Speed cameras and statistical ignorance

A new study shows that government claims about lives saved by speed cameras are overstated. This is ammunition against the free-spending little people who run our local authority highways departments. As recession closes in, councillors and others who have been rubber-stamping big budgets are going to have to start questioning what the money is for and why it is necessary to spend it.

Researchers at Liverpool University have knocked Government claims that 100 lives a year are saved by speed cameras. Whilst speed cameras do reduce accidents, the numbers are exaggerated. The research shows a fall in accidents of 19% compared with the claimed 50%.

Does this matter very much, you might ask. After all, this Government belches out false statistics daily and has, indeed, devoted more energy to rigging the apparent outcomes of initiatives than it has on the initiatives themselves. It does matter, and for reasons which go beyond the actual facts behind this research and beyond motoring. Money is wasted in vast quantities on things which make little difference; things which really do matter are neglected in favour of those which yield apparently good outcomes; the police, who need all the friends they can get at the moment, are tarred with the fall-out of policies to which they do not necessarily subscribe; and any little surviving regard for government (as opposed merely to this Government) takes another pasting.

Welsh van man fag trap

A self-employed van driver in Wales has been fined for smoking in his own van. What is it about the local authority mindset, why is it even worse in Wales, and do the local police have nothing better to do?

In my post Smoking Snoopers of 25 February 2007, I commented on the fact that the government had handed £29.5 million to local authorities to help them enforce the smoking ban. It coincided with the news that the police no longer bothered – as a matter of policy – to attend at the scene of a burglary. I did not know it at the time, but the sum so allocated was exactly twice the amount which the Treasury (Gordon Brown Prop.) had shaved off the budget for flood relief.

My focus was on the sort of people who would become smoking snoopers, getting their thrills from lurking to catch people enjoying themselves. They would include, I said:

The sludge which collects at the bottom of every local authority pond who get moved from department to department because they are really unemployable even in that undemanding environment, but who cannot be dismissed through political correctness or union strength.

Imagine being all that and Welsh with it!

Brown the waster tells us not to waste

Hypocrisy is New Labour’s prime characteristic, and Gordon “Heathcliff” Brown’s injunction to us all not to waste anything is a fine example of Labour – and specifically Brownite – hypocrisy

We are, apparently, throwing away £1bn of food each year. That is indeed something to be corrected, with implications well beyond the £420 per family which a Whitehall study has alleged. It deprives others, it generates waste and it inflates the profits of the supermarkets. It is nothing, however, to what Gordon Brown has wasted.

Decency all round as Boris wins London

Both Boris Johnson and, unlikely as it seems, Ken Livingstone, grew somewhat in stature in what was said after Johnson’s win tonight. The sheer unpleasantness of Gordon Brown, which has infected British politics for longer than he has been Prime Minister, makes magnaminity in victory and graciousness in defeat seem rather precious and rare.

Sarkozy goes boating

I have not seen so many policemen together since their march in support of their pay rise. The Embankment was over-run with severe-looking chaps in black and yellow, holding up the traffic and chattering into microphones. A very large Bentley without number plates drew up and a small man in high heels got out and strode down the gang-plank.

It was President Sarkozy, fitting in a boat trip in between playing football with Gordon Brown at the Emirates Stadium and addressing both houses of Parliament. He was accompanied by a group of people who, had I thought about it, must have included the fine figure of the real star of the show, Carla Bruni. So close, camera in hand, and I missed her. I don’t suppose I could have got her to pose as she had been seen in the Sun that morning, not outside in March anyway.

Prescott and the cocktail sausage

The top right hand corner of page 4 of Thursday’s Times had a short piece about John Prescott – Two Planks Prescott as he is known – who is withdrawing from his Hull constituency at the next election.

Immediately abutting it, in the top left hand column of page 5, was a story about an old man from the north, someone much younger, and an incident involving a cocktail sausage. I am sure there is some connection between these stories but I can’t quite bring it to mind. Perhaps a chemical stimulant of some kind would help get it up there.

Now where is the News from the BBC?

I don’t know what was more infuriating about this evening’s BBC News, the presentation or the stories themselves.

It kicked off with a long exposé about Bulgarian baby-selling, complete with film from hidden cameras, dramatic-sounding appointments late at night, and an East European villain from Central Casting. The story was run by an intelligent-sounding, attractive-looking female reporter on, I would guess, her first big break, who spoke proper English and walked well that narrow line between sober journalism and breathless excitement.

The newscaster, Dermot somebody, clearly thought he was somebody, adding his stern visage and heavy moralistic adjectives and adverbs to make it clear that he wasn’t just a reader of bulletins but a man with opinions.

The news element in this could have been disposed of in 30 seconds. It was competently done, and not unimportant – but it was not news. It was investigative journalism, put together some time ago and held over to make a splash on the first available quiet night.

Law enforcers gang up on Cornish shop-keeper

A shop-keeper who fought back against shop-lifters who attacked him has been fined £250 and given a criminal record by Truro magistrates. The thieves were given fixed penalty tickets – equivalent to a parking ticket.

This obviously says something about the quality of policing in Penzance and a little about Truro magistrates. It says very much more about the Government’s criminal justice priorities.