It is Friday, and I cannot be bothered to ponder the latest outrages of our political oligarchy. For our mental health, let us ponder the lines of this new little beauty from Porsche.

Burn that carbon, baby!

I guess this is a good reason as any not to fly on Ryanair.

I don't want to use these hallowed pages as a forum to moan about the odd personal gripe, but I think I can find an excuse as there is a larger point. What am talking about? I am talking about the fact that at my local London Tube (underground for you non-Brits) station, the down-escalator has been taken out of service for almost nine months. It is in Pimlico, and serves the Victoria line, one of the deeper of the stations in the capital. Result: I, along with everyone else, have to walk down a long flight of stairs, which was a bit of a problem recently after I suffered a painful foot injury (now mercifully healed). It also meant that it is impossible sometimes to use that station if you have heavy luggage. A disabled person would have to go to another station, which is hardly a great advertisement for public transport.

The explanation given for why it has taken this time to service and replace an escalator seems to be something like this: spare parts for these things are incredibly rare and specialised and take months to make. I can even remember once reading several years ago about how the Tube engineers were trying to find spare parts on Ebay. Now, a thought occurs: surely, in this era of computer-aided design, or CAD, and just-in-time stock inventory systems, it should be possible for an engineer, supplied with the correct measurements, to fabricate whatever spare parts he or she needs to fit into something like an escalator, or for that matter, an aircraft engine. And yet this does not appear to be the case.

Of course, another explanation is that the building contractors who work on the Tube, while they may contain some excellent staff, contain an awful lot of leeches who are happy to pocket the contract money and then spin out their contracts for as long as possible. So it may be that the procurement process is woefully inefficient. Even so, our forefathers who built much of Britain's industrial landscape would regard such delays with contempt. I bet this guy would not have been very happy.

Via Instapundit, here is the modern form of the classic Mercedes car, known as the gullwing. Given its price tag, I'd only be able to afford the badge, alas. Anyway, it is nice to see a manufacturer trying to make something with a bit more of a stylistic personality.

I am writing this while keeping the TV on in the background and the programme is the F1 qualifying round for Monza, Italy. Seems rather appropriate.

Until fairly recently, I have been a fan of budget airlines, if only because they have enabled my family and friends to whizz around the skies of Europe seeing interesting places and keeping in touch with loved ones. (Until I make my millions and can afford a Learjet, this will probably not change). I prefer Easyjet to Ryanair in this - by a whisker - because the commutes from the airports that airline uses to wherever I want to go tend to be so long as to undermine some of the cost savings of using the airline. This is a marginal difference between the two airlines and other passengers might take a different view. So Easyjet gets the nod. But until now.

Yesterday, on a fairly routine flight out of Europe, I spotted something that made my jaw drop - although that may be my naivete here. A young, short woman - less than 5ft tall - was struggling to push her hand luggage item into the locker above her seat. The bag was not all that big or heavy. But the flight attendant, a 30-something young guy with a rather annoying tendency to giggle at the passangers and staff constantly, refused point blank to help her move the item. I think the line went something like this: "It is not my job to move your stuff. If you cannot move it, then it is too big for you and it goes into the hold."

Eventually I helped the lady put the bag, which was fairly light, into the locker. Now I have checked the regulations on the Easyjet website and I cannot see where it is stated that flight attendants are not supposed to help short people push their bags into a locker. In other words, a woman was refused help because she was short, as far as I can tell. My wife speculated that Easyjet staff do not get medical insurance as part of their pay package, so they have refused to do anything - such as lift bags - that might lead to a problem. That may be the reason.

I hate the whole litigation culture so I would not advise the person in question to have a go at Easyjet. And it is a hassle to spend more money to fly with an airline where the staff do not come close to treating their paying customers with an attitude hovering between fake bonhomie and outright contempt. And in these straightened times, we'll probably do the British thing, bear up and put up with it. But all the same, I was not impressed by the orange airline, and will be avoiding it in future if at all possible. In fact, when I head for France next month, I'm taking the ferry across the English Channel and then duelling it out wiith the motorists of the Fifth Republic.

Update: another big and fatal air crash. There seem to have been rather a lot of them lately.

I was not able to make it to last weekend's extravaganza of classic cars, racers and glorious carbon-emitting beauties of Formula 1, but I certainly wish I was there. The Goodwood Festival of Speed, held in west Sussex in July, is always a great event.

Here's the sort of vehicle that will be running. Serious petrol-head eye candy.

London is today in the grip of a tube strike. Tube as in underground railway. For a brief summary of the anti-strike arguments, try Burning Our Money. (Burning Our) Money quote:

Here we have a reeling dispirited government who no longer care if they give away the shop. They're way beyond that. Their main aim now is to minimise the scale of their defeat, which definitely DEFINITELY means no Winter of Discontent style public sector strikes.

Sure, if they give in to big union demands they'll be increasing the problems facing the next government. But why should they worry? They don't care if they make life more difficult for Dave and George in 12 months time - in fact, that would be a positive bonus.

And the union bosses ain't quite so dumb as they look ...

In other words, another bit of earth will get scorched.

In a break from the usual hurlyburly of current affairs and to protect my sanity and sense of humour, I like to scoot around to blogs such as the Deep Glamour site set up by Virginia Postrel, for example. There is a great entry by one of the contributors there on the subject of wristwatches. I have a few, mostly cheap, plus a nice, limited edition Breitling that is probably the most expensive thing I own and that I bought from a dealer for what I reckon was a bargain (no, not a guy with a briefcase in Hong Kong!).

Will these things ever die out? I don't think so. Yes, you can tell the time by looking at your mobile phone - I know a few people who do this - but I find it such a convenient, reflexive action to look down at your wrist and see the time. And yes, there remains a fashion appeal, which applies as much to we chaps as it does to the ladies. Watches can convey a macho, outdoors "I am an astronaut/pilot/yachtsman in my spare time" appeal or a sophisticated look that goes well with a suit. And as long as people enjoy adornment, then the wristwatch, I think, will remain.

Which given the state of its banking sector right now, is good news for the Swiss.

Well, full marks for trying, I guess. Ross Clark - a columnist whom I enjoy reading - argues that the fuss about proposals to reduce certain speed limits on UK roads are unwarranted. This is his argument:

It didn't take long for the militant motorists' lobby to get into gear to attack the Government's proposal to reduce the national speed limit from 60mph to 50mph.

That's true.

To lop 10 mph off the speed limit on country lanes, apparently, is tantamount to declaring a fascist dictatorship. “These corporate Nazi New Labour bastards are intent on turning law-abiding citizens into criminals,” began one of hundreds of angry posts on the website of a prominent motorists' pressure group yesterday - before, bizarrely, imploring his fellow petrolheads to vote for the British National Party.

A classic bait and switch. For sure, some opponents of speed limits might like to clam they are the equivalent of bringing back the Gulag, but for most of us who do not see the logic of ever more draconian controls on the car, the case can be made without invoking images of Soviet Russia or Hitler's Germany.

That the leaders of the motorists' lobby are not quite the defenders of liberty they often profess to be is obvious from reading their output over the years. They have never been slow to demand the prosecution of cyclists, jaywalking pedestrians and motorists who drive too slowly or in any other fashion that impedes their progress.

That has probably something to do with the fact that a lot of pedestrians and cyclists do not think the highway codes in countries such as the UK applies to them. But he does make a fair point, but so what? Just because some motorists are hypocrits does not undermine the broader point.

Unfortunately, Mr Clark descends into nonsense:

The assertion that tighter motoring law is tantamount to dictatorship is further confused by a paradox. The world's most illiberal regimes happen to have some of the most anarchic and dangerous of roads, while the most liberal nations tend to have the strictest traffic enforcement and safest roads. For all the conspiracy theories, Morgan Tsvangirai now says that the car crash that tragically killed his wife on Friday was an accident. It shouldn't come as a surprise: reporters who have used the road between Harare and Beitbridge paint a terrifying picture of speeding, overloaded lorries and complete lawlessness - this in a country where if you criticise the President you can expect a rapid visit from Robert Mugabe's thugs.

He's right that consistently enforced rules of the road are hardly the same as political oppression, forced labour or torture. Of course. Rules of the road are a bit like etiquette: if consistently followed, it helps us all to rub along, which in a small island like the UK is not a trivial matter. But Mr Clark needs to think this through. Take countries such as post-war Germany or France, with their excellent motorways. Speed limits are, and can be, quicker than in the UK and in the case of Germany, some of their autobahns have had no limits at all (this may have changed, I'll have to check). When that fella with the silly moustache was in power, the autobahns got built, and the quality of driving in Germany is, in my experience, high. But that example, when set against the chaos of Zimbabwe, proves little. In India, which is a democracy and fairly free place, the driving is absolutely terrible. There's no correlation between oppression and driving like Jeremy Clarkson on crack. None.

Local authorities would love to reduce speed limits on a great number of roads, but they are hampered by bureaucracy. Whenever they want to designate a limit on a rural road lower than the default 60mph they must justify it through accident statistics. It may be obvious that motorists are driving too fast on a stretch of road, but a council must wait for the required number of people to be killed or injured before it can take any action. And even when, finally, sufficient coffins have been filled to justify a speed limit on a rural road, it remains legal to drive along surrounding lanes at 60mph, giving reckless motorists an incentive to divert on to even more dangerous rat-runs.

Well obviously, if we had privately owned roads, rather than roads run by bureaucrats, then speed limits would be dealt with without the need for all this sort of wrangling. This is, by the way, a powerful argument for privately owned roads.

The only problem is that the proposal does not go far enough. Many country roads are no more than cart tracks covered with tarmac, where 50mph is still far too fast.

Match the speed to the conditions - that is a sensible principle. But if that is the case, that does rather mess up the idea of blanket speed limits in the first place, unless one is going to adopt a sort of "if in doubt, walk" approach to getting from A to B.

And Mr Clark makes no reference whatever to the glaringly obvious fact that the profusion of speed cameras is, and has been, driven in part by a desire to raise revenue. Now, if roads were privately owned and the driver, as consumer, knowingly signs up to the deal, that would not be an infringement of liberty. But as things stand, the obsession with restricting use of the car is all of a broader assault on these machines, for ideological and environmentalist reasons. And the proposal to cut speed limits comes across, at a time like this, as just another, petty little squeeze on private citizens and their desire to get around relatively quickly. It has nothing to do with a yobbish desire to drive as fast as one likes and damn the results.

Notwithstanding traffic congestion - which private road ownership would help solve - the car is a symbol of freedom for millions. Mr Clark, who has written brilliantly about the assaults on freedoms in this country, should focus his ire elsewhere.

This is great.

Via the Register, are some of the latest iterations of the electric car. This promises to be one of the fastest yet. I think it is vital that if these vehicles are going to catch on with a mass audience, they have not just to be practical, but fun to drive, to be, for want of a better word, cool. The trouble with the Toyota Prius and similar vehicles is that they are driven by the sort of folk that, as PJ O'Rourke once put it, are in favour of government regulation of bed-time and other outrages. To reach the "Jeremy Clarkson" demographic, one needs something rather more likely to appeal to the guy who eyes up advertisements for Alfa Romeo or Porsche, even if they cannot yet quite afford one.

Being charitable to my fellow motorists, I guess a lot of them were in a hurry to get home last night and start off the first full working week nice and early, judging by the amount of tailgaters I encountered while driving down from East Anglia to London. At least half a dozen motorists drove very close behind me, full headlight beams on, doing probably about 90mph, forcing me to get out of the way and then watch as these idiots drove at up to 100mph or more. Odd, really, since as Samizdata readers are only too well aware, the UK has become the land of the speed camera. For whatever reason, a lot of motorists seemed not to give a damn about getting a speeding fine last night. But maybe this was nothing unusual and I was just a bit unlucky.

I actually enjoy driving fast along a motorway although I find the strain on the eyes of driving at night, with lots of drivers' lights shining in my eyes via the reflection off a rear-view mirror, to be pretty difficult after a couple of hours. I can understand the frustration of motorists with a very slow driver who, frankly, should not be on a motorway at all, but tailgating is bloody dangerous particularly when road conditions are less than perfect. In this case at least, I am on the side of the police taking a firm line.

Anyway, after a splendid break spent in the contrasting locations of Malta and Northumberland, I am back at the blogging coalface. A belated Happy New Year from me.

Via the wonderful Boing Boing site, I came across this rather, ahem, interesting luggage. And the website is French. Quite what the airport security people will make of this is anyone's guess. I suspect that many airports will not see the joke.

I like gadgets like the best of them but for the life of me, what is the US government doing creating flying cars? I cannot quite see this as a priority item in defeating Islamic terror, somehow.

That's not to say I do not want a flying car, of course.

During the recent LA/LI Conference, Sean Gabb, half of the two-man team that now runs the Libertarian Alliance (Tim Evans being the other half) sat himself down next to me and asked me to suggest good speakers for next year. My best two suggestions were two Michaels.

Michael Jennings will be well-known to regular readers here as an expert on technological trends and much else besides. He would be exactly the kind of second-tier speaker, and I mean this in no disrespectful way, who maybe isn't a superstar name who would cause dozens more attendees to sign up in the first place, but who would add greatly to the enjoyment and enlightenment of the event for all who did attend. Technology, I am sure you will agree, can be relied upon to keep on supplying interesting trends for someone like Michael to talk about.

And the other Michael I suggested was Michael O'Leary, the boss of Ryanair. Okay, definitely a first-tier speaker, but equally definitely a long shot. But what's the worst he can say? No, too busy running Britain's largest low fares airline, you can afford my air fares but not me but the best of luck anway being what he probably would say, if anything, if asked.

Ryanair press releases are actually fun to read (like some of Sean Gabb's, come to think of it). Here is a typically populist and opportunistic snippet from the latest one:

Ryanair, Britain's largest low fares airline, today (31st Oct) offered to rescue Jonathan Ross after he was 'Sent to Coventry' by the bigwigs at the BBC. Ryanair will help Ross jet off to much more exotic surrounds as it sent him free tickets to escape the media spotlight and sample how those who don’t earn £18million a year live.

Ryanair, called on the black sheep of the BBC, who will lose £1.5million over the next 12 weeks, to make his money go further by escaping the high cost of living in Mayfair and fly on one of Ryanair's over 350 UK routes where he can live cheaper, get a tan and gear himself up for his return to the beeb next year.

Does Coventry have an airport, I wonder?

O'Leary's open contempt for state monopolies of all kinds, but especially in the airline business (on the ground and in the air), is most pleasing. A growing trend in public opinion, especially since this latest wall-of-taxpayer-money bailout of dodgy banks, is the alignment of enthusiasm for free markets with populism, while statist solutions to problems are becoming regarded more and more as elitist manipulations, the rich helping themselves to public money on scale that the poor could never dream of. O'Leary feeds into that current, I think, especially in the way he bangs on about how much more you often have to pay the government, when you fly Ryanair, than you have to pay him.

Michael Jennings, constant globetrotter that he is, could doubtless tell libertarians about the impact of low fare airlines on the world, even if Michael O'Leary is otherwise engaged.

Congress notes that the Government proposes to require workers in aviation to enrol in the National Identity Scheme in 2009. Congress has deep concerns about the implications of the National Identity Scheme in general and the coercion of aviation workers into the scheme in particular. Congress sees absolutely no value in the scheme or in improvements to security that might flow from this exercise and feels that aviation workers are being used as pawns in a politically led process which might lead to individuals being denied the right to work because they are not registered or chose not to register in the scheme.

Congress pledges to resist this scheme with all means at its disposal, including consideration of legal action to uphold civil liberties.

Overwhelmingly carried by the TUC. Coming not very long after the British Air Transport Association (the association of airlines and airports) expressed its "joint and determined opposition to the proposal" [pdf], this suggests the current scheduling of the UK National Identity Scheme may have some problems.

Expect yet another repositioning shortly. (My guess: it'll be about "immigration control".)

As a fairly regular user of Heathrow Airport and other UK airports such as Gatwick - the former has suffered all manner of problems due to loss of baggage, massive queues - this, on the face of it, looks a good development, but I have my reservations, as I will explain later:

Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- BAA Ltd., the owner of London's Heathrow airport, should be broken up and its Gatwick and Stansted terminals sold off to foster competition in the U.K. capital, antitrust regulators said.

The unit of Spanish builder Grupo Ferrovial SA provides a poor service to airlines and passengers and has shown a lack of initiative in planning for additional capacity, the Competition Commission said today, recommending that the company should also be stripped of either Glasgow or Edinburgh airport in Scotland. BAA said the analysis was ``flawed.''

Hmm. The problem partly stems from the fact that when BAA was originally privatised by the former Tory government, it was sold as a monopoly. That is not, in and of itself, a terrible thing so long as there are other competing transportation businesses. But there were not other big airports owned by non-BAA businesses to compete, especially against the crucial hub of Heathrow. In a previous Samizdata posting on the Snafu of the opening of Heathrow's Terminal Five, one commenter pointed out that one issue that is sometimes overlooked in issues like this is restrictions on new airport builds by the planning authorities. Well indeed. I think there is a good case for building an airport to the eastern side of London, on the flat lands that sit to the north of the Thames (it is not as if this is an area of outstanding natural beauty). It would relieve some of the air traffic now coming over the capital, which would be good for abating noise as well as removing a potential safety and security issue of thousands of aircraft flying into land over the middle of London.

Getting planning permission for a new airport is, under the current system, very difficult. Yes, there are, in the UK, a lot of old, disused military bases left by the RAF and the USAF, such as in Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire, and East Anglia and bits of Kent. However, the trouble is that such bases were deliberately built miles away from major urban centres, to prevent the danger that an attack on such a base would hit a large city. So you have th situation of huge runways turning into rubble in the middle of Suffolk but of no real use to commuters in London. So we would need something a bit closer. Another matter to bear in mind is that southern England is not very large: airspace is at a premium and already crowded, if not quite so bad as during the Cold War, when the UK was covered in airbases.

I am not, as a free market purist, at all happy to see a private business broken up at the behest of a state regulator, but then we should recall that BAA was originally put together as a state business and sold as a monopoly as a matter of state policy. When its current owners, the Spanish firm Ferrovial, bought BAA, they must have known that failure to sort out the problems might have incurred the wrath of the regulator. It would be nice in a total free market not to have to bother about such things, but it would have been failure of basic due diligence for Ferrovial's lawyers not to have warned their managers that competition issue might arise. Well, it jolly well has arisen at last. We would not, as the old joke about the Irishman giving street directions to a tourist, want to start from here. But here is where we are. If there is a chance of putting a large, competitive fire up the backsides of BAA's management, there is a chance, however slender, that the experience of coming to and from the UK by air might be a tad more pleasant in future.

The excellent "swearblogger" at Devil's Kitchen, recently suffered a nasty car accident. He's okay, although his car was damaged. I could not help notice in the associated comments that some character called Neil Harding chose to make a cheap political crack about how this proved that we "individualists" who like cars should take the train instead. It was not a friendly word of sympathy for someone involved in a potentially fatal accident.

Maybe I am in a grumpy mood today, but please, would these car-haters, these collectivist train fans, please, please just go off to North Korea. Not everyone can rely on public transport, Mr Harding.

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Ford Model-T car, the vehicle that changed the face of the automobile business, helping to put the four-wheeled auto within reach of a vast swathe of the American population. Ford's mass-production techniques may not have been totally original, since one can argue that some of the features of mass production used had been employed in parts of the industrialised world before. But the factories that churned out these cars were probably the most famous forms of mass-production in their time, and encouraged a host of imitators.

Here's a nifty slide-show on the anniversary.

The day before yesterday, while travelling on the London Underground, I came across an interesting little news item in one of those free newspapers, about how a visit by President Bush to Britain caused disruption at Heathrow a week or two ago. Heathrow being near to Bush's destination, which was Windsor Castle, he or someone decided that he would arrive there, rather than at a military base. Only last night did I remember to chase it up on the internet. Here is the original version of the story I encountered.

British Airways has criticised Heathrow owner BAA for allowing George Bush to fly into the UK's biggest airport, forcing the cancellation of at least 69 flights and disrupting the travel plans of 40,000 passengers.

Willie Walsh, BA chief executive, said he was angry that the presidential entourage, which included two Boeing 747 jets and four helicopters, caused chaos 10 days ago as runways were closed and planes grounded. "The decision to allow President Bush and his fleet of aircraft to fly into Heathrow rather than a military base was one all of Heathrow's users could have done without," he said. "I am also angry that this was allowed."

Walsh said the disruption began two days before the president's visit on June 15 and lasted for the two days that his party stayed in the UK. Heathrow was reduced to one working runway for 30 minutes on June 15 and 16, after its other runway was closed temporarily for the arrival and departure of Air Force One.

I know, I know. If it had been any other President, the Guardian would not have been half so exercised. And had it been President Chavez causing all this fuss, they would have found a way of saying how splendid that was. But this time I happen to agree. Read the rest of the article to learn the full scale of the disruption.

I remember being shocked, in Edinburgh I think it was, when by chance I happened to observe the then Prime Minister John Major being driven past, in the midst of a huge fleet of black cars and police motorbikes. Ordinary motorists were swept from the road to make room for all this shinily mechanised pomposity. It is one thing to object to "statism" in an abstract sort of way, as I had long been doing even then. It's quite another to observe the actual state in action, in a great flurry of self-importance such as this was. Nothing I was doing was deranged, luckily for me. But I know just how little all these people in their black cars and their blaring motorbikes would have cared if my plans and activities had been thus interrupted. And now these people are crashing through major airports and screwing them around, as if air travel wasn't chaotic enough already. In the old USSR they used to have dedicated central lanes for the fat cats to be driven along in their convoys of fatcatmobiles. Now the whole world seems to be heading in that direction.

I am not an admirer of British Airways. From what I hear, the habit of BA's senior management of shouting at anyone who tries to tell them bad news (they call this procedure, bizarrely: "NLP") was a major cause of the recent Terminal 5 luggage catastrophe. Lots saw this disaster coming. They tried to tell their bosses. Instead of listening and taking the necessary corrective steps, the bosses simply shouted. But I like what BA's top boss said about this more recent episode very much.

Swiss banks have not had a good time of it lately, which does rather dent their image of being sober-suited outfits able to protect your millions. UBS, the Zurich-based banking and wealth management group, has booked a total of $37 billion in losses connected to the credit crunch. Wow. Even other banking groups in the Alpine state, like Clariden Leu, Julius Baer and Credit Suisse, have suffered - though not remotely as badly as UBS, which possibly may break up or get taken over.

So I was a bit bemused to read that Credit Suisse has hired former US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta as an adviser. Has no-one told Credit Suisse that this fellow used to be known unflatteringly as "Underperformin' Norman" when he was in charge of sorting out airport security and other areas?

Random searches of Britons going about their business are now established features of life in this country. The old refrain - "It could not happen here", no longer applies. On Saturday, while driving along the side of the Thames towards Westminster, passing by the Tate Gallery, I was flagged down by a policeman.

Officer: "Could you show me your driving licence? This is a section 41 search" (at least I think that is what he said).

Me: "Section 41 or whatever of what?"

Officer: "The Terrorism Act"

Me: "Why have you pulled me and my wife over?"

Officer: "We are doing searches of vehicles in the area."

Me: "Well obviously you are. Is this a random thing?"

Officer: "Yes. Please hand over your driving licence and we want to search the car."

They searched the car, called up the driving licence authority, and were able to their enormous satisfaction confirm that I was whom I said I was. I was then asked to sign a document stating that the search had been carried out as it should have been. The officer gave me his name, rank and police station number and address. When I signed the form, he asked me how I wanted to classify myself as there were about 15 options, including "White British". He was polite. My treatment was fine. The officer and his colleagues told me they were on duty, searching vehicles, for the rest of the day and into the evening.

Now I will spare you a rant about the impertinence of this. You can, gentle reader, assume as a matter of course that I regard such random searches of members of the public as impertinent. What makes me wonder, though, is what on earth the supporters of such searches expect? Do they honestly, really believe that would-be terrorists will be deterred, frightened off or caught? Unless the police put up roadblocks across London, at god-knows what disruption and cost, I do not see how doing this on one of many major roads will cause a blind bit of difference.

This is what has been called "security theatre": lots of action signifying little. Even the copper who carried out the search had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed.

Update: One commenter has complained that I am getting all upset for no good reason and has used the argument that this sort of behaviour is okay as it can act as a "fishing" expedition to unearth potentially other crimes. It is hard to summon breath to deal with such a brazen argument in favour of abolishing the idea that one is presumed innocent until otherwise.

Update 2: a reader asked for further details on the search. From the time I was pulled over to being let on my way, the process lasted 15 minutes. The police officer's colleague called up the driving licence authority to give them my licence registration number and the authority took about 10 minutes to get back. An officer opened the car boot, rummaged around some bags and luggage - I was travelling up to Cambridge with my wife - and had a look inside the car. They also inspected my clothes and checked my footwear. They did not ask me to open the glove compartment of the car. They also did not look under the car with a mirror or anything similar, or look under the bonnet.

I do not normally like receiving emails selling me products, but I thought I would have to make an exception for this:

Dear Antoine,

Virgin Galactic is delighted to announce a new destination... space. Climb to 360,000ft. at a cruising speed of almost three times the speed of sound, in unprecedented levels of safety and comfort. See our beautiful planet from 63 miles up and experience the magic of weightlessness.

Redeem 200,000 miles to receive 10% off the cost of a spaceflight, that's an incredible $20,000 saving!* Join our future astronauts and book your place in history.

I look forward to the Nigerian version:

"My name is Mr.Moses Odiaka. I work in the credit and accounts department of Union Bank of NigeriaPlc,Lagos, Nigeria. I write you in respect of a foreign customer with a Virgin Galactica ticket. His name is Engineer Manfred Becker. He was among those who died in a plane crash here in Nigeria during the reign of late General Sani Abacha.

Since the demise of this our customer, Engineer Manfred Becker, who was an oil merchant/contractor, I have kept a close watch of the deposit records and accounts and since then nobody has come to claim the airmiles in this a/c as next of kin to the late Engineer. He had only 18.5mllion air miles in his a/c and the a/c is coded. It is only an insider that could produce the code or password of the deposit particulars. As it stands now,there is nobody in that position to produce the needed information other than my very self considering my position in the bank."

Via the Association of British Drivers (and Transport Blog) comes news of this wondrous logo, which advertises the activities of something called GMPTE:

I don't know when this poster was first displayed, but it is the star of the most recent ABD press release, so presumably quite recently.

It doesn't actually say at the GMPTE website what GMPTE stands for. I had to go here to be sure that it stands for Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive. If that logo is any guide to GMPTE's modus operandi I should guess that it is also known locally as Gumpty Dumpty.

Anyone worried by Natalie's posting below should be aware that you ain't seen nuttin' yet. Tom Griffin of The Green Ribbon has obtained a full listing of the information it is intended to collect (and distribute among various authorities) concerning those buying tickets to move from any one of Britain, the Irish Republic, and Northern Ireland to any of the others.

There has been a common travel area since St Patrick, and this was formalised in the 20th century when the countries of Britain and Ireland came incompletely apart. Now it seems both governments are in effect conspiring to introduce internal passports and replace a common travel area with a common surveillance area.

[hat-tip: spyblog]

One of the not-so-secret reasons why motor cars are popular, to the fury of some, is that some of the designs are just staggeringly beautiful. As with aircraft or yachts, the aesthetics of a perfectly designed machine should never be underestimated. At a time when much so-called Modern Art (the capital M and A says it all) is such empty, vacuous tosh, it is a fact that needs to be remarked that so much industrial design that we have today is outstanding, inventive, clever, even a bit naughty.

This must surely be contender for one of the very best, courtesy of those clever men at Alfa Romeo.

Patrick Crozier and various others, of whom I am one, continue to put stuff up at Transport Blog from time to time (although my contributions are not always very profound). One of the more interesting Transport Blog items of recent weeks has been this recorded conversation in which Samizdata's own Michael Jennings talks with Patrick Crozier about low cost airlines. Says Patrick: "Here's my favourite bit."

This favourite bit is worth quoting in full:

Jennings: There was an airline named ValuJet which flew a plane into the Everglades and everybody on that plane was killed. Now this sort of put a damper on the discount airlines of the US, because ValuJet was the second largest discount airline in the US at that point after South West, and it got out ... once there was an investigation into this crash, it turned out that ValuJet had cut costs in all kinds of places, and in particular they'd simply neglected safety. And because the fact that this one discount airline in the US had done terribly bad things with respect to maintenance, discount airlines in the US didn't grow as fast after that as they probably would have if this crash had not happened.

Crozier: It's interesting that that does sort of put a kibosh on the profits-before-safety argument. If you try to put profits you lose the safety, and if you lose the safety you lose the profits.

Jennings: The interesting thing which came out of that was that discount airlines in other parts of the world really, really learned a lesson from that. Discount airlines in Europe, in particular RyanAir, which is ... one of the most ferocious cost-cutting companies I've ever seen of any kind ... it doesn't skimp on maintenance. The lesson was learned that whatever you do, you do your maintenance properly, because if you do skimp on maintenance and a plane crashes that will be the end of you, basically.

One of Patrick Crozier's relentless Transport Blog memes is that safety and profit are not alternatives; they go hand in hand. As he says here in connection with railways, where exactly the same equation applies:

... crashes are expensive. You lose the train, you lose passenger revenue through delays and cancellations and you probably have to rebuild the track. As a rail executive once said: "Even a minor derailment or a collision can cost a fortune. I mean millions."

No wonder Patrick was glad to hear Michael saying a similar thing not just about airlines, but in particular about cheap airlines.

My favourite bit is where, reflecting on the impact on low cost aviation of the Second World, Michael says:

There are probably more airstrips in East Anglia than there are in all of China.

It's not so much that I never knew that as that it had never occurred to me to even think about it.

A wonderful snippet from a BBC radio reporter (Ed Stourton) in Afghanistan for the Today programme: A new bus-stop has been built in Lashikar Gah as part of the 'reconstruction' effort.

The report does not say whether it is a replacement for a pre-war bus-stop. Somehow I doubt it. It is very well-equipped, having its own mosque and a pharmacy, as waiting times "can be rather long".

An odd approach. In most of the world a bus-stop is a place where buses happen to stop. Of course bus-stops, like ports and railway stations all round the world provide opportunities for traders, places of worship, bars and cafes and so forth, but they seldom have them built in. Bus companies and their passengers are primarily interested in selling and buying travel. The pause at the roadside to move from foot to wheel, wheel to foot, refuel, refresh, is just procedural necessity.

Even in the first world, where there are some fabulous bus stations and garages, mostly this is an utilitarian afterthought, contingently well-designed. Everywhere (I thought) the buses are the transport network, not the stops. You have a shed for the buses at the end of the route, and signs to show where the buses are supposed to stop. Many places they do without the shed, not least because the buses are always on the move maximising their passenger-, luggage- and livestock- miles.

But a government bus-stop is built to different, higher, standards. A throwaway line at the end of the report reveals just how long those waiting times are: "There are no buses yet."

In some of the recent understandable moans about the sheer awfulness of Britain's state-controlled rail network - please don't try and tell me it has much to do with laissez faire capitalism - several commentators have complained about the dearth of people entering the fields of engineering. Jeff Randall in today's Daily Telegraph does so. Various reasons are given for this lack of talent: the education system, an anti-science, anti-technology culture, etc. While some of these factors have a part to play in this, I do not think these explanations get to the core of the issue. If railway engineers do not earn large salaries and the job is not seen to be worth the hassle compared with say, becoming a hedge fund manager in London's West End, it is not a surprise to see what will happen. If or when the remuneration for being a new Brunel rivals or even exceeds that of being a Goldman Sachs derivatives dealer, we will get more engineers, and of higher quality. It is that simple.

Or maybe one problem is that railways, perhaps because of the problems now facing the UK industry, are seen as just plain dull. As Randall says, confessing to being a railway engineer may not always be a great move at a dinner party, or for that matter, on a hot date. I am not sure how one changes that.

Thanks to Instapundit, I came across this staggering collection of photo images of vandalised speed cameras - called "Gatsos" - on the sides of British roads.

The website I have linked to gives the impression that it is generally rather in favour of this practice, on the grounds that many such cameras are difficult to spot and hence set up as a sneaky way to catch out motorists to make money from fines, rather than actually trying to slow down speeds to cut the risk of accidents. A recent book by Christopher Booker and Richard North contends that the obsession with reducing speed limits on Britain's roads has not reduced the amount of accidents, although it has made the driving process even more tedious than it can be already.

Frankly, I am not able to judge whether North and Booker's analysis is correct, although they present a formidable number of facts to demonstrate their argument. Rather, what the extraordinary collection of images of vandalised speed cameras demonstrates is how far Britain has retreated from quiet deference to the rule of law. I think that society needs to have laws and certain laws need to be enforced and respected. It is a perversion of the argument for freedom to state that it implies a lack of respect for the law. Not so. But what is also clear is that in a society burdened with a rising weight of regulatory, nannying regulations, that a degree of blowback, if I can use the term, will occur. Which is a pity. Motorists who hammer along roads in streets near schools and houses are a menace.

Well, actually, no. For their information. You have been warned, however. Statewatch notes:

The European Commission is to put forward, on Tuesday 6 November, a proposal to collect personal data (PNR) on everyone flying in and out of the EU. ... The data to be collected is almost exactly the same as that being collected under the controversial EU-US PNR scheme.

You recall that famous passage from The Wealth of Nations?

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

It applies with even greater force when the 'people of the same trade' are states and their governments.

I was trying to think of something profound to say but in the end, what the heck.........

I drive around London at weekends occasionally - I have a car but do not bother to use it to get work (I can reach my office in Westminster on foot, thanks to living nearby Pimlico). But when I do get behind the wheel, the congestion is terrible, not just at the usual peak times. Getting out of London often takes longer than on the open road. For example, whenever I go to visit my parents in Suffolk, at least half of the journey time is taken up by driving from Pimlico through the eastern reaches of London before actually hitting Essex on the A12. Pretty much the same dire situation applies if you head north, south or west.

Has the congestion charge, introduced by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, made much difference? I doubt it; it always looked like a revenue-raiser to me, whatever the spin. While in theory I have no ideological problems with the charge - if the roads are genuinely privately owned, that is - in the current context the charge seems like a bit of a con to me. Or at least it is unless we can get rid of the curse of the Bus Lane. But then the charge does not apply at weekends, so my view might be affected if I had to drive during weekdays. On those rare times when I have done so, I thought the traffic was pretty heavy.

This guy agrees with me. But what to do about it? Well, cutting down the number of buses - heavily subsidised - might be a start since they hog up so much space; some road widening might be workable in places but given London's densely-packed streets and historic buildings, maybe not easily doable.

Maybe I should face the facts: if I want to drive without raised blood pressure, live in Nevada.

This glorious article in the BBC website appeared today. I'd love to know whether the person who wrote this has a sense of irony. There is just a hint that he might:

Britons are "addicted" to cheap flights and confused about the climate impact of flying, according to research.

Well, at least the writer had the good grace to put addicted inside scare quotes.

Britons want to fly for a cheap fare. The horror.

This is a public service announcement to save time for those who would rather get on with irrelevant vituperation and not bother digesting the point of my post: In a moment I'm going to say something positive about Gerry Adams.

First, consider this from The Washington Post:

The government's terrorist screening database flagged Americans and foreigners as suspected terrorists almost 20,000 times last year. But only a small fraction of those questioned were arrested or denied entry into the United States, raising concerns among critics about privacy and the list's effectiveness.

A range of state, local and federal agencies as well as U.S. embassies overseas rely on the database to pinpoint terrorism suspects, who can be identified at borders or even during routine traffic stops. The database consolidates a dozen government watch lists, as well as a growing amount of information from various sources, including airline passenger data. The government said it was planning to expand the data-sharing to private-sector groups with a "substantial bearing on homeland security," though officials would not be more specific.

....

Jayson P. Ahern, deputy commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said focusing on arrests misses "a much larger universe" of suspicious U.S. citizens.

"There are many potentially dangerous individuals who fly beneath the radar of enforceable actions and who are every bit as sinister as those we intercept," he said.

Gotta love those adjectives: "Potentially dangerous", not "dangerous". "Dangerous" would invite the question: How dangerous, exactly? And: What mayhem have these invisible pseudo-threats caused that the forces of security could not have created all by themselves? As for the visibly suspicious, the "sinister", just how threatening they are is shown up by the US Customs and FBI's own account - a "small" number of arrests, not necessarily related to terrorism, a number in the hundreds turned back at the airport. Which can happen even if you have been arrested without charge at some other time in your own country and didn't realise that in consequence you need a visa.

Which brings us to Mr Adams.

He has an amusing little piece in The Guardian, Panic at Passport Control about being selected for secondary security screening selection, or SSSS.

I hand the FBI young gun a copy of my travel schedule - a document that has been in the possession of the US state department for the past month or so.

"Huh," he says. "Why are you going to the White House, sir?"

"To see the president."

"Huh. Why?"

"He asked me," I say evenly.

My deadpan delivery is wasted on him. Maybe he is used to dealing with wise guys.

"Why, sir?"

Now we all know - maybe even the callow G-man knows - that Mr Adams is formerly a terrorist by most modern definitions. At the very least he was a leading member of a banned organisation, which is quite enough to get you locked up in many places - or extraordinarily rendered to unpleasant conditiond in secret parts of the world, if it is Banned Organisation of the Month. But Mr Adams is a former terrorist whose current business is known and accepted by the US government, so pulling him aside and interrogating him is not just a waste of his time. It is a monumentally stupid misapplication of the FBI's time.

I am inclined to believe it is also a stupid waste applied to everyone else as well. If the guy isn't carrying a bomb the first time you check his luggage, he won't be the second time, half an hour later. If he's been specially screened before, then doing it again has no benefit at all. Severe disbenefit in fact. All that is time and money that could be spent on real HUMINT, or at least recruiting officers and teaching them the languages and culture to do real intelligence work. However, once you are on a list of the sinister, you may never get off. Look at the trouble even Teddy Kennedy had. If you don't have influential friends, like the senator and the Sinn Féin leader do, fat chance. And the inconvenience involved is likely to be greater.

Lists feed other lists. And feed back again. Confirmation bias, the prosecutor's fallacy, and the spirit of ley-lines do their work. The shade of Profesor Parkinson hovers over all: "Look, this is important work. Because we are doing it, and because we are doing a lot of it." "We suspect 20,000 persoons now, and we are working on suspecting 60,000."

As Adams says: " This is usually a random selection, we are told. The legend SSSS is stamped on the tickets of those randomly selected, and the lucky ticket holder gets extra attention. Richard and I are randomly included for this treatment all the time." It is a common experience. A consitutional reformer of my acquaintance is also randomly selected more often than not. Unlike Mr Adams, she has never justified violence (I'm fairly sure she's against smacking children), but like him she has publicly criticised government. A sometime commentator on this blog and friend of the Samizdata family is formally on the US Homeland Security Register. The reason: he was born in Kabul and lived there till the age of one year, and has a sinister surname. This despite the triple absurdity that (1) lots of people have the same name who are entirely unrelated in any sense, (2) names even if they do indicate family connection don't signify character - imagine pulling in Peter Hitchens and questioning him based on Christopher Hitchens's writings - and (3) middle-eastern names don't follow the western European pattern, so suspecting people on that basis is to elevate ignorant misconception to an operating standard.

Now if you only want to fly to Croatia for a bit of skinnydipping in the Adriatic, you may not think this affects you. (Me, I've stopped flying. Not that I ever could bear airport bureaucracy much.) But where one idiot government programme goes, another government is likely to follow with its own idiot programme. Particularly if the idiot government programme is brought to you by the Pax Americana As Perry pointed out recently, Britain's shiny new Borders and Immigration Agency (BIA), is also a borders and emmigration agency. It not only contributes to those "various sources, including airline passenger data," for the convenience of US securocrats, but is keen to start operating its own no-fly and supplementary screening programmes.

And the point is? Well it doesn't do, and cannot do, anything for its purported purpose of "protecting the travelling public". It is counterproductive as at the very least a waste of resources. And it pointlessly delays, inconveniences, iritates and humiliates, tens of thousands of people, from minor statesmen (whether or not they are retired... er... 'freedom fighters'), to government critics, to those more "randomly" selected on the basis of being a bit sinister. It is for the latter it will be most frightening, since they are unlikely to be fortunate enough to know specialist lawyers, politicans and media people who might be able to protect or rescue them if things turn nasty. There is another group we must not forget who will be frightened and overawed unnecessarily: all those other travellers who see one of the previous categories escorted away by officials, not to return to sight. They who will think, "Omigod that could be me - I musn't make any trouble."

That's the point, I suggest. The exercise is about exercise of power. Demonstration that the state is doing something, and you ought to be frightened - of the state or of the "threat". Either will do. Keep your head down "beneath the radar of enforceable actions".

It sends a message. Those people being marched away are a massively expensive exercise in dramatising insecurity in an objectively safe world. It is 'security theatre' in Bruce Schneier's enduring phrase. And it is the biggest, longest lasting production in the history of security theatre, being brought direct to you at any of 1,000+ airports throughout the world on an indefinite run. At massive taxpayer expense (remember, you bought your own ticket for this performance, and every other one, for the rest of you life, at a special block-rate) it helps keep you frightened about bad people, reassured that the government cares about your fear and is doing something, and discouraged from questioning authority.

It is a huge vanity project, in essence. Securocrats in praise of themselves and the power of the state for good as the state defines good. Not so different from this. Or this. At least the Bolshoi Ballet could really dance.

The past weekend, I spent it the way that any islander should - sailing along England's south coast in an all-too rare weekend of good, if at times blustery, weather. A good chance to practice some rusty sailing skills and practice some navigation. When the sky is a nice cobalt blue and the sea looks inviting, it is all too easy to forget just how violent the weather around the UK coast can be. (The same applies to places like the Med; I have seen some very stormy seas around Malta, for example). I tend to take safety on boats very seriously (there are some people I would refuse to sail with on the grounds that they think horseplay and boats go together). All the more reason to salute people who volunteer to save people in distress at sea. One charity that I have a huge amount of admiration and time for is the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

At Samizdata, we like to moan about how certain state-registered charities are being pulled into the maw of the state, and I am one of those moaners. The best way to try and keep the state's hands off such organisations is to donate generously to charities and urge their organisers to spurn any state "initiatives". If any charity deserves a bit of help, it is the RNLI. They seem to avoid striking certain platitudes and get on with a crucial task. Here's to them.

I am certainly not the first person to state what a miserable process travelling by civil aircraft now is, unless one happens to enjoy the use of a private jet (a growing sector thanks to ventures like this one). Even before the latest terrorism problems, the security measures put in place added to the tedium of queuing, increased the tendency of staff to be rude and highhanded towards customers, and added to the cost and expense of flying. The budget airline changes wrought by the likes of Easyjet or Ryanair in Europe certainly have been a massive bonus for anyone who likes to regularly hop over to Porto for a nice weekend or buzz down to Malta to see in the in-laws, in my case. But the fun of flying is pretty much dead. (There is, alas, a similar problem with driving cars today). Airline food is terrible. The safey procedures are a joke - I have never seen any passenger take them seriously. Delays are considerable and getting worse, simply due to the massive amounts of traffic and the lack of airport space. And finally, in places such as London's Heathrow Airport, the place is a nightmare: noisy, dirty, resembling nothing so much as a grotty provincial shopping mall. What can be done about it?

Well, part of the problem is that airport operators like BAA, now owned by Spanish company Ferrovial, operate more or less as a monopoly. There is relatively little competition in the sector and the state regulatory body lacks the market incentive to worry about improving the comfort and enjoyment of passengers. There is something to be said in forcing a breakup of the monopoly of the main airports and encouraging more competition. I personally make it a personal mission to avoid Heathrow Airport at any cost and fly from Gatwick when it is possible, or go to a smaller airport instead. Competition is urgently needed to shake up this industry and put a bit of glamour and excitement back into the business of flying.

Glamour is not a word one hears very often about modern aviation. For all that it is fashionable to bash him (his beard and toothy grin seems to drive some folk up the wall), Sir Richard Branson tries his hardest to inject some fun into the process. But not nearly enough airport/airline operators seem to have that spirit. This industry needs a few more Howard Hughes-type characters to kick it hard up the backside. If they don't, more and more people like me will look for any alternative to taking to the skies in the future. Airlines may think that treating people badly will make them profits, but the long-term cost in alienating people who are seeking alternative forms of transport is bad economics and bad business.

Checking some details, I came across this rather interesting site. Well worth a look.

Scanning various news websites this morning, as is part of my routine, I came across this article over at Reuters. Scroll down and you will see that the item refers to a person commenting to the effect that car ownership is "immoral". Think about that: ownership of a piece of metal, with wheels at each corner, that conveys people from A to B by the harnessing of controlled explosions in something called an engine, is immoral. Not unwise, costly, difficult or impractical, but "immoral".

Maybe these creeps will next argue that Man's possession of opposable thumbs is "immoral" too.

Somehow, I do not think this line of argument is going to work with my employer. I know this sounds harsh, but aspects of Greenery are starting to resemble a form of mental illness.

I have a confession to make. I love the French TGV train that recently set an speed record of more than 350mph - that is quicker than some of the fighter aircraft of World War 2. It is a brilliant, sleek example of engineering and no wonder the French are proud of it. French civil engineering is in fact world-class, a fact that Frog-bashers would do well to remember. The French also played a part in that other magnificently quick and elegant beast - Concorde.

I read an interesting article on the TGV business in the UK weekly, The Spectator, last week, by Neil Collins (subscription-only). In this week's Speccie, old-style socialist Neil Clark (defender of Milosovic, to his eternal shame) pops up in the letter's page of the print edition to poke fun at privatised railways, arguing that the TGV example proves how splendid nationalisation is. It is a superficially appealing argument, but wrong on a number of grounds.

First of all, the TGV train has most of its fixed costs paid for by the state, ie, the French taxpayer. Taxes in France are high, some of the highest in the western world. It is all very well for Collins or Clark to wax lyrical about the ability of Monsieur and Madame to travel from Paris to Marseilles for under 20 euros, but that rather ignores the heavy tax bill that the benighted citoyens of France pay to keep this ultra-quick train system operating. When anyone talks about the 'profits' that the TGV might make, it is an abuse of economic language, since the initial investment into the railway was not an 'investment' in the sense that anyone spending their own money of their free will would understand it. And France, a less densely populated nation that Britain with a rather less respectful attitude towards property rights, can more easily punch straight railway lines across the land regardless of the objections of anyone who stands in the way. These are costs that lie on the debit side of the ledger.

The truth is, that many big state projects are often awe inspiring and people will therefore conclude that we should model the rest of our activity on that. When emergency planning methods were used to make war machines during WW2, socialists and others imagined that we should turn to such 'rational' methods in times of peace. How naive they now appear, but no more naive than those folk like Al Gore who claim that the State should take the credit for the internet, for example, as if such things as Google, YouTube or this blog would ever occur to a civil servant. In fact, just imagine how crap the internet would be if it was run by a state monopoly, like British Rail in the 1960s and 70s.

UK rail privatisation is often held up as an example of the supposed limits of 'free market fundamentalism', but given the botched way in which railways were sold off, the constant interference with the railways in the early years of Labour, it is a nonsense to claim that only state monopolies can run rail networks.

An old refrain from protectionists and other fixed-wealth folk is that it is terrible that Britain does not have a major car manufacturer any more. Japanese and other nations' car plants are in Britain, true, but we have little home-grown stuff. Jaguar is owned by Ford. Aston Martin has been taken over from Ford by a private equity firm. TVR has gone. Morgan is just about hanging on. Land Rover, Rolls Royce, Bentley, MG... they are all in the hands of evil foreigners.

This is largely a function of globalisation, with a bit of help from decades of restrictive practices, crap design and poor quality during the 1950s, 60s and 70s and early 80s. The car industry never really recovered. A whole generation of people learned to loathe British Leyland cars and bought Saabs, Renaults, Citroens and VWs whenever they could. Even though some gems remained - Landrovers and some of the Jags were fine - the reputation of the British car industry was devastated. The same nearly happened to Italian carmaker Fiat when Communist-run unions nearly destroyed that industry as well. But at least Italy had Ferrari.

However, the situation these days is quite bright. Many of the world's top Formula 1 racing teams are based in Britain, like MacLaren in Surrey. And as this article demonstrates, while it may be cheaper to make cars in China or Brazil or Poland, many of the hottest car designers are still British. In the information economy, the value-added areas of design are what count, and it turns out that Britain is rather good at it.

Quick, which has a smaller total impact on the environment?

Well, you know if the answer was the Prius, I wouldn't be posting this. Dog bites man, and all that.

It turns out that, factoring in all costs, that the Hummer is more Gaia-friendly than the Prius. The punch line? Its not even close.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

More proof, if any was needed, that much of the modern environmental movement is about being seen to care, rather than actually accomplishing anything.

The Conservative Party has long been regarded as having a certain nostalgic, and some would say romantic, yearning for the past. I had no idea that this included a desire to drag us all back to the 19th Century:

Harsh new taxes on air travel, including a strict personal flight "allowance", will be unveiled by the Conservatives tomorrow as part of a plan that would penalise business travellers, holidaymakers and the tourist industry.

The proposals, to be disclosed by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, include levying VAT or fuel duty on domestic flights for the first time as part of a radical plan to tackle global warming.

The Conservatives will also suggest - most controversially of all - rationing individuals to as little as a single short-haul flight each year; any further journeys would attract progressively higher taxes, a leaked document entitled Greener Skies suggests.

Even if this is just policy-mongering, the fact that such proposals could even be considered is per se a megaphone-warning about the true nature of the Tories and their future likely conduct.

The mobility that has been afforded to people on relatively low incomes by cheap international air travel is one of the most productive and liberating benefits of this age. By declaring war on this, Cameron and his lickspittles show themselves to be not just opportunist but also disreputable and loathsome (as is anyone who either supports them or votes for them).

As for me, I will be unaffacted. I do not intend to hang around long enough to witness the huddled masses setting sail from Southampton to seek a better life in the free world. If (God forbid) Cameron does win power in the next election, I shall utilise my air travel 'ration' to purchase a one-way ticket out.

The World Cricket Cup is almost upon us, and innovative fans from the Antipodes, have found that the distances between the matches and the lack of hotel capacity in the Caribbean, warranted another solution. They can go on a cricket cruise. One of the most popular reasons for building ships these days is the popularity of cruises amongst many niche markets.

There are an astonishing number of cruise ships and they are built to hold an ever larger number of passengers. The 142,000 ton Royal Caribbean Voyager class cruise ship can accommodate 3,844 passengers. That is an astonishing size.

Even more breathtaking is the number of defunct proposals that entrepreneurs and business have put forward to build replicas or cruise ships named after the Titanic. The centenary of the loss is five years away and for the last decade has exerted an extraordinary hold over the mind of many dreamers. Louis Epstein has listed these proposals, often the fantasies of teenagers who confused website construction with raising capital, in the new economy of the 1990s. He discusses some of the prohibitions that render the Titanic's design illegal in today's world:

In any event, an exact replica of the Titanic could not legally operate, thanks to what happened to the Titanic. I'm not sure how much latitude has been envisioned in the Gigantic Project as a "sister" to the Olympic/Titanic/Britannic...the 48 full-size lifeboats Harland & Wolff recommended and planned building the ship with although White Star insisted little need be added to the legally required 16 would be alteration number one,followed by the other safety improvements on the (nonetheless quickly sunk) Britannic... from a practical standpoint, required changes would take the form of conformance to the Safety Of Life At Sea (SOLAS) Convention of the International Maritime Organization. This would cover numerous facets of design,construction, and operation.

For example, there would have to be massive fireproofing, cabin arrangements would have to be reorganized, stairways and doors would have to be added, lifeboats would have to be nearer the water...

However, this would really be just the beginning of differences between the Edwardian concept whose keel was laid in 1909 and a ship that could be constructed and operated today.The Titanic had coal-fired steam engines that took a crew of 329...which today would be an unbelievable expense, people do not work for 1912 wages! Recall that the Royal Yacht Britannia was retired because its 1980s-refitted 1950s technology was too inefficient for the 1990s (coal would run afoul of pollution regulations also).

This is one example of how symbols of the Victorian and Edwardian eras acquire a patina of attraction with the symbolic entwining of engineering prowess in the Harland & Wolff shupyards and the aristocratic luxury of the cruise ship. The Titanic had the very first swimming pool on a liner. To recreate this world would be an extraordinary feat. It is unlikely.

It has just recently been decided that the new ship will employ about the same number of people, as the original Titanic did. All in all, about 900 people will be employed by Thomas Andrews Trans-Atlantic Line, once the new ship has been completed. Included in that number will be an army of over 200 firemen, trimmers, and greasers, all necessary for the ship's propulsion. The Ship will be steam powered, just as Titanic was, fuelled by coal.

If nothing else killed a reconstruction of the Titanic, the Greens would undoubtedly try.

Bryan Appleyard has a terrific piece in defence of 4x4 vehicles, often dubbed as "Chelsea Tractors" on account of their often being driven by well-heeled west Londoners in the narrow streets of said neighbourhood rather than being driven in muddy village lanes. He says what I suspect has been the obvious point, which is that class hatred and the current puritanical culture explains what fires the dislike of these vehicles. The amount of petrol consumed per mile has, I expect, not got a lot to do with it.

These cars have become emblems of all our environmental crimes. They represent 7.5% of the UK car market and 100% of British car loathing. The very idea that in town, or even in the country, anybody should use a car in which all four wheels are driven is regarded as a crime comparable to logging the rainforests or clubbing seals. Across Europe, owners of 4x4s

(or, as they are also called, Sports Utility Vehicles, or SUVs) have become eco-pariahs, malevolent planet-warmers. If you happen to be sitting in a Range Rover Sport, a BMW X5 or, worst of all, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo S in London, it is best not to catch the eyes of any pedestrian.

I can sympathise, however, with some, not all, of the annoyance that these vehicles provoke. Their drivers are often terrible, imagining that their being surrounded by massive lumps of metal means they are somehow absolved from the rules of the road. They gobble up a lot of parking space, which is at a premium in highly-taxed London. They have a higher centre of gravity than most cars and yet some drivers do not adjust their driving to take account of this. And I occasionally do wonder quite why a person needs such a large vehicle to take little Johnny to school or do the shopping.

But whether I think people should or should not "need" to have such a vehicle is beside the point. I have an opinion, but the Greenies want to use the coercive power of the state to limit our motoriing ambitions, and I very much doubt that concern for the welfare of the planet has much to do with it.

Talking of politics of envy and massive City salaries, this article is worth a look.

The other night I glanced at the television to see an advertisement for a smooth-looking new car by Hyundai. All very clever with a sort of liquid metal effect - due to the wonders of computer generated technology - but absolutely nothing at all about the car. There was no description of how fast the car could go, what sort of gearbox it had, how many seats, how much it costs, what its fuel consumption is. Nothing. It was about as informative as watching a North Korean press release.

The reason, I think, why modern car advertisements are like this is because of a campaign by the UK authorities, with bodies like the Advertising Standards Authority, to remove all reference to the idea that a car is desirable because it goes fast. One must not offend against the Gods of Health and Safety by implying, stating or otherwise celebrating that this or that set of wheels goes like a rocket. No sir. One must not lead the gullible British public into the sin of speeding and other naughtinesses. What we therefore have are adverts that are self-indulgent eye candy, of no more import than a nice piece of modernist artwork. Here is an example of what I mean.

It is, I suppose, a reflection of the society in which we live that advertisements, like old Tom and Jerry cartoons, get bowdlerised or otherwise influenced by the desire to remove all risk from life. But life is not free from risk, and risk is actually one of the ways that you know that you are alive rather than dead.

On a brighter note, Richard Hammond, "The Hamster" as he is known to his Top Gear TV colleagues, is back to the screens this Sunday after recovering from a stunt that went badly wrong. What I continue to love about that show is that you know, you just know, that the serried ranks of the do-gooder classes cannot abide this programme.

Go Hamster!

I am just about to go out to nail some final Christmas shopping but if anyone is feeling all warm and generous, they can always buy me one of these. I promise I will send a very fulsome thankyou card.

"Stunning" does not even come close to describing how magnificent the new Aston Martin is. No wonder the makers of the Bond movies keep going back to the marque. Isn't rampant capitalism just great?

The Waterloo and City line was closed this morning due to "excessive dust". Moondust?

Coming in 2007: Gordon Brown best Prime Minister since sliced bread say 364 command and control specialists (the public teat profession formerly known as Economist).

A brigadier general (retired) writes to The Times:

Last week, a security scanner at the Waterloo Eurostar terminal detected a credit-card-sized toolkit in my overnight case as I set out for Paris on business. ...

Read the whole thing. It is not long.

I am reminded that we are only a fortnight since St Crispin's day.

He that outlives this day and comes safe home
Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day and live t'old age
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors
And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day.

What did you do in the "War on Terror," Daddy?

Road pricing has just got a big push in the Queen's Speech. Quoth Her Maj:

A draft bill will be published to tackle road congestion and to improve public transport.

More detail here:

The government will press ahead with plans to introduce trial road-pricing schemes across England, in an effort to cut congestion.

The draft Road Transport Bill gives councils more freedom to bring in their own schemes in busy areas and will look at the scope for a national road toll.

It also gives councils a bigger say in improving local bus services.

I am in favour of all this. At present, transport in the entire Western World is a mess worthy of the old USSR, the extra dimension of insanity being that the queues for the products park themselves on top of the products.

To me, this is the most interesting bit:

If the trials are successful, a national scheme could be investigated - with drivers possibly paying £1.34 a mile to drive on the busiest roads at rush hour. Black boxes in cars could work out how far they travel on toll roads.

Once you have "black boxes" in cars, the way is open to start arguing that the black boxes need not provide the Total Surveillance State with a constant stream of surveillance material, but only with information about whether the fees have been paid or not, for that particular black box. Obviously that will not be how the scheme starts by being implemented. The black box will reveal everything about you, your fingerprints, your grandmother, etc.. But nevertheless, these black boxes just might be the thin end of a wedge that separates road pricing arguments from civil liberties arguments, sane pricing of road use (good) from the Total Surveillance State (bad).

I now have an Oyster card for use on the London Underground which I bought, without telling them even my own name. This is just a debitable ticket. Black boxes in vehicles could be like that. Like I say, they won't be. But they could. Black boxes could merely be the automation of the process of chucking a coin out of your car window into a big bucket and proceeding on your way.

Black boxes will surely also make it possible to have much more precise pricing, of how much road you use, and when. At present, in London, all you are allowed to do is buy the equivalent of a one-day all zones travel card, or not. Those are your only choices, even if all you want to do is pop into the edge of the C-zone for a quick lunch, and then pop out again.

Could it be that those people who have been stealing number plates to pass their London Congestion Charges on to the poor suckers they stole them from are the ones we have to thank for this? Could that be what blew the whole photo-everyone's-number-plates paradigm for road pricing out of the water? If so, well done them.

Or am I being just too crazily optimistic? But please note: I am not saying that any such separation, between pricing and surveillance, ever will occur, merely that it will become a little bit easier to argue for.

Transport Blog is up and running again, and I have agreed once again to write bits for it, now and again.

Specialist blogs like Transport Blog often get quite high traffic, provided everyone involved keeps at it. There are a lot of people in the world who are interested in and excited about transport, especially by trains, which just happen to be a particular interest of Transport Blog supremo Patrick Crozier. Almost everyone travels, or has travelled. Bloggers everywhere have the occasional moan about transport, and often also have stories to tell about how transport was good in one way or another, or about how it may soon be very exciting. So, emails to me or to Transport Blog itself (i.e. Patrick) about transport related stuff, either telling the story direct, or linking to where you or someone has already told it, will be most welcome.

Transport Blog will, just as it did first time around, find a quite distinct readership to that which reads things like Samizdata. So it makes sense to have a little competition here, and for me now to promise to repost the best comment(s) on this posting here during the next twenty four hours, over to Transport Blog.

Any good recent transport stories to tell? Terrible delays? Transport policy cock-ups? (Or triumphs?) Weird and wonderful pictures (a particular favourite with me – see below) of bizarre transport contraptions? Very nice transport experiences? Odd moments in transport history? Transport in odd places? It's a delightfully vast subject.

Picture from here. Hat tip: ASI Blog.

At last we can put an end to all the quarrelsome debates and ill-informed speculation

A fundamentalist Islamic movement is emerging as a common link between several of the men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners.

Well, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

(And, by the way, I wonder what links the remainder of the men? Perhaps it was too soon to call for an end to the quarrelsome debates.)

You may have thought that the recent search orgy at British airports was triggered by a genuine fear that passengers might bring something explosive on board. Apparently not, because the same regulations apply to air crew too. It is of no consequence to the official mind that a pilot can destroy an airliner without any technical assistance. (9/11 didn't change quite everything - even where it might be thought to be relevant by us untrained civilians.)

Here is an extract from the security briefing from the BALPA (pilots' association) website:

The requirements for airline crew are:

Any crew, whether operational or positioning, using passenger search areas must be subjected to the same security measures as passengers.

Crew accessing the Restricted Zone through staff search areas must carry only the items they require to perform their duties (including personal hand baggage meeting that description). All such items must be x-rayed where possible and hand searched where not. All crew must be hand searched.

However, no liquids of any type are permitted other than those mentioned above as able to be taken into the Restricted Zone by passengers.

At airports where there is no specific staff search facility, airports should make special arrangements for crew to be screened away from passengers.

How thoughtful they insist crew are not searched in front of passengers. One would not want them humiliated any more than is strictly necessary. Creating artificial privileges is in any case good psychology to keep the recipients of privilege loyal to the heirarchy. It also helps to avoid anyone getting the idea that the whole rigmarole is ludicrous.

Earlier this week I flew into London Heathrow from Athens, having been subjected to a relatively modest amount of incovenience, expense and humiliation as a result of the latest anti-terrorist security measures. Had I been travelling in the opposite direction (i.e. London to Athens), the story would have been altogether different and my trifling miseries compounded by several magnitudes. I truly sympathised with the weary, frustrated wannabe-outbound travellers who were camped on the floor of the terminal going nowhere, thanks to numerous cancelled flights, huge delays and a blanket of zealous security measures aimed at stripping them down to their socks.

I wonder if any of those people have been sullied by the experience? I wonder if any of the magic and wonder of modern civilian airline travel has been marred for them? I hope not, but what is certain is that the hidden costs of this latest air-travel crisis, in terms of time, money and lost opportunities, must be huge. Air travel is no longer the preserve of the privileged few; it is a vast mass industry that bestows incalculable economic, social, cultural and even spiritual benefits on us all.

And yet, it is all too easily assailable because no amount of security or scrutiny can obviate the basic fact that a pressurised, inescapable metal tube flying some 30,000 feet up in the sky is, and always will be, critically vulnerable to attack from either without or within, the results of which are simply to horrible to be shrugged off. Tougher security measures can make life harder for the Islamists but the fact remains that the security screeners need to be lucky all the time while the jihadis only need to be lucky once. That is why, over a longer time frame, the odds favour the latter.

Perhaps that is why the tune has changed. Following the London Undergound bombings in July 2005, there was an instant and comprehensive demand for solidarity. 'One London' read the official blazen of the Mayor's office. 'We will not allow these terrorists to divide us' proclaimed HMG. From one end of the country to the other, hands were held, memorials were wept through and communities appealed to for calmness and reason. Everyone who was anyone rushed headlong towards the Totem of Tolerance and hugged it hard enough to squeeze out the sap.

In contrast, the airline scares have been just that; scares. Not a single bomb has exploded and (mercifully) not a a soul was taken. Yet the response could not be more different. This time, the message emerging from some official quarters is that it is time for profiling, a measure the mere utterance of which would have been unthinkable a year ago in the wake of 52 dead commuters.

Why the difference now? Perhaps it is just the cumulative weariness of one bloody thing following the next and a government that is rapidly running out of other ideas. Or perhaps it is because there is a dawning collective realisation that it will not take too much more of this to bring the whole wonderful, liberating phenomenon of commercial air travel to a juddering and insensible end. It seems that taboos can be easily dispensed with the moment they are no longer affordable.

Of course, the threat of profiling has precipitated a chorus of disapproval but, significantly, only from the usual and expected circles. I would wager that those exhausted travellers, stranded in blankets on the unforgiving stone floor of Heathrow's Terminal 2, would noisily and heartily approve.

And now for a story of a nature rarely seen in the pages of Samizdata - that of government policy incompetence resulting in farce. As in the rest of the world, we Australians are starting to rankle about paying the high petrol prices experienced at present. Politicians of all stripes sense votes in this issue, and they are right to do so - I am certain the average Australian firmly believes the government should Do Something about this added financial impost. Consequently, the Australian federal government has announced that it will Do Something About It by spending other peoples' money. That should come as no surprise to those that watch governments with a w(e)ary eye, however this latest brain fart from the sages in Canberra - to subsidise Australian motorists if they convert their petrol powered cars to Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) - is more egregiously stupid and counterproductive than most, and deserves attention.

First, some background. LPG is widely available in Australian cities. All of the larger fuel stations sell it. LPG's price is usually slightly less than half that of conventional unleaded petrol. I estimate that somewhere between 5-10% of cars have conversions enabling them to run on gas. A conversion kit, fitted, costs about A$2500. The federal government subsidy is worth up to A$2000 per conversion.

There are a number of fairly simple and certain predictions one can make from such a proposal, given the circumstances outlined above. Firstly, the cost of vehicle conversion will soar due to the massive increase in demand⁽¹⁾. No matter - the increased investment will soon be recouped through fuel savings. That is the whole point of the subsidy; alleviate the political headache of high fuel prices by getting Australians to switch from expensive petrol to cheap LPG. Of course, all things are static - especially prices.

Back in the unfortunate realm of reality, it is quite obvious that a return on the conversion investment is unlikely to be realised, because the price of LPG will also be a victim of incrementally increasing demand, as more and more gas-powered cars hit the road. The price of petrol may fall slightly, though oil (and thus petrol) is a global commodity with a more-or-less uniform price. Naturally, producers will sell their fuel in a market that provides the optimum return. Thus, supply will fall in concert with the slump in demand, leaving prices largely unchanged. And another factor to be considered by those who are thinking about taking up the government's ostensibly generous offer - petrol excise is a major revenue earner for the Commonwealth. If this starts to dry up, lightly-taxed and increasingly-used LPG is going to look like quite an attractive target for the Treasury boys, narrowing the price gap further. The two fuels will probably reach price parity at some not-too-distant point; that is, the price of LPG will rise to meet that of petrol.

Simply put, this subsidy will achieve none of its stated aims, create a bunch of unintended negative consequences and is a most elementary economic blunder. The lesson - and it should be well understood by a government that trumpets its sound economic management at any opportunity - is that subsidies do far more harm than good. The big winners will be gas conversion component manufacturers and those installing this equipment. Gas suppliers also stand to benefit. The losers will be the broad pool of taxpayers (again) and those who have invested in a gas conversion kit in the vain hope of cheaper vehicle running costs.

What a marvellous outcome.

LPG-powered cars do, however, emit far lower levels of greenhouse pollutants than their petrol-powered counterparts. A nation of gas-powered cars may help Australia achieve its assigned Kyoto targets. We sensibly refrained from taking on that ball and chain, however we may as well sign the bloody treaty now - our adherence to it might be the only thing we have to show from the colossal waste of taxpayers' money that is about to take place.


⁽¹⁾ = In my home state of Western Australia, our state government had already declared it was going to subsidise LPG conversions by $1000 per unit. This subsidy will now run on top of the federal government's $2000 subsidy. Expect all conversions in WA to rise, probably overnight, from A$2500 to $3000+ when the subsidies come into force.

Roy Bacon seems to have a talent for finding the silver linings in dark clouds.

The panic ban on books and electronic gadgetry aboard transatlantic airliners throws into relief our terror at being deprived of the means to insulate ourselves from other people.

The shock of losing our personal entertainment bubbles should give us pause for thought, and make us wonder if there is a better way of enduring the enforced collectivism of a long-haul flight.

Five hundred people is more individuals than most of us can hope to know intimately in a lifetime. It is the population of a small village. If a packed Jumbo is a community, then aisles are village streets. All right, they are a bit narrow for a full-fledged passeggiata, but there is no reason we should not loiter, chew the fat, shoot the breeze – indulge in those unhurried activities that are so out of kilter with the rush of modern life. With a little lateral thinking the jet airliner, the destroyer of worlds, could be the means of regenerating some homely values.

If you do not like the idea of talking to your neighbour, and in the absence of printed matter, why not get a tattoo to entertain him or her? Depending on your physique you might be limited to a short story or a few haikus, but less – in terms of skin and stanzas – has always been more. Airport novels are not thousand-pagers out of literary necessity.

Or have a random word inscribed on your skin: from an authorised British Airways or United Airlines list, of course. Stewards could ask us our syntactical preference as we get on board, and arrange seating in a narrative way. Even with a 500-word vocabulary there would be the chance of dramatic developments as a YES fell into company with a PLEASE, or failed to see eye to eye with the MAYBE two rows back.

We should start thinking about this stuff. The War on Terror is here to stay, and it is only a matter of time before they take things to their logical conclusion and ban us from carrying anything at all onto aircraft beyond ourselves. And would that really be so bad?

It is often observed that a series of power cuts in a developed nation precedes a spike in the birth rate nine months later. A planeload of naked adults flying through the night: surely they could all find something to do!

According to Scotland Yard a plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit "mass murder" on an unimaginable scale has been disrupted.

It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft. High security is causing delays at all UK airports. The threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 to critical. Three US airlines are believed to have been targeted.

There are no more details about the plan available at the moment other than it revolved around liquids of some kind and that the explosives would have been sophisticated and extremely effective. Flights from Heathrow Airport and Gatwick are suspended until this afternoon at least. The security measures are pretty drastic:

Passengers are not allowed to take any hand luggage on to any flights in the UK, the department said. Only the barest essentials - including passports and wallets - will be allowed to be carried on board in transparent plastic bags.

Another article reports that intelligence is often fragmentary and partial, so the fear perhaps is that there is another, parallel group or other individuals who are also going to carry out similar attacks and that is why such security measures are being taken.

This is all very distrurbing, of course, both for the obvious threat to lives as well as the disruption it will bring to our everyday existence. Another disturbing fact is this kind of comments (a reader's comment next to the BBC article I got the news from):

This disruption [security measures] is one of the short term limits on freedom that are needed. Tony Shield, Chorley

There is now a very high chance that Eurotunnel, the Anglo-French consortium operating the Channel Tunnel rail-link between London and the continent, could be liquidated by this September, having failed to reach a key agreement earlier this week with creditors. The saga of how the operator would persuade a group of banks to let it restructure a huge pile of debt has been chugging along for months. Now there is a real risk that this marvel of civil engineering could be known as one of the biggest transport commercial flops in history. The free-marketeer in me says well, the venture was never based on fully commercial grounds in the first place. The folks concerned probably no doubt rightly thought that if the project was a flop, then the fortunate taxpayers of Europe would pick up the tab, just as they did with that other venture of high-tech wonder and dubious economics, Concorde. The romantic in me would be very sad to see this wonder of rail come to an end. I have used the Eurotunnel service several times, both for work and for short breaks to France in recent years. Every time I have marvelled at the smoothness of the service, only occasionally marred by delays in the English side of the operation, or by the odd rude French ticket inspector.

It certainly beats messing around in airport lounges, that is for sure.

Some recent court rulings show that marriage is turning into a nice little earner for certain spouses, as Tim Worstall discusses on his blog. He pinpoints a key problem in English law that it is not possible to have pre-nuptial agreements recognised as valid, although pre-nups might influence a ruling (he goes on to discuss how things are a bit different in Scotland). It seems pretty basic to me: the State has no business legislating at all on marriage. The way in which persons choose to form long-term contracts with another is for the parties concerned and no-one else, period.

If a rich entrepreneur, or musician like Paul McCartney, say, wants to shield himself or herself from being taken to the cleaners by a wife or husband, then it should be within their rights to do so. Of course, it may not be terribly 'romantic' to have pre-nups, but let's face it, if rich people fear they will lose a huge chunk of their money to a cynical spouse on the make, it will raise calls for no-fault divorce to be abolished. It could prolong the divorce process at the expense of children's happiness, foster further cynicism about the institution of marriage, and erode respect for an important part of civil society.

In the interests of the institution of marriage, then, I call on politicians to let consenting adults get on with whatever arrangements they please. It really is that simple. (Which is probably why it won't happen anytime soon).

By the way, I will be getting married to a lovely woman in just over a week's time in Malta. Just thought I would mention that.

Replacement Bus Service

If there are three words that can strike gloom into the heart of any traveller within the bounds of London, it is the phrase above. The art of getting from here to there is complicated by the dusty ejection from train or tube onto the road, where one is placed at the mercy of the traffic jams and Livingstone's nightmarish road policy. Worse, the replacement bus must follow the path of the railway or underground, twisting and turning back upon itself, prolonging what was expected to be a straightforward and swift journey.

Such journeys are tolerable if there is time to relax and alternative routes prove just as long. But, if it is the last train or tube, and the only alternative is the night bus, then you are well and truly screwed. You will be a long time getting home.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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'?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.)

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.

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!

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?

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.

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 Speed Cameras are anything whatsoever to do with either road safety or saving lives. In fact, so confident is Mr Smith in his own research that he throws down this gauntlet:

So here's the challenge. We promise to publish here (in this box, on the first page of the web site) web links to any serious credible research that implies a strong link between excessive speeds and accidents on UK roads.

So if you are one of those people who thinks that the GATSO is a life-saver, you know exactly what to do.

In the meantime, more power to Paul Smith and his campaign for common sense and reason. When we eventually win this battle, the victory will be due in no small part to the dedication and integrity of people like him.

Cross-posted on White Rose.

The reasoning is clear and simple: if you drive a car, you must have too much money for your own good. It is time that HMG relieved you of some of this burden:

Motorists convicted of speeding may have to pay compensation for victims, the government has proposed.
The plan, published on Monday, is one of several changes to the funding of victim support services.

Motorists given a prison term or suspended sentence would pay £30 to a Home Office fund providing victim and witness compensation and support.

Those fined for speeding or driving without insurance would face a levy of £5 or £10...

He said a victims fund would put more money into services such as practical support, information to victims of rape and sexual offences, road traffic accident victims and those who have been bereaved as a result of crime.

So, if you get caught speeding, you get punished for sexual offences and murders.

Not that the absurdity will matter in practice. I predict that not a single real victim of any real crime will ever see a single penny of that money ever.

This morning I was watching the news about the US requiring UK passport holders to either provide biometric information on it or stand in queues and pay money for visa for any visit to the US. Bugger. And I was looking forward to travelling to the US more regularly in the future. It did strike me as a move out of the blue and rather harsh in the light of both the Anglo-American relationship and the global trade and tourism links between the US and the UK. But, I thought, the terrorism meme has won the day and the US is going to 'protect' itself back to the Middle Ages.

However, as the day progressed I have learnt that the situation may not be as bad the media represent. Apparently, the news reports that talk about passengers having to have biometric passports containing fingerprint details as well as digital photographs are, quite simply incorrect. It is true that discussion has been taking place between the USA and all of the 27 countries on the visa waiver programme regarding mandating this information on the machine readable passports currently being issued and it may be that some countries will have to comply. However, at present, no such stipulation has been enforced and it is felt "unlikely" that such measures will be forced upon the UK.

For the time being nothing has changed. The position remains as originally stated by the US - all travellers from the UK had to be in possession of machine readable passports by 1st October 2003 or would require a visa. The deadline was subsequently seen as unachievable and it was extended until 26th October 2004. Advice given to corporations by their agents acting as liason to the US Embassy and the Foreign Office remains that UK travellers will have to be in possession of a machine readable passport by the 26th October in order to gain entry into the USA under the visa waiver scheme. (A machine readable passport is one with the electronic strip on the back and containing a digital photograph of the holder).

I am still confused. Despite my reservations about the BBC and other major media I find it hard to believe that they would report such a huge factual error about this matter and got 'biometric' confused with 'machine readable'. I am quite anxious to know the truth not only for the impact such measures would have on my personal travel arrangements but also their implications for introduction of biometrics into documents in the UK in general. Daniel Johnson points out in the Telegraph today:

British passports are not, of course, biometric; nor, for that matter, are American ones. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the Government will be speeding up their introduction - as a form of ID card - before you can say "David Blunkett".

The Telegraph also has doomsday reports about his issue. Can anyone tell us what's really going on?

It's useless new law time again in the UK.

From today it will be an offence to drive a vehicle on a public road while using a mobile telephone (or 'cellphone' for our North American readers).

A complete waste of time. Which is not to say that driving a vehicle while using a mobile telephone certainly can be dangerous, so is driving a car while unwrapping a sandwich, tying shoelaces, fiddling with the buttons on the radio or playing the accordion. Whatever the object of distraction, the point is that the motorist is driving without due care and attention and since that is already an offence, surely no elaboration is required.

If the police are unable or unwilling to prosecute motorists for extant offences then what on earth is the point of merely enacting more?

Really this all smacks of the the short-term 'something-must-be-done' mentality and the impulse which requires the demonisation of objects rather than the uses to which those objects are put.

The UK media are blitzing the issue as a part of which I have been drafted in as libertarian voice-du-jour. I have not long returned from the BBC studios in Central London where I got my oar in on the Jeremy Vine show and, this evening, I will adding my piece to a similar debate on Classic Gold radio.

For anyone interested enough to listen in or phone-in, the show will be streamed live on-line at just after 8.00pm UK time.

Inspired by the posting below about soundbites, Patrick Crozier has lashed up a list of attempted transport policy soundbites. Not all of them have quite the zip and zing that you are looking for in a soundbite. For example, I don't see this catching on:

Transport is not an unalloyed good.

"Unalloyed"?

Or this:

The chaos on Britain's railways is to a large extent the fault of the EU.

"To a large extent"? That sounds like John Major as enacted by a TV puppet.

But, as I said in a comment there, never mind. As soundbites they are mostly unfinished, but they're a definite start. Others can maybe get polishing.

And, as I have also already commented at Transport Blog, before realising that the thought might also be worth airing here, one of Patrick's suggestions may actually be ready to spread around. Here it is:

Safety is dangerous.

This little phrase may have been arrived at many times before (comments about that are of course very welcome), but I've not heard this exact combination of words before. I think it might be a winner.

First, it is short. Three familiar, easy-to-remember, easy-to-say words. Very important.

Second, it asserts an important truth, which is that an overzealous pursuit of safety, by (for instance) shutting down a pretty safe transport system in a vain and very expensive attempt to make it ever more safe can actually cost lives. The costs incurred (but hidden because spread around) can make everyone's lives a tiny bit more unsafe, and the alternative transport they use in the meantime might be a lot less safe. Shutting down railway systems after crashes, or grounding huge airplane fleets ditto, can kill, on the roads. And of course "safety is dangerous" has numerous applications besides and beyond transport.

But third, just as important, "safety is dangerous" has just the right degree of counter-intuitive outrageousness, such as will arouse interest and stir up debate. Because this soundbite is, literally speaking, untrue, it could cause opponents of the truth it flags up to get drawn into a stupid argument about its truth, and its unfairness. "It's not true!" "Ah but you're missing the point, what it says is true." Etc. etc., blah blah. The sense of outraged logic of the victims of the soundbite could be all part of the fun, and will cause TV interlocutors to keep on throwing this soundbite in their faces, simply because they hate it so. Like all good soundbites, it could supply a cushion for the lazy TV compere to fall back on.

Well, maybe. Most attempted soundbites are like newborn fish, doomed to die immediately. But maybe this one will prove to be a fish with legs, if you'll pardon the expression.

It could be that "safety is dangerous" needs more work done on it. Maybe it should read: "Safety is unsafe." Or maybe the even shorter: "Safety isn't." Personally I think that "Safety isn't" is too brutal towards the banal truth that safety, properly understood, is indeed safety. Also, the claim is too absolute. It isn't being claimed that "safety" is always unsafe. Just sometimes. You might have to change "safety is unsafe" to "safety can be unsafe" and then the word count starts to rise. ("Safety is to a definite extent unsafe.") "Safety is dangerous" is the best, I reckon.

Low cost airline RyanAir is a subject that gets mixed feelings from this blog's different contributors. Their latest problem is an EU ruling that affects their French and Belgian operations from the British Isles because the preferential rates offered to RyanAir amount to a state subsidy (funny how state subsidies to farmers do not seem to get the same response, eh?) because the airports in question are all state owned:

The airport is owned by the Walloon regional government, which approved grants worth an estimated £5 million a year to subsidise landing and handling charges and marketing costs. Ryanair pays a landing fee 85 per cent lower than the list price. However, since the airline's arrival, the annual passenger "throughput" at Charleroi has risen eight-fold to nearly two million, sharply boosting the local economy.

[...]

Managers say they would adopt the same approach for other publicly-owned airports. Negotiations are already under way with a dozen private alternatives. Some European countries, such as Italy, Germany and Sweden, have a significant number of non-state airports, but not France.

The solution is screamingly obvious. Privatise all the frigging airports in Belgium and France and the problem goes away! Duh.

One of the pleasures of British television as the nights get longer and darker is watching the gloriously laddish and unPC gentlemen on the BBC2 show TopGear, fronted by irrepressible Jeremy Clarkson, a sort of British version of P.J. O'Rourke. I am not quite sure how the great man continues to work in the Guardianista-infested corridors of power at the BBC, but maybe the bosses there feel they need at least someone like him to 'appease Middle England' or whatever.

Sunday night's show had a number of good features, not least the bit when Jeremy and his two co-presenters drove a variety of BMW sports cars, very, very fast around the country lanes of the Isle of Man. Apart from some built-up areas, there are absolutely no speed limits on the island. Yep, not one.

At one point, one of the younger presenters - sorry, I forget his name - said this place was the motoring version of Fantasy Island. And Clarkson waxed lyrical about how the place was a 'nanny-state free zone'.

Yes, I know it is just about cars. But somehow, I find it mighty encouraging that these sentiments get aired on prime-time British telly.

We rag on the BBC a lot in these parts, and rightly. Well, TopGear is a veritable oasis of petrol-head good sense. Clarkson for Prime Minister!

Tedd McHenry writes in with some creative musing on an idea that would allow even the most extreme privacy fetishist to harness a splendid cost minimizing technology whilst keeping the user shielded from intrusive data mining. With apologies to John Donne for the editor imposed title.

This idea was inspired by Highway 407 in Toronto, Canada, which is a toll highway. I do not know if it is privately managed, but it could be. I am very interested in both toll roads and private roads, which have been discussed before on samizdata.net. Highway 407 solves the toll-collection problem with two technologies. When a car enters and leaves highway 407 its licence plate is photographed, and that information is used to bill the owner for the distance traveled on the highway. Regular users can get a subscription wherein they mount a transponder on their car, which makes billing easier (and gives them a discount). Both of these technologies make toll roads much more viable by making toll collection cheaper and easier. But they both entail a very serious compromise of privacy, in that someone collects information on where and when your car travels.

The solution that occurred to me was to have, for lack of a better name, a privacy agent through which a car owner could subscribe to the highway. The transponder would be registered to the agent, and the agent would collect from the car owner. There would be no way for the bill to be tied to any actual person or vehicle.

Then it occurred to me that this system could be generalized for any service. You could interact with governments and markets through your privacy agent, much as subscribers to anonymizer.com interact with the web. Privacy agents could provide credit and debit card services allowing you to buy any product or service anonymously. Where a service requires identification (name, social insurance number, etc.) you would simply provide your privacy agent account number (and a PIN, to prevent fraud). Your public identity would be somewhat like a corporation, but with a reversal: whereas a corporation limits the liability of its owner but must publicly declare who he is, this body would not limit the liability of its owner but would also not publicly declare who he is.

There must be some holes in this plan, other than the obvious difficulty of selling it to politicians, but I am not coming up with them on my own. Any thoughts?

Tedd McHenry, Surrey, BC, Canada

I can not tell whether this is real or a joke. It could very easily be both of course.

Fuss has recently been made about an amphibious sports car, which seems genuine enough, if rather extravagant. But this, linked to by BoingBoing, is an amphibious bus, and is strictly for the luxury end of the bus market:

John and Julie Giljam, a married couple from South Carolina, created a first-class motor coach that doubles as a yacht.

The Terra Wind is an amphibious 42 � foot motor home. The RV can cruise down the highway at 80 mph, and when it hits water it becomes a yacht � with just a few maneuvers.

What it looks like when in water is a drowning bus caught in a flood. I seriously wonder how seaworthy it is. So how well is it doing?

The Giljams said there has been a lot of interest in the amphibious motor home. They plan to show it off at boat shows, RV shows and yacht shows.

Oh dear. "A lot of interest." They "plan" to show it off at shows. This is salespeak for no one wants to buy the bloody thing.

If that is so I am not surprised. As I understand it, boats are heavy, because they have to be strong enough to keep water out, and because the water can support them even though they are very heavy. They just have to be able to slide along in it. Vehicles are not so heavy, because they have to be dragged about on roads by an engine, with no water to prop them up as they go. Vehicles have to be self-supporting. A floating sports car is just about plausible. A floating bus? Forget it. The physics is, I feel, similar to the physics that says you can have insects the size of insects, but you can't have them the size of elephants, like in very bad Michael Caine movies.

But what if I'm wrong? The great thing about capitalism is that barking bonkers people like the Giljams are allowed to have a go at things like this, and can try to prove that they aren't so barking bonkers after all. Maybe my physics is all up the spout. Maybe they are using some new space age material for the bottom of the bus which combines being strong with being very light. Maybe � who knows? Maybe people will love the idea of travelling in it so much that they will queue up like mad things for the tickets, no matter how expensive they are.

Not long ago I was reading about the people who built the first steam engines, and that gave me a lively sense of how possible impossible gadgets can sometimes prove themselves to be.

I wish the Giljams luck.

And by the way, I've just noticed that this is the four thousandth Samizdata entry. How about that!

It seems self-indulgent to regale readers of this blog with a personal gripe, but indulge me a moment. Like all too many Londoners, I usually have to take our Tube (subway) system to work. It is unpleasant. It is irregular. It is often extremely noisy and the air pollution is bad. In the summer months, it is incredibly hot (we Brits cannot figure out airconditioning without bleating about how vastly expensive it is). And it seems a cult of incompetence has gripped the organisation that runs it, like ivy creeping around the trunk of a tree.

This morning, on the Victoria line, all trains north and south were halted "owing to a signal failure in the Kings Cross area." At least that is what I thought the announcer mumbled into the microphone, though the voice was so hushed and marked by embarrassed pauses that he or she could have been announcing something entirely different, such as last night's football scores.

We gung-ho capitalists may hope that an injection of raw, competitive private enterprise will blast all this complacency and mule-headed uselessness away. Maybe. But sometimes I wonder whether if the country that built the first great railway network 150 or more years ago is capable of every again running big engineering projects with a modicum of talent.

Right, I'll cheer up now.

Just a reminder to anyone planning to tour Britain, this bank holiday weekend, by rail. Well, the bad news is, you can't. The good news is that the cricket's on.

That useless subsidy-addicted creature of government, Network Rail, has decided to shut down large parts of the rail network in order to create road chaos, sorry, in order to carry out essential engineering work. For instance, if you're a small bear from Peru, with a fondness for marmalade, hoping to stowaway on a Great Western locomotive from Bristol to London, this weekend, don't do it. Otherwise a whole series of books about you in the future will have to be named 'The Adventures of Reading Bear'. Paddington station is closed.

If you're old enough and stupid enough to remember voting for Mr Tony Blair, in 1997, on the back of the glittering promise that he would sort out Britain's transport system, you'll by now have realised that we only get what we wish for. For he's well and truly sorted it, by turning it into a snake-pit! Why doesn't the fool just hand it over to the Transport Blog, who'll make a much better fist of it?

I myself shall be attempting to navigate a path, to Victoria, to take a train to Worthing to visit my mother-in-law (Reginald Perrin fans, please note, I am not making this up.) Let's hope it's not as warm and humid down in the Tube, this afternoon, as it was this morning on the Bakerloo line, where I literally thought I was going to liquefy. Yes, literally become a puddle of once human flesh.

I shall be imbibing a ridiculously over-sized bucket of iced gin and slim-line tonic, the moment I descend the steps at Worthing station, if I should get there before midnight. My advice to everyone else who can, is stay at home.

For those poor blighters, like me, having to travel: Good luck, everyone!

Blogging is unpredictable. It began as innocent posting by me about the Segway, which is a sort of mobile Zimmer frame, on Transport Blog.

Then Patrick Crozier, presiding boss of Transport Blog, made this rather more profound comment.

I have no idea whether the Segway is a good idea or not. But it strikes me as one in a long list of good ideas eg. bikes, roller skates, the C5, which might have been the answer to all sorts of our problems had it only been possible to give them the right sort of road space.

Take roller skates. Small, fast, relatively easy to learn. They should be fantastic. Lots of people should be using them. Why aren't they? Because if you skate on the pavement you are constantly bumping into people and if you skate on the road you get run over (if not arrested).

But what if you had dedicated roller skate lanes or even dedicated roller skate highways? Different story � perhaps.

Incidentally, this is one of the most compelling reasons (I think) to want a free market in transport � because if entrepreneurs could do their own thing we might actually find out what forms of transport were actually (given all the factors) the best. We certainly aren't going to find out so long as the state runs the show.

From the ridiculous to the sublime.

David Sucher of City Comforts Blog, copying and pasting all of Patrick's comment onto his blog, responded thus:

1. Why not look at the way things are as the result indeed of a free-market of choices but in a vast time frame and not bound by the use of coin? There's an expression "people get the kind of government they ask for." I believe it. Think of it as people, individuals, corporations, etc making choices over the span of several centuries or even longer. In the USA, at least, state creation/control/limitation of the transport system has emerged out of the desires of the populace. (Perhaps that is difficult for either the extremists � I don't mean the people at Transport Blog, of course � of left and right to accept, finding as they do on every hand a conspiracy to enslave the people.)

2. Crozier raises a valid question about the state monopoly over road space. This monopoly is an outgrowth of eminent domain.

And the reason we have (and forgive me for repeating myself yet again) eminent domain (compulsory purchase) is because earlier generations, going back hundreds of years, found it impossible to create transport networks without such a mechanism. Our tradition of eminent domain goes back to an era when The King's Highway was to be taken literally. (Though I am an anti-monarchy � not that what the British do is any of my direct business � I can also readily concede the evolutionary necessity for kingship and pay it its historical due.) You cannot create a network which crosses the properties of thousands (or at least hundreds) without compulsory purchase; and you cannot leave compulsory purchase in the hands of a private party as that leads to the very abuses which so concern libertarians. So we have a double bind: the bargaining problem, the "hold-out" problem makes it structurally impossible to create a network without eminent domain and yet to delegate eminent domain to private parties is even more horrendous than leaving it with government. I think that any discussions of the government as monopoly over road space must start with those assumptions.

***

Perhaps I demonstrate my lack of imagination but I cannot visualize a scenario in which our routes and corridors are transferred to private parties. Does that mean that we might lose efficiency compared to how a private party might manage the space? Perhaps in theory yes a private party could build/manage a street grid (and in Seattle, btw, that consists of roughly 50% of the land area of the city) better than the government does. But that's in theory.

I just can't see how it would either evolve or be managed. Indeed, that does mean that lots of good ideas � more dedicated bike paths � will be ignored by conventional majoritarian thinking. But the transaction costs of the market itself require that government (or something similar) step in to create common, network systems because The market is incapable of doing it itself.

Or else it would have already done so.

And now a very few brief comments from me, because what I really want is for the Samizdata libertarian commenters gang to lay into this guy, politely of course, as politely as he lays into us.

First, I've long ago lost count of the number of times when an arguer against the free market confuses his own inability to imagine a market-based solution to some entrepreneurial problem or other with the permanent inability of any entrepreneur, in any market, anywhere, ever to come up with such answers. Sucher at least has the grace to use the phrase "Perhaps I demonstrate my lack of imagination �" in using this line of attack. Usually this argument is not so politely put, but the impolite version is no different in substance to Sucher's version.

Second, doesn't Sucher's argument boil down to saying that might is right? "People get the kind of government they ask for." David Sucher says he believes this. Does he really believe it? I was going to put: Only in America. But the truth is more like: Not even in America. The fact that something hasn't yet happened maybe opens up the possibility that it is impossible, but it doesn't prove it.

We now live in the Age of Democracy, as surely as people in earlier times lived in the Age of Kings, and earlier than that in the Age of Caesars. And democratic assemblies and electorates all of them seize control of "infrastructure", and by the ubiquity of their thieving they suggest that such theft is necessary, and impossible not to have. And their apologists certainly say so, endlessly. (They say similar things about education and healthcare.) I daresay in earlier times people felt much the same about military conscription, capital punishment, interrogating prisoners with torture, and the upper classes raping the women of the lower classes with impunity, all of which are things which still happen a lot but which are not any longer considered inevitable or necessary if civilisation is to keep advancing.

But we shouldn't be diverted from the outrageousness of the claim that, in general, governmentally speaking, people get what they ask for to divert us from the particular debate about whether linear and connected infrastructure of all kinds can or cannot be supplied in a purely free market.

Suppose a democratic assembly existed which had been persuaded that, although it could steal all the infrastructure it wanted to, it nevertheless ought not to. And suppose it further defcided that nothing infrastructural could be done without the consent (purchased freely) of all the property owners in the path of such plans. How would matters then develop? Would the assembly really be obliged to intervene, in order for us to have any running water at all, or any roads or footpaths? Would the concept of "right of way" lead necessarily and inexorably to the democratic equivalent of the King's Highway, which the King (democracy, with taxation money) would then be obliged to look after, because if he didn't no one would.

These are important questions, which I usually approach here at Samizdata from the other end. In my wonders of capitalism posts I often end by asking (by way of explaining what the post is really about) something like: Wouldn't it be great if the stuff now engulfed by the public sector could be as good as [insert capitalist wonder of choice]? What if roads were constructed as carefully and as artfully as the vehicles that now travel on them? What if one could choose one's water supply as happily and in the light of as many choices as one now chooses wine or fizzy drink of the sort that comes to us in supermarket bottles? What if improving the road system could be as relatively painless as the switch from LPs to CDs, or from VHS to DVD?

It would be a great shame for civilisation to miss out on such wonders merely because the people who believed them desirable accepted by default the argument that they are impossible, rather than because they really are impossible.

Kevin Connors talks about a certain British civil servant with a licence to kill, er, drive

Bond purists know that there are only two 'proper' cars for 007 to drive, an Aston or a Bentley. But for many years, while the British auto industry decayed, neither Aston or Bentley produced anything James would be caught dead in (book readers might recall Gardner gave him a Mulsanne Turbo in 1984). But over the last decade, the British Car business has been undergoing a renaissance, riding a wave of American and German capital and technology. The fruits of this are really starting to come now. Two years ago, Aston Martin (now owned by Ford) introduced their beautiful V12 Vanquish, seen in last year's Die Another Day. But still, relative to the breathtaking Ferrari 575M Maranello, it's only real competition, most automotive commentators declared it an also-ran. (While the comparison is far closer than that of the classic DB5, introduced in Goldfinger, and the 1964 Ferrari 500 Superfast, to say nothing of the incomparable 250GTO. Even the Lamborghini 350GT and Maserati 3500 GT, would likely have cleaned the DB5's clock.)

Now, all that is behind us. After many teases, Bentley Motor Cars, (now owned by Volkswagen) is finally releasing their latest masterpiece, the Bentley Continental GT:

It has no competition.

This 4 passenger, 5000lb, W-12, AWD monster does 0-60 in 4.7 seconds, the same as a Porsche Carrera. It tops out at 198 mph, faster than all but a handful of 2 seat super-exotics. All this while coddling the passengers in the lap of luxury.

With plenty of room for Q to hide toys, this is a car Commander Bond would love. Of course, the next car 007 actually drives will be determined by the real world consideration of how much the manufacturers are willing to pony up in product placement money. And, although the producers know the fans want to see Bond in a British car (and not a plastic toy Lotus, even if it does go underwater), If Toyota forked over enough, James might be driving the new Supra.

BUT WAIT!
There's a new player on the scene

I didn't consider this at first, because of the leading name on the moniker. However, on further consideration, there's likely more actual British engineering and manufacturing content in this than the Bentley. Ladies and gentleman, coming in about six months, I give you the revolutionary Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren:



As opposed to the Bentley's porcine two and a half ton mass, carbon composite construction helps keep the SLR to a svelte one and three-quarters. This, along with slightly greater horsepower (580, not 605 as stated on spec. sheet), shave a full second off the Bentley's 0-60 time. Top speed is 211 mph. A handful of currently available automobiles are in the performance league with the SLR: the Lamborghini Murcielago (also VW, btw), the Pagani Zonda C12-S 7.2, the Ferrari Enzo, and the Saleen S7. But all these are, to one degree or another, racing cars for the street. The SLR promises to be the first super-exotic that's also a viable daily driver.

Of course, the SLR costs (before Q-izing) two or three times the price of the Bentley. But, to Her Majesty's Government, it's just chump change seeing as they have all those taxpayers to call on.

Our Revered Leader Perry de Havilland has been telling us in conversation that our postings here are better than they were in the early days of this blog. I'm sure I hope so, and I believe that something similar may also apply to David Farrer over at Freedom and Whisky.

His latest posting is a particularly choice item, based on an equally choice story in the Sunday Herald, about a potential collision between ramblers in Scotland and trains in Scotland, caused by an actual collision between "Right to Roam" legislation and the decision to bring charges of Corporate Manslaughter against six of Britain's railway ex-bosses for an earlier prang.

The railway infrastructure has been taken out of the hands of shareholders and into the safekeeping of selfless (sic) public servants. Surely this kind of mix-up shouldn't occur. Don't tell me that there's something wrong with socialism! In the meantime the local council is forcing open the gates over the tracks and Network Rail is locking them up again.

The folk at Network Rail are - wisely - looking out for number one:

�If people are serious about crossing live railways, the safest way is by underpass or bridge and somebody has to fund that � and it�s not going to be the railway because it�s not our responsibility. The responsibility must either rest with councils or central government.�

Dave Fordwych, the Sunday Herald man, thinks both policies are foolishness, but David has the answer to the problem:

I think that a solution may be found if the Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling, has a quiet word with the Secretary of State for Scotland who is, er, Alistair Darling.

And I thought that Rod Liddle, in his recent Spectator piece about the Kelly Affair had been joking about �

� the day that Tony Blair announced his embarrassing and botched Cabinet reshuffle, the one where people suddenly found out that they were simultaneously Secretary of State for Transport and Scotland.

David adds a personal recollection to the effect that Darling seems inclined already towards talking to himself.

Funnily enough, the only time I have ever seen Mr Darling, my own MP, was on an aeroplane flying from London to Edinburgh and, yes, he was talking to himself.

"Joined up government" is what David calls his posting. You can't get much more joined up than this. But, it doesn't seem to be working very well.

Nothing surprises me about this shower of idiots, collectively known as the UK government, but sometimes their crass shamelessness still manages to astonish me. After six years of adding nothing to the UK road network, other than the insane pink Kremlin lane, from the first class lounge at Heathrow, to the drawing room of 10 Downing St, comes a U-turn of almost epic proportion.

In 1997 they won the election, under a pledge (remember those?) to impose a road building moratorium, in order to bring those of a green persuasion into an anti-Tory rainbow coalition. In 1998, they told us building more roads to ease the road congestion, on the M25, was "not an option", and in 2000, they held fast to the anti-roads position that "simply building more and more roads is not the answer." So what do they do, in 2003? Yep. You guessed it. They are going to build more and more roads, in a huge new road building programme, mainly concentrating on widening the M25, and the southern stretches of the M1. Incredible.

Does the word hypocrisy never spring from these people's lips? Do the lies, which tumble so effortlessly from their spin-doctors' word-processors, never keep them up at night? Do they actually manage to catch themselves, in the mirror, each morning, and think to themselves, what a good-looking and upstanding politician you are? Or do they shuffle out of the door, ashamed, and afraid? Sorry, I was forgetting these people are socialists. All the New Labour lies will be worth it, one day, for the greater good. Some time real soon now, apparently.

But, linking to Mr Carr's story, from earlier, do I detect a tang of bare panic?

After stealing £40 billion pounds, annually, from the motorist, and then pouring it into the black hole of the railways, which get worse by the day, I think they might have realised the game is up. This may be their last throw of a taxpayer subsidy, from a pot which is rapidly dwindling. They can not admit to themselves that socialism does not work, of course, propped up as it is on a crispy bed of lies, so they have done the next best thing. They have simply blanked out, from their minds, the last six years of their failed policies.

No doubt they will call this new roads programme a 'Fresh Start', or a 'New Beginning', or some other such Stephen-Byers-style nonsense. But what they will not admit is that they have dropped the ball, big style, and made a complete hash of their fabled 10-year plan — even Uncle Joe had the sense to only impose 5-year plans!

I do not claim an authoritative knowledge on transport issues, and you may want to go here to find such a thing, but from where I am sitting, it looks to me like a severe case of headless chicken street, down there in Whitehall. They are on the ropes, and the poor loves just don't know what to do about it.

And with the Tories rising in the polls, remarkably even ahead of St. Tony's party, the New Leftist panic is in. So let's steal some of the Tories' policies; let's abandon our own 'principles' of car-bashing, and let's try to buy back some of those hateful south-eastern votes we've lost. They will not bring in any of Tory Tim Collins' more sensible road privatisation plans, or private road toll schemes, or cut the outrageous levels of fuel duty, but they will try to keep Mr Commuter, of Epping Forest, happy, with an extra 'free' lane, on the M25.

I must say, as somebody who had to commute from Oxfordshire to Surrey, every day, for six months, I would welcome a new lane, but I have got news for you, Mr Blair. Six years of nothing, and then a big splurge to try to buy back my favour, ain't going to work. You are like the girlfriend who chucked me out, who then asked me back when she could not get her grasping hands on anybody else. You had your chance. But you blew it. Big time. Thank you, Tony, and goodbye!

And now, to paraphrase Mr Carr, as we watch the tigers in valley, a green-striped tiger joins the BBC-striped tiger, to attack the red-striped tiger. Let's just sit back, and enjoy the view!

The usual practice here is to denounce France, and certainly (with only occasional and admirable exceptions) the French, as one of God's more incomprehensible derelictions of His creative duty. But this device, the Trottoir Roulant Rapide � which means "fast rolling pavement", is, I think, impressive.

Science fiction buffs have long been able to read about such gadgets. At Heathrow, as in many other places I'm sure, there's a slow rolling pavement, which makes your journey a bit less wearisome from the tube station to one of the terminals. And I seem to recall something similar connecting a couple of bits of the London Underground somewhere in the City, although I could be imaging that. But this TRR is an altogether more serious creation, because it is fast. It is rapide.

"People have to learn how to use it and that takes time," the trottoir's inventor, Anselme Cote, told BBC News Online.

He added that escalators had presented travellers with a similar challenge when they were first introduced.

People stepping directly on to the TRR would be sure to lose their balance, so they first have to be accelerated - and then decelerated again at the other end.

"The problem lies in the transitions; one has to glide from one phase to the next; we ask people not to move, but they are not used to it," says Mr Cote.

"One must keep one's feet flat between the two phases, but people walk. There's a technique to it. But people get used to it very quickly."

Fair enough.

Some regular users say it is a great timesaver, but that they would not dare use it with a rolling suitcase or a pushchair.

People who use walking sticks are also advised to steer clear.

What, no equal access for the handicapped? Apparently not.

It seems to me that "invent" is hardly the right word for what Mr Cote did here - we've all long known that such things could exist. It's just that until now they haven't, so to get the thing installed and working is still a major achievement. And it is no mere inventor's indulgence.

"The real problem nowadays is how to move crowds; they can travel fast over long distances with the TGV (high-speed train) or airplanes, but not over short distances (under 1km)," he says.

You can travel from Le Mans to Paris in 50 mins, he points out, but crossing Montparnasse Station may take you 20 minutes.

This explains the enormous international interest the TRR has aroused.

Experts from all over the world have gone to Paris to see the magic trottoir in action.

The price for moving short distances can often reflect these difficulties. In the age of cheap air tickets, it is now a common experience to find oneself spending as much to get to and from an airport as one spends on the plane ride itself. I'm not saying that there should be one of these things connecting London SW1 to Stansted. And in general, London is pretty full up and might not be able to accommodate anything new along these lines. TRRs have to be straight, it seems, and presumably they don't work so well in the open air. But for airports, spectator sports facilities and the like, surely the TRR, and its various spin-off and copies, has a big future.

Now I know that this has probably been done with public money and all that, so maybe I ought not to be, but nevertheless � I'm impressed.

I also like that word "trottoir", even if all it means is "pavement". It is suggestive, I think you will agree, of horses, although they'd better keep horses well away from this trottoir. And perhaps I should also add that my heading could be wrong. It could be a "nouvelle" kind of trottoir. Linguistically speaking, as I'm sure you all know, the French bring sex into everything.

The EU will shortly announce its plans to more strictly regulate the Budget Airline industry. After decades of nationalised "flag carriers", which in Europe priced out ordinary consumers from regular air travel, world-wide Thatcherite reforms of this important transportation industry drove prices down, and greatly increased the numbers of destinations and budget price options; this brought a stagnant European industry more into line with a vibrant US.

But those heady days seem numbered under the forthcoming EU regulations. These, of course, will be written by many in a corrupt organisation regularly claiming 1st class weekend airfare expenses, from Brussels to home, without the need to produce either receipts, or even without the need to take the flight.

Instead of the consumer placing their custom where they will, with different competitors, and companies building up individual loyalty and trust in their brands, the EU has decided, in its wisdom, to crack down its regulatory whip.

For those passengers bumped off over-booked flights, compensation levels will be doubled; some claims for compensation may even be several times the original low-budget fare. The new measures will also introduce enforced compensation for delays, whether the fault of the airline or not; indeed the industry claims 75% per cent of delays are caused by the failures of the various European air traffic control systems.

Many of the companies involved, such as Ryan Air and Easyjet, have complained bitterly about this planned interference in their market. They argue that if travellers want both low fares and compensation, they should protect themselves through the purchase their own travel insurance. But it seems the EU will have its way.

Once again consumers are to be treated as mindless cattle, with an inability to make their own travel choices, change their purchasing decisions, or risk the uncertainties that low-fare travel inevitably brings with it. What's really sad, is that many consumers in this dirigiste continent will agree with the plan; what many of these supporters won't realise however, until it's too late, is that they will also pay for it.

It seems certain that fares will rise sharply, to cover the airline insurance necessary to fulfil compensation claims, and the courts will be swamped with form-waving compensation-culture vultures trying to bleed the industry dry. Marginal destinations, such as the many which have recently sprung up in France and Spain, servicing holiday-home Britons, may also be dropped altogether, as their slim potential profits will fail to cover the possible compensation costs or necessary insurance.

So, thanks Big Brother EU. Where would we be without you?

It is about time that some mainstream voices were prepared to challenge the absurd and iniquitous eco-fascist-inspired war against the motorist and, much to my surprise, that voice is emanating from the Conservative Party:

The Tories promised yesterday to raise the motorway speed limit from 70 to 80mph as part of a "fair deal for drivers".

Tim Collins, the shadow transport secretary, said this was part of a set of reforms to be unveiled later this month.

They will include the removal of the bus and taxi lane on the M4 between Heathrow and London and speed cameras that trap motorists "unfairly".

Unnecessary road humps and road tolls will be abolished. Some speed limits, through villages, for example, may be tightened.

Its a funny old world when the Conservatives are starting to make anti-establishment noises but that is what they are doing. I suppose it is symptomatic of having spent so long in the political wilderness that even they realise there is nothing to be lost by saying boo to a goose.

It is still a long way from the kind of radicalism that we need and it is not enough to cause me to review my poor opinion of them as an institution but I am prepared to give them credit where a little bit of credit is due.

Last week, Connex became the first private rail operator to be stripped of its franchise after being accused of financial mismanagement and poor service. The company, which carries 300,000 commuters a day, has become a byword for crowded, dirty and late-running trains.

What caught my eye was the fact that Connex is a French-owned company and the main reason for its demise is its contant pleas for funds. Connex has lost its franchise mainly because of its financial management. The SRA (Strategic Rail Authority) decided the extra �200 million of public subsidy demanded by the company would not be wisely spent (after it has already spent £58 million of public money received last December).

In the last couple of weeks we have had some interesting exchanges among commenters attacking and defending France. The trains were held as an example of French superiority in matters of public policy and generally as the evidence of higher civilisation in France. Ross Clark points out in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph:

If there is one good thing to come out of Connex's humiliation, it will be that it should stop British railway passengers whining: "Why can't we run our trains like the French do?" Connex, of course, is a French company, which brought with it to Britain experience of running commuter services in Paris.

The superiority of French trains is hugely overstated. TGV trains may be rapid and relatively inexpensive to use, but that is an inter-city service with few stops and it operates thanks only to state subsidies which would make a British taxpayer squeal. Most other French trains run on slack and infrequent timetables which ensure punctuality but at the cost of providing little amenity for the passenger. On holiday in Brittany two years ago I took my family on a 15-mile train ride from Paimpol to Guincamp. The journey took well over half an hour, excluding the 10 minutes that it took to buy a ticket. It cost �17 for two adults and two children; and there were only three trains a day.

The problem with travelling by train in London and the South-East is the millions of passengers being transported over an increasingly large urban area. The rail network is far from efficient but comparing it to the French equivalent is misleading at best. I am sure the guys from the Transport blog could supply all the relevant comparative statistics but even without them one can see that conveying commuters in London is, at least when it comes to size, a slightly different proposition to doing that in Paris, Rome or other European capitals.

One of the more feeble but less important things about the euro is the actual design of the banknotes. It was decided early on that the notes would show pictures of bridges, supposedly to symbolise "the close cooperation between Europe and the rest of the world". However, due to the fact that there were not going to be enough notes to show a picture of a bridge from each Euro-zone country, the notes were instead designed with pictures of bridges that don't actually exist, but which resemble (in terms of style) bridges that do exist somewhere in Europe. (To my eye, a remarkably large number of them resemble real bridges that are actually in France, but that might be just me). So, rather than drawing attention to the great cultural treasures that do in fact exist in the euro-zone, European money instead gives us a sort of homogenised blandless.

(Euro coins have one common side and one side that the country that would issues the particular coin into circulation can do what it likes with. Just as with the state quarters in the US, which the states got to design, the quality of the designs is variable).

In any event, it was nice to see on the front page of this morning's Times (which Samizdata does not link to) that the people who design British coins do not go for such blandness. From 2004 to 2007 Britain (assuming it does not join the euro) is going to release a series of four new pound coins showing great British bridges.

Of course, issues of everyone getting their turn come into this, too. As England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all use the same coins, one of the four coins has to feature a bridge from each of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom. (Curiously, the situation with the pound is the precise reverse of that with the euro. All of the UK uses the same coins, but England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland all have different banknotes).

This is where we get to the interesting part, which is the choice of bridges on the coins. Choosing for Scotland and Wales was undoubtedly very easy. Benjamin Baker's Forth Bridge and Thomas Telford's Menai Strait Bridge are so famous that it can't have taken more than a moment to choose them. As for Northern Ireland, we have the rather more obscure Egyptian Arch from the Belfast-Dublin railway. Sadly, there are no really famous bridges in Northern Ireland, so we have to make do with what we have. I would rather a more famous bridge from somewhere else in the UK on the coin, but I guess Northern Ireland has to get a coin.

As for England, we have the very new Gateshead Millennium Bridge. This choice doesn't impress me greatly, as I think the new bridge is more a piece of urban decoration than a piece of important infrastructure. (It illustrates that with modern super-strong materials, engineers and architects designing urban footbridges suddenly have immense freedom to be playful with the design of such bridges, as almost anything they can imagine has suddenly become technically possible and affordable. This is an interesting story, I am all for urban decoration, and I think the bridge is a very good example, but am not sure that this bridge is the right choice for a series of coins that celebrates great bridge building.

So what would my choice for the "England" bridge be?

Well, the two most famous bridges in England (besides the unspeakably ugly Tower Bridge in London) are Abraham Darby's Ironbridge in Shropshire and Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. The Ironbridge is beautiful, and was utterly revolutionary when built. This would be my choice. The Clifton Suspension bridge is a great bridge built by Britain's greatest engineer, but is very similar to the Menai Strait Bridge, and the Menai Strait Bridge was built first.

However, if you were to choose the Ironbridge as the fourth bridge, then you have chosen four bridges built between 1779 (The Ironbridge) and 1890 (The Forth Bridge). This isn't that surprising, as this is the era during which British engineers led the world. However, I am guessing the coin designers decided they wanted something more contemporary for the fourth bridge. In the 20th century, bridge design came to be more and more dominated by the Americans, but British engineers still did some impressive things. As I see it, there were three major movements in the design of long bridges. One of these developments was the steel arch bridge. One of the most important examples of this type was designed by British engineers, but unfortunately it is in Australia. There are one or two examples of this type of bridge in the UK - most notably the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, but there are much greater examples in Sydney and New York, so this has to be ruled out.

Bypassing the second for a moment, the third major movement in 20th century bridges was made possible in the 1980s by the same invention of new super-strong materials that gave the designers of pedestrian bridges their new freedom to exercise their every whim. This same materials revolution led to the cable stayed bridge becoming the most economical type to build for spans of up to about 1000 metres. Sadly, though, there are no particularly good examples of the type in the UK. The longest is the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at Dartford, and the circumstances of the location prevented this from being an especially pretty bridge. In any event, the bridge was not particularly long or innovative by international standards. (There is a stunning example of this kind of bridge across the mouth of the Seine in France, however. If real bridges were being used for euro notes, I would definitely nominate this one. In fact they have put an imaginary bridge that looks quite like it on the 500 euro note).

So what have we left? Well, the second and most important 20th century movement for long bridges was the long span suspension bridge. The first two of these to be built were in the United States: the George Washington Bridge in New York and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. However, there are three major bridges of this kind in the United Kingdom. The Forth Road Bridge is in Scotland, right next to the more famous rail bridge, so it doesn't qualify for the English coin. (Also, it wasn't a particularly innovative bridge, for reasons I will get to in a moment). The Humber bridge in East Yorkshire had until very recently the longest span of any bridge in the world (the record is now held by the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge near Kobe in Japan), and is a good piece of engineering, but not an especially exciting one. In any event, the amount of public money wasted on this fairly pointless bridge was so great that the Treasury is unlikely to want to constantly reminded of it.

The third long span suspension bridge in the UK is the First Severn Bridge, near Bristol. This bridge has a story.

In the early 20th century, suspension bridges got longer and longer, and their decks got thinner and thinner. This all went well until 1940, when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State shook itself to pieces. It was then realised that the aerodynamics and resonance properties of bridge decks were not as well understood as engineers had thought. For a while, this problem was solved by attaching a thick metal truss to the bridge deck to make it rigid. However, this was expensive in engineering terms and looked ugly. (The Forth Road Bridge has such a truss, which is why I described it the way I did earlier).

Eventually, though, engineers did figure out the aerodynamic and resonance properties of Bridge design, and the Severn Bridge was the first long bridge built with a thin deck after the problems were properly understood. It is for this reason a significant bridge, as well as being a particularly beautiful bridge, especially at twilight, In my opinion it is the best bridge built in Britain in the 20th century. If not allowed the Ironbridge, this would be my nominee for the bridge to put on the "English" coin.

Except the Severn Bridge probably doesn't qualify to appear on any of the four coins. The Severn Estuary marks the boundary between England and Wales, and while one end of the bridge is in England, the other is not. Personally I would still put it on the English coin, and insist that it had been chosen to emphasise "the close cooperation between England and the rest of the United Kingdon". But the bureacracy probably couldn't cope with this.

Despite all this commentary, I do like the design of the new coins, and very much look forward to actually seeing them in circulation. This is one more (relatively unimportant) reason to vote against the euro.

I was just watching a report on early morning TV which was in itself a rather mundane piece about how the authorities in Britain are clamping (immobilising) cars which are stopped on the road and found to have unpaid vehicle tax. Yeah yeah, whatever.

But then came a remark which astonished me...

"Unpaid annual Vehicle Excise Duty costs the British economy millions of pounds per year"

Now without getting into the rights and wrongs of vehicle ownership taxes (as opposed to road use taxes), the implication is clear: money not paid to the state for the privilege of owning your own several property does not create wealth... only when that money is safely in the hands of the state does the British economy benefit. Note, the words use are not "costs the British state millions..." but rather "costs the British economy millions..."

And with that tax money taken out of private hands, the state creates a net gain in wealth how exactly? Hiring more wealth destroying bureaucrats? And of course that money you selfish tax dodgers have not paid to the state is going to be flushed down the toilet rather than being used for some alternative economic activity, right? Likewise immobilising people's transport because they have not paid an annual ownership tax, and thereby preventing those people making deliveries or getting to work, that does not British economy a penny, right?

Arrogance and ignorance in equal measure. The state is not your friend.

In London just now there is a big push on to make the place more pedestrian friendly, and less car-dominated. The Congestion Charge is part of this trend. So are the three new footbridges across the Thames, in the form of the Millenium Bridge between the City and Tate Modern, and the two new footbridges they've put on either side of the old Hungerford (railway) Bridge to replace the one old puddle-ridden sewer of a footbridge that used to be there.

As a confirmed pedestrian, I consider all these changes to be big steps in the right direction, especially the Congestion Charge. The long term threat is that London may one day stop being a living city, and become a tourist city, like Paris. Paris is pretty. Of course it is. But the trouble with Paris is that increasingly, that's all that it is.

In London, for the time being, tourism is no threat. London is far too big, busy and ugly for that. Tourism is the seasoning of this great city, not its basic nourishment. And one of the more entertaining sights to be seen in London in recent years has been the tourist related one of seeing one of these things trundling about, these being DUKWs.

DUKWs, or "Ducks" as they have always, inevitably, been called, were originally used for amphibious landings during World War II, and although I've never witnessed them actually making the transition, the London ducks are amphibious here too, being both buses and boats at different stages of their travels about London.

While putting this together, I found myself wondering, not for the first time in my life: why DUKW? Well, according to this:

D = First year of production code "D" is for 1942 U = Body style "U" utility truck (amphibious) K = Front wheel drive. GMC still uses that on trucks today (K5 Chevy Blazer) W = Two rear driving wheels (tandem axle)

So now you know.

I also learned on my google-travels that London is not the only city where DUKWs are still making themselves useful, and keeping people employed driving them and looking after them. They are to be found all over the place, it seems.

The Royal Mail is to sell off the Post Office Underground Railway, better known as Mail Rail. For the uninitiated, this is basically the Crossrail project (the East-West rail link across London that is as eagerly anticipated by commuters as it is delayed by politicians and dreaded by taxpayers). The only differences: it exists in reality, not just as a gleam in John Prescott's eye, and it only carries sacks of mail. Millions of them per day. Like Crossrail, however, it is too expensive - the Post Office says it is simply not economic to run any more.

The Times [to which Samizdata does not link], asks in today's Leader for ideas on what use may be put to such a railway, bearing in mind it is only tall enough to carry passengers if they lie down like guests in a Japanese capsule hotel. Surely the collective ingenuity of Samizdata can come up with some good ideas?

Here's two to start the ball rolling:

• Cross-London packet sevice. Surely it could continue in its present role if anyone - private individual, corporation, courier or freight company - could use it. Modern barcode technology could make it easy to identify the right packet to serve up at the receiving station. Mail Rail is infrastructure; if the Post Office opened their pipes to competing "content", like telcos and ISPs do, then perhaps the infrastructure would be viable, and even extended?
• The real Crossrail. Wouldn't it be cheaper to widen a tunnel that already exists than to build a new one? Everyone knows that Crossrail is desperately needed if London is not to sieze up - and risk losing companies migrating elsewhere to restore the balance. Everyone also knows that the �4bn estimate is likely to be spent several times over before the system goes into service - these projects always overrun. Isn't this a good opportunity to cut costs?

The usual prize (kudos, not cash) for the most innovative suggestion.

Last Sunday I did a posting about the new Rolls-Royce Phantom, and now that comments there have had as much say as they're going to, I'd like to add just one more. I appealed in my posting for eyewitness accounts of new Roller, but commenters were only able to speculate about the new car's appearance and about the impression it makes on people nearby from various photo-links we had found, until this arrived, from Joseph Beckner of Atlanta, Georgia:

I saw the new Rolls-Royce Phantom at the Amelia Island Councours D'Elegance in Florida in March.

Impressions:

1) It is an IMPOSING automobile. It has a massive quality to it that transcends any other car in recent memory. The grill is indeed huge and, in my mind, overbearing. it comes up to my chest and is very wide. The car is very long and wide, and seems to have been carved from a block of granite. It simply dwarfs anything on the road. The first descriptive thought that came to me was "it's a locomotive".

2) There is nothing stately about the car. It has what I can only describe as a "Panzer" feel to it. You'll never mistake it for any other car in your rearview mirror. And I guarantee you'll move over.

3) The auto oozes quality in every detail. The paint is flawless, the interior fit and finish is beyond fault, and the materials are first rate. That said, it isn't a "warm" car. Unlike the Rolls of yore, it feels cold and unforgiving. Rather than "This is your reward, sir, for a life well-lived", it seems to say "See, I have more cubic money than you. Out of the way, swine!".

4) The wheels are enormous, and according to reports, the biggest tires on any passenger car. They are 31" in diameter, and while they visually tend to make the car appear smaller in pictures, in the flesh that trick doesn't work. With its giant grill, high beltline, and small glass-to-body ratio, it just overwhelms the viewer.

5) The coach doors in the rear ('suicide doors' to Americans), are a nice touch. Well integrated in the design. Whether they actually work in real life remains to be seen.

6) Everything about the car suggests that it is what the Germans believe the British think of as a "Rolls-Royce". It's almost cartoonish. It's an idea that's been filtered through BMW's preconceived notions of the British. "You know, Hans, with their overinflated sense of "Empire" and such, the British really think they still rule the world. This is the car that reflects that attitude."

One of the other commenters, blogger Charles Hueter linked to and quoted from this story, which happens to include at its top left corner, this photograph, which I think best illustrates Beckner's reaction to this remarkable, but it would also seem, decidedly offputting vehicle.

Early last month I did a piece over at Transport Blog about the new Rolls Royce. This car, the "Phantom", is interesting for several reasons.

First, it costs a lot, around £250,000. That's a lot more than a Rolls Royce has ever cost before. Who will buy such a thing?

Second, will the fact that Rolls Royce is now German-owned affect sales in the USA? I don't know, but maybe commenters from the USA can enlighten us. Presumably the German connection will ensure that the car has fewer bits falling off it than is the case with cars made by large but still British-owned car makers. But do Americans perceive the Rolls Royce now to be a German car? Or do they still view it as British, with Germans merely helping out with the running of what remains a Great British Institution? If Americans do think it's now German, will that matter?

Third, it may work terribly well, but is the Phantom a nice enough design to be worth all that money? I have yet to see one of these beasts myself. When I did my Transport Blog piece, I was merely noting the new Roller's existence, a transport event in itself. Since then, I have heard Jeremy Clarkson's somewhat critical views about what the Phantom looks like, and what driving about in one might say about you, and I suspect Clarkson is right. What he said was that the thing is just not beautiful enough. In fact, he said, it's rather ugly. If you drive about in one, you'll come across as, not to put too fine a point on it, a bastard. I don't recall Clarkson's exact words, but that is the gist that I recall.

When it comes to car aesthetics, photographs are notoriously not sufficient to answer such worries.

Some photos make the Phantom look rather small, but this could just be because the wheels are so very big. And if the Rolls is actually very big, then it could turn out to be the front that will upset me. If you follow the Rolls Royce link above, and scroll down the one of a certain Tony Gott introducing the car, you'll see what bothers me most about this car, which is the latest version of the radiator grill. What used to look stately and classical now looks like it may be aggressive and overbearing. Rollers used to mean noblesse oblige. Well, they did until the sixties, when pop stars and drug dealers started buying them. This latest one looks more like the kind of Germanic noblesse that doesn't give a scheisse. On the other hand this may all be effect of the photograph exaggerating the size of the radiator, and actually the Phantom is very nice.

I've been walking about in London now for two months since this beast was launched and have yet to spot one. Could it be that it isn't selling very well, and that others have similar reservations to mine?

Has anyone else laid eyes on it? If so, what did you think of it?

Patrick of Transport Blog links to this story, drawn to his attention by this promising rival/collaborator to/with Transport Blog.

So that, when trawling through the Samizdata archives in 2085 you may learn what this story was about, it is an advert by a car making enterprise called "General Motors" featuring a bus with "CREEPS AND WEIRDOS" on its sign machine instead of saying its destination. (I know what you're thinking: what's a "bus"?)

"Truth in advertising" says Patrick. Indeed. This advert says something extremely true and important about public transport, which is that not all of the public are very nice or companionable people. So obviously the advert can't be allowed and General Motors have been made to withdrawn it. But it looks like the blogosphere will immortalise and universalise the message. Congratulations GM. I shouldn't be at all surprised if they provoked the row deliberately, in order to help them make their point wihtout having to go on paying for it to be said. And in Canada! The horror.

GM is famous in public-transportophile circles for having bribed and corrupted buses and trams into perdition in the USA and replaced them all with the hated (by everyone except the non-creep non-weirdo public) motor car. The more I study this argument, the more I think that GM is the messenger being blamed for the message, the message being that most Americans prefer cars to buses and trams and for good reasons. Whereas buses and trams are quite good for getting new American places to live and work in started, they are not very good for serving all the people who subsequently go to live in these new American places, because American places are, generally speaking, big dispersed smudges rather than arranged in neat bus and tram friendly lines.

And the rest of the world is now following America into this argument. The only "public" transport issue of import now is not how to replace cars, but how to make the car system far, far better, which can't happen while the infrastructure remains in "public" hands, which can't be changed until the public sector is bullied into introducing road pricing, because that way there'll be an income stream to privatise.

One of the many benefits of the new London road pricing scheme � crude and intrusive though it undoubtedly is � is that London buses now go a bit less slowly.

I hate blogging sometimes. You start out doing something short and frivolous and fun, and you end up with something long and profound and wearisome. It's a bit like life, isn't it?

Patrick Crozier at Transport Blog links to a piece about the perennial tendency of all concerned to prefer railways to cars, except where their own personal travelling arrangements are concerned. Cars take you where you want to go. Trains can't take you to almost any of the places you want to go. Work is spread out in the suburbs. Trains can't be spread out in the suburbs, because they only stop at stations. If you could jump off trains at any point, the way you can jump off the old London double decker buses with the wide-open back doors whenever they slow down, and if trains did slow down quite often, then trains would be much more convenient things. But you can't do any of that.

So, people actually use cars. But what they vote for and politick for is trains. People don't like cars, in the sense of liking their combined effect. They prefer the train system to the car system.

Why? Whence the train fascination? Why does even Transport Blog obsess about trains, when trains are such economically stupid things compared to cars?

Part of the answer is surely aesthetic. Trains go in those lovely elegant curves. Trains don't get stuck in train jams and produce nothing but fumes for twenty minutes. (They do get stuck from time to time. But mostly they don't get stuck.) Above all, trains don't need huge, huge train parks to park in. They just carry on trundling around.

Cars, on the other hand, have turned a substantial percentage of the surface of the earth into a place whose only purpose is to be purposeful. The biggest bridges and the most intricate motorway interchanges have genuine beauty and grandeur. But most car infrastructure is every bit as dull and clunky and messy and uninspiring as the word infrastructure itself is.

In particular, car parks are an almost total aesthetic negative, in most people's eyes. Car parks pave paradise. The more exciting a building is, the greater the price that seems to have to be paid in meaningless tarmac expanse surrounding it. And which is now uglier: a full car park or an empty car park? You tell me.

But it doesn't have to be like this.

Car parks aren't just ugly; they are aesthetic no-go areas. By this I mean that mostly they are not just ugly, but are places where no attempt is now made to make them look beautiful. It is simply accepted in our culture that whereas it makes sense to try to make an office block or a sports stadium or a appartment building look cool and dandy and the sort of thing that people would want to take photos of, car parks are just incurably awful places, and we just have to put up with them and make them as un-huge as we can.

Well, correction. Trees are often planted in among car parks. But to believe that only trees can beautify a car park is, in a way, to accept the very point I am saying should be challenged. Do we really have to accept that the only way to make tarmac surfaces look good is to punch little holes in it and allow weedy, smoke encrusted and apologetic little plants to peep through (and then shed leaves everywhere)? Cannot a car park, by virtue of its own carparkness, be as beautiful in its own right as a tree?

Car parks could look great, surely.

Anyway, what I would like to see is a serious attempt by architects and designers to make car parks into things of beauty, and a quite deliberate acceptance of the fact, which it surely is, that doing this would amost certainly mean spending extra money.

But so what? There is no law that says that a car park should not be so amazing that people would actually visit it, and pay extra to park in it and to photograph their car in it, and buy picture postcards of it seen from the air the way they do of the Sydney Opera House or St Paul's Cathedral. In the hands of a great designer, could not a car park be paradise?

For people who are supposed to 'worship the motorcar', we sure are crap at building car cathedrals.

Two general suggestions. One: as per Sydney Opera House, think curves. Avoid rectangles. This actually makes driving sense. The sharp right angle turn saves space, of course it does. But it is not fun to drive in sharp turns. Curves make driving sense. And of course curves give you all kinds of chances to make places that look great.

Two: spend money to get away from total flatness. At present, aesthetics tends to forbid turning hills into car parks, because hills are too beautiful thus to ruin, even if a car park carved into a hillside might be a lot nicer. So build slopes and hills and intersecting ramps. Advantage: tourists can take good three-d photos without having to hire helicopters or climb towers. Eventually, places with frankly rather drab looking lumps of earth (hills) would be asking successful car park designers to turn their boring earthly protuberances into groovy car parks.

Discuss.

Questions. First, of course: am I, approximately speaking, on to something? Two: are there already examples in the world of car parks built in the manner I suggest, with the kind of aesthetic and financial exuberance I would like to see? Surely yes. Three: are there any rejected or fantasy car park designs along the lines I suggest? Surely yes again. Pictures and links to pictures appreciated.

Struggling into the office via the Tube (London's subway system) this morning, I distinctly thought I heard the following announcement over the public address system. I may have been hallucinating, but I am not sure:

Ladies, gentlemen, buskers and beggars, London Transport regrets to announce that in addition to the Central Line being closed until Hell freezes over while we check to see if the nuts and bolts have been screwed in correctly, the Piccadilly Line has been suspended. So I suggest you suckers get outside and into the fresh air for a bracing walk. Let's face it, transporting you people is more than our jobs are worth

As I say, I may have been imagining things.

The above is also the title of a piece by Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute, about the principle of road pricing in the light of the London scheme (£5 per day) that is just about to come into force. I'm not such how long Eamonn's piece has been up at the ASI website, but thanks to Alex Singleton for bringing it to my attention.

Like Eamonn Butler, I'm strongly in favour of road pricing, for all the reasons he itemises, and which I have been going on about for many years. But also, like Eamonn, and like Patrick Crozier of Transport Blog, I am uneasy about the effect Ken Livingstone's London will have on this debate.

Eamonn and Patrick both fear the worst. Says Eamonn:

The London congestion charging scheme is a bad scheme. But if it fails, it will put back the debate on road pricing for another twenty years, until we're all in an even worse jam.

I'm a pathological optimist, so discount the following if you aren't, but I suspect that the logic of road pricing is so overwhelming, and the utter absurdity of any other road regime in places like central London � right under the noses of the people who will decide about the overall future of road pricing in Britain � so palpable, that there is nothing that even Ken Livingstone can do to stop this idea. On the contrary, the fact that he is at least attempting it will be what counts and what will get (is getting) the idea out there into the heads of intelligent people everywhere, and if the idea is regarded as not having worked for London, yet, the culprit will be identified as the way Livingstone did it, rather than the idea itself.

So what should have been and should be done about road pricing?

The obvious place to start is the busiest motorways, because they're busy, and because by their nature, motorways only have a very few entry points.

The simple principle to apply is: No payment, no passage. Clearly there would be a demand for payment systems that didn't interrupt one's journey, in the form of a kind of giant credit card attached to one's car, or something similar. Once everyone had got used to it, the same gadgetry could then be applied to much more complex situations, like central London.

To invent an untried system from scratch for central London, which is what Livingstone has done, is asking for trouble. His scheme involves photographing every car that crosses the line, and then sending out bills, based on knowing who the owner of the car is from the number plate. Trouble is already guaranteed, in the form of all the Nigerians in our midst (from Nigeria itself and of the home grown variety) who are applying their minds to this arrangement. Having bogus German number plates ought not to make any difference to a decent road pricing system, yet suddenly London seems to have many more German diplomats than formerly.

I live just inside the western boundary of the London payment area. Big Cs have been appearing on all kinds of roads near me, and for a while I just thought that C stood for me being Confused. I still don't know how it will all work, but will surely have stories to tell about it all, if not here then on Patrick's Transport Blog, for which I also write occasionally.

As for the Cut Taxes! part of my title, and of Eamonn Butler's, I think that's trickier than Eamonn makes it sound. There are two ways to do road pricing. You can do it a bit at a time, which makes sense but which makes car use tax reduction decisions hard to make sense of, because you can't reduce these taxes only very locally. Or: you can make a gigantic switch from free-at-the-point-of-use roads to priced roads, throughout the entire country, which would at least make tax reductions work okay and with reasonable justice, but which would be insane on just about all other counts.

That's to assume, of course, that the politicians can be trusted to cut car use taxes in the first place, having introduced road pricing, which of course they can't.

But even there, I am an optimist, in the sense that if all that road pricing means is a sharp increase in the price of motoring in certain places and along certain roads and nothing much else (the probable story), I think that would still be an improvement. Even that would be better than gridlock.

My ego being suitably gratified by the reactions to my earlier post about SUVs, well, I could not resist linking to this nice story, also by Reuters, about the latest incarnation of the mighty Ford Mustang.

It seems that folk who want us Westerners to cut back on oil as a way of squeezing the Middle East are fighting a losing battle at the moment.

Also in a totally gratuitous vein, here is a story with some picks of the latest Aston Martin, as driven by Pierce Brosnan in his, in my view, largely rather silly James Bond movie. But for this petrol-head, the car is pure eye candy. Aston Martin in my view has made some of the most beautiful cars ever. I used to rank the DB5 as the most aesthetically pleasing, but I think the Vanquish is even better.

The sports utility vehicle (SUV) is the bete noire of the anti-globalista class, epitomizing much that they hate about western, and specifically American, culture. They are big, brash, consume a lot of fossil fuels and symbolise an almost Wild West ethos (although in my experience many of them are driven by stockbrokers in deepest west London).

I must say that in my more ideologically manic moments, I fantasize about buying a SUV for no other reason than to cock a snook at the flat-earthers. Check out this interesting story for the enduring appeal of these capitalist behemoths on wheels. Vroom!

Patrick Crozier posted a piece on Transport Blog the other day about something called SkyTran, which I hereby throw to the Samizdata comment pack to see what they make of it. It seems like a wonderful idea.

Said Patrick:

Further to my investigations into alternatives to driving, I stumbled across a site promoting SkyTran. SkyTran will be a 100mph, computer-controlled, magnetically-levitated, almost door-to-door, non-polluting, personal transportation system. It will whisk us to our destinations in futuristic, light-weight pods, eliminate congestion at a stroke, cost next to nothing, turn a profit, allow spectacular views and be built along existing rights of way.

Can it be done? I have no idea. But I so, so hope it can. Imagine, an almost perfect transport system, making trains and cars look like the 19th century technologies that they are and consigning both to the rubbish bin of history.

I love it.

Maybe it was just that other blogs were taking the Christmas holiday off and there was nowhere else to go, but I've been struck not just by the quantity but also by the quality of the comments samizdata has been attracting recently. I can't reasonably expect the number of comments that David Carr got for his piece about communism not collapsing the way it should, but a dozen or more good, informed responses to this proposal, maybe referring to what else has been said about this scheme by critics and commentators in America, is not an unreasonable hope. The more lucid of these comments, if there are any, can then be swung back to Transport Blog, together with a link to the rest if them. So let's show these trainspotters what we can do, eh? A very cursory google search got me to several more commentaries about SkyTran, but they all seemed to be echoing the original sales pitch. Has anyone been minded to shoot the thing down in flames?

I'm not sure I quite love SkyTran. There's something uniquely satisfying about choosing and owning your own vehicle, which SkyTran doesn't seem ever to allow. Nevertheless for commuting SkyTran looks most enticing, if it can be made to work.

SkyTran is basically a scheme I myself have gone a good way towards inventing � in a science fiction kind of way � as a result of my decades-long enthusiasm for the idea of road pricing. Road pricing, once it is installed (and I do believe that it will be with us in a big way any decade now), will reward the road operator who manages to fit as many vehicles as he can onto his road, and this he might eventually do by taking control of the vehicles himself. The trouble with both trains and road vehicles now is that the gaps between them are too big. Computerised control of the vehicles by the system itself might make much denser track and road usage possible. Essentially, what you need are traffic jams which move along as convoys, all vehicles starting and stopping at the same time, yet the individual vessels being separable and recombinable into different convoys, by destination. Need I add that you also need the faultless driving - second by second, day after day, year after year - that a humans can't manage but which a computer might?

But we're decades away even from a fully rational pricing system for roads, and who knows when computerised vehicle guidance will come on the roads, if ever? This might be a much quicker fix, at any rate for urban transport.

My principle technical confusion about SkyTran is: does the system involve "points"? (As in railway-type points. Funny, I never realised until now what an odd word that is to describe what it describes.) It seems as if it must, in order (a) to allow the SkyTran pods to go from any destination to any other destination, and (b) to enable the pods to detatch themselves from the main line and to insert themselves into the stopping system, like so many London taxis in a cab rank.

Such road pricing as does happen in the near future will definitely help, because it will concentrate minds wonderfully on dreaming up and arguing about possible alternatives. Alternatives like SkyTran.

UK Transport is now Transport Blog, and has a burst of short but varied new postings. This is a good name, combining Patrick Crozier's all-embracingly global field of vision (although the latest postings are mostly British, with only the occasional Japanese reference) with his general gloom about his ability to dazzle. No "Transports of Delight" nonsense.

Now that Patrick has moved it over to Movable Type, I am nagging him to set me up with automatic posting rights to Transport Blog, to take up some of the slack when he gets too depressed about the state of Britain's deeply depressing transport infrastructure, for words, as it were. When my campaign has succeeded, this is the kind of stuff I'll be putting there, although if Perry wants to insert a weekend type picture here, I recommend this as being more his (our) kind of thing.

Being a pedestrian with a heart condition is about to get worse.

This is an absolute classic, picked up and copied in full (I think) by Natalie Solent. Which is a good thing because the link to it supplied by Natalie was also a horse's arse when I tried it.

The piece in question is both an utterly convincing and an utterly hilarious explanation (based on the size of the standard horse's arse) of why the standard railway gauge throughout the world is 4ft 8.5 ins, and it has a delightful space age postscript.

Increasing the chances that everyone on earth reads things like this is one of the basic purposes of Samizdata, as far as I'm concerned. Instapundit: do your thing, if you haven't already. UK Transport (quiet at the moment � I believe Patrick Crozier is moving house) eat your heart out.