Longrider

Thus goes the headline in today’s Groan.

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

Am I surprised by this revelation? Am I buggery. CCTV was always going to be a placebo, a comfort blanket for the hard of thinking and terminally gullible. It makes a certain portion of the population feel safe; it doesn’t actually make them safe, though.

The first and most obvious reason being that the clued up criminals will simply move their base of operations to an area devoid of CCTV. This leaves the more empty headed variety to carry out their nefarious activities under the watchful eye of the CCTV operators. But, even then, it still isn’t working… Why might that be, then? What about all this fantastic face recognition technology? And what about all those cop shows where someone says “enhance that, please” and a pin-sharp image of the suspect is displayed neatly on-screen?

Ah, ain’t fiction wonderful. They can do all sorts of things in fictional TV land – travel through time and space, speak English to aliens and be immediately understood, solve crimes with DNA alone and, importantly, enhance an image that is so dreadfully low resolution that all you should get is a few unrecognisable pixels – but, hey presto! we get a razor sharp picture of the perp with not a pixel out of place. The reality is somewhat more mundane. The reality is that a low resolution image cannot be enhanced because it doesn’t have enough information in the image to enhance. And, frankly, facial recognition is a pile of poo.

So, there you have it, the entirely predictable being announced. The surveillance state has wasted millions on piss-poor technology that achieves bugger all. The low tech solution would be to spend that money on police officers patrolling the streets, but that, presumably, isn’t sexy enough.

Reading on through the article, though, they want to utilise the technology anyway – quelle surprise.

The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. They include:

· A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.

· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.

· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined.

They also complain that the use of images in court cases has a poor record. Well, given the poor quality of the images, I suspect that a decent defence counsel would drive the proverbial coach and four though it. And, what is it with these people who think that national databases are going to do what good old fashioned policing won’t? Sure, if you have a decent image of your suspect, it will help – but go back to the original point; they are not decent images. They are, frankly, barely recognisable. You have only to see what they put out on news items and Crime Stoppers to get a feel for the poor quality of the pictures CCTV produces. They are little better than photofits.

Why do I get the feeling that the police are looking to make their lives easier rather than making a proper effort to secure safe convictions?

Seumas Milne in comment is free:

But it’s also clear that the kind of progressive coalition and policies that Livingstone favoured - on transport, housing, privatisation and redistribution - are a good deal more popular with voters than the rudderless triangulation currently on offer from Gordon Brown.

Having been trounced because they steal from those who earn and give it to those who don’t, or piss it up the wall on special interest minorities and quangos, because they snoop and pry into our private lives, bully and fine us for petty misdemeanours – because, frankly, they are poisonous bastards, the way back is…

…more of the fucking same?!?

Fuck me, but they are thick.

I notice, too, that Milne is trying the same misanthropic and patronising tack displayed so admirably by Neil Harding and blaming the press. No, you thick fuck, people are not so stupid as to vote on the basis of a headline – they voted the way they did because the Labour party has treated them like shit.

Jesus, but the so called progressive left in this country is a monster to behold. They didn’t get it wrong – the voters, blinded by the evil press barons got it wrong. Listen, chaps; you got it wrong. The voters rejected your candidates. Some genuine introspection – should you be sufficiently intellectually honest  – will provide you with an answer. Don’t blame the press, don’t blame the electorate, don’t blame “posh” people. Blame yourselves, for there is no one else.

A little over a decade ago, following the landslide Labour victory, I knew that this day would come. It was inevitable that sooner or later, the party in power would pall with the electorate – they always do. Of course, at that time, I was unaware just how deeply authoritarian that party would prove to be. So, I did wonder how I would feel, come this day. Would I, I wondered, feel much like Neil Harding does this morning?

Ah, no. Partly because I realise that this is a good day for democracy. We, the electorate, (or at least those of you who voted yesterday), reminded those in power that that power is borrowed, not a grant of right. And, I realise that one party in power for too long becomes corrupted and complacent, indolent with power.

So, even apart from my subsequent divorce from Labour, I would still have been pragmatic about the results of this week’s elections. I don’t hold a torch for the Tories, but their victories are right and proper. A sea change is occurring and it looks like we are set for a change of administration in Westminster in a couple of years – and that, too, is right and proper. We are not a one party state and it is good to remind the politicians that they are on borrowed time.

The icing on the cake is the removal of Ken Livingstone from City Hall. As for a Johnson administration in London, well, contrary to what the fatuous fuckwits like Charlie Brooker might think, I suspect that he will be a competent mayor. If you bought into the buffoonish persona presented on the television screens, then you have missed the sharp mind underneath.

He already has one sound policy before we start. Unlike his predecessor, he plans to allow motorcycles to use bus lanes in London. A policy adopted in Bristol over a decade ago and in other cities around the country since (most recently, Swindon). This has consistently demonstrated that it reduces accidents for all vulnerable road users. Ken Livingstone deliberately and cynically appeased the cycling lobby – who, despite the contrary evidence asserted that it would place them at risk – and suppressed the Tfl research findings. Those findings were consistent with other experiments – accidents decrease where the policy is applied. Johnson has stated that he will follow those the findings and allow bikes in bus lanes.

So, from a motorcyclist’s point of view; it’s a good start. Now, how about cancelling the Olympics?

Slowly, surely, inexorably, the new puritanism is enveloping this country. Trawling its way through parliament is the egregious amendment to the criminal justice bill that will outlaw the possession of “violent” pornography. This terrible bill is the consequence of a terrible crime – and as such, is a terrible reason for it to be considered in the first place. As with the dangerous dogs act and the handgun legislation, we have bad law built rashly on the back of a tragedy.

Five years ago Jane Longhurst, a teacher from Brighton, was murdered. It later emerged her killer had been compulsively accessing websites such as Club Dead and Rape Action, which contained images of women being abused and violated.

So this man liked to watch violent porn. This does not mean that violent porn leads to violent acts. This is the facile thinking of the ban-it brigade, those who claim that porn leads to rape, that violent video games lead to violent behaviour. This is a non sequitur. People who are predisposed to behave badly may well want to watch videos and pictures of acts that turn them on. It does not mean that watching such material corrupts or depraves people to the point where they will carry out acts of violence against others purely as a consequence.

Under the new rules, criminal responsibility shifts from the producer - who is responsible under the OPA - to the consumer.

And where will this lead? Another operation ore is highly likely. This from Deborah Hyde of Backlash:

“How many tens or hundreds or thousands of people are going to be dragged into a police station, have their homes turned upside down, their computers stolen and their neighbours suspecting them of all sorts?

Such “victims” won’t feel able to fight the case and will take a caution, before there are enough test cases to prove that this law is unnecessary and unworkable”

Which is pretty much what happened with operation ore – innocent people had their lives and reputations destroyed by an obsessive, puritanical state set upon prosecuting scapegoats.

While I have sympathy for Jane Longhurst’s mother’s loss, I have no sympathy whatsoever for her nasty little campaign:

Speaking from her home in Berkshire, Mrs Longhurst acknowledges that libertarians see her as “a horrible killjoy”.

Ah, yes, the old “I’m jot a killjoy, but…” argument. Yes, Mrs Longhurst, you are a killjoy, because you want to subvert the law in order to impose your sensibilities on others.

“I’m not. I do not approve of this stuff but there is room for all sorts of different people. But anything which is going to cause damage to other people needs to be stopped.”

There being no evidence that watching pornography, violent or otherwise, causes such damage to others; it is not the place of the state – nor the victims of crime – to decree what people watch or read in the privacy of their own homes.

To those who fear the legislation might criminalise people who use violent pornography as a harmless sex aid, she responds with a blunt “hard luck”.

There you have it. Mrs Longhurst is now the arbiter – with the blessing of a puritanical state – of what you may or may not watch. Don’t like it? Hard luck is the reply. Mrs Longhurst is right and you are wrong. Hard luck, tough titty. That you are a consenting adult engaging in consensual activities, watching other consenting adults engaging in consensual activities is neither here nor there to Mrs Longhurst. She doesn’t like it, she doesn’t understand why you want to do or watch it, so, hard luck. What she says, goes. Get used to it. Your life is not your own. Mrs Longhurst will tell you what is okay or not.

“There is no reason for this stuff. I can’t see why people need to see it. People say what about our human rights but where are Jane’s human rights?”

Which just goes to demonstrate how catastrophically ignorant this woman is. Her daughter was murdered by a violent criminal – this has nothing to do with the matter of human rights or freedom of speech and expression. Mrs Longhurst is confusing negative and positive liberty. In restricting the liberty to read and watch what we like, Mrs longhurst will not prevent another tragedy of the type that befell her daughter. Those who are predisposed to murder, will do so. Meanwhile, innocent people will suffer the consequences of bad law because Mrs Longhurst went on a vengeance trip enabled by people like David Blunkett.

Via Freeborn John, yet another staggering intrusion by the state into our private lives:

More than 500,000 people a year are to be questioned about their sex lives and salaries by Government inspectors, it has emerged.

Sigh… The bastards want to know the ins and outs of everything. Is nothing sacred?

Officials will ask for information about former sexual partners, contraception and how long couples have lived together before getting married.

The 2,000-question survey, which will be carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), has prompted fears of further data security breaches as both names and addresses will be logged by inspectors.

The thought that went through my mind was echoed by Juliam commenting on FBJ’s piece:

…what happens of every one of those selected 500,000 people simply tells the researcher to fuck off…?

Should any inspectors be knocking on the door of the Longrider abode, that is exactly the response they will get.

I refuse to blow a gasket… I refuse to blow a gasket… I…

LUL drivers are to protest about a new comedy film because it trivialises railway suicides:

Train drivers will stage a protest tonight at the premiere of a British comedy about suicides on the London Underground.

Members of Aslef will hand out leaflets when Three And Out, starring Mackenzie Crook, is shown at Leicester Square, London, this evening.

Crook plays a tube driver in search of a volunteer to commit suicide under his train so he can get compensation. Union members have criticised the subject material, saying that deaths on the railway are “never funny”.

I’m sorry, but haven’t they got something better to do?

No, deaths on the railway are not funny. That didn’t stop us cracking black jokes with the local BT Bobby while standing over the dismembered body of a young woman who had put her head on the line at Westbury some years back. We were waiting for the coroner’s office to send out a medical practitioner to declare the body pieces formally dead – we knew she was dead, but we were not experts, you see. When the doctor did turn up an hour or so later she tottered along the line to the scene, took a brief look and told us what we already knew – yup; dead. Including the bits the foxes made off with before we got there.

As I’ve helped recover the body parts from suicides, I concur with the view that there is nothing funny about it (despite my facetious tone in the previous paragraph). But… But… Writers and performers will always try to push the envelope of acceptable source material. Sometimes it is funny and it works. Sometimes it is plain distasteful. Why not let the viewing public be the judge?

Do I want to watch this film? Nope. Do I plan to protest about it? Nope.

Keith Norman of Aslef thinks that it shouldn’t go unremarked:

I don’t want Aslef to look like some sort of kill-joy organisation, because we’re not,

I’m afraid that’s exactly how you come across – and as stated, I have personal first hand experience in the matter.

but there are issues which we shouldn’t ignore - and this is one of them. I want the public to be aware of how distressing it can be for a driver to discover a body under the wheels of his or her train.

Maybe you should trust them to be able to tell the difference between a piece of fiction and reality?

Of course, as is often the case, someone comments on the article and in so doing displays that they are have qualified with honours from the university of cretinry. In this case, gil from Bristol:

I have read that once a train driver has killed a person he is never able to return to his job because it has so unnerved him. This film should be banned. I have every sympathy with train drivers over this stupid film.

No, gil, some drivers become so distressed that they cannot carry on driving. And, no, it should not be banned, you fucking ignorant little control freak.