Vox Polis

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Looks like the “post-partisan” Arnie has been watching himself in Hercules again reading up on his ancient Greek history. In his annual state of the state address, Arnie said that California is the “modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta. California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta”.

California has Athens’ ideas of democracy that, we can see, have led to the election of a populist ex-action actor who often struggles to articulate a coherent sentence and probably just like the city state of Athens has seen the sentencing and execution of innocent men (remember Socrates?).

It also has Sparta’s strength, which came through its corrupt military and complete subjugation of it’s citizens in a totalitarian state. Well California may not be quite there on this one, but Arnie clearly has his sights on it. He even referred to California as a “nation-state”. You’ll clearly need an army to achieve that one Arnie. I am so glad he can’t run for President.

Not feeling fearful enough of your fellow man? Worried you’re losing touch with the world from inside your terrorism-proof bunker? Well the Ministry of Love MI5 have a helpful new service just for you. All you have to do is sign up on the MI5 website and a helpful spook will email you whenever the UKs threat level changes.

All very comforting. Having said that, our protectors don’t have a great track record when it comes to predicting terrorism. The threat level was lowered prior to the July 7th attacks and John Reid’s warning that a terror attack was “highly likely” over the Christmas period came to nothing more than a fireworks display. So, if the warnings are so frequently wrong why bother in the first place? Because as a hawkish home secretary or a budget minded spy you can’t lose. Say the threat level’s low and there is an attack, well that proves how sneaky the terrorists have become and justifies a budget increase for security. Get the threat level too high and have no attacks - you’ve proven what a good job you’ve done and (guess what) justified a budget increase for security to keep us even more safe. The thing to take away from this, in my opinion, is that (not unlike terrorists) threat levels are best ignored. Stay watchful citizens.

Now that they’re finished doing their annual shift for Santa the Vox Polis elves have got time to do some maintenance work. The usual upgrade related warnings (moderate chance of rains of toads, threat level orange) apply.

The Civil Service is planning strike action over poor pay, redundancies and plans to ship them all out of London to the regions. Most voters have little sympathy for civil servants, who are perceived as benefiting from rock solid job security and generous pensions; certainly these strikes will do little to change that attitude. But the Government is clearly scared. Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, took the unprecedented move of sending a letter to all staff urging them not to strike. An interesting move considering that it is unlikely to change people’s minds and it actually helps feed the story. In fact I’d be more likely to strike if my boss told me not to.

After our successful predictions last year, here are 7 things to look out for in 2007.

1. Saddam Hussein’s zombie will make an appearance in the French General Election and beat Sarkozy.
2. Lembit Opik will use the Lib Dem repeal appeal to make bigamy legal and subsequently marry both Cheeky Girls.
3. Cliff Richard will summon God to extend copyright term to a 1000 years.
4. Tony will reveal the identity of his “big, clunking fist” to be his old mate Silvio Berlusconi.
5. NASA will discover life on Mars in a manned expedition, the debate over whether the life was intelligently designed or evolved will split America in two.
6. There will be free and fair elections in Iraq.
7. The police’s ancient law investigation unit will stop looking into the loans for honours scandal
   and instead focus on the widespread consumption of mince pies on Christmas Day.

We’re off to spend last year’s winnings from William Hill on getting ourselves an honour from Tony. Have a happy new year.

I always have a chuckle when I’m reminded of all those obscure laws that never get repealed. A law firm in Swansea has come up with a list of 10:

1. In Hereford you can shoot a Welsh person on a Sunday, with a longbow, in the Cathedral Close.
2. It is legal for a male to urinate in public, as long it is on the rear wheel of his motor vehicle and his right hand is on the vehicle.
3. A bed may not be hung out of a window.
4. It is illegal for a lady to eat chocolates on a public conveyance.
5. It is illegal to be drunk on licensed premises.
6. Taxi drivers are required to ask all passengers if they have smallpox or the plague.
7. Any person found breaking a boiled egg at the sharp end will be sentenced to 24 hours in the village stocks (enacted by Edward VI).
8. Any boy under the age of 10 may not see a naked mannequin.
9. Throughout the whole of England it is illegal to eat mince pies on December 25.
10. You can shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow in Chester, inside the city walls and after midnight.

A few years ago Richard Smith and Bateman decided to travel America to break as many obscure laws as they could. For example, it is illegal to go whaling in the landlocked state of Utah or fall asleep in a cheese factory in South Dakota.

I wish someone would do the same in the UK. But trouble is you might get arrested. Look how seriously Scotland Yard are taking the obscure law that forbids the sale of honours.

El Mundo has reported that 94% of Euro notes in Spain contain traces of cocaine. Well what a surprise!
Because these notes could have been “contaminated” at any point, such as when put in counting machines, it doesn’t tell us anything about the number of people using it, the frequency or anything else that might be interesting. But it does grab tabloid headlines.

Similar surveys in London have found traces on 99% of all £5 notes. Even tests in the European Parliament’s toilets found traces of cocaine. Does this tell us that MEPs are using? Hardly, they have their own private bathrooms, and the EP toilets can be used by the public.

The only thing that I can think that these types of surveys tell us is that people are using notes to snort cocaine. In this case Euro notes - perhaps we should get rid of notes! Or ban the Euro!

I’m a big supporter of renewable energy and believe that it is the only way the UK will meet its targets and reduce its carbon emissions. These views have been presented a number of times on this blog. But recently I have become a little more sceptical about wind turbines. There have been a series of stories in the MSM that draws on some interesting findings.

First of all, there was a report by Renewable Energy Foundation on the efficiency of wind turbines, which only generate about 28% of their capacity. This especially highlighted the problem of inland wind turbines, including one on the M25 which generated 8% of its capacity.

So build more at sea seems to be what this suggests, and this is certainly what the Government intends to do, with the world’s biggest wind farm to be built off the Kent coast. Of course this has annoyed some of the locals who complain about the eyesore (I think they look impressive personally) and the damage to the local birds (just like buildings!). But even those at sea rarely achieve their optimum output.

Currently there are 30 wind turbines on the Kentish Flats. Interestingly there have been some issues. After just one year of operations, 9 are out of action waiting repair, with the tops of the turbines having to be sheared off and the gear boxes replaced. I hope this isn’t a recurring problem.

One of the problems is of course that not enough has been invested in the past to make current wind turbines as efficient as they could be, but this will hopefully change over time.

John Reid quietly admitted last Monday that of the 3.46 million people on the National DNA Database, 1.14 million have committed no offence. The latest figure is one million higher than Home Office figures released in March. The number of innocent people on the database is the result of a policy which allows the police to take and store DNA samples from anyone they arrest regardless of whether the arrest leads to a caution or conviction.

Given that the database contains a disproportionate number of samples from people from ethnic minorities as well as the records of (as of January) 24,000 innocent children, it’s pretty clear that what we have is not a database of criminals but one of people the police don’t like the look of. For the time being we have have a pledge from the Home Office Minister Andy Burnham that the database would not be extended to the whole population but in light of recent calls from Tony Blair to acquire the “maximum number” of samples an incomplete database could turn out to mean everyone apart from politicians and those with enough money to claim that they would be at risk if their information was stored in a leaky government database. I can only hope that the investigation by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics will provide enough evidence against the database for someone to put the breaks on the pernicious harvesting of our most personal information.

Via The Register.