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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?

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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.

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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."

(27)

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.

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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]

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

(15)

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.

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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.

(11)

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

(14)

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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).

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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 Rest