The Highways Agency Want to Control You

When part of the M62 in West Yorkshire was made into a ‘managed motorway’, with variable speed limits enforced by speed cameras on over-head gantries, I suspected it wouldn't be long before the 50mph limit in place during the conversion works was made permanent.

Now I read that the Highways Agency, currently converting a stretch of the M1 south of Barnsley into another ‘managed motorway’ is ‘consulting’ on establishing a permanent 60mph limit when the conversion is completed, again enforced with over-head mounted speed cameras.

They, the Highways Agency, claim that this is to comply with EU directives on pollution.

As a frequent visitor, as a driver, to our European neighbours I can’t help but remark that such ‘directives’ if indeed they exist at all except in the mind of the Highways Agency, don’t seem to apply in Germany, where the autobahns have no speed limit at all, or in France where their motorways have a limit of 130 kph, or about 80mph.

Perhaps cars in France and Germany don’t cause pollution.

Another somewhat worrying aspect of this ‘consultation’ is that Parliament set the national motorway speed limit at 70mph, not the Highways Agency, and speed cameras were only supposed to be erected in locations with an established record of fatal or near-fatal accidents, and not as a blanket coverage.

The use of speed cameras on ‘managed motorways’ seems to be a direct contravention of this principle and the proposed near-permanent 60mph limit an usurpation of Parliamentary democracy.

It’s nothing to do with either pollution or safety of course, it’s all about control!

Petty Little Parish Councils

I’m no fan of Parish Councils, believing them to be little people drunk on what little power they have.

In a village near where I live, with its own Parish Council, a row of terrace houses face onto a main trunk road. With nowhere to park their cars the occupants, quite sensibly, parked on a wide grass verge fronting the houses.

Until the Parish Council exercised their little power by erecting a row of bollards along the verge, preventing the cars using it and forcing their owners to park on the very busy road, with all the dangers inherent in such a move.

I was reminded of this exercise of petty power when reading of how the Queen Thorne Parish Council in Devon erected a fence behind houses backing onto a public park, so blocking one house’s gate leading from the garden to the park.

Despite this particular house having a right-of-way onto the park from the garden the Parish Council of Queen Thorne pursued a three year legal battle, at a reported cost to the Council of £14,121, twice their annual budget, before throwing in the towel on the eve of the Court hearing and removing the fence.

Not that this appalling waste of public money did anything to lead the Parish Council to regret its action, their Vice-Chairman Rodger Dodd is reported to have said that the gate in question had been put up “in a provocative manner”!

A ‘provocative’ gate, now there’s a thing I’d like to see. 

Double Think on Global Warming

I was tickled pink to read about the trip to the Antarctic by a team of ‘climate change’ scientists and ‘green’ activists from Australia, dedicated to proving that the Antarctic ice shelf was ‘melting and collapsing due to global warming’.

Far from proving their pet theory, their Russian ship became wedged in thick ice, at a time when it was high summer in Antarctica when the ice should have been at a minimum level.

So thick was this ‘melting and collapsing’ ice shelf that two ice breakers were unable to free their ship and the team of ‘experts’ had to be rescued by helicopter.

Not that this debacle did anything to change the teams pre-conceived ideas, a spokesman claiming that “it is precisely climate warming that led the vessel into its awkward predicament”.

Yes you read that right, global warming which was causing the ‘melting and collapsing’ of the Antarctic ice was responsible for ice so thick two ice breakers could not free the stuck ship.

George Orwell, in his seminal novel 1984, coined the term ‘double think’ for the capacity to simultaneously hold two mutually contradictory beliefs and accept them both as being correct.

He had nothing on the disciples of ‘global warming’.

The Value of a Free Press

Newspapers come in for a good deal of criticism, not least for all the hoo-ah over phone hacking, but the value of a truly free press in ably demonstrated by the case of Asha Khan.

Asha Khan is a Muslim trainee solicitor with the family firm of KK Solicitors in Newcastle, and is of Pakistani origin.
When her father, who had been driving without a licence for the past 18 years and had three convictions for so doing, was caught by a speed camera while driving Asha Khan's BMW she lied about who was driving, laying the blame on a colleague who worked for her.
Charged with perverting the course of justice, à la, Vicky Price, her barrister argued in court for her to be granted anonymity, a request granted by Judge Peter Hughes at Carlisle Crown Court for "cultural reasons," in that Asha Khan would be  "upset if matters are reported"  and that "culturally, it's very difficult for them (Pakistani Muslims)to say things in public". 
Well it seems to me that being upset at being exposed as a liar is par for the course, and one supposes that, as a solicitor, saying things in public would go with the territory.

Nevertheless, because of Judge Peter Hughes bizarre ruling, effectively saying that Pakistani Muslims should be given special treatment, there the matter may have rested but for the actions of the Daily Mail. Their legal challenge to this disgraceful ruling resulted in Judge Peter Hughes being forced to eat his words when he rescinded his anonymity order two days later saying, what he should have said originally, that "people of all faiths or no faiths should be treated in precisely the same way."

Asha Khan was subsequently convicted of perverting the course of justice, as was her father and the man who agreed to take the blame for the deception, but had they, and Judge Peter Hughes, had their way you and I would be none the wiser.

Secret trials have no place in Great Britain and are the very antithesis of fair and open justice and the Daily Mail is to be commended for their actions in ensuring that this was the case with Asha Khan.

One wonders how long we will continue to enjoy the protection from abuse by the authorities that a free press provides in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry, and Government proposals for curbing that freedom.
What is certain is the powers that be, from judges to Government Ministers, hate and are fearful of a free press, always there to expose their wrongdoing. How much of the MPs expenses scandal do you think would have come to light without a free press to go after these cheats?
No not much!
It would have been quietly swept under the carpet, just like the case of Asha Khan would have been.

Thomas Jefferson said in 1789, and it's as true today as it was then

"our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."