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Sir Freddie Laker, the man who took on the nationalised airlines in the 1970s with his cheap "Skytrain" airline, only to go bust, has died at the age of 83, according to this report. Laker was, despite the failure of his venture, a hugely influential figure in the airline industry by daring to suggest that flight need not be the preserve of the wealthy. He laid down the model to be copied by the likes of Southwest, Easyjet and Ryanair. His tough business battle with BA also inspired Sir Richard Branson to have a crack at the privatised national carrier's transatlantic business.

The economics of airlines has fascinated me, not least because as a business it has attracted some of the largest egos and some of the few remaining examples of buccaneering entrepreneur. Perhaps that is why we like them or even if we don't, find them fascinating. They stand out from the grey suits. None more so than Sir Freddie.

On the subject of cheap airlines and their globalising impact, here is an excellent piece from a year ago by Matt Welch in Reason magazine.

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I have been in the habit of buying zone 1 (i.e. very central London) tube (i.e. London Underground railway) tickets, in clutches of ten, for a reduced price, compared to what such tickets would cost if you bought them one at a time. I tried again, a few days ago, but it seems that as of January 1st 2006, the only way to get cheaper tube travel is to buy an Oyster Card. Oh no, please no, I said, you'll make me fill in a ludicrously complicated form. No, they said, just buy an Oyster Card. What just buy it? No name, no address, no grandmother's maiden name. Yes, just buy it, and put some money on it. Okay then.

A day or two ago, I was out and about, and had forgotten how much money I had left on my Oyster Card, and saw a machine which looked as if it might tell me, if I put my Oyster Card on the sign, like the one you use when you are passing through a ticket barrier. It duly told me how much cash I had left, and it also gave me the option of learning about my 'card usage'. I pressed that. And this is what I got (click to get it bigger):

The message is loud and clear. We know where you have been, and when, and we want you to know it. Because, combine all that with surveillance camera info, and they can tell at once who you are.

The times we now live in.

How long before not wanting to buy an Oyster Card is itself regarded as cause for suspicion?

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Well, Christmas is nearly upon us. I am shortly off to demonstrate my serious limitations as a singer down my local church. (I write this from Suffolk in eastern England at my folks' farm. The weather has been sunny although snow is promised later in the week). One of the things that I certainly valued this morning was my ability to get out of central London by car. People reliant on public transport have been reminded, alas, that public sector trade unions are among the most cussed groups of people around. The London Underground system is threatened with a strike on New Year's Eve, which would seriously mess up many people's celebration plans. And as this story suggests, it may even tempt some people to use their cars, even if they are over the alcohol limit.

Anyway, enough of such glum thoughts. May I wish my fellow contributors and Samizdata readers a very happy Christmas and prosperous 2006.

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All hail the Bugatti Veyron, the world's most expensive car that you can drive on a road, as opposed to a circuit. From nothing to 250mph in less than a minute. The audio system alone costs $30,000. Have you got $350,000 to spare? Then go for it. That will cover the deposit if you want to place an order.

And all hail to Jeremy Clarkson for featuring this mighty vehicle on Top Gear. It is this evening's repeat, of the show first shown on December 11th, which I am now listening to.

Clarkson also wrote in the Times - on November 27th, but I doubt (see below) if any faster car has appeared since then – about the Bugatti Veyron, and the struggle to make it go as fast as it does:

Somehow they had to find an extra 30kph, and there was no point in looking to the engine for answers because each extra 1kph increase in speed requires an extra 8bhp from the power plant. An extra 30kph then would need an extra 240bhp. That was not possible.

The extra speed had to come from changing small things on the body. They started by fitting smaller door mirrors, which upped the top speed a bit but at too high a price. It turned out that the bigger ones had been keeping the nose of the car on the ground. Without them the stability was gone.

In other words, the door mirrors were generating downforce. That gives you an idea of how much of a bastard the air can be at this speed.

Volkswagen, the parent company, decided to make this Bugatti wonder car as a mere "engineering exercise", and they are apparently taking an enormous loss on each one that they sell. Clarkson reckons this is a car Concorde, and that what with "everyone twittering on about global warming", they might never again make another such.

Having, almost three months ago now, tracked down the latest Rolls Royce, this is my current must-photo car.

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When the answer is bloody obvious, that is when!

There is a public investigation by the US Congress underway into a string of disappearances aboard cruise ships.

So let me get his straight, a cruise liner, which is in effect a floating pub in which people regularly drink to excess, has people disappear from it and that is... mysterious?

How about this: they unwisely drink too much, they fall overboard when no one is looking and as a consequence they drown.

And it takes a Congressional investigation to solve that 'mystery'?

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This Chinese banning of electric bicycles is placed firmly in the stupidity column at Beyond Brilliance Beyond Stupidity. Bicycles good, cars bad.

It is hard to disagree with BBBS when they oppose this particular piece of partiality towards cars and against bikes. My only uncertainty concerns the fact that someone has to decide about how roads are administered, and there just might be good reasons for this, besides trying to hurry along the making of a big home market for cars in China, and clearing the proles off the roads, to speed things up for fat cat limos.

That hesitation aside, this certainly looks like a classic case of a law to stop the potential future from competing with the established present. Cars are already big business. Electricity for transport has a long way to go, but will surely go that long way, if allowed to. Batteries, to name just one crucial aspect of electric transport technology, seem to be progressing well, judging by how much better digital camera batteries have got lately. So is China wise to be deliberately trying to rebuild old Detroit?

The libertarian line on all this, which of course is the one I prefer, is that road owners should price the use of roads, and then the market would decide whether electric bikes are a reasonable proposition or too much of a bother to other road users, such as cars. Something tells me that this solution will not be unleashed in China any time soon, although that something may be misinformed.

Whatever you make of this story, it is an interesting angle on China now. My personal policy towards China is (a) trade with it by buying cheap stuff, and (b) learn about it, good and bad, and (c) blog about it, ditto. And one interesting thing I learned from reading this story is that in China they apparently have something called the China Bicycle Association. Concerning this ban on electric bikes, the China Bicycle Association is "enraged". Good to hear that associations in China are allowed to be enraged. I could not find any China Bicycle Association website though.

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As I predicted a few weeks ago, SUV-phobes need not get into a hissy fit. The market is changing people's driving habits:

Toyota Motor Corp. has seen a rise in demand for hybrid vehicles in the United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as consumers seek more mileage out of $3-gallon gasoline, a top official said on Thursday.

"At the end of last month, we had a 20-hour supply of the Prius (hybrid sedan)," Jim Press, head of Toyota's U.S. operations, said at the Reuters Autos Summit, held in Detroit. "We no longer count in days."

Price increases change human behaviour. Who would have thought it?

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Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan, fresh back from his holidays, rages against Americans who drive big SUVs on the grounds that by doing so, they help swell the coffers of terror sponsoring states in the Middle East. Patriotic Americans, says the ahem, British Mr Sullivan, should drive smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. He does not like the habit of "soccer moms" driving their kids around in such vast vehicles, full of clobber he thinks is a waste of space and money.

Well Andrew, maybe. I would have thought that with the price of crude oil hitting the region of around $66 per barrel, that even the dimmest motorist is going to see the impact on a bank statement eventually and wonder about trading in the Hummer for something a tad smaller. I know it is crazy ideological talk but people do actually take account of prices.

If oil prices stay on their current trajectory, it won't need a scold like Sullivan to remind Americans, or indeed anyone else, to adjust their consumption. All it takes is the operation of prices. Some Scottish geezer called Adam Smith once wrote about this about 230 years ago, I think. It is such a shame that even bright folk like Andrew Sullivan take all this time to catch on.

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It has not been a good last few days in the airline industry. Today, a passenger jet crashed in Venezuela, killing its entire passenger muster of more than 160 people. A Cypriot airliner crashed in Greece at the weekend, killing its entire passenger list and crew. And a few days previously, an Air France plane had a crash near Toronto, but fortunately all the passengers survived.

There is probably no direct connection to all this but it is a harsh reminder that, even in an age of ever-improving safety standards, air travel carries its hazards (and of course that is even before we get to the terror issue). It is also makes me aware that the skies over southern Britain, for example, are crammed with aircraft and it is still amazing that not more accidents occur than is the case. The volume of aircraft now flying to and from Heathrow's mega-airport is extraordinary and continues to grow. The margins for error when it comes to potential collisions must be razor-thin.

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Sometimes talented, sometimes monumentally untalented assailants of one's ears: yes, the phenomenon of the public "busker" seems to be alive and well on the London Underground. A guy at Chancery Lane station this evening was dressed in what must have been a hot and thick red jacket, with a sort of Elvis haircut and was belting out Sinatra hits. (Not bad, actually). The sound of Old Blue Eyes followed me down the Stygian depths of the platform until the racket of the train overwhelmed it. A strange evening. The station was full of police with their yellow jackets on on high alert four Thursdays on from the mass murders of July 7. Cops and Sinatra on a Thursday night. A rum combination.

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I am taking the scenic route home at the moment. I know readers will think I am a wimp, but I still cannot quite summon up the courage to go down the Tube again - which is unpleasantly hot in the summer, anway - and have been getting plenty of exercise. My route takes me from Holborn, down Chancery Lane, down to the Embankment and then a long walk up to Parliament on the side of the River, then through Millbank, past the lovely Tate Gallery and then back to my home in Pimlico. (Brian of this parish also lives in the area).

The atmosphere is rather odd. There is the constant racket from helicopters hovering about, over Buckingham Palace much of the time. There are hundreds of police, some armed, outside prominent buildings including Parliament and the big Whitehall offices, of course. There are thousands of tourists, although quite a few appear unwilling to use their cameras for fears of appearing insensitive or possibly even suspicious. A lot of the tourists look even more dazed than is often the case. Most people seem pretty cheerful, though, which is good.

As I walked past Parliament Square opposite the rather scruffy anti-war posters, a young black guy in a posh shirt was shouting out loudly his evangelical Christian message. No offence to Christians but it struck a jarring note. I wish folk like this fellow, no doubt a decent person, could realise that hectoring religion is not quite what London, or anywhere else, needs right now.

A final thought for tonight: I cannot help notice how many stunning women there are walking about the moment. They may not realise it or care less, but in their ravishing way, these suntanned goddesses are sticking one in the eye to the women-hating jihadis.

Hot British crumpet - FUCK YEAH!

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I'm watching the BBC Top Gear motoring programme right now and its main presenter, the irrepressible Jeremy Clarkson, is driving a hot-rod Mercedes sports car at high speed along a German autobahn listening to a CD of Margaret Thatcher speeches.

How can you not love this guy?

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Still buzzing with pleasure after a terrific day with pals at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on Saturday, it struck me as I walked around the ground and past the huge car park as to how fantastic is the level of motoring engineering, aesthetics and of course safety these days. But we are hemmed in as never before by rules and regulations, speed cameras and road humps, the combined effect of which is to make driving in most of Britain a frustrating experience. The joys of flooring the accelerator on the open road, with the roar of wind in the hair, are over.

Such a shame. As my dad said, it is a bit like being surrounded by the world's most beautiful women and then to be told by the State that you are not allowed to ask any of them for a date.

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I was going to write a piece with that title (assuming the allusion would spare me from discipline for scattering the star-field with apostrophes) but it seems Richard Tomkins in the FT has done it first, and, almost certainly, better.

However, that's a subscription-required piece, so I will rehash my main thoughts for those who do not subscribe, and do not still have a venial physical paper habit like mine.

I was dumbstruck by the general soft welcome among free-market types for Alastair Darling's hints at individual travel charges by satellite. Sorry ladies and gentlemen, but the only word that springs to mind is - "suckers".

Just because a minister says something is "road pricing" does not mean it is a real live example of a market mechanism. In fact, when a minister in the current UK government says something, one would have thought that by now most people would be looking for the misrepresentation. If the minister seems to be saying something, then the truth is likely incompatible with the impression.

The thing is, it is not a price unless you get a choice. Road pricing as conceived by freemarketeers involves someone being willing to pay the cost of more convenient travel, someone else being prepared to provide it, and a bargain between them established when the buyer chooses to use the road.

The price is determined by the market, and the choices available depend on the costs of the providers and the willingness of travellers to pay. There are geographical constraints, and competition with non-transport uses for land, but politics, though it might influence the course of the roads, has no direct effect on the price you choose to pay. The turnpike company does not care who you are, or how far you go, as long as you pay the toll. It is only selling roadspace.

What Mr Darling offers us under the same name is no choice. The state will ration travel. The state will control the charges on the basis of what it thinks is good for you. There is a monopoly provider, the state. Its nominal purpose is to "reduce congestion", that is, stop travel, rather than assist it. And it insists that total surveillance of - and therefore control of - the individual traveller, is necessary to do it, rather than a disinterested payment mechanism.

Still like the idea? Here is another example of how to deal people who want to be where the government thinks they should not be.

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The UK government has floated the idea of fitting GPS tracking devices into cars as part of a way to enforce road tolls, with a pilot project starting in a few years' time before going nationwide. One can immediately see how civil libertarians might object to such a setup, given that it could further consolidate the surveillance state.

Even so, the idea of charging for road use has a strong free market pedigree, as the Adam Smith Institute blog makes clear here. Road toll systems operated by private firms need not necessarily involve the centralised data collection systems that our present UK government might favour.

One little detail of the ASI comment made me grin, in that apparently, road tolls in Hong Kong failed in the 1980s to become law because men feared the toll invoices would reveal they had been spending their evenings down the local bordellos. Okaaaay.

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From Instapundit, the excellent news that traffic cameras have been voted down in Virginia, New Hampshire, and Indiana.

A number of jurisdictions still have such cameras in place (or at least a place for them has been reserved, legal authority-wise), but fortunately there is a solution.

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P J O'Rourke weighs in with a modest proposal on public transit in the Wall Street Journal. A choice tidbit:

The Heritage Foundation says, "There isn't a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides." Heritage cites the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price.

That, my friends, is a sound bite that can stop a light rail train (proposal) in its tracks if it gets in front of the voters before the referendum passes. Of course, as we all know, these kinds of facts emerge only after the horses have left the barn, so to speak, because of the bare-faced lying that always accompanies the run-up to large public works projects.

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A song called London Underground is currently being spread all around the Westminster political elite by e-mail. The song represents public sector workers not as altruistic heroes, but as "wankers" and "lazy".

The London Evening Standard says:

London Underground was penned by Adam Kay, 24, a junior doctor at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and Suman Biswas, 26, an anaesthetist....

"Having lived in London all my 24 years you get used to the Tube service," said Mr Kay.

"Once in a while you are three hours late after what should have been a 20-minute journey. It has struck a chord with people. They also like the swear words, they seem to get people going." Mr Kay is receiving around 1,000 emails a day from people asking for copies of the record.

You can download it here.

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Walking past a newsstand near my office yesterday, I saw the banner headline "Tube Bosses Buy Parts on eBay". The accompanying story told us, in faintly mocking tones, how engineers working on the London Underground system have resorted to using the online auction firm because the parts they need are so old that they cannot get the pieces they need from regular stock.

Now it may at first appear a terrible thing that our metro systems are so old that the folk running them have to resort to an online auction set up by those vulgar American geeks from their Silicon Valley offices to get the stuff they need. But (drums roll!) I have a certain admiration for the Tube staff who had the entrepreneurial savvy to make use of the amazingly successful eBay platform. If the power of the internet can make my journey to work a bit smoother, I ain't complaining.

It makes me wonder how many other major businesses are resorting to services like eBay to solve their inventory supply needs. I think it is still not yet possible for an airline to buy jet engines that way, though you never know. Is capitalism great or what?

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Do you remember all of those science fiction movies where air taxis would soar across the skyline taking paying customers from highrise to highrise? Neither do I but air cars were included in the visions of the future that the twentieth century popularised. That future is now creeping up on us.

A firm in the United Kingdom called Avcen has developed a short take off and landing prototype called the Jetpod.

Mike Dacre, Avcen's Managing Director, says "We are expecting a great deal of interest from around the world in this unique form of localised air transportation."

The Jetpod T-100 air taxi and the P-100 personal transpeeder can operate quietly in tiny city-centre landing sites that will be one tenth of the length normally required, thereby opening up cities to true pay-on-demand, free-roaming air taxis.

This is preferable to the train or tube and could prove the disruptive technology that ends New York's taxi licence cartel.

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Yesterday, while out and about in London town, I espied this vehicle.

Does this Samizdatista perhaps visit London more often than he tells us, on business he has omitted to mention?

Well, probably not. This is probably just another fan of this.

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The present UK government, like many socialist-leaning administrations, does not like cars. Besides complaints - sometimes justified - about pollution and congestion, a lot of the hatred of the car contains a puritan impulse (sometimes this is also seen among a certain tweedy sort of conservative). Congestion charges, petrol taxes, speed cameras, road bumps... you name it, owning a car will soon be on a par with smoking, eating red meat, or confessing to enjoying recreational sex.

Well, I have bad news for the puritans. I spent last Saturday in total petrol-head heaven - the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed in west Sussex, and the event was a total sellout. I saw the Lotus of the late Ayrton Senna driven immaculately on a wet track at 150 mph and hear the unbelievably high noise that a F1 car makes. Vintage Maseratis, Ferraris, Lotuses and BRMs vied with Le Mans endurance cars such as the Ford GT40 or the Gulf Porsche (of the kind that Steve McQueen drove in the movie, Le Mans). Magic. There is an almost sensual pleasure involved in the sight, shape, noise, and yes, the smell, of a very fast car.

The crowds were large although not so big as to impede my enjoyment. From what I could see, Britons remain firmly in love with cars, including very fast and noisy ones. I would not presume to check the political/cultural views of the crowds, but I would guess the bias would be towards liberal (small l), fairly pro-enterprise, pro-fun, and not very keen on environmentalism and high taxes. If I were Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, then the Goodwood Festival of Speed clientele would be the sort of folk I would have in mind as a target constituency. I would call it the 'Jeremy Clarkson Voter Segment'.

The Goodwood event also reminded me of something else, which is the high number of South Africans, Finns and Scots who have excelled as drivers over the years. I wonder why that is?

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When I was in my native Australia a couple of months back, I was pleased to discover that it is at last possible to fly around the country on Australia's airlines for something like the at times very low cost of flying around Europe. Traditionally, domestic air tickets in Australia have been mind blowingly expensive due to truly astonishingly stupid over-regulation of the industry. (Just as an example, for several decades only two airlines were licensed to fly domestically in Australia, one state owned and one privately owned. These two airlines were required to charge identical fares, operate identical aircraft, offer an identical number of seats on each route, honour each other's tickets, and operate to identical timetables. This meant that if one airline wanted to fly an 9am flight to Sydney, the other airline had to agree to do so before it would be permitted). Getting rid of this asonishingly stupid over-regulation has been a slow and painful 20 year experience. Thankfully, though, it is largely gone. Although there is still far too little competition, the competition is now clearly on its way.

In any event, I was explaining this to Brian Micklethwait last month over a cup of tea, and he suggested I should write it up. I started doing so for this blog, but the story was sufficiently long and esoteric that by the time I had finished I discovered that I had written 6000 words, and it was a little too long and esoteric. Therefore, I have posted it to Transport Blog, where it probably more belongs.

And if you have ever wondered how Australia got from being the richest country in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century to being substantially behind the pack (although still a rich country) in 1980, and how it has managed to catch up substantially again since then, the answer is quite a lot of this sort of regulation and protectionism, followed by a substantial (and it times quite hesitant) about turn in the early 1980s, and this story captures most of the key details.

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I refuse to pay more than about £100 to sit in a tube for several hours, no matter how far it travels or how interesting the place at the far end, and even if they let me sit by the window and look at the clouds and, with extreme luck, at the beginning and the end of the journey, some actual views of earth. So until now, and given that no one else has thought it worth paying for me to visit, I have resigned myself to never actually seeing the (now sadly truncated) towers of Manhattan and the depths of the Grand Canyon (to name the two American things I most want to see before I die), plus whatever else American has to offer, such as those peculiar shaped small mountains in the desert wherever those things are, nice people, Carnegie Hall, an NFL football game, etc. But now, via the invaluable Transport Blog "In Brief" section (April 28th), I have come across this:

Transatlantic flights for as little as £60 could soon be available under a deal being forged between a German airport and US carriers.

The managing director of Cologne-Bonn airport, Michael Garvens, says he has been negotiating for several weeks to establish the service, which would take low-cost travel into a new realm.

Under the proposals, carriers such as Hapag-Lloyd Express and Germanwings would fly passengers from Cologne-Bonn to New York, Chicago and other destinations in America and Canada for as little as £60 per stretch. The deal would require passengers to pay for refreshments and to book online.

"We are currently holding concrete discussions with American carriers," said an airport spokesman. The airport said its goal was to combine the strengths of budget airlines.

Concrete discussions, no less. (Interesting that "concrete" in this connection means a discussion that is actually going somewhere. Often "concrete", applied to conversations, means the opposite of that.)

Two possibilities suggest themselves. Either Cologne-Bonn to America will shortly be followed by (e.g.) Stansted to America, or Stansted to Cologne-Bonn by Ryanair or scumbagair or reallyeasyjet or gojet or whatever can be stuck on the front of the journey, and I could be in the USA for something around or not far above my £100 limit.

The world is getting smaller.

So, now, who will pay my American hotel bill and cab fares, or put me in their spare room and feed me for a fortnight, having collected me from the airport? Some pocket money would be nice. A few speaking engagements (but not too many), some TV and radio appearances in which I can air my opinions to the American masses and become an instant celebrity, maybe some girl friends for the duration (see the Kris Marshall scenes in Love Actually for details), …

Who will start the bidding? America is the land of opportunity, right? So America: prove it. Show me some opportunities. (And please: no "we will pay this much for you to stay at home" nonsense. Well, actually, yes, that might be good too.)

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I've just been relaxing in front of the telly watching a show called Fifth Gear, on Channel 5. This show was preceded by another automobile-based show about "Building the Ultimate …" in this case, building the ultimate racing car. (Although, luckily for me, given my actual tastes, I switched back to BBC4 TV in time to witness this amazing boy doing his thing.)

Trouble is, what with speed cameras and satellite snooping systems and politicians who just plane hate cars, except for themselves to be driven about in, there are fewer and fewer places where you can drive these monsters in the manner intended by nature.

So, Fifth Gear went looking for the answer, and they came up with Race Resort Ascari. (Either that or they were told about the answer, and they stitched the question onto the front.) The Race Resort Ascari website is long on atmospheric photography and on self-importantly waffly abstractions ("The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express" – Sir Francis Bacon) and short, as befits the website for a super-luxury product, on trivia like what it is and what it costs to buy it, so I will have to describe this place myself, based on what Fifth Gear showed. Basically what Race Resort Ascari means is that now, you can not only own an ultimate racing car; you can actually drive one at its ultimate speed, around a privately owned race track. You can now go on holiday and drive your car at two hundred miles per hour, just like in the car advers on the telly. And if that palls, you can have a go with one of the other cars they have there permanently. A grand prix car? No problem. A finely tuned rally car? Step inside and foot down.

Financially, obviously, this is one of those "if you have to ask you can not afford it" deals. (I think I heard the figure of £100,000 mentioned.) Personally I would never spend my money this way no matter how much I had. But even so, I salute the principle.

The next step is for someone to build a money-no-object private road which does not just go around in a circuit in the one little lump of land, but on which you can actually go from somewhere to somewhere else, and the further apart these somewheres are the better.

At two hundred miles an hour. In your car. Yours not mine, for once again, I would not be queueing up for this service any more than I now want to spend any time at Race Resort Ascari. Nevertheless, that I would love to see. That I would love to share a planet with.

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Every single incident and accident on the UK rail network in recent years has prompted a torrent of bug-eyed wailing about the 'disastrous effects of privatisation' and the iniqiuties of those 'greedy' shareholders who insist on putting their squalid demands for profit ahead of safety concerns.

The answer (say the established media, the transport unions, the sundry activists, lawyers, Uncle Tom Cobley and all) is to take the network back into public control. Only when the 'distorting' private profit-motive has been eliminated, they say, will it be safe to travel by rail.

As safe as this?

Up to 3,000 people have been killed or injured in a huge explosion after two fuel trains collided in North Korea, reports say.

The blast happened at Ryongchon station, 50km north of Pyongyang, South Korea's YTN television said.

Nationalisation kills! Privatisation now! Put profits before people!

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Let's take some time off away from the gloomy issues of the day to drool over the latest creation of the Ferrari empire. This car looks fantastic.

A four-door car that does 200mph. This model looks particularly good in silver, as is the case with a lot of famous Ferraris. Is capitalism wonderful or what?

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What does this sound like to you?

[From UK Times]

DOZENS of speed cameras are to be replaced with electronic signs that display a frowning face when a driver is speeding but do not result in fines or penalty points.

The devices are to be placed where police can no longer justify having a speed camera because there is no recent history of crashes.

Police hope that the speed indicator devices (SIDs) will defuse some of the anger generated by the huge increase in camera fines. Last year an estimated two million drivers caught on camera were fined £60 and given three penalty points.

The new devices use radar to detect the speed of an oncoming vehicle, and flash it up on a screen. If the driver is within the limit, the screen changes to a smiling face.

At just 1mph over the limit, the face will frown.

Because it sounds to me like the Home Office are starting to back down.

At this rate it will take about another year for the 'frowny faces' to be replaced by an All-Weather Traffic Co-Ordination Officer whose job it will be to stand on the verge of a dual carriageway and shout "fascist, fascist" as the cars whizz by.

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Paul Smith is a man with a profound interest in driving and road safety. As a driver myself I, too, have a vested interest in these matters. Whenever I depart from point A I much prefer it to be overwhelmingly probable that I will reach point B with all my favourite limbs and organs in situ and functioning as nature intended.

The British government and its various agencies claim that they share this interest as well. Moreover, they assure us that the solution to the problem lies with forcing everyone to drive more slowly and punish those drivers who fail to comply. Hence the virus-like proliferation of the 'GATSO' or 'Speed Camera' which (just by complete coincidence I am sure) has also raised tens of millions of pounds for the public coffers from already over-taxed motorists who infringe blanket and arbitrary speed limits.

In response to the wave of discontent this has caused, the government, the police and the various lobbyists that support them, have doggedly stood their ground and explained that, yes, it is all very regrettable but the point of the GATSO's is most assuredly not to raise revenue (no, perish the thought!) but merely to save lives. In other words, they are relying on the canard that freedom must be sacrificed in order to achieve safety.

Well, they are wrong and Paul Smith has made it his business to prove, publicly and beyond argument, that they are wrong. His website, Safe Speed, cuts a swathe through the cant and the piety:

We have never seen any credible figures that put road accidents caused by exceeding a speed limit at even 5% of road accidents. We object to speed cameras mainly because they fail to address the causes of at least 95% of road accidents. The Government claims of 1/3rd of accidents being caused by excessive speed are no more than lies according to the Government's own figures.

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

Mr Smith has amassed a treasure trove of documentary, audio and video evidence that entirely discredits the myth that Tax Sp