I was flicking through Freeview channels last night and came across a programme called Road Wars on Sky 3. It’s a reality TV type thing that follows Thames Valley Police’s “proactive squad”. Here’s a transcript of the bit that got my heckles up [with comments].

Titles: Andy and Chris; Slough; Thursday 20:32
Narrator: Andy and Chris pull alongside a red car in Slough. They take a long look inside, and decide to speak to the occupants.
Andy and Chris: [Inaudible. I think they are finishing the conversation about whether or not to stop the car. The programme gives no indication of why they decide to stop the car.]
Andy or Chris:: We’ll have them here then.
Narrator: It’s all fairly routine, and once the blue lights come on the driver quickly pulls over to the side of the road.
Chris or Andy: Too easy.
Andy or Chris: It is. [Inaudible. Something about “clocked ‘em”?]
Narrator: Andy keeps it friendly as he checks out the driver.
Andy (to the driver): Good night? Where you going then?
Driver: Going to a party. [This is very civil. At this point I’d already be on the defensive. I don’t generally tell strangers about my movements.]
Andy: You’re going to a party? Nice one, whereabouts is that? (To a passenger): How you doing mate? [He’s just pretending to be friendly. Really he’s looking for an excuse to arrest the driver.]
Driver: Stoke Poges [sp? A place in Slough, presumably.]
Andy: Stoke Poges. Do you live round there do you?
Passenger: [Inaudible.]
Andy (to passenger): Oh you do? Okay. [Again, when people I don’t know accost me in the street and ask where I live, I generally don’t tell them.]
Narrator: In a well worn routine, Chris, Lester to his friends, talks to the passengers.
Andy: Do you mind being on TV?
Driver (now out of the car): No, no.
Andy: What have you got, let’s have a look.
Driver: [Inaudible. Something about a cash card. It looks like the driver has offered this for identification.]
Andy: Okay, let’s just take some details from you.
Chris (to passengers): Is that yours? Very nice!
Andy (to Chris): What’s that, the dog in the front?
Chris: [Inaudible. Laughs. More fake friendliness.]
Driver: I’m not trying to be funny but how come I’ve been stopped, man?
Andy: Because you…
Chris: You car was all steamed up, we couldn’t see who was in it. [This is a reason to stop someone?]

Narrator: But when Chris asks for names, the friendliness starts to evaporate.
Chris: Who else is in the car with you, Calvin?
Driver: Ask them.
Chris: They go something to hide? [Yes — they have a legitimate desire to be wary of strangers, especially strangers who might want to be violent towards them (i.e. throw them in jail).]
Driver: It’s up to them, isn’t it? [This is the right thing to do. I wouldn’t give my friends’ details to the police either, without their permission, in the same way I don’t put my friends’ details on this blog.]
Chris (to passengers): He doesn’t want to tell us your names, boys.
Passenger: I’m not telling you my name.
Chris: Why not? [Because I don’t know you and I don’t know why you want to know my name and I am suspicious of your intentions toward me?]
Passenger: Why should I fucking tell you my name?
Chris: Because I’d like to meet you. Introduce you: “I’m Chris, who are you?”
Passenger: Why do you want to know?
Chris: Why not? What have you got to hide then? [Plenty of things that are none of your business.]
Passenger: [Inaudible.]
Chris: Don’t swear at me. I’m just chatting to you.
Passenger: [Inaudible.]
Chris: Why not?
Passenger: Because I’m not. Simple as. Are you going to arrest me for not telling you my name?
Chris: I’m not going to arrest you no. Who said I’m going to arrest you?

There’s an edit here. It looks like Chris has handed the passenger his warrant card.

Chris: Well look at it.
Passenger: [Inaudible.]
Chris: Well I tell you what, you swear at me one more time –
Passenger: I’m not swearing at you.
Chris: You’ve sworn at me three times.
Passenger: [Inaudible.]
Chris: Listen, if you swear at me one more time you’re gonna be arrested section five of the public order act. [So much for “I’m just chatting to you” and “who said I’m going to arrest you?”. It seems that simply saying certain words is enough excuse for Chris to threaten violence against someone who is just trying to get to a party without being harassed.]
Passenger: [Inaudible].
Chris: Yeah, you might have heard it. One more time, you’re coming in, mate.
Passenger: [Inaudible…] section five is about. If I don’t swear — (referring to the torch) Don’t point that in my face, man.
Chris: Is that pointed at your face?
Passenger It was that time, it was.
Chris I told you — oi! I told you to stop swearing.

There is another edit. The passenger appears to have relented.

Passenger: That’s my ID.
Chris: Let’s have a look then, please.
Passenger: No, I’ll hold it myself.
[Chris closes the door and walks off.]
Passenger: Aw, don’t slam the door.

Narrator: And now Andy has discovered the driver doesn’t appear on the driving license database. Oh dear.
Andy: I need to have a word Calvin. [Andy takes the driver by the arm and walks him towards the car.] You’re under arrest, mate.
Driver: Whoah, why?
Andy: You’re under arrest because I’ve just checked you on two different databases, and they’re not showing that you exist.

Now we’ve got to the heart of the matter! If you’re not on the database, you don’t exist! You need to be arrested and questioned, because clearly if you’re not on the database you have something to hide and need to be dealt with.

Driver: Whoah, whoah, whoah, you’re joking!
Andy: No, mate, I’m not. Sit in the car.
Driver: Come on. Can I get my keys?
Andy: Sit in the car.
Driver: [Inaudible…] I don’t exist or something?
Andy: Sit in the car.
Driver: [Inaudible…] Wait, wait, wait [he appears confused and wants to try and reason with Andy. But Andy just threatens violence.]
Andy: I’ll ask you nicely one more time, sit in the car. Sit in the car.
Driver: Oh, come on. Nooooooooo.
Andy: Sit in the car. I ain’t going to ask you again.
Driver: All right, all right.

Narrator: Finally in the car, the driver insists the database is wrong. [But Andy and Chris know that the database is never wrong.] It’s all getting a bit heated.
Driver: I’m giving you genuine details. I am Calvin Stuart. And you’re telling me I’m not?
Andy: No.
Driver: What do you mean? What do you want me to be? Don’t be silly, man. Come on now.
Andy: Calvin, have you quite finished?
Driver: No I’m not having it. Go on, what have you got to say? All right, take me to the station, come on. [That was the wrong thing to say. He should be making it clear that this all very inconvenient and that he would like to be allowed to continue on his way.]
Andy: All right.

Outside, Chris is talking to the passenger but we can’t hear what he is saying.

Passenger: Get out of my face, man.
Chris: You’re not going to listen to me, are you?
Passenger: No, just not in my face.
Chris: Right, go away, then. [He goes away.]

Narrator: Andy decides the confusion can only be sorted out at the police station, and arrests the driver. [You’re not on the database, therefore you have to be abducted and questioned.]
Andy: He’s not going to listen to reason, so we’ll do it back at the nick. [I don’t know what other option the driver was given.]
Narrator: [Ready for this?] Safely back at the nick, it turns out the driver has given a slightly different spelling of his name to the one on his license, and is released without charge. But by that time, his mates had gone to the party — in his car.

So there you have it. You can be stopped while going about your lawful business for no apparent reason (the car didn’t look steamed up to me and there was no suggestion that the car or the driving was unsafe) and arrested for no other reason than your details don’t match the database.

Welcome to the database state.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 11:48 AM EST

15 Comments »

Idiotic socialist Brendan Barber of the TUC is complaining about executive pay.

Many now earn more money than they can possibly need, but the size of their pay packet has become a status symbol. My worry is that this is all leading us by stealth towards an Americanisation of UK society where the gap between rich and poor is no longer worthy of comment.

Who is Brendan Barber to tell people what they are allowed to pay each other? The reason top executives are paid so much is that that is what their employers think they are worth. As for the gap between rich and poor, so what? The ‘poor’ today are richer than they have ever been and it is because people are motivated to create wealth by working hard to make money. De-motivating top executives by capping their pay will not help ‘poor’ people. What does Mr Barber think they do with all their money anyway? A: they invest it and spend it, which creates employment and helps ‘poor’ people.

Someone needs to give him an economics lesson.

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 1:19 PM EST

4 Comments »

Ricky Gervais is on Radio 1. Jo Wiley asked him what he’s doing at Christmas Eve, is he going to midnight mass? There is no god, he says. There might be children listening, Jo protests. So? he says. They should know the truth. It’s all a sham. When you die you turn into worms’ meat. That’s why you’ve got to be good to your fellow man, because this is all there is; there’s no heaven.

Wise words.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Imaginary Friends at 11:17 AM EST

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Someone told me yesterday that 2006 was the hottest year ever. When challenged, well, “in the UK” and “since records began”. But that’s still the hottest year in over 300 years!

Perhaps he’d been reading an article on Channel 4 News. It says that the Met Office is saying that the mean central England temperatures this Summer and Autumn have been hottest since 1659. The Met Office themselves only seem to quote a Reuters report saying that 2006 “could be the hottest year since records began in the 1860s. Presumably world wide records only began in the 1860s but UK records begin over 300 years ago.

Then again, “Nasa claims that 2005 was warmer than either 1998 or this year, largely due to disputes with the WMO over Arctic data interpretation”.

The Met office have historic station data available, and I made this graph of Oxford (somewhere in the middle of the country, and more complete than Grenwich, which I looked at first):

There is a point for each month since January 1853. It only goes up to March 2006. The temperatures are the mean maximum temperature. The hottest on the graph is July 1983, which had a mean maximum temperature of 26.8C. I couldn’t find that value for July 2006, but a Sunday Herald article says that it was 0.6C hotter than July 1983.

But what can it mean? Australia had a hotter summer than this one 70 years ago. The Alps had a hotter summer than this one AD 700 and some scientists claim that a warm winter there “is part of natural trends”.

In general, I think statements about the X-est Y since Z are quite easy to make about a random system like the weather. For example, in 1999 the UK had the sunniest January since 1994, the warmest April since 1993, the dullest May since 1994, the coldest June since 1991, the driest July since 1911 and the sunniest since 1990, the wettest and dullest August since 1992, the warmest September since 1949, the driest November since 1990 and the sunniest December since 1962. Obviously these are more impressive the farther back they go, but even 300 years is not very long compared to the two million or so that humans have been around.

Complaints about extreme weather aren’t new. A quick Google news archive search for “hottest summer” turned up a Missouri paper complaining in 1949 that “York’s millions labored through their hottest summer since records were started In 1879″. You have to pay to see the whole article, but looking on MSN Weather for Kansas City, which is the closest big city to York, you can see that the record high of 112F occurred in July 1954.

A US government site lists weather extremes on each continent around the world. The latest they have for hot temperatures is a station in Antarctica in 1974 that reached 59F. Next is Africa in 1922 and then North America in 1913. Europe’s hottest temperature occured in Spain in 1881. Why aren’t there any more recent extremes?

I don’t think extremes tell us much, and I think news articles about them can be more or less ignored. Maybe averages are more helpful. The Met Office also has raw data for averages in England and Wales, and I made this graph:

There is no annual figure for 2006, but there are summer and winter ones. Oddly enough, 1976’s average summer temperature was higher than 2006’s. What makes 2006 unusual is its hot autumn temperature as well. It looks like autumns have been getting hotter lately, but springs have been getting cooler.

From this data I can’t disagree with the oft repeated statement that the last ten years have been hotter than usual. But the graph is still pretty much random noise. Maybe the next ten years will be enough to prove one way or another whether anything unusual is going on. I’d also be extremely interested to see this graph going all the way back to the 1600s — I can’t find anything on the Met Office site before 1853. Where is the other 200 years of data?

Posted by Rob Fisher as Enviro-Mentalism at 12:03 PM EST

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Heather Mills has been receiving death threats. A “panic alarm” might have been installed in her home. Police have been briefed and are ready to provide an immediate response.

I’m sure that will be very comforting when she’s being stabbed or bludgeoned or lying in a pool of her own blood. How immediate can a police response be? Unless she’s got a policeman by her side 24 hours a day, not immediate enough. Why can’t they stop being so wishy-washy and allow her to take measures to defend herself?

It’s almost as pathetic as giving rape alarms to prostitutes in Suffolk.

The correct thing to do when someone is trying to kill you is not to call the police or sound your rape alarm, it’s to shoot your attacker in the face.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Self Defense at 9:41 AM EST

1 Comment »