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 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. → Continue reading: State security theatre
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.
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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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