Longrider

The Australians having recently kicked out a conservative government are now facing the realities of a Labour one:

Australia is planning tough new rules to protect children from online pornography and violence.

The new Labor government wants internet service providers to filter content to ensure households and schools do not receive “inappropriate” material.

Of course, like control freaks all over the world, it’s all about the chiiiillldreeen!!! Like parents are incapable of looking after their interests properly. Oh, no, the state must decide what is  or is not appropriate.

Civil libertarians have condemned the plan as unnecessary, and say it will erode the freedom of the internet.

Yes, well, it’s a bit late for that. You’ve got a Labour government – welcome to the world of the new fascists.

But telecommunications minister Stephen Conroy said more needed to be done to protect children.

And Stephen Conroy knows better than parents what is best for the little critters.

The government is set to compile a list of unsuitable sites, although at this stage it is unclear what will be deemed unsuitable.

Here we go… Doesn’t the Chinese government do something similar?

Critics of the proposals have insisted they have no place in a liberal democracy, and have accused Canberra of being oppressive.

But Australia just joined Britain in ceasing to be a liberal democracy.

But Mr Conroy has been unmoved by their arguments.

The minister stressed that if people equated freedom of speech with watching child pornography then he would always disagree with them.

Um… Child pornography is already illegal. Adult pornography is not child pornography and it is pornography and violence that the government is proposing to filter. Child pornography is merely an excuse, and Mr Conroy is constructing a strawman of epic proportions.

So, this is about freedom of speech and Australia’s new government is planning to restrict it, because they have decided what people can and cannot watch in their own homes. The opt out solution is no solution. Anyone applying to their ISP to opt out will be immediately drawing attention to themselves. Highly unwelcome attention at that. They will avoid doing so in their droves and as a consequence, Australia will achieve the same type of net censorship currently enjoyed by the Chinese.

This is what happens when you vote Labour.

Via Tim, DK and Bishop Hill, my post migraine stupor is disturbed by the inane, stupid, evil drivellings of this obnoxious little fascist, who demonstrates that he is not only incredibly ignorant of history, but prepared to impose his prejudices and bigotries on others. Thanks, chaps, I needed that, really, I did.

I presume that the truly egregious Chris Hallam is a product of our failed education system. The education system that seems not to bother with history. I mean, does the noxious little shit-for-brains not realise just how Al Capone made his fortune? No, it wasn’t tax evasion. Still, never mind that prohibition does not work, never mind that prohibition merely fuels illegal trafficking, Chris Fuckwad Hallam wants smoking banned; everywhere, forever.

Ultimately, the ban enacted on July 1 should not be the end of the legislative process but the beginning. The months and years to come should witness a wealth of legislation enacted by the government leading towards one ultimate goal: the abolition of smoking, whether public or private, throughout the land, forever.

I’m sorry, but what an arrant wanker. What does this mindless little fascist think will happen in his smoke free utopia?

Bishop Hill:

You would have thought that after the chaos of the war on drugs and prohibition in the 1930s people would have learned that banning things has unintended and very unpleasant consequences. Mr Hallam obviously feels that tobacco smuggling gangs having gunfights on every street corner is a reasonable price to pay so he doesn’t have to sully his nostrils with a whiff of tobacco smoke. Some people just never learn.

I can only presume that Chris Hallam is ignorant of such history, has never been exposed to it and, like others of a fascist ilk, has little understanding of humanity. People won’t stop smoking because the nanny state tells them to, they will simply go underground, there will be smoking speakeasys – now, there’s an idea. Probably a few bob to be made there…

And, of course, this disgusting little excuse for a man proffers the justification used by charlatans the world over when seeking to attack our liberties. Think of the chiiiilldreeeeen!

And what about children? If the government is sincere about protecting those most vulnerable from second hand smoke, then why isn’t a ban on smoking in all households containing children, at least being considered?

And how, exactly does he think that this will be policed? Telescreens in every room, watching our every move? If ever there was a candidate for the lamp post, rope and spike treatment, this is your man.

Also, although DK points to it as well, the comparison between smoking at the wheel of a car and using a mobile phone is a straw man that would make the wicker man pale into insignificance. There is no correlation.

Still, nice to see that comment is free manages to maintain its usual low standards of journalism and employs historically illiterate half-wits to write for it. Standards have to be maintained, after all.

Interestingly, the comments are overwhelmingly critical of this stupid excuse for an article. Interesting, very interesting…

It’s a small enough news item; one that could easily be missed among more important ones. However, it is illuminating as it gives an insight into the mind of the politician.

A Labour MP has called for all nail bars to be regulated and for a ban on a potentially harmful chemical glue used in some outlets to fix fake nails.

Ah, yes, a problem is identified and a ban proposed. Obvious, really, isn’t it? What is so bad that it needs such draconian measures?

Methyl methacrylate (MMA) is often used because it is cheap, but has a strong odour that can trigger serious skin reactions or permanent nail damage.

It sounds like pretty unpleasant stuff. I’ve not come across it before as neither I nor Mrs Longrider indulge, but that said, surely if the risks are made clear to people, they can ask at a salon whether they use this substance or not, and if so, then they will go somewhere else. With such consumer pressure, salons will have to choose between using this stuff or an alternative, based upon the risk of losing business and, of course, reputation. A savvy consumer is a powerful consumer.

But, no, that is not the politician’s way. We are all far too stupid to make informed decisions:

Milton Keynes South West MP Phyllis Starkey said the UK should follow the US in banning its use.

This despite:

The government said there had been no recent public complaints about MMA.

So there isn’t actually a huge problem after all.

In London local authorities already have the power to close salons using MMA, but nail technicians say they are still seeing clients who have been harmed by MMA.

So, not only is there not a significant problem, but there are already existing powers in place to deal with it.

This, then, is the raison d’etre of the politician. Identify something that is entirely insignificant and ban it. If nothing else, it gets your name in the News and raises the old profile, eh? This is the same type of obsessive control freak behaviour that DK discusses here:

Prof Richard West, the Government’s leading smoking adviser, has called for a complete ban on smoking at the wheel.

He said: “It may seem draconian but the Government should legislate.”

In this case, it is an unelected, unaccountable self-promoting control freak (as opposed to an elected one) who is making the demands on government to legislate yet more of our liberty away. They are two sides of the same coin, a coin we cast when we elected a Labour government. It is the control freakery of the government that encourages the obsessive bansturbation mentality of these intellectual and emotional cripples who seek to regulate every aspect of our lives in order to further their own agenda.

The tragic case of the seven year old girl killed in a collision is drawn to my attention by Haddock. The Telegraph carries the story as well.

A seven-year-old girl has died in a head-on crash as she drove along a country road on a quad bike she had been given for Christmas.

Elizabeth Cooke and her 10-year-old brother Jack were following their father’s car in the dark along an unlit lane in the village of Blackmore, Essex, last night.

The little blonde girl was killed in a collision with a Range Rover travelling in the opposite direction at 7pm.

So, quite apart from any feelings I might have about the suitability of buying motor vehicles as presents for minors, we have an illegal vehicle being driven on a public highway without insurance. Bad enough, but at the controls is an unqualified, under-age driver. I’m sorry, but what part of this scenario is not rampant stupidity?

“It’s such a tragedy, it’s absolutely awful especially at Christmas time. I don’t know how they will cope.”

Yes, well, without wishing to sound harsh or anything, it’s because they bought entirely unsuitable presents for their children and then allowed them to drive illegally on the roads that this tragedy happened at this time of the year. There is no one to blame here but the parents. And as for the family friend who admits to being in the car, did you not say something to the childrens’ father? You went along with this dangerous stupidity and said, nor did nothing to try and prevent it? Then you are as guilty as he is and should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.

I was watching them, keeping an eye on them.

Really isn’t good enough, is it? Given that you were colluding with allowing under-aged, unqualified, illegal and uninsured drivers to use the public highway.

An Essex Police spokesperson said that a 28-year-old woman driving the Range Rover was arrested and bailed until New Year’s Eve. It is understood police are treating it as a tragic accident.

I don’t know enough about the circumstances to comment on whether this driver was in any way to blame, but she had, presumably already passed the childrens’ parents’ vehicle, so would have slowed sufficiently for that. What happened then we can only surmise until the police complete their investigations, but if she was arrested, why was the driver of the parents’ car not arrested as well?

Libby Purves bemoans the fact that no trains are running over the festive period:

There’s one place you’re unlikely to be reading this, and that is in a train seat. There aren’t any or at least, only a few oddities such as the Gatwick Express coach replacement, or the Great Central Railway’s Boxing Day gala lunch trip from Loughborough to, er, Loughborough, on a steam train. Which I’m sure will be delightful, but doesn’t actually count as transport.

There won’t have been any trains yesterday, either. Unique among the main Western European nations, Britain closes its railways down for 58 hours. Nine others run trains on Christmas Day, eight of them managing a virtually normal service. Friends of the Earth is furious, saying: “It is time the rail industry helped people get out of their cars by running trains on Boxing Day at the very least.”

Um… Yes… When, exactly would Libby and Friends of the Earth like the infrastructure controller to engage in their major engineering works? During the working week or when most people are tucked up somewhere with no particular need to travel?

It is, in short, a thundering inconvenience.

Well, yes, doubtless it is to some, but rather less than it would be trying to do major works during the week. This major shut down is when they can take out and replace bridges, for example or replace junctions, track and overhead electrification with minimum inconvenience, because contractors have continued access to the line without disturbance. There is always a balance to be drawn between running trains and repairing and replacing the infrastructure that can only be done when trains are not running. You can’t have both.

And almost more importantly, it dramatises the difference in attitude between Britain and its neighbours. The difference is that, in Britain, public authorities and utilities find it difficult to grasp that they exist to provide a service. To us.

And part of that service involves maintenance and renewals, doesn’t it?

Actually, for me, it’s been a funny old two years.

It’s at this time of the year that we pause and reflect briefly before moving into the tumult of the next year – or, more of the same…

When I was made redundant by Network Rail back in the autumn of 2003 during the night of the long knives; later dubbed “Operation Violet”; when the company decided that shedding people with skills that it needed was a spiffing plan, I had a cunning plan all of my own. I walked out of one job and straight into self-employment as a training consultant. Given that training and development was something I’d been doing on and off for a couple of decades combined with my fiercely independent nature, this was a sensible move. At least, I thought so. Sometimes, though, we see what we want to see, not what is looming before us with “This is a titanic disaster waiting to happen” writ large in big friendly neon letters all over it.

Initially, one expects things to be slow while building up new business. Things were. They did, however, start to pick up during the autumn of 2004 and early in 2005. By that time, I had earned roughly half of what I could expect in my erstwhile post at Network Rail. Never mind, my redundancy payout cushioned the blow. By mid 2005, the work tailed off again and the agency I was working with lost a major contract – with Network Rail, as it turned out. From then on in, things just steamrollered downhill and I was forced to take on temporary driving work to keep the wolves from the door.

It was in the spring of 2006 that I had the cunning plan to regain my ADI qualification and go back to being a driving instructor, while at the same time taking on any training and assessment work that might be going. I took and passed my part 1 with little to worry me. During the summer of 2006, I took and failed my part 2 twice before passing on my third attempt. Being in denial, I refused to acknowledge to myself that I had made a serious error of judgement. When the examiner picks up faults that have not been picked up during training, one really should take notice. But my trainer was a decent sort and I ignored the obvious. It wasn’t until I failed my part 3 on the first attempt and I was offered temporary work with the driving school coaching PDIs through their part 1 exams while I prepared for another attempt at my own part 3 that I really took a step back and reconsidered my position.

It was then that I realised that the whole training programme for driving instructors was inadequate and had only been running for a year. Now, though, the poor quality training received by the trainers was coming home to roost as I took call after call from people who were failing their part 3 – and, the examiner was picking up flaws not covered in training. Those trainers who were experiencing a high success rate were the ones who had taken the time, trouble and money to develop their skills beyond the basic day and a half training provided by the company – and it showed. It was after one such discussion with a failed PDI that my own observations were confirmed.

I took and failed my part 3 a second time. I knew in my heart that if I was to succeed, I would have to go to another training provider and spend a considerable sum on remedial training before making a third attempt at this exam. This was money I didn’t have. Added to this was another factor; franchising. The big schools (and some of the small ones) operate franchises. This is good for the school, but encourages them to flood the market to push up their revenue. The instructor is squeezed as a consequence. This was why; nearly twenty years ago; I went independent. This was why, shortly after that, I left the industry. I realised just under a year ago, that I didn’t want to go back, irrespective of the cost of retraining. This time last year, I had reached a low, such that I could not see an obvious way out.

During 2007, I reluctantly went back onto the job hunting circuit. Several interviews followed, but no job offers. I even decided to try my luck with Network Rail. This was my final shot – I was becoming increasingly weary of the process and my confidence was already low. By late July, I had one more interview lined up and my temporary contract was coming to an end. The financial black hole was increasing in size as Mrs Longrider and I tried to cope on her income and my greatly reduced one. Common sense would have had us selling our French property and clearing up our debts. However, we would never have a second chance to regain what had taken years of saving to achieve and what was, after all, our preferred home. If we found ourselves with our backs against the wall, we would sell the UK property, clear our debts and take our chances in France. It would be a huge risk, but better that than lose it. At least, that’s how our increasingly desperate reasoning went.

In early August, I was advised that I had not been successful in my job application. The driving school had nearly completed its plans to take all driving instructor training out to the instructors in the field, so my services would no longer be needed when the contract expired at the end of August. We put our house on the market and had an offer of the full asking price within 24 hours. Something was wrong. It was all too quick. The buyer wanted us out by November and we wanted time to prepare. I managed to get another short term contract – similar to the previous one and equally badly paid, but it slowed the rate of financial descent. We withdrew from the sale, realising that the agent had undervalued the property by about £10,000, and decided to pause before leaping. Meanwhile, I emailed my old contacts, just in case something turned up.

My first day in the call centre on that temporary assignment in early September was my low point. I recall thinking just how desperately I wanted to be anywhere but here, doing anything but this. How did I end up in a sodding call centre? I went through my contacts again and there was one I hadn’t contacted. His company had been taken over during the previous year and I wasn’t sure if they used associates still, or, for that matter what the current work situation was like. I sent an email and he emailed me back almost immediately. He had auditing work for me on an associate basis – and it would bring me back into the rail industry. The pay for an associate was more than I took as a training consultant. Indeed, I can earn a living with 2 – 3 days a week, although since October I’ve been working flat out to bring that debt down. Given that I can earn a decent living on twenty weeks a year and there is plenty of work, I can go back to the plan Mrs Longrider and I made optimistically when we first bought the French property back in 2003; sell the UK property, move to France and clear both mortgages. With no mortgage, we can live comfortably on money I can bring in by commuting back the Blighty for a couple of weeks work every so often. My client is happy with this arrangement; I’ll be easing myself gently into semi-retirement while still young enough to enjoy it and Mrs Longrider will potter about in the garden, which is what she wants to do. With 1000m² of land to play with, we plan to grow some of our own veg and keep a few chickens. We may even open a chambre d’hôte to bring in a few extra Euros.

Yes, it’s been a funny old couple of years, fortunes can change so suddenly; both for good and bad. It’s nice, for once, for it to have turned out well this time.

May I take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Christmas and I hope you have a prosperous New Year.

So there is another story about the incompetents of the state losing confidential data.

Nine NHS trusts in England have admitted losing patient records in a fresh case of wholesale data loss by government services, it has emerged.

Hundreds of thousands of adults and children are thought to be affected by the breaches, which emerged as part of a government-wide data security review.

It would beggar belief, but I have become so blase, that I expect these serial incompetents to be losing our information hand over fist. It’s what they do best; fuck up everything they touch. These are the control freaks who not only want more data to lose, they will prosecute private companies that behaved in such a cavalier fashion.

The Department of Health says patients have been told and there is no evidence data has fallen into the wrong hands.

Oh, well, that’s alright, then.

The DoH said the security breaches were being dealt with locally and it did not have details of how many patients were affected.

The bastards can’t even fuck up competently. So, Identity Cards and a massive National Identity Register is a jolly fine idea, then?

The state is not your friend.

In an attempt to drive home the message that driving while using a mobile phone is dangerous the guidelines are to be changed:

People who use mobile phones, sat-navs or MP3 players while driving could face up to two years in prison, under new guidelines being published today by prosecutors.

Here we go… Causing death by dangerous driving has been around for some while and an incident investigation has always posed the possibility of using ancillary equipment as a contributing factor, so really, there is nothing new here. If a driver causes death by dangerous driving, then death by dangerous driving, it is.

Using a mobile phone, sat-nav or an MP3 player while at the wheel will be treated as dangerous driving instead of careless driving, with the chance of up to two years in prison.

Using a mobile phone; yes, I accept that. It is why I never use a phone while driving, not even a hands-free. If people want to talk to me, they will have to wait.

We still see terrible crashes where people have been texting, driving into the back of stationary queues because they haven’t seen them.

Well, yes, people who do this deserve all they get. If they do this, then they are driving dangerously and there is a specific offence to cover it.

I also accept that using an MP3 player could be a distraction if the driver is using headphones and the outside traffic noise is significantly diminished as a consequence. However, simply listening to music is not a major distraction. If it was, we would be careering off the roads every time we switched on the radio or CD player. If the driver is adjusting the equipment on the move and is, therefore, not watching the road, well, that’s another matter.

Now… using a sat-nav… These things are designed to be used on the move. I use one on a daily basis on the bike. I would have some difficulty finding some of the more obscure locations I have to attend without it. Ever tried map reading on a bike? Which is more distracting; looking down at a set of directions taped to the tank or listening to voice prompts in the headset? When navigating in a car, which is more distracting; glancing at a screen next to the speedometer or leaning across to the open map on the passenger seat? Pulling over in busy traffic is not always an option, particularly when trying to work out which lane you should be in on a multi-lane junction. The sat-nav is much like any other instrument provided for the driver; tachometer, speedometer, fuel gauge and so on. All are intended to be glanced at while on the move. Or is glancing at the speedometer a distraction and can we ignore these in an attempt to avoid prosecution for dangerous driving?

Update: I see that the Telegraph carries the same story and specifically mentions “adjusting” the sat-nav. That puts a slightly different spin on the story. That said, mine has a safety cut out. That is; you can’t make adjustments while on the move. Mine’s a Garmin. Do others have the same feature?