Bike riding & danger.

Riding a bicycle is fun & healthy but dangerous!
In Europe bicyclist are an accepted feature on the roads and more care and courtesy is shown by drivers towards bikes.
In January I drove two thousand kilometres through France, Italy and Switzerland and I observed patience and acceptance of bikes to a degree way beyond that shown here.
During the last few days we saw a terrible accident on Southern Cross Drive in which a rider was hit by a car.
I am doubtful that the attitude of drivers here changing. I think the the first step is to dedicate a newtwork of suburban streets as Bicycle Priority Routes. On these streets bikes would have priority. These streets would be sign-posted and could spearhead a change in attitude by force drivers to slow, giveway and defer to bike-riders.
The road rules would treat bikes on these roads in the same way buses are in bus lanes with exceptions for local residents.
Petrol prices will soon be on the march again and carbon reductions are achieved with every car trip replaced by a bike ride.
We need polititians with vision to plan fir the future.
The option would be

-- Post From My iPhone

Where is history going?

At one time the overwelming theme of history seemed to be that science was advancing everywhere and the main dynamic was the competition between two opposing rational economic systems. (Does anyone now remember Marxist-Leninist- Maoist theory?)
Now we seem to have a degeneration of culture across the globe. Fundamentalists are threatening to overturn social order and freedoms to exert religious, (that is, irrational beliefs) as having equal or superior value to science, democracy and freedom.
The recent choice of Sara Palin as a candidate for vice-president in the US, creationists having a say in education, and Sharia Law being accepted as a modern legal system suggests that regressive irrational belief systems are unwinding progress.
The aggressive opposition in the US to steps to establish a health care system which supports everyone is astonishing for people in Canada, the UK and Australia.
In Moslem countries and the USA large numbers of irrational people appear to be to mobilized for campaigns promoting stupid aims or even violent actions.
Where will this all lead?
Or is this a return to normalcy? Is it that most people are more comfortable following an authority figure or dominant regime and do not want to exercise the personal freedom that rational life implies?
If so, pass the Prozac!

-- Post From My iPhone

Civil Liberties

The "War on Terror" combined with the creeping anxiety which has overtaken so many has lead to greater powers being given to law enforcement authorities.

These powers are often in the form of the authority to detain people for longer periods without trail or without a lawyer or without contact with family. Also new legislation allows greater powers of search or restrictions on disclosure of the facts of a case so a defendant's capacity to defend is limited.
Generally these increased police powers are unnecessary. During the one hundred and fifty years of development of the criminal law to the year 2000 a good balance was struck between the rights of the state to protect the citizenry and the rights of the individual. This balance was developed in times of gangland wars, drug crime, the cold war and political agitation.
The core values of our Western Democratic Tradition include personal liberty free from all but the most essential interference from the state.
In Australia we have by consensus agreed not to have fiearms except in limited circumstances. This is an example of balance. We as individuals concede that to the state. We should not concede to the state the means by which we as individuals may protect ourselves against abuse by state authorities. There must not be detention without charge and everyone must be able to access a lawyer. Lawyers must not be prevented or inhibited from defending their clients so long as they act honestly.
These principles must apply always everwhere in our society or our society will be forsaking it's values.
Some will be surprised that sometimes individuals suffer at the hands of stupid or incompetent police officers or as a result of political considerations. Remember Dr. Hanif!
Those with political ambitions both parliamentry and in law enforcement play on public anxiety to demand greater powers for police or prosecutors. There is a suggestion that "evil doers" will get away with their wrong-doing if the law is not strengthened. This is an illusion.
The law and courts have been well tested by gangsters, drug-lords and wealthy businessmen over many years. Terrorists are not exceptional.
We should be proud and protective of our liberties and not blindly surrender them due to pressure created by medieval, superstitious, ignorant people who have as their aim the destructon of our traditions.

-- Post From My iPhone

No courage in public

So Nathan Rees, Premier of NSW compares climate sceptics to the those who followed the policies of appeasment in the 1930's and he gets soundly criticised by the media.
His analogy was not flawless but
why was he so rubbished and why did he back down?
Those who criticised him were kicking a man who it would appear is without prospects. An unpopular leader of a government "on-the-nose", Rees cannot do anything right and vacuous commentators have a easy target for cheap shots. Where is the insight or analysis of the issue or the man in such an attack? Those who got stuck into him do themselves no credit.
Rees for his part took the mantle of victim offered by his critics and numbly wrapped it around his shoulders. His meaning was clear, he hadn't mentioned the Nazis and he was right, yet he backed down instead of giving his critics the box around the ears they deserved for being so cheap, nasty and shallow.
Public debate in this state is dominated by persons without courage or insight who shamelessly check their bank each week to make sure their undeserved salaries have been deposited.
-- Post From My iPhone

Why debt is bad!

We can all be revolutionaries by refusing to borrow. Karl Marx never imagined how working people could be enslaved and pacified by the great seduction of debt. At one time only the aristocrats could borrow. They had land and they had honour- a name to protect against the great shame of "not being able to pay your debts".
Now a steady income means anyone can have a personal loan, a car loan and at least two credit cards.
Instantly, an independant person with a sense of adventure is turned into a cowering spineless slave too afraid to speak out or do anything to risk losing their job.
Add a mortgage and the worker is terrified foreigners will take his/her job and will vote in any conservative government who will guarantee "low interest rates".
Bah! Humbug!
Fight! Stand and demand liberty from oppression. Live simply and don't borrow!
Remember all the capitalists want you to do is: Consume, be silent & die.

-- Post From My iPhone

Popular Culture

So much of popular culture seems like a drug for the masses to keep the generic person focused on fashion, celebrity, weird behaviour on reality TV and trivia rather than refined debate, rational analysis, fine art, writing, good music and generally uplifting forms of expression.
There are broadly two ways of looking at this:
People do the selecting and if they didn't want to watch stupid talent shows, stories about celebrities, soap operas, reality TV and formula-driven crime drama they wouldn't. This argument for popular culture as "what the people want" is rather undercut by the fact that "people" are tuning off TV and selecting what they want elsewhere- mainly the internet. The web may or may not be of higher value intellectually than TV but there is a greater variety of content and there we link to the opposing argument.
The media are driven by commercial interwst to attract viewers or readers in the greatest numbers at the lowest production costs. Hence they produce cheap shows aimed at the lowest common denominator, appealing to the basest of human interests and in turn they debase the audience and readeship by promoting interest in puerile, nasty, lurid subject matter.
There is a proposition that the whole point of this is that it enhances those in power to maintain power without real challenge.
That proposition has many layers not just political. Academia is motivated by self-interst to obscure consideration into literature, film and art to make their discipline exclusive and therefore remote from the general parties in the same way political parties do not really want to increase their membership.
In Burma, we see the blunt, maked use of power by thos in control. In the "civilised west" the combination of many, thousdands of people with wealth, with the control of state instrument of power or of the media tend to use them to maintain their control of the means of power to the exclusion of others.
Where is there a true example of a participatory democracy really?