We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
The excellent “swearblogger” at Devil’s Kitchen, recently suffered a nasty car accident. He’s okay, although his car was damaged. I could not help notice in the associated comments that some character called Neil Harding chose to make a cheap political crack about how this proved that we “individualists” who like cars should take the train instead. It was not a friendly word of sympathy for someone involved in a potentially fatal accident.
Maybe I am in a grumpy mood today, but please, would these car-haters, these collectivist train fans, please, please just go off to North Korea. Not everyone can rely on public transport, Mr Harding.
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Ford Model-T car, the vehicle that changed the face of the automobile business, helping to put the four-wheeled auto within reach of a vast swathe of the American population. Ford’s mass-production techniques may not have been totally original, since one can argue that some of the features of mass production used had been employed in parts of the industrialised world before. But the factories that churned out these cars were probably the most famous forms of mass-production in their time, and encouraged a host of imitators.
Here’s a nifty slide-show on the anniversary.
The day before yesterday, while travelling on the London Underground, I came across an interesting little news item in one of those free newspapers, about how a visit by President Bush to Britain caused disruption at Heathrow a week or two ago. Heathrow being near to Bush’s destination, which was Windsor Castle, he or someone decided that he would arrive there, rather than at a military base. Only last night did I remember to chase it up on the internet. Here is the original version of the story I encountered.
British Airways has criticised Heathrow owner BAA for allowing George Bush to fly into the UK’s biggest airport, forcing the cancellation of at least 69 flights and disrupting the travel plans of 40,000 passengers.
Willie Walsh, BA chief executive, said he was angry that the presidential entourage, which included two Boeing 747 jets and four helicopters, caused chaos 10 days ago as runways were closed and planes grounded. “The decision to allow President Bush and his fleet of aircraft to fly into Heathrow rather than a military base was one all of Heathrow’s users could have done without,” he said. “I am also angry that this was allowed.”
Walsh said the disruption began two days before the president’s visit on June 15 and lasted for the two days that his party stayed in the UK. Heathrow was reduced to one working runway for 30 minutes on June 15 and 16, after its other runway was closed temporarily for the arrival and departure of Air Force One.
I know, I know. If it had been any other President, the Guardian would not have been half so exercised. And had it been President Chavez causing all this fuss, they would have found a way of saying how splendid that was. But this time I happen to agree. Read the rest of the article to learn the full scale of the disruption.
I remember being shocked, in Edinburgh I think it was, when by chance I happened to observe the then Prime Minister John Major being driven past, in the midst of a huge fleet of black cars and police motorbikes. Ordinary motorists were swept from the road to make room for all this shinily mechanised pomposity. It is one thing to object to “statism” in an abstract sort of way, as I had long been doing even then. It’s quite another to observe the actual state in action, in a great flurry of self-importance such as this was. Nothing I was doing was deranged, luckily for me. But I know just how little all these people in their black cars and their blaring motorbikes would have cared if my plans and activities had been thus interrupted. And now these people are crashing through major airports and screwing them around, as if air travel wasn’t chaotic enough already. In the old USSR they used to have dedicated central lanes for the fat cats to be driven along in their convoys of fatcatmobiles. Now the whole world seems to be heading in that direction.
I am not an admirer of British Airways. From what I hear, the habit of BA’s senior management of shouting at anyone who tries to tell them bad news (they call this procedure, bizarrely: “NLP”) was a major cause of the recent Terminal 5 luggage catastrophe. Lots saw this disaster coming. They tried to tell their bosses. Instead of listening and taking the necessary corrective steps, the bosses simply shouted. But I like what BA’s top boss said about this more recent episode very much.
Swiss banks have not had a good time of it lately, which does rather dent their image of being sober-suited outfits able to protect your millions. UBS, the Zurich-based banking and wealth management group, has booked a total of $37 billion in losses connected to the credit crunch. Wow. Even other banking groups in the Alpine state, like Clariden Leu, Julius Baer and Credit Suisse, have suffered – though not remotely as badly as UBS, which possibly may break up or get taken over.
So I was a bit bemused to read that Credit Suisse has hired former US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta as an adviser. Has no-one told Credit Suisse that this fellow used to be known unflatteringly as “Underperformin’ Norman” when he was in charge of sorting out airport security and other areas?
Random searches of Britons going about their business are now established features of life in this country. The old refrain – “It could not happen here”, no longer applies. On Saturday, while driving along the side of the Thames towards Westminster, passing by the Tate Gallery, I was flagged down by a policeman.
Officer: “Could you show me your driving licence? This is a section 41 search” (at least I think that is what he said).
Me: “Section 41 or whatever of what?”
Officer: “The Terrorism Act”
Me: “Why have you pulled me and my wife over?”
Officer: “We are doing searches of vehicles in the area.”
Me: “Well obviously you are. Is this a random thing?”
Officer: “Yes. Please hand over your driving licence and we want to search the car.”
They searched the car, called up the driving licence authority, and were able to their enormous satisfaction confirm that I was whom I said I was. I was then asked to sign a document stating that the search had been carried out as it should have been. The officer gave me his name, rank and police station number and address. When I signed the form, he asked me how I wanted to classify myself as there were about 15 options, including “White British”. He was polite. My treatment was fine. The officer and his colleagues told me they were on duty, searching vehicles, for the rest of the day and into the evening.
Now I will spare you a rant about the impertinence of this. You can, gentle reader, assume as a matter of course that I regard such random searches of members of the public as impertinent. What makes me wonder, though, is what on earth the supporters of such searches expect? Do they honestly, really believe that would-be terrorists will be deterred, frightened off or caught? Unless the police put up roadblocks across London, at god-knows what disruption and cost, I do not see how doing this on one of many major roads will cause a blind bit of difference.
This is what has been called “security theatre”: lots of action signifying little. Even the copper who carried out the search had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed.
Update: One commenter has complained that I am getting all upset for no good reason and has used the argument that this sort of behaviour is okay as it can act as a “fishing” expedition to unearth potentially other crimes. It is hard to summon breath to deal with such a brazen argument in favour of abolishing the idea that one is presumed innocent until otherwise.
Update 2: a reader asked for further details on the search. From the time I was pulled over to being let on my way, the process lasted 15 minutes. The police officer’s colleague called up the driving licence authority to give them my licence registration number and the authority took about 10 minutes to get back. An officer opened the car boot, rummaged around some bags and luggage – I was travelling up to Cambridge with my wife – and had a look inside the car. They also inspected my clothes and checked my footwear. They did not ask me to open the glove compartment of the car. They also did not look under the car with a mirror or anything similar, or look under the bonnet.
I do not normally like receiving emails selling me products, but I thought I would have to make an exception for this:
Dear Antoine,
Virgin Galactic is delighted to announce a new destination… space. Climb to 360,000ft. at a cruising speed of almost three times the speed of sound, in unprecedented levels of safety and comfort. See our beautiful planet from 63 miles up and experience the magic of weightlessness.
Redeem 200,000 miles to receive 10% off the cost of a spaceflight, that’s an incredible $20,000 saving!* Join our future astronauts and book your place in history.
I look forward to the Nigerian version:
“My name is Mr.Moses Odiaka. I work in the credit and accounts department of Union Bank of NigeriaPlc,Lagos, Nigeria. I write you in respect of a foreign customer with a Virgin Galactica ticket. His name is Engineer Manfred Becker. He was among those who died in a plane crash here in Nigeria during the reign of late General Sani Abacha.
Since the demise of this our customer, Engineer Manfred Becker, who was an oil merchant/contractor, I have kept a close watch of the deposit records and accounts and since then nobody has come to claim the airmiles in this a/c as next of kin to the late Engineer. He had only 18.5mllion air miles in his a/c and the a/c is coded. It is only an insider that could produce the code or password of the deposit particulars. As it stands now,there is nobody in that position to produce the needed information other than my very self considering my position in the bank.”
Via the Association of British Drivers (and Transport Blog) comes news of this wondrous logo, which advertises the activities of something called GMPTE:
I don’t know when this poster was first displayed, but it is the star of the most recent ABD press release, so presumably quite recently.
It doesn’t actually say at the GMPTE website what GMPTE stands for. I had to go here to be sure that it stands for Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive. If that logo is any guide to GMPTE’s modus operandi I should guess that it is also known locally as Gumpty Dumpty.
Anyone worried by Natalie’s posting below should be aware that you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet. Tom Griffin of The Green Ribbon has obtained a full listing of the information it is intended to collect (and distribute among various authorities) concerning those buying tickets to move from any one of Britain, the Irish Republic, and Northern Ireland to any of the others.
There has been a common travel area since St Patrick, and this was formalised in the 20th century when the countries of Britain and Ireland came incompletely apart. Now it seems both governments are in effect conspiring to introduce internal passports and replace a common travel area with a common surveillance area.
[hat-tip: spyblog]
One of the not-so-secret reasons why motor cars are popular, to the fury of some, is that some of the designs are just staggeringly beautiful. As with aircraft or yachts, the aesthetics of a perfectly designed machine should never be underestimated. At a time when much so-called Modern Art (the capital M and A says it all) is such empty, vacuous tosh, it is a fact that needs to be remarked that so much industrial design that we have today is outstanding, inventive, clever, even a bit naughty.
This must surely be contender for one of the very best, courtesy of those clever men at Alfa Romeo.
Patrick Crozier and various others, of whom I am one, continue to put stuff up at Transport Blog from time to time (although my contributions are not always very profound). One of the more interesting Transport Blog items of recent weeks has been this recorded conversation in which Samizdata’s own Michael Jennings talks with Patrick Crozier about low cost airlines. Says Patrick: “Here‘s my favourite bit.”
This favourite bit is worth quoting in full:
Jennings: There was an airline named ValuJet which flew a plane into the Everglades and everybody on that plane was killed. Now this sort of put a damper on the discount airlines of the US, because ValuJet was the second largest discount airline in the US at that point after South West, and it got out … once there was an investigation into this crash, it turned out that ValuJet had cut costs in all kinds of places, and in particular they’d simply neglected safety. And because the fact that this one discount airline in the US had done terribly bad things with respect to maintenance, discount airlines in the US didn’t grow as fast after that as they probably would have if this crash had not happened.
Crozier: It’s interesting that that does sort of put a kibosh on the profits-before-safety argument. If you try to put profits you lose the safety, and if you lose the safety you lose the profits.
Jennings: The interesting thing which came out of that was that discount airlines in other parts of the world really, really learned a lesson from that. Discount airlines in Europe, in particular RyanAir, which is … one of the most ferocious cost-cutting companies I’ve ever seen of any kind … it doesn’t skimp on maintenance. The lesson was learned that whatever you do, you do your maintenance properly, because if you do skimp on maintenance and a plane crashes that will be the end of you, basically.
One of Patrick Crozier’s relentless Transport Blog memes is that safety and profit are not alternatives; they go hand in hand. As he says here in connection with railways, where exactly the same equation applies:
… crashes are expensive. You lose the train, you lose passenger revenue through delays and cancellations and you probably have to rebuild the track. As a rail executive once said: “Even a minor derailment or a collision can cost a fortune. I mean millions.”
No wonder Patrick was glad to hear Michael saying a similar thing not just about airlines, but in particular about cheap airlines.
My favourite bit is where, reflecting on the impact on low cost aviation of the Second World, Michael says:
There are probably more airstrips in East Anglia than there are in all of China.
It’s not so much that I never knew that as that it had never occurred to me to even think about it.
A wonderful snippet from a BBC radio reporter (Ed Stourton) in Afghanistan for the Today programme: A new bus-stop has been built in Lashikar Gah as part of the ‘reconstruction’ effort.
The report does not say whether it is a replacement for a pre-war bus-stop. Somehow I doubt it. It is very well-equipped, having its own mosque and a pharmacy, as waiting times “can be rather long”.
An odd approach. In most of the world a bus-stop is a place where buses happen to stop. Of course bus-stops, like ports and railway stations all round the world provide opportunities for traders, places of worship, bars and cafes and so forth, but they seldom have them built in. Bus companies and their passengers are primarily interested in selling and buying travel. The pause at the roadside to move from foot to wheel, wheel to foot, refuel, refresh, is just procedural necessity.
Even in the first world, where there are some fabulous bus stations and garages, mostly this is an utilitarian afterthought, contingently well-designed. Everywhere (I thought) the buses are the transport network, not the stops. You have a shed for the buses at the end of the route, and signs to show where the buses are supposed to stop. Many places they do without the shed, not least because the buses are always on the move maximising their passenger-, luggage- and livestock- miles.
But a government bus-stop is built to different, higher, standards. A throwaway line at the end of the report reveals just how long those waiting times are: “There are no buses yet.”
In some of the recent understandable moans about the sheer awfulness of Britain’s state-controlled rail network – please don’t try and tell me it has much to do with laissez faire capitalism – several commentators have complained about the dearth of people entering the fields of engineering. Jeff Randall in today’s Daily Telegraph does so. Various reasons are given for this lack of talent: the education system, an anti-science, anti-technology culture, etc. While some of these factors have a part to play in this, I do not think these explanations get to the core of the issue. If railway engineers do not earn large salaries and the job is not seen to be worth the hassle compared with say, becoming a hedge fund manager in London’s West End, it is not a surprise to see what will happen. If or when the remuneration for being a new Brunel rivals or even exceeds that of being a Goldman Sachs derivatives dealer, we will get more engineers, and of higher quality. It is that simple.
Or maybe one problem is that railways, perhaps because of the problems now facing the UK industry, are seen as just plain dull. As Randall says, confessing to being a railway engineer may not always be a great move at a dinner party, or for that matter, on a hot date. I am not sure how one changes that.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
