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Analyse the gov.uk budget document for kicks and re-politicization

The latest budget docs on the excellent gov.uk site is presented as a neutral document, as is Hammonds speech transcript.

What's fascinating is just how much politics are revealed in how the budget simplifies any rationale and narrative behind any of the figures and decisions. Furthermore, it's ironic that the balanced neutrality of the text transcript of Hammonds speech has much effectively redacted 'political' content.

I wonder what would happen if in the future the transparency that fuels the vision for gov.uk site (which Im a fan of) would start to include transcripts for Hammond and his colleagues media appearences and what the implications for this would be. Would his comments that imply more disabled people in the workplace are to blame for low productivity in the economy and not politically motivated dis-investment would also be redacted?

I'm intrigued on what criteria and basis is used to decide which elements of 'Spreadsheet Phil's' speech where removed and replaced with the [Political content removed] tag. A reference to the cough sweets gag remains for instance which I guess that's because was either too hilarious to miss or deemed not political. Some might say that budget gags are symptomatic of the contempt these highly specialised professionals have for the actual real lived experience of those impacted by budget decisions. Maybe they need the black humour required of soldiers on the edge of horror.

More subtle reading (just the tip of the cyberg) reveals how his statement that "Britain is genuinely at the forefront of this technological revolution." ends up in the docs as an objective to

* Establish the UK as a world leader in new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), immersive technology, driverless cars, life sciences and FinTech seems to end up playing out later in the actual government action to see Britain being at the forefront of regulating the revolution

``` * Emerging Tech: Leading the world in developing standards and ethics for the use of data and AI, and creating the most advanced regulatory framework for driverless cars in the world '''

Feels like this needs a mozilla x-ray goggle hack



last updated december 2017