Monday Moan 70

BIG BROTHER IN HERTFORDSHIRE?

In Watford they are trialing an electronic speed warning sign which flashes up the offending driver's car number.  The intention is said to be to get motorist’s to reduce their speed and the data will not be collected or drivers fined or otherwise punished.

 

I have been pondering on this.  Surely if such signs are to be used then you would expect them to be sited in places where speed is a real danger, as evidenced by a history of accidents. But if that’s the case then either there would be cameras there already or drivers should not be let off with what amounts to just a warning?  If the signs are not situated in such dangerous places then what’s the point?

 

Of course, there is no general agreement on whether such warnings are a good idea.  On one side we have people saying it’s just another example of big-brother watching you and on the other we have people who say we need this because of the high number of deaths on the road.  At this point statistics are usually added in order to help prove the viewpoint being expressed.  Someone said we need the signs because 5,500 people are killed on our roads every year.  In fact, the true number is around 1700 - every death as a result of a motoring accident is a tragedy, but the number killed in these circumstances in the UK has been falling since the mid-1980s and is now at its lowest level since 1926.  Just under 25% of those deaths are as a result of exceeding the speed limit or driving too fast for the conditions.

 

Some may see this speed indicator development as a rather effective deterrent. Others may wonder about the further loss of freedoms to go about your daily business without the ‘authorities’ keeping a watching eye on you.  It all depends on your viewpoint. 

 

How will this all develop in the future? I imagine that in the labs they have prototypes that will show pictures of cyclists who jump red lights and of drivers who fail to signal at roundabouts. An even more exciting version will flash up the names and addresses of drivers who are not following the most logical route home after work. 

 

Just imagine how much more successful those old totalitarian states would have been if only they had survived long enough to benefit from today's technology.

 

 

WEATHER CHAOS

The UK has been on high alert today because of a major storm battering the south of the country. 

Of course, what constitutes a ‘major’ storm in the UK is not necessarily what people in other parts of the world would see in the same way.  Some might even consider that we have overreacted and been a little wimpish about the whole thing.

It must be good to be Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT transport union, since he is a man who never has a moment’s doubt about the cause of any problems.  He goes through life certain in the knowledge that it was all management’s fault.  

So, Bob knows that  the decision by the rail companies to cancel morning services today was not because of the weather forecast, but because the number of employees on the railways had been "hacked to the bone" by management. 

Network Rail, the rail infrastructure company, thought otherwise, saying that “it was impossible to run services in hurricane-force winds and that lives would have been put at risk if trains had operated".  At 08.40 they said that they had discovered over 100 trees on train lines in the South East of England.

No doubt Bob would have condemned management as being irresponsible and cavalier with people’s lives had the trains run and an accident occurred.  See, that’s the beauty of being Bob – whatever happens you can have a go at someone else.

 

 

IT DOESN’T HELP TO SELL IT TO THE REST OF US

Last week saw the death of Sir Anthony Caro, said by many to be the most important British sculptor of the last century.

There was the obligatory Will Gompertz piece on the BBC news and viewers who might previously have been unaware of Sir Anthony and his importance were given a brief opportunity to see for themselves the kinds of things he produced, such as this one. 

Some viewers may have concurred with the view that he was a genius, Others may have wondered why anybody would think some railway sleepers painted yellow should be so highly regarded.

But few, if any, will have thought along the lines of the following explanation from the NY Times of why Caro was so revered:-

“Caro took sculpture off the pedestal, stretched it across the floor and expanded it into airy concatenations of brightly coloured lines and planes made with industrial metal sheets, pipes, tubes and beams. Perfectly composed yet seemingly freshly improvised, they gave the impression of color liberated from physical support, like paintings in space, or jazz.”

 

Nor will it have helped people to understand his position in the arts to be told that his second most famous contribution to the world was as co-designer of the Millennium Bridge in London (cost of £18.2m; closed after three days because of excessive swaying, arising from the apparently unforeseen fact that people would walk on it; reopened months later after spending £5m on a redesign and rebuild).   Probably want to keep quiet about that one.

 

 

MORE ALARMING TOILET NEWS

In Moan 68 I mentioned the shock to the system from experiencing the sudden noise and suction caused by the unintentional triggering of a sensor activated flush whilst sitting on a toilet.

 

News from Norway last week made me realise how trivial this was in comparison with other events.

 

On one of the islands of Hvaler, in the South East of Norway, a 70 year-old man was quietly sitting on the toilet in his holiday cottage, perhaps thinking about the day ahead, or maybe reading the newspaper.   He would not have thought it necessary to put on his bullet-proof vest, even if he had such a thing.  But had he done so then he would have avoided being air-lifted to hospital in Oslo, having been shot by a stray bullet from a hunter, apparently unable to distinguish between a moose and a holiday cottage.  

 

Makes sitting on the auto-flushing toilet seem like a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.