BIG SHOT

I was reading an article about Brad Pitt over the weekend.  I quite like him.  I have enjoyed most films in which he featured.  I don't envy him being married to Angelina either; I imagine she's quite a handful.  But I quite enjoyed all the films of hers I have seen too.  In fact I quite like Brangelina as an entity; they have a curious approach to family-creation, but I like what they have done - if you can afford a large family, how nice to adopt several disadvantaged kids.  And they seem to be one of the more stable Hollywood couples (they'll probably split up now I've said that).  And workwise, their moves into direction have been pretty successful too.

But I was quite shocked to read in the interview with Brad the following words, ' I got my frst BB gun when I was in nursery school.  I got my first shotgun by first grade, I had shot a handgun by third grade and I grew up in a pretty sane environment.'  I know what he means.  He means that his was a reasonably normal upbringing in a reasonably normal neighbourhood, and yet he had this exposure to weaponry.  But, I'm sorry, Brad, there will be very few Brits reading this who will think that this is in any way pretty sane or normal.  For us, a sane environment and a normal upbringing would involve anything but real guns.  In fact I suspect very few Brits will ever have held a gun, leave alone fired one.

He went on to say that he and his kids enjoy surprisingly adult discussions about topics in films which they often watch together.  When asked, he said that the last film they wayched together was 'Apocalypto'.  This is an 18-rated epic full of violence and human sacrifice, described by one reviewer as featuring a super-cruel, psycho-sadistic society on the skids, a ghoulscape engaged in widespread slavery, reckless sewage treatment and with a real lust for human blood.

I suppose Mr Pitt must consider that he too is providing a pretty sane and reasonably normal environment for his kids.  This disappointed me more than I would have liked to have been.  Perhaps American lifestyle has moved further away from the British than I imagined. 

NO SIGN OF GETTING UP TO SPEED

There has been a bit of a debate here about speed limits on Britain's roads.  We're not like Texas, where an 85mph speed limit has just been approved on one road, since we don't have long, straight, undeveloped stretches of road of that sort.  But we do have Motorways which are built to accomodate fast driving.

The national limit (on Motorways) is 70mph.  This limit was decided at a time when many cars only just managed 70mph.  The Motorways were also half empty.  I remember driving up the M1, the first Motorway to be built here, soon after it opened, just to try it out.  I did manage a little over 70mph, but then I hardly saw another vehicle.  Nowadays, very, very few drivers take any notice of the 70mph limit.  I recently drove round part of the M25, at speeds rarely under 80mph, and I was overtaken continuously.  But we now have seat belts, disc brakes, obstruction sensors, collision control, engine braking systems, and many other safety devices which make driving at high speed much safer than it was in my young days.  Drivers are far more likely to have an accident from not paying attention (usually because they are on the telephone or playing with their GPS or trying to break one finger off a Kit Kat), than they are from speed alone.

One proposal being discussed in Government is that the limit on Motorways now be raised to 80mph.  This may ease congestion.  But, frankly, all it will probably do in reality is recognise the actual average speed of modern drivers.  The police don't pay too much attention to speeding these days, unless some other element makes it dangerous driving or unless the driver is fleeing a crime scene (such as the Lamborghini-powered Audi the other day that was outrunning a police helicopter at speeds of up to 200mph).  The Deputy Prime Minister is in favour of this change, but many in his own party even are against.  We don't know what the Conservative part of the Coalition thinks about this (if it thinks about road speeds at all at the moment).

I have complained before about frequent changes in the speed limit on certain roads.  The limit is normally 70 on a dual carriageway, 60 on a single carriageway and 30 in towns (occasionally 20).  Vans, buses, goods vehicles, etc have different restrictions.  Occasionally, the limits are reduced because the road passes an area where there might be slow traffic or pedestrians.  In Findon, for example, there is a long stretch of dual carriageway where the speed limit is 60mph because there are slip roads into and out of a school.  I have never understood how 60 is safer than 70 passing a school, but there it is.  And there are 13 changes between here and Petersfield, a 20 minute journey I undertake often.  One minute there is no limit, then suddenly it is reduced to 40mph in a village, then 50 again up to the next village, then 20 for the centre of a small town en route (another proposal has been for all town centres to be restricted to 20mph; the Lib Dem part of the Coalition likes this, but I'm not sure it carries much weight otherwise), then back up to 70 for a short rural stretch, etc.  Needless to say, many drivers either don't understand or don't take any notice.  It is a confusing hotch-potch.

But the main point about these speed limits, which doesn't yet seem to be recognised officially, is that each is accompanied with large signs on both sides of the road, in an attempt to inform and warn drivers.  That's 13 sets of signs on a mostly rural Hampshire road.  And, where the speed limit exceeds 30mph, there will be 'repeater' signs at intervals to remind you of the higher limit.  In some villages, where there is no street lighting and therefore no lamp posts to tell you this is a built-up area, there  will be regular repeater signs right through the village.  That's some 20 sets of signs, or 40 signs in each direction, or 80 signs altogether, on a 20 mile stretch of road.  The entire country is littered with speed restriction signs, 'no limit' signs and repeater signs.  Not to mention signs announcing other road restrictions, warnings, directions, etc.  This is the now famous stretch of the A3 just up the road from here.

Note the speed camera in amongst that lot, as if you'd spot what the speed limit is, as you drove past.  Now consider the improvement if large numbers of these signs were removed.  This is far more important than faffing around with changing speed limits (and presumably adding new signs accordingly).

So, here's my proposal.  You can have it for nothing, Dave and Nick.  Make all Motorways and dual carriageways 80mph, all other main roads 60mph, all rural and minor roads 40mph, and all town centres 20mph.  No exceptions.  There are always signs anyway saying 'pedestrians' or 'hospital' or 'school' or even 'elderly people', so we don't need those backed up with another sign saying 'that means you should drive slowly; ie 40mph'.  In other words, let's take ALL the speed signs away.

As you enter a Motorway, there are signs telling you that there is no speed limit (ie 70mph).  Why?  There are no exceptions on any Motorway in the whole country.  Take them away!  Under my scheme, if there's a main road, no need to post signs all the way along it to remind you of the speed limit; it's 60mph.  If there are likely to be young or especially elderly pedestrians, you are more likely to see the single sign warning of that and to slow down, than if the sign is lost in a sign forest or if you have sign fatigue and have begun to ignore them.

Meanwhile I shall continue to floor the accelerator and let the car's onboard computer do the driving.  In fact this post has been entirely written by the car's onboard computer and not by my driver at all.

WHISTLES, TRUMPETS AND HORNS

There have been interesting developments lately involving secrecy.  I give some of my time to the local District Council, by chairing a committee which examines complaints against Councillors.  Of course, I start from the position that the Councillor is not guilty unless proven otherwise.  But it wouldn’t occur to me to look critically at the complainant for revealing sensitive information about the activities of the Council or the proceedings of the committee on which he sits.  In fact, when we wrote our Code of Conduct some while ago, we inserted a clause which says that we will respect and not punish whistleblowers, or something along those lines.

The situation in America seems to be becoming less tolerant than that.  Of course, terrorism has become the new neurosis.  But there have been a number of cases recently of investigation of citizens for espionage or inappropriate use of position or ‘exceeding authority’, etc, when what they have actually done is shed some light on the hidden activities of the administration.  This smacks a little of authoritarianism, if not guilt.  I do believe that there should be some limits on such revelations, but I also think we should know what our democratically elected representatives are actually doing.  This illiberal trend certainly won’t help the case of Bradley Manning.  I don’t expect him to be given the death sentence, but I don’t suppose the ‘no criminal intent’ defence will get him off either.

In this country, at another level, we had the fascinating period of the super-injunction, when celebs (mostly footballers it seemed) would obtain a court order preventing anyone (usually the press and a woman they’d shagged) from saying anything in public about their nefarious activities.  The justification was that disclosure would harm their family life, as though it was the whistleblower that caused the harm, rather than the shagger himself.  What was really interesting was that the press were not even permitted to reveal that a super-injunction had been granted.  That too was secret.  I think all that has stopped now.  But, who knows?  I haven’t been told.

One of these cases sort of came to court the other day, when the subject of a super-injunction had to apologise for words spoken about the object of a super-injunction.  We’re not allowed to know that there was a super-injunction of course.  Isn’t the law wonderful?!  So we’re not to know the name of the footballer (or it might have been a film star or a politician) who was granted the super-injunction, but because he said some disparaging words about the alleged object of the super-injunction, he was taken to court and had to apologise publicly, even though there might not have been a super-injunction.  Are you with me so far?  In court, the shaggee was known as ‘CTB’ to protect her identity and the shagger was known as ‘RJG’ to protect his family.  After the case, Imogen Thomas made a public statement outside the court saying that she was relieved (which was probably the point of the alleged incident in the first place) and vindicated, but of course couldn’t say who she was or what she was relieved about.  The press then reported the whole story with the real names of those involved (since there is no injunction on this subsequent case).  Well, at least secrecy was maintained, the super-injunction wasn’t broken and Ryan Giggs name didn’t come out as the shagger in the woodpile.

We have also seen the US military withdraw from Iraq.  No secrecy was involved here of course, but one interesting outcome of all the secrecy that had gone before was that the military had signally failed to win over hearts and minds, which, as we all know, is the second most important role of the military overseas.  The debate about whether we should have invaded Iraq or whether the cost was worthwhile I leave to history.  But, since they have been in Iraq, the US has improved electricity generation and transmission, improved irrigation and drainage and increased the amount of land under agriculture, created a new sewage collection and treatment system, increased civil aviation capacity and upgraded airports, repaired the fibre-optic network and built a new telephone exchange, increased oil production and reduced import dependence, built prisons, barracks, entry points, and equipped and trained the military, security forces and police, not to mention establishing local administrative committees and democratic elections.  It’s not perfect, but it’s not a bad state to leave the country in. 

But somehow this information has not permeated down to the Iraqi population.  If there’s one thing that needed not to be kept secret, surely it was this.  Now's the chance to get Wikileaks to leaflet the population.  Ask any Iraqi what they think about the US withdrawing and they will say ‘good riddance’, ‘they didn’t do anything for us, except maybe kill my brother’, ‘things were better under Saddam’, etc.  What a waste.  All that expense and cost and all that has been created is resentment and maybe hatred.  If ever there was a need for whistleblowers!  Or at least blowing one’s own trumpet.  Or is it tooting one’s own horn?