F. intentaba retener en sus oídos el sonido de los árboles que se mecían a lo lejos. El viento cruzaba sobre los tejados y en menos de 1 minuto, pero más de 25 segundos, las cortinas de la casa se elevaban. La luz entraba y los cuartos se hacían blancos, los objetos desaparecían. Son los juegos de F. contar cuánto tardan el viento y la luz una tarde de sábado.

Aquel día, justo cuando un rayo de luz le llegó al dedo índice de la mano derecha, percibió un olor amargo, avinagrado, similar a fruta en descomposición, azúcares podridos. Recordó los pavos, los loros, las gallinas, la inmensa variedad de aves que vivían en un patio a la sombra de un roble; los recordó porque el suelo siempre estaba cubierto de frutas y los emplumados se paseaban picoteando duraznos, papayas, mangos, hasta que éstas se deshacían sobre la tierra. Aquel particular olor a tierra, aleteo y fruta podrida le había quedado en la memoria. Por supuesto, también el increíble cambio morfológico de las frutas: sus colores, sus formas, del amarillo al café, del rojo al negro, la inflamación que deformaba la perfecta redondez o el perfecto equilibrio de sus cuerpos. F. podía vivir con ese olor. F. se durmió recordando los amarillos y los rojos del mango, también, el sonido del picoteo sobre la papaya.

Abrió los ojos de golpe porque algo chocó contra la ventana, cuando se asomó pudo ver una paloma, cayó sobre la canaleta con el cuello quebrado. F. logró sacarla con un artilugio diseñado a partir de palos y telas; por el camino la dejó cerca a un tronco rodeado de varios centímetros de hojarasca. Frente al desayuno, en el restaurante de siempre -donde lo habitual era que los manteles fueran rosas o azules y a las 6 de la mañana la luz estaba baja y escalaba por una esquina de la calle, la luz subía lento y solo iluminaba las piernas, los zapatos, los pantalones, las rodillas de los comensales y el café humeaba y las decenas de pares de ojos cansados caían sobre las tazas, sobre los cubiertos o se dirigían al ventanal esperando a alguien amado y desaparecido- percibió la mesa levemente inclinada hacia atrás y la izquierda, por ese motivo el café, el plato y el pan hacían una forma irregular y extraña sobre el mantel arrugado y manchado. Las mesas, los rostros, las piernas y los ojos se inclinaron, de repente, hacia atrás en perfecta armonía. Todo estaba inclinado y la lluvia perenne de esta ciudad inició entre el ruidajo cotidiano de los pesares y las noticias políticas. F. salió de allí siendo víctima de aquella inclinación y con el leve aroma a podrido que persistía desde ayer.

Tercera vez que se lavaba las manos y el rostro, incluso el cuello, fue la paloma muerta con borbotones de sangre del pico o sus pensamientos sobre las frutas, pero el olor a azúcar podrido y aleteo permanecía. Se vió al espejo, cabeza inclinada. Ingresó a su oficina inclinada y cada cierto tiempo debía acomodar su cuerpo debido a la inclinación del mundo. M. cruzó frente a la oficina en una silla de ruedas y sostuvo la mirada en el rostro de F., le llamó desde el silencio y le dijo que había enfermado de angustia y debía prepararse para una incapacidad porque sus intestinos no funcionaban por el miedo, y además, el hígado no metabolizaba a la 1 de la tarde y a esa hora comía, solo a esa hora. M. se despidió en silencio, desde su silla inclinada y vieja.

Durante el trayecto en el transporte público -repleto de personas húmedas por la lluvia, personas que esperan, personas que duermen, personas feas, personas amargas y personas con hambre- F. se quitó su abrigo, húmedo y mucho más pesado, entonces, el aroma a podredumbre dulce se elevó desde alguna parte del cuerpo. F. -quien ha estado luchando con la inclinación- supo que era su aroma, su cuerpo emanaba el olor a azúcar podrido, aleteo y tierra; era probable que su pensamiento, su recuerdo hubiese puesto ese olor en su piel o algún órgano. F. consideró necesario erradicarlo, o al menos, disimularlo para sí misma; decidió bajar del transporte y caminar sin abrigo.

Atravesando el parque, embriagada por el vinagre dulce, sintió una punzada aguda y dolorosa en el abdomen. F. se agachó, desde el impulso animal, dispuesta a parir como sus antepasadas, acurrucada y sin queja. Puso sus manos frías y aromáticas entre las piernas y emergieron miles de lombrices cubiertas de barro. El mundo hizo el último movimiento para alcanzar la inclinación ideal, y F. -en su lucha postural atravesada por el dolor de parir un alúd- se dobló hacia atrás como una rama joven y verde, y las raíces retorcidas de una passiflora desgarraron sus músculos y sus órganos de forma violenta y vertiginosa para quedar arraigadas al suelo.

The word DeCoTech has been floating around more and more in recent times: it stands for “Democratic Control of Technology”, and it’s the idea that digital technology should be conceived, designed, developed, maintained, and monitored with the participation of the people who are going to use it, who are going to be impacted by it, or who have an explicit democratic mandate from the communities and individuals involved.

In this article, I will summarize the concept concisely since I see it used often behind closed doors, or referenced under this or other names in pamphlets, blog posts, books, and papers that never take the time to lay down exactly what we are talking about. This includes a recent strategy paper I published, which made me realize both the galvanizing power of this concept and the need to systematize what it means.

Currently, most new digital technology in the West is produced without democratic oversight. A few centralized investors direct its creation, and a network of big or small private actors organized in business ecosystems execute the vision. State actors intervene by either investing money to reinforce the private sector in alignment with their agenda, supplying their technologies, or regulating such technologies after they have been released on the market. State actors with a liberal regime often act within this space with limited accountability to the public. The consequence is that policymaking is determined by the conflict between specialized civil society and tech lobbying groups.

It’s a bit more complicated than that, but we are not here to talk about the status quo. We are to talk about what we want to build.

Democratic Control of Technology is an umbrella term for a series of radical changes within the current power structure to shift control of technology towards workers, users, communities, and old or new public institutions. It is not a single demand, nor a blueprint, but a general term to identify a winning condition for political actors. Since Democracy is not a binary condition, but a fluctuating property of a system, a spectrum along which we can evaluate the fairness of a process, DeCoTech can be achieved through a multiplicity of paths and result in many different new political entities and institutions.

DeCoTech is not a new invention: the implicit or explicit idea of having democratic oversight over digital technology has existed for a long time. DeCoTech, though, is useful to bring together viable answers to the problems of the current moment. It is a catalyst to aggregate political forces towards a shared direction.

Now, all this talk about power structures, actors, and systems is very abstract. Leaving DeCoTech as a general, pluralistic term, let’s look at some existing phenomena that express a degree of DeCoTech.

Let’s start with environments in which the users and the developers come together to design a certain technology or its deployment. Software developed through participatory design, data cooperatives, platform cooperatives, or any situation in which related communities are treated as stakeholders with equal power to the developers is an expression of local DeCoTech.

Another form of existing DeCoTech is tech workers’ resistance against corporate decisions on technology. Examples include No Tech for Apartheid, resisting their employers’ collaboration with the genocidal military forces. In a non-democratic setting like private corporations, the expression of democracy passes through workers resisting the authoritarian power of the employers, forcing them into complicity with the development of harmful technology. While the people directly impacted by the technology are not involved in the process (also because such technologies are designed to kill them, and I imagine the governance meetings would feel quite tense), the tech workers stand as a replacement through a desire for solidarity and justice.

Some degree of DeCoTech is also obviously expressed by state regulations around technology, even though they have limited and delayed impact. This is primarily due to institutional capture by tech lobbying and limited political will to oppose private interests in favor of the popular interest.

Now, what would an increased level of Democratic Control over Technology look like? There is an endless array of proposals, which I won’t even try to categorize. Some want to put the State in charge of planning technological development but under new institutions. Some want to put workers’ power in the workplace at the center. Some others want decentralization of technology at the community level, with every neighborhood vibecoding their own hyper-custom stack. Some proposals are an overarching economic overhaul; some are concerned with single, narrow aspects.

An example I like to bring up when I speak about DeCoTech is the way, as a society, decided it was good to test all medical drugs before putting them on the market. In the 19th century, the proposition of extended tests for all commercial drugs was unthinkable. It took several incidents with thousands of victims to lead to the formation of dedicated institutions to validate what was going to land on the market. The whole industry reshaped, and not necessarily for the better: the costs of testing led to a huge concentration of capital in what we now call Big Pharma. Despite this and other shortcomings, we can all agree that we prefer to have the guarantee that the medicines we buy at the pharmacy have had a degree of testing.

Why can’t we do it for commercial software? Well, we are already doing it for a small portion of it. There’s auditing for privacy reasons, or for critical software that, if it malfunctioned, would kill a lot of people, like the one that runs planes or cars. These auditing systems have been under attack for a long time by corporate interests, but they show that where there’s a will, there’s a way. CEOs, if presented with this proposition, would kick and cry endlessly and make up claims that it’s technically unfeasible. It’s easy to understand why they don’t like this kind of scrutiny: code won’t be an industrial secret anymore, and it will be under continuous public scrutiny. No more shady practices, dark patterns, reckless deployments, secret surveillance of users or workers, and a permanent end to the “move fast and break things” ethos.

Private companies needing to ask for permission, rather than forgiveness, is but a small building block, a first step towards DeCoTech.

Verifying and validating the impact of all the software put in production can be a daunting task, and most likely depends on the State having an incentive to protect Democratic power, which, these days, doesn’t seem to be the case. Big Tech has captured many State institutions in the USA and Europe, embedded itself into the military, and fundamentally sabotaged the electoral process, Janonism notwithstanding.

Let’s approach DeCoTech from a different perspective. Tech Workers within tech companies are the potential frontline of DeCoTech for the very nature of their position in the productive process: they observe directly how every decision of investors and managers is translated into requests to alter software. A degree of DeCoTech happens when tech workers, collectively, decide to contest “how” a technology is developed. A much higher degree of DeCoTech happens when they contest the “what”, such as the previous example with No Tech For Apartheid.

A high degree of DeCoTech will be achieved when tech workers have, in most companies, the power to consistently decide what technology is developed and for what purpose, in coordination with the adopters of such technologies. This will require entirely new institutions to be designed in a way that the development process itself is conditioned and constrained by the consensus and approval of all parties impacted. This is not a trivial effort, and I don’t want to offer a simplistic and underwhelming solution here, such as a deliberative assembly or a wishy-washy cooperativemaxxing.

One last branch of DeCoTech I see being discussed is in the spaces of economic planning: appropriating the logistics technologies that, for example, Amazon or Walmart use to predict and plan a good portion of the global economy, and using them in combination with the plenty of economic planning models and simulators to move away from the unstable, unreliable, and self-destructive economic system we live under. CyberSyn in Chile, despite its enormous limitations, was definitely a good example of DeCoTech.

I want to conclude by highlighting how a lot of people have the feeling DeCoTech will become a central point of discussion in the immediate future, at least in Europe. While I’m writing, the stocks of many tech companies are in freefall. I don’t know if this is the AI bubble bursting or not yet, but it’s clear that the current trajectory is not sustainable. Tech Bros are to blame. More generally, the neoliberal order is shattered, and whatever Trump is going for doesn’t seem built to have a lasting impact if not within the USA, then at least in the rest of the world. Politicians don’t have good answers and are entrenching themselves either in a gruesome defense of the dying order or in a frontal, irrational assault on the remnants of the establishment.

Soon or later, there will be a strong demand for a new way of doing things, and we need to be ready with a compelling vision to heal society from the madness we are going through.

Given the harm and destruction Big Tech has brought in the last few decades through surveillance, militarization, pollution, and the capture or destruction of public institutions, DeCoTech is not only a political project, but a necessary condition to insulate society from the damage digital technology is capable of, and to turn this potential in service of the fight against the enormous challenges that climate collapse and other ecological threats pose to civilization.

You may have been wondering what happened or where I disappeared to. Honestly I just got overwhelmed with planning, preparing and thinking about this seasonal relocation to Colorado.

Here are the highlights since Day 119:

• I started my final to do list of tasks to complete before my move
• I went to California for a little over a week. It was an incredible trip filled with kayaking, hiking, biking, pumpkins, running, whale watching, beach strolls, and much more!
• I had my final post op appointment and everything went well. My recovery has felt so much better since the last check in
• I went to Chattanooga for a little while and probably for the last time this calendar year

Lately, I have felt a lot more optimistic than I have in a long while. I still miss and think of my dog every single day. My other pup unfortunately can’t join me just yet in my mountain adventure, but I hope he can soon after the initial move. I am trying to figure out what is next, what I hope to accomplish, what I want to learn and experience. I still can’t fully believe this is happening. I have not even started packing. I officially leave in 27 days so there is a ton to figure out. I hope you stick around while I finish out whatever messy chapter this was, and start the next one.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office — but will return at the end of the month.

Some hip-swaying beats for today's jaunts.

I've been practicing a bit of belly dancing again. Admittedly in my own way. I pulled a tambourine out for this one. It was most enjoyable.

Weekend update:

Weight has held the same. Being sick made me lazy with my cooking, and I foolishly turned to cup-of-soups. I imagine by tomorrow I'll have dropped 3-5 pounds of water weight.

Realizing how ick they make me feel, I've upgraded my egg plan because I did enjoy the “broth” aspect. I will be initiating an egg drop soup plan. I'll add beef a few days out of the week and continue with the tuna/sardines mix on others. I need to remember butter on my next grocery haul. I think the simplicity will get me back in habit. It also means very easy cleanup.

I'm surprised by my desire to eat soup a lot. I'm not really a big soup eater in general. I think I might dehydrate some of the beef for the chew factor. Otherwise, I'll just end up gritting my teeth a lot. Perhaps I should go back to chewing on miswak or a licorice root. Sensory-wise, I find a lot of satisfaction in shredding a tough piece of jerky. My innate oral fixation is definitely rearing its head. Le sigh.

Storms are coming tonight. I plan on enjoying them to their fullest. Now back to dancing.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

Today's musical inspiration.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=k20r8dA8PcI&is=XJPxiAdcLFKSNHwl

“Claude / ChatGPT, please help us respond to this email. Use our voice and research the points under discussion.”

A complex email had arrived from a client during an important negotiation. With other work to attend to, we asked AI to help us prepare a response.

The research brought back information that might have taken a colleague several hours to find; the drafts had the suspicious courtesy of a form letter. Sentences stood neatly beside one another without making an argument. Some phrases made little sense, while others sounded plainly generated.

We kept trying to explain what was wrong. An hour and a half later, the research was useful and the email still needed to be written. We had asked for our voice, yet each reply took us further from the thought we wanted to convey.

How much of a voice can be supplied before the writer has decided what needs to be said? The research had given us facts. What we made of them, and what we were prepared to say to the client, remained ours to decide.

What the empty box leaves to us

The business user is making choices before knowing quite what those choices will mean. How should the task be framed? Which model should receive it? Where a setting for effort is available, how much should be applied? Claude Opus 5, in our experience, could produce writing so verbose that returning to an earlier model became preferable. Even then, a model that was useful for one part of the work might leave us struggling with another.

Each decision sits inside an interface that makes the whole undertaking look deceptively simple. A reply arrives beneath the question, apparently complete, while the user is left to work out which information deserves attention, which sentences have earned their place and whether the time spent has brought the work any closer to its purpose. To build a useful workflow, we first have to see the separate tasks contained within the request.

The distance between finding and knowing

When researchers in South Korea asked employees where generative AI had made their work more efficient, information search and collection came first. The survey covered 1,090 people with experience of using the tools at work; considerably fewer identified developing new ideas or plans.[1] The findings record workers’ perceptions, and they describe work undertaken with the tools available in 2025.

Consider what sits between those two activities. A search may return a useful document, an unfamiliar regulation or a fact that changes the terms of a negotiation. Someone must still decide whether the source can be trusted, how much weight it deserves and whether it belongs in the argument at all. Our email made that distance visible: the research gave us material we could use, while the repeated drafts made it harder to say what we meant. How many other tasks have we been treating as a single act when the advantage lies in only part of it?

The lesson left on the desk

Among the results were import figures for a product in Japan and South Korea: the sort of information that can take a considerable amount of time to find across languages and sources. There was work to do with it. Some sources needed checking, some might have been discarded, and the useful ones could have helped shape an argument of our own. Instead, the research was passed back into the system to produce a reply. Its talent for finding had been given authority over what came next.

That decision deserves a second look. A post-mortem for a single email might seem excessive, until we remember how many emails a business answers in a year. Where did the research save effort? Where did the drafts begin to consume it? A few honest answers could spare us from repeating the same experiment each time a complicated message arrives.

The larger evaluations are beginning to take professional work seriously. OpenAI’s GDPval draws on tasks from 44 occupations; its initial version judges a single attempt, leaving out the growing context and successive revisions of work in progress.[2] It cannot tell us what we learned from working on the client’s email or whether that knowledge helped with the next email. Yet the question facing someone at their desk is more intimate. After the scores have been published and the model has been chosen, can we learn enough from one attempt to make the next one wiser?

Rajan Anand
Co-founder, Octaflow Labs

Sources

1. Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training, Job Redesign and Innovation Strategies in the Generative AI Era. Survey of 1,090 employees who had used generative AI at work, conducted in July 2025. The findings record workers’ perceptions.
2. OpenAI, Measuring the performance of our models on real-world tasks. The limitation described applies to the initial one-shot version of GDPval.

#AI #KnowledgeWork #Research

I have been to two AEW shows in the last six months, and both opened with a pre-TV Ring of Honor match.

“Hmm,” thought I. “Seems like Ring of Honor is kind of like AEW’s minor league! I’d be interested in checking that out!” Because, as a rule, the smaller the stage, the weirder the stuff that happens, and I’m all about the weird.

I keep seeing little clips and stuff of wrestlers I like but don’t see enough on AEW (like Lio Rush!) in Ring of Honor matches.

But here’s what I’m not clear on. What is Ring of Honor and, furthermore, how does one access its content? I know they have shows. I think they have shows. Anyway they had an ad for one on the AEW website once. And I assume those clips are coming from somewhere.

I went to the website which is spectacularly uninformative. There is something called “ROH on Honorclub” which you can subscribe to for 10 bucks a month. It seems to be a weekly show? Which consists of, what, ROH matches that have been taped at AEW events? Or what? If I were to subscribe to Honorclub, what would that 10 bucks a month get me? Does that include the pay-per-view events, or not?

There are no answers. Only questions.

My point here is just that the entire thing feels very insider-y, very “if you know, you know,” but I don’t know, and I wish to know, and there seems to be no way to find out.

Which is fine, I mean, you do you, ROH, but I guess I wonder why this thing even exists if they don’t seem to actually want anyone to access it.

Je pense souvent à cette phrase de Mercédes dans le Comte de Monte Cristo.

Elle dit exactement : « Comment pouvez-vous vivre ainsi, sans rien qui ne vous rattache à la vie »

Mes dépressions reflétaient l’idée qui se cache derrière cette phrase.

Sans un centre, une ancre, une attache, la vie ne fait plus sens.

Vivre pour les autres ou vivre pour soi ? En sachant que sans l’autre, le soi n’est pas grand chose.

J’aimerais ça. Vivre pour quelqu’un.

Ho appena finito un colloquio con un ragazzo. Prima di salutarci decidiamo di fermarci insieme per un cattè e un dolce, in uno di quei locali storici del centro raffinati che sembrano custodire un pezzo della città. Ci sediamo e ordiniamo. Poco dopo un giovane addetto al servizio arriva al tavolo con il dolce. Sta per appoggiarlo, poi si ferma e, con grande naturalezza, mi fa notare che forse quel dolce potrebbe non essere adatto e propone subito di cambiarlo. Tutto qui. Una cosa piccola e talmente “normale” che non dovrebbe nemmeno meritare di essere raccontata. E invece mi colpisce. Forse perché siamo diventati tanto bravi a parlane e molto meno a praticarla. Accorgersi dell'altra persona prima che sia costretta a chiedere, fare attenzione senza invadere, rispettare una differenza senza trasformarla in distanza. Nessuna domanda. Nessuna differenza da sottolineare. Nessuna identità da interrogare. Nessuna gratitudine da esigere. Un dolce cambiato, un movimento che non cambia niente e che rivoluziona tutto.

ok let’s unload

First time I watched Gilmore Girls, I identified with Rory. Being young, doing things for the first time, Over the subsequent rewatches, over the years, I’ve identified instead with Lorelei, gradually of course!

And now, twenty six years later, I’m starting to feel more and more like Emily.

And one day, I will die.

Monday Night Football.

My game of choice tonight comes from the NFL and has the (4-3) Seattle Seahawks hosting the (5-2) Chicago Bears in a game scheduled to start at 7:15 PM CT. Given my schedule it's unlikely that I'll be able to stay awake for the entire game, but if I can stay with it through halftime I'll be satisfied.

And the adventure continues.

The holidays are here and it’s awesome. However, out of the three fall/winter holidays I like the least it’s Halloween. I liked celebrating it when I was a kid, but by the third grade I was bored of dressing up. To this day, I don’t remember why.

Maybe I found out buying candy at the grocery store was easier, or finding a different costume every year was a hassle, or going through and knocking on strangers’ doors was exhausting. Anyway, it’s too much work.

My wife loves Halloween and it’s her favorite holiday. We do like driving around to find all the houses who took the time to setup decorations. My kids liked trick or treating around our complex.

It may not be my favorite holiday but at least my family loves it.

#candy #costumes #family #holiday #Halloween

In an audit of a database written by the chatbot, one of the issues had as a consequence that SELECT * FROM t WHERE 4 = 5 returned a row...

So I now propose that we call people who think “vibecoding” will replace people thinking “inhabitants of the land where 4 equals 5”.

Lech Walesa, appearing at George Washington University, 27 Oct. 2026.

Jessica Tarlov at Center for American Progress, 27 Oct. 2026.

New recent photos of government and media leaders, including historical figure Lech Walesa, are now available in the TechNewsLit portfolio at the Alamy photo agency. In addition, new photos of Medicare and Medicaid administrator Mehmet Oz and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, also taken in late October, are available for download from the TechNewsLit collections.

Lech Walesa, a shipyard labor organizer in Gdansk, Poland, become the leader of a nationwide anti-Communist movement in Poland in the 1980s, leading to the collapse of the country’s Communist government. Walesa received the Nobel Peace Prize and later became Poland’s president from 1990 to 1995. He spoke at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University on 27 Oct. 2026.

Jessica Tarlov is a Democratic party strategist and co-host of the public affairs discussion program The Five on the Fox News Channel. She is also a podcaster, co-hosting the Raging Moderates podcast with Scott Galloway and Aaron Parnas. Tarlov appeared at the Center for American Progress discussing her new book, also on 27 Oct. 2026.

Dr. Mehmet Oz at Punchbowl News, 21 Oct. 2026.

Mitch Landrieu at the Arlington, Virginia Democratic gala, 24 Oct. 2026.

Dr. Mehmet Oz trained as a cardiac surgeon, and went from his medical practice to become a popular television personality, with his own Discovery Channel program. After an unsuccessful Republican run for senator in Pennsylvania in 2022, Oz joined the second Trump administration as administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Oz was interviewed by Punchbowl News, and photographed by TechNewsLit, on 21 Oct. 2026.

Mitch Landrieu served as lieutenant governor of Louisiana and mayor of New Orleans, where he led much of the recovery from Hurricane Katrina that devastated the city. In 2021, president Joe Biden named Landrieu a White House advisor and coordinator of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. He appeared as keynote speaker at the Arlington, Virginia Democratic party gala on 24 Oct. 2026.

These photos are available in special collections for government and political leaders, and media and business leaders, as well as the general TechNewsLit portfolio at the Alamy photo agency.

Copyright © Technology News and Literature. All rights reserved.

After a gap of about five years I recently attended a Police Powers Scrutiny Panel and was struck by how much the process has improved since I was last there.

The panel is now far more representative of our community, bringing diverse voices to the table to examine police body-worn camera footage. It is encouraging to see a genuine effort to engage citizens in the oversight of policing powers.

However, I feel that this progress in representation stands in stark contrast to a worrying regression in the data that feeds the panel.

The 'community complaints trigger', the automatic mechanism that once ensured community oversight and continuous improvement, has long gone. Now, complaints are largely kept within the constabulary's internal systems, with a very slim chance of ever reaching their scrutiny panel.

The result is that the panel, however well-composed, is left to review only a tiny fraction of stops and 'use of force' via dip samples. On complaints, the panel is blind.

I've also been very concerned, for some time, about the Constabulary's use of strip search. I raised it at the last Gloucestershire Police & Crime Panel and although I asked for a 'considered response' my request didn't make it into the draft minutes; the PCC chose to answer a different question.

This structural gap is not just anecdotal. It has now been illuminated by the latest Home Office data for Gloucestershire, year ending March 2026, which reveals deep-seated issues that our current scrutiny model is ill-equipped to catch:

• Accountability Gaps: In the realm of strip searches, the data is more than alarming. Of the 38 full strip searches conducted, one involved a child, yet it is recorded as “not known” whether an appropriate adult was present. Furthermore, for 97% of these searches, the location was “not known”, and supervisor consultation was “not known” for all of them.
• Disproportionate Impact: Black people were stopped and searched six times more often than white people relative to their share of the local population.
• Low Yield: For most searches (57%), the reason was drugs, yet 60% of all searches resulted in no further action, with only 18% leading to an arrest.
• Use of Force Disparity: Black people were involved in use of force reports 7.8 times more often than white people relative to population proportions.

These statistics suggest that the problems here in Gloucestershire are not merely about the outcomes of individual searches, but also about the systemic recording and oversight of the encounters themselves. If a force cannot reliably record the location of a strip search or confirm the presence of an appropriate adult for a child, how can a Scrutiny Panel effectively review the conduct? A strip search of a child where it is 'not known' whether an appropriate adult was present is not a data quality issue. I consider this a serious safeguarding failure.

I've reviewed the minutes produced by the Police Powers Scrutiny Panel and these have improved immeasurably, however it was clear from conversations that there is no staff capacity to adapt them for release into the public domain. I have not been able to find published minutes since March 2024; I'm told this is due to budget cuts. If I'm wrong, I'd welcome correction. HMICFRS noticed similar in the latest PEEL inspection saying that “publishing this more often should help to build public trust and confidence”.

The improved composition and working of the Police Powers Scrutiny Panel is good news for local democracy. However, the Terms of Reference for the panel remains elusive, I've asked for sight of it but it's not been forthcoming. Personally, I think that document should be signed off by the Gloucestershire Police & Crime Scrutiny Panel. But without transparent data and a mechanism to surface complaints that bypass internal filters, the Constabulary's own panel risks becoming a forum that reviews a minute selection of events rather than the reality of policing on our streets.

Trust and legitimacy are built on the assurance that misconduct and procedural failings will be detected and addressed. By allowing critical data fields to remain blank and removing the automatic triggers for community review, we are eroding that trust.

We must ensure that the Police Powers Scrutiny Panel has the tools and the data it needs to hold the constabulary to account, rather than watching from the sidelines as the feedback loop remains broken. I am asking the OPCC to assist in getting the Police Powers Scrutiny Panel's Terms of Reference and summaries of their minutes into the public domain.

For Wotton-under-Edge, North Nibley & Stinchcombe

Along with residents' casework and in addition to council and training meetings at Ebley Mill, Cllrs Kitchen, Braun & Cohen attended the regular council meetings at North Nibley, Stinchcombe & Wotton-under-Edge.

Local Government Reorganisation

The Government announced on 29th October that it is 'minded to' confirm a single unitary authority for Gloucestershire. A pause in the LGR process and a full review of decisions had been announced in September following legal challenges. A final decision is expected before Christmas, and in the event that the single unitary council decision is confirmed, elections to the new Gloucestershire Council would take place in May 2028, ahead of vesting in April 2029. There may also be elections to Stroud DC in May 2028 for the final year of the district council.   

Council meetings

Link to meeting agenda and documents in the committee title.

Strategy and Resources Committee – 8th October 🔗

• The Old Town Hall, Stroud – A Community Asset Transfer from SDC was agreed to the Stroud Valleys Artspace and Stroudwater Textiles Trust of the Old Town Hall for a nominal sum to develop a Centre for Textile Arts.
• Woodchester Mansion Agreed £245k to support the Woodchester Mansion Trust in funding the next stage of project development and an application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund in order to secure a sustainable future for the council-owned Grade I listed building, in partnership with the National Trust which owns the surrounding Woodchester Park.
• Kingshill House An urgent funding request from the trustees of Kingshill House Limited was not supported by the Committee as it was assessed as not being permitted under the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and not compliant with the council’s fiduciary duties. It was however agreed that the council officers would urgently meet with the Trustees to see whether a long term restructuring plan can be found which would return the trust to long term viability.
  
• Compulsory Purchase, May Lane/Prospect Place, Dursley The committee authorised compulsory purchase powers to acquire land for a scheme delivering up to 17 new affordable council homes, along with service road widening.
• Warm Homes – Social Housing Fund The committee recommended to Council to accept an increased grant offer from Government for an additional £550k of 'supplementary solar funding' to increase the number of homes delivered under the Warm Homes Wave 3 programme and raise more homes to EPC C standard. SDC had already been awarded £5.3m to deliver retrofit works to 507 properties. The additional funding will allow an extra 65 properties to receive solar PV and battery installations, reducing energy bills for tenants and helping SDC to ensure all council homes are at least at an EPC C efficiency rating.
• Local Authority Housing Fund An additional grant offer of £3.9m from Government was recommended for approval by the Committee which would enable 16 new homes to be purchased in the district, with 8 to be provided for people on the Afghan Resettlement Programme and 8 to be provided for temporary accommodation for homeless people.
  
• Housing Capital Budget Committee recommended that a further £10m be included in the Housing Revenue Account capital budget to acquire new council homes. Demand for affordable housing in the district remains high, with over 3,000 households on the Homeseeker Plus register and 1,169 assessed as being in significant housing need. This additional capital funding will enable the council to partner with developers to buy new s106 affordable homes which may otherwise be converted to open market housing. A financial assessment for each property would ensure that the ongoing borrowing costs by the Council are fully funded from the ongoing rental income.
• Summary of Member/Officer Reports
  • Leadership Gloucestershire Proposed abolition of the Police and Crime Commissioner model by May 2028 and replacement by Policing and Crime Boards (PCBs) comprising local authority Leaders, Mayors and independent co-opted members. These boards will be responsible for budgets, precept setting, scrutiny and appointing or removing the Chief Constable. Functions are expected to transfer to a new PCB rather than council leadership directly, though the OPCC may remain as a separate legal entity. Discussed the new Gloucestershire Business Board, comprising up to 15 senior business leaders, to give local businesses a stronger voice in shaping the county's economic future.
    
  • City Region Board Investment of £279m by government at the barracks in South Cerney for the Army's cyber unit; though local recruitment is not guaranteed despite construction and contractor opportunities. There was also an update on the Golden Valley development in Cheltenham with a cyber sector focus. The county-wide business rates poolhad generated an £8m gain in 2025/26 with over £1.5m allocated to the Strategic Economic Development Fund. No further contributions are expected due to the Government's reset of business rates baseline. A Local Plans update noted progress across the county with local plans and the consultation on a Spatial Development Strategy (SDS) to create a more strategic planning framework across Gloucestershire which is now open – from 2 Nov to 14 Dec 2026, and includes drop in events and online webinar sessions.
    
  • Regeneration and Investment Board Brimscombe Port following positive market engagement, procurement for a developer for the site has now launched, with a contract award targeted for April 2027. Cheapside and Stroud station work is progressing with rail sector partners including the station forecourt redesign and wider regeneration plans. Canal Project – the project to create a new canal channel under the M5 is on target, but the programme is forecast £1.9m over budget, with a partnership approach needed to close the gap. Funding programmes impacts and legacy – Noted that the UKSPF, REPF and Market Town Vitality Fund delivered significant benefits to market town projects (£200k, and Wotton received funding for our Christmas lighting). No further Government funding is available for these schemes. But SDC is launching a new Sustainable Economy Fund for the district (see Other news section below for details). A Cultural Asset Audit is proposed in partnership with councils and Arts Council England. Small Modular Reactor (SMR) and data centre proposals there are emerging energy and digital infrastructure proposals within the Severn Edge area (Berkeley and Oldbury), including discussions relating to SMRs and associated data centres. Proposals are at an early stage, with no planning applications submitted.

[ ▶︎ ] Video recording (241 views)

Licensing Sub-Committee – 15th October – Postponed 🔗

• New date 6th November 2026

Full Council – 15th October 🔗

Recommendations from Housing Committee – To accept a £3.9m grant for the HRA capital programme, to deliver additional housing for those fleeing conflict and those in need of temporary accommodation. – To accept a £550k grant through the Social Housing Fund Wave 3 project, which will allow Stroud District Council to further increase the number of homes delivered through the Wave 3 project, and increase the number of homes to EPC C. – To agree an additional £10m into the Housing Revenue Account capital budget for acquisition of new homes, mainly from developers via S106 agreements.

Recommendations from Strategy and Resources Committee – Budget Strategy and Draft Medium Term Financial Plan: This will be used in setting the budget for the 2027/28 year. A 2.99% increase in Council Tax is planned, as this is expected by Government. The Council faces a considerable decrease in funding over the coming years. – The Old Town Hall, Stroud: Following the S&R Committee decision to approve the transfer of The Old Town Hall, Stroud, to Stroud Valleys Artspace to develop a 'Centre for Textile Arts' Council agreed for £70k to be added to the capital programme (from earmarked reserves) to replace the gas heating system as the council had required.

Updates to the Constitution. Amendments to the Constitution were approved. Most changes were mundane but the paper also contained changes necessary to reflect the Government's new National Scheme of Delegation which took effect on 31 October 2026. This aims to streamline the planning decision-making process and means that most minor applications (including developments up to 9 homes) will be decided by a planning officer and cannot be referred to the council's Development Control Committee for wider debate.
There was unhappiness with these imposed changes which reduce local voice and participation in the planning process and led to 21 abstentions.

Appointment of Independent Persons. Agreed to appoint Duncan Chittenden and Alan Darlington as Independent Persons to assist the council when making its decisions on an allegation that there has been a breach of the code of conduct and Cllr Richard Halpin as a Town and Parish representative until any merger takes effect.

[ ▶︎ ] Video recording (82 views)

Development Control Committee – 20th October 🔗

S.26/0850/COU – Permitted Change of use from residential dwelling (Class C3) to residential institution (Class C2) as a children's home for up to two children.

Parish council objected because of impact on the adjacent properties, unsuitability, limited parking provision. Residents have similar concerns.

The Local Plan also supports the provision of new care facilities within the district with a strategic objective to provide 950 care home spaces by 2031. [ ▶︎ ] Video recording (75 views)

Audit and Standards Committee – 27th October 🔗

An overview of the more interesting snippets at the meeting.

Revised Strategic Risk Register. The most significant takeaway is that the Council is adopting a clearer, more transparent approach to managing its biggest strategic risks.

Annual Complaints Update. In April 2025 the council introduced a new complaints case management system which has improved the data available for reporting. Councillors discussed SDC's commitment to effective complaints handling, transparency and continuous improvement while noting that performance in some areas remains below expectations. e.g. Only 55% of complaints were responded to within the Council's published service standards. Council Housing is by far the most complained-about service, receiving 266 accepted complaints. Of these, 41% were Upheld (the Council admitted fault), 37% were Partially Upheld, and 23% were Not Upheld (%'s rounded). The vast majority of complaints were resolved at Stage 1. It has been noted that complaints are becoming “more complex and voluminous”, partly due to the increasing use of AI by complainants. SDC has plans in place to improve performance.

Annual Performance Review of Our Service Standards.The Customer Contact Centre now handles 60% of all calls to the main council number. While they resolve 95% of Waste & Recycling calls and 90% of Council Tax calls at the first point of contact, resolution rates for Environmental Health & Licensing remain much lower.

The council has implemented a new cloud-based contact centre solution (Liberty Converse CX) which includes features like real-time dashboards for managers, call recording for training, and a planned chatbot/live chat capability.

Proceeds of Crime and Anti-Money Laundering Policy The report explicitly states that while the Council is governed by the same legislation as banks, it is considered “low risk” in terms of exposure to money laundering.

Q1 Treasury Management Activity Report The Council's investment portfolio holds an overall low exposure to ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) risks and a blended credit rating of A+.

Extension of Term of Office for Independent Co-opted Member Approval to extend the term of appointment of Jonathan Wood, the Independent Co-opted member of the committee.

[ ▶︎ ] Video recording (39 views)

Other news

• New Sustainable Economy Fund for Stroud district businesses, charities, community organisations and education providers are being invited to apply for grants of up to £5,000 through Stroud District Council's £100,000 Sustainable Economy Fund.
• Fly-tipping Make sure your waste ends up in the right place. Many people don't realise that they have a legal Duty of Care when arranging for their waste to be removed. If your rubbish is fly-tipped and can be traced back to you, you could still be held responsible, even if you paid someone else to take it away. Fight Fly-Tipping Fortnight.
• Award for the Canal Project Cotswold Canals Connected achieves prestigious building with nature award.
• Planning changes SDC are advising of forthcoming changes to the planning system in England being introduced by the Government from 31 October 2026.
• Museum in the Park shortlisted for two Cotswolds Awards in landmark anniversary year.
• Local Transport PlanIf you have any views on the priorities for transport in Gloucestershire, please do take a moment to complete the survey on the Local Transport Plan which is open until 15 November.
• Local Plan– SDC has now formally started the 30 month long process to prepare a new Local Plan, with completion of a 'Gateway 1' self-assessment. Feedback from the summer early scoping consultation and the proposed local plan timescale has also been published. The next formal consultation is planned for summer 2027.

Prepared by Cllr Gareth Kitchen 🔗 (Green) & Cllr Catherine Braun 🔗 (Green) based on councillor activity in October with updates from Cllr Linda Cohen 🔗 (Lib Dem).

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Ik wil een speciale wil die omgezet kan worden in een lopende of spaarrekening een wil waarmee ik spullen en activiteiten kan betalen eentje waarmee ik kan tanken van alles kan bedrijven in een daarvoor opgerichte zaak deze wil nummeriek vermenigvuldigen daaraan mijn naam verbinden en als gevolg hiervan andere dwingen exact hetzelfde te doen zodat alleen wij de mensen die geschikt zijn om te leven en werken in kunstmatig intelligent klimaat en anders totaal niet zullen bepalen hoe het leven op aarde er voor ieder ander type elk etmaal uitziet

ex amen

Ik zal mijn snelheid en vermogen overal altijd zwaar overdrijven met alle mogelijke middelen machines, apparaten, automaten, pillen spuiten, instrumenten, scanners, klokken, verbeelding en geschriften vooral via taal zal ik iedereen en alles mijn wereld intrekken en er levenslang in opbergen ik produceer, repliceer, vernietig, verklaar ontwikkel, redigeer, beheer, amuseer lieg gedrukt, lieg verbeeld, onderdruk manipuleer, ambieer en maak gebruik van nog veel meer van dergelijke uitgewerkte woorden om mij 100000000000000 groter te maken dan ik echt ben

ex amen

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