"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." "Like I always say, there's no 'I' in "team". There is a 'me', though, if you jumble it up." We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do. Wisdom - that part of knowledge that isn't only true, but also happens to be helpful. Wisdom speaks softly... Thereafter the volume increases proportionate to the level of ignorance A punctured bicycle
On a hillside desolate
Will nature make a man of me yet? All designed objects are propaganda for a certain way of life. Sometimes we need to stop analysing the past, stop planning the future, stop figuring out precisely how we feel, stop deciding exactly what we want, and just see what happens. We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." --Napoleon Bonaparte The best designed clothes: invite being removed but reward being kept on. It's that you just can't take the effect and make it the cause | A Prophecy Within three months I imagine that any Lib Dem/Labour/Others coalition will fall, a General Election will be called, the Lib Dem vote will be decimated, the Conservatives brought to full power and Electoral /Constitutional Reform will be nothing but a wistful memory as those of us with distaste for conservatism hunker down for the duration. Demos, riots, overturned cars in the streets, many more homeless, infrastructure decay, a rise in crimes against the person and property, a happy time perhaps for the City and the secure middle classes, a dreadful time for the vulnerable, the disabled, the [ continue reading Stalemate: PR and PR, Ice Cream, Bananas and Fudge ] The US-based International Intellectual Property Alliance has asked the US Trade Rep to add Indonesia to its list of rogue nations that don’t respect copyright. What did Indonesia do to warrant inclusion on this “301 list”? Its government had the temerity to advise its ministries to give preference to free/open source software because it will cost less and reduce the use of pirated proprietary software in government. According to the IPA, this movement to reduce copyright infringement is actually bad for copyright, because “it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights and also limits the ability of government or [ continue reading IP Alliance says that encouraging free/open source makes you an enemy of the USA ] On Thursday 8 January 2009, then 18-year old Mahoud Samed Almahadin (aka Matt Connor aka Agent Pubeit) took off his shirt, proceeded to rub vaseline all over his upper body and subsequently used it to hold toenail clippings and pubic hair. He then ran into the New York Scientology building, tossed some books around and smeared the mixture on objects. After his greasy raid, Mahoud Samed Almahadin was charged with burglary, criminal mischief, and aggravated harassment as hate crimes. Weeks later, 21 year-old film student and Anonymous member Jacob Speregen was charged with the same crimes, bar burglary, because [ continue reading We Are Anonymous. We Are Legion. We Plead Guilty In Court. ] What do a trucker, an Israeli entrepreneur, Al Gore and Richard Branson all have in common? Proof that the real goldmines are old, neglected industries. The name of that proof is GreenRoad. While so many entrepreneurs bang their heads against a Web and social media advertising brick wall, GreenRoad has applied common technology to an industry technology has largely passed by and—voilà—they’ve got a business that’s growing and saving lives, money and the environment. Driving is the third most deadly profession after deep sea fishing and working in a coal mine. Not only does driving more safely save lives [ continue reading Al Gore Joins Richard Branson in Backing GreenRoad ] Parking wardens working for London’s local authorities routinely issue tickets against authority-owned vehicles. When this happens, the authority takes itself to court to argue that it shouldn’t have to pay fines to itself. Sometimes, they ask the courts to award themselves legal costs from their own pockets. This according to Barrie Segal, who published a book in 2007 on London’s insane parking enforcement called The Parking Ticket Awards: Crazy Councils, Meter Madness and Traffic Warden Hell. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» Boing Boing London councils issue themselves parking tickets, fight them in court: .) [ continue reading London councils issue themselves parking tickets, fight them in court ] Make your own David Cameron poster. oh… this will amuse you, I have found out today that Morris Dancing cannot be licensed! It is classed as an ancient tradition, of pagan origin thus religious and therefore exempt! Now I thought it was dying out but how does this affect the war on terror. How perilous is it to cycle where you live? Here’s a map showing Department for Transport data of all the road accidents in 2007 involving cyclists where injuries were reported to the police. There were just over 16,000 accidents in total – about 46 per day. Thanks to the raw data released by Direct Gov, we were able to learn the grid reference for each – presumably thanks to the police report. We turned these into latitude/longitude co-ordinates using a program one of our coders wrote, which we then plotted on a map. Mapped: the UK’s road cycling blackspots — [ continue reading Mapped: the UK’s road cycling blackspots — Times Labs Blog ] Young people eh? tsk … we’ve gotta fix them. Reminds me of the Hackney police officer telling me that people were not supposed to cross roads except at ‘official’ crossing points. Whilst I wear a haz-vest often and think they are a good idea this piece seems to suggest more about clothing and reflective tape. If they are not simply enforcing the use of front and tail lights and are insisting on reflective clothing then the words: ‘ultra vires’, obstruction, harassment, illegal, abuse of powers, vigilante, all spring to mind. Will there be a curfew on black and dark-coloured vehicles [ continue reading No hi-viz vest means no cycling in Norwich ] More than £400million a year is being raised by police and town halls targeting minor ‘middle-class’ crimes. They are hitting millions of people with tickets for speeding, parking, litter and even putting out bins on the wrong day. The ‘offenders’ are being caught using a range of increasingly advanced surveillance techniques, including spy cameras. The amount raked in from ‘soft crimes’ includes £330million in parking fines, £100million from speeding tickets and £12million from spot fines for offences such as over-filling a dustbin so its lid will not close. Speed cameras alone snare more than 1.4million people a year. In [ continue reading Don’t nick us it’s only ‘middle-class’ crime ] “A Manchester cyclist is striking back at dodgy drivers by secretly filming them as he commutes to work. Joby Spragg, 33, of Hyde, has been cut up, clipped and forced off the road by hostile motorists. Although he’s written to some of their employers to complain, he’s received little in reponse. Now, he has fitted a tiny camera to his helmet and posts his experiences of cycle commuting in Greater Manchester on his website, www.fightbaddriving.co.uk Cyclist names and shames on video website “ (CLICK HERE FOR MORE -> road.cc Secret filming captures drivers at their worst: [ continue reading Secret filming captures drivers at their worst, (it’s just ‘filming’ isn’t it) ] It is very important that this sort of behaviour is stopped – how can we build a better and more equitable and sustainable society when people take their clothes off in public in Britain? Now off to Spearmint Rhino with the Sun in my pocket. “The former Royal Marine, who became notorious for his naked hike from Land’s End to John O’Groats in 2003, has spent much of the past seven years in prison for repeatedly appearing nude in public. He was yesterday found guilty of breaching the peace when he walked naked from Perth prison in December after [ continue reading naked rambler faces life in prison (for ‘so what?’) ] Avatar, James Cameron’s blockbusting 3D film, is both profoundly silly and profound. It’s profound because, like most films about aliens, it is a metaphor for contact between different human cultures. But in this case the metaphor is conscious and precise: this is the story of European engagement with the native peoples of the Americas. It’s profoundly silly because engineering a happy ending demands a plot so stupid and predictable that it rips the heart out of the film. The fate of the native Americans is much closer to the story told in another new film, The Road, in which a [ continue reading Monbiot: “Avatar is a profound, insightful, important film” ] …and what do the young people see parents, teachers and admin-staff eating? Have you seen the size of many teachers and school admin staff? Have you seen the cakes, chips and kebabs taken to staff-rooms at lunchtime? The tins of Quality Street and boxes of Roses in the school office. At every school function school-raffles mean head-teachers hand bottles of wine and scotch to staff and parents and boxes of chocolates are everywhere in front of the same kids humiliated in every lunchtime stop & search. Witness the amount of kids walking to school with [ continue reading “Junk food fills children’s lunchboxes” – SO WHAT! ] Charges against a driver whose Range Rover struck and killed a cyclist in Warrington in September 2008 were dropped yesterday after a judge heard that she had probably fainted at the wheel. Mother-of-three Sharon Corless, aged 43, was killed when she was dragged under the vehicle while on a bike ride with her husband Peter, who also suffered serious injuries in the incident. Charges dropped against driver who killed cyclist after [ continue reading Charges dropped against driver who killed cyclist after apparently fainting ] The Observer reports that an estimated $352bn of drug and mafia money was laundered by the major banks at the peak of the credit crunch, while regulators turned a blind eye, since the highly liquid criminal underworld was the only source of the cash necessary to keep the banks’ doors open. As Charlie Stross notes, “A third of a trillion dollars is a lot of money; it’s enough to fund the US military invading another country halfway around the world, or a manned Mars exploration program.” Charlie goes on to mention that now that these narcobucks “aren’t neatly bundled up [ continue reading Hundreds of billions in crime money knowingly laundered by banks during credit crunch ] Rubbish! rubbish! rubbish! Latest in the series, “lazy people collect reasons to ensure that they never have to get out of their cars” The fashion for wearing iPods while cycling has been blamed for a rise in the number of riders being killed or seriously injured. Dubbed the iPod zombies, cyclists who are distracted by thumping tunes blaring in their ears have become the latest menace on Britain’s roads. Generation of ‘cycling iPod zombies’ blamed for rise in deaths on the road ] “The main tenets of this car culture can be summarised as follows: 1. The inevitable attrition is a price well worth paying (by unknown others) in return for individual autonomy and convenience (often now described as necessary to the way in which we live our lives). 2. Every physically competent adult has a right to drive, removable only as a punishment for serious or repeated criminal offending and, even then, only temporarily. 3. Conduct which might be regarded as dangerous in any other walk of life is, in a motorist, merely careless and that which would otherwise be careless [ continue reading Cycling against the car culture ] Not big or clever! and so not recommended or supported, I have had far more collisions with cyclists than with cars – what to do about that? “ Luke Iseman sells a Bicycle Defense Kit for $19.90. The Bicycle Defense Kit (BDK) offers options for dealing with aggressive motorists. Contained within an altoids tin, the 8 tools vary in detectability, potential to cause damage, and legality. Specifically, cyclists can: • Issue ‘citizen citations’ with official-ish tickets. • Label offending vehicles with an ‘I was a jerk to a cyclist’ sticker. • Introduce the risk of paint [ continue reading Bicycle defense kit fits in Altoids tin (not recommended) ] A jury has returned a verdict of not proven in the trial of a van driver accused of killing a cyclist. Elspeth Kelman, 59, was struck on the island of Arran during a cycling trip in memory of her late husband. Charges against Nick Underdown, 28, of causing death by careless driving, were found not proven. A police report had blamed the 28-year-old for the fatal crash but his defence counsel successfully argued this should not be seen by the jury. via BBC NEWS | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Cyclist death charge ‘not proven’. A former international showjumper who critically injured a cyclist because he was taking up too much road has been jailed for 33 months by Guildford Crown Court. Christopher Robertson, 22, drove his car into Leslie Smith, 66, a former IT consultant, on a country lane in Surrey. After leaving Mr Smith for dead, Robertson, the son of wealthy stud farm owners, began trying to cover up his role in the crash near his home in the village of Chiddingfold. He hosed down his Citroën Xantia, had a damaged numberplate replaced and ordered a junior colleague to remove police notices appealing [ continue reading Former showjumper Christopher Robertson jailed for injuring cyclist ] Blimey this is a boring post. The argument has to be made, of course, but while one WILL NOT support loutish cyclists one will also not support fat, lazy people looking to persecute all cyclists and force helmet use to portray cycling as a dangerous as well as anti-social activity to excuse their idleness and selfishness. Last year, 14% of all road traffic accidents, and one quarter of road deaths, had exceeding the speed limit or driving too quickly for the conditions as a contributory factor. That suggests to us that taking measures to curb speeding motorists are a sensible [ continue reading Daily Mail calls for prosecution of anti-social cyclists ] Strict liability – a civilised compensation system,. Discussion paper for RoadPeace April 2008 conference So according to this we, (the mouthy community described by LBH councillors and officers alike as misguided, fanciful and alarmist), were pretty damn accurate in our calculations for the costs of Clissold Leisure Centre. We said almost £50,000,000 they said, “nowhere near that”. This figure in the Freedom of Information disclosure won’t include officer-time, precautionary redundancy costs*, auditors’ fees, consultants’ fees, lawyers’ fees, recruitment costs, either! Mr Pipe is not expected to apologise to anyone anytime soon. Can anyone explain why the out-of-court, ‘no-blame’ settlement remains confidential? (This calculation also makes no mention of the additional £10,000,000 windfall grant [ continue reading well you could push our ignorant arses over with a soft stick – we were correct! ] “Home Secretary agrees to release previously unseen documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. The Home Office said the documents would be made available to the families before they are made public because they many contain sensitive and personal information about the last minutes of the victims’ lives. A Home Office spokesman said: “Hillsborough was a terrible tragedy and the Government is committed to full disclosure of information held centrally and by local agencies in order to help provide a permanent record of documentation relating to the tragedy. This will be done in close co-operation with South Yorkshire [ continue reading Unseen Hillsborough documents to be released by Home Office ] “Terrible piece of parking here in on the Apollo 15 mission in 1971. Even though there is plenty of space available here in Mare Imbrium, the driver David Scott has chosen to park right across a lane, forcing cyclists into a difficult detour round Hadley Rille.” (CLICK HERE FOR MORE -> MyBikeLane.com: .) “Scott DeathBoy sez, ‘Blog post about a photographer’s interaction with a police officer, who wrongly tried to have him delete the photo of their van in a disabled bay (referencing terrorism). The photographer held their ground and the policewoman backed down after checking her facts.’ As soon as I had taken a shot, PC Smith (40144) came out from the train station and asked to speak with me. She asked why I’d taken a photo of her van. I told her that it was parked in a disabled bay. She told me that she’d been called because a [ continue reading ‘War on terror means no pictures of police vans in disabled parking spots’ ] “The Cardigan Bay dolphins are one of the only two substantial resident populations left in British seas. It is partly for their sake that most of the coastal waters of the bay are classified as special areas of conservation (SACs). This grants them the strictest protection available under European Union law. The purpose of SACs is to prevent “the deterioration of natural habitats … as well as disturbance of the species for which the areas have been designated”. That looks pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? The bay is strictly protected. It can’t be damaged, and the dolphins and other rare [ continue reading These are not the mariners of old but pirates who make bureaucrats blanch ] I cannot see the argument about cycle-paths being the answer – if anything they create a false sense of security that I believe leads to less road-sense and a belief that bicycles aren’t really ‘traffic’. Just like that “oh he was killed because he wasn’t wearing a helmet” never “he was killed because he got hit by a ton of metal driven by an impatient person on the phone, sorting their cds, with a cigarette in their mouth”. Drivers of motor vehicles go very quiet when told that the dead person did have a hat made of polystyrene foam [ continue reading You can do everything right and still wind up dead ] Local Lad Luke gets a visit from Hazel Blears offering her full support and he now seems to have less understanding for MPs than he did in April when he wrote his thoughts on reform. The local angle that Luke forgets to remind people of is that not so many years ago Hackney Councillor, Andy Buttress, actually went to gaol for expense irregularities. This was a Labour councillor under a Conservative government and the amount wouldn’t today clean a moat or trim the hedges around a helipad. Why is there so little talk of custodial sentences now? Thanks [ continue reading Luke’s Blog: Topical visitor ] | Shirdi Sai Baba: "Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it true, is it necessary, does it improve upon the silence?" Well known fact that any kiss where one or other party is in control of heavy machinery doesn't count for quality assessment purposes. There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. The honest heart that's free frae a' intended fraud or guile. However fortune kick the ba', Has ay some cause to smile. Life consists in replacing one worry with another, and one desire with the next, what the Buddhists call ‘grasping’ or upādāna in Sanskrit "Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future." "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." A wrong decision isn't forever; it can be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved. heavy words thrown lightly And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” |
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