That's strange. As a reasonably smartly-dressed, skilled and experienced techie, my conclusion has been that there is pretty much no correlation whatsoever between how smartly someone dresses and how good they are at their job. Frankly, your implication that I'm an unprofessional rip-off merchant because I'm happier wearing reasonably smart clothes to work is kinda offensive.
I grew up in a time when people took responsibility for their stupidity.
There is a difference between stupidity and naïvete. Everyone is naïve about something, no matter how experienced they may be about life in general. In a sense, law only exists because to protect society, it's necessary to protect any given individual from having to know everything about everything in order to be safe and fairly treated.
Think of all the money that's going to go into have to retrain users how to use office apps all over again.
Given that most users at present can't do much beyond open, edit, save and print anyway, I'd be surprised. I've never seen any business provide any formal training in how to use Office to any member of staff. I imagine MS knows this; they may be many things, but contrary to popular opinion, they aren't completely stupid when it comes to running a profitable business.
While I agree with the sentiment, it seems they've missed an opportunity here. If they were going to redesign Word so dramatically, why stop at eye candy?
They could have put in decent typography, matched up with the OpenType support that's coming through in new versions of Windows, and made everyone's documents look better.
They could have switched the emphasis from ad-hoc formatting to styles and templates, and made everyone's documents look better (not to mention faster to produce).
They could have invested R&D resources in a grammar checker that worked.
They could have revamped some of the horrible formatting tools (bullets and numbering springs to mind), or added the features necessary to get professional-looking indices and tables.
Anyone can do eye candy, at least anyone with even a small fraction of Microsoft's resources. At the end of the day, UI code takes a lot of time to write, but that writing is easy to do once you've decided what you want. Give me something that genuinely makes it easier to work with my documents, or produces higher quality output, and I'll be a lot more impressed.
It may sound good, but any interface that isn't consistent is a bad interface. Now the user no longer can learn where things are, but have to look at the options given, which change based on the user's previous actions.
It's funny, you'd have thought they'd have learned from all the complaints about hiding rarely used menu items. It was a reasonable idea, but didn't work in practice because too many people didn't understand it, or just found it confusing.
Customer: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
Owner: We're closin' for lunch.
C: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Windows what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very store.
O: Oh yes, the, uh, the Redmondian Blue Screen... What's, uh... What's wrong with it?
C: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's not Genuine, that's what's wrong with it!
O: No, no. It's, uh... it's a different window manager!
C: Look, matey, I know a non-Genuine Windows when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
O: No, no... He's Genuine. He's, he's... using a different window manager! Remarkable code, the Redmondian Blue Screen, isn't, eh? Beautiful skins!
C: Skins?! Mate, this Windows wouldn't "reskin" if you put four million volts through it! It's bleedin' fake!
O: No no! It's just a different window manager!
C: It's not a different window manager! It's a fake! It is illigitimate! It is unregistered! It is Not Genuine! The licence has expired and I'm being audited by its maker!
THIS IS AN X-WINDOWS!!
This can only be good news. Just last night, lack of ability to get downloads easily from Microsoft cost someone else (a small games publisher needing a recent DirectX version) money, as my other half and I gave up on the hassle of downloading from MS, and therefore didn't pay to download the puzzle game in question either. We both have 100% legal installations of Windows on our machines, and she was willing to pay the small asking price for a simple puzzle game she found enjoyable. Everyone lost.
Actually, I think more use of variable speed limits is about the one good thing that might happen if this goes through. Having driven round the M25 variable speed limit section several times recently, they do work pretty well, and generally people do respect them, probably because roughly every other overhead gantry has speed cameras mounted on the back. Traffic slows but usually keeps moving at a useful rate, which is vastly better for progress, the environment and safety than 70mph vs. 0mph stop-start driving.
In your case, I'd say the situation falls clearly under my "getting worse" provision, and using the speed limit (and enforcing it) to maintain reasonable standards for locals is fine with me.
My objection isn't to people in your position, it's to people who move into houses on the side of major roads, and then start campaigning to have the speed limit reduced for their own convenience. That just says "I'm more important than the N drivers who use this major road every day", and it's a self-inflicted problem.
I do understand your argument, and on the face of it I agree that it has merit, too. The thing is, driving psychology is a funny thing, and history and research tell us that speed limits don't really work at all when set according to current policy, and can actually be counter-productive if set too low.
For example, you get roads with very low speed limits, which drivers routinely exceed by a large margin. If the limit is raised by 10mph to something more realistic, it's not unusual for the average speed to fall, because most drivers will prefer to stick to a limit they perceive as reasonable rather than break the law but only by a few mph. This isn't a hypothetical, unlike the claims made by those who say a motorway limit of 80mph would "obviously" mean everyone driving at 90mph when they do 80 now. This is based on measuring what actually happens when the change is made.
Similarly funny things happen with the currently faddish 20mph limits in the UK. If the road is genuinely only safe to travel at 20mph, the vast majority of drivers will reduce their speed to that level anyway, even without a 20mph limit. This is common on narrow back streets full of parked cars and such. OTOH, when major roads are shut down to 20mph for a mile or more, because there is a school somewhere within a half-mile radius, drivers will either ignore the speed limit when there aren't zillions of kids around at going home time, or drive so slowly that they actually lose focus and don't concentrate as much because it's too "easy" to hold their attention. The latter is far more dangerous, because an alert and aware driver travelling at 30mph is less of a hazard to children coming out of school than an inattentive driver doing 20mph.
This is why the whole "speed kills" argument is daft. Reducing speeds, or speed limits, does not automatically equate to lower casualty rates. If we really care about saving lives rather than Whitehall PR, we should be setting all speed limits at a level where they are a realistic balance between making progress and safe and considerate driving, and then enforcing those limits against those who are genuinely dangerous and inconsiderate.
Incidentally, my opposition to this is much more a principle thing than a desire to speed myself. I know my WRX could easily beat the chavs with large exhausts and LEDs off the lights, and I'm confident that as an experienced and well-trained driver (far more than just lessons to pass a test) I could handle my vehicle safely at much higher speeds than I'm ever likely to drive on a British road, so I have nothing to prove by speeding like a nutter around town. As you say, that is what we have track days for.;-)
In areas where speed cameras have been deployed speeding has been reduced and in those same areas the rate of fatal accidents have been reduced. This somewhat undermines the suggestion that speed limits do not have a beneficial effect.
Others have already mentioned that this isn't even true, and where it is, it's often a result of careful timing by the government in installing the camera to take advantage of regression to the mean. Look at the figures more than a year or two after installation and then see what you find.
Moreover, it's often the case that installing a speed camera affects local traffic patterns. Fewer cars passing the camera = less risk of accidents on that road, but ignores the fact that more cars will be travelling on alternative routes, where the accident rate frequently does go up.
I'm afraid your argument isn't very clever, Mr AC. It's government propaganda, page 1, and it's been debunked into oblivion by the pro-car groups for years now.
What you say is true, but to be brutally honest, I have little sympathy if someone moves into a house next to a road and then complains about noise. That house was probably available significantly cheaper than others like it but away from roads, and it's not like it's hard to spot a road outside. Personally, I'd love to buy my own home, but since I can't afford one that I want, I have to accept renting for now. These are voluntary choices.
Having said that, where local conditions would be worsened through noise, for example because raising the speed limit is being proposed (not that there's any mechanism to actually do that any more anyway) or because new developments are likely to increase the volume of traffic or change its nature (e.g., more heavy trucks using the road) then adjusting a speed limit to compensate is fair enough.
I agree with much of what you wrote there. Personally, I think it's long past time we simplified our traffic laws to about three offences: dangerous driving, inconsiderate driving, and failure to meet prerequisites (driving licence, tax, MOT, etc. as applicable). If a driver's behaviour isn't dangerous or inconsiderate, and the driver isn't dodging the regulations that apply to everyone else, why is the behaviour criminal?
Note that there is no problem with allowing the courts discretion to impose a wide range of penalties for these generic offences, as is the case with manslaughter, for example: drive intimidatingly around a learner, get a slap on the wrist; tailgate for extended periods at 100mph on the motorway, get banned for being in danger of causing a fatal accident.
Under such a simplified system, hopefully cases would only be brought against those who were genuinely not behaving properly on the roads, and when they were, the penalty could fit the circumstances, not some government playbook.
Apologies; I was following several subthreads at once, and confused you with some of the other posters from the US (which does have about 5x the population of the UK, and where the NRA is a significant political player).
Two million people marched in London to protest against going to war in Iraq, yet our troops were still sent. That's what two million votes are worth to this government.
The membership of the NRA in the US is about three million if memory serves, and your population is about 5x ours. Despite some dubious laws, you still have your Constitution, and your Supreme Court to rule on it.
On this one, I think it's pretty clear that you're winning.
I'll see if I can dig up a proper link, but various critical articles in the media a few weeks back (IIRC it was commentary after the 7 July bombings, or possibly after the old man was thrown out of the Labour Party conference) were citing something like 30,000 arrests, resulting in charging around half those people with any offence, many not terrorism related, and as I said only single figures (possibly low double figures these days) of convictions for terrorism-related offences.
(PS: I found a couple of links by searching for "UK anti-terrorism legislation arrest statistics" on Google, which suggest I'm misremembering. However, they still list nearly 1,000 arrests, fewer than half resulting in a charge, and only around 20 convictions, so I stand by my argument even if the numbers were off.)
(PPS: I wonder if the figures mentioned by Liberty in the aftermath of 11 September, cited here, were the sort of thing the articles I was thinking of were describing. They mention over 7,000 arrests, with a much smaller number of people charged and only a tiny fraction ever convicted.
I was actually advised by my driving instructor -- a former police driver herself, and married to one of the highest rated police pursuit drivers in the country -- to exceed the limit somewhat when overtaking, if it was safe and it was necessary to complete the manoeuvre within a reasonable time. She reckoned that no traffic cop was ever going to pull me for that; most of them would rather I did the safe and reasonable thing than the legal one. They have to clear up the mess when accidents happen, which (speaking as a first aider myself) is pretty good for putting things in perspective.
Of course, the wonder of automated enforcement is that it removes any use of common sense in such cases, while giving you a rock solid "Well, you knew it was illegal" to fight in court, where "Well, you knew it was a poorly written law" is no defence.
You'd think so, wouldn't you. Curiously enough a British traffic cop recently got away with something pretty close to that (slightly faster, on a 70MPH limit road). Also over 80MPH in an urban 30MPH zone. He claimed he was testing the capabilities of a new vehicle.
The majority didn't vote for Blair last time. In fact, at the last general election in England, New Labout didn't even get the most votes; the Conservatives did. New Labour got in on the back of votes from Scotland, which has a separate government for the purposes of some local issues, yet still contributes MPs to Westminster who can swing votes on issues that only apply in England.
But schemes like this do not intrude into our homes.
Unless your home happens to be covered by a CCTV camera, which the operator uses to spy on your wife while she's changing. Not that there have ever been any cases of that happening, of course.
We still have privacy.
Unless you ever go out shopping, drive anywhere, use the Internet, use the phone, or fail to complete various statutory notifications, that is.
In fact, we have state-protected privacy with laws like the Data Protection Act.
Sure, and we have freedom of information legislation, too. Strangely, both that and the DPA have exemptions for things where they'd really count, though.
Credit reference agencies have no obligation to seek your permission before obtaining and holding potentially very significant information about you, for example, and while you theoretically have rights to challenge it, the agencies have a captive market, so their "customer" service is terrible, and as anyone who's been brave enough to get a copy of their credit record can testify, the accuracy of the information is highly suspect as well.
Ever ask your doctor if you can see your medical records? He doesn't have to show them to you. He's exempt.
The government, both central and increasingly local, dodges freedom of information requests on technicalities all the time. We'll gloss over the fact that 3x the usual volume of records were destroyed in the days immediately before the FOIA came into effect; I'm sure that was just a coincidence.
And then these people have the nerve to criticise a former civil servant who publishes memoirs exposing the actions of our representatives in the run up to a war of dubious legality, described from first hand knowledge, in contradiction of explicit statements given by the representatives at the time that this wasn't happening.
It's about time we started impeaching senior government figures. <rhetorical>Do we still have the death penalty for treachery in this country?</rhetorical>
I think we should all have access to all the CCTV cameras.
That would be grand. Unfortunately, they were all switched off for maintenance while the police held a few hundred people against their will on May Day the other year, right out in the open in London. Funny how that happened.
...you don't get arrested for having a conversation, no matter whom it was with...
On the contrary. That is exactly the excuse that has been offered to justify detaining thousands of people under anti-terrorism legislation since 11 September 2001. Of those people, fewer than half have ever even been charged with a terrorism-related offence, and AFAIK the total convictions under that legislation so far remain in single figures -- around 1/10,000th of those arrested under it. That's not good law, that's a police state.
Slashdot Mirror
That's strange. As a reasonably smartly-dressed, skilled and experienced techie, my conclusion has been that there is pretty much no correlation whatsoever between how smartly someone dresses and how good they are at their job. Frankly, your implication that I'm an unprofessional rip-off merchant because I'm happier wearing reasonably smart clothes to work is kinda offensive.
There is a difference between stupidity and naïvete. Everyone is naïve about something, no matter how experienced they may be about life in general. In a sense, law only exists because to protect society, it's necessary to protect any given individual from having to know everything about everything in order to be safe and fairly treated.
Given that most users at present can't do much beyond open, edit, save and print anyway, I'd be surprised. I've never seen any business provide any formal training in how to use Office to any member of staff. I imagine MS knows this; they may be many things, but contrary to popular opinion, they aren't completely stupid when it comes to running a profitable business.
While I agree with the sentiment, it seems they've missed an opportunity here. If they were going to redesign Word so dramatically, why stop at eye candy?
They could have put in decent typography, matched up with the OpenType support that's coming through in new versions of Windows, and made everyone's documents look better.
They could have switched the emphasis from ad-hoc formatting to styles and templates, and made everyone's documents look better (not to mention faster to produce).
They could have invested R&D resources in a grammar checker that worked.
They could have revamped some of the horrible formatting tools (bullets and numbering springs to mind), or added the features necessary to get professional-looking indices and tables.
Anyone can do eye candy, at least anyone with even a small fraction of Microsoft's resources. At the end of the day, UI code takes a lot of time to write, but that writing is easy to do once you've decided what you want. Give me something that genuinely makes it easier to work with my documents, or produces higher quality output, and I'll be a lot more impressed.
It's funny, you'd have thought they'd have learned from all the complaints about hiding rarely used menu items. It was a reasonable idea, but didn't work in practice because too many people didn't understand it, or just found it confusing.
Customer: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
Owner: We're closin' for lunch.
C: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Windows what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very store.
O: Oh yes, the, uh, the Redmondian Blue Screen... What's, uh... What's wrong with it?
C: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's not Genuine, that's what's wrong with it!
O: No, no. It's, uh... it's a different window manager!
C: Look, matey, I know a non-Genuine Windows when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
O: No, no... He's Genuine. He's, he's... using a different window manager! Remarkable code, the Redmondian Blue Screen, isn't, eh? Beautiful skins!
C: Skins?! Mate, this Windows wouldn't "reskin" if you put four million volts through it! It's bleedin' fake!
O: No no! It's just a different window manager!
C: It's not a different window manager! It's a fake! It is illigitimate! It is unregistered! It is Not Genuine! The licence has expired and I'm being audited by its maker!
THIS IS AN X-WINDOWS!!
Yeah, that was about it when it happened to us last night. Hey, maybe Sony has a product to help me <ahem> manage my anger?
This can only be good news. Just last night, lack of ability to get downloads easily from Microsoft cost someone else (a small games publisher needing a recent DirectX version) money, as my other half and I gave up on the hassle of downloading from MS, and therefore didn't pay to download the puzzle game in question either. We both have 100% legal installations of Windows on our machines, and she was willing to pay the small asking price for a simple puzzle game she found enjoyable. Everyone lost.
Actually, I think more use of variable speed limits is about the one good thing that might happen if this goes through. Having driven round the M25 variable speed limit section several times recently, they do work pretty well, and generally people do respect them, probably because roughly every other overhead gantry has speed cameras mounted on the back. Traffic slows but usually keeps moving at a useful rate, which is vastly better for progress, the environment and safety than 70mph vs. 0mph stop-start driving.
8. The NRA.
Oh, we're talking about the UK. Never mind, then.
In your case, I'd say the situation falls clearly under my "getting worse" provision, and using the speed limit (and enforcing it) to maintain reasonable standards for locals is fine with me.
My objection isn't to people in your position, it's to people who move into houses on the side of major roads, and then start campaigning to have the speed limit reduced for their own convenience. That just says "I'm more important than the N drivers who use this major road every day", and it's a self-inflicted problem.
I do understand your argument, and on the face of it I agree that it has merit, too. The thing is, driving psychology is a funny thing, and history and research tell us that speed limits don't really work at all when set according to current policy, and can actually be counter-productive if set too low.
For example, you get roads with very low speed limits, which drivers routinely exceed by a large margin. If the limit is raised by 10mph to something more realistic, it's not unusual for the average speed to fall, because most drivers will prefer to stick to a limit they perceive as reasonable rather than break the law but only by a few mph. This isn't a hypothetical, unlike the claims made by those who say a motorway limit of 80mph would "obviously" mean everyone driving at 90mph when they do 80 now. This is based on measuring what actually happens when the change is made.
Similarly funny things happen with the currently faddish 20mph limits in the UK. If the road is genuinely only safe to travel at 20mph, the vast majority of drivers will reduce their speed to that level anyway, even without a 20mph limit. This is common on narrow back streets full of parked cars and such. OTOH, when major roads are shut down to 20mph for a mile or more, because there is a school somewhere within a half-mile radius, drivers will either ignore the speed limit when there aren't zillions of kids around at going home time, or drive so slowly that they actually lose focus and don't concentrate as much because it's too "easy" to hold their attention. The latter is far more dangerous, because an alert and aware driver travelling at 30mph is less of a hazard to children coming out of school than an inattentive driver doing 20mph.
This is why the whole "speed kills" argument is daft. Reducing speeds, or speed limits, does not automatically equate to lower casualty rates. If we really care about saving lives rather than Whitehall PR, we should be setting all speed limits at a level where they are a realistic balance between making progress and safe and considerate driving, and then enforcing those limits against those who are genuinely dangerous and inconsiderate.
Incidentally, my opposition to this is much more a principle thing than a desire to speed myself. I know my WRX could easily beat the chavs with large exhausts and LEDs off the lights, and I'm confident that as an experienced and well-trained driver (far more than just lessons to pass a test) I could handle my vehicle safely at much higher speeds than I'm ever likely to drive on a British road, so I have nothing to prove by speeding like a nutter around town. As you say, that is what we have track days for. ;-)
Blockquoth the AC:
Others have already mentioned that this isn't even true, and where it is, it's often a result of careful timing by the government in installing the camera to take advantage of regression to the mean. Look at the figures more than a year or two after installation and then see what you find.
Moreover, it's often the case that installing a speed camera affects local traffic patterns. Fewer cars passing the camera = less risk of accidents on that road, but ignores the fact that more cars will be travelling on alternative routes, where the accident rate frequently does go up.
I'm afraid your argument isn't very clever, Mr AC. It's government propaganda, page 1, and it's been debunked into oblivion by the pro-car groups for years now.
What you say is true, but to be brutally honest, I have little sympathy if someone moves into a house next to a road and then complains about noise. That house was probably available significantly cheaper than others like it but away from roads, and it's not like it's hard to spot a road outside. Personally, I'd love to buy my own home, but since I can't afford one that I want, I have to accept renting for now. These are voluntary choices.
Having said that, where local conditions would be worsened through noise, for example because raising the speed limit is being proposed (not that there's any mechanism to actually do that any more anyway) or because new developments are likely to increase the volume of traffic or change its nature (e.g., more heavy trucks using the road) then adjusting a speed limit to compensate is fair enough.
I agree with much of what you wrote there. Personally, I think it's long past time we simplified our traffic laws to about three offences: dangerous driving, inconsiderate driving, and failure to meet prerequisites (driving licence, tax, MOT, etc. as applicable). If a driver's behaviour isn't dangerous or inconsiderate, and the driver isn't dodging the regulations that apply to everyone else, why is the behaviour criminal?
Note that there is no problem with allowing the courts discretion to impose a wide range of penalties for these generic offences, as is the case with manslaughter, for example: drive intimidatingly around a learner, get a slap on the wrist; tailgate for extended periods at 100mph on the motorway, get banned for being in danger of causing a fatal accident.
Under such a simplified system, hopefully cases would only be brought against those who were genuinely not behaving properly on the roads, and when they were, the penalty could fit the circumstances, not some government playbook.
Apologies; I was following several subthreads at once, and confused you with some of the other posters from the US (which does have about 5x the population of the UK, and where the NRA is a significant political player).
Two million people marched in London to protest against going to war in Iraq, yet our troops were still sent. That's what two million votes are worth to this government.
The membership of the NRA in the US is about three million if memory serves, and your population is about 5x ours. Despite some dubious laws, you still have your Constitution, and your Supreme Court to rule on it.
On this one, I think it's pretty clear that you're winning.
I'll see if I can dig up a proper link, but various critical articles in the media a few weeks back (IIRC it was commentary after the 7 July bombings, or possibly after the old man was thrown out of the Labour Party conference) were citing something like 30,000 arrests, resulting in charging around half those people with any offence, many not terrorism related, and as I said only single figures (possibly low double figures these days) of convictions for terrorism-related offences.
(PS: I found a couple of links by searching for "UK anti-terrorism legislation arrest statistics" on Google, which suggest I'm misremembering. However, they still list nearly 1,000 arrests, fewer than half resulting in a charge, and only around 20 convictions, so I stand by my argument even if the numbers were off.)
(PPS: I wonder if the figures mentioned by Liberty in the aftermath of 11 September, cited here, were the sort of thing the articles I was thinking of were describing. They mention over 7,000 arrests, with a much smaller number of people charged and only a tiny fraction ever convicted.
I was actually advised by my driving instructor -- a former police driver herself, and married to one of the highest rated police pursuit drivers in the country -- to exceed the limit somewhat when overtaking, if it was safe and it was necessary to complete the manoeuvre within a reasonable time. She reckoned that no traffic cop was ever going to pull me for that; most of them would rather I did the safe and reasonable thing than the legal one. They have to clear up the mess when accidents happen, which (speaking as a first aider myself) is pretty good for putting things in perspective.
Of course, the wonder of automated enforcement is that it removes any use of common sense in such cases, while giving you a rock solid "Well, you knew it was illegal" to fight in court, where "Well, you knew it was a poorly written law" is no defence.
You'd think so, wouldn't you. Curiously enough a British traffic cop recently got away with something pretty close to that (slightly faster, on a 70MPH limit road). Also over 80MPH in an urban 30MPH zone. He claimed he was testing the capabilities of a new vehicle.
I think even two or three of us might, actually. I doubt it's any more than that, though.
The majority didn't vote for Blair last time. In fact, at the last general election in England, New Labout didn't even get the most votes; the Conservatives did. New Labour got in on the back of votes from Scotland, which has a separate government for the purposes of some local issues, yet still contributes MPs to Westminster who can swing votes on issues that only apply in England.
Unless your home happens to be covered by a CCTV camera, which the operator uses to spy on your wife while she's changing. Not that there have ever been any cases of that happening, of course.
Unless you ever go out shopping, drive anywhere, use the Internet, use the phone, or fail to complete various statutory notifications, that is.
Sure, and we have freedom of information legislation, too. Strangely, both that and the DPA have exemptions for things where they'd really count, though.
Credit reference agencies have no obligation to seek your permission before obtaining and holding potentially very significant information about you, for example, and while you theoretically have rights to challenge it, the agencies have a captive market, so their "customer" service is terrible, and as anyone who's been brave enough to get a copy of their credit record can testify, the accuracy of the information is highly suspect as well.
Ever ask your doctor if you can see your medical records? He doesn't have to show them to you. He's exempt.
The government, both central and increasingly local, dodges freedom of information requests on technicalities all the time. We'll gloss over the fact that 3x the usual volume of records were destroyed in the days immediately before the FOIA came into effect; I'm sure that was just a coincidence.
And then these people have the nerve to criticise a former civil servant who publishes memoirs exposing the actions of our representatives in the run up to a war of dubious legality, described from first hand knowledge, in contradiction of explicit statements given by the representatives at the time that this wasn't happening.
It's about time we started impeaching senior government figures. <rhetorical>Do we still have the death penalty for treachery in this country?</rhetorical>
That would be grand. Unfortunately, they were all switched off for maintenance while the police held a few hundred people against their will on May Day the other year, right out in the open in London. Funny how that happened.
On the contrary. That is exactly the excuse that has been offered to justify detaining thousands of people under anti-terrorism legislation since 11 September 2001. Of those people, fewer than half have ever even been charged with a terrorism-related offence, and AFAIK the total convictions under that legislation so far remain in single figures -- around 1/10,000th of those arrested under it. That's not good law, that's a police state.