In August, Neil Wilby wrote that Leslie Thomas QC described GMP as ‘rotten to its core’, and iOPS seems to have adopted that approach.

Back in January, the Manchester Evening News reported on this, and nothing of consequence has happened since that’s been made public, but much of the public don’t realise the sheer levels of incompetence involved…

The ONS and Police Inspectorate got involved at the time, and ultimately nothing came of the probes except this lame, wet flannel quote:

“Following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019, GMP have been unable to provide police recorded crime data for July, August and September 2019.

This issue is ongoing and will also affect next quarter’s data. In order to allow for accurate comparisons across the years, data for GMP have been excluded from all the police recorded crime data and tables presented in this bulletin for the years ending September 2019, March 2019, September 2018 and March 2018.”

Office for National Statistics report

Neil Wilby writes,

In September 2013, two senior GMP officers, believed to be the then chief constable, Sir Peter Fahy, and one of his assistant chiefs, Garry Shewan, reported to Tony Lloyd, at the time the police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester, that the contract for a £30 million overhaul of GMP’s computer systems should be given to professional services giant EY, formerly Ernst and Young, without inviting rival contractors to bid for the work.

By that time, EY had already been paid £300,000 by GMP for preparatory work to scope the merits of introducing a single new system, which would unify the existing GMP databases, transfer them to a virtual infrastructure (Cloud), and allow officers to access key information whilst out on patrol or responding to incidents.

In the event, the PCC couldn’t countenance such a large contract being effectively handed to a single favoured contractor and, quite correctly, ordered that the project be put out to tender…

Neil Wilby: Cost of GMP’s disastrous IT Transformation Programme rises to £80m

Capita won the tender process, taking the integration away from EY. And to put it gently, Capita doesn’t have the greatest public track record in functional IT systems delivery. £500 million Army contract underperforming consistently with deliverables delivered years late, significant miscalculations in a £330 million NHS project resulting in tremendous losses and other issues around upgrades of a back-office support system, and so on and so on.

In February 2020, GMP described iOPS issues as “intermittent problems”. Interesting interpretation of the definition.

As it stands, Greater Manchester Police is now the only force in England to have not published any crime statistics since June 2019. As we roll towards 2021, this situation looks to be unchanged. HMICFRS made nine recommendations to GMP earlier this year to improve iOPS, none of which appear to have been implemented.

Despite this, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins has said on the record that iOPS does provide accurate crime data, apparently showing an 8% reduction in recorded crime (presumably since June 2019). However we have no way to see this, because the system still isn’t providing public datasets to Government.

What an utter shambles.

Despite crime investigations requiring further actions rising 68% in the first three months of iOPS’ deployment, Capita still felt it necessary to perform planned work which effectively took iOPS out of operation for four days in February 2020. Officers had to resort to using pen and paper!

The continued failure of iOPS has huge implications for external audit and assessment of police performance and effectiveness, appropriate policing and protection of vulnerable individuals and efficient communication between GMP and the Courts Service for timely serving of justice. It also makes it incredibly difficult to do things like research an area when considering a house purchase, using what should be readily available public data.

To add insult to injury, at the start of October 2020, a significant data breach – of thousands of victims’ personal details, including those who suffered sexual abuse – were accidentally published online as part of a test by a contractor, presumably while trying to fix broken aspects of iOPS. Both GMP and the ICO got involved investigating that one – and the Mayor’s office wasn’t even notified. Shameful.

People like Jennifer Williams and Neal Keeling at the MEN has been doing sterling work reporting on the continued failures of iOPS, Capita and GMP.

In the article linked above, Williams explains how GMP are prevaricating, obfuscating and plain denying access to information which would inarguably confirm the sheer scale of ineptitude surrounding the iOPS rollout,

Among the Freedom of Information requests I have had rejected, for example, was a request for details of the iOPS procurement exercise; how much the awarded contracts were worth; any in-built penalties; and who all the different elements had been awarded to. Virtually all public reports or documents that went to the then-police commissioner, Tony Lloyd, about the system’s procurement have vanished from the internet.

Jennifer Williams, MEN, 2020-03-04

From another of MEN’s articles, here’s some of the now familiar failings:

Senior officers did not know what was in a huge backlog of cases that had built up between July and November last year following the introduction of iOPS.

Inspectors found nearly 700 domestic abuse incidents had been sitting in the queue, not being dealt with, concluding that senior command did not know what risks or threats were waiting to be addressed.

In one case, a domestic abuse incident involving a known sex offender was assessed as being appropriate for resolving over the phone rather than a visit in person – because staff could not find the necessary information.

Referrals for high-risk domestic abuse victims initially halved following the introduction of the network.

Staff also told Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services they had felt “blamed” for problems with the new system, introduced July 2019, and that they felt they “weren’t being listened to”.

The M.E.N. has repeatedly reported the concerns of frontline officers around iOPS, which went live in July 2019 to replace the force’s old, creaking IT systems – with particular fears raised over risk to the public and safeguarding of vulnerable people.

Senior command have repeatedly insisted the issues it has faced were expected and that nobody was being placed at risk.

Neal Keeling, 2020-10-02, Manchester Evening News

When is Andy Burnham’s office going to step in and force Ian Hopkins and GMP to own up to the scale of this disastrous rollout? How much extra work are taxpayers going to have to fund to fix this disaster? And will anyone actually face dismissal, disciplanary action or even prosecution by NAO/ONS for this gross negligence in what should be a watertight, well tested and high priority project?

Further reading

• https://neilwilby.com/2020/08/21/rotten-to-its-core/
• https://neilwilby.com/2019/09/04/cost-of-gmps-disastrous-is-transformation-programme-rises-to-80-million/
• https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/greater-manchester-police-having-problems-18545559
• https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/wp-content/uploads/greater-manchester-police-integrated-operational-policing-system.pdf
• https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/names-details-thousands-victims-crime-19039572
• https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/astonishing-testimony-police-whistleblowers-who-16749861
• https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/gmp-police-computer-iops-crime-17621926
• https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/07/manchester_police_outage/
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/manchester-police-work-paper-computer-system-malfunction-a9319441.html

And I’m pissed off that its £25, because it’s beautiful.

Sack the lot of them, introduce a parliamentary republic and modernise the Houses. And while we’re at it, introduce far more stringent laws surrounding campaigning, funding, permissible extent of promises and claims by elected representatives, clampdowns on political lobbying & advertising and a radical rethink of how this country’s voting system works. Perhaps we should term limit all political representatives, or force mandatory breaks after consecutive periods of reelection, with MPs nominated from general society as opposed to our current system of career politicians entrenching political divides even further. Our political system is demonstrably broken at the moment and is in no way representative of the UK’s population and spread of opinion. I’m disgusted with the whole thing. And yet, I can’t stop watching BBC Parliament at the moment…

Now recently I’ve been playing Internet games on my brand spanking new ps3; and a lot of people, including my co-blogger, would tell me that I’m an idiot. I won’t go into why I chose the ps3 over the sexbox, but I have my reasons and I’m very happy. Unfortunately none of the people I know either own a ps3 or have the same games as me, so it’s a little tricky to find people I know who I want to play games with; so of course I turn to the general community of the Internet; and how sad I am because of this.

Every time I login I am greeted with “omgwtfpwnerer2238762 wants to play!” Or some other silly person with a gamer tag that makes no sense at all. My gamer and online tag is Christov; or in some cases Christovftw when Christov is taken (YES… I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE… YOU FUCKERS STEALING MY INTERNET PRESCENCE). Some may say I am a hypocrite to give myself a “ftw” at the end of my name but fuckit… what do i care, its three little letters. What makes me more angry than the login names is the banter you get a lot of the time with gamers; particularly in their showing of the e-peen they have. This is largely presented with trophies on the PS3 network, and people seem to think it makes them better than everyone else and therefore everyone else should listen to them. What utter bullshit. If we look at this logically, the person who has spent a large majority of their time playing their games console and not socialising with the real world, or indeed anywhere.. (gaming does not count a socialising for obvious reasons) then why should we listen to them? I see countless posts on the ps3 official forums and in fact all over the Internet of opinionated twats giving their stupid and quite frankly sometimes a little bit retarded suggestions towards a given subject.

For now, I’ll leave you with that and continue another day… perhaps find some of your own twats of the Internet and post them here; or just re-post this and we’ll talk. Actually, ‘ a lie. If you’re on the Internet, I don’t want to talk to you.

Yes… btw… I realise that having a blog under my own name where I can spew nonsensical opinions about anything I desire and anyone reading it… well.. has to; has it’s own spin of irony on this given subject.

Three calls later, I was given umpteen different numbers for various different departments – not even the Highways department could help me. The guy I spoke to at Planning was helpful, but didn’t know himself – there was never any planning permission applied for, possibly because those kinds of camera gantries are exempt from the planning permission requirements… But still, c’mon!

I ended up ringing West Midlands Police’s Press department to try and get some information… No joy. Turns out that they treat small fry and more important journalists alike: with complete and utter disdain. Richard McComb from the Birmingham Post wrote of his similar experience during a recent attempt to extract some fairly menial information from West Midlands Police’s press department recently – read it here. In case you need convincing, here’s a good bit:

Press officers love being “proactive,” nor least because when they are pro-active, their “team leader” is tickled pink and can tick a performance monitoring box that records “proactive actions.” Armed with this fascinating information, all manner of charts and graphs can be constructed to dazzle the gullible. It doesnâ€t matter that the subject of the proactive action – usually a press release – is dull, just that it is proactive.

However, when press officers have to be “reactive” – that is, answer an unexpected request from a journalist – they generally do two things: first, they get highly suspicious about the reason for the request. Secondly, they stall. Some donâ€t bother to do anything. In the last two to three weeks, I have called the press office of a major force, left requests and nobody bothered to call me back. Rude? Inefficient? Iâ€d name names but it would probably spark an internal investigation, which would be funded, as usual, by the taxpayer, which really is throwing good money after bad.

It is for this reason I celebrate the fact that requests to West Midlands Police under the Freedom of Information Act continue to rise. During 2005, 830 Freedom of Information Act requests were made to the force – a figure which rose to 1,052 in 2008. The force, the countryâ€s second-biggest, now receives about four inquiries each working day.

It’s just ridiculous – the police are in charge of maintaining and administering the ANPR scheme, yet they aren’t even willing to dispense a little information to publicise the fact to the general public? Are we all fucking terrorists or something? ‘Oh no, they can’t know about the camera gantries which everybody can see if they go on the 128 down Broad Street, because (whisper) *they’re secret*’. It’s just ridiculous, and I hate it. I hate being left in the dark about this kind of thing! As a Birmingham resident I feel entitled to be kept informed about these things, particularly as I am a law-abiding road user who pays his Vehicle Excise Duty, car insurance and has a full (clean) driving licence.

Urgh, collective unwillingness to help out really pisses me off sometimes (that and the good old Right-Hand-Left-Hand syndrome which plagues Birmingham City Council – the largest City Council in Europe as council employees sometimes extol as a virtue, like it justifies the continued year-on-year rise of our council tax). Why can’t I just be given a straight answer for once?

There’s going to be an initial run of six 30 minute episodes. Quoteth the magnificent Press Office of the British Broadcasting Corporation;

The aim of Charlie Brooker’s News Wipe is to expose the inner workings of news media, just as Screen Wipe does to TV in general.

The series will be a funny, thoughtful and scabrous digest of recent news events. News Wipe will take a look at the brilliant or preposterous way the news is presented to us.

There will also be experts on hand to pick apart certain stories and analyse the news media’s obsessions.

Charlie Brooker comments: “This is new territory for me: I’m no current affairs expert. Just like, I suspect, many people, when I tune into the news I often feel like I’ve wandered into episode 389 of the world’s most complex soap opera. So it’s also about me trying to make sense of a bewildering and often bloody stupid world.”

All I can say to this is you’d be an idiot to miss it! Keep your eyes peeled for more cutting-yet-remarkably-accurate commentary.

And in the meantime? Well, most businesses claim VAT back anyway, and while they’re spending less up front due to the lower VAT rate, they’re still having a tougher time in the long run because the VAT they claim back from HMRC on their own expenditure won’t be as much. Some companies have raised their pre-VAT prices to the equivalent of when the VAT rate was 17.5%, a bit of a sly move – so businesses who have to pay these artificially inflated prices will be struggling as a result because they’ll get less back on balance today than they would have before the VAT rate cut.

 

And aside from that, this VAT rate cut has caused a massive amount of wasted time and money as companies either have to rejig, rewrite or reorganise their own billing systems and inventories, and it’ll happen again when the rate returns to 17.5% (or higher, knowing Mr. Broon!) Think how insanely impractical it’s been for supermarkets to have to reprice all of their items and go round replacing every single price ticket on all shelves… And that’s a comparatively minor hassle compared to the issues many other companies will have faced across all sorts of market sectors.

All in all, I think the UK could’ve done quite nicely without the VAT rate cut. Instead, why didn’t UK.gov take the money they would’ve otherwise been getting from us taxpayers, and give some to the Highways Agency (so they wouldn’t be forced to economise and only grit the main highways and roads) – and make sure they have enough rock salt for the depots to avoid shortages in the first place? It’s typical – countries like Sarajevo have our levels of snowfall for months on end during the winter, and they cope fine with it. Admittedly, the gritting and road clearance budget of a Scandinavian country like Finland (with a comparative road network to ours) is approximately three times that of the UK, but seriously, come on! We don’t have several inches of snowfall every day, surely we can afford to better prepare ourselves for these inevitable ‘freak’ snowfalls to avoid the farcical situation this country faced again this year.

On a related note, Keith Adams from AROnline counted how many idiotic drivers were driving around in the morning without using their headlights… You might be surprised at how many prats he encountered (and the curious trend he uncovered). Remember people, using your headlights is as much for other peoples’ benefit as your own!

Courtesy of lobbyists and uk.gov… News from the I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Utter-Bollocks department: over the past week, plans have once again been quietly introduced to the public to implement voluntary speed limiting systems… In peoples’ cars. This idea is so fundamentally flawed it’s just ridiculous, but I’ll break each point down and explain just how stupid an idea this whole thing is in a little bit.

Let’s take a look at the raw story shall we? The Guardian paints the picture well:

An automatic speed limiting device should be fitted to cars on a voluntary basis to prevent up to 29% of injury accidents, according to a report by a government advisory committee published today. The device uses satellite positioning to slow down a car to within the speed limit of the local road.

The Commission for Integrated Transport and Motorists’ Forum said the system would also reduce carbon emissions. It would use detailed digital maps containing the speed limit for every British road. The devices would be voluntary and should have a manual override feature for overtaking, the groups said.

John Lewis, who chaired the panel, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “You can override the device that we’re talking about, either by pressing a button on the steering wheel or by kicking down the accelerator as you would on an automatic car.

“But we conducted trials with 20 cars and 80 different drivers over an extended period, and actually the drivers found they changed their habits and changed their behaviour and might not have taken the risk of overtaking.”

Thankfully, Humanity is not entirely bereft of common sense – I’m not the only person who’s been pointing out the pitfalls of this idea. Here are some of the proponents’ favourite reasons for being in favour of the system:

1. By allowing the system to reduce your car’s speed automatically (by reducing engine power and braking for you when approaching a lower speed limit) the driver doesn’t have to concentrate on keeping their speed in check, and their driving habits will subsequently adjust to allow the system to perform this task all the time;
2. By ensuring vehicles stick to the appropriate speed limits throughout the UK road network, CO2 emissions are reduced, thereby contributing to a more eco-friendly nation of drivers;
3. Likewise, as vehicles will be travelling at a slower speed, fewer accidents will occur. (“The report by the Commission for Integrated Transport and the Motorists’ Forum claimed accidents involving injuries could be cut by 12% if the system was adopted universally – with a manual override system – and by more if the speed limiter was mandatory and always on.”);
4.  By enforcing these maximum speed limits, journey times will improve in consistency and fewer traffic jams will occur – particularly on motorways.

…Time to pick these claims apart and show them for the fallacies or extremes of wishful thinking that they are.

1. Enforced speed limits are already enforced on HGVs in the UK, resulting in drivers of large HGVs (mainly articulated lorries) only being able to reach 56mph on motorways. There have been past cases where, because drivers sometimes just drive with their right foot flat on the floor, they go into ‘zombie mode’ after hours of monotonous motorway driving – and accidents have arisen as a result of the driver’s attention going AWOL. Some may contend that a driver should always be attentive when behind the wheel, but when some aspect of a vehicle’s control is removed from the driver, this kind of scenario is to be expected!
2. Whilst a small reduction in CO2 emissions may result from compliance with the 70mph motorway limit (quoted at around 6% in several national newspapers), this figure relies on a mandatory 100% adoption of the speed limiting technology. Anything less than a mandatory rollout for 100% of UK vehicles immediately prevents this best-scenario figure being reached. However, the Department for Transport’s initial consultation on a third runway at Heathrow being built shows that overall CO2 emissions would rise by 2.6 million tonnes a year – how’s that 80% reduction of CO2 emissions by 2050 target coming along Mr. Brown?Also, vehicles’ engines are generally less efficient at lower speeds if they are not operating in the correct rev range (and the correct gear), with many vehicles’ gear ratios optimised for European speed limits – so an engine may perform far more efficiently when cruising around 40mph than it may do at 30mph! This is also true for high speeds; my Dad’s Toyota Avensis – when driven ‘greenly’ – can perform at more than 80mpg when cruising at 80mph in sixth gear, whereas 70mph is almost inbetween the ratios for fifth and sixth gears, meaning you either have to slow towards 60mph to stay in the optimal rev range for fifth gear, or break the speed limit to obtain better fuel economy and lower CO2 emissions. Whilst this is not an excuse for speeding in itself, it is a multi-faceted issue which must be addressed by the car manufacturers as well as the Government. Simply enforcing a lower speed limit with a Black Box will not automatically result in lower CO2 emissions, and may in fact do far more harm than good in the long run.
3. An interesting statistic of note is that the UK already has the lowest fatality rate for road traffic accidents of any European country – so we must be doing something right already without computer-enforced speed limits, no? And, just like the optimistic figures claimed by the Government and various lobby groups – 29% reduction in accidents if the system was put into place in 100% of vehicles, 12% if only fitted to some vehicles – is assuming that people won’t override the system at every possible opportunity!
    
4. Accidents involving drivers driving ‘without due care and attention’ (as the Police would define it, I’m sure) may also end up raising this overall road traffic accident statistic, as more drivers and their vehicles are involved in pretty grisly crashes when they forget about the speed limitations imposed on their vehicles during an overtaking manoeuvre (or when an older vehicle not fitted with the system is tailgating a newer, limited vehicle when going into a lower speed limit zone). Fender benders are bad enough, but imagine a car travelling at 60mph (where the driver has simply eased off the accelerator in order to gradually slow to 30mph in a safe and predictable manner) ploughs into a vehicle which has rapidly decelerated to 30mph! That could quickly get quite ugly, and end up in higher insurance premiums – the exact opposite of what some proponents have claimed will happen. (If you don’t believe how fast a speed limited vehicle would slow down, see this BBC News video where a reporter test drives a demo vehicle entering a 40mph speed limit zone – it surprises even him, leading him to remark that it feels like “someone else is driving.”)As The Guardian’s article on the matter quotes:Claire Armstrong, from the road safety charity Safe Speed, told the BBC that the device would be “highly dangerous” for driver reactions. “You’ve taken the responsibility away from the driver,” she said. 

   Derek Charters, from the Motor Industry Research Association, added: “The last thing you need is one car to be overtaking and then pull back in, in front of the cars in front, because that braking event will then cause everybody to start to slow down, which will then compress the traffic, which then causes an incident.”

   
   

   Exactly.

My other issue with this idea are that an element of driving is going to be removed from my responsibility – I have the responsibility to generally operate my vehicle’s controls as I see fit, and I am appropriately qualified to do this with a full UK Manual Driving Licence (and I have paid handsomely for this privilege). Part of my entitlement to drive is the acceptance that I will adhere to speed limits and drive in a safe manner – why do some people now deem it appropriate for this aspect of driving to be taken out of my hands and placed under the control of a closed loop system?

Arranging a system in this manner also presents some ‘interesting technical challenges.’ For starters, as soon as a system exists to restrict users, a bustling underground market in tools and knowledge to remove these restrictions appears (take a look at the aftermarket companies that offer ECU modifications to remove the GPS-based 180kph limit that Nissan enforce on their GT-R, in compliance with Japanese law). But what could the vectors of attack be for an in-car, automated speed-limiting device?

1. The device is simply removed by the driver or other person with adequate technical ability after buying the car
   1. Pitfall: uk.gov would probably introduce law making such tampering illegal and subject to regular checks as part of MOT
   2. Pitfall: could reduce resale value of car… if inclusion of speed limiting hardware is viewed as adding value
       
2. The device’s inbuilt maps are replaced with hacked, ‘carte blanche’ third party versions with blanket 200mph limit (or other suitably high limit to encompass every UK road-legal vehicle)
   1. Pitfall:  the device could include integrity checks for the mapping files, in an attempt to ensure that the maps are not replaced with unauthorised versions. However, given the increasing ease of breaking encryption (based on past history of encryption schemes – and some fairly recent news about industry-standard SSL encryption being compromised using consumer hardware and some expert knowhow), then I would not expect the integrity of the supplied maps to last very long.Another problem with leaving a device in the hands of the user is that sooner or later, someone will crack the unit open and set about investigating its innards – so reverse-engineering of the hardware to obtain the private keys is another distinct possibility.
3. As any unit would rely on a constant GPS signal to accurately detect the car’s location, if that signal were to… disappear… or be too intermittent for a reliable lock… then the system would be rendered next-to-useless.
   1. Pitfall: of course, doing so may introduce a default limit of 70mph when no lock can be obtained, but then that still renders the device completely useless when driving through urban centres or through other speed limit zones. I would wager that this kind of hack could even be peformed with a good bit of tinfoil ‘insulation’ over the GPS receiver, or maybe a small lead case to cap the GPS receiver unit. Quick and dirty, and far more easily removeable when taking the car in for an MOT or check of the system.
   2. Pitfall: what about people driving through tunnels? TomTom, Garmin et al only know roughly where you are when a lock is lost because it knows the route it has calculated for you in advance (and just takes an educated guess as to your progress based on previous speed of the vehicle and the road). For continuous on-the-fly calculation, such as the speed limiting device uses, loss of a GPS lock precludes any kind of ‘useful’ operation.
       
4. If the device was to include some kind of realtime call-and-response using the mobile phone network, this would also prove very costly for uk.gov for both the upkeep of the subscriptions to the phone network for data access and the MASSIVE infrastructure required at their end for verification and logging. (Like hell am I going to pay to be checked up on, never mind the cost of the equipment in the first place!) Just the cost of including SIMs and arranging blanket access on all the UK mobile networks, in order to perform subsequent piecemeal updates of the speed limit data and/or verify the integrity of the hardware, software and map data, would be prohibitively expensive and also, I can foresee, quite problematic. (What was the planned cost of these units to the road user again?) What happens when there’s no phone signal? What happens if that bit of tinfoil you have left over from ‘insulating’ the GPS receiver is wrapped around the GSM transceiver to keep it safe?

 

As you can see, there are too many potential problems which uk.gov will doubtless gloss over in a vain attempt to enforce UK law in an absolute manner, to the detriment of road safety and optimal driving techniques. UK law has always succeeded by being implemented and enforced in a discretionary manner; our constitution was one of only two major countries in the world to be partially codified (a rarity) yet the entire Parliamentary system has operated without revolt, major reform or revolution for over 600 years. The Police have always been held in high regard for encouraging the use of common sense by its officers when enforcing the Law – an example of this is a driver, who has committed several moving traffic offences, is stopped and cautioned – but maybe not formally so – and receives no permanent penalty aside from a stern talking to and a reminder to not repeat his actions again lest he be punished far more harshly.

This tactful approach I consider to work far better than a blanket “you have sinned therefore you will be punished to the fullest extent of the law”, because almost everything in life has shades of grey to it. The only thing that is black and white in life is the fact that we will all be born and we will all die at some point in our lives!

 

Oh, and of course – fixed speed cameras won’t disappear, as uk.gov will be completely unable to fit these devices to motorbikes and older vehicles (if the rollout is not made mandatory), particularly as it would be far too dangerous for bikes. While a four wheeled vehicle braking is not safe if it is unexpected, it is still far safer than a two wheeled  vehicle braking quickly with no other form of stabilisation. (Have you ever seen a bike fishtail and go into a 50mph tankslapper after the wheels lock under braking, with rider flying off into the sunset in the opposite direction?)

Yet another criteria to consider – what about when in wet, icy or snowy conditions? Many people respect the dangerous conditions by lowering their driving speeds, but what about the people who drive do not appreciate the increased level of difficulty and plough on at the maximum speed possible? An automated speed limiting device is designed to stop a vehicle exceeding a maximum speed limit, it is not designed to protect a driver from their own stupidity – and it is usually the stupidest drivers in the country who are at fault in most road accidents, and I would argue that the introduction of a speed limiting device would make next to no difference.

 

The only possible useful application for a device of this nature would be to enforce a maximum speed limit for drivers who have been prosecuted for exceeding the speed limit – instead of losing your licence for exceeding 100mph on the motorway, for example, they are instead allowed to keep their licence but are limited to 60mph on the motorway, just like HGVs, and are limited to 50mph in a 60mph zone and 25mph in a 30mph zone. This could be enforced for a standard, fixed period of time. This is something I would fully support, but only as a form of punishment for being convicted of a speeding-related offence – do not condescendingly introduce this as a form of road safety and environmental improvement when it is nothing of the sort.

In the current form in which this system is being introduced to the general public, it is patently useless and, frankly, wholly inadequate for implementation in any law-abiding UK road user’s vehicle – either in current or future, ‘refined’ form. I will staunchly oppose any such plans for rollout in the UK, and I suggest you do too. Government’s going slightly mad in its old age.

 

Speedometer image credit: Mark Sweeney/The Sun.

Further reading…
Current:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/30/speed-limiter-car
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/31/carbon-emissions-transport
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/article5418016.ece

Historical:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/jan/20/motoring.automotive1
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/07/27/think-inside-the-box/
http://bristolcars.blogspot.com/2008/12/tampering-with-speed-limiters.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3134484.ece

It’s a classic, so I strongly suggest you read it. Here’s a fun excerpt:

When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

The full article can be found on The Guardian’s web site, and it’s a beaut. If you’ve not checked it out yet, go watch an episode (or twenty) of Screen Wipe, his satirical (and cutting) review of television and all its wondrous programming – you won’t be disappointed.

Why? All because of a two week (well, two month) period of vapid commercialism loosely defined as ‘Christmas’, whatever the hell that is now. I staunchly refuse to bow to the whims of rampant consumerism – I’ve bought some small gifts for people I actually give a shit about, and everybody else can bugger off. Go away with your stupid Lynx gift sets, go away with your pointless Christmas Deals, take your Late Opening Hours and go back to where you came from. My old housemate’s moved to Japan, and they have the right idea – on December the 25th, everybody in Japan (bar ex-pats and Christians) will be doing what they usually do on a weekday, because they don’t celebrate Christmas Day. Sounds like an increasingly good idea.

And why do perfume companies take it upon themselves at this time of the year to bombard us with inanely similar adverts for their ‘New’ fragrance, usually consisting of the following items merely Pick ‘n Mixed into one homogenous 30 second lump:

• scantily clad man/woman/both, writhing around like a snake that’s just been fed rat poison
• a boat
• a bigger boat
• a hillside/hilltop
• waves/ocean/seaside
• a big hotel room / house
• other random expensive shit in-frame
• occasionally, someone gradually removing items of clothing
• wind machines
• pointless dancing about in front of said wind machines
• a Director who insists that there be camera shake “for artistic purposes”

Is it the same ad agency churning out all of the bollocks adverts we see each Christmas? It’s like they have an office Tombola at the end of October and they pick out which elements are going to appear in which order, then just stitch together the clips in iMovie with an 80s pop song over the top and a generic breathy voiceover. Bingo, now you want to buy this smelly toilet water! No I fucking don’t, get off my TV before I throw a bauble at the screen. 

But do you know what REALLY winds me up about the Christmas period? No, of course you don’t, but you do now: it’s people who, for some reason, develop this bizarre urge to seek out ‘deals’, even if they’re actually only as good as a regular shop deal (or in some cases, far worse than a regular shop deal!) All sense leaves their brain at a rate of knots and they become obsessed with finding every single item marked “Deal” or “Christmas Bargain” or “Special Offer”. (Special Offers for Special People…) And why so MUCH? People don’t need all that stuff. Really, they don’t.

 

Most importantly though, when you’re out in town and you’re aimlessly meandering around in between one shop and the next – GET OUT OF MY WAY! I shouldn’t have to feed through traffic like motorcyclists do in long queues. Some people still have places to go to and things to do when they’re out and about, and you – yes, you, taking up the entire pavement with your crusty family, sauntering along at 5 miles a day – you’re not helping. Stay in lane! Ideally, walk as close to the road as possible at all times and pray that gravity (or a passing bus) does us all a favour. One of the only good things about this time of year is that they show classics like A Muppet Christmas Carol,which still makes me laugh even now. But on Channel Five, with yet more of those bloody perfume ads interspersed all the way through it! ARGH!