Quotulatiousness

September 2, 2010

Feeling old

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Cancon — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:39

Yesterday, I had to go down to the MTO office (“DMV” for our American friends) to renew my driver’s licence and get the 2011 plate sticker for the Quotemobile. It was a pretty ordinary lineup for the middle of the day, with perhaps a dozen people ahead of me. When I got to the wicket, however, the clerk looked to be all of maybe 14. Absolutely the youngest person I’ve ever encountered in a place like that who wasn’t holding hands with mommy or daddy.

He was definitely in the right place: he’d already mastered the bureaucratic mumble, the never-make-eye-contact-with-the-client, and the dull, listless attitude. Other than his age, he looked like he’d been doing the job for decades . . . and hated it.

I felt quite sorry for him.

August 25, 2010

Bans on texting while driving have not measurably improved highway safety

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Law,Media,Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:34

This report should come as no real surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention:

The two biggest highway-safety issues right now, as far as Washington is concerned, are runaway Toyotas and distracted driving. But what if these aren’t the most important factors driving the nation’s annual highway death toll, which averages about 100 fatalities a day?

That’s the view of Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who says the U.S. Transportation Department, Congress and the media have gotten sidetracked by issues like texting while driving.

“There’s nothing rational about the way we set highway safety priorities,” Mr. Lund says in the Insurance Institute’s Aug. 21 “Status Report” newsletter.

Mr. Lund’s organization is the safety research and advocacy arm of the insurance industry. The IIHS has been critical of the government’s highway safety policies over the past few years, usually arguing that the government wasn’t moving fast enough to require better crash-prevention technology from auto makers.

Mr. Lund and the Insurance Institute also say recent laws banning motorists from using mobile phones behind the wheel don’t correlate with a significant reduction in accidents.

“You’d think from the media coverage, congressional hearings, and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s focus in recent months that separating drivers from their phones would all but solve the public-health problem of crash deaths and injuries,” he wrote. “It won’t.”

August 24, 2010

“One of the few thrills of working as a bylaw enforcement officer is making people cry”

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Cancon,Law,Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:23

Ezra Levant looks at the bylaw enforcement regime in Clarington, just east of Toronto:

It’s not a lemonade crime wave that the brave city elders of Clarington are combating. It’s the menace of backyard barbecues.

Peter Jaworski has been holding backyard barbecues at his parents’ property there for 10 years. It’s a house in the country on 40 secluded acres. Once a year, Peter invites a few dozen of his friends to spend the weekend eating his mom’s cooking and camping next to the swimming hole. I’ve been there: it’s one part family reunion, one part picnic and one part political talk.

So clearly, the Jaworski family must be stopped.

First came the health department. They poked and prodded, and even took water samples. No one has ever got sick at a Jaworski barbecue — the opposite; everyone comes for the food — but the government ordered that no home cooking would be allowed. The Jaworskis complied with these costly and ridiculous demands, catering the whole weekend and serving only bottled water, at great cost.

But bureaucrats travel in packs. A local bylaw enforcement officer waited until the barbecue itself, and marched right onto the property — no search warrant needed! — and started peppering the guests with questions.

He wasn’t a health officer; he was a bylaw officer. Yet he demanded to know what the guests had for lunch. In the name of the law!

Armed with this devastating information, the officer charged Peter’s parents with running an illegal “commercial conference centre,” which carries a fine of up to $50,000. The officer, a burly, tattooed, six-foot-something man, told Peter’s mom to “be very careful.” She burst into tears.

Why do people get this insane idea that they should be able to do what they want on their own property? If we wanted that to happen, we wouldn’t appoint bylaw officers and arm them with bylaws to quash your fun and destroy your ability to enjoy your own property!

This scourge of backyard entertainment must be defeated, and Clarington is leading the way!

August 14, 2010

Business jargon got you down? Unsuck-it!

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Humour,Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:07

I’ve been known to print off Business Bingo cards for the inevitable business meeting jargon-fest, so I wholly support the notion behind Unsuck-it:

H/T to Xeni Jardin for the link.

August 13, 2010

UK to reduce number of senior officers in armed forces

Filed under: Britain,Bureaucracy,Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:46

In a desperate search for economies in the army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force, Liam Fox announced a good first step:

The number of senior military officers could be cut in an attempt to curb spending in the Ministry of Defence, the defence secretary, Liam Fox, said today.

In a speech setting out his vision for the future of the MoD, Fox said the reforms were intended to make the department leaner, less centralised and more effective.

He said military chiefs would be given greater control over the armed services as he attempted to sweeten what he described as “difficult and painful” cuts he blamed on the “dangerous deficit” left by the Labour government.

Fox said it was a “ghastly truth” that Labour had left the department with a £37bn “unfunded liability” over the next 10 years. However, he made no specific commitments on cuts, which are not expected to be announced until October.

It’s probably a safe bet that you could reduce the number of generals and admirals by half without in any measurable way decreasing the effectiveness of the armed forces — this is true in almost any nation’s armed forces, not just in Britain. Above the rank of Brigadier/Commodore, there are very few combat posts to be filled, but lots of administrative ones. When a senior officer transitions to being an administrator, their focus shifts from supporting the combat mission of the service to building their bureaucratic empire. It’s startling to see that an army of 100,000 troops “needs” 85,000 civil service workers to support it. (I’ve touched on this before.)

Each of the services has been starved of capital improvements so that any reduction in funding at this point will be very detrimental to long-term defence capabilities. The Royal Navy is starting to look more and more like a coastal defence force than a blue water navy . . . and getting rid of one or both of the new aircraft carriers would end Britain’s pretensions to be able to do any force projection at all (but Argentina would be happy to see it). The RAF had hoped to be next in line for shiny new aircraft to replace their current lot. The army has been wearing down their armoured vehicles at a steady pace and were also hoping for new, improved models in the immediate future.

In spite of the statements of the new coalition government, I don’t see why they’re bothering to replace Trident: you’ve already admitted that you can’t support the current force levels — which are clearly inadequate to meet the challenges of today, never mind those of tomorrow. Forcing the Trident replacement into the military budget could almost literally mean scrapping the rest of the RN just to retain those few nuclear submarines and their support structures.

August 9, 2010

The inevitable decline in public respect for the police

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Law,Liberty,Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Paul Bonneau examines the declining levels of respect among members of the public for the police:

I’ve gotten the impression lately that cops aren’t getting very much support in Internet forums these days, even in places where in the past you’d find almost unqualified support. About everyone seems fed up with ‘em.

I wondered why this should be. Why are they becoming so much more frequently scorned?

[. . .]

I think one reason cops are hated is that people generally don’t like being scrutinized, and put under suspicion for minding their own business; they really, really don’t like that. Cops are always checking you out, looking for a reason to “brace” you (an old meaning of the word that looks very useful these days).

The War on Some Drugs has to cause some hatred, as more and more peoples’ lives are ruined by it. Indeed, this prison industry boondoggle has stained all aspects of the “Justice” system, not just cops.

Another reason is that cops are treated, and see themselves, as superior to the rest of us. In innumerable ways, cops are always given the benefit of the doubt; certainly legally, and also informally — although the latter seems to be fading a bit, as trust in cops fades. They are “The Only Ones”, we are “mundanes”, “proles”, peons. They can lie to us, we can’t lie to them; they can beat us up and torture us, but if we touch them it is “assault”.

Along with this insufferable attitude is a self-regard that what they are about is important and good. I suppose everyone suffers from this malady, but usually it does not impact a person as it does when one runs into a cop in the throes of it. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good, will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” What are cops, if not “omnipotent moral busybodies”? At least when the Mafia runs a protection racket, they don’t deceive themselves they are doing you a benefit. One appreciates the Mafia’s honesty, in comparison.

August 7, 2010

Protip for British troops: don’t wear your uniform to the Co-op

Filed under: Britain,Bureaucracy,Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 21:02

Apparently, British soldiers (in uniform) are considered “untouchables” by the Co-op grocery chain:

A soldier who had just arrived home from Afghanistan was refused service at a supermarket and told they didn’t serve people in Army uniform.
Sapper Anthony Walls called into a branch of the Co-op for some beers after a gruelling 34-hour journey from Kandahar.

[. . .]

The manager told Mr Walls he ‘couldn’t do anything about it’ and refused to serve him while he was in uniform. The soldier — who was on his way to his three-year-old nephew Jack’s birthday party — walked out of the shop in New Addington, Croydon, in a daze.
‘I was deeply hurt,’ he said yesterday. ‘All I was thinking about was getting home to Jack in time to wish him a happy birthday.

‘It was great to be home after a difficult journey and I just thought I’d grab a couple of beers — a luxury I hadn’t had in a while.

The good news is that it was all a misunderstanding: the Co-op won’t sell beer to Policemen in uniform, and the cashier and her manager misunderstood that the chap in military-style kit wasn’t actually a police SWAT-team member on a break from bashing EDL protest marchers. They’ve apologized (but there’s no indication that Sapper Walls got his beer before flying back to Af’stan).

August 5, 2010

US governments still finding this “free speech” thing annoying

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Liberty,Media,Politics,USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:52

If you support the notion of free speech, it is most important to support it during elections . . . but not everyone feels this way:

The Associated Press reports that California’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) is considering “how to regulate new forms of political activity such as appeals on a voter’s Facebook page or in a text message.

Not whether to regulate these new forms of political speech, but how.

The recommendations apparently include “requiring tweets and texts to link to a website that includes . . . full disclosures, although some people feel the disclosure should be in the text itself no matter how brief . . . .”

To paraphrase Chief Justice John Roberts, this is why we don’t leave our free speech rights in the hands of FPPC bureaucrats. To bureaucrats like those at the FPPC, the Federal Election Commission or their analogues, there seems to be no need to show any evidence that Twitter, Facebook or text messages actually pose any threat to the public. It is enough that they these new forms of low-cost media aren’t currently regulated, but could be. Their primary concern, apparently, is that the regulation of political speech be as comprehensive as possible.

Free speech can be a messy thing — but censorship is worse.

Examining DNA testing from the client’s point of view

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Health,Media,Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:19

Mary Carmichael is writing a multi-part series about DNA testing:

On July 22, Congress held a hearing on direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic tests, services that analyze your DNA and interpret the results in exchange for a few hundred bucks — no doctor necessary. The hearing could have been a thoughtful national conversation about science, business, and ethics. Alas, it devolved instead into a series of gotcha moments, starring a General Accounting Office sting operation that came off like a cross between the ACORN videos and the world’s worst ad for snake oil.

Time and again, on tape, an undercover agent called up an unidentified testing company and asked an ill-informed question. (“Is it OK if I stop taking my cholesterol meds and instead take the nutritional supplements you sell? If I can manage to get hold of my fiancé’s saliva without him knowing, will you run it through your machines so I can surprise him with the ‘gift’ of his own data?”) And time and again, the phone rep sank to the occasion and made the company look awful. (Sure, lay off the pills and take our supplements! Of course we’ll analyze your fiancé’s spit without his permission even though that’s illegal, unethical, and weird!)

I listened to the tape several times the day it was released, despairing at the way people were taking advantage of gullible, albeit fictional consumers, which was clearly how the congressmen who held the hearing wanted me to react. Then I started to worry about something else. How much time did I even have left to decide whether I was going to take a test myself? Even before the hearing, the FDA had announced its plans to regulate all DTC genetic tests, possibly so heavily as to keep them off the market; the hearing was just the sort of thing that could push it to move faster. What if, by the time I finally decided if I wanted one of these tests, I couldn’t buy one anymore? My credit card was sitting next to my laptop. I did something that in retrospect seems a bit rash. There’s a DNA-collection kit on my desk now, taunting me — because although I bought the thing, I still can’t decide whether I actually want to use it.

The sheer volume of misinformation on DNA testing — combined with public belief in the amazing accuracy of DNA testing (probably induced by watching too many crime investigation TV shows) — leaves the legitimate companies in an awkward situation. The actual DNA self-tests don’t tell you what you might expect, and can tell you things you don’t want to know. Politicians jumping in now (at the prompting of bureaucrats who want more power to regulate) will only make the situation more confused.

H/T to BoingBoing for the link.

August 4, 2010

The costly San Antonio class

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Military,USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:08

Strategypage recounts the sad story of the LPD 17 class:

The U.S. Navy is having major problems with its LPD 17 class amphibious ships. Originally, the plan was for twelve of these ships to replace 41 smaller, older and retiring amphibious ships. Then, disaster struck. Five years ago, the USS San Antonio (the first LPD 17 class ship) entered service. Or at least tried to. The builders had done a very shoddy job, and it took the better part of a year to get the ship in shape. The second of the class, the USS New Orleans, was also riddled with defects that required several hundred million dollars to fix. This pattern of shoddy workmanship, incompetent management and outright lies (from the ship builders) continued with the five LPD 17 class ships now in service. Now the order has been cut to ten ships, partly because of all these problems. To add insult to injury, the last ship in the class is being named after politician John P. Murtha, who is generally hated by soldiers and marines for the way he politically exploited and defamed the troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is particularly painful because the LPD 17s carry marines into combat.

Many consider the San Antonio class as a poster child for all that’s wrong with American warship construction. The ships are being delivered late, and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. The list of problems with the ships is long and embarrassing. Although the San Antonio did get into service, it was then brought in for more inspections and sea trials, and failed miserably. It cost $36 million and three months to get everything fixed. The workmanship and quality control was so poor that it’s believed that the San Antonio will always be a flawed ship and will end up being retired early.

August 3, 2010

Japan’s centenarians are going missing

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Health,Japan — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:36

After the discovery that the oldest man in Tokyo had actually been dead for years, it should come as no surprise that the oldest woman in Tokyo has apparently been missing for decades:

Fusa Furuya, aged 113, had been registered as living with her daughter.

But the daughter says she has not seen her mother since the 1980s.

According to government data, there are more than 40,000 centenarians in Japan. But the discoveries in Tokyo have cast doubt on the accuracy of the figures.

Despite being reputed to be Tokyo’s oldest woman, it appears no-one had bothered to check that Mrs Furuya was still alive — until now.

Local council officials have been visiting the very elderly after the body of Sogen Kato, thought to be Tokyo’s oldest man, was found last week.

The police believe he had been dead for more than 30 years.

When officials went to Ms Furuya’s home, they discovered that she had been missing for decades.

Unlike the earlier case, where the man’s family had continued to collect his pension, the family of Fusa Furuya don’t appear to have been involved in pension fraud . . . although you do wonder why they hadn’t noticed her being missing all this time.

July 31, 2010

USDOT holding back Toyota report because it’s too favourable to Toyota?

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Media,Politics,Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Toyota has been claiming for quite some time that they have found no fault in their cars that could cause unintended acceleration. The US government’s report is reported to support that claim, but officials have been delaying the release of that information:

Senior officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation have at least temporarily blocked the release of findings by auto-safety regulators that could favor Toyota Motor Corp. in some crashes related to unintended acceleration, according to a recently retired agency official.

George Person, who retired July 3 after 27 years at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in an interview that the decision to not go public with the data for now was made over the objections of some officials at NHTSA.

“The information was compiled. The report was finished and submitted,” Mr. Person said. “When I asked why it hadn’t been published, I was told that the secretary’s office didn’t want to release it,” he added, referring to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

A Transportation Department spokeswoman, Olivia Alair, said NHTSA is still reviewing data from the Toyota vehicles the agency is examining. “Its review is not yet complete. The investigation remains ongoing,” she said.

It could be suspected that the reason the government doesn’t want to release the report is that it pretty much exonerates Toyota after their trial-by-media over the sudden acceleration issue. The US government’s holdings in GM and Chrysler make them effectively competitors with Toyota, and the media has done a fine job of trying to depress Toyota sales (to indirectly benefit GM and Chrysler).

But that would be an unfair thing to suspect, wouldn’t it?

QotD: Take experts’ advice with a pinch of salt

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Health,Media,Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:41

More and more, the history of dietary guidelines that our public-health authorities promulgate resembles the Woody Allen comedy Sleeper, in which the main character, awaking from a centuries-long slumber, learns that every food we once thought bad for us is actually good, starting with steak and chocolate. But you wouldn’t know that from government experts’ increasing efforts to nudge us into their approved diets. In 2006, New York City passed the nation’s first ban on the use of trans fats by restaurants, and other cities followed suit, though trans fats constitute just 2 percent of Americans’ caloric intake. Now the Bloomberg administration is trying to push food manufacturers nationwide to reduce their use of salt — and the nutrition panel advising the FDA on the new guidelines similarly recommends reducing salt intake to a maximum of 1,500 milligrams daily (down from 2,300 a day previously). Yet Dr. Michael Alderman, a hypertension specialist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, observed in the New York Times that because sodium is an essential component of our diets, the city’s effort amounts to a giant uncontrolled experiment with the public’s health that could have unintended consequences. And in 2006, Harvard Medical School professor Norman Hollenberg concluded that while some people benefit from reduced salt intake, the evidence “is too inconsistent and generally too small to mandate policy decisions at the community level.”

Steven Malanga, “Egg on Their Faces: Government dietary advice often proves disastrous”, City Journal, 2010-07

July 30, 2010

Exactly right

Filed under: Bureaucracy,Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 18:32

July 27, 2010

Photography is legal in Britain . . . unless they catch you at it

Filed under: Britain,Bureaucracy,Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:22

The continuing story of police harassment of peaceful photographers has still not come to a middle:

The Metropolitan Police Force cannot be guaranteed to abide by the law when it comes to allowing the public their right to take photographs.

That was the startling admission made last week by Met Police Commissioner John Stephenson under sharp questioning from Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Dee Doocey during a Police Authority Meeting on 22 July in City Hall. Video footage of the exchange is available on the Metropolitan Police Authority site, with relevant footage from around the 68 minute mark.

[. . .]

He admitted that he was aware of a recent disturbing incident that took place in Romford, which according to Doocey represented “eight minutes of two of your officers intimidating somebody”.

She continued: “At one stage they say that they don’t need a law to stop them photographing, but much more worrying, they don’t need a law to take them away. It’s not a question in my view of . . . It’s so serious that it don’t think it should be somebody giving them words of advice and I don’t also agree with you that it is a question of officers using their discretion.

“This was very black and white: Two of your officers who, despite the fact that I know you have given them guidelines because I have a copy of it, who totally disregarded them and were either so completely ignorant of the law, or decided to ignore the law — they were just going to say they knew the law better than the person they were talking to — they were very seriously intimidating. I find it quite worrying that I don’t think you are taking this quite as seriously as I think you should be.”

In short, the powers-that-be have grudgingly acknowledged that photographers do indeed have the right to take photos unmolested by PC Plod, but admitted that it’s still not actually been properly communicated to Plod and the other coppers on the beat.

We asked the Met for official comment as to why, despite the numerous efforts made by Assistant Commissioner John Yates and other serving officers to get the message about photography across, such incidents kept occurring. They suggested that these incidents were a very small part of the whole story of London policing, that to expect zero incidents was unrealistic, and that when such incidents occurred, they tended to be blown up out of all proportion by the press.

An alternative explanation, suggested to us by current and recently serving police officers with whom we have spoken, is that such incidents represent a far more disturbing aspect of police culture. They suggest that a small minority of officers see the law as being “what they say it is”, and these officers are quite prepared to take their chances, on the basis that the number of times they will be caught out by being recorded is likely to be few and far between.

It’s almost as if the police are sublimating their frustrations with the out-of-control but politically favoured members of certain religious groups and instead victimizing members of the public who don’t have political favour.

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