The Queen's Speech - BBC at-a-glance Summary
May 18, 2016 7:56 AM   Subscribe

"The Queen has announced the government's legislation for the year ahead, at the state opening of Parliament. Here is a bill-by-bill guide to what is in the 2016 Queen's Speech."
posted by marienbad (15 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill (England and Wales):
...
Ofcom to have power to regulate internet-streamed material from outside EU


Well, that sounds scary.
posted by YAMWAK at 8:06 AM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Plans for a British bill of rights to replace the Human Rights Act will be published in 'due course' and subject to consultation" is more subtly frightening.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:19 AM on May 18, 2016 [8 favorites]


Consultation on future of Land Registry with a view to privatisation

Privatising the Land Registry would be misguided and wrong
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:19 AM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Exempting lawyers and other professional advisers from liability for threatening legal action in certain cases

What's all that about?
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:22 AM on May 18, 2016


For mefites outside the UK this provides a handy explanation of Queen's speechifying.

Posting mainly to avoid despairing at actual content of said speech.
posted by melisande at 8:23 AM on May 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


In a perfect world the Land Registry would be complete and public. It is incomplete and charges stop anybody using the whole dataset in a way which would expose the problems of land ownership in the UK (the Private Eye have done their best). I have no idea how privatizing it would help anybody achieve anything except make a bit of money. As an organization with a monopoly on its service, the chance of competition is precisely nothing. The Conservatives don't even believe in the market, just private ownership. It's sad, stupid, and futile for a paltry one-off £1.2bn.

I hope that the Land Registry is bought by a Panamanian company and held offshore.
posted by Emma May Smith at 8:40 AM on May 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh wow, there are some scary things in there. The one that really leaped out at me was "making head teachers, not councils, responsible for school improvement."

Sounds like a formula for defunding, sacking anyone who isn't toeing the line, and replacing with flacks. Eeek. (Someone correct me if that interpretation from this side of the pond is wrong.)

I do love that HM always wears white for the Opening now, provides such a focal point across that ocean of red and black.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:49 AM on May 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


Sounds like a formula for defunding, sacking anyone who isn't toeing the line, and replacing with flacks. Eeek. (Someone correct me if that interpretation from this side of the pond is wrong.)

It's about removing powers from local education authorities (school boards). The Conservatives want schools to be self-governing and wholly or semi-privatized. They don't want local government to have a role in education eventually, as they see local government as a hotbed of left-wing ideas. They u-turned on a policy which would have seen all schools forced to become "academies"--basically charter schools. It's a long-running battle for them which has been going on since 1988, but academies themselves were--amazingly--a Labour invention. (Labour were also big on faith schools, where government money is spent promoting religion to children through the medium of 'education'. Fucking hell.)
posted by Emma May Smith at 9:06 AM on May 18, 2016 [7 favorites]


Ah, close but no cigar for me. As in, yes it's awful but for different reasons than I'd thought.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:14 AM on May 18, 2016


I was actually pleasantly surprised by this. The nastiest bills came later down the list, but there were certainly things that I could see being positive.

My concern is that the tactic they've played with this parliament is to do a gigantic shift of the Overton window towards nasty at the beginning of the parliament, then give themselves lots of fertile centre ground to fight over in May 2020.
posted by ambrosen at 9:20 AM on May 18, 2016


All websites containing pornographic images to require age verification for access
FFS, not again. Is this going to mean:

(a) backing down quietly later, or
(b) imposing some sort of Very Important Mandatory voluntary option thing that in practice has no effect, or
(c) making ISPs and users deal with a big bunch of pointless shit just so HM Govt can look like they're Doing Something?

Obviously I'm hoping (a) or (b), except that these have both been tried in the past and this stuff still gets raised...
posted by doop at 2:31 PM on May 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


spaceport! :P
posted by kliuless at 2:38 PM on May 18, 2016


So far they've been less than clueless on net stuff.
REmember when they wanted to ban encryption?
So, the porn thing is going to be tiresome nonsense for a while until we figure out how to automate around it probably.

The spaceport stuff is interesting though.
I've been hoping to work more in that area, so time to get working on spaceport bids!
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:52 PM on May 18, 2016


"Measures to encourage investment in driverless cars, electric cars, commercial space planes and drones"

That all sounds like good stuff.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:04 PM on May 18, 2016


Sounds like a formula for defunding, sacking anyone who isn't toeing the line, and replacing with flacks. Eeek. (Someone correct me if that interpretation from this side of the pond is wrong.)


I think that, as with quite a few government policies (of any party, not just the Tories), there's a germ of a reasonable idea here, but it will go off half-cocked and be implemented in a half-arsed way, as they all do, and not have the desired effect.

Local education authorities seem all too often to be political fiefdoms with little or no expertise (or interest) in educating children. I would hope (probably in vain) that this is an attempt to give some influence and money to those who actually run the schools.

Mrs 43rd is a governor in a local junior school, and says that while giving more money and influence to the head and governors is welcome in many ways, handing the responsibility for a large budget to financial amateurs may not always be the wisest thing...
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 6:51 PM on May 18, 2016


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