Gordon Brown
I won’t comment on the policies of the main parties, as they were debated in Parliament after the Queen’s Speech today. To me they are irrelevant, as we must get on with the task of sorting the mess out, rather than scoring points.
But I’ve never heard Prudence sound so tired and almost shot to pieces. He’s not a good or jaunty speaker, but he was as uninspiring as you can get. There didn’t seem to be any conviction in his words, no passion, just the repeating of tired phrases.
He should go! And in the manner suggested by The Moody Blues.
Cynicism About the Cambridge Busway
The Cambridge Evening News has a poll for readers about when the busway will open. Voters are obviously showing a good deal of East Anglian cynicism.
I think it will open in February.
Egypt v Algeria
This seems to be one of those football matches with more aggravation than a river full of crocodiles.
You can watch it on Eurosport at 17:30 in the UK. They are three hours ahead of us.
My Views on Abuse Reporting
In the previous post, I said that commercial pressures and the fact that most of the social networking and other companies are outside the jurisdiction of the UK and the EU, will make it very difficult to enforce any proper reporting of abuse.
But we can do something.
Take Sunday morning. I was driving out of Cambridge, when a guy in a very large 4×4 pulled out on me. He just didn’t look and if there had been anything coming the other way, I would had the choice of hitting his vehicle side-on or the other vehicle head-on. Luckily, there wasn’t any traffic and I passed easily.
I did shake my head at him and he took offence. So as I drove out of the city in a queue of traffic at the legal limit, he was about a couple of metres from my back bumper. This behaviour continued on the A14, until I was able to let him go.
We’ve all had things like this happen and they are just too trivial to report. For me life is too short and I have many more important things to do, than waiting in a Police Station to fill in endless forms, that will result in no action at all.
Now, this guy’s behaviour could have been caused by many things. He may have just got out of bed the wrong side, had a row with his girl-friend or more seriously he may have been severely hung over from the night before. One off’s are excusable, but supposing he’s a bad driver all the time and is always driving like this. If it’s the latter he needs to be informed that his behaviour is not acceptable.
I should say that I have a vested interest at this point. A few years before my wife died, she had breast cancer. The cancer appeared at exactly the same spot, as where she had got a bruise from a car air-bag in an accident. (Search various forums and you’ll find other women, who have got breast cancer by say being hit by a ball, whilst playing tennis or squash.) The cause of the accident had been a foreign truck driver. A few months later we believe that the same driver killed an innocent motorist because he was driving outside his hours.
How many near misses had the truck driver had in the UK between the accident with my wife and the killing of the other driver?
What is needed is a site, where driving misbehaviour can be reported? Not a site run by say the transport industry, which only reports compliments, but one run by the Police.
Obviously, the Police would not be able to follow-up every report, but software exists to analyse these reports to identify the worst offenders. (I’ve wrote systems like this so I know!) So if say a vehicle is always cutting up other drivers, then it can be identified. Probably in most cases a simple letter to the keeper of the vehicle would suffice.
But, one thing that has to be born in mind is the fact that often bad drivers, find it impossible to get any insurance and so how many of those reported would be drivers who shouldn’t be on the road for one reason or another. You may think that this a bad link, but the Police have shown that if they stop a driver without valid documents, there is a fifty percent chance a non-motoring offence is being committed.
The system would have to have safeguards, but just as it would identify bad and irresponsible drivers, it would also identify the vindictive, who perhaps constantly report someone for parking outside their house, when they have a perfect right to do so. I’ve heard policemen say that these are sometimes the worst disputes between neighbours.
Properly used such a database would be an asset to everyone, but if it was setup badly, it could be used as a means of abuse.
Over the last few days, we’ve had reports of cyberbullying and problems with social networking sights.
Let’s take the cyberbullying first and I’ll add to that all of the fraudulent scam e-mails that you get trying to extract money from your bank account. The problems may be different, but the solutions are the same.
The government should have a short text message number and a simple e-mail address, where any unwanted message can be sent. These could then be analysed and real abusers located. With say mobile phones, the abuser would just be told to desist and after a second strike their number would be cancelled. The same could be done with e-mail messages too, although here it would be more difficult to cancel addresses as many are outside the jurisdiction. But many of these e-mail scams use UK phone numbers, which can of course be cancelled immediately.
Some would argue that this might be a bit draconian, but I suspect, it would most abusers would quickly take the hind and desist. You won’t stop the foreign crooks and their scams, but hopefully the publicity would mean that there work was less productive.
There is always the point about who pays.
In fact, if done properly, these sort of systems would be self-financing, as there would be reductions in motoring offences, cyberbullying and e-mail fraud.
Unfortunately, Pete’s budget would have to be raided to pay for Paul’s. Governments never do that well!
Reporting Internet Abuse
There has been a lot of reporting lately about cyberbullying and abuse on social networking sites. In fact the BBC breakfast phone-in was about this subject.
I have no experience of reporting problems on social networking sites, but for years I have been fighting a campaign against on-line fraudsters using the Internet and mobile phones. I have reported endless people for abuse to e-mail organisations and so have many others I know who work in this field.
No service provider have ever informed me that they have taken serious action. As these scams are still occurring, it would appear that nothing has been done. I have found that the same e-mail addresses keep coming up in different scams.
Why?
These companies want the traffic to continue and as they run tight ships, they can’t afford the methods that everyone knows would stop all of these practices.
It is exactly the same with social networking sites. Put a button to report abuse on a site and the abusers will go elsewhere, so a site that does it, will lose traffic and advertising revenue, which is of course geared to traffic.
I also have a granddaughter and she was showing me an innocent site aimed at her age, with educational games, quizzes and puzzles. There was nothing wrong with the site, but some of the advertising on it, was promoting all the foods and snack products that you shouldn’t give to children of her age.
All of these problems are driven by commercial interests, most of which are headquartered outside of the jurisdiction of the UK and the EU. So in truth we are just whistling in the dark and the sites will never change.
All these indignant phone-ins are just free publicity for these social networking sites. They would have had to pay millions to get the same effect. I’d love to see how many new members have joined them in the last few days.
Car Traps on the Cambridge Busway
Because of the design of the Cambridge Busway, cars which have a narrower wheel-track than buses would not be able to run along the track. So a simple trap is placed at each road crossing to stop cars getting on the busway.
Cambridge Busway - Car Trap
The trap will obviously catch a car that shouldn’t be going up the busway. But supposing a driver makes a mistake at a junction in heavy rain and turns up the road, then how long will it take to get a vehicle out?
At least I suppose all the passengers could get out of the bus and push the car away.
The Anonymous Widower 