Friday , March 29 2024

It is not that complicated

How many times have you thought ‘Why does it have to be so complicated’? Looking for white sauce recipes I was confounded with requests to decide if I was OK with my data being used/searched for a better user experience. No I just want a sauce recipe. In the end I left the Internet and made something up. If something becomes too complicated should it be scrapped and started again?

Personally I have never experienced an enhanced Internet experience due to the use of cookies. There is just a sense of paranoia and irritation with adverts I have no interest in. Adverts are an increasing noise that I can’t turn down. The new Data Protection Act now called the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is meant to protect us from the misuse of our data. The simplest way of doing that is not to save my data at all, a transaction is carried out and then everything personal  is removed. There simple no possibility of misuse. Allow people to opt out of cookies instead of forcing them to accept them because we are supposedly protected. I don’t feel protected I feel invaded and exploited for the benefit of a marketing industry. This is a simple protective solution.

Politics is very similar. In the UK we are in the middle of Brexit (just in case you have been hiding under a rock and don’t know). The question was Do you want to Leave or Remain. The result of a referendum was to Leave the European Union. A simple answer to a simple question? No, because politicians, lobbyists, big business and analysts got involved. What kind of Leave do they mean? Hard Leave? Medium Leave? Soft Leave? Leave with access to the Common Market? Leave with access to the Economic Community? The options are limitless. No, those who vote leave just want to end our membership to all these different organisations, repeal The 1972 Communities Act and leave. Start again because they subconsciously recognise when the system gets too complicated and you don’t understand the rules the system is broken.

Have you tried to read The Draft Agreement? Even the full title is too long. As for understanding, well you would have to have a law degree which specialises in international and contract law. Then you need a library of documents that refer to every other treaty and legislation that have ever been written by the EU and imported into British law, and trust me they can know how to kill trees. Half of the document (all 585 pages of them) could be reduced if you just got rid of the blank areas. Then another third when you get rid of the repitition (boy do they like the sound of their own voices). However, you would think because it is so long it must be very detailed. Wrong. It is vague, with broad sweeping sentences that have to be read a couple of times to try and nail it down but end up not meaning what you think.

Here is an example Article 8 – Access to Networks, Information Systems and Databases.

‘Unless otherwise provided in this Agreement, at the end of the transition period the United

Kingdom shall cease to be entitled to access any network, any information system and any database

established on the basis of Union law. The United Kingdom shall take appropriate measures to

ensure that it does not access a network, information system or database which it is no longer

entitled to access.’

So when I read this I thought about mobile networks and anything on a computer that has ever been created since our computer age started, especially since the origins of the Data Protection Act. So on that basis is sounds like they want to return us to the Stone age and we have to rebuild everything. What the…? No this can’t be right read on. The next point that jumps out is Article 50 where, to summarise because trust me you do not want the full version, we have to pay what they charge for access and pay on a specified date. Is that in additional to the 39 billion we have already agreed or on top of? Oh Article 50 is then repeated verbatim in Article 53. At this point I threw my hands up and went to look for someone more qualified than me to explain it.

It is this confusion that allows people to miss important Articles such as 131, 132 and 164-169 which deal with whose law has supremacy and who is in control of the negotiations during transition.

The referendum, which I already consider The People’s Vote, asked a simple question, got a simple answer and then it became unnecessarily complicated.

The past two years have been spent creating The Draft. As far as I understood we were meant to be agreeing what we owe under our existing commitments, and working out what the notice period was from the various organisations we are a part of. The process of detachment, complete detachment from the European Union allowing us access to the rest of the world. However they didn’t do that they created the Draft.

Now it has become so confusing the politicians have got themselves in a knot and are tell us ‘We need another vote because you got it wrong?! We got it wrong? You’re the ones that over complicated it and wasted two years doing it.

Maybe the referendum was a vote for simplicity and the American election a vote for plain speaking (sorry but I think they got that wrong, have you read his tweets)? Maybe if we had the choice we would reject cookies. Maybe we are sick and tired of this complicated, bureaucratic quagmire that you have created.

In business there is a rule if you are not making a profit after a certain amount of time then it is time to shut down and start again. This should also ring true for this. People say that you can only change things from within. We’ll we have been within for 45 years and have found it impossible to get anything done due to the nature of the  bureaucratic monster the European Union has become. Yes we have opted out of certain things, but we have been involved enough to experience frustration and obstruction.

We were given two and a half years experience of membership, to decide if we wanted to stay in the EEC after we joined in 1973, when we had the referendum in June 1975. We had another 41 years of watching the European Union evolve into something completely different and the 37.7% has grown to 51.9%. That is a significant swing after 48 years of experience especially when take into consideration population growth. We tried it and now we want out. You had your turn and now we want ours.

This why we are angry, why we are shouting, why we reject the experts. We don’t trust you anymore, because you don’t listen.

We gave you a simple answer to a simple question, why can’t you understand that?

About Lisa M. Bridge

Lisa M. Bridge is a writer, online student and property restorer who is married with three cats. She lives in England. When she is not reading, studying or writing, she is trying to find her purpose in life...I know I left it round here somewhere. She used to work in accounts and payroll. Curious about everything, passionate about a lot and she really wishes things did not have to be so complicated.

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2 comments

  1. Andy hall

    We can’t and never will be able to make a purchase and then the company delete the personal information….lets say the manufacture of that washer you purchase 3 years ago identifies an issue and needs to do a safety product recall….or an airbag fault of a car you bought….its all covered under contractual necessity…and that’s before we start thinking about tax implications….but as with many things the EU set out to fix one problem with the GDPR and failed but instead created a dozen more on route…..mainly putting the fear of god in to everyone regarding their data. 100’s many be even 1000’s of companies will have our date, legitimately, as they have done for years and years but the GDPR hype is just another load of unnecessary EU rubbish tying many a small/medium size business up in red tape. All we needed was tougher penalties for blatant missus of data and not the OTT GDPR

    The use of cookies and ads does indeed provide a better user experience whether we like it or not but to see it we have to strip the internet down to the bare bones of what it is….its a great big advertising platform and without the ads the thing wouldn’t work….nothing in life if free and everything needs paying for. So although it may not always like we are getting the best user experience we are indeed getting a user experience by being able to use it for free in the first place. I got to this blog post following a link from the biggest website in the world, facebook, and did it for free! Someone needs to pay to run and host the site and I haven’t googled figures but my guess is facebook costs a fair old few quid to run. Without the ads there would be no income….without the cookies the ad companies couldn’t target ads and get the best return on their money….without either we would have a coin slot next to our screen to use the internet and have to feed it pound coins  

    Incidentally…I have an ad blocker, all be it turned down so it only blocks the most intrusive ads but it blocked 3 ads while I was reading this blog post on the daily globe…..the site set 5 cookies on my pc….and is requesting my name and email address to comment on a site that is none https…basically an insecure site which is now industry wide recognized high risk for user data breaches….come on daily globe…splash the cash and get yourselves a SSL

    As for over complicating the brexit….absolutely…the UK voted out and we just need to get on with it…..no where on my ballot paper did it say leave but still be tied to EU Regs or still pay under a Norway type agreement….Its time they got on with it and delivered the British public what they voted for.

  2. Loved the article. It might also be worth while pointing out that the 1975 Referendum was in respect of staying in the European Economic Community i.e. a Trading Organisation. The 2016 Referendum was to get out of a Political and Power Hungry Organisation. I’m sure that if there hadn’t been the Relentless Negativity and Rubbish Forecasting to intimidate the Electorate the Leave vote would have been higher.