While driving home on the M4 a couple of weeks ago, I heard a story on the radio that the department of transport is extending use of the hard shoulder to more motorways up and down the UK, in an attempt to reduce congestion.
A week later the news reported that an increasing number of prisoners are now being released, earlier than expected in an effort to reduce overcrowding. An recently, the Ministry of Justice reported that the prison population in England and Wales has exceeded its highest normal level for the first time.
Just before Easter, the Beeb broadcast a story about many hospitals across England turning away women in labour because they were full. The same day they also ran a story based on reports from an ex-air traffic controller who claims passenger safety is being put at risk in the skies over London, because air traffic controllers are under so much pressure to maximise the number of landings.
On Easter Sunday, delegates at the annual National Union of Teachers conference in Manchester said excessive class sizes were a “national scandal”. There have been proposals for class sizes of up to 70 students…
Why do the authorities suddenly seem to have decided that we need to use every ounce of spare capacity in the system?
There’s a reason we have a small amount of spare capacity built into almost all our key infrastructure; it’s called MoE. Humans are highly fallible and make a great many mistakes. When we have a little bit of MoE, we often have the opportunity to extricate ourselves from our mistakes without at least killing anyone in the process.
What the hell happens if you breakdown on the motorway now? Or if emergency vehicles need to get to an accident scene in heavy traffic? Without the hard shoulder, neither we nor they have anywhere to go. Doesn’t releasing prisoners early not only jeopardize public safety, but also make the threat of prison terms somewhat laughable? Will this act as a deterrent? Do we want our babies born on roadsides or in WC’s? And when they are old enough for school do we want them “taught” in monster class sizes?
Do we want to have a mid-air collision with another aircraft while returning from our cheap holiday in Spain?
So why are we letting the government and Civil service get away with this cheap con? Well, probably because in a shaky world economy, we don’t want to be faced with an even higher tax burden that the government would undoubtedly claim was necessary to deal with these issues properly.
Remember that this is the same bunch that are contributing to the $100million-a-day military/security bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. The same bunch that are forking out our taxes left right and centre to bail out Northern Rock and other short-sighted greedy bastards who got their fingers burned on dodgy deals that no self-respecting student of finance would have touched with a barge pole.
And how do they get away with this? Because we are all too lazy to stop them…and the worst part is that it will probably take a major calamity to wake us up to the stunts that these slimy little shits are pulling.
*sigh*
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