Pay & Display Dismay

One section of the UK population which irritates me immensely, as anyone who reads this blog knows, are those people who believe in a 'freer' Britain in which they can speed around , use their mobile phones and park where they like with impunity.  This is primarily associated with driving, whether in a car or a commercial van or lorry, but in fact this is simply because they feel they can talk about outrageous things in that sphere whereas in others such as re-introducing the death penalty and castration as sentences for courts and expelling any immigrants, would be challenged more vigorously.  In the field of regulation of driving and parking they constantly portray the rules as having nothing to do with safety but simply as a form of taxation.  I constantly come back to the fact that if you do not break the law, then this is a tax you are exempt from.  However, it is clear these people think very individualist behaviour in vehicles, which puts others' health and lives at risk is not a crime so they should face no charges.

Another issue has come up in this regard, brought into view by the Breakfast programme run on BBC1.  This is the rule that even if someone has a valid ticket to park in a particular location, if there are numerous other ones on display, they can still be fined.  The response has been vigorous, that this is another tax.  I am marginally more sympathetic to this argument because if these people have actually got to a car park, rather than believing they have some exceptional God-given right to park on a double yellow line with their lights flashing while they do the shopping, as I see so often, then that is a good step.  However, if your car, van or lorry is full of different, similarly looking tickets, why should you compel a parking warden to read them all to find if one is correct or not.  They complain about traffic wardens anyway, so why are they happy to give them more work.  Perhaps councils and the government should adopt the same approach and never bother taking down road signs when the road layout is changed.  Perhaps they should simply stick up signs that they have lying around rather than ones that actually relate to the towns that can be reached from the location where the sign is.  Maybe we should put up a selection of speed limit signs and say that drivers have to comply with whichever one is correct for the particular road.  This would be a major challenge for many drivers given that many cannot adhere to the speed limit even when there is a single clear sign.

I think, that if you cannot be bothered to keep your vehicle sufficiently tidy so that anyone can see simply whether you have the correct ticket or not, then you deserve to be fined.  The UK is better than some countries anyway.  I remember in France in the 1980s seeing people with a string of road tax stickers down their windscreen, but no-one in the UK would complain that we have to show only the current one on our windscreens.  Potentially I could have thirteen different road tax discs on my windscreen making it a challenge for anyone to spot if I had a current one, but, of course, that is seen as a silly approach.  Simply chuck away old parking permits.  Or, if that is really too much trouble, at least shove them off the dashboard on to the floor!

What this whole complaint stems from is the unhealthy characteristic that seems to have taken root in the UK and is growing like mold throughout our society.  This believes that the individual's desires (not even just their needs) must be satisfied and not constrained, certainly not by the safety or interests of anyone else, and certainly not policed by any state authority (just by who can shout loudest).  This is already impinging on road safety but is likely to spread into other aspects of society effectively implementing 'mob rule' in many things.  Examples of this spread can be seen in Simon Cowell's desire to have a political show that makes decisions by people telephoning in.  Of course, tabloid newspapers have long done this, I remember an opinion poll in 'The Sun' newspaper of the 1980s which told you to ring one number if you wanted the minimum sentence for certain crimes set at 20 years and another if you wanted it at 25 years.  There was no option for no sentence or 10 years or 15 years.  What can be seen as a 'free' choice can easily be engineered to channel you into backing a policy which has already been established (just ask any of the dictators who have run 'free' elections) and so seemingly giving it popular support.  Of course, the people peddling this kind of approach see what they do as simply based on 'common sense' whereas in fact it is based on assumptions and prejudices and excludes so many options that fall outside the very individualist approach they advocate. 

If you want to see this in action just watch an episode of 'Live from Studio Five' which is made by SkyNews (owned by Rupert Murdoch) and shown on Channel 5, Monday to Friday evenings.  It features former model Melinda Messenger, former footballer Ian Wright and a runner-up on 'The Apprentice' television show.  It is a magazine programme which mixes coverage of celebrities with discussion of news items.  This is where it is most dangerous as it presents a very right-wing perspective especially on social and legal issues in a light manner with the presenters indicating that they see pretty extreme views as somehow 'common sense'.  Fortunately it only attracts 230,000 viewers.  However, it is a good example of how the 'me first above anyone else' attitude is being fed into the popular consciousness and it is on this basis of assumptions about 'common sense' that more extreme steps are made to seem unassailable by those of us who would like an inclusive society that does not value freedom to behave how you like over the right of people to live in safety.

No Surprise that Another Town Wants to Leave England

After commenting yesterday about the difficulties of having pride in England and last month on the town of Berwick-on-Tweed which announced that it wanted to become part of Scotland (which it lies very close to) rather than England it was interesting to note that a referendum in Audlem in Cheshire in North-West England the people voted to move the town into Wales. Cheshire does border Wales, but Audlem lies East of the A41, 10 miles (16Km) from the Welsh border and there is the city of Chester and towns like Oswestry which is pretty large, Malpas, Coddington and Tattenhall which lie nearer to Wales. An alternative suggestion was that the town become part of Shropshire and that that whole county move into Wales, though obviously that would need a far greater level of support. Most of the commentary seems to feel that Audlem's decision is just another example of English village eccentricity. However, as with Berwick, you may start asking why do these places want to leave England.

Just under 3 million people live in the whole of Wales, and 66% of these in South Wales, whereas Cheshire borders with northern Wales. Wales covers 20,700 Km2 compared to 77,925 Km2 for Scotland and 130,200 Km2 for England. Thus you could imagine that the people of Audlem would like to be a small fish in a much smaller pool. Whereas England does not have its own parliament, Wales has an Assembly which has powers in particular in the areas of social services and education, and as with Scotland its laws on such things are increasingly diverging from those of England. A third of the population of England lives in the South-East (about 18 million people if you include London) in an area almost the same size as Wales so you can see why people in the rest of England may feel overlooked. The key issue for Audlam is that services in Wales are better and cheaper. There are not prescription charges whereas in England they have just risen; you do not have to pay to park at a hospital in Wales whereas you have to pay a great deal to park at English hospitals. So as with Berwick it seems to be the costs that particularly affect the elderly that impinge greatest on which state people want to live in. There are other benefits of being in Wales university students do not have to pay the fees (set at £3000 at present but set to rise sharply) that they have to pay in England (Scotland has also scrapped them); the same goes for the SAT exams for 7-year old children which have also been abolished in Wales.

Wales has a rich culture. The number of people speaking Welsh has risen. In 1981 only 18.1% of the population (around 400,000 people) spoke Welsh, now with it being a compulsory part of the National Curriculum and with more programmes in Welsh it has risen to 21% (about 611,000 people). Wales has a rich musical and literary culture that many English would be happy to become a part of. The country was independent until 1282 when it was conquered by English King Edward I and in 1532 it was absorbed into England. Consequently the development of its laws has not differed as sharply from English law as those in Scotland have always done, so it is far easier for a teacher or a solicitor being transported from living in England to living in Wales to continue in their job without the need for retraining which would be the case if they moved into Scotland.

The point that seems to be being missed by the bulk of England, and by those of us who cannot leave this state for another (the nearest one to me would be France, we could return to the control of Normandy!) is why people want to get out of England. The stated reasons are all around social welfare policies. In England we have no way to protest about these through regional on English elections and we seem saddled with policies which are unpopular and hit the people who need help (the elderly and pupils/students) more than anyone else. I think this is partly due to the fact that the bulk of the super-rich of the UK actually live in England and are unfussed if Wales or Scotland adopt a more balanced educational or welfare policy but are loath to tolerate it in England. We already have campaigns for an independent Cornwall, which was absorbed by England in the 10th century and are you suprised. Wales and Cornwall would never be rich countries but they would have, no doubt more popular policies than England. When doing the posting on proportional representation I came across the Wessex Regionalist Party formed in 1974 which still stands in elections and pressed for an independent Wessex. Wessex is assumed to include the south-western English counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Devon and Somerset though historically in the 9th century it was expanded North and East. The WRP also include the Isle of Wight which at times has been part of Hampshire and recently included Gloucestershire to the North West and Oxfordshire to the North East into Wessex so fitting the 9th century picture.

Ironically attempts to get regional parliaments in England, an idea favoured by New Labour when it came to power in 1997 have constantly failed. Interestingly if the government continues to pursue policies that upset people in the average town or village especially those who do not border with Wales of Scotland may start reviving these old earldoms and kingdoms of England to give them a chance to adopt more amenable policies. As I suggested, there are enough patron saints of regions to adhere around culturally, for starters.

What would be a better approach, though, I believe is for the UK government to actually listen to the ordinary people in England rather than the super-rich and adopt policies which satisfy normal people. It is unfair that we should suffer bad policies which the Welsh and Scots have managed to escape from and it is likely that we as a consequence, despairing of any movement from the government towns across England are going to look for border changes to help them out.