Speed Limits in Lancaster

On the 14th June I wrote about a change of speed limit on the Greyhound Bridge in Lancaster and it has made the letters page in the local newspaper. On the 14th I concluded that a lowering of the limit from 40mph to 30mph was a good thing but one of the letters has the heading '30mph limit is barmy'. The author reckons that he can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that he has been able to drive at 30mph. You see we have a traffic congestion problem between Morecambe and Lancaster which has been described as the worst outside London (I reckon it's the worst full stop).

The author is confusing arguments. There is no need for a speed limit if there is a traffic jam. You only need to put in a limit when traffic is able to travel at that speed so it really is irrelevant what happens in a jam. I had written in a previous blog that the 40mph, meaning that traffic travelled much faster, and this was dangerous to pedestrians. He suggests that we close the road to pedestrians and cyclists. I agree with him that both pedestrians and cylists should prefer to use the footpath/cyclepath, however I have met people who do not use it for fear of mugging.

My main reason to support the lowering to 30mph is that 40mph is anomalous and drivers exceed the limit enough anyway. As it happens I travel this route on most days and on quite a few occasions I have seen drivers who do not appear to be affected by the new limit. It may sound as if traffic is not too bad on the bridge but if there is no queue of traffic on the bridge then there is always a queue when you get off.

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Praise good behaviour

Jeremy Hunt has had to apologise after commenting that the terrible problems of "Heysel and Hillsborough in the 1980s seem now to be behind us". He was referring to the behaviour of the English fans at the World Cup, so the inference was that Liverpool fans were not behaving well. As bad behaviour played no part at Hillsborough it was natural that the relatives of those who were killed and those who were injured should feel insulted.

I do not think any insult was intended. He remembered footballing disasters and related it to the the English fans in South Africa. It is definitely thoughtless, but to equate thoughtlessness with insult is not quite the same thing even though people in Liverpool may disagree.

In the meantime let's not forget that English fans have behaved well and congratulate them for doing so. It is very easy to forget to praise good behaviour and very easy to condemn bad behaviour.

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Another blog about football

I suppose that I should stick with football today because of England's departure from the World Cup. Yesterday's blog was about footballers' attitudes and today I would guess that there are hundreds if not thousands of comments on the internet that have been written about technological advances on the football pitch. I am not too bothered about this myself. I am much more concerned with the attitude and ability of our players. We treat them with so much respect and pay them so much and this in turn raises our expectations. The bubble should have burst yesterday.

Our top players looked like amateurs, and these are people that are paid thousands of pounds per week. I often joke that if we paid them a little more then they could afford the time to be a little fitter, a little quicker, a little more skillful. The joke is wearing thin. Compare the salary of the England manager to that of New Zealand's who only receives a £20 000 salary.

If we are expected to cut back in so many areas then Premier League salaries would be a really good place to save money. I know we live in a capitalist system and the money belongs to the League and they can do with it what they like, but there are plenty of football clubs that are struggling and the bias towards our best players is clearly not working.

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Get away with what you can

When the Brazilian footballer Kaka was controversially sent off near the end of their match against the Ivory Coast it didn't make a difference to the final score. It gave him a one-match ban and it is usually not good to loose one of your best players in the world cup finals but in this case Brazil were already through to the second round. It may even be useful to rest one of your better players at this stage in the competition. So my reason for writing this blog is nothing to do with Kaka's punishment, it is more to do with the punishment for the Ivory Coast player who went down in agony holding his face when he had been touched in the chest.

How are we to bring up children to do the right thing if the right thing is to win Oscars when playing football? This sort of behaviour tells us that it is right to get away with what we can, to ride roughshod over anyone whether they play football or happen to be our competitor in any aspect of life. I haven't read about any punishment but let's hope there has been one. At least I am hearing commentators saying it is wrong. Usually football pundits tell us players should fall over if they are touched in the penalty box. Surely players should fall over if they can't stand up.

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Abortion news

Abortion has made the news recently because a report came out in support of not lowering the 24-week legal time limit for abortion because pain cannot be felt by the foetus. It seems the highly complex neural network does not connect to the pain centres in the brain. Of course there are exceptions that allow for abortion up to birth, e.g. if the child is disabled.

If you believe that life begins at conception then the debate is fairly simple. Abortion is taking a life. If you believe that the debate relates to whether the child could live an independent life from the mother then the debate gets so much more complicated. If you believe the debate relates to complex neural pathways then the debate gets really complex. I thought some pain was recognised at spinal level because we need to recognise pain quickly in order to defend ourselves from it.

If you want to make the debate really complicated then you have to decide what constitutes disability. A couple of days ago I saw someone with a disability who is an actor. He was talking about how we have come so far in the way we treat disabled people. We don't call them names now. However he recognised that the pendulum has swung so far that most people don't know how to mention disability. It looks like the pendulum needs to swing a bit further if we are allowed to abort disabled children until just before they are born.

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Retirement Age

I don't particularly object to working till I am 70. I believe that a role in life does us good and just because we get paid for something doesn't make it bad. Unfortunately there are many people who do not go out to work and enjoy it but they go to pay the bills. However I see most people dying with a house to pass on to their relatives. To me this makes us a fairly wealthy nation and if we have this wealth then most people could choose to retire early.

I am sure that in the 1970s the Daily Mail told me that I would retire at 50 (I'm nearly there) because of North Sea oil and instead of going down it looks like retirement age is going up. It would be nice if everyone had the opportunity to receive a pension at an earlier age so they could choose to give up work, but it would be even nicer if people didn't want to give up work.

Even if I could afford to retire I would choose to be active in employment. So wining the lottery would not do much for me. It's a good job I don't buy lottery tickets.

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Keeping the cogs of industry moving

My recent blogs have been about the way we treat each other and how we have to put in place safeguards in case things go wrong. One example was a vending machine to tell hospital management exactly how their stock was used. It must cost a lot to run this system, so it must save a lot in order to pay for itself. This means that there are a lot of NHS staff who (what is the politically correct term for this...) manage to lose lots of equipment. This is my reading of the situation and it must be the same for a lot of the staff too. The system says we don't trust you. It's the same for anyone who clocks in. Whether they think about it or not there is an implicit mistrust that affects the whole of the nation. We are all guilty and need protecting from ourselves.

One mechanism to save us from ourselves is the legal system and our policies and procedures at work. I was recently told a story about someone who wrote a letter to their management. It was a private matter and one which they did not want publicising. A couple of hours later they found 40 or 50 copies of their private letter. It had been copied and left on a desk for anyone to read. The reaction when asked if they could be shredded was yes but not at the moment. They had to do it in their own time.

Now what would you do if you were in charge? A private letter of a personal nature has been left in a public place. I presume the first thing to do is investigate whether it is accidental or deliberate. I would guess deliberate because there was no need to make 40 or 50 copies and then leave them in a public place. So it looks like someone is deliberately making public information of a sensitive nature which could be hurtful. I would support an enquiry first and if my guesses are correct I would be thinking of a verbal warning. You see we do have managerial and legal methods of keeping the cogs of industry moving. However what was the answer this time? Shred them in your own time. Poor management affects us all.

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