Bendy Busses: A Controversy Born
Tags: London, Politics Buss Design.
So this morning I was woken up by a ring at the door and thinking I was probably the only person home (it was nearly eleven) I made my way down stairs in my dressing gown.
I heard someone open the door and the start of a conversation so I headed back up stairs until one phase caught my ear: “Bendy buss…” This got my attention and I continued down to see what the situation was.
Turns out it was the local Conservative party canvassing for support in the upcoming mayoral elections and they were talking about how Boris has pledged to get rid of bendy busses because they’re unsafe and blah blah blah. I wanted to pipe up in support of the new busses because I (as an avid user of public transport) really like them but then I came to a sudden realisation. The debate about bendy busses isn’t political, either they work or they don’t. It’s a debate for buss designers and engineers not for politicians.
The Intrepid Fox
I read an interesting article on The Observer’s blog this morning, ‘Your chance to tell politicians: it’s we who are watching you‘ by Henry Porter. It compares today’s political acceptance of a ’surveillance society’ with the political climate in England during 1790 and the French Revolution, when the young liberal MP Charles James Fox tried to stop the Prime-minister pushing through legislation designed to keep tabs on potential English revolutionaries.
He told the Commons: ‘All the true constitutional watchfulness of England was dead to the only real danger… we are come to the moment when the question is, whether we shall give to the king, that is the executive government, complete power over our thoughts.’ Fox was defeated by 290-50 and lost subsequent votes, but he kept the flame of liberty alive while most of the political establishment were busy giving in to Pitt and their own hysteria.
It is this Fox of course whom the London pub ‘The Intrepid Fox’ is named after… I’ve said before that I was surprised that London’s favourite watering hole for Metalers was named after a politician and this is an interesting insight into why!
Check out the article here.
Convicts handed keys to Human Rights
I found this on FARK today. It’s an article in my favourite ‘news paper’ (The Daily Mail) about some prisons giving some prisoners keys to their own cells.
After a closer inspection of this fear inspiring piece of journalism I found a few things worthy of comment. The first being what the story actually is:
Some prisoners are given keys to their own cells to promote a sense of responsibility for themselves or so they can protect their property (or their person) from other prisoners. So this astonishing measure
is in fact an attempt to promote the rehabilitation and security of in-mates… What’s the problem with that?
The next thing I spotted that made me chuckle was a theme best summed up by these quotes:
The astonishing measure prompted a furious response from MPs last night, who warned that the human-rights culture was out of control.
These people are banged up for a reason. But the Government seems more concerned about the human rights of criminals than those of their victims…
So is this scheme the result of Human Rights legislation? No. Was it put in place for ‘fear’ of Human Rights legislation? No. So what has it got to do with Human Rights? Nothing.
We seem to be in the middle of a huge public relations offensive against Human Rights at the minute and I hate to see the spin doctoring of stories like this to put them in a negative light. You see last time I looked I’m a human… and I like the idea of laws that protect me. For example one day, God forbid, you or I could be accused of a crime and I’m really keen on neither of us (well maybe you, but defiantly not me) getting beaten up in Police custody by other prisoners (or by authorities trying to extract a confession…) so aren’t having guaranteed rights a good thing?
The last thing that caught my eye was this shocking report that:
£750,000 [was spent on] nearly 200 drug addicts who suffered withdrawal symptoms after they were forced to go ‘cold turkey’
Umm… isn’t that a good thing too? Surely reducing peoples’ dependancy on drugs will also reduce the likelihood that they will re-offend? Mel Gibson aside, drink slash drug addiction is a serious illness that leads (if not forces) a lot of people into crime… and only The Daily Mail could take exception to their treatment.
So why do ‘Conservatives’ want to see us give up our Human Rights? For a long time I thought that it was simply because the money grabbing SOBs wanted to go back to the industrial revolution days and fill their factories with slave children and not have to waste money catering for disabled people whilst discriminating against every one who isn’t just like them… But these days I’ve become more cynical and think that, while employees not having the right to those unproductive screen breaks would be nice, the real problem is that Human Rights are European… and we all know what that means, don’t we boys and girls?
South Park Libertarians
I found this interesting interview with the creators of South Park this evening.
It talks about some of the stories behind the stories on the show and their view of politics and religion. They also spell out their view of people who choose to illegally download episodes off the internet:
We’re always in favor of people downloading. Always. It’s how a lot of people see the show and it’s never hurt us. We’ve done nothing but been successful with the show. How could you ever get mad about somebody who wants to see your stuff? We worked really hard making that show, and the reason you do it is because you want people to see it.
They also touch on the infamous Muhammad episode, Carton Wars:
Parker: When we did the Muhammad episode, we got flowers from the Simpsons people because we ripped on Family Guy. Then we got calls from the King of the Hill people saying, “You’re doing God’s work ripping on Family Guy.� Even though it was this big political thing about Muhammad and whatever, everyone was just, “Thank you for you ripping on Family Guy.�
censorship.net
In an effort to highlight and undermine censorship on the net Amnesty International is calling for bloggers the world over to publish snippets of censored material thus dirtying up the waters for search bots looking for sites to black list.
Of course as it’s a JavaScript include any bot that is sophisticated enough to actually view its contents will undoubtedly be able to see through the cunning idea… so I think of putting it on my blog as an entirely symbolic act.
[Edit: I’ve had to take the thing off line as there was a bug in their javascript that was pissing me off! Maybe that was the secret method to beat google… Who knows.]
The Daily ‘Hate’ Mail Watch
One of The Daily Mail’s creators, Lord Rothermere, pictured with his friend Adolf Hitler. More info here.
Ages ago I had an idea for a web site that would keep track of the hilarious antics of everybody’s favourite news paper, The Daily Mail (aka. The Fascist Snail). The idea inspired me to register this domain but I never got around to making the site… fortunately it turns out that some one else isn’t as lazy as me… so go check out the site!
www.mailwatch.co.uk
One thing is for sure, house prices will fall.