Understanding Nothing

Matt Wardman, asking what a “bicycling Parliament” would look like, compares the salary and benefits packages for Norwegian MPs to those in the UK. I’m perennially dismayed by how infrequently this sort of comparison takes place, particularly in Britain. It’s as if there’s a feeling of “We invented modern democracy and everyone should be studying us. What could we possibly learn from anyone else?”

I’ve recently been comparing the UK’s Freedom of Information laws to those of other countries, and the answer there, as always, is “quite a lot, actually” (Particular kudos on that one to Estonia where virtually all government information is automatically electronically published and doesn’t need to be specially requested.)

Generally, however, making such comparisons is trickier than it ought to be. Unless you can find a report from some organisation that published the results of an comparison of a particular area of information, it requires lots of searching through primary sources and trying to work out whether you’re comparing like to like. And that’s not including all the cases where what the laws say bears only a vague resemblance to what actually happens.

Wikipedia is a good starting place for high level information, and provides a basic (and generally well-referenced) comparison on economics, tax rates, and some legal topics (e.g. Freedom of Information and Age of Consent).  There are also good pages gathering country-specific information from a variety of sources (e.g. visa-free travel with a British passport), but on other topics (e.g. comparing the remuneration of MPs or equivalent around the world) the information is either well hidden or not gathered.

Is there some other source for this sort of comparative study, generally? If not, should there be, and if so where? Is it just a matter of seeding pages on Wikipedia for the relevant topic, and hoping people flesh it out and keep it up to date? Or is there a better alternative?

According to the Daily Mail, (via No2ID), the latest line from the UK government is that although you won’t be forced to have an ID card, if you opt out you’ll not be able to have a passport.

If this is indeed likely to be true, it’s yet another reason why people should renew their UK passports early, even if they don’t need to, and if at all possible, find a way to get a second passport. There’s probably quite a large percentage of the UK population who would qualify for an Irish passport, for example, but I haven’t noticed the press suggesting yet that people start investigating that.

Here in Estonia, I’m not sure what the status of ID cards actually is. I was originally told that they’re compulsory, but that there’s no penalty for not having one (as an aside, I really like the concept of laws with no penalty – it seems like a wonderful government hack). But recently I read an interview with an Estonian politician who said (IIRC) that they were originally compulsory, but that there was a lack of public support, so now you don’t need have one, but you’ll find lots of things simpler if you do.

One thing that they have gotten right in Estonia, however, is the privacy side. There is no centralised government database of information. Each department has its own, and there is full transparency back to the citizen. Not only can you see all your own data, you can also see who else has been looking at it.

So if the police had been examining your medical records, for example, you would both know about it, and have the right to find out why.

I wouldn’t recommend any hold their breath waiting for the UK government to do likewise…