So the first domestic high speed service in the UK is running a preview service from Ashford International in Kent to St Pancras in north London prior to the launch of the full service in December.
Why am I seemingly so uninmpressed by this?
Well despite having shelled out the princely sum of £3800 for my season ticket I am being asked to pay a surcharge of £4 each way to use this service. I know this does not seem much given the fact the service takes almost half the time of the current one, but this an extra £40 per week, or £160 per month, or £1600 per year and then I will need to get the underground from the terminus to work adding another £600 or so a year to my costs and losing me close to half the time saving. In the interest of balance southeastern (the train operating company) are only actually asking for an additional £600 on top of my season ticket and the service will stop at Stratford International allowing me to catch a different underground line to work saving me around 70 minutes a day on my journey.
I am still unsure whether it is worth the extra £1200 a year to save me approx 12 days a year sitting on a train - I know that my billing rate is significantly higher than this per day, but I do not actually get these extra days...
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Has the World Gone Mad?
Or was it just her?
My partner and I were just out walking round Dover and the seafront, as always I took my camera with me (my recently acquired EOS 1D markII with a Sigma 120-400mm DG lens)as I wanted to take pictures of the gulls, the castle etc. Anyway we had stopped on the beach to enjoy the sun and a cigarette when I spotted two gulls sitting on the shingle so I decided to take some long shots of them (at 400mm). We then headed off down the beach (heading home), we had only gone a few yards when we heard shouting behind us, we ignored it as we assumed they were shouting to people further down the beach. The shouting continued getting closer, so we stopped to see what it was all about, only to be confronted by this shrieking Spanish woman. She demanded to see my photographs and to know where we were from, I declined to show her on the basis that she had no right to see them. She continued to demand to see my photos and then threatened to get the police as she believed I had photographed her; I told her to go and get them, if she did not then I would as she was now harassing me and my partner, at this point she backed off and we went on our way. She was no doubt hassling someone else.
I suspect that she was either slightly unhinged or that it was some kind of hustle to obtain money in return for not telling the police.
Well sorry, even given the daft recent laws in this country I can take photos of what I pretty much like without having to seek permission. The only provisos obviously are not to take shots of the police without their permission, defence establishments, also where the intentions is to sell the photograph then permission should be sought from individuals who feature prominently. It must be remembered that there is no law of privacy in the UK
Labels: Dover, photography
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ID Cards what is wrong?
The ID card debate has reared its ugly head again recently in no small part due to the fact that the government have slipped this corker into the Coroners and Justice Bill, due for its first debate in the Commons on Monday 26th January, Clause 152 will allow ministers to make 'Information Sharing Orders', that can alter any Act of Parliament and cancel all rules of confidentiality in order to allow information obtained for one purpose to be used for another. This has the impact of converting the Data Protection Act into its exact opposite. Add this to the ID cards and we should all be very afraid.
It is clear that ID cards do not stop criminals, terrorists or illegal migrants; if they did the rest of Europe would be crime, migrant and terror free and it is not.
When you couple this with the utterly appalling record of the UK Governement in delivering secure IT facilities far less IT systems that actually work; along with the above gem of reduction in our rights one has to ask why any sane sensible individual would want to trust all of ones personal details and much more to a single database?
It is important to remember that our legal system here in the UK is based on the premise that the accuser/state must prove that I am not who I say I am rather than the other way round, coupled with the premise that I am innocent until you prove otherwise. We must not allow these principles to be undermined by ID cards or information sharing orders or any other hair brained scheme that this or any other government comes up with in the name of fighting the "war on terror".
We should also call on governement to think twice about further legislation at this juncture, whilst our legal system does have faults it most absolutely does not mean that it is at all sensible or safe to throw out centuries of tradition that generally works and replace it with diminished rights for all.
I recognise that there are loopholes in most of our laws, the governement needs to recognise that they are there because legislation is badly drafted, too often in a rush, as some sort of knee jerk reaction to perceived public concern. Loopholes also occur because the CPS are poor, the police too often skimp on evidence gathering and some judges are just perverse in their interpretation of the relevant statute.
Therefore what we need to do rather than churn out more dubious legislation that only has the net result of reducing the rights of the law abiding majority and reducing our freedoms is:
a) review the whole body of current legislation
b) repeal acts that are no longer relevant
c) repeal acts that are contradictory or contrary
d) review tariffs and set these to levels that genuinely reflect the severity of the crime and get the right balance between crimes against the person and crimes against property; with the former carrying more severe tariffs.
e) review judges performance on sentencing and retire, retrain etc as required.
f)review the structure, performance and remit of the CPS and conduct a root and branch overhaul to ensure that they do their job
g) Provide updated guidance to the police on their role in gathering evidence to make sure they carry out that duty correctly
h) Produce a statement that sets out in plain simple english the rights wea ll enjoy and the duties and responsibilities we all have.
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Financial Crisis?
So here we are in the depths of a financial crisis, credit crunch, recession etc.
What can we do?
As individuals, not a lot.
Of course, if we have savings we should spread it around UK registered / regulated banks to ensure we have less than £50,000 in any one (if only one were so lucky...).
For the rest of us who have personal debt, mortgages, credit cards etc. we need to keep paying them off as best we can, ensure we talk to our lenders as soon as possible if there is the slightest possibility that we might not be able to make a payment and trim our cloth as much as we can to ensure we can service our debts.
As a country, now that is a different matter, even in the face of the global nature of this crisis there is loads that can be done, such as:-
1. Carry on with the liquidity and capital support of the banks
2. Modify the terms of the support to allow moderate dividend payments after 12 months, but more importantly, to ease loan conditions particularly to small businesses.
3. Cut interest rates immediately to 2% and ensure that the banks reflect his in mortgage and loan rates.
4. Government needs to refresh its knowledge of Keynsian economics and start spending ideally on capital projects such as social housing projects, investment in the space industry, investments in infrastructure and transport etc.
5. Government also needs to step into the housing market and working with both the banks and the housing corporation look at buying out the mortgages of people in trouble and taking the stock into public ownership and then renting it back to them at affordable rents; thus bolstering the housing market by stopping repossessions etc.
Labels: politics UK
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