Abandoned, I am! Herself has driven off to visit unwell Mum and quite frail unwell Dad - due back late tomorrow. But she’s just phoned to say she got there in v. good time with fairly light traffic. So that’s good. Weather better than yesterday and warmer - but not amazing. Bach playing today - sparked by a reference in a novel I’m reading. Good stuff. I wish I played an instrument other than drums / percussion. I love that and always did but just now and again I’d love to play twiddly bits and tunes. But the grass on the other side of the fence is always greener and it’s too late now.
Well, I seem to have lit the blue touch paper with my previous musings. Firstly many thanks for the various insights I received. That’s an aspect of this blogging business that I just love. I’ve always loved debate as opposed to two ‘deaf’ people just repeating the same shouted frozen attitudes at each other. But some response seems called for so here’s where I’m at. (If you’re bored with the topic(s) look away now).
Firstly some general principles. There are millions of people and so statistically a percentage of them will do bloody stupid things. For each of us there will have been times when we did unwise or downright stupid things. I certainly have. Fortunately, most of the time we get away with them and harm neither ourselves nor anyone else. But sometimes we do.
Then, in reality, accidents happen. An accident is just that - someone in the wrong place at the wrong time or doing the wrong thing - like standing on a swivel office chair to reach something off the top shelf, twisting, falling and striking a sharp edge on the way down. There is an insane culture around at present saying that there should be no accidents and if one happens it MUST be someone else’s fault and there must be compensation. Stupid. People should look out for themselves and avoid hazards like a damaged pavement stone or ‘trip’ as it’s called. Just watch where you walk, OK? If the problem is caused by active error on the part of someone else then that leaves room for discussion.
Try this for a brutal current example. Two nice young teenage girls wanted to go by train to Cambridge for Christmas shopping. They had to buy tickets on one platform then cross the railway lines to the other platform to join the train that was waiting there. They were killed by a train coming the other way at about 1oo mph. That is awful. Their families are desolated and two lovely young lives have been snuffed out. But it was an accident. So although there were warning lights flashing which they must have seen people want to blame the railway company because the access gate wasn’t locked. The unpalatable other face of the coin is that they should have got to the station earlier to allow comfortable time to buy a ticket and cross a clear line to wait for the train they wanted. They should have attended to the light signal. They should have thought ‘we can’t see the other line past the bulk of the train standing in the station so we can’t be sure that nothing is coming so we shouldn’t risk it’. But they did. And they’re dead. And that’s horrible. But that was an accident. It is ludicrous to seek to prevent anyone, ever, from suffering an accident caused by an error of their judgement - or that of someone else - or an uncontrollable physical event - like the tsunami.
Unconvinced? Mad at me? As I understand it (and this may vary from State to State - I don’t know) in the USA if some stranger enters the grounds of my property or, worse, my building, I can shoot him / her and it’s their fault for being there uninvited and unwanted. Here in the UK if I confront a burglar on my property and I have the strength to oppose them or, dear me, use a weapon of any kind, I am WRONG and have offended against the burglar. What? At my age I could never win against a young man intent on stealing from me. So the only way I can defend myself and my property would be by using help - sword, gun, w.h.y. But I would be wrong. And this blisteringly stupid damned Labour government filibustered out a private member’s bill to put that imbalance right. OK. Why are any of you suppoorting an unspeakable government that believes a burglar has more rights that I have when he’s on my private property? Please explain why that is not totally and absolutely perverted. Sick. Yuck. So the State and politicians can be wrong.
Which brings us to speed cameras in the UK. These are a steam-hammer to crack a nut. Two police forces reject them (rightly) and say it’s not sheer speed that’s the problem, it’s poor driving OR an accident caused by the cyclist / pedestrian behaving without thought. They say that cameras do not reduce accidents but good traffic policing does because they catch bad drivers. Where cameras are put up, traffic police are taken away. So bad driving goes un-noticed but a technicality brings a fine without being able to say that the road was clear and dry, weather fine, vehicle fully under control.
The area where I live is littered in cameras. We were told that they would be set up only where there had been a series of accidents with pedestrians. Not true. There are a number set up on clear stretches of road where there hasn’t even been a two car fender-bender let alone an accident which hurt a person. There is a notorious strech of dual carriageway with a 40 mph speed limit between two roundabouts. The line of the road is straight, no hidden stretch of road - nothing. But because there is housing on one side which has a separate service road in front of it and is not on the main road itself - it’s 40. That kind of thing simply makes a mockery of all these do-gooders.
Stu was concerned that when I adjust the radio or heater in my car I might hit a cyclist. He didn’t mention the number of EXTRA accidents caused by cameras because people have their eyes pinned on their speedo rather than the road (Fact). He didn’t mention that when I was out and about earlier this week in the dark there were bloody death defyingly stupid cyclists who were riding along WITH NEITHER FRONT NOR REAR LIGHTS. And this is LEGAL??? And he didn’t mention that through my inflated Council Tax I have paid for ‘cycle ways’ to be created - BUT stupid cyclists refuse to use them - and there is no law saying that they have to. So I’m in the car, the cyclist won’t use a dedicated cycle track and insists on wearing dark clothing whilst ambling along without any lights whatsoever - and suddenly it’s MY FAULT if I hit him? Go make sense of that. You can’t, because it’s non-sense.
Brad really lost his sense of humour with me which I’m sorry about. No speed camera would stop a very elderly lady making a very unfortunate mistake and hitting his family at 25 mph on a zebra crossing. See above. It was an accident. The driver’s fault, not the family. And had the driver been a drugged-up youngster in a stolen car doing 45 mph then he may well have lost his family. No camera can change that. Seen the recent picture taken by a speed camera of the faces of 3 louts in a stolen car doing 40 in a 30 limit? You need police for that, not a camera. And Brad - I didn’t set out to cause offence but your comment is an example of the impossibility of discussing in public ideas which libertarians propound but which are not necessarily sensible. Lord Hutton suggests that ‘as long as the average [person] can speak their mind there is no problem’ - but I’m afraid that obviously there is. Just because you do not share my viewpoint doesn’t make me wrong. So no need for language that might offend the kids.
Cars don’t kill people, people do. Guns don’t kill people, people do. Yet because one deranged person tragically murdered children in Dunblane my wife and I - and many other perfectly sensible people - had to surrender the pistols we enjoyed using on the local range and now can no longer enjoy exercising our skills. For many years I was a certified weapons training instructor and safety / range officer. I am very highly aware of the need for the safe handling of firearms. But some lunatic politician in an orgy of publicity-seeking has taken from me a particular pleasure and decreed that he knows better than I and indeed that I am incapable of exercising care in the use of firearms. Sheer arrogant offensive libertarian nonsense. I bet I’ve fired more rounds in safety and taught more people safe weapon handling than he even imagined. And meanwhile there has been an explosion in the number of ‘Saturday night specials’ owned and used by scum who never had a lesson in gun use in their lives but blow others away every weekend. So it’s OK for them but not for me. That’s plain disgusting.
So let’s lighten up a bit and become more questioning about whether the nanny-state is necessarily right. And let’s reclaim the rights of the individual and the need for us all to become personally responsible not slave-subjects. Britain used to be the land of the free. Not any more.
You all know about John Dunn (b. 1834 lived in S.Africa) He became very strongly associated with the Zulu Nation. In 1856 a civil war broke out between the King’s two sons Mbuyasi and Cetshwayo. Many thousands of Zulus died. Cetshwayo won and the King let him effectively run the Zulu Nation. He became King on the death of his father in 1872. He asked Dunn to be his Secretary and Diplomatic Advisor and Dunn was subsequently acclaimed a Zulu Chief. Although he had a white wife, to her displeasure he was awarded sundry Zulu wives and ultimately wound up with about 45 of them and sired about 110 children - so there’s a lot of Dunn history about to this day.
He said ‘The creation of wealth is almost a duty because of the widespread benefits that flow from it.’ Why is a University Graduate like Brown unable to understand that without a strong and thriving private sector there will be no funds for him to squander blindly on the public sector?
Have a peaceful day - Dad
