17.7.08

Speed Camera Madness

Gordon Brown, Yesterday
This has been widely reported elsewhere and commented on by many bloggers but I would like to throw my view in too.
Now I drive, and I hate speed cameras; I feel I can travel safely and responsibly at a slightly elevated speed which enables me to get maximum performance from my car, the various emissions and from myself - not that I can drive my car much since it costs nearly £80 to fill up my tank nowadays (a Volve S40 by the way - a big, heavy car) which is money best spent keeping me from starving.
Now, having said I hate speed cameras my first reaction to the Metro article on my way to work earlier this week was "hurrah! rejoice! the revolution comes! watch as the public rise up against our state masters..etc..." then my cynic gland switched on and gave me a big, swift dose of reality - the following occured to me:
  • Had the money gone straight into the councils coffers, would they have readily wanted to close down this particular revenue pool?
  • Unlike the police, speed cameras catch people in the act of the particular crime they are being punished for, at the crime scene 100% of the time; the only arguement against speed cameras in this light is to increase the speed at which a ticket is issued to above the accepted speed limit slightly - someone being ticketed for going 34mph downhill in a 30mph zone when their speed reads in units of 10 is incredibly unfair and a recipe for criminalising and alienating law abiding citizens for what should penalise dangerous drivers.

The motive of Swindon Council should be addressed here; since they cannot get their hands in the cookie jar they've decided that their own source of biscuits should be cut off - this is not the beginnings of good policy and forgets that speed cameras are designed to curb the number of road deaths, not provide a revenue stream.

In Swindon Councils defence however, the blame really lies at Whitehalls door - consistent underfunding of the roads for years has meant that the monies raised by road tax, fuel duty and every other tax NuLabour wishes to milk our last remaining drop of money and human dignity for has been wasted on other nonsenses; now that the coffers are empty in the midst of an economic downturn NuLabour are viciously scrabbling around to find revenue sources for their insane projects, tax bungs and related guff. My guess is that those mythical "road safety grants" that Whitehall should've given Swindon to create safer roads have been spent on something pointless, ineffectual and completely unrelated.

Then again, its not unlike NuLabour to first take our money, lose it in storage, burn a little more, and then hand it back to some of us, perhaps getting some of it stolen or too much given by mistake...

14.7.08

Their Contempt For You Is Absolute

The BBC led a few days ago with a scheme being rolled out in Redruth, Cornwall to attempt to curb anti-social behaviour amongst children by introducing voluntary curfews; DK and Old Holborn have both registered their discust at this and the possibility that other councils may adopt this scheme.
I for one have several issues with this scheme, aside from the norm:

  • This does nothing to stop kids from being "anti-social", it merely makes their place they are behaving anti-socially more localised to their parents (hopefully).
  • Exactly where are the parents in these cases?
  • If these same parents are happy to let these children be on the streets after 8pm (for under-10s) and9pm (for under-16s) then are they really the type of adult we want influencing these same kids? I'm not suggesting taking the children off them by the way.

This is a snap shot from a quick google search of Redruth and some of its locals (i'm guessing enjoying a quiet drink in idylic :




A family enjoying a beverage and a chat

And here is a less-than-leafy suburb of Leeds known as Beeston:


...as well as some of its inhabitants enjoying a "beverage":

Kids enjoying a fun-filled day out in sunny Beeston

...and here is a cross-section of news articles taken from a quick search of google news on the area; you may remember that Beeston's fairly famous for introducing home-grown islamist terrorism in this country - there were some who commemorated 7/7 in altogether different ways too.

Now my point is thus; say that there are genuine excuses for infringing on hard-won liberties, such as curfews for unruly children, or 42-days or any of the other brilliantly hair-brained statist bunkum that is coming from our morally corrupt regime, where do you think it will have the most positive impact? Sunny Redruth? or not-so-sunny Beeston? and where do you think it is more likely, if you are perfectly honest, this scheme will be introduced, and more importantly, enforced?

I know the kids from this estate; most of the time it is the failings of the parents that has caused the near-feral nature of these kids - the stories bring me, a grown man, to tears at times - and yet somehow these kids endure.

And now we have Gordo's political-lackeys in the police and government telling us that, despite their failings to deal with a growing problem, despite their interference, despite them creating more dependants on the welfare state which has caused the burgeoning underclass to grow, they still think they've got it right.

Their contempt for you is absolute.