Sunday 13 November 2011

Zero

Q1 What is the probability that Brodie Clark woke up one morning, fancied a change, and decided to throw the borders open?

Q2 Pillorying Brodie Clark and forcing him out of UKBA is bad politics, bad management and bad manners. What is the probability that all this pillorying and forcing was Theresa May's idea?

Hint Since 2005, we have had three Prime Ministers, five Home Secretaries and only one head of the home civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell.

Background reading

Zero

Q1 What is the probability that Brodie Clark woke up one morning, fancied a change, and decided to throw the borders open?

Q2 Pillorying Brodie Clark and forcing him out of UKBA is bad politics, bad management and bad manners. What is the probability that all this pillorying and forcing was Theresa May's idea?

Hint Since 2005, we have had three Prime Ministers, five Home Secretaries and only one head of the home civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell.

Background reading

Thursday 10 November 2011

Whitehall on trials

Appendix
Home Secretary, somewhat late in the day, herewith the appendix promised in my open letter to you dated 8 November 2011.

The fourth enquiry – into the efficacy of the biometrics used by UKBA and the Home Office generally – has at its disposal a lot of evidence in the form of correspondence with the Home Office, the UK Border Agency, the Identity & Passport Service, the Home Office Scientific Development Branch, the Information Commissioner and the Information Rights Tribunal available here, herehere and here. The enquiry may also be assisted by reading the reports on biometrics here, here and here.

The hypothesis that the enquiry needs to test is that:
For 10 years the Home Office have been investing public money unwisely in projects which depend for their success on mass consumer biometrics technology being reliable – it isn't.
There is a lot of respectable evidence suggesting that the technology chosen by the Home Office is not reliable and no respectable evidence suggesting that it is. The enquiry may conclude that for 10 years public money has been wasted.

In the matter of Brodie Clark, the implication is that the Home Office's chosen biometrics cannot enhance border security. It is therefore inept to fire the man for not using it.

The further implication is that you, Home Secretary, have been lured by your officials into talking nonsense about strengthening and relaxing border controls – to the extent that those controls depend on biometrics, the technology available cannot enhance border security and can only weaken it by diverting UKBA staff into useless procedures.

There is so much evidence available that the enquiry may welcome some guidance on the best routes to take as they travel through it. It is suggested that the first route they take should be as shown in the timeline below. It's hard to stay awake as you read through it but there is a dénouement to look forward to, so please persevere.

Facial recognition biometrics and smart gates at UK airports
August 2008 Back in August 2008, the UK Border Agency started a trial of so-called "smart gates" at Manchester Airport. UKBA issued a press release about the trial here. Don't bother clicking on the link, the press release has been deleted.

With smart gates, travellers walk into one end of a booth, stick their ePassport (electronic passport) in a reader and stand in front of a camera. Face recognition software compares the face on camera with the "template" stored on a chip in the ePassport. If the two images match, according to the computerised threshold tests, then the exit gate opens and that's the traveller done, successfully through passport control.

No UKBA passport control staff needed. They can be laid off. There will be considerable cost savings and – the matching process having been performed by computers – it will be more reliable than mere human beings, the security of the border will have been enhanced.

That was the idea. In the event, there was some adverse coverage of the equipment in the Daily Telegraph and on the BBC News website:
19 August 2008 – Machines to scan faces of travellers at UK airports
19 August 2008 – Passengers test new face scanners
4 October 2008 – Security fear over airport face scanners
5 April 2009 – Airport face scanners 'cannot tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and Winona Ryder'

But that was just unionised UKBA staff moaning about losing their jobs. Wasn't it?
So far so simple. UKBA, playing it by the book, have got this new equipment that takes advantage of the facilities offered by ePassports. Does the equipment work? They don't know in advance. So they conduct a trial. Depending on the result of the trial, either the idea can be dropped, because the equipment doesn't work, or it works well and UKBA can start to deploy these smart gates at airports elsewhere.

24 February 2009 Six months after the start of the Manchester Airport trial, UKBA announced a 10-point delivery plan, which comprised 10 "pledges". Pledge no.7 was, by August 2009, to "have completed delivery of new facial recognition technology in 10 terminals, giving British passengers a faster, secure route through the border".

(UKBA's 10-point delivery plan used to be available here, on the bia.homeoffice.gov.uk domain. Don't bother clicking. The domain has long since disappeared. There is what looks like an accurate copy available here down at the bottom of the page.)
Presumably the Manchester Airport trial must have been a success. Presumably the equipment was found to work, presumably it was established that it was a wise investment of public money to deploy smart gates equipment at 10 airport terminals around the country, and presumably it was accurate to assure the public that their experience of automated passport control would be "faster" and "secure".

16 April 2009 Always worth checking these things. Someone wrote to Sir David Normington, permanent secretary at the Home Office, reminding him of the uninterrupted history of failure of biometrics based on facial recognition, asserting that the public would be sceptical about smart gates, and saying:
I suggest that the way to overcome that scepticism is to place the matter in the hands of the Office of National Statistics. The use of mass consumer biometrics in public services, I suggest, should be based on official statistics. If rigorous academic evaluation suggests that mass consumer biometrics have a part to play, well and good. If not, then don't let's waste our time and money on them.
There was no answer from Sir David.
26 June 2009 But a couple of months later, an answer came through from Brodie Clark, Head of the Border Force at UKBA.

"Your letter has been passed to me to respond", said Mr Clark, and:
UKBA commenced testing our Automated Clearance System (ACS) at Manchester and Stansted in August and December last year, to assess the accuracy and reliability of the technology. The Home Secretary’s pledge to introduce gates at a total of 10 UK airport terminals by August, includes the two current sites at Manchester and Stansted. It will provide a further opportunity to test the technology on larger numbers of passengers, across a broader range of locations. It also means that the gates will be available to British and EEA citizens throughout the busy summer holiday period.
Asked to confirm that smart gates would be "faster" and "secure", was Mr Clark, on behalf of Sir David, going to try to get away with saying only that they were "available"? Asked to confirm that the Manchester Airport trial had been a success, was he going to say simply that the technology would benefit from further testing?

No. Mr Clark adds:
The test’s findings demonstrated considerable improvement in this field [facial recognition], and confirmed that the technology could be applied successfully in a one-to-one (verification) mode*
and
We recognise that the vast majority of the travelling public are legitimate, law-abiding passengers and believe that the gates will deliver an improved service† to our customers whilst allowing us to deploy our staff intelligently to areas of greater risk.
----------
* Some of us harbour the suspicion that Mr Clark had to be leant on to write that.
† As we now know, the only way to deliver an improved service is to abandon use of the smart gates.
3 February 2010 The history of biometrics based on facial recognition really is a history of failure. If UKBA now had reliable facial recognition equipment, then some sort of a technology revolution must have taken place. Someone, in a letter dated 4 August 2009, asked Brodie Clark to publish the revolutionary Manchester Airport trial results. The same request was made of his boss, Lin Homer, chief executive of UKBA, in a letter dated 8 August 2009.

The trial results were not published then and still haven't been published. There is still no respectable evidence in the public domain that UKBA's facial recognition technology works.

On 3 February 2010, Lin Homer wrote:
UKBA is currently trialling the use of automated gates using facial recognition technology at 10 sites across the UK ... The technology used has proved reliable within the operational environment ...
and
Evaluation of Manchester gave us enough confidence to proceed to expand the trial.
23 February 2010 Lin Homer kindly arranged a meeting, which took place at the Home Office on 23 February 2010. The meeting was attended by someone and by Karen Kyle (UK Border Agency), Marek Rejman-Greene (Home Office Scientific Development Branch), Alex Lahood (UK Border Agency), Henry Bloomfield (Identity & Passport Service), and Mike Franklin (UK Border Agency).

No useful information about the reliability of UKBA's facial recognition technology was imparted at the meeting.

In his informal minutes of the meeting, Alex Lahood wrote:
Marek Rejman-Greene explained that we are under no illusion that the systems are 100% accurate but that there is adequate evidence/information about the level of performance to warrant embarking on a trial.
A year after the 10 "pledges" of the UKBA delivery plan assured the public that the technology works, Lin Homer and Alex Lahood are still talking about trials. Why?
It is normal to publish the results of trials. It is suspicious when trial results are not published.

The efficacy of biometrics has been asserted ever since 9/11, over 10 years ago. Public money has been spent throughout that period and continues to be spent on projects which depend for their success on biometrics being reliable.

Not once have the Home Office supplied any trial results proving that they are investing public money wisely. For all we the public know, our money is being wasted on technology that doesn't work.

If it doesn't work, using that technology cannot improve the security of the UK border. In which case the Home Secretary and the Shadow Home Secretary are talking nonsense when they say that failing to do biometric checks impairs the security of the border. And it is nonsensical to pillory Brodie Clark and force him out of UKBA for not using technology that doesn't work.

5-7 May 2010 By this stage we have had it confirmed to us by UKBA press releases, newspaper articles, letters from Brodie Clark and Lin Homer and the informal minutes produced by Alex Lahood that UKBA conducted trials of facial recognition technology at Manchester Airport.

Mr John Vine CBE QPM is the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency. He conducted an inspection of Manchester Airport between 5 and 7 May 2010. In his report, Mr Vine lists a number of problems with the smart gates in use there. And then, at para.5.29, he writes:
We could find no overall plan to evaluate the success or otherwise of the facial recognition gates at Manchester Airport and would urge the Agency to do so [as] soon as possible.
It is hard to believe that the Home Office have been wasting public money on biometrics. But if we must entertain that thought, must we also make room for the thought that the Home Office haven't even been conducting the trials they keep talking about? How else are we to understand the Independent Chief Inspector's words, "We could find no overall plan to evaluate the success or otherwise of the facial recognition gates at Manchester Airport"?

Whitehall on trials

Appendix
Home Secretary, somewhat late in the day, herewith the appendix promised in my open letter to you dated 8 November 2011.

The fourth enquiry – into the efficacy of the biometrics used by UKBA and the Home Office generally – has at its disposal a lot of evidence in the form of correspondence with the Home Office, the UK Border Agency, the Identity & Passport Service, the Home Office Scientific Development Branch, the Information Commissioner and the Information Rights Tribunal available here, herehere and here. The enquiry may also be assisted by reading the reports on biometrics here, here and here.

The hypothesis that the enquiry needs to test is that:
For 10 years the Home Office have been investing public money unwisely in projects which depend for their success on mass consumer biometrics technology being reliable – it isn't.

Oborneiana – Theresa May and Brodie Clark

Peter Oborne had an article published on the Daily Telegraph website dated 9 November 2011, 'Theresa May’s attempts to pass the buck make for a distressing spectacle'. The article provoked a strong desire to help him.

Not to help him just once:
You really couldn't be more wrong about Whitehall, Mr Oborne, if you tried.

Whitehall has become a law unto itself, unelected, unaccountable, out of political control, wasting public money by the lorryload, operating in secret, to an unknown agenda. (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmpubadm/715/715vw.pdf, see Ev W7)

Look at FiReControl, the project to establish regional centres for 999 calls to the fire brigade. The National Audit Office estimate that a minimum of £469 million of public money has been wasted. Do you seriously believe that that is all John Prescott's fault? (http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/10/its-all-johns-fault.html)

Look at NPfIT, the NHS computerisation plan that is costing us £11 billion. Even the intervention of the Prime Minister can't turn Sir David Nicholson's head. (http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/10/less-for-more.html)

Never heard of Sir David Nicholson? That's the problem. Massive openness needed. More reporting of Whitehall needed, in the nationals, by Peter Oborne and others.

Ministers do what their officials tell them. Otherwise they get spat out, like Liam Fox.

Theresa May is trussed up by her officials. The question isn't why she didn't follow the sensible plan Mr Oborne advances. It's why Whitehall didn't. And there, Mr Oborne, we have to look to you to investigate and report. (http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/11/brodie-clark-alone.html)
Not just twice:
Mr Oborne

As you must know, senior officials don't get booted out of Whitehall just for incompetence. That's one of the recruitment criteria. And they don't get booted out for disobeying ministers. That's the job. So why was Brodie Clark suspended/fired/"resigned"?

It's a rare event and there's only ever one explanation -- vested interests are threatened.

What vested interests?

Perhaps Mr Clark will tell us on Tuesday. Or perhaps you will start doing some investigating and reporting. I've made a start for you -- http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/11/brodie-clark-alone.html Look out for the connections between Mr Clark, Raytheon, IBM, Morpho, CSC, VFS Global, ...
But three times:
Mr Oborne

As you must know, Whitehall doesn't like a public fuss. They don't want Theresa May and Yvette Cooper talking nonsense about biometrics in the House. It makes Whitehall look incompetent. Horror.

Think what happened the last time. Sir David Normington and Sir Gus O'Donnell called in the police to find Chris Galley, the Tory mole in the Home Office. Damian Green ended up in the nick for nine hours and the House of Commons was invaded by the police for the first time since the Civil War.

So the Home Office won't have wound up poor Theresa May and pointed her at the microphones unless there was a serious requirement to take the risk of making a fuss.

Brodie Clark must have been about to say something. Or John Vine must have been about to reveal something. That's what Mr Vine is paid to do and he's good at it.

Whatever the threatened revelation, it was enough for O'Donnell, Normington, Ghosh and maybe others to press the panic button.

Don't waste our time, Mr Oborne, talking nonsense about ministerial responsibility and an inviolably perfect Whitehall. Get on with finding out what rattled Sir Gus O'Donnell's cage and Sir David Normington's and Dame Helen Ghosh's -- especially hers, as she's likely to be appointed by O'Donnell and Normington as our next head of the home civil service.

You have a job to do, Sir. In the national interest. Get to it.

http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/11/brodie-clark-alone.html
http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/10/its-all-johns-fault.html
http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/10/you-just-cant-keep-good-man-down.html
http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/10/whose-bust-is-it-anyway.html

Oborneiana – Theresa May and Brodie Clark

Peter Oborne had an article published on the Daily Telegraph website dated 9 November 2011, 'Theresa May’s attempts to pass the buck make for a distressing spectacle'. The article provoked a strong desire to help him.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Brodie Clark alone

Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Open letter
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Marsham St
London W1 SW1
8 November 2011

Dear Home Secretary

Brodie Clark alone
I write to suggest the right course of action to follow now.

You have started three enquiries. You must start a fourth.

Without that fourth enquiry, although you may keep your job, your name will be tarnished.

With it, even if you lose your job, your reputation will be enhanced. You will eventually be recognised as having struck a blow in favour of the businesslike investment of public money and against the present practice of Whitehall wasting it by the lorryload. And you will eventually be recognised as having struck a blow in favour of democracy and against the present practice of rule by an unelected and unaccountable Whitehall.

The media are convinced, to a man and a woman, that the biometrics chosen by the Home Office, to defend the border, work. Increase the use of those biometrics, and you get a better defended border, they say. Reduce it, and border security automatically suffers.

If that relationship between the chosen biometrics and border security holds, then you’re guilty, Brodie Clark is guilty, you’re both out of the job and your names will be Mudd.

But does it? Does that relationship hold true? Why do the media believe in the efficacy of the Home Office’s chosen biometrics? Why do they make that assumption?

If you assembled the entire corps of Whitehall editors, home affairs editors and political correspondents of the press and of the broadcast media, you wouldn’t find a single biometrics expert among them. Not one. They don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to biometrics, and they haven’t bothered to check.

Which means that when you launch your fourth enquiry – into the efficacy of the biometrics chosen by the Home Office – the corps shouldn’t find it difficult to change their tune.

Once they realise that there is a substantial amount of respectable evidence against the biometrics chosen by the Home Office, the media story will change. Once they realise that there is no respectable evidence in favour of these biometrics, the media will start at last to ask the right questions.

Why has so much public money been wasted on investments in a technology that doesn’t work? Why have the public been consistently misled by politicians about its efficacy?

Nobody expects politicians to know anything in detail about the “false non-match rates” and the “receiver operating curves” that constitute the study of biometrics. We just expect you to be properly briefed. So who has been misleading the politicians? There are only two possible answers. The biometrics suppliers themselves – but they presumably don’t have daily access to ministers. And the Whitehall officials who do have access to ministers. Officials who have apparently acted as unpaid salesmen for certain biometrics products and who have given part of the industry an unsolicited and undeserved testimonial.

For about 48 hours after the story broke on Friday evening, the media focused on Brodie Clark alone. One man. Decades of experience in policing and prisons, a man capable of running 20,000 staff doing a dangerous job in the interest of national security, a man at the height of his powers – he didn’t go barmy one day and just decide to stop bothering with passport checks on a whim.

It takes one small change in the reporting of this case and Brodie Clark becomes a hero. If he is described correctly as a professional having to do a very hard job – quite beyond the powers of any of his detractors – while being lumbered with useless technology by a bunch of dilettantes in Whitehall, then the focus changes.

The focus has already changed, of course, the media now have you in their sights. They have skipped from the Head of the Border Force to the Home Secretary without taking into account any of the intervening people responsible. You have to get the media to start joining the dots.

Brodie Clark doesn’t run UKBA on his own.

He’s one member of the Board. What were the other directors doing while he was supposedly impairing national security? Looking the other way? What were the non-executive directors doing? Do they turn up to Board meetings just for the sandwiches? What about the Chief Executive of UKBA, Robert Whiteman? He was appointed in July 2011. Lin Homer, the previous Chief Executive, moved on in December 2010 to become Permanent Secretary at the Department of Transport. Why did it take so long to find a replacement?

UKBA is an executive agency of the Home Office. How come we haven’t heard from Dame Helen Ghosh, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office? Is she responsible for UKBA or isn’t she? And where’s Sir Gus O’Donnell while the shrapnel’s flying? He’s Head of the Home Civil Service. He’s responsible for everything. He’s the man with a budget of £710 billlion of public money for the year 2011-12. Why don’t the media find out from the horse’s mouth what’s going on? This is an operational matter. The media should be quizzing the operators.

And that’s where your fourth enquiry comes in. Who chose these useless biometrics? James Hall. No-one’s ever heard of him. One of Whitehall’s numerous imports from Accenture, James Hall was Chief Executive of the Identity & Passport Service (IPS) until the 2010 election, when he was allowed to go quietly into retirement. No public recriminations against him for having spent £292 million on the National Identity Service with nothing to show for it. Nothing whatever. By contrast, some of the newspapers are keen to tarnish Brodie Clark’s good name, deprive him of his bonus, gloat at his salary and question whether he should be allowed his pension.

James Hall reported to Sir David Normington, Permanent Secretary at the time at the Home Office. He retired at the end of last year, his KCB was uprated to a GCB and he is now our First Civil Service Commissioner. He is garlanded. Brodie Clark is pilloried. But it’s Sir David who had operational responsibility for IPS and UKBA ever since John Reid pointed out that the latter was not fit for purpose. No questions about Sir David’s pension. Why?

The Home Office was advised on biometrics by the Home Office Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB) and by external consultants. Marek Rejman-Greene was the biometrics expert at HOSDB at the time and has moved on smoothly to advise the Cabinet Office on identity assurance. Still in the job, still on the public payroll, and no impertinent questions about his bonus, if any, for Mr Rejman-Greene.

Who are the external consultants? PA Consulting. See Helping the UK Border Agency International Group to deliver a world-class biometric visa service on the PA Consulting website. That’s the same firm of management consultants who charged £42 million for project management on John Prescott’s FiReControl fiasco, a project which the National Audit Office (NAO) assures us will waste a minimum of £469 million of public money.

Who provides the biometric technology being used by the Home Office? Morpho. Once again, no-one will have heard of them. They used to be called "Sagem Sécurité". They're a subsidiary of Safran Group, the French equivalent of BAe. And they're the world leaders in biometrics, selling their unreliable wares to Australia, the US and India as well as us and presumably the poor unfortunate French.

PA Consulting and Morpho would benefit from a close inspection by the UK’s media quite as much as, if not more than, you and Brodie Clark.

You would have some powerful support for a fourth enquiry from the NAO and from the chairmen of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (whose excellent report on the Home Office’s ID cards plan was rudely and unwisely ignored), the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration Select Committee. Margaret Hodge at PAC has a wide selection of adjectives to describe the wisdom with which public money is spent by Whitehall and Bernard Jenkin at PASC doesn't seem to be too impressed with the quality of public administration in the UK either.

You would also have the support of the unions. They want to protect their members’ jobs. Faced with the prospect of replacing thousands of UKBA frontline staff with computer technology that doesn’t work, you, too, may want to protect the border by protecting their jobs.

The Guardian, of course, won’t support you. Not because you’re a Conservative. But because they believe in a state where a grateful populace is wisely served by an all-knowing cadre of public officials. Men from the ministry. Whitehall. Which is why their editorial today asks everyone to turn the rhetoric down.

Don’t start the fourth enquiry and then wait patiently for its findings to be announced in six months time. Make them report publicly once a week, orally and/or with interim written reports and plenty of press releases. The only reason Whitehall have been able to waste our money on unreliable biometrics for the best part of ten years is that they operate in secrecy.

Behind closed doors, Whitehall seem to make one unbusinesslike, irresponsible and downright illogical decision after another. They desperately need to operate more openly to keep their noses clean. And we the public desperately need them to keep their noses clean – we can’t afford for Whitehall to carry on wasting our money like this.

The enquiry could find itself going to unexpected places. Don’t be surprised to see the European Commission figuring large. The European Commission's white paper on electronic identity will be one important source. The Commission's plans for Project STORK will be another. And the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also will figure large. Via the eBorders scheme, the DHS get access to all UK API data (advance passenger information) whenever we fly, whether domestically or internationally.

eBorders must be included in the enquiry. Partly because it depends to a large extent on biometrics. And partly because this is the Home Office system which manages UKBA’s watchlists for terrorists and criminals which Brodie Clark is accused of not using.

The BBC’s File on 4 programme, ‘Open Borders?’, explains why Mr Clark might well not use eBorders.

The last government appointed Raytheon as the lead contractors on eBorders. One of the first acts of the coalition government was to fire Raytheon for breach of contract. It’s never been explained what breach took place. IBM have now taken over as lead contractors.

For £1 billion, in the 21st century, we’re getting a computerised system that would disgrace the 19th century.

eBorders relies on little scraps of paper being delivered to the desks of UKBA border force staff. Sometimes, these little bits of paper go astray. And then anyone can get into the country, even “Sheikh [Raed] Salah, an Arab-Israeli activist, [who] flew into the UK last month [June 2011], days after Home Secretary Theresa May had signed an order denying him entry to the UK”.

Let’s see the media grill Raytheon and IBM as well as Brodie Clark and you.

We elect politicians. You politicians seem to be immediately trussed up by officials who control your every move, only allow you to take the calls they put through, attend the meetings they arrange, see the letters and papers they choose. We do not elect officials. But who has the power? Certainly you politicians keep taking the responsibility. But power? It looks as though that lies with Whitehall. That is the unacknowledged fact of our present democracy. It is not the democracy the public thinks it partakes in.

There’s a lot riding on the fourth enquiry. I append an outline of the first topic to research. There’s a lot more to come. If you would like it.

Yours faithfully
David Moss

Brodie Clark alone

Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Open letter
Secretary of State for the Home Department
Marsham St
London W1 SW1
8 November 2011

Dear Home Secretary

Brodie Clark alone
I write to suggest the right course of action to follow now.

You have started three enquiries. You must start a fourth.

Without that fourth enquiry, although you may keep your job, your name will be tarnished.

With it, even if you lose your job, your reputation will be enhanced. You will eventually be recognised as having struck a blow in favour of the businesslike investment of public money and against the present practice of Whitehall wasting it by the lorryload. And you will eventually be recognised as having struck a blow in favour of democracy and against the present practice of rule by an unelected and unaccountable Whitehall.

Tuesday 1 November 2011

494 years later ...

... a profitable 22 minutes and 53 seconds may be spent by all, listening to the audio of Chris Chant's talk, given to the Institute for Government on 20 October 2011, available here and here:

In the first nine minutes, Mr Chant declares war on the Whitehall dispensation under Pope Augustine.

REFORMATION I
The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (Latin: Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum), commonly known as The Ninety-Five Theses, was written by Martin Luther in 1517 and is widely regarded as the primary catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. The disputation protests against clerical abuses, especially the sale of indulgences …

On the eve of All Saint’s Day, October 31, 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, according to university custom.
REFORMATION II
OK, we don’t call it “reformation” now, we call it “transformational government”. But that’s what Mr Chant’s talking about, isn’t it. He didn’t nail his theses to the door, they were posted as an audio stream. But it comes to the same. And we don't buy indulgences any more, but we might as well, it might be more effective than paying PA Consulting and Computer Sciences Corporation.

What chance did Luther stand, with the powers ranged against him? To any sensible observer at the time, none. Ditto Mr Chant. But Luther won. Mr Chant (and we) might, too.

494 years later ...

... a profitable 22 minutes and 53 seconds may be spent by all, listening to the audio of Chris Chant's talk, given to the Institute for Government on 20 October 2011, available here and here:

In the first nine minutes, Mr Chant declares war on the Whitehall dispensation under Pope Augustine.

REFORMATION I
The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (Latin: Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum), commonly known as The Ninety-Five Theses, was written by Martin Luther in 1517 and is widely regarded as the primary catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. The disputation protests against clerical abuses, especially the sale of indulgences …

On the eve of All Saint’s Day, October 31, 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, according to university custom.
REFORMATION II
OK, we don’t call it “reformation” now, we call it “transformational government”. But that’s what Mr Chant’s talking about, isn’t it. He didn’t nail his theses to the door, they were posted as an audio stream. But it comes to the same. And we don't buy indulgences any more, but we might as well, it might be more effective than paying PA Consulting and Computer Sciences Corporation.

What chance did Luther stand, with the powers ranged against him? To any sensible observer at the time, none. Ditto Mr Chant. But Luther won. Mr Chant (and we) might, too.