Longrider

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at Redbaron Blog. Now while the baron and I may disagree over detail, broadly we are in consensus on the bigger picture. In this case, regarding the election in the UK; the matter of the best possible outcome.

I have long been disillusioned with the first past the post system used in the UK. The electoral college in the USA is similar in concept. The system works thus:

Each constituency fields a selection of candidates for parliament. The three major parties; Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat will have a showing in each constituency. Minority parties such as UK Independence Party, Respect, Veritas and The Natural Law party will field candidates in those seats where they feel that they will get a significant showing. In the devolved Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, the local national parties also field their own candidates. Ballots cast are for the local candidate. The party that wins overall is the one that wins enough seats to form a government. While this sounds logical - bear in mind that if you live in a "safe" seat; one where the majority for a particular candidate is all but assured, a vote for the opposition parties is meaningless. The outcome can well mean that a party forms a majority in parliament but has less votes overall. That’s where the system falls down. For example, the Liberal Democrats regularly get around 20% of the popular vote yet do not have a similar level of influence in the house - 19% at the last election gave them 52 seats. Labour polled 43% and gained a huge majority with 413 seats. Bear in mind also, that this was the lowest turnout since 1918. Of the 44 million registered voters, the Labour government with its massive majority gained only 25% support of those registered to vote - and that is only 44 million from a population of nearly 60 million. Representative? I don’t think so.

So what if we get a hung parliament? Unlikely going by the current trend in the polls, but possible. Traditionally this has been regarded as a bad thing as it inhibits strong government. However during the last eight years of strong government we have seen our liberties eroded in an unprecedented manner for peacetime. Therefore, strong government is not necessarily a good thing. A hung parliament will mean that the largest party will have to negotiate with the opposition to have any chance of pursuing its mandate. Perhaps the most significant factor will mean that the Liberal Democrats will have sufficient influence to force through electoral change.

Don’t however presume that this will always be a good thing - electoral change has the downside that should the politicians get it wrong (What? Not possible, surely?) we could end up with a system that gives too much influence to minority parties - and remember that the odious Nick Griffin’s British National Party is one such minority player on the field of British politics…

So why the damned spot? Well, given that I have no option but to operate within the confines of the existing system, I will be voting tactically. My MP voted in favour of ID cards at the third reading of the bill. This means that he supports Charles Clarke’s campaign against the freedoms of the British people. Therefore, I no longer want him to serve as my MP - he betrayed my trust. The Liberal Democrat candidate came a poor third at the last two elections. The most likely candidate to unseat the sitting MP is the Conservative, Owen Inskip. If I want to help reduce the Labour majority and in the process send a strong message to my current MP, then a vote for the Tories it will have to be. Idealogically, it would be hard to find a candidate that is further from my own position. I have never voted for them for this reason. I believed that I never would. I will find it difficult to do so. But I must. The damned spot will just have to be lived with.
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Yesterday when discussing the woes that befell Railtrack, I mentioned the phrase “Public Outrage Risk”. I felt a little expansion was in order.

Public Outrage Risk is something that happens to corporations when they become embroiled in incidents that capture the public imagination to their detriment. For example, Shell suffered this when it wanted to dispose of an oil rig at sea. Exxon suffered it following the Valdez oil spill. Sometimes of course, the outrage is quite proper. However, the problem is that reality and facts can have little to do with it. Particularly when the tabloid press get hold of a story.

The newspapers love public outrage - it sells newspapers. Consequently they fuel it, fanning the flames, poking the wound, increasing the level of outrage, while screaming righteous indignation from their red topped headlines. In the December following the Ladbroke Grove tragedy, the Daily Mirror offered monetary incentives to anyone who could tell them the whereabouts of Christmas parties that had Railtrack personnel in attendance. Consequently Railtrack made sure that any events planned were cancelled.

Public outrage is corrosive, eating away at the confidence - both within and without - of an organisation. Share prices plummet and can if unchecked, lead to bankruptcy. Of course, this might be deserved. But, equally, it might not - the press don’t much care either way. A company failure is just another story to them. Where the company cannot go bankrupt - as was the case with Railtrack - then something else happens. It withers, yet clings on. It becomes a national joke that is fashionable to knock. Yet, again, the reality is harsh and uncompromising. Following the incident at Ladbroke Grove, colleagues of mine were verbally and physically abused while travelling to the incident to help with the rescue and recovery. That they had nothing to do with the failures leading to the incident was irrelevant to those who read and believed the tabloid press.

The longer term implications are that people will not want to work for the organisation. Railtrack needed signallers, engineers, designers and project managers. It needed talented people to make it work. It certainly needed these people if it was to ever recover. Yet public outrage hampers recruitment - who would want to work for such an organisation? Certainly many of us who already did, no longer wanted to.

One of the shining moments of my redundancy from Railtrack’s successor; Network Rail was the realisation that I would no longer feel ashamed to admit who I worked for. A sad, damning indictment.

Chief Superintendent Les Owen is facing disciplinary charges following the conviction of his driver for speeding en-route to a meeting (I trust it was an important one) - 82mph in a 40mph zone. Well, this being a senior police officer, you’d think that this was quite right, too - after all, the law is supposed to apply to them, as well as we mere proles.

The real beauty of this story is that Chief Superintendent Owen is, and I quote:

..a leading figure in the London Safety Camera Partnership, which coordinates the placing of speeding cameras on London streets.

Eighteen months ago he said: “We aim to educate drivers first and foremost about the hazards and the repercussions of speeding.”

On another occasion he said: “By making drivers aware of the consequences that speeding cars can have on themselves, their passengers and other motorists and pedestrians, we hope to change behaviour on the roads, making them safer for everyone.”

There’s plenty I could say about the hypocrisy here, but it is probably best left unsaid. The trouble is, Les Owen isn’t the only one. Last year Assistant Chief Constable Steve Thomas managed to hold onto his job following a speeding conviction after being caught travelling at 104mph on the M6 toll road.

Now I wouldn’t mind - I agree with Mr Thomas’ point that

“On the day in question, the driving and road conditions were good, and I was part of a group of around 15 cars all doing around the same speed.

“I considered that my manner of driving was safe.”

But we all say that, don’t we? And where does it get us? It’s that these people have the gall to lecture us about road safety if they catch us doing it that irks. If I was a traffic cop, I’d feel pretty let down by these two clowns. After all, it is the front line troops who have to dish out the lectures and tickets to errant motorists.

I’d like to think that both men were well and truly hoist with their own pétards, but while you and I would lose our livelihoods, these guys just carry on with little more than embarrassment and a slap on the wrist.

It’s a cliché, I know - and I try to avoid clichés - but this really is one rule for them and one rule for the rest of us.

Patric Crozier has been commenting on Railtrack - or more specifically, the circumstances surrounding its demise. My view is perhaps coloured by being there at the time of Raitrack’s birth and final snuffing out at the hands of Steven Byers.

I’ll be blunt; the privatization of the railways was appallingly botched and driven by political dogma rather than what was in the best interests of the industry, the travelling public and the freight haulage operators.

I would not argue with the assertion that British Rail was deeply flawed. As a recently self-employed person entering the industry, I was horrified at some of the working practices. Driven by heavy unionization and collective bargaining, many of these practices confounded local managers’ ability to operate efficiently. For example, the notorious “walking time” expense. A signaller would be paid to work from the booking on location where he (or she) normally worked. In the event of working away from that location, “walking time” was paid depending on the distance. I occasionally worked at Bridgwater, some forty miles or so from my home location at Bristol. For this, I would be paid four hours walking time each way. That would be eight hours pay before I started. The actual travelling time was forty-five minutes along the M5. Then I would be paid my normal eight hours. If it was a Sunday, then premium rates applied. In the early nineties the writing was on the wall for this type of practice, no matter what happened to the railways. There were occasions when I wondered just who was managing the local area - the managers or the RMT. Sometimes it was difficult to tell them apart.

Following the privatization fiasco of 1993/4, Railtrack was born. Supposedly part of a private industry it was at that time still government owned. It didn’t pass into the private sector until 1996. For me, the immediate difference to what went before was the shattered relationships. Where we had previously made decisions with our opposite numbers working on the station or driving trains, we now had to seek permission - and track authority - before rescuing failed trains, making regulating decisions or changing platforms. No longer did the end user become the prime focus, but the “customer” and the customer was the train operator, not the person buying the ticket. This led to some strange decisions on such matters as regulating trains, switching platforms, providing block protection for trackworkers and arranging for light locomotives to rescue failed trains - common sense was out, the Railtrack Regulating Policy was in.

The other difficulty for those of us who had to work closely with the Train and Freight operators and the Track maintenance teams was the organisations overweening arrogance - it’s our train set and you play by our rules. Unfortunately as the inquiries following such incidents as Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Southall demonstrated, Railtrack couldn’t play by the rules. Safety management systems were undermined by an experiment with enabling management, whereby the centre devolved management control to the seven zones, resulting in seven independent fiefdoms. This was particularly confusing for those agencies who operated across the zone boundaries, such as Virgin, EW&S and the emergency services.

By the time Steven Byers decided to call it a day, the matter of who owned Railtrack was neither here nor there - public outrage risk had long since corroded the organisation’s ability to operate effectively. Add this to the inability of senior managers to impose obedience on middle management and the demise was, perhaps, inevitable. I wasn’t too upset by Mr Byers’ decision to pull the rug - even if it was underhand and left shareholders in the lurch. A little homework on their part would have had them offload the shares long before, so I cannot feel too much sympathy.

What followed was, I hoped, to be better. Certainly the board of Network Rail came down heavy on corporate disobedience - at least they said they were. The reality though was much the same as before. Directives from the board failed to reach those who were charged with putting them into practice. Cullen recommendations went unfulfilled - partly because there were too many to manage effectively and a significant proportion were pointless anyway - but also because those charged with carrying them out lacked the support in the organisation to do so. Then, of course, there were the redundancies.

I was one of those made redundant in November 2003. I could see it coming and had my exit strategy lined up. Indeed, many of those ex-colleagues in the same situation walked into another form of employment soon after the 17th November 2003. Since then, I’ve watched developments. Given that Network Rail, like Railtrack is not a private company, nor is it a truly nationalised one, it continues much as Railtrack did. The arrogance unfortunately, is still there.

Railtrack is dead. Long live Network Rail.
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I see that my blog entry on the M4 speed cameras elicited a flurry of comments. It is, after all, an emotive subject. Given some of the comments and the issues they raise, I thought further discussion is in order.

As an advanced rider and driver (as well as having been a qualified driving instructor) I follow a fairly simple basic premise when on the road. I maintain maximum distance between my vehicle and hazards. Those hazards range from other road users to static road furniture. When I’m out on the bike on an empty road you will see me hugging the white line in the centre of the road. From here I am equidistant from the roadsides (and their associated hazards) and I have maximum visibility of the road ahead. I adjust my position on the road when approaching bends, or oncoming traffic. On the motorway I will move into the middle lane to avoid lorry ruts in the nearside lane. They might not be particularly noticeable in a car, but they affect directional stability on a bike; believe me.

The other thing I can do to maximise distance between myself and hazards is adjust my speed. Dropping back to increase the space between myself and the vehicle in front, for example. However, I can also increase speed to get clear of a bunch of traffic or to overtake an erratic driver.

Which brings me inevitably back to speed and its effective use. I tend to disagree with he current hysteria about speed because it places the wrong emphasis on the speed component of driving. The argument goes that an impact at higher speed will make survival less likely. While this is fine, the whole point of assessing hazards is to avoid the collision in the first place and that is where the effort should be concentrated. Maintaining roadspace does that. Let’s be clear here; the posted speed limit laid down by law and the safe speed for a given stretch of road at a given time are not necessarily the same thing. On many open roads, a safe speed is well in excess of the posted limit.

What do I mean by safe speed anyway? It is the speed at which the driver can stop or take avoiding action within the road space that is seen to be clear. Therefore, on a 70mph motorway in dense fog, the safe speed may be 20mph. Obvious, really. Which begs the question why so many drivers tailgate at 70mph in such conditions…

There is an exception to this and it is the one where I agree with the safe speed fascists: Urban areas. I’ve come across the question on a number of occasions; why do we still have a mandatory 30mph limit when vehicles’ performance has improved so much? The answer is that people haven’t. Given the high density of hazards in the urban environment; road signs, traffic lights, poster hoardings, shops, schools, pedestrians, other vehicles etc., the levels of concentration necessary and the need to retain sufficient roadspace mean that the mandatory 30mph is about right. Indeed, in some cases it could be lower. The other thing to bear in mind is that here, the issue about impact makes sense. Survival in a collision becomes more likely at these lower speeds - particularly for pedestrians involved. Also, at these lower speeds, the driver has more time to react and avoid the collision in the first instance.

Because I agree with the philosophy of maintaining lower speeds in the urban environment, I practice what I preach and rigorously stick to the posted speed limits. I’m not in any hurry anyway. However, where I fall out with the road planners (now there’s an oxymoron) is the insistence of yet more road furniture in the name of safety. Far better to adopt more effective systems such as shared space where drivers and pedestrians are encouraged to look out for each other and take some responsibility for their own actions. It is a system that has so far proved to have worked. The other system that works well is the Spanish one that has speed operated traffic lights. Go too fast and the lights change against you. The result is that drivers regulate their speed on approach and keep moving.

The cynic in me feels that these devices will never be adopted in this country in significant quantity because, unlike speed cameras, they generate no income. I wait to be proved wrong.

In the UK speed cameras (or euphemistically, using Orwellian Newspeak, “safety cameras”) are springing up all over the place. They are being used to target motorists who break the speed limits in the name of “safety”. The latest stunt is to wait over the bridges on the M4 in vans with mobile cameras because

240 people died or were seriously hurt on the M4 in Wiltshire last year

Okay, so 240 people died. Why did they die? Was it because people drive at about 80 - 85 miles per hour or is it because they drive too close to the preceding vehicle, don’t use the lanes properly, don’t concentrate on their driving, don’t read the road ahead and don’t allow for road and traffic conditions? All of which may involve adjusting speed as a consequence - but might not.

Contrary to the slogans, speed does not kill. This little fact was proved conclusively with the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and people were not killed by all the air being sucked out of the carriages at speed.

What kills is bad driving. Unfortunately the issues involved here are far too complex for government and its law enforcement agencies. Nice little (misleading) slogans such as “speed kills” are easier to apply. The problem is that manipulating peoples’ behaviour with the threat of punishment only really works if the majority accept that the behaviour in question is really unacceptable. With speeding on our motorways, this just isn’t the case. Firstly, other countries have higher limits on smaller motorways and it works perfectly well. Partly because drivers in European countries use the lanes properly and tend to keep a decent distance between themselves and the vehicle in front. And secondly, travelling at 70mph will seem like going backwards as everyone whistles by at speeds well in excess of the posted limit.

Yesterday, knowing that I had to travel to Swindon on the M4 and that these cameras were going to be about, I made a decision to stick to the 70mph limit. It wasn’t long before I came across a bunch of lorries. I checked my mirrors, signalled and moved into the middle lane ready for overtaking the stream of trucks. So far, so good. Then those cars in front who had not been reading the situation as far ahead decided to move into my road space. There was traffic closing in on me from behind and cars converging from the left. My one escape route was to the right. So I moved into the right hand lane and accelerated hard, taking my speed briefly up to 85mph before dropping back to 70mph once clear. My good intentions lasted 15 miles.

That’s the problem with arbitrary limits - they make no allowance for the circumstances. On this occasion, maximum safety was achieved by increasing speed. But the politically correct dunderheads responsible for the current atmosphere of hysteria can’t understand that simple concept. Police patrols in cars out on the motorway may cost more than cameras, but they are capable of reading the situation and making reasonable judgements.

Religion seems to be doing the rounds at the moment. Jonathan’s talking about it, so is Libertine. and damn me if Jane isn’t at it too.

Oh, well, my turn I guess.

At the ripe old age of 7, I announced to anyone who would listen that I didn’t believe in God. I came to this conclusion fairly logically. I had already figured out that Santa Claus was a myth and so too, was the tooth fairy. Happy ever after was strictly reserved for Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Magic slippers and frogs who turned into princes were just stories. Magic isn’t real.

Yet I was being expected to accept that a woman can be impregnated by an angel and give birth to a child. That child would perform miracles; bringing people back from the dead, turning water into wine, and ultimately rising himself from the dead before physically ascending into the heavens.

Er, what was that about glass slippers and pumpkin coaches? To my 7 year old mind, why should one set of fairy tales be true and the others not?

I tried. I really did. My peers went to Sunday School and church. So too, did I. I even went to confirmation classes and eventually was confirmed. Even while serving at services, I knew deep in my heart that I didn’t believe.

It came to a head when I was 15 and my parents moved to North Wales. The change in environment meant that I no longer had peer pressure to contend with. My parents were never religious, so the pressure never came from them. I attended one service in a Welsh chapel (in Welsh) and that was it; I finally accepted my lack of belief for what it was. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in gods - any gods. Yahweh is no different to Apollo, Odin or Ra. They are all invented by people who needed something to explain the unexplainable. The writings make interesting literature - just as does Arthurian legend. But I don’t believe that, either.

So what does this confession tell us? For me it means that I am comfortable with who I am and what I believe. I do not share many atheists’ nihilistic belief that we are nothing more than neutrons and electrons and that consciousness is merely a series of electrical impulses. I really do believe we are more than the sum of our parts. But what is that? Ah, now there’s the rub.

As the forum has built up to nearly 20 members and is generating lively discussion, I took the plunge. I have purchased a hosting package from Invision which includes the latest version of the forum software and a gallery feature. As some of the members (including myself) are interested in photography, we thought this might be a good idea. Only time will tell, of course.

On the plus side, things are now looking good. The new software has a lot more control over the creativity than its predecessor. This has the mixed blessing that it involves a whole new learning curve and I’ve spent the best part of two days getting used to it. I also had to reload images that were missing after the transfer. The skin I had developed for the old board looked horrendous with the new one so I’ve downloaded some from the web, adapted them and given my users the option of four skins to choose from.

I’d like to see it grow a little more yet. New registrations have slowed down in the past week or so, but those who have registered recently are participating. Which does beg the question - one that I’ve never been able to answer - why do people register on a forum and then never contribute?

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