Extortion?

How is the proposal by Bedfordshire's Police to fund its budget shortfall by rigorously enforcing speed limits materially different from the arbitrary road blocks set up in various third world countries by their police solely for the purpose of extorting bribes from motorists?


Update. Mark in Mayenne makes a valid point about road useage.  To elaborate, the third world road block bit is usually justified by a 'document check' or similar which can take hours, unless you pay the bribe.  And the bribe is often the only 'wage' they get.

FakeCharity of the day

Having spent the morning on a family surfing lesson (as in 'the waves' rather than 'the internet') and the afternoon at the Blue Reef Acquarium (which is really good but either a tad expensive or a tad small, depending on your point of view), I haven't had time to trawl the usual sources today, so am indebted, again, to AC1 who asked, completely o/t, "Is Brake a fake?"

From the BBC:

Swindon has become the first English authority to scrap the use of its fixed speed cameras.

The Conservative-run borough council said it was reinvesting the £320,000 a year maintenance costs for the five cameras in road safety measures. The move does not mean the town will be left without any speed cameras as Wiltshire Police will continue to operate mobile units. The decision has been called "reckless" by the road safety charity, Brake...

Leaving aside the question of what "road safety measures' might entail - the article suggests it'll be "vehicle activated signs", i.e. another complete waste of money, let's have a quick look at Brake.

Their website screams fakecharity - it uses the same template as all the others, with sub-pages for 'Home', 'About us', 'Contact us', 'Our supporters' (as a variant on 'Support us' or 'Donate'), 'Jobs' and 'Links'.

The income in their 2007 accounts (see page 8)was as follows:

Corporate partnership £285,718
Donations £333,057
Road Safety Education £296,984
BrakeCare £75,979
Fleet Safety Forum £66,535
Research £3,360
Investment income £15,759

Their list of corporate partners seems innocuous enough. Donations include "Community Fundraising £236,319" (which might or might not be suspect). Note 3 to the accounts discloses income of about £70,000 from the Department for Transport, the Youth Justice Board, the Office for Criminal Justice Reform and the Scottish Executive. Those government departments are all duly listed on their site, along with Children in Need, which you might argue is not a fakecharity.

So far, so not so bad, really. Where it starts to stink a bit is on their list of Organisations working with Brake, which includes, along with some genuinely interested private groups, the following:

British Transport Advisory Committee
Chief Fire Officer Association
Child Accident Prevention Trust
Community Transport Association
Disaster Aftercare Services
European Secure Vehicle Alliance
GMB
The Intensive Care Society
Learn + Live
Motabillity
Pre-Hospital Care
Never Away
Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety
Prospect
Public & Commercial Services Union
Road Operators’ Safety Council
Road Safety Markings Association
The Slower Speeds Initiative
Transport & General Workers Union
Transport Management Association of the NHS
University of Huddersfield

All of which appear to be quangos, fakecharities, public sector pressure groups and/or wholly or party funded or arganised by the government (there may be exceptions and I am happy to edit that list down a bit).

So, to cut a long story short, Brake appears to be, to a large extent, a fake.

Horizon: Is Alcohol worse than Ecstasy?

I had to nip to the loo (two cans of lager and Horizon's on the BBC, so no ad-breaks) and pop upstairs (to get another half ounce of Old Holborn and some more Rizlas), so I missed the statistics on cocaine users and deaths therefrom*, but I'm still surprised that they put in Heroin** at number 1. If I scribbled it down correctly, they said 300,000 users, and despite the fact that these poor people are peddled the worst adulterated filth, nowhere near proper pure medicinal heroin, it only causes 700 deaths a year. That's one-in-four-hundred users.

As opposed to Heroin-substitute Methadone*** at number 4 with 33,000 users and 295 deaths, and apparently it doesn't even give you a buzz. And it's a pissy green colour.

* Did this include crack-cocaine? Now that's nasty stuff, that is.
** ^TM Bayer AG, ca. 1897
*** ^TM Hoechst AG, ca. 1938

Update: full list here.