That's fucking stupid

Posts Tagged ‘Transport’

The old expression about a bad workman and his tools is generally fairly true; it is often the workman who selects the tools so any failure of the tools must surely be a byproduct of poor selection or improper use. If a tool is used in a way that it was not intended, use for a malfarious purpose or not maintained well then the blame must also lay at the feet of the workman. I was once stabbed with a three quarter inch bevelled edge chisel and while it was all very unfortunate I can’t bring myself to blame the chisel for its actions.

At this point you may be wondering where I am going with this, am I now going to step forward in support of the NRA? Am I going to start saying that as it’s the people holding the guns that do the killing, gun control should be relaxed?

Am I bollocks.

Guns are indeed the tools that enable a person to kill another person, tools which can be used for other reasons; mainly to kill animals or to just get shit and giggles from waving it around and showing off. What is important to remember though is that if there are lots of tools around and it’s easy to get hold of these tools then the chances of people getting shot increases because more careless workmen will be fully equipped for mayhem.

But that’s beside the point.

The whole workman/tool thing is more an analogy for all those government departments that come under regular scrutiny every day in the ‘newspapers’; in the last week there have been criticisms of the police, social services and there is an ever present criticism of the armed forces for their role in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The health service in the UK is shit, immigration officials are shit, the government regulators are shit, the traffic wombles who close the roads and hand out tin foil are shit and of course the teachers who are moulding the next generation are shit.

But if they are shit, or doing a shit job, is this their fault? Are the social services department directly involved with Baby P really eligible for the witch hunt that the media insisted upon? Are the nurses and doctors who work long hours on low pay to blame for MRSA, long waiting lists and the occasional mistakes that are inevitable in a health service serving sixty million people? The media have no concept of ‘good enough’; in most cases so long as the system works most of the time it is pointless and unrealistic to spend a disproportionate amount of time and effort trying to fix the few that fall through the net. If you fuck up one nail out of a hundred you probably wouldn’t go and buy a new hammer. While the individual cases of failure in a government department are pretty tragic these cases are extraordinary and do not warrant the sort of knee jerk legislation that the current government has made its trademark.

But proportionate response aside, who’s to blame?

I am in the difficult position of being very supportive of our troops, our police, our health service and our teachers while being heavily opposed to many of the things they do. Iraq and Afghanistan were immoral and pointless wars which we should not have entered into but during the course of the conflict we must support the armed services in the difficult job they are doing. The NHS is a shambles but doctors and nurses work bloody hard to do the best they can in all but a handful of cases. Teachers are undermined at every turn by parents, education authorities and successive governments yet most entered the profession in order to help kids make the best of themselves.

If you compare a soldier to a powertool you will find many similarities. Both are only as effective as the person directing their actions, both need careful maintenance and both can be used in a constructive and destructive way depending on who is in charge of them. In this respect the tragedies in Iraq cannot be blamed on the soldiers out there pulling the trigger because they are a tool of the state, the sharp edge of a tool that the government uses to protect our interests. Our armed forces are currently not being well maintained (low pay, poor housing, substantial MOD budget shortfalls due to lack of funding for costly overseas conflicts), they are being used inappropriately (sent to fight wars we have no business involving ourselves in) and when they are damaged they are not being repaired, they are just discarded with little thought to the ever growing pile of damaged soldiers and the ever dwindling supply of recruits.

The workman weilding all these tools is the state, not the government. The government itself is just a flawed tool of the people with a mandate to direct these services on behalf of the nation; it is the electorate who allowed the government to send the troops in to Iraq and Afghanistan, it was the electorate which allowed the government to starve the police, NHS and education services of the levels of funding that we need in order to operate effectively. The people were happy to elect the party which took us to war and very few people objected to the individuals who ordered this on our behalf, the people were happy to take tax cuts and increases in public spending while knowing that this is an unsustainable economic model, the people were happy to borrow 5 times their salary in order to make a quick profit on the property ladder and the people have stood by and criticised teachers while the government has all but privatised education with their public/private partnership academies.

The people of London even voted out one of their hardest working public servants in favour of a blundering personality who attracts media interest.

So next time you are reading some reactionary piece that calls for the head of a social worker or asks for the resignation of a senior policeman you must think to yourself: is this system ‘good enough’ or do I need to do something about it. Whatever you do don’t look around for someone to blame because the blames lies at your feet.

After seeing this I thought I would run it by the ASA in case it was a statement that should be substantiated. Carlsberg can’t say that their beer is definitely the best beer in the world because they can’t prove it so why should the bible thumpers be able to state as fact something that nobody can prove?

Turns out that the Christian Party, as a political party, is exempt from rule which prevent lying. The letter I got from the ASA said that their code prevents them from interfering with the political process.

12.1 Any advertisement or direct marketing communication, whenever published or distributed, whose principal function is to influence voters in local, regional, national or international elections or referendums is exempt from the Code.

I would, of course, argue that the advertisement in question was aimed at recruiting members to the party rather than influence voters in an election. Either way the toothless ASA won’t get involved.

From the ASA code:

3.4 Obvious untruths or exaggerations that are unlikely to mislead and incidental minor errors and unorthodox spellings are all allowed provided they do not affect the accuracy or perception of the marketing communication in any material way.

Well i guess that’s how they are going to justify this:

From the Highways Agency via BBC news:

it’s the wrong type of grit for the wrong type of snow

Thanks to Ewan Spence for the tip via Twitter

EDIT

It’s a close one between the above quote and this little musing heard on twitter from @seaneeboy

..funny how heavy snowfall in Scotland never gets this amount of news coverage

I was quite pleased to see that noted scientist, economist and government policy advisor* Alistair McGowan has been speaking out about the proposed (and de facto approved) plans to expand Heathrow with a further terminal and runway. I wonder if Mr McGowan has gotten a little carried away with his day job; one where he impersonates people who either know what they are talking about or whose opinion the public cares about. Along with a bunch of other well meaning luvvies, McGowan would rather see an investment in high speed rail links and people being ferried around the country between smaller distributed airports.

The BBC, meanwhile is doing a Have Your Say item in which literally dozens of people who live near Heathrow are complaining that it’s too noisy and they don’t think that there should be an airport expansion. Oddly enough they are quiet about their choice of airport to fly from, one must assume that they trek up to ‘London’ Stanstead or ‘London’ Luton for their flights or down to ‘London’ Gatwick or maybe over to ‘London’ Bristol airport. Maybe they take the tube, bus and walk to the easily accessible London ‘City’ airport which is somewhere in the docklands and great for those who happen to also own a helicopter to get them there.

Heathrow is the busiest airport for a bunch of reasons, most are pretty dull and have something to do with it being a major carrier hub, close to London and well connected on the rail and tube networks. It is, in fact, the only airport in the UK that is within the M25 and connected to both the rail and tube networks so logically it’s the airport of choice for anyone in the south east who does not want to: