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If we live in a democracy then not doing things that are unpopular is the right way to do it.
It's at best a poor duocracy.
You can choose between two increasingly homogenous political parties - beyond that there is little scope for your views to be heard beyond an indirect and secondary/limited/peripheral kind of way.
Surely fixed penalty fines are only a "stealth tax" on the people committing the offence..i.e. people speeding.
Of course.
Generate and employ hundreds of offences, enforce (?) these with fines and, yes, you have generated a tax on the demographic it targets.
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I personally like the Norwegian model for fines, i.e linked to earnings. The police will never be able to catch most people breaking the law on th road but when caught the punishment should be such that it make you acts as a warning, currently it clearly dose not. Another good example of this is the number of people using mobile phones. The government are too sacred to tackle the problem fully so the fines are only token, coupled with the chance of getting caught there is not deterrent. The lower the chance someone if caught for a crime the more expensive the fine should be to even out for all the other times the person was not caught to even out the deterrent.
On the bigger political point this country has unfortunately has no means for most people to effectively have their view represented. The two big parties will not let things change / vote for change, for example p.r as they are benefit the status quo.
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Shirley the majority of the offences existed already - and even where they did not, the summary penalty sysem of FPNs / NEFPNs reduces the burden on an an underfunded and overstretched judicial system. In which an offender might be sent to the magger, convicted, and then fined, but at a greater cost to the public purse.
I think this is the initial idea behind FPN, however due to the way the money is channeled they have become a useful revenue source for councils e.t.c
There is also the problem of the filtering down of power of law enforcement away from the police.
A law is passed to allow traffic wardens to issue FPN, fine but the problem is you get legal creep so to speak and more and more issues are passed onto non police staff. It's a dangerous road.
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I completely agree with you oliver, reducing road danger at source would be the best bet and I'm definately not suggesting we shouldnt enforce the laws against speeding.
Good, it sounded a bit like it.
What I'm saying is that the National Gov't have clocked onto the fact that speeding ticket can raise revenue, in effect a stealth tax.
Generate and employ hundreds of offences, enforce (?) these with fines and, yes, you have generated a tax on the demographic it targets.
Can we first of all stop repeating this Daily Mail bollocks that fines for speeding are taxes? Taxes are imposed on legal pursuits; even smoking is legal, but taxed. Speeding fines are imposed for breaking the law, and are therefore not a tax, and no, not even a 'stealth tax' (a stealthy non-concept if I've ever come across one). Everybody has a choice whether to break the law or not--no-one is compelled to speed.
It's not as if speed limits are unreasonable; there are very good reasons for them. Yes, occasionally, someone may have to be quick in driving his pregnant wife to hospital (although speeding can arguably put the car's occupants at greater risk, and in these circumstances ...), or some such case, but there is generally a completely acceptable presumption in place that freedom should involve leaving others their freedom to get about with a smaller risk of injury or death (and the factors of severance, noise and particle pollution, enjoyment of space, etc. also come into play, of course)
Yes, people often don't understand blanket speed limits--the real bone of contention. There are two points of criticism. Firstly, the speed that blanket speed limits in built-up areas are currently set at--30mph. Many motorists think that this is too low. This point is adequately answered by the extensive research into the effect of higher speeds (e.g., in the event of a collision), and the current trend is now towards 20mph as the default speed limit in most areas, certainly residential. Anyway, there's lots of stuff about this on-line.
Secondly, even a lot of the most rabid motorists concede that certain speed limits would make sense in many places, although they would want them to be highly varied and always adjusted to the conditions on a particular stretch of road or street. There are lots of points to be made about that, but the most important one again is the point about the road danger at speeds higher than 20mph (the presumption on tha part of motorists would be to set higher speed limits)--varied speed limits would be guaranteed to attract a higher rate of collisions; the fact that such highly varied speed limits would be very difficult to enforce; the administrative effort and the near-impossible task of setting criteria for an assessment of what in the view of motorists would constitute an acceptable speed in a certain area, etc.
Another myth that needs puncturing:
If speeding tickets actually worked the number of tickets would have decreased rather than increased - a speeding ticket as a deterrent is cleary not working.
This is certainly not clear without actual numbers. Firstly, owing to the chronic lack of traffic policing in this country, it is not clear that speeding, beyond extreme cases, had ever really been enforced against in this country before the technology for speed cameras became available.
Secondly, the number of cameras has increased over the years, and the number of fines has probably risen accordingly.
Thirdly, the actual evidence over the years has been that collisions at or near speed cameras have decreased substantially. The Government have claimed a reduction of about 40% (this number is a few years old and given that 40% is the Government's general casualty reduction target for KSIs needs to be treated with some caution). So, a 'deterrent' isn't only measured by fines decreasing, which at any rate could well be evidence not of people not speeding, but of the speed camera programmes being watered down and made less effective (there appears to be a bit of guerilla warfare in the background).
But polticians can then crow "were doing stuff" as usual whilst revenue raising. If for example, youimmediatly got 3 points on your liscence for every speeding offence, I suggest this would be far more effective. But this would be far too politically unpopular/difficult to implement. People grumble about a speeding fine but pay it and get on with it and HM Treasury is quids in
Well, people will have broken the law in this case. Don't get me wrong--I'm by no means an advocate of blind adherence to laws--in many cases, laws are unjust or lead to unjust outcomes--but laws against speeding make sense, as the risk created by it is unacceptable. I do think people should accept risk in their lives and not try to be marooned in total 'safety'. But fear of road danger is precisely what causes people to avoid taking risks, e.g. by causing them to think that cycling is dangerous.
I'm not an expert on road safety but i would welcome anything that reduces accidents on the roads such as traffic calming measures like speed bumps or chicanes (where appropriate) or the recently inroduced 20mph speed zone, which a recent study suggests can cut road injuries by 40%.
20mph zones are not a recent introduction. They've been implemented for more than a decade, and for roughly the last decade the GLA/TfL has had a funding stream for them. They're all around London. What's new in Islington is the 'Portsmouth approach' of implementing a limit rather than a zone. The difference is that a zone is typically much smaller than a whole borough, requires much more associated traffic calming infrastructure than a limit, must be self-enforcing, etc. A (nearly) city-wide limit was successfully introduced in Portsmouth recently at much lower cost than individual zones.
Well, in the LCC we were very pleased to see this research quantify what we've been saying about 20mph for years. It's one of our key policies, and we've consistently pushed for it.
However things that reduce injuries and death on the roads are often expensive
Sadly, all traffic schemes are incredibly expensive. Some of the costs are just staggering. You wouldn't believe the bureaucracy that has to be followed before anything is implemented, with safety audits, compliance audits, etc.
and strangely enough unpopular with motorists, motoring organisations and more importantly powerful motoring lobby/pressure groups who HM Gov'ment definatley listen to (mostly i think because anything which reduces death and injury usually involves reducing motor speed, and we cant have that now can we). Just note from the evening standard article:
"But motoring organisations immediately criticised the scheme for unfairly penalising drivers and raised concerns over how it will be enforced."
"Drivers accept restrictions in sensitive areas outside schools and hospitals but a blanket ban causes a lot of frustration as without cameras you're looking at speed bumps and chicanes, which are almost equally unliked."
Unliked! So whats this numpty from the RAC saying, speed reduction zones, speed bumps and chicanses so less death and mayhem = bad. Unrestricted speed around residential roads and lots of death and mayhem =good.
Well, yes, those quotes are standard in articles like this, and also betray a lack of awareness of what is being proposed. There will undoubtedly be some associated infrastructure measures in LB Islington in due course, as well, but far fewer than in boroughs where 20mph zones are being implemented. That nonsense about schools and hospitals is often heard and is annoying as it assumes that there should be a few safe zones for 'vulnerable road users', but otherwise a free-for-all. This kind of thinking is the reason why Britain has the worst child casualty record in Europe.
I'm sure there are other ways to reduce road deaths and injuries which have never even been implemented simply because it would be 'politically unpopular' to do so.
In astonishingly simple terms, there are always two things that can be done, positive and negative things. Yes, all that speed reduction malarkey is a bit negative and of course reactive, and you can sense how people feel that and are put off by it. Understandable, but as I said above, there are a lot of earnest reasons.
The positive things are to encourage/enable people to do more cycling and walking, which are highly enjoyable activities that many people are missing out on. What motivates me to ride a bike is that it's so positive that there is simply no alternative. Once we get away from the presumption that motoring is somehow the first option, we'll be fine. (In most cases it isn't, and if we ever manage to locate places of residence, education, and employment closer together again, as is the case, for instance, in the Netherlands, that case will become even clearer.)
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I think this is the initial idea behind FPN, however due to the way the money is channeled they have become a useful revenue source for councils e.t.c
It depends. The City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for instance, have very high revenues from parking fines and Westminster certainly encourage the flow of motor traffic into their area to cause this revenue stream to continue. But for the vast majority of councils, income from parking fines is really not very high at all, a couple of million pounds a year, perhaps. Some councils have committed to filter this money back into work to achieve modal shift towards the sustainable modes.
There is also the problem of the filtering down of power of law enforcement away from the police.
A law is passed to allow traffic wardens to issue FPN, fine but the problem is you get legal creep so to speak and more and more issues are passed onto non police staff. It's a dangerous road.
This is certainly a problem. As ever, there needs to be a rethink on the role of policing, and the UK should introduce more dedicated traffic police. Decriminalising parking enforcement was not a bad move, though. Parking offences are quite different to moving offences, which really need well-trained police to enforce and investigate.
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Whilst accidents at speed camera sites have fallen (above Oliver says it's 40%) there are two reasons why this is not a reliable measure of the effectiveness of speed cameras. Firstly speed cameras can only be put up where there have been 2 fatalities, or in London, 3 fatalities. The likelihood of multiple fatal accidents in the same spot is very small, and the likelihood of there being even more gets ever smaller. So while 2 fatalities is rare enough, 4 would be much rarer. Therefore by doing absolutely nothing you'd likely get the same reduction, and the speed camera may well be irrelevant. The reduction is merely a regression to the mean. The second reason, and the proof that there must be some truth in the first, is that while KSIs have fallen at camera sites, they have not fallen overall. Indeed in some years they have even risen.
Before the introduction of speed cameras KSI figures fell significantly year on year. Either we have reached a point at which we're just not going to reduce them further, or more likely, we're seeing the effect of a policy due to which traffic policing has been greatly reduced since the introduction of speed cameras. Exceeding the speed limit is a causal factor in a very low number of KSIs. Lots of misleading figures were bandied about back in the day, but I think it's now officially something like 8% if I recall correctly. Speed cameras therefore can only aspire to reduce KSIs by 8%. 82% of KSIs are caused by drivers going at less than the speed limit, and speed cameras can never catch them even if the legal speed they were doing was far too high for the road conditions. Real live policemen can of course reduce an awful lot more causal factors - drunk driving, mobile phone use, careless or dangerous driving, etc - but are of course a very expensive cost centre rather than a profit centre.
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FFS - the BNP is not a proper political party, you racist.
It was when I joined, now that they have let 'darkies' in I am forced to agree with you.
Shirley the majority of the offences existed already . . .
No, over the past 10 years there have been around 3,400 new offences added to the law - the government has come up with offences at the rate of almost one new crime a day.
Many trivial, many carrying with them fines.
. . . and even where they did not, the summary penalty sysem of FPNs / NEFPNs reduces the burden on an an underfunded and overstretched judicial system.
I am sure it does. Expediency at the expense of justice is not a good thing.
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. . not even a 'stealth tax' (a stealthy non-concept if I've ever come across one).
'Stealth tax', as a phrase, I think has it's place, the generating of revenue from other (not normally considered as tax) sources. It might not technically be accurate, but I think people understand that and use it accordingly.
Everybody has a choice whether to break the law or not--no-one is compelled to speed.
When it comes to speeding yes, agreed, no one is compelled to speed - but, putting speeding aside, on the broader question of the law being employed as a revenue collection service, you seem to be setting up a false distinction - of either wilfully breaking the law or acting within the law.
I am responding to you because you quote me in this response (with your frankly tired and platitudinous genetic fallacy of 'Daily Mail, Daily Mail, Daily Mail !!!') - but we might be talking about two entirely different things here, you specifically road traffic (or even just speed limits) and me more generally about the law being employed as a revenue collection service.
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Whilst accidents at speed camera sites have fallen (above Oliver says it's 40%) there are two reasons why this is not a reliable measure of the effectiveness of speed cameras. Firstly speed cameras can only be put up where there have been 2 fatalities, or in London, 3 fatalities. The likelihood of multiple fatal accidents in the same spot is very small, and the likelihood of there being even more gets ever smaller. So while 2 fatalities is rare enough, 4 would be much rarer. Therefore by doing absolutely nothing you'd likely get the same reduction, and the speed camera may well be irrelevant. The reduction is merely a regression to the mean. The second reason, and the proof that there must be some truth in the first, is that while KSIs have fallen at camera sites, they have not fallen overall. Indeed in some years they have even risen.
Good information, I have never really thought of that, really interesting, almost like placing a camera at the sight of a lighting strike (for the sake of illustration assuming correct the old adage that lighting never strikes twice in the same place) and then using the data from the camera to show how lighting strikes are down year-on-year !
CCTV - winning the war on lighting !
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A point that I was in two minds about raising. I am, however, slightly circumspect, as it strikes me as being somewhat of a soundbite, and I'm not entirely convinced of its validity.
It's validity to the argument or it's validity as a claim ? Not sure what you are saying here ?
My perception is that a lot of the new crimes already existed, in some form or other, under previous legislation. All that the new laws did was to, somewhat redundantly, make an arbitrary distinction / reclassification, as a quick political fix (rather than improving enforcement). Not that I don't agree with you, in that there does appear to be a swathe of fucknutted legislation to criminalise anything that moves.
The ldnfgss bad post act 2009: *section 16 *[spellin' also bad grammer]. A fine of *no less *than £80.
My perception is that a lot of the new crimes already existed, in some form or other, under previous legislation.
No, overwhelmingly new, some would have been, of course, needed, many - as you say - political in nature (and not just as a 'political fix'), and many, as MyQul pointed out, simply about politicians being seen to be 'doing stuff'
By way of an example - a leaked memo from Tony Blair to his cabinet illustrates just that: feeling that he was seen as "out of touch" by the public he asked ministers to come up with "eye-catching initiatives", adding that "I should be personally associated with as much of this as possible."
The expediency is that, once guilt is accepted, the process is prescriptive - there's no need to muck about any further. Should a claim innocence be maintained, the usual judicial process is available.
True to an extent. At the least the dynamics of justice are changed.
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is it not a democratic republic? as far as I was aware the two are not opposites.
Democracy = all people held as equal
Republic = certain people are held as more equal than others through mob rule
They are completely different ideals - you can only consider them as non opposites if you start with a democracy and it decides to become a republic. But as far as im aware this has never happened in the entirety of human history.
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No, over the past 10 years there have been around 3,400 new offences added to the law - the government has come up with offences at the rate of almost one new crime a day.
A point that I was in two minds about raising. I am, however, slightly circumspect, as it strikes me as being somewhat of a soundbite, and I'm not entirely convinced of its validity.
It's validity to the argument or it's validity as a claim ? Not sure what you are saying here ?
If it's not an valid claim, it's not a valid argument.
Yes, agreed, but if it is a valid claim - then you can still make the claim that it does not impact on the argument - (or does) there are three options here, not one.
Claim = false = conclusion (or use in argument) = irrelevant.
Claim = true = conclusion (or use in argument) = irrelevant.
Claim = true = conclusion (or use in argument) = relevant.Anyhow . . . putting all that aside, the claim is valid - you can check for yourself - it has been widely reported, and is not contested by government or the police and is not considered a controversial claim. Both the Labour party, the Conservatives and the Liberal democratic party seem to think it is factual, as do ACPO, the Home Office (who alone have come up with 430 new crimes), The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies . . .and so on.
I am sure if you had the time you could trawl through all the legislation and put a more exacting figure on it, but everyone involved agrees these figures are about right.
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Democracy = all people held as equal
Republic = certain people are held as more equal than others through mob rule
They are completely different ideals - you can only consider them as non opposites if you start with a democracy and it decides to become a republic. But as far as im aware this has never happened in the entirety of human history.
It's been a while since my political science classes but I think the definition is a bit more than those. Mob rule and the 'tyranny of the majority' would be more accurately assigned to democracy as 51% decides for all.
Republics involve the masses electing people to represent their views with a key factor being the absence of a monarch.
Anyhoo. It's all politics and silliness. I've had a boozy lunch before heading off for the holidays so that's as in-depth as it gets today.
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We dont live in a democracy,
we live in a republic.
wow
Democracy = all people held as equal
Republic = certain people are held as more equal than others through mob rule
They are completely different ideals - you can only consider them as non opposites if you start with a democracy and it decides to become a republic. But as far as im aware this has never happened in the entirety of human history.
i was under the impression a republic was a state with the head of state not being a monarch. thus, the uk is not a republic.
unless you mean a republic where power is in the hands of those albe to vote, or in the hands of representatives of them, which i don't think we are in either...
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depends what you define as what is the 'head of state'
if for you, its defined by whose image you lick when you stick a stamp, then its the queen.
if for you, its defined by who decides what Muslim country we are going to invade next, then its mr brown.
I suppose it really comes down to whether you happen to be posting a stamp or signing up to enlist.
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Thanks D. Generate your quite right - let me correct
Democracy = all people equal decided by mob rule
Republic = Some people put in charge decided by mob rule.It's been a while since my political science classes but I think the definition is a bit more than those. Mob rule and the 'tyranny of the majority' would be more accurately assigned to democracy as 51% decides for all.
Republics involve the masses electing people to represent their views with a key factor being the absence of a monarch.
Anyhoo. It's all politics and silliness. I've had a boozy lunch before heading off for the holidays so that's as in-depth as it gets today.
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So we're agreed then.
I think so.
Just because it has become received wisdom does not necessarily make it so.
Perversely, I want to it to be true, but I would prefer it to be demonstrated to me, as opposed to making it an article of faith.
It needn't be an article of faith any more than thinking Australia exists is an article of faith. The acts and statutes are all recorded - it breaks down as around 1100 as primary legislation and 2300 as statutory instruments / secondary legislation and orders in council.
I have not been to Australia nor have I spent the time to count all the legislation introduced over the past ten years - but those who know about these things agree both Australia's existence and the figures on the introduction of new laws are both valid claims.
Unless both are a complex charade involving everyone on both sides I think it reasonable to think both claims are accurate.
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Got home this evening
letter on the doormat
opened it up and the heading was "fixed penalty fine"
I thought "oh fuck"
they were refunding my fine, police had cancelled it
no explanation
woohoo WTF woohoo
smiling dj
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Posted by
@dancing james
If we live in a democracy then not doing things that are unpopular is the right way to do it. (sorry for the double negative)
Surely fixed penalty fines are only a "stealth tax" on the people committing the offence..i.e. people speeding.
This stealth tax thing is a load of daily mail bollocks anyway.