If I had wanted to live in a libertarian dystopia, I would have moved to America c. 2002

[diarytypething]

The government are arseholes. But I say this like it's news, or in some way surprising. It's not. I'm just appalled on a daily basis about how far they will go. Now they're going to abolish speed cameras - a piece of technology which is proven to decrease the number of serious road accidents - because they interfere with the lives of "law

Comments

[stubbleupdate]

But... speed cameras are ace.

This week, I'm teaching my first years about crimes and punishment and how you have to have punishment to discourage people from committing crimes.

But if nobody's going to catch them speeding, why shouldn't people bomb it down the A90?

I am continually dismayed by the quality of idiots that I have to share the roads with.

[diarytypething]

It might just be in England, because this kind of stuff is dealt with at a local level, but if the funding to maintain the cameras is cut then the Scottish authorities might have to give up on them as well (speeding fines recover a lot of the costs, but the government still has to put in a fair chunk of money to keep them in operation). The major flaw in this plan is that, as we know from past experience, some people won't enforce restraint on their own behaviour, and as a result, cause accidents. Sadly, the human brain is not very good at dealing with certain types of risk analysis, and "I'll get a fine and points on my licence" is a much better deterrent than "there's a vague chance that I'll crash and cause serious injury/permanent disability/death to myself or someone else". Some people are stupid, and this is why we need health and safety (also something the Tories dislike), because people actually die when there isn't an external force telling them that they have to do things properly.

[bohemiabythesea]

The fact that there is no rioting, no large-scale demonstrating every day, that people are not constantly going on strike, is something I really and honestly cannot comprehend. Now, I'm not from, say, France, where this happens on a regular basis, but for my background (which is very averagely and boringly left-liberal, not even Berlinian leftist) and age, to have taken part in about 12-15 demonstrations in your life is perfectly normal, so I am, again, utterly bewildered by this not taking place here, and with all sorts of citizens participating, not only a handful of what will then be dubbed 'devoted activists'. So in a way, I cannot help thinking that if a populace allows itself to be treated like this, it somehow also got the government it asked for. Not that you, personally, deserve this government, but, you know. I have some Tory-voting friends as well, and I am waiting for the first instance of them complaining, so that I can yell 'You made your bed, now fuck in it!'. Because I immediately reach the stage of screaming

[diarytypething]

There was a big trade union demo in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't get much attention, and media coverage of protests is a huge obstacle. A lot of people think that activists are unwashed and unemployable, when actually there are plenty of us who are respectable, working citizens on a day off. Activism has been presented as carrying a risk of being blackballed by polite, "successful" society, to the extent where my mother threatened to take me out of university after I went to my first demonstration, because she thought I was ruining my career prospects. When jobs are scarce, this is a hell of a thing to fight

[bohemiabythesea]

The media coverage is rather ridiculous, true, and the fact that 'ordinary, respectable citizens' wouldn't demonstrate is just something rather alien to me. I remember different versions of demonstrations; there is the traditional May 1st demonstration, to which everybody goes, there are the ones against the transport of nuclear waste to its final storage, to which only the hard-core demonstrators go (bcs it involves chaining yourself to traintracks etc and the police has a reputation of being quite brutal there), there are the educational-cuts-demonstrations, to which all students go and which go hand in hand with the universities going on strike, and that means fully on strike, with students taking over all the lecture theatres to hold forums (often camping inside the theatres for weeks), lectures taking place in the town hall and on the market square, all the doors of all the seminar rooms being dismantled ('truly open university' - happened when I was teaching the first time; was slightliy disconcerting). If there are anti-war or

[diarytypething]

Dare you to throw a brick...

May Day stuff used to be traditional here as well, but somewhere along the way it all got stopped. We've got an utterly pathetic attitude towards standing up to the government in this country, partly due to Thatcher, and partly due to ingrained class issues, but it's about time it started to change.

[diarytypething]

Shit. I'm really sorry to hear about your job. You're the second person on my flist who's being booted out of a public sector job.

Everyone who drives wants to break the speed limit from time to time, even if they know it's a generally a bad idea, which is exactly why we need the cameras as a deterrent.