Our Labour government, once again, seem to be intent on recreating a communist Russia here in the UK, where only the rich and privileged can drive a “nice” car.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2461213.ece
It’s about time we challenged this government to be seen driving, and be driven in, the standard
of transport they feel appropriate for you and me. Let them drive Priuses! Let them be chauffered in a Yaris!
This wasn’t the report of an attempting car-bombing in London.
Rather, the news that the European Count on Human Rights, the highest ranking court in Europe, has decided that the “right to silence” doesn’t always apply. Specifically, if you own a motor vehicle, it is your responsibility to know who is driving it at any time, and to furnish that information to the police on request, even if to do so is to provide evidence leading to your own conviction.
This is a truly frightening development.
Why? The European Convention on Human Rights sets up a clear definition of fundamental human rights in law. And one of them, enshrined in police TV shows and movies, is that you are not obliged to say anything in response to questioning by the police. Suddenly this is weakened – “unless you own a car”.
The driver of the car bomb in London has a right to silence. If I inadvertently exceed an arbitrary speed limit by a few miles an hour, I lose that right to silence.
I am not a Lawyer. I am not a politician. I’m a law abiding citizen, and one of the fundamental rules that protects my freedom has just been severely weakened. And I am not happy about this.
It’s intresting to look at the e-Petitions web site, set up by the British Government to allow the public to have their say on a variety of issues.
The biggest response to a petition to date has been 1.8 million votes opposing Road Charging, a scheme that the government seems determined to push forward. With prices up to £1.50/mile being talked about, this could add £15,000 to the annual cost of running a car. There’s no way that this can be economically viable.
But it’s interesting to look at the rest of the top 10 active petitions by number of votes: Some of them are about freedom. Freedom to dance, freedom to take photographs in public places, freedom to hunt. Some of them are to reduce the tax burden, others to continue funding things.
If I were to stand for election, it would be on a simple manifesto:
Unfortunately my only chance to succeed at any of that is to become a dictator. There’s no way a democracy can actually accomodate change that drastic.
I did the Civic Duty thing this morning and went and voted in the local government elections. What a farce!
The Sandhurst Parish Council has 9 candidates, and you have to vote for 6. 6 of the candidates are from the Conservative party, so you either don’t use all your votes, or have to vote for some of them. Personally, I like to spread it about a bit – a more balanced makeup is much better than the current system of “my party’s better than your party” being more important than actually doing what’s right.
If I had the time to spare, I’d stand as an Independent candidate, just to stir things up. Then again, I can’t actually figure out what our Parish Council actually does, apart from attempting to sell public property, presumably (allegedly) for a huge kickback from the developers.
Andy
There’s an awful lot of hype out there on CO2, and it’s contribution to global warming. Personally, I’m in favour of the evidence that suggests that increased atmospheric CO2 is the PRODUCT of global warming, not the cause.
From www.canada.com, this article is one of a series. Just last week, the fourth United Nations International Panel on Climate Change report was issued to mass media hysteria.
Some of the quotes from this series of articles are priceless: “the IPCC itself, in both 1995 and 2001, had found no global warming signal in the hurricane record. ”
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science.
And if that’s not enough:
“Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians,” he told me. “These parallel global warmings — observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth — can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance.”
“Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming,” he states, particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed, in fact, that “it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist … Yet Dr. Shaviv also believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb [hydrocarbon] pollution.
I don’t know what the agenda is, but climate change has been blown out of all proportion. Climate change is something that happens over millenia, not decades. We won’t know for centuries if our climate is permanently changing. And by then it will be too late, one way or the other.
CO2 levels were higher when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
The snow line in the Alps was 3,000 feet higher at the time of the Roman Empire.
We are in an interglacial period right now. Of course galciers are receeding. Of course ice shelves are melting. It started happening 10,000 yeas or more ago, and will probably carry on for the next several thousand years at least.
Never mind the European Human Rights legislation. Never mind the Magna Carta. We are guilty until proven innocent in the eyes of Speed Camera Partnerships. These mysteriously funded, unaccountable bodies are responsible for ruining thousands of lives through dodgy prosecution practices – not to mention the fact that road deaths in the UK have increased since speed cameras were introduced.
This quote in the 6th December MotorCycle News shows that these people clearly believe they are above the law:
“The onus is on the driver of the vehicle to prove their innocence, not on the Partnership to prove guilt. Therefore if any driver is adamant that they were not doing the speed they were allegedly detected at, then they have the right to go to court and prove so”
— Staffordshire camera partnership spokesman Jeannie Hoddinott, as reported in Motorcycle News.
“We are not obliged to send out any form of photography and we do so out of courtesy, so the registered keeper can identify the driver of the vehicle. Some partnerships send out no photography at all. Therefore Staffordshire’s approach to this is quiet lenient.”
The MCN article also states that “West Midlands is cropping images to prevent the accused from using markings to perform speed calculations.”
It’s a fundamental principle that, as a prosecutor, if you proceed with a prosecution having denied the defence evidence that you hold that would prove the innocence of the accused you are perverting the course of justice.
Speed cameras are nothing about road safety. The numbers speak for themselves. The numbers of people killed and seriously injured in the UK every year fell steadily until the introduction of speed cameras. We’re all too busy looking out for cameras to have time to watch for children crossing the road. We need more advanced driver education, more safety training for children, and more focus on the true causes of accidents: aggressive driving and inappropriate speed for the conditions (which could be well within the speed limit).
These people have to be stopped before their practices are used as justification to introduce the “guilty until proven innocent” in other aspects of British law.
How Soon We Forget . Please pause a moment, reflect back, and take the following multiple choice test. (The events are actual cuts from past history. They actually happened! Do you remember?)
1. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and
massacred by:
a. Olga Corbitt
b. Sitting Bull
c. Arnold Schwartzeneger
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
2. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Iran was taken over by:
a. Lost Norwegians
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
3. During the 1980′s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon
by:
a. John Dillinger
b. The King of Sweden
c. The Boy Scouts
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
5. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old
American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by:
a. The Smurfs
b. Davy Jones & The Monkees
c. The Little Mermaid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
6. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a U.S. Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by:
a. Captain Kid
b. Charles Lindberg
c. Mother Teresa
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
7. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:
a. Scooby Doo
b. The Tooth Fairy
c. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
8. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:
a. Meatloaf
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
9. In 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:
a. Tarzan
b. Hillary Clinton (to distract attention from Wild Bill’ s women problems)
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
10. On 11 September 2001 four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted to a crash by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by:
a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
11. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:
a. Lawrence of Arabia
b. The Lutheran Church
c. The NFL
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
12. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:
a. Bonny and Clyde
b. Ned Kelly
c. Billy Graham
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
13. In 2002 the Sari Nightclub in Kuta Beach, Bali, was blown up killing
189 young mainly Australian tourists by:
a . The “Bundy” Polar Bear
b. Ho Chi Minh
c. Paul Keating
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
14. In July 2004, three London Underground trains and one London Bus were suicide bombed by:
a. The Spice girls
b. The Beatles
c. The Four Tops
d. 4 ‘British’ Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
Nope, ………I really don’t see a pattern here to justify profiling, do you? So, to ensure democratic western Christian civilisation never offends anyone – particularly fanatics intent on killing us – airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile (or target) certain people. They must only conduct random searches of 80-year-oldwomen, people in wheelchairs, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, Secret Service agents who are members of the U.S.President’s security detail, 85-year old World War II veterans with metal hips, and Boy Scout groups. They must never “target” a turbanwearing 17 to 40 year old male who appears to have a suspicious package tied around his body. This would be unjustified discrimination!
According to the BBC, the children’s TV channel will be editing Tom and Jerry cartoons to remove characters smoking.
Now, I admit, I’m about as anti-smoking as you can get without actually throwing buckets of water at people.
But these cartoons were made back in the 1950′s when smoking wasn’t seen as the health hazard it is today. Surely it should be seen in the same light as a a character being crushed by an anvil and bouncing back.
Cartoons aren’t real.
