This is a guest post by Brian Mooney, about why he is opposing his council’s new parking permit system. My council, Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F), has annoyed residents with its new parking permit system, with swingeing rises of up to 328%. To add insult to injury, the new system is online only. Permit renewal is not as easy as before – you have to enter all your data from scratch. It has also been controversially designed to require the uploading of a scan of a driving licence. The Data Protection Act works to the principle of data minimisation. This exists for good…

StopWatch has launched a new report #GIRLSMATTERTOO, looking at women and girls’ experiences of the police. Here is a guest blogpost by StopWatch about the issue… A failure to safeguard female victims of crime. Unlawful strip searches used as a disciplinary tool. Unnecessary use of force during routine stops, often resulting in trauma. These are some of the shocking encounters with police experienced by racialised girls and young women surveyed for an upcoming StopWatch report. Under a participatory action model of research, a team of girls and young women conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 Black, Asian and Mixed-race girls and young women…