Safe Speed Forums

Check my sums

Six acres is 6 x 43,560 = 261,360 square feet .
30 inches = 2.5 feet of rain per year.
So 261,360 * 2,5 =653,400 cubic feet of water per year
6.229 gallons per cubic foot
So 6.229 * 653,400 = 4,070,002 gallons per year.

Even your little 20 to the acre executive home is getting 30,000 plus gallons per year.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

OMG you guys are arguing rainfall. I am afraid if you were drinking in my pub I may be forced to stand up, point at you and shout FREAKS!

(freak pointing is a hobby of mine)

Getting somewhere near back on topic ....

I heard on the news/Newsnight that one of the police forces are reviewing their stop and search policies as it is not assisting public relations. They interviewed some young black guys; not surprisingly some of them had been stopped and searched over 100 times in a week . There are also 3 or 4 different acts that cover stop and search powers; why?

If they're reconsidering stop and search then maybe ...

I'm usually known for my cynicism and pessimism. Must be old age

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Prepare to be Judged

They interviewed some young black guys; not surprisingly some of them had been stopped and searched over 100 times in a week

That takes some doing!

What were they up to???

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

Now, the engineering arguments are part of the picture, but they are not really my point (Or why my utility comment is relevant in the context of scamera partnerships)

The point is that all these utilities are provided by corporations. The fact that corporations provide services and/or products hides the fact that the real function of a corporation is to make money!

Consider water, lets say everybody is put on a meter, they pay for water at a certain rate, Then over (say) a six month period everybody halves their water consumption. What happens?

Well, the revenues to the water companies will halve also (near enough) and, since their operating costs are pretty well fixed (employee pay bills and infrastructure costs) then they will start posting massive losses.

As a consequence the price of the “Product” has to go UP in order to maintain the revenue stream. (Leaving the consumers no better off than before, and possibly worse off due to the costs on implementing water saving measures)

Of course various excuses will be made to justify the price rise, but the bottom line is that they will be necessary to maintain revenue!

The same applies to fuel costs. Any significant shift in the national vehicle fleet towards more economical vehicles will result in a reduction of national fuel consumption.

Some 80% of the pump price paid for fuel (maybe even more) goes straight to the treasury (remember, tax is paid on crude oil as well as on the refined products)

Any significant reduction in national fuel consumption will result in a massive reduction in tax revenue. Fuel taxes will likely be raised to compensate for this leaving everybody no better off than before. (Or likely worse off due to the high cost of the technology required to produce vehicles with high levels of fuel efficiency)

In other areas, you will find that any large scale take up of self generation of electricity and heat (solar panels, wind generators, CHP, etc) or rainwater harvesting will inevitably end up being taxed, either as part of general property taxes or as specific licensing charges. (Or both)

What has this to do with speed cameras?

Well if (as has been claimed) Speed camera convictions are falling then the scameraship “Corporations” will start to lose revenue. Up until now they have been largely self-financing,

(They have never been big profit centres as such, but they have effectively paid for the employment of a large number of public sector “Useless eaters” without the government having to “officially” raise taxes to pay for them!)

But if they move towards collecting less in fines than they cost to run, then eyebrown (I meant Eyebrows, but that’s such a good Freudian I shall leave it!) will be raised in the treasury!

There is a whole industry out there reliant on a steady stream of income from speeding fines. If this stream is threatened by more people complying with the existing limits. What can we expect to see in the future?

Well,

We can expect further reductions in existing speed limits!
We can expect the prosecution thresholds to be lowered!
We can expect more aggressive “enforcement” over more sites, areas and circumstances. (Wider use of average speed measuring systems, especially in areas where limits have been severely curtailed. Empty roadworks, School areas at weekends etc)
We can expect the size of individual fines to go up!

Various spurious arguments will be made to justify these changes, but the bottom line is that revenue must be maintained! (And this is without considering the various hidden agendas!)

The state relies on “minor” crime for a significant part of treasury revenue. If the people become too law abiding, the state will simply move the goalposts!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Agreed Dusty, but to borrow from my work in the NHS if I may...

When something/anything is not about profiteering but simply good quality of service it becomes open to abuse too, in my experience, and a black hole for as much money as the tax payer is (not) prepared to plough into it.

As the NHS service moves towards a Foundation Trust, privatisation if you like, I am already seeing the bad effects which I can tell you are of great concern to me and others. So I can see it going from one extreme to the other.

If or when they wise-up that keeping people on the roads is more profitable I’m sure we will start to see a U-turn in the speed kills argument which gets us banned and, ultimately, claiming benefit since we all have to be mobile and let’s face it public transport sucks!

Here’s how I see it...

Someone works hard but gets banned from driving. He or she can either: -

A) Flout the law and keep driving in order to keep job, house and family together
B) End of career, can’t pay mortgage, family falls apart etc. etc.

The Government catches option A and adds another to the ‘crimes solved’ stats which should not have happened in the first place if they had an ounce of integrity or common sense and puts both the family through hardship and burdens the tax payer further.

The Government pays out for option B and his or her family effectively turning a perfectly respectable hard-working person into someone who now needs to seek out alternative means of income through endless courses and training for which he/she may not be best suited, experienced or qualified to do at reduced income or simply no work for however long etc.

Yeah, I think I know partly where our society is breaking down.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

People have started obaying the law and they then lowered all the limits to make up for the lost revenue

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

Do you know - I truly believe weepej has been so blinded by his acceptance of the nanny state that he cannot see that this is already happening. The reduction in speed limits serves only one purpose, the replacement of lost revenue to the partnerships because too many people have started obeying the law.

Weepej please open your eyes, look around you, you do not need to be an autonotom of the state!

Even the poor cat looks like he's in dismay at weepej's logic....

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

weepej, do you really think it that ridiculous?

Let's review the behaviour of the SCPs so far: they claim a certain level of effectiveness of their cameras (50 odd % ksi reduction), people shouted "RTTM" but the SCPs et al simply dismissed it. in 2004 RTTM and long-term trend were quantified and published and it was subsequently concluded that the effectiveness of the cameras were a small fraction of what was originally claimed - this was put in the Four Year Report for all to see - and even that didn't account for the very real and substantial effect of 'bias on selection'. Today, 5 years later, they're still making their same extremely misleading claims.

Now, do you think all the 43 partnership's staff are so utterly incompetent as to somehow still not know about RTTM, or do you think they're deliberately keeping mum about it? Either way, why could that be?

Wrap your tin-foil around that one!

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Mods: can someone move weepej's photo to the Rogue's Gallery thread?

I guess that is the look of incredulity on Weepys face is from when he finds that his reward for fitting new "Energy saving" windows in his home (At great expence) is to be bumped up a council tax band!

(As many people are discovering!)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

If this Government was really honestly concerned about KSI and all the money earned through speeding fines was ploughed back into road safety, weepej may have a point. But it isn’t, therefore he doesn’t. I think he’s deliberately being obtuse.

Governments lie, it’s what they do best. Try a web search for ‘Government lies’ and see how much you get back; and I’m not talking conspiracy theories. I don’t know why he puts so much trust in this wonderful philanthropic Government anyway. The same one which took us into an illegal/immoral war, in case he's forgotten.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I was at a nice venue the weekend where I was able to talk to traf pols and camera operators.

Firstly, I was surprised to hear that these cam operators do not have to come from any police background but can simply be any member of the public looking for a job. They got the training and that was it. There were two of them and very nice people they were too I must say.

I also liked their honesty. In his own words, “I sometimes disagree where they put them”. (Where they are asked to operate). They know where they are going to be one month in advance BTW but he wouldn't give me a sneak peek. He also freely admitted to speeding like “we all do” but “that’s just how it is”, “the luck of the draw”.

A couple of the traf pols were great guys too who also talked openly about the nonsense surrounding current road policy but one of them I was speaking with was very much a ‘Speed Kills’ type of guy. I politely started my platter on how many other factors should be taken into account and not just speed. But his argument was that his wife had an accident in which her knee was badly damaged and went on to say that if she had been going faster it would have been much worse but if she had been going much slower she may have avoided the collision altogether.

Now I really wanted to delve deeper into exactly what happened to see how else it may have been prevented and talk COAST but felt It would have been insensitive of me to continue with my angle as well as disrespectful to his position. It did make me wonder though if many of the ‘speed kills’ supporters stems from some personal experience or witness to an accident followed by an overwhelming, but sincere, effort to prevent KSI on our roads.

Is this you weepej, because your angle certainly doesn’t come from logic or common sense? Maybe you’re here just as a wind-up merchant?

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

I can't remember where the interview was held specifically, but it looked like a sink estate. I am not saying they were all criminals or unemployed.

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Prepare to be Judged

Here's how it works...



Of course I could be a little paranoid. After all, you never see Government corruption on the front page of every newspaper in GB do you?

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Just realised I missed something off...

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.