20mph Speed Limits in Portsmouth

I can see the introduction of 20mph limits in parts of Portsmouth being at best a complete waste of time, and at worst cause an increase in accidents and convictions.

The emphasis by the police and the council will be in detecting drivers exceeding this unrealistically low speed limit, and ignoring all the other bad types of driving and road use that goes on. When drivers cause accidents it is usually due to lack of observation, concentration, anticipation and control. These factors are now totally ignored by the police, so the standards of driving have plummeted over recent years.

Most accidents involving pedestrians are actually the fault of the pedestrians themselves. Stepping out into the road without looking, ear attached to an iPod or mobile phone, all really basic stuff we were taught as kids. Cars hurt when they hit you, make an effort to avoid them.

I know Portsmouth quite well and I expect the limits to be concentrated around the narrower streets which are full of compact terraced housing and rows of parked cars on each side. Even if the limit was 100mph down these roads, drivers still wouldn’t go much faster than they currently do. There is simply too much too look out for such as on-coming vehicles to negotiate space with, badly parked cars, tight side roads and so on. In these sort of road drivers don’t travel quickly. But what they do need is 100% concentration on what is going on outside of their vehicle. An unreasonably low speed limit will be a distraction with the drivers eyes consumed with the speedometer and hidden speed traps. This cannot be good for safety.

Driving too slowly can also give a false sense of security for pedestrians, as they may start to take risks with cars that appear not to be perceptually moving, or can be heard to be moving. A certain amount of speed is required to make your existence known.

Police Targets

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here, but I’ve been a busy man. Well enough of my chitter-chatter and down to some issues…

Finally the media has picked up on the government’s obsession with targets and how it has degraded our police force. I’m sure many of you out there have been a victim of police zealousness in finding soft targets for their crime figures. Personally I was false accused of speeding, but thanks to a corrupt justice system ended up losing my case. Unlike many who have been on the receiving end of a fixed penalty notice I decided to fight (after all I was innocent), but most people just take the punishment as an occupational hazard of modern living. This sort of thing gives the police yet another tick in the box for their crime solving statistics and a pat on the back from the government.

I’ve also been a victim of crime a few times. I’ve had my car broken into with items stolen. My partner’s flat was broken into an possessions of both mine and hers were stolen. There have been others. All these have something in common: the person committing the crime was not caught in the act by the police with a positive identification at the time. Currently, to be stand a chance of being convicted of a crime, not only do you have to be caught in the act, your actual identification must be made. Speed cameras are a fine example of this. Your number plate gives you away…probably… but that’s enough. If any sort of investigation is required, such as tracking down a criminal after it has happened, then you can guarantee nothing will be done. Why? Because it takes too much time and resources, so will spoil the targets they have to meet. Serious crimes with real victims are now ignored. Those intending on breaking the law know they have little chance of being caught.

Years ago when minor offences occurred a police officer may take someone aside and offer some words of warning or advice and nip the issue in the bud. No paperwork required, and hopefully an escalation of bad behaviour eliminated. These days such offences are seen as the money-pot, and are almost actively encouraged or entrapment is used. Instead of preventing these things happening they now escalate into continuing offences that can easily be added to the monthly targets.

I know a lot of police officers are unhappy with this situation, even the Police Federation of England and Wales say so. Why can’t they just stand up to the government and police the way they should and want to? What happens if police forces fail to meet these targets? There is something very nasty and controlling going when the police force can’t be allowed to police in the way they want to, and how the majority of the public wants to.

Not only has this resulted in the criminalisation of law-abiding citizens (not helped by the introduction of hundreds of new and mostly pointless and petty laws) and the escalation of serious crimes that are ignored; but it has also destroyed the public’s view of the police. They are not trusted anymore. A vicious circle now occurs where serious crime is now not solved because it is not profitable enough of the police to solve, and they get no co-operation from the distrusting public in helping them. My personal experiences with police make me treat them as no more than con-artists at best and corrupt criminals at worst.

I’ve highlighted how the government’s obsession with targets has affected policing and the safety of the public, but it has also destroyed education and the NHS. I fear that all the major parties may follow this method though, for the sake of statistical debate and point scoring.

Road Pricing Petition

Just a quick post to follow up my comments on road pricing. There is a petition on Number 10’s website, where you can sign up to scrap this daft idea. Here’s the link:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/

There’s already over 55,000 signatures on it, so add some more!

Road Charging

The latest government idea to try and save the environment, or so they claim, is to introduce road charging. They will charge every driver per mile of driving some value depending upon how congested that particular road is considered at the time. For example driving along the M25 at 8:00am may cost £2 per mile, whereas driving along a remote country lane at 11:00pm may cost 10p per mile.

The scheme will require a lot of technology, the use of the GPS system to track the cars, and in-car recording devices. Needless to say all this technology will not only cost money (for the motorist naturally), it will be as reliable as any technology of this nature is. In other words, it will be as flakey as a 1970’s made British car.

So will this idea reduce congestion? In one word, no. Do they seriously believe people want to be sitting in a traffic jam on the M25 at 8:00am in the morning? They are there because they have no alternative. They have to get to work, or have to deliver something. The public transport system does not give them an alternative. It is either too expensive, too busy, or more usually far too time consuming and doesn’t even go the way you are going. Charge these drivers even more and they will have two choices: pay up and suffer or stay at home and not work (if working from home isn’t an option). Neither will do anything for the economy of the country, or much for the environment.

It is so obvious that it will do nothing for the environment, it is a joke the government is trying to pass it off as a green idea. It is nothing to do with green, just greed. It is purely another tax on the motorist and more income for the government. It will not reduce congestion, but just fill the coffers for more wars.

This scheme will also target the honest and law-abiding. Those who don’t want to pay will just drive un-insured and un-registered cars, breaking the law to avoid these charges. It is already happening with the congestion charging zone and as a result of the explosion of speed cameras. There are also serious civil liberty issues with it. The government will now be tracking your every move. Quite frankly it is none of their business where and when I go somewhere. Do you want me to peer through the bedroom window of 10 Downing Street while Tony and Cherie get down to action? I’m sure they don’t, so don’t spy on me.

If the government was serious about reducing congestion they could do so in a matter of months. They could free up clogged urban roads by sorting out badly timed traffic lights. They could removed speed bumps and chicanes. They could remove pointless bus lanes, and road narrowing. They could put more trains on the tracks, more bus routes to remotes areas. They could increase speed limits to what they orginally were several years ago. They should clamp down on poor motorway driving, and remove unlicensed drivers. They could provide more off-road cycle routes. They could run the Underground for 24 hours. None of these things are particularly expensive, or require massive civil engineering work. They are just common sense ideas to free up the movements in this country. The environment will benefit significantly.

Taxing things does not reduce their use. It didn’t work on smoking or drinking. The government know a cash cow when they see one, and the current trend is to hide it behind the green banner. It is cynical and deceiving.

Binge Tax

Tax, tax and more tax. This seems to be the government’s method in trying to control social behaviour, and I for one like many can see right through it. Patricia Hewitt’s latest idea is to add extra tax on alcopops to try and curb teenage binge drinking. What planet is this woman from? If you charge £100 for a Bacardi Breezer or a WKD, then the kids are just going to switch to something else cheaper. Even if you increase all booze by a more moderate amount, people will still buy it, or just get it from France (like I do for my wine!). The rich kids will still be able to get tanked up, and the poor kids will just find alternatives to intoxicate themselves, or just bleed their credit cards even drier.

All this policy will result in is more money for the government’s coffers, and not the slightest improvement in the binge drinking and weekend town centre puke-fests we now have. But I can’t believe Hewitt doesn’t already know this. She must do. It is just another tax increase hidden behind another current scare (whether real or imagined) we should be all concerned about, alongside the environment and terrorism. She doesn’t give a fig about kids smashing up town centres, all she cares about is getting money for Tony’s wars.

So how do we solve the binge drinking problem? OK, I can’t claim to have all the answers, but I know it isn’t tax…

If we look at the southern European countries, they don’t have such problems despite having far cheaper booze, which is easier to buy and bars open far longer hours. Alcohol isn’t treated as some forbidden fruit which you can only have a particular age. There’s no feeling of the rites of passage into adulthold that it has over here. It isn’t considered as something that grown-ups have and kids don’t. Youngsters are gradually introduced via glasses of wine over meals, so it doesn’t feel unusual to them. So they never feel the need to sneak off and try it out with their friends. In fact, in this country, some youngsters are often brought up this way and they usually don’t end up as the hardened boozers. A more mature approach is needed by adults.

So why do people need to drink themselves into oblivion at weekends? I think the clue is in that last word: weekend. After a week of work people want to escape from it, and getting pissed is the easy outlet. People in the UK work longer hours with fewer holidays than anywhere else in Europe, it’s no wonder they need to let off steam at the weekend. If we improved working conditions and hours, hopefully people would not feel so damn depressed and stressed out to need to drink it off.

We are still a very reserved society by nature, where striking up a converstion with a stranger is very difficult. Alcohol is a great builder of confidence and a breaker down of inhibitions. By getting a bit tipsy it allows us to approach others with some belief we might get somewhere with them. When you’re young and virile, you’re desperate to meet new people for a bit of slap-and-tickle, so the bit of booze helps the cause. I’ve overheard people say things like “She doesn’t drink, so I’ll never stand a chance of sleeping with her”, which implies the only way of getting a girl is if she’s drunk enough to sleep with you. We need some way of breaking down this reserve and start to demistify strangers. Why can’t we just go up to someone we’ve never met before and talk to them in a friendly manner? Is it because we all consider strangers as potentially dangerous? How mad is that? Maybe if bars turned the music down a bit, people might get to know each other more. But I think this culture of friendliness needs to be promoted more in the home, schools and in the media.

Last of all, it’s the old problem of peer pressure. If all you mates are drinking, you have to too. Woe betide anyone who can’t keep up. You don’t want to be the lightweight who drinks the least. Peer pressure will always exists amongst young people, it’s part of their growing up and defining themselves. How we break that particular cycle I’m not sure. Maybe other things to do for young people apart from drinking. In the old days, young men just got sent to war. Now maybe that’s what Tony’s got in mind all along…

Veils

The recent controversy over Jack Straw’s comments about Muslim women wearing veils and the veil wearing teacher getting sacked have raised the profile of the veil.

I do firmly believe in people being allowed to wear what they want, but they to understand the likely reactions their dress might get from others. The big issue with the Muslim veil is that it covers the face, the most important part of the human body in terms of visual communication and recognition. By wearing a veil you are effectively making yourself anonymous. You may want to remain anonymous in certain situations, and I think you do have certain rights to do so. However, anonymous people should expect to be treated so. If you cover you face, don’t expect your neighbours or friends to say hello, don’t expect passers-by to ask for the time or directions. If you are unrecognisable, particularly if you dress in the same manner as others with you, then don’t expect to be treated as a unique individual. You become an object not a person anymore.

If I go into a shop, or walk along the street, I don’t expect strangers or people in authority to know who I am. I am just another person minding my own business and getting on with things. So a woman who wears a veil should have this right if they so choose. However, there are occasions when my face becomes my identification, such as getting through the door at work, or when I show my passport at an airport. When people or organisations really need to know who I am (that doesn’t mean the likes of supermarkets who don’t need to know who I am) then my face lets them know. In these situations I cannot see any justifications for hiding your face, and therefore you should be prepared to reveal it; regardless of their gender or religion.

This now leads onto my next point, and was highlighted by the sacked teacher. There are mixed news reports over this (as is so sadly true with our press, they can’t tell the truth it seems), and from what I understand is that she removed the veil when standing in front of the children. So the issues of her ability to communicate with the children is not really an issue if this is the case. What she did apparently do was to wear the veil when men were present. Now this becomes a sex discrimination issue, and I suspect this is what she was sacked over. By treating male members of staff differently to women, she was being sexist. So what has priority, religious rights, or sex discrimination rights? Given that religion is a personal choice, but you gender is not a choice then the gender rights should win every time. The reason I often hear from women who wear veils in front of men, is that they do not want to appear as objects of sexual desire. I find this completely demeaning towards men, just accusing us all of being purely sexually driven beasts without the ability to treat women as multi-faceted people. Would she remove her veil in front of a gay man? Would she raise it in front of a gay woman? How many men are seriously driven uncontrollably wild with desire by the slight of just a woman’s face regardless of how beautiful they are? But you could cover your face with a veil and work as phone-sex worker and drive men wild with flirtacious suggestions.

Now I’m on to telephones, the arguement often used is that people are happy to have a conversation over the phone, so why is the different from talking to someone with a covered face? Well, personally I really dislike having conversations on the phone, because I like to see people’s facial expressions to really understand what they are saying. I also like them to see my face, so they know my light-hearted sarcastic quip is exactly that and not some massive insult. Some people are not naturally verbally articulate, so what their face says helps so much to convey information. Try and speak with someone who doesn’t share you language (e.g on your hols to Spain or France). If you are dealing with them face to face you can’t often bumble along and get the message across, and the facial expressions help you along so much. Try doing the same over the phone, and you don’t have a hope in hell. With a face you can see friendship, fear, humour, boredom and all the other emotions that make us human. Take that away and you might as well be talking to a robot.

I’ve even heard some Muslim saying the veil means they don’t have to worry about dealing with their appearance every morning, putting on the make up and deciding what to wear. Why don’t they just go out without make-up on then? Who is going to judge any less of you? Is it the men you so despise for their sexual advances? Do need feel you need to tart yourselves up for them, even though you claim you don’t want their attention? Or is it other women who will get bitchy over that frumpy woman with no make-up? Plenty of women can go out without putting make-up on, so why can’t you?

I’ve never read the Koran, so I can only take on what others have said about what it says over the veil. The general concensus is that only the hair needs to be covered. So where has this trend started amongst a growing minority (most don’t, they are still very rare) of Muslim women to use the veil now? Are the preachers and teachers in the mosques putting new spin on what the Koran says? If it driven by them, why are they doing this?

Feel free to wear a veil, but don’t whinge if you getting treated differently, it is your choice and nobody is making you wear it. I would expect to have the right to wear a pink rubber gimp suit, but I would anticipate to be treated differently as a result and have to live with that. By the way, I don’t!

Permit Parking

I’m sure you’ve all been aware of Richmond council’s recent idea of charging residents differing parking permit fees dependant upon the car’s emissions. It’s certainly provoked plenty of debate in the national press.

I think it is one of the more ridiculous ideas a council has come up with, and really does prove they do not give a toss about the environment and only about making more money. It is simply daft on so many levels.

Firstly, parked cars do not pollute, moving cars do. Or rather cars with their engines running do, as most car driven in London don’t spend much time in motion. So why penalise someone who may rarely drive their car? It reminds me of an incident in Hove where they introduced permit parking where residents had to pay. A couple I knew who lived there cycled to work, which is a pretty environmentally good thing to do. However, they couldn’t get a permit for their car parked in the street (no garages or driveways around that area) as there were a limited number available. So their only option was to abandon the cycling and start driving to work instead, as they couldn’t legally park in their road in the daytime. So that was great for the environment wasn’t it?!

Secondly, they are targeting cars with high CO2 outputs as far as I know. Surely parking problems are due to the footprint of the car, not what comes out of the exhaust? So why not charge based on the car’s length and width? The more obstructive a vehicle, the more they should be charged.

Thirdly, why do they base emissions purely on CO2 outputs? What about all the other gases and particulates they generate, particularly sooty diesels (yes, even very modern ones seem to go off tune quite easily) which seem to be considered better than a well maintained petrol engine. What about older cars which do not have an official CO2 level? There’s too much scope for luck on what you’ll pay rather than the real pollution you may generate. The levels also don’t take the slightest notice of driving styles either.

I’m not standing up for 4×4s, in fact I find them very annoying. I don’t see why anyone would want to drive something that large and cumbersome around the narrow streets of our cities. They block visibility when driving a car near one, they are often too wide to let two cars pass in a narrow road, and stick out when parked. They are often driven rather badly, and I have suffered a dented wing from one trying to park. I would also rather drive something which I could drive away from danger in, rather than something that’ll crush the other object more than mine when I do hit something. But I do still believe in letting people drive what they want to drive, and let them decide themselves whether they really to drive these things, or something more practical, sociable, efficient and classy.

If Richmond council really want to reduce pollution from cars, they should encourage local shops, businesses, schools and other things that should be local to prosper and be close enough to the residents to not need to drive in the first place.

I’m generally against permit parking full-stop. I can understand why it was introduced in the first place, where certain residential streets close to shopping areas got overrun with people trying to park and preventing the residents from parking. But the councils (not just Richmond, but many nationally) have spotted it as a money spinner and now they spread and spread out like an oil slick.

Examples of this are in Brighton & Hove where virtually the whole city is now permit parking. Even areas a long way away from shops and places of work have them. There are even streets where the houses had driveways and garages where cars didn’t even park in the street (give or take the odd visitor or window cleaner), now have permit parking. Instead of encouraging people into using other forms of transport, it just results in cars going round and round in circles trying to find somewhere they can legally park. The traffic as a result has got worse. In London, there is a road I know which is border between two boroughs. On one side of the road is permit parking, on the other it is totally free. Being a purely residential area where the only people parking are resident and their visitors, there is no justification for the permit parking to prevent commuter and shoppers from using the roads. In the daytime you get the bizarre situation where all the locals in the road and surrounding ones in Southwark (the permit parking borough) park their cars in the Lambeth side of the road and nearby ones. So the Southwark side is like a ghost town in the daytime, whereas the Lambeth side is jammed to bursting, and the narrower roads often suffer with blockages. Whereas at the weekends and evenings when the permits don’t apply all the cars spread evenly out again, only filling the roads up about 60%, further proving that the permits aren’t necessary around here.

With permit parking, you get parking attendants. These used to be called traffic wardens, who’s job it was to keep traffic moving. What you get with the modern parking attendant is someone purely targeting on making money, and not caring about the traffic. They only cover permit streets, and do so with zeal. In the Southwark road just described, if you are one minute into the permit parking time the car will be clamped. While rules are rules, they ignore the car parked on the corner on the double-reds down the road blocking visibility and blocking the traffic. They don’t give a toss about the traffic. After all, clamping a car doesn’t exactly free the space for others does it?

First Message

Why write anything useful for my first ever message? Let the good stuff follow later….