William Heath’s blog

Here’s my letter to my GP after two annoying leaflets appeared in the post:
NHS Summary Care record

Dear Dr W.
I’ve just had two leaflets from DoH about “Care record guarantee” and “Your health information”.
I said to you when you first took me on a a patient I do not consent to my health record, or [...]

Dave Birch asked me to talk in a panel about “Identity and the Consumer” at the Digital Identity summit on 9 June. I kicked off with yet another introduction to buyer-centric commerce, customer-managed relationships or vendor-relationship management (VRM)…

A year after Godalming Friends adopted the “database state” as a corporate concern, the main party political manifestos published this week suggest the tide may have turned over control of personal data. On Monday we had:
We will explore how to give citizens direct access to the data held on them by public agencies, so that [...]

In the “longest suicide note in history” 1983 Labour manifesto Michael Foot promised the UK a national, broadband network. But Mrs Thatcher won of course. Now, in an article in the Daily Telegraph, Gordon Brown promises:
targeted, strategic action by government…to bring super-fast connections to households and businesses to every corner of the country
Of course [...]

I was wondering (we we all might) about the privacy policy of this vast DIUS/Learning & Skills Council database called MIAP. It issues an obligatory unique learner number to everyone (making it easy to cross reference with obesity databases and delinquency-forecasting tools like ONSET), and creates a central lifelong learning record, accessible to vast numbers [...]

Waitrose has (belatedly, months after everyone else did) pulled its ads from Fox News (says Telegraph).
“We have pulled it because we believe it’s the right thing to do. Our customers’ views are important to us”
Indeed it is, and indeed they are. Next: stop stocking “West Bank” produce grown on illegally-settled farms for the same reasons.

Here’s my latest note in correspondence with Helen Bray at ONS about the 2011 census:
Dear Helen Bray
Thank you for your letter. I’m still uneasy about this and have sought advice.
The immediate advice is that that your letter is disingenuous, in that it refers to the duty of confidentiality but fails to mention the extensive [...]

Please find enclosed a cheque for £300.00 in full and final settlement of your claim. Yours sincerely
Orange UK Legal Department
No signature, not even on the cheque which has a mutli-coloured bubbly stamp. No apology, of course. I reserve my right to continue to grumble. But on a more positive note:
- the new Nokia E75 works [...]

What an excellent voice of America: winner of the White House blog competition for a public health message on H1N1:

Peace breaks out with Orange. What tipped the balance was their late but pretty comprehensive response to my DPA subject access request.
It excludes location data, but has all the contractual and customer-service data for my real account, and also the phoney account impersonated in my name. It must be some 800 pages. The phoney [...]