What’s Wrong With This Picture?
Two stories from today's Telegraph should be considered together. Because it shows that something is badly out of whack. First:
Bus and taxi drivers face 'eco-safe' tests
Bus, lorry and taxi drivers are to be given lessons on how to drive in a more environmentally friendly way.
Techniques for green motoring will be introduced next year into tests for passenger and large goods vehicle licences.
Local authorities are also piloting a scheme that could require taxi drivers to take courses in how to drive in an environmentally friendly way before they are awarded a licence to operate.
Eco-safe driving, as it is called, encourages motorists to drive more efficiently to reduce the impact they have on the environment by reducing fuel consumption and exhaust fume emissions.
According to the Driving Standards Agency (DSA), drivers can significantly reduce the amount of fuel they use by accelerating less ferociously, revving the engine less and reducing sharp braking by anticipating the need to slow down or stop.
The agency also wants drivers to switch off their engines if they are stationary in traffic, at bus stops or on taxi ranks.
Officials at the agency believe the move will slash pollution in busy city areas.
There will, of course, be an abundance of officials to ensure compliance. Now, let's consider another story:
Dangerous patients left to roam free
Dangerous psychiatric patients with access to weapons are being left to walk the streets for weeks because of a shortage of police, social workers are warning.
Patients who should be detained and taken to hospital are free for up to a fortnight, they say in a report to MPs. The delays are longest when firearms officers are required because the patient is known to have access to weapons.
The Approved Social Workers Leads Network, a group representing senior social workers, says several serious assaults have been carried out by psychiatric patients while doctors and social workers have being waiting for help to detain someone.
Under the Mental Health Act, a person can be "sectioned" and compulsorily taken to hospital only if two doctors and an approved social worker agree that his or her health or safety is at risk, or that the patient is a danger to others. If the patient is dangerous, or a warrant is required to enter the property, police support is required.
The network claims that one police force would offer firearms officers only on alternate weeks, and another only on Thursdays. It said that London was a particular concern.
In evidence in the report, one social worker said: "In some areas of London, approved social workers are waiting up to two weeks for support to execute warrants… and where risks are greater (for example, where the person who needs to be assessed is known to have access to weapons) the wait is longest."
Another said: "Assessments needing tactical/firearms officers can only be booked on alternate weeks." The report expresses concern about delays in sectioning patients because of a shortage of ambulances and hospital beds.
You have a bunch of bureaucrats so absorbed, so invested in their utter submission to the environment that they could not care less about the people they are supposed to protect and serve. Frankly, Scarlet, they could give a crap. So long as they can micromanage driving habits, who cares if everyone is killed by mental patients running wild. Seriously, is this what we want from government?
Environment, Insanity, World news | Gaius Sunday, 10 June , 2007
By Chris, Monday, 11 June , 2007 @ 7:52 am
This is not what people want from their government, rather it is what their government wants for them. As government grows larger, with a more entrenched bureaucracy that increasingly sees its purpose as defending its own interests, with the creeping socialism that all of this brings about, this is what we get. Out-of-touch officials who obsess over details of picayune projects while actual issues are left to fester.
I would expect to see some sort of backlash eventually, even in Britain, which has become thoroughly benumbed by nanny-statism. There must be some significant portion of the British people who remember their past and aren’t automatically ashamed of it.