UK MP calls for email disclaimer ban | Hacker News Reader

UK MP calls for email disclaimer ban

bbc.co.uk

10 pointstimthorn23 comments

> Sir Alan Duncan said the "meaningless missives" led to "forests' worth of paper" being wasted when emails are printed out.

Well stop printing out your sodding emails then, you clown.

To be honest, its a pretty useful practice for common management tasks involving face to face meetings.

As much as I love technology, its amazing how much bringing out a laptop or tablet reduces the quality of person-to-person interaction. A printout of the email relevant to the meeting lets you refer to the key points and make notes while still giving full attention to other participants. Sensitive situations just don't let you make compromises about that.

Is it better for the planet if I buy a tablet which lasts three years and bring that to the meeting instead?

Why would a tablet only last three years?

In any case, you can simply buy a laptop/tablet hybrid nowadays, instead of the laptop you'd buy anyway (exceptions made for people who need desktops or non-hybrid laptops for some reason, but they're an exception).

OS updates either aren't available or refuse to run on it, so it's still usable but not safe to connect to the internet.

The Surface comes with a guarantee of four years of updates (minimum).

I don't want the government spending my money on computers they don't need so that they don't need to print anymore.

I'm not sure what you intend with your post. I assure you I'm not responsible for laptop purchasing decisions in the UK civil service.

I didn't think you were. My point was that if they can quickly fix this issue with a simple law banning government entities from putting disclaimers at the bottom of an email I'd rather that than spending millions on new hardware to prevent printing. Considering most of these people will use Word + Internet Explorer all day money doesn't need to be unnecessarily spent on new hardware.

My idea was simply, when buying new laptops that are needed anyway, to choose hybrids instead of "regular" laptops.

Thing that bugs me the most about this... ...email has nothing to do with the web so why bring Tim B-L into it?

He used it to prove a point. I understood it as "I am proud of Tim B-L, and what he brought us. Let us be proud British, and not bloody asses, and stop this disclaimer non-sense."

To avoid appearing as the stereotypical grumpy ol' luddite. It's just a rhetorical device: "hey, I love the internet like the next guy, but...".

Politicians often use codified sentences as shorthand for concepts that are already well-understood by the rest of the House; some are more creative than others.

We need remedial ICT classes for politicians taking office. When I read things like this it makes me wonder how much other legislation is based on bogus knowledge of politicans of topics I know nothing about myself? One of the few good things about The House of Lords in the UK is the fact that there are some people in there with some know how of things outside politics.

What's so bogus about it?

Even if they were not printing out emails, the effect of disclaimers to a thread between staff of a few different companies is appalling. If using short emails to, say schedule an appointment, it can easily be worse than 1:10 ratio of signal to noise causing loss of important information.

I definitely support curtailing this nonsense legalism that has also led us to click through 100 pages of incomprehensible TOS documents. Its pretty clear we need political intervention to protect companies and their users in a sane manner compared to the path we are currently on.

10 minute rule bills rarely become law. It's a way for a politician to create publicity about something they feel strongly about.

Signature collapsing/removal isn't a thing in their email programs I take it. Thunderbird has an option to remove sigs on reply - it's a technically solved problem, it doesn't need a legal solution (that will be impossible to enforce).

You could do this by having a government standard though - they presumably have a statement of requirements for basic software (wordproc/email/browser). Add a requirement that any email program paid for with tax-payers money (which would include free ones installed or supported by gov workers) allows signature/banner/disclaimer cropping.

It's telling that when he was in control of a gov department he didn't have the disclaimer scotched.

"The legislation was accepted at first reading, but it is unlikely to become law in its current form without government support due to a lack of parliamentary time."

Translated: this Parliament is already over (elections are scheduled in a few months), so MPs are free to pitch in their headline-grabbing pet-projects, stuff that has no chance in hell to ever be taken seriously but might help their campaign prospects.

Email disclaimers are hokum, legally speaking. They're ordinarily seeking to impose a contractual obligation unilaterally. Unless the contract has been freely negotiated, in Europe, a party can't be bound to it.

The Economist covered this in 2011: http://www.economist.com/node/18529895

> Email disclaimers are hokum, legally speaking.

That's his point. They're bullshit and a half, but when emails are printed (which is more common than you'd think) they still waste paper and ink.

His point seems to be that it's a waste of ink and paper, not the legal aspect.

The article implies he did call them "useless", "meaningless missives" and "sluggish bureaucratic verbiage".

Seems to me like this is a problem that could be solved without legislation?

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