The great speed camera evasion farce

It wasn't until we'd passed our fifth speed camera that — like the warning system — my brain clicked. Every time the Volvo XC60 approached one of the spy devices, the sound of a camera clicking was played over the car's speakers, as a warning.

Very clever — and it helped keep us out of trouble as we notched up some 650 miles or so on a round trip to Devon from south-east London.

Gillian Duffy and the normality of road violence

Road violence is a natural part of everyday life. It’s like the weather and the institutions of the state would like us to accept it as such, something about which nothing can be done, other than through the passive, change-nothing medium of ‘road safety’.

'I only went out for a loaf of bread,' Gillian despairs, her eyes widening as she recalls her first encounter with Mr Brown.

‘I was walking up to the shops when I saw some commotion, there were police there and the road was blocked off a bit. I thought there had been a car crash.

Pavements are for cars and rubble

Shared use, Waltham Forest style! Pedestrians can share their pavement with parking bays , builder's rubble, plastic cones and a traffic sign. The Drive, E17.

I expect the next council will cut down those trees, which are quite obviously taking up space which could be more valuably used for parking.

Waltham Forest - where the council aspires to be the Greenest in London.

Walthamstow Labour Party continues to abuse my copyright

A hat tip to Martin Belam, who has spotted something that I hadn’t – that the local Labour Party’s cynical misuse of my blog photograph is continuing.

He spotted this last weekend and today I went along and had a look. Yes, my photo is still on prominent display in the Walthamstow Labour Party window at 23 Orford Road E17 and it and is still being used in a wilfully misleading way to slag off the local Liberal Democrats.

Let me recapitulate. By using my copyright photograph the local Labour Party is in breach of The Digital Economy Act, which the Brown government rushed through in the closing days of the current parliament and which has been strongly criticised on civil liberties grounds. Among other things it gives the state the power to disconnect you from the internet if you breach copyright.

My photo which the local Labour Party has pilfered shows a street choked with cars. This scene (unidentified on the election literature) is used in a Hoe Street ward leaflet to criticise the Liberal Democrats for their policy on Controlled Parking Zones. In fact I took this photo on Westward Road, Chingford, so it is of dubious relevance to Hoe Street ward. It is additionally irrelevant in so far as Westward Road is not in a CPZ. Finally, the parking conditions on this street cannot be blamed on the Lib Dems as they were created by a Labour council long before the party lost overall control.

The final absurdity is that a few days ago, as reported in the local paper, the coalition council agreed a policy on reducing CPZ charges, so the Labour and Liberal Democrat policies are as one. This makes the claims in this leaflet grossly misleading.

The ripples of this affair have now even reached the website of the Daily Telegraph, where Shane Richmond comments:

During the debate on the Digital Economy Act, Ben Bradshaw, the Culture Secretary, told MPs:

“Hundreds of millions of pounds a year is haemorrhaging from our creative industries because of unlawful file sharing, and that is not a harmless or victimless activity. It deprives our musicians, writers, film makers, actors and other artists of their livelihood, and if we do not do something about such activity it will pose a serious threat to our creative sectors and Britain’s leadership in them.”

I wonder how he squares that with his own party’s apparent contempt for the rights of creators?

The Digital Economy Act requires ISPs to send warning letters to customers who are accused of illegally sharing copyrighted material. It’s likely that the letters will not be sent out until early next year. Should one drop through your door, perhaps you can try Labour’s defence.

Try this: “Yes, I did download that album but I only listened to it for a set period and that period has now passed.”

Or this: “Yes, I downloaded your new film but that was an innocent error which I regret.”

How do you think you’d get on?

Gordon Brown’s car crash campaign

While journalists were quick to spot the metaphorical implications, no one bothered to take note of the extraordinary prevalence of road violence in British society (elsewhere there was this). If a cyclist had been pedalling by at the time they might well now be dead or seriously injured.

A tweet from Stella!

tell crap cycling in waltham forest the street light's been looked at, she tweets, alluding to this. And she’s right. The light in the Town Square has now been fixed.

But the others haven’t, including this one on St Mary Road E17, just a short walk from Stella’s HQ on Orford Road. But at times like this I suppose the environment has to take a back seat…

Apocalypse Now

The future annihilation of the human species is quite rightly one of the many topics which are not being covered in this election campaign, as it’s a lot of silly nonsense, innit? So take no notice of this, which is just a trick to stop us all flying and driving:

The Arctic is locked into a destructive cycle that could see its icy cover rapidly disappear, scientists have confirmed. A new analysis shows that dwindling levels of sea ice are responsible for unusual levels of global warming in the region. The findings reinforce suggestions that a positive feedback between ice loss and temperature rise has emerged in the Arctic, which increases the chances of further rapid ice loss and warming.

The study could re-ignite claims that the Arctic has passed a key tipping point, which could see ice disappear much sooner than expected. While most estimates say the summertime Arctic will not be ice-free until the middle of the century, some models suggest it could vanish within a decade.