio, TV, printed media, electronic media, etc).

It is virtually impossible for whoever occupies the position to have mastery
in every field he/she is responsible for. Terence Eden might think she's not
very bright when it comes to the internet, but there's a lot of people in the
arts despairing about both the incumbent and shadow CMS minister as well!

Fundamentally, this problem isn't going to go away for some time. It's the
product of merging several different posts and positions in an attempt to
reduce the civil service budget.

~~~
edent
The "particularly stupid" description comes from Helen Goodman herself. I
agree that the department is far too over reaching.

~~~
objclxt
Oh, I know - I just did a double take, because for a minute I thought we
actually _had_ an internet minister. Government policy when it comes to all
things digital is a total shambles, which is a real shame because on the one
hand you have some parts of the civil service actively engaging with things
like open data, open source, etc, and on the other you have the politicians
being...well, politicians!

------
epo
It is not clear whether she is genuinely techno-challenged or was playing
devil's advocate to see if these 'experts' could explain things in ordinary
language. I hope the latter, I suspect the former.

~~~
dazzawazza
As a minister it only matters that she is clever enough to take expert advice
and run with that. She's there to represent us, it's unfair to ask her to have
an in depth knowledge of any portfolio that she could possibly be given.

Having said that MPs, like the general population, seem to undervalue expert
advice and value 'gut feeling'. This is especially true if their gut senses
media controversy or 'giving the opposition a stick with which to beat them at
the next election'.

While it would be nice to see a tech savvy person in such a position they may
well not understand the social implications of policy (such as most people
don't know how to search in the internet for a filter let alone understand
what a filter is) and that would be equally painful to watch.

~~~
89a
> it's unfair to ask her to have an in depth knowledge

Double clicking install.exe is now considered "in depth knowledge"

~~~
slig
Where do you find the proper "install.exe" to use? How do you know it's the
one you want? How do you set it up? How do you know it's not a
crapware/malware/whatever? How do you know it's up and running? How do you
prevent your children from disabling it? ...

------
lucisferre
I think the two that are discussing this with the MPs are taking the entirely
wrong tactic. They are suggesting that child filtering and protection is not a
problem on the internet as it stands today. They are, quite franky, completely
wrong.

The problem they should talk about is the difficulties and serious pitfalls
that the government will have to deal with if they actually want to filter and
control the internet. This isn't something they can just flick a switch on. It
will impact the freedoms of millions of their citizens. And all because a
portion of todays parents are not interested in actively parenting, monitoring
and educating their children (and themselves about the internet). I think that
is rather sad.

------
louischatriot
Reminds me of Christine Albanel, former French Minister for Culture, talking
about the "openoffice firewall". There is something fundamentally broken in
our democracies, in that politicians are not appointed on the basis of
skill/experience in a domain but on the basis of their importance within the
party.

There are of course exceptions, but I observed that the less important a field
is (and politicians view the Internet as NOT important), the more true this
is.

------
trhtrsh
Blatantly sensationalized headline, packed with 1 incorrect capitalization, 1
misleading ministry title, 1 misquote, and 1 completely made up false fact: #1
on HN.

------
josephlord
Just in case anybody doesn't realise:

'Shadow Minister' means the official opposition's spokesperson on the topic
represented by the real Minister. If Labour were to win in the next General
Election the Labour Party leader would become the Prime Minister and may
appoint a 'Shadow Minister' to the ministerial role they were shadowing or any
other at their discretion.

------
moioci
You guys realize that the "shadow minister" of anything is not really in
charge of that thing, right? A shadow minister is an opposition MP assigned to
harass and criticize the real minister of whatever it is. IN US terms, making
Paul Ryan the shadow Secretary of State would not actually put him in charge
of US foreign affairs.

------
lenkite
I think democracies suck - they are popularity and wheedling contests that put
the charming or greasy folks in power and very rarely someone who is equipped
to do their jobs.

Would love a meritocracy where people who campaign for posts must really
satisfy some educational or excellence requirement.

------
gregsq
I find it amusing that our general perception of politicians, and of their
real efficacy is such that no one can seem to work out if she's really playing
dumb or not. The fact that it seems entirely feasible that she could be, says
quite a lot about our expectations.

Still, from the point of view of many public service departments, though I'm
not sure about this one, a yes minister parrot is not necessarily a bad thing.

------
Zenst
Its not supprising, concerning but there again in the UK we have just elected
heads of UK police forces out of a pool of people who have no policing
experience with a vote turn out below 20% in most cases.

Sad thing is this will only mean more playground insult opertunities.

But the fair point is that she admits her limitations, would it not be more
concerning if there was somebody who did not know there limitations.

------
lwhi
I think the author is missing the point. She's replying in a factitious manner
to highlight how the majority of households aren't technically adept.

------
grannyg00se
She's taking the position of someone who can't understand "use search then
download". I think it is reasonable to say that if you are concerned about
filtering, you need at least that level of competency to bring a computer into
your home. Some tools require parental supervision and you are expected to
know how to provide that supervision.

------
dutchbrit
The thing is, what most of you seem to have forgotten, is her age. She's 54!!
Her generation didn't grow up with personal computers. I know a lot of people
in their 50's that don't know much about computers. Anyway, with her role, she
obviously needs to know a few things about internet.

~~~
eropple
My father is 55 and is as adept as any non-programmer I've ever met.

Age is not an excuse for incuriosity.

------
ommunist
This is how good old Law of Parkinson works. She is on top of her career. She
has to be completely ignorant in order to be there.

Tony Blair has to learn this, he is too clever to be a PM. As advisor to
President Nazarbayev he is positioned more properly.

~~~
dangravell
Do you mean the Peter Principle? Parkinson's Law is "work will expand to fill
the time allocated" or words to that effect.

------
namank
This is why entrepreneurs (oh you don't like that word? ok then how about
'thought leaders') need to infiltrate and then disrupt the government.

------
tonyblundell
Wow, talk about misquoting. She's clearly trying to illustrate a point by
playing the part of a non-internet savvy parent.

------
switch007
I couldn't help but think of The Thick of It.

~~~
teh_klev
Ha beat me to it, and spot on.

------
suriyawong
As

------
kingmanaz
Jewish ethnic nepotism.

