More EU legislation is leading to cuts in transport possibilities. Mostly affected are the elderly who rely on volunteer transport schemes to help them travel. But it will also mean cutbacks in public transport for us all.

From the Lynn News:

Ben Colson, managing director of Norfolk Green, has described the new legislation, which has been introduced at EU level, as “ludicrous” and believes rural services will suffer.

He said: “Rural services are being withdrawn in increasing numbers.

“In the past this was due to a lack of passengers, now the demand is going up at an unprecedented rate, but we have got daft, stupid legislation which is causing buses to be withdrawn.”

As well as installing a tachograph [that cost about £1500], drivers will also have to gain a certificate of professional conduct while adhering to a new working hours directive and a law which states they must have two consecutive days off in a week.

Combine this with an ever increasing desire to tax car drivers, and I can only think of two end goals that those in charge have in mind.

1. They would like us to never leave our homes
2. Horse and carts?

LEAVE US ALONE!

I didn’t see this one coming:

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The full licence (soapbox) is here

So right now the British government is toying with the idea of putting tracking devices in all our cars so that they can charge us for the mile. The idea is that it will cut congestion and help the environment. It’s a bad idea in so many obvious and not so obvious ways, but that isn’t the point I want to make. Instead I’m interested in the response.

In November of last year, the government put into place a petition feature on their website. As of writing, the petition on the current issue has achieved 1,241,800 signatures.

According to the Daily Mail:

The protest means that 1 in 30 of the UK’s 30 million drivers have taken the trouble to register their protest on the web – an unprecedented feat in British political history.

The thing that got me to sign it was an email from a friend. It had a link in it, and so it was easy to sign. I’d been hearing about the petition on radio, but even though I care about this I didn’t head to my computer, search for the site and sign. The Internet helps people to engage.

It also raises fear on accuracy (among politicians!). This from the same Daily Mail article.

Transport minister Stephen Ladyman also denied claims that the electronic boxes which would be placed in cars would allow the Government to ‘spy’ on motorists.

He said: “Once this petition has closed, what we are going to do is explain the real policies to the people.

“The viral emails sent round in support of this petition have got crazier and crazier. The information they have been sent is a mile away from what we are actually trying to do.”

What politicians don’t yet understand is that political marketing has changed in the Internet era. Who do you trust more: the government who are closed mouthed or your friend who sent you a viral email and may well be completely ignorant? In my case it was neither. I’d already made my mind up based on a wealth of political and real-world knowledge as well as the media. But I’m still open to having my mind changed. If the government wish to do that they can do too things. 1. Become trustworthy by proving that they can do a good job! hahaha 2. By engaging me in their debate using new-media.

But I must give kudos to the government for setting up this system.

If you are a British citizen, you can sign the petition here if you do so before 20th February 2007.

I don’t know how big the problem is outside Britain, but here the streets are covered in litter. We have people picking it up, but they can’t keep up. We have campaigns to stop it, but they will never work unless the penalties are severe and we increase surveillance to 1984 levels. That would give us clean streets, but… well read 1984.

The reason littering will continue to happen is because we’re looking for the solution in the wrong place.

Policing the random dumping of rubbish will only be effective when the state gives the people the ability to police it themselves. That’s the only way it will be cost effective and it’s the only way we will ever have enough eyes.

A police state says: if you see someone drop litter, ring this special number to report them. People will do that until they realise the men in uniform don’t have the resources to do anything with your report. When they realise that they will stop reporting.

A properly policed state is there for back up. A state that is properly policed says: go tell that litterbug off, and if he threatens you we will protect you. In a well policed state people will have no fear for doing this because they know that kid wouldn’t dare carry a knife with him. They’d do it because every kid they’ve told previously felt ashamed.

When people start respecting authority again, littering will reduce significantly.

And people will start respecting authority again when they find some to respect.

Dun, dun, dunnnnnnnn

I’ve always sat on the fence when it comes to subjects like the Iraq War because, frankly, I’m a little ignorant of the facts. Not more ignorant than most people I doubt, but I take longer to reach a conclusion. Somebody telling me, ‘it’s all about the oil’ doesn’t really sell the idea. When it’s backed up with a FACT it doesn’t help because a fact is useless unless you can put it in context and check its accuracy.

But I finally decided I should become a little better informed. This is a major issue afterall, and it’s not really sensible to be ignorant of politics.
My route in was Terrorstorm — a documentary by Alex Jones declaring that the London Bombings of 7th July were ‘an inside job’ just like 9/11. This is obviously the extreme view (and he gets more extreme) but it’s amazing how easy it to get sucked into his argument when you are igorant of what he is talking about. I decided to let go and for the two hour documentary I suspended my disbelief and swallowed every FACT (he prints them reguarly in capitals across the screen) he shoved down my throat.

By the end of the documentary I was furious, scared and ready to fight against the evil conspirators…

…just as soon as I checked out the counter argument.

The first page of search results were just people propagating the video, but on the second page I found some forums that tore his documentary apart. How did they do this? Well they took the majority of his facts and proved (often with citation, but admittedly not always) that his facts lacked accuracy. Not all his facts were torn apart, but enough to seriously discredit him as a reliable source of information.

But to be sure I had to check the counter argument. That didn’t really exist for Terrostorm but I found the more common 9/11 conspiracy theories. What became immediately obvious was that those that believe it was ‘an inside job’ generally had less reasoned forms of argument; they jumped to conclusions based on a profound mistrust of the government and little else.

However, the majority actually had a more reasoned argument, were very well informed and took more of a middle-road conclusion. Everyone knows that governments twist the truth and hide too many details. Not only does this produce a profound mistrust, but that mistrust is usually well founded. The chances of all terror attacks being funded by the Illuminati in order to set up the World Bank that will rule the world is possible, but very unlikely. The chances that the government made several cock-ups and is trying to hide them is so likely that I’d ‘eat my shorts’ if it didn’t prove true.

There are so many political problems that we know are true and we really should be focusing our attention on them. I don’t like government cover-ups nor spin and I believe we should be focusing on ways to counteract it properly. If we do that, it will reveal any true conspiracies along with it. As it is conspiracies do more harm that good by distracting from real issues that never really get resolved. Whatever your stance on Iraq, falsifying intelligence reports is wrong. Even if it proves the correct decision, the means still do not justify the end. Such a lie shows such a great disrespect for British citizens that there is no way we should ever have voted such a person back in. So why did we?