I see in yesterday's Observer that HMG is considering compulsory tracking devices for all cars, ostensibly for congestion charging, but also to allow wholesale surveillance and automatic speeding charges (naturally, because it's "the biggest single cause of death on the roads"). The next extension to this is speed limiting, where "you won't be able to go faster than the limit, no matter how hard you press the pedal". Great safety measure, that!
How ironic that our new Orwellian future is being overseen by a man called Blair.
Better enjoy the present while it lasts...
|
The thin end of the wedge advances while a complacent British public is convinced by spurious arguments about road safety. What a superb and effortless way for gov't to take away from you the responsibility for living your own life and substitute it with a formula carefully developed by thousands of Belgian civil servants with inflation-proof pensions.
Wait till you get your monthly email showing your calorific intake for the last four weeks and a call to make an appointment to discuss your Body Mass Index and your alcohol intake with your Personal Welfare Counsellor, along with details of your out-of-pattern trips to see your Grandma in Oswestry, noting that on at least 3 occasions the trip record indicates you may have exceeded 31.5 mph in pedestrian zones and warning you that further indiscretions of this nature will be penalised and may cast a shadow over your future job performance assessment by your employer, whose records are automatically submitted to the Ministry of Thought for adjudication by a panel of pimply liberal arts graduates who were carefully trained to evaluate your years of experience despite their own failure to capture job openings as shelf-stockers in Tesco's.
|
|
Bravo! What a fantastic rant Growler!!
|
I presume that Joe Motorist will have to pay for this box along with renewing his tax disk (or similar) otherwise I can't see how they would check that everyone had one. I suppose that those that feel happy to drive untaxed, unlicensed, un-everything will be the ones speeding past you at 100mph while you are stuck at 70mph.
However I can imagine that there will be some enterprising young computer technician who will design some programme that can overcome this (or is it impossible?)
|
> (or is it impossible?)<
I believe that the 'safety' camera warning devices that rely on GPS satellite signals can be rendered useless by the thin wires used as heating elements in widescreen glass. Wrapping the GPS detector in tin-foil would surely be sufficient to block all signals? I expect there would be a mechanical link to disable too, in the manner of the tachographs installed in HGV.
|
|
|
|
"What a fantastic rant.."
I second that! I was considering a reply to the original article, but I may just substitute the above - it would be hard to improve on...
|
I've said it before and here we go again.
They can fit GPS driven devices to limit your car's speed and as sure as the sun rises each morning, one day they WILL. Not tomorrow. Not next year. But certainly in our driving lifetimes.
Argue as much as you like, rant and rage if you will, but in a few years we'll all be sitting at exactly 30 MPH, bumper-to-bumper, and trying to stay awake.
|
Growler - spot on!
Alan Gowdy - NEVER accept that we will have such speed control. We should always object to anything that may lead to such control. Governments will always try to fool the gullible public (not difficult!) with their "thin end of the wedge" tactics.
Such control is wrong on so many counts (safety being one of them). I have always argued against the ever increasing restrictions on UK drivers. The trouble is, is that people are too daft to see what's coming; they tend to see little further than the end of their noses and, as long as a new restriction affects "that other person" then it's OK by them. Sooner or later, it'll be their turn to be restricted and so it goes on.
|
|
|
|
|
Growler,
Loved the piece, but be careful what you say. Some do-gooding crettin will read it & try to implement some or all of it in the near future. John Prescott springs to mind...
|
James, it's not a prospect I relish either, but I stand by what I wrote.
I suspect, given the opportunity, not many people would have voted for parking meters, catalytic converters, punitive taxation on most aspects of motoring, congestion charging etc etc - but they happened anyway. Democracy.... what democracy?
No amount of posturing by indignant motorists will stave off the inevitable for ever. What price a Ferrari with a 70 MPH maximum speed?
|
|
|
Nitro - too true, I fear. Growler you had me in fits, but I think he (Nitro) may be right!
I think I may be putting my name down for one of Sir Clive's 2004 "surprises"!!!! Perish the thought.
|
..one of Sir Clive's 2004 "surprises"
What are those, then? Sounds worrying...
|
Saw it today:
A follow up to the 'fabled' C5!
Check it out at
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3125341.stm
|
|
I can't quite believe what I read....the Segway costs £4,600, and is 'designed to be used on pavements' !!!
|
|
|
Thanks, Hootie - I'd no idea he was cooking up another vehicle, but I don't think I'll be holding my breath!
Sir Clive has a fertile brain, but has always been let down by production corner-cutting and over-optimistic claims (I speak as one who made several of his radios and amplifiers in the late 60's). The C5 wouldn't have been quite such a debacle if people hadn't been encouraged to believe that it would go 20 miles on a charge, and then discovered that it wouldn't when they were eight miles from home!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"compulsory tracking devices for all cars"
It's just occurred to me that it may not be all bad, as there must be some way of switching it off, and by then there won't be any speed cameras or patrols...
|
|
|
