Lorries Banned form Outside Lane – A1

Via Al Jahom, I see this interesting story.

LORRIES are to be permanently banned from overtaking during the daytime on two stretches of a busy North East motorway.

The ban is aimed at curbing the frustrations of motorists stuck behind two slow lorries overtaking, and on increasing the capacity of motorways.

It is to come into force on the A1(M) in County Durham from March 31, following an 18-month trial which the Highways Agency has hailed a success, claiming less congestion and improved journey times for other vehicles.

From 7am to 7pm each day, lorries of 7.5 tonnes or more will be banned from the outside lane on two uphill stretches of the southbound carriageway of the A1(M), between Junction 63 at Chester-le-Street and Lumley New Bridge, and between Junction 61 at Bowburn and Bishop Middleham.

Much as I dislike bans and petty laws, I cannot but feel that this one has been a long time coming. This ban applies to a two-lane stretch, but the same congestion occurs on three-lane motorways as well. Many goods vehicles are limited by law to 56mph, which doesn’t help matters, but we all have to bow to the gods of the carbon footprint and elfansafety, so vehicles that once could overtake relatively briskly can no longer do so.

However, it takes a measure of bloody-mindedness to move out and overtake travelling at one or two miles per hour faster than the vehicle in front, thereby creating a 56mph traffic jam for several miles at a time. The whole thing is summed up by the person making the first comment to the article:

Of course none of this would be necessary if lorry drivers exercised just a smidgin of common sense and courtesy towards other drivers.

Indeed.

Apparently this ban will be enforced by fines and penalty points – so that will work well… Much is made of the French ban on trucks at the weekends and on public holidays. As someone who travels the French motorway system regularly, I can assure you that this ban is regularly breached. Truckers regard the fines as an occupational hazard and worth balancing against the cost of being holed up somewhere unable to get to their destination. The same, I suspect, will apply here.

While I am having a moan about trucks, another comment echoes one of my regular complaints:

They will tailgate other road users with alarming closeness in order to intimidate them to speed up if they find they can’t overtake due to traffic in the outside lane.

Whenever I slow down for a 50mph limit through road works, I invariably see the radiator grill of a truck in my rear view mirror, barely a few feet from my bumper. If anything happened and we had to stop suddenly, I would be crushed and the trucker would walk away. I don’t give a fig if people wish to play fast and loose with their own life – I do have a problem with arrogant bastards who take risks with mine just because they want to ignore the prevailing speed restriction.

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Update: While I’m in full rant mode… When you want to overtake, you check your mirrors and if there is a suitable opening you indicate your intention. You make the move when there is sufficient room for you to do so. What you don’t do is put the indicator on and move out irrespective of any vehicles that may be alongside you at the time. I have to take avoiding action pretty much every motorway trip I do because of this moronic homicidal behaviour.

The NHS Summary Records Database

According to Gillian Braunold, it’s all for our own good, of course. Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she?

The chairman of the BMA, Dr Hamish Meldrum, declared this week that NHS consultants and GPs “have coped up until now without an electronic record of patient details”. And he is right – but at the expense of several high-profile deaths and countless near-misses and incidents of accidental harm, which accessible information could have prevented.

How many, precisely? We are not offered any statistics, but consider this; how many people turn up at A&E who are unconscious, unaccompanied, confused or otherwise unable to communicate and have some sort of life-threatening condition or allergy? Realistically, this is an insignificant problem and if this is the best that HMG can do to justify the £10billion this thing is supposed to cost, then they clearly haven’t done their cost/benefit analysis properly.

Oh, but they can do better:

Inquiries into cases such as those of Penny Campbell, Maria Caldwell, Victoria Climbié and Jonathan Zito all emanate from different parts of the health service. They have one recurring theme: if key information was available at a time when the risk is highest, the vulnerable, the sick and the old would be better protected.

Talk about scraping the barrel. Dragging these cases into the argument is just plain sick. That’s it; bereft of any rational justification for this scheme, they roll out the scare tactics and attempt to pile on some collective guilt into the bargain. Well, I don’t feel guilty and before I left the UK I advised my GP that I wished to opt out. He was sympathetic to my request and expressed his own concerns about the database. It seems as if he is not alone.

We know that patients have concerns about confidentiality and have gone through rigorous processes to ensure that the right levels of security and patient consent are in place. This means that you have an absolute right to opt out of having such an electronic record.

Naturally we have concerns about confidentiality – and with good cause. The government and its agencies have demonstrated remarkable incompetence over the past few years when handling sensitive data; why should this be any different? And, specifically, when a massive central database simply isn’t necessary? As comments to Braunold’s piece point out, there are alternative solutions to the problems she outlines that would be more secure and cost a fraction of the £10Bn of the spine. For example, a smartcard updated at the GP’s surgery when a new medication is prescribed along with relevant care information would be kept by the patient in the event of another medic needing access. Simple, reasonably secure and no need for a database.

But, then, HMG wouldn’t be able to lose it or sell it, would they?

The New McCarthyism

Dick Cheney’s daughter is engaging on a witch hunt, it seems. Her Keep America Safe campaign is targeting lawyers who had the temerity to represent terror suspects.

Now Cheney’s daughter, Liz, has taken up the cudgel by heading what some are describing as a McCarthyite campaign to purge the government of lawyers who dared to defend men, and even a child, accused of terrorism. The lawyers drew particular ire by sometimes defeating in court the Bush administration’s attempts to declare itself beyond the law.

Liz Cheney and her organisation, Keep America Safe, have dubbed lawyers who acted on behalf of accused terrorists, and who now work for the department of justice, the “al-Qaida seven”. The group has rebranded the justice department the “department of jihad”.

Liz Cheney, who trained as a lawyer and served as a deputy assistant secretary of state in the same administration as her father, is backed by some Republican members of congress, relatives of 9/11 victims and parts of the conservative press who have accused the lawyers, some of whom worked pro bono, of “coddling” and “abetting” terrorists.

The longer I live, the more I realise that humanity learns nothing from the past. The whole point of a judicial system is that we are all equal before it – innocent or guilty, no matter how heinous the offence of which we have been accused.

Deny the accused terrorist a fair trial with full legal representation and you undermine the whole process. Deny the accused paedophile his right to a fair trial on the evidence and nothing but the evidence, and you deny all of us a right to a fair trial.

Once more, I have to refer to A Man for All Seasons, because once more, I see that the lesson contained therein is being ignored:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

Liz Cheney’s is the behaviour of the lynch mob and she the self-appointed witch-finder general. Just as the howls of outrage and demands for information by the British tabloids over Jon Venables last week, this too, seeks to undermine the rule of law, because the lynch mob will never be out for the decent, upright, law abiding citizen, will it?

Keep America Safe – whose mission statement says the current administration is “unwilling to stand up for America” – has recently launched a television attack advert questioning the loyalty of the targeted lawyers and sinisterly asking: Whose values do they share?

I’d have thought that fairly obvious; they value the rule of law and the right to a fair trial; basic principles that underpin any civilised society, something of which Liz Cheney should be fully aware.

But the assault has prompted an unexpected backlash from some former Bush administration lawyers and officials who have joined liberal critics in denouncing the campaign as unAmerican and violating the principle that even the most unpopular defendant is entitled to a lawyer.

Quite.

Why do I keep thinking of “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

More Mass Punishment of the Law Abiding Majority

Once again, this truly appalling government resorts to mass punishment to resolve what is, in fact, a small problem that is already illegal.

All dog owners in England and Wales would have to insure against their pet attacking someone, under Labour proposals to tackle dangerous breeds.

Police and local authorities could also be given powers to force owners of dangerous dogs to muzzle them, or even get them neutered.

So, because some dog owners are irresponsible, all dog owners have to be punished. Timmy asks the money question.

There are pet insurance companies. They would clearly benefit from the passing of such a law.

Someone should start tabling questions in the House. Which Ministers have met representatives of such companies? Which such companies have made donations to which political parties? Who knows who?

Indeed. After all, the vast majority of dogs do not attack people and the vast majority of owners keep them responsibly. Why, therefore, should they pay unnecessary insurance, if not to benefit the insurance industry?

Another part of the proposal is compulsory microchipping.

All dogs are to be compulsorily microchipped so that their owners can be more easily traced under a crackdown on dangerous dogs to be unveiled today.

Sigh… The people who keep pit-bulls in defiance of the existing dangerous dogs act – a stupid and ill-conceived piece of legislation – will be equally likely to ignore this new piece of equally ill-conceived legislation. Responsible owners already microchip their animals or otherwise identify them so that if they do stray, they can be reunited with them.

So, one more, we have a failing government making up silly laws on the basis of tabloid headlines.

Censoring the Troops.

Via Constantly Furious, this:

British journalists and TV crews are to be banned from the Afghan front line once a date for the election has been set, while senior officers will be prohibited from making public speeches and talking to reporters.

MoD websites will also be “cleansed” of any “non-factual” material including anything containing troops’ opinions of the war, according to a memo leaked to The Daily Telegraph.

Cleansed, eh? So MoD folk aren’t allowed to express an opinion because it might cost Labour votes. This is pretty disgraceful stuff and that’s putting it mildly.

In the memo, Nick Gurr, the MoD’s director of media and communications, says “embeds” for all British news broadcasters and national journalists will be prohibited during the campaign, expected to begin later this month.

Why? What possible justification is there for this? That there is an election coming is no excuse. We, the electorate, have a right to know how things are going. After all, we are paying for it and it is our youth who are dying for it. That it might be embarrassing for Labour is tough shit, frankly. Mind you, foreign and local journalists aren’t banned and in these days of global media those determined enough can watch foreign channels, undermining the ban. Therefore, the only possible justification for this is to restrict domestic audiences, who for the most part won’t go out of their way to find a workaround, for political motives.

Mr Gurr says that allowing journalists to report from the frontline during the election “could call into question [the forces’] political impartiality or give rise to the criticism that public resources are being used for party political purposes.”

Bollocks! Banning them is what smacks of party political purposes.

But the order has led to accusations that the government wants to hide the true picture of the war in Afghanistan from voters.

Er, yes.

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said he would table an emergency question in the House of Commons demanding an explanation on Monday.

“Given the recent visit of the Prime Minister, this is a bad joke,” he said. “There is clearly one rule for Gordon Brown, when he wants to use the armed forces as political props, and another for reporters who want to tell the public what is being done in their name.

“It’s a truth blackout. Nothing, especially the truth, is to stand in the way in Brown’s election. Our armed forces can fight and die, but not write or speak. Any critics of the Government are to be banned from having any contact with the press. This is the grotesque endgame of New Labour. They want to bury bad news and bury the truth.”

I doubt he’ll get a valid explanation; rather the usual cockwaffle used to justify Labour control freakery. I expect terrorism will find its way into the weasel words used to justify what can only be described as politically driven censorship.

CF has this to say on the matter of censoring the troops:

This is some chilling stuff. What next? How the fuck do they think they’re going to get away with this?

Soldiers, Civil servants. Anyone with any ‘non-factual’ material. CF hereby throws his blog open to you.

Come here, and have your say. Have a guest post. Have as many as you want. Email CF, DM CF on Twitter. Stick links in the comments.

We will not let this fucking corrupt, mendacious, inept Government censor you for PR reasons.

Labour can censor and restrict the tame, buyable, dead-tree media, but they can fuck right off out of the blogosphere.

Quite.