[AlexanderHanff]

What a day. They wouldn't let me on the train because the doors closed as I got on the platform (screw up in the ticket office delayed me) so I was an hour late for my CoL Police meeting (they were very good about it though).

I explained that I would be presenting them with a case file on the day of the protest too and initially they thought it came under the jurisdiction of the communications commissioner (as you lot discussed earlier today) however I pointed out that the Home Office has stated it was the responsibility of the police and the Chief Inspector who was in the meeting actually agreed. So we may get somewhere next week with the case file. The police will be providing 10 officers throughout the protest in the interests of public safety and they will be providing some barriers too. They are perfectly happy about the protest and have no issues.

Now on to the House of Lords. First they serve fantastic coffee! But on to the serious stuff. My meeting with the Earl lasted almost 3 hours and it was an incredibly interesting discussion, he is very easy to talk to and I have most of our discussion recorded (we had a chat about it all first before I started recording).

I haven't listened to the recording yet (just got back very very long day) but I will go over either tonight or tomorrow and it will be put online within the next 48 hours (dependent on how much cleaning up I need to do on the sound.) Be aware in advance that there will be some background noise as we were in a room with other people as well, so you will have to put up with that.

Anyway, just wanted to update you all, it was a very positive experience today and a little spoiler for you, the Earl doesn't think the Phorm system will be deployed at any point in the near future and perhaps not at all, he also feels if BT do deploy it, it would be a very serious mistake.

Back soon,

Alexander Hanff
PS I will probably have a cold or something on event day because I got absolutely SOAKED today in London.