We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Patrick Crozier’s Transport Blog has a valuable service at the top right of the blog, in the form of links to transport related articles. (Most of the media do not seem to have a special category for “transport” stories, the way they do for “education” or “arts”.) Patrick adds very little in the way of accompanying commentary to these links, but others can comment, and on this story, several people did. I missed this when it first came out, but it seems to me worth making a fuss of, even if belatedly:
A pensioner who warned motorists of a police speed trap was convicted of wilfully obstructing a constable in the execution of his duty, banned from driving and ordered to pay £364 costs yesterday.
Stuart Harding, 71, was attempting to slow motorists down as they approached a Sunday morning car boot sale where many people were crossing the road.
Noticing that police were parked nearby with an officer using a hand-held laser speed camera, he decided that a warning stating “Speed Trap – 300 yards ahead” would be the most effective way of getting drivers to reduce their speed. But as soon as the officers noticed his placard he was cautioned for committing an offence.
And there seems little doubt that it was this sign that was the “offence”.
Robert Manley, prosecuting, said: “In displaying this sign the defendant was giving motorists advanced warning of a road safety camera being operated by the police 300 yards further along the road.”
The supposed idea of speed cameras is to dissuade people from breaking the speed limit. Mr Harding was also dissuading people from breaking the speed limit. Yet this is something that a prosecutor considers it proper to denounce Mr Harding for doing. And what is more, the court agreed.
I suppose you could just about argue that if we were all allowed to put up signs about speed cameras, we would all be at it, and we would all accordingly only have to obey the speed limit where there was a warning sign, instead of all the time as we should.
But I prefer Andy Wood’s explanation, which he links back to in his comment on this story. The income from speed cameras goes to local police forces, and they use cameras, and place their cameras in the first place, to raise revenue rather than to dissuade dangerous driving, the problem with dissuasion being that if it succeeds they get no money out of it.
So, watch out. If someone is committing an offence for which he is liable to be fined, do not, whatever you do, try to dissuade him. You will be “wilfully obstructing” the police in their attempts to fleece us of our money whenever they can.
I suppose the next question is: would it be wrong to encourage people to commit such offences? Would the police have any objections to that? Presumably not.
More seriously, this illustrates the general principle nowadays, that the state would rather tax and torment and generally mess with law-abiding, and even, as in this case, actively law-upholding citizens, rather than go after real criminals. Criminals are just too much bother to deal with. Moral: be a criminal. Seriously. The government is always jabbering away about how this or that measure might “send the wrong message” – usually what they say is that if they do not forbit some harmless and utterly unaggressive thing they might be interpreted as encouraging it. Well, what kind of message does prosecuting Mr Harding send?
Today I did something I do not normally do, but ought to do more often. I bought the latest issue of Viz, which looks like this:
What a fine British institution this is! Dirty jokes. Merciless send-ups of political and any other sort of correctness, attacks on the high and mighty (especially God), and lurking under its lewd surface is a fiercely freedom-loving political agenda, not unlike that pushed in a similarly subversive manner by the creators of South Park.
I have been feasting in particular on the wonderful Viz letters pages, where, in this issue, there is to be found a thoughtful exchange of views on the nature of the terrorist menace, and the concomitant threat to civil liberties posed by the various state measures that are allegedly being taken to curb it.
T. Harris of Leeds starts the ball rolling:
So the Home Secretary plans to force us to carry identity cards with our iris patterns encoded onto them. That’s rich. How dare David Blunkett judge people on their eyes when his don’t even work. It would be like the head of the DVLC not having a number plate on his car.
Les Barnsley of Barnsley pursues the theme of iris patterns:
Could the Home Secretary explain to me how biometric checks on iris patterns and fingerprints are going to help keep tabs on muslim cleric Abu Hamsa.
Good points both, I think we would all here agree. → Continue reading: Some Viz letters
Scott Baines calls for the government to allow an fair debate on smoking.
There is conserable pubic debate at present about the role of government in regulating smoking. The Prime Minister has called for a “Big Conversation” on whether local authorities should be able to ban workplace smoking. Yet the government seems unwilling to allow a fair debate. Instead, it is hugely bankrolling one side.
Action on Smoking and Health, which calls for smoking to gradually be made illegal, received £177,640 last year from the Department of Health. It also received £136,936 from the Welsh Assembly. This is money earned by taxpayers, including the especially heavily-taxed smoker, which goes towards an organisation that persecutes them. Ash offers an entirely negative contribution to society. Its funding should be stopped.
Scott Baines
This on the midday BBC Radio 4 news:
The Government is resisting pressure from the European Union to introduce random breath tests.
Yes, my ears did not deceive me. Here is the story in writing:
Police should carry out random breath tests as a matter of course, according to the European Commission.
Under existing laws, UK police can only carry out a breath test if they believe the driver has been drinking.
But the European Commission wants all member states to allow its police to carry out random tests.
The Home Office said introducing random testing was “inefficient in catching drink-drive offenders.”
Whenever the British Government describes itself as resisting pressure from the European Union, it is a good bet that this pressure will in due course be succumbed to.
The pseudonymous ‘Slowjoe’ sends in this article to ponder on the subject of ID cards. Incidentally, anyone with articles on that subject would do well to consider submitting them to our sister site White Rose, which really specialises in civil liberties issues such as this.
The Register has the story of a man jailed because of a flaw in a fingerprint identification program which appears to have been chosen as the basis of the UK ID card scheme.
A number of disturbing points:
- The victim in this case didn’t realise that the software was flawed until 4 years after he’d been jailed.
- There have been at least 97 cases where mistaken identification took place that the state of Oregon was aware of. Since these involved fingerprints, it’s likely that this means “97 cases of wrongful arrest”.
- This story appeared in the Register on May 11th. No mainstream news site has considered it worth covering. (My basis for this is are two searches at new.google.com, a search of the UK site and of the US site. For the lazy, these links show that no mainstream news organisation has gone beyond printing Mr. Benson’s press release. A couple of finance websites and trial lawyers sites seem have also run it.)
- The defendants are crass enough to ask for the suit to be dismissed because the victim didn’t know about their software bug in time.
Next time someone suggests that “fingerprints are flawless”, the kicker is, the chosen system apparently cannot distinguish between men with 10 fingers, and those with only 9. How anyone can trust such a system is beyond me.
Is anyone still in favour of ID cards?
Slowjoe
If something sounds too good to be true then it is most likely untrue but if something sounds too bad to be true you can probably take it to the bank.
If there is anything axiomatic about that proposition then perhaps I should claim proprietory rights on it and call it ‘Carr’s Law’ or something. I am not sure how much use this law will prove to be on a practical day-to-day basis but it may oblige as a useful yardstick against which to measure my natural cynicism about opinion polls, surveys and related statistical exercises.
For example, take this one, published last month:
David Blunkett has pledged to push ahead with ID card legislation after an opinion poll said most people would be happy to carry one.
The MORI survey was commissioned by an IT consultancy which has worked on projects with the government.
It revealed 80% of those questioned backed a national ID card scheme, echoing findings from previous polls.
And published yesterday:
Most people would support closing a legal loophole that allows parents to smack their children, says a survey.
A total of 71% of people would favour such a ban, according to a survey commissioned by the Children are Unbeatable! Alliance.
And published today:
A majority of British adults favour a total ban on smoking in public places, a survey suggests.
A poll of more than 1,500 people by market analysts Mintel found 52% support for a ban, including two-thirds of non-smokers.
Despite my ingrained reluctance to pay these wretched surveys even a jot of heed, I do accept that a sufficient number of such polling exercises (if conducted scientifically and honestly) can, correctly identify a trend if not quite reveal great truths. → Continue reading: All those in favour say “aye”
Something rather remarkable has just happened. I am watching Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, and they have just had a serious discussion about how they really did not like the fact that the Government can tell exactly which internet sites you have just been visiting, and read all your emails, and send you to prison if you encrypt them and do not tell them the key, or whatever it is. Baddiel and Skinner never have serious discussions.
A bloke in a beard (of the trimmed sort rather than ZZ Top style) asked a question about this, and instead of him being laughed out of the studio, they found themselves discussing it quite seriously. Bearded bloke was allowed to add a further comment (about the emails). Baddiel in particular seemed quite upset.
Interesting.
Has anyone ever come across a case of a politician championing the expansion of state regulation from beyond the grave? Is this a first for cemetery regulation?
The Florida Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services Bill has just been passed by the state’s House of Representatives in response to the Menorah Gardens scandal, where fees were pocketed by the funeral home and corpses went unburied. This bill is known as the “Howard Futch” Bill since his untimely demise was marred by his internment and relocation, after the plot designated for his widow was filled by someone else. Futch was, by all accounts, a decent man, a Second World War veteran, and like all representatives, inclined to act in order to right perceived wrongs through government action. Now he has a highway and a funeral regulation bill named after him. Still, people will sleep easier in the ground for this:
The bill will require cemetery operators to survey and plot new grounds, establish minimum grave sizes, and put names on vaults. It also will establish a monument dealer inspection program, allow monument companies to join funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums in the pre-need funeral services industry and consolidate the regulation of the industry under the Department of Financial Services….
Why the scandal of unburied bodies requires the monument dealer inspection service or other regulatory actions is beyond me? At the moment, the European Union has only turned its attentions to pet cemeteries as the ever vigilant Euromyths website under David Delaney details here and here.
Once this furore has died down, let us hope other deceased politicians rest more quietly than Howard Futch.
I have just done a spot on Talk Radio, being interviewed by Mike Dickin, as is my occasional wont. From time to time, it is arranged that he and I will take it in turns to mouth off about some issue of the day.
Today what Mike Dickin was complaining about, and inviting me to complain about along with him, was this:
Business leaders have criticised new rules that require companies to provide prayer rooms and give religious holidays to non-Christians as “unacceptable and ridiculous”.
In a 99-page document published last week, the Commission for Racial Equality set out draft guidance on how companies should prevent discrimination against religious and racial minorities.
The most controversial proposal is that employers should have to provide prayer rooms and give time off for non-Christians to mark their own religious holidays.
Obviously commenters may want to say their thing about that, but I want to discuss something somewhat different. I found myself in partial but severe disagreement with Mike Dickin on this matter.
In particular, I think I observed an extremely common syndrome which does much to explain why proposals for intrusive laws have such an annoying habit of becoming intrusive laws. → Continue reading: Falling into the Mike Dickin trap
Lest anyone forget about the “broken-watch principle” (i.e. even a broken watch is still right twice a day), a reminder is served up courtesy of this excellent and unsettling article by Nick Cohen in the Guardian:
Politicians might be despised, but it is a fair guess that if a home secretary or prime minister proposed repealing the Human Rights Act or tearing up habeas corpus a majority of the population would clap their hands and cheer him on. A paradox of our time is that while ministers are everywhere vilified as scheming liars, and bureaucrats as sinister incompetents, large sections of the supposedly cynical and wised-up electorate are eager to allow them to behave like major-generals.
Sadly true. Mr Cohen even goes on to quote H.L. Mencken:
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,’ said H.L. Mencken. But in modern Britain it’s hard to know who is the leader and who is the led. It’s easy enough to blame elite politicians, desperate to win the approval of apathetic voters, and elite media managers, desperate to hang on to their shares of declining audiences. But there’s also no doubt that politicians are buffeted by an angry and fearful public which isn’t overly concerned if the punitive measures they demand tear up civil liberties or, indeed, work.
For such great wrongs are liberties which this country fought Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler to defend abandoned without a squeak.
Mr Cohen’s doleful analysis chimes with my own observations and experiences of life in contemporary Britain and because I often come to the same melancholy conclusions I am sometimes accused of ‘revelling’ in pessimism. But this is not true. It is rather that I am unwilling to ignore the evidence of my own eyes and ears.
For those same reasons, I find myself growing increasingly impatient with analyses of our current woes in terms of historical precendents (the 1930’s, the 1950’s and the 1970’s appear to be the most referred to). If Nick Cohen is right (and the evidence points towards his being right) then comparisons with previous eras are specious. We are facing a whole new situation here.
Looking for trouble? Well, you’ve come to the right place:
People who refuse to register for the government’s planned ID card scheme could face a “civil financial penalty” of up to £2,500, it has emerged.
David Blunkett said not making registering a criminal issue would avoid “clever people” becoming martyrs.
Got that, dickhead? That is what happens to people who try to be ‘clever’. We do not like clever bastards going around being all….clever. So just pack it in, right, otherwise you will be cruisin’ for a bruisin’. Are we clear, pissant? Because if not, its two-and-a-half grand and a punch in the face.
Now just piss off, mind your own bleedin’ business and do you as you are fucking well told.
After an enjoyable day out with fellow libertarian troublemaker Andrew Ian Dodge, I settled in a for a quiet night in front of the television and watched about half of an interesting, if rather depressing, documentary about the late British comedian, Frankie Howerd.
He ranks alongside the late Peter Sellers and Terry Thomas in my pantheon of eccentric Brit funnymen. Howerd was the master of the double-entendre, teasing his audiences with riske jokes at a time when censorship of the press and popular entertainment was still relatively strong by modern standards. He is probably best known for his role as a comic slave in the Roman comedy, “Up Pompei!”, accompanied by his usual refrains such as “No missus!” or “Titter ye not”. (He’s an acquired taste, I will admit).
The programme on Howerd’s life focussed on his private life, which was not particularly pleasant. Howerd was a homosexual and in the post-war years up to the 1960s before gay relationships were legalised. In consequence, Howerd conducted his personal life on the fringes of the law, and at times was vulnerable to blackmail.
With all the current concerns about state ID cards, European Union cross-border arrest warrants and the like, it is easy to become despondent about the threats to our individual freedom. But we should not forget that in that much maligned decade, the 1960s, a group of people like Frankie Howerd were liberated from the bigotry of the law. In certain areas, the cause of liberty has taken a leap forward, and we should not forget that fact.
Oooooh, shut yer face!!
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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