Longrider

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The head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Bulle has warned that civil liberties may need to be eroded to "protect" us from terrorist attacks.

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! When will these obsessive control freaks ever let up? How many times must we repeat Ben Franklin’s mantra; trading liberty for security costs both? How many bloody times do we have to put up with these people trying to control and subvert us, sniping away at freedoms my grandparents’ generation fought and died to preserve?

We do not need to make such a trade. Even during the darkest days of the IRA bombings, even when they targeted the British government, we did not give up our liberties; because it was not necessary; it never is. When we trade our freedoms and hand them placidly to the security services in exchange for "protection", we move towards totalitarianism, a state of serfs and masters. The terrorist wins.

Dame Manningham Butler tells us that the world has changed. Well, bless me, I’d never have guessed that. It’s been changing for millennia and will continue to do so - that is no bloody excuse for allowing her seedy little agency to steal our liberties. Frankly, we are in more need of protection from our government and its agencies than we are from terrorist cells.

I watched Watchdog last night and I noticed that the DVLA rumpus is still grumbling on. I also see that the link on the Watchdog site isn’t working, which is a shame. It is now

The gist of this story is that people who needed to update their license due to change of address for example, have had it returned with crucial categories missing. This seems to have hit motorcyclists particularly badly. One gentleman interviewed lost his HGV licence, which meant that he had to retake his test - at a huge cost - and could not work in the meantime.

When challenged, the DVLA response is that they are “working with customers” to resolve the issue. Okay, so what do people have to do to reinstate their categories? According to the spokesman from the DVLA, a previous license will do.

When you apply for a replacement license, you have to send the old one to the DVLA - they update their database and send out a new one. The old one is destroyed - after two months, I believe. So, if two months have passed, it is too late. The DVLA have the requisite documents, have destroyed them and expect the “customer” to prove entitlement. If that isn’t bad enough, the lorry driver was able to produce a copy that a previous employer had maintained on their records. The DVLA response? It was a forgery - take your test again. So there you have it, if you do manage to demonstrate that you have a backup, it will be ignored anyway and back into the vicious circle you go again. The arrogance is so staggering that I find it difficult to find words that adequately express my utter contempt for this odious, self-important, lamentable, spiteful and infernal bureaucracy.

Now, just think for a minute. If the government gets its ID card scheme with the pernicious National Identity Register, who will be maintaining it? The same people who currently maintain government agency databases - such as the DVLA and the Passport Agency. Why would their “customer” service be any different? Up to a third of the DVLA vehicle records contain errors. Transfer this to a database with 60 million people and it doesn’t take much imagination to realise what problems will occur. If your driving license records are wrong, you cannot drive a category of vehicle that you could before. This will vary from mild inconvenience and cost to loss of employment and major expense. Now, if your NIR record is in error, you may well find that you cannot get employment, claim benefit, see your GP or you get arrested because you now have a criminal record - oh, yes, did I mention that the criminal record database is riddled with errors, too?

And who is responsible for proving that the database is wrong? The “customer” of course. And when the “customer” tries to do so, they will come up against the same Kafkaesque wall of intractability that the poor trucker and bike riders have with the DVLA. Whatever your views on ID cards, the incompetence combined with conceited intransigence of those who will run the system should worry anyone who stops to give it a second’s thought.

One final word on driving licenses. If I have to renew mine - and I will resist for as long as I can - I will not only copy the license, but get my solicitor to confirm that it is a true copy. Retaking my test is not an option - that means the bastards win.

Dr Emily Finch, of the University of East Anglia has been doing a little research into criminal behaviour in the light of the recent move towards Chip & PIN cards. The banks would have us believe that they are a panacea for fraud prevention. Unfortunately as Dr Finch points out, the security measures are only as good as the lowest common denominator and that is the person at the point of sale:

“You go in, you put the card in, you type any number because you don’t know what it is. It won’t go through. The fraudster - because fraudsters are so good with people - says, ‘Oh, it’s no good, I haven’t got the hang of this yet. I could have sworn that was my number… I’ve probably got it confused with my other card.’

“They chat for a bit. The sales assistant, who is either disinterested or sympathetic, falls back on the old system, and swipes the card through.

“Because a relationship of empathy has already been established, and because they have already become accustomed to averting their gaze when people put pin numbers in, they don’t check the signature at all.

“So fraud is actually easier. There is very little vigilance at the point of sale any more. Fraudsters know this and they are taking advantage of it.”

This is no surprise to me. I am well aware that to be effective, a crook has to develop an understanding of human nature - therefore in our complacency we are our own worst enemies

Which is why I am so derisive when the Home Office tells us that Identity Cards will combat fraud - that assertion is of itself a fraud. It assumes that the people checking will be vigilant at all times, yet, going back to Dr Finch’s findings:

“As part of our research - my colleague is male - we have been using each other’s cards to buy things. And not once in the whole period that we did this, did anybody say to me, ‘This is a man’s card, this isn’t your card.’”

Again, entirely unsurprising. If people are looking at the things day in and day out, they will become blasé - it is human nature, after all. According to Dr Finch’s comments reported on the BBC website,

Dr Finch’s research leads her to doubt that any scheme for national ID cards will work, even if it is backed up by biometric data such as eye scans - because the criminals will simply adapt their strategies to try to get around the hurdle.

“The more people rely on the production of a particular piece of identification to verify identity, the less vigilance people will exercise themselves - that’s the problem. If there are ID cards we will trust them to be unassailable.”

Now, I can see this - it is not news to me. Yet the Home Office apparently cannot. I doubt this myself. Rather, I suspect that they are not concerned; as the touted “benefits” are not the ones that the Home Office is seeking. It is more interested in surveillance and social control. Criminal activity - including identity theft - will not affect this, nor will it dampen the enthusiasm of the bureaucratic control freaks who want it.

I use eBay with caution. Generally, I never buy used goods and certainly not privately. I like the security that comes with buying directly from a retailer. That way, I get the backup of warranties and the retailers’ statutory responsibilities. However, when selling, eBay provides an outlet for recouping some money back from old items towards the new ones. Selling the TR1 is my first excursion into selling a vehicle by this method. I must admit, I would never bid for a used motorcycle on the basis of a seller’s description and a few photographs, but, I guess, each to their own.

The TR1 has generated a deal of interest and questions. Some are straightforward, legitimate requests for more detail. Others, are ones I would rather not receive. One questioner wanted to know more about the possibility of turning it into a trike. This makes my blood run cold. Partly because I don’t much like trikes and choppers anyway - I see them as a waste of a perfectly good motorcycle, bordering on wanton vandalism. But, most significantly, this machine is an example of a bike that is becoming increasingly rare, a bike that is in mostly original condition. To take a hacksaw to a wreck is one thing. To take one to a bike that is complete and useable, a rare example of its model is downright criminal.

Okay, so when I take someone’s money, it ceases to be any of my business. However, I really don’t want potential buyers telling me they plan to destroy my pride and joy. What is it with buyers that makes them so crass?
—–

So that’s it. Summer is gone, deceased, dead, and is no more. The first day of September is a bittersweet turning point for me; my own personal equinox. It is the day the summer dies and I mourn its passing. The day when in years past, the long, lazy weeks of indolent leisure would be replaced abruptly with a return to the stuffy environment of the school classroom; where children with new uniforms and freshly scrubbed faces mingled in the tired atmosphere of buildings that had been closed for the summer and were now prison cells smelling of wood polish and chalk, confining us while the warm afternoons drifted by with their tantalising reminder of the outside world of the summer holidays.

Unfortunately as far as school was concerned, “outside” meant physical education lessons and with them came (unimaginatively) football; a game I learned to loathe; repugnance I still experience today. Kicking a ball around for ninety minutes left me bored witless, so I usually opted out; wandering off to the side of the pitch where I daydreamed of more intellectually challenging pursuits while ignoring everyone else, much to their annoyance. Well, if you force someone to play a game in which they have no interest, what do you expect? Whatever it was that they did expect, what they got was rebellion and a stubborn refusal to cooperate – skills I have honed to perfection in adult life.

Occasionally those of us who disliked football and made ourselves sufficiently irritating to the majority who did, were allowed to disappear on a cross country run. This became a carefully timed amble as we were sufficiently far from any supervision for anyone to realise just where we were going or what were weren’t doing (running). I cannot help wondering whether the games teachers were complicit in this deceit as it made their lives easier. They cannot, surely, have missed the possibility that we were not running the full course and were simply biding our time until the end of the lesson? Certainly they never bothered to check, confining themselves to refereeing the inconsequential game going on back at the school playing field. I suspect that we were an irritant better out of the way and forgotten. It was an arrangement that, unspoken as it was, suited both parties. Apart from our being stripped down to skimpy shirts and shorts in the middle of winter, those cross country runs were almost like the exploratory rambles in the woods during the more amenable summer months and anything; anything at all; was preferable to the mind-numbing tedium and bombast of football.

This time of the year when the hedgerows start to turn russet under a blanket of heavy dew and the horse chestnuts ripen among gently reddening leaves is redolent with those memories. I no longer have to return to school, no longer have to dread the High Street posters, full of smiling children modelling the new school uniforms with apparent pleasurable anticipation of the impending new term; and no longer do I have to endure football and the testosterone soaked machismo that accompanies it.

Yet still those feelings haunt me. Still, I dread September; the harbinger. Chill misty mornings and lazy warm afternoons are a hint of the dark winter to come when trees reach their naked branches against sullen, leaden clouds full of snow, rain and sleet, and night falls at four in the afternoon; when, riding home, I see the streetlamps cast pools of neon on the wet pavements and caught in their pale glow, raindrops hang orange against the indigo sky. The early mornings stutter to the sound of chattering starter motors and running engines while motorists defrost their windscreens and mutter under breath that hangs misty in the glacial air. In the ferocity of mid winter, summer will be a warm memory and spring, a promise somewhere on the distant horizon.

I hate September for what it forebodes and for the memories it dredges unbidden from my past. Conversely and perhaps paradoxically, I love September for its mellow colours, afternoon warmth and the memories it dredges unbidden from my past. It’s like the song says; September mornings still can make me feel that way.