Ssshhh… This is “For your eyes only”

We live in a dangerous world; there are terrorists, eco-nuts, liberals and Wacky Jacqui Smith looking to take away your personal freedoms and/or attack you at any time. I’ve often wondered about who is keeping Britain secure, and have even been having nightmares recently about the thought of Sarah Palin with her finger on the nuclear trigger. 

I’ve also been wondering how I can help to secure Great Britain, but drawn a blank. Obviously, I have some technical ability and a strong sense of pride in my country, but how can I possibly make a difference?

Well, thankfully, the answer arrived in an email a couple of days ago – and unfortunately got sent straight in my spam bin…

 

MI6/SIS Advert

 

It seems that Oxford and Cambridge are lacking in potential recruits for the security services. Now with the number of people attending university these days, you’d have thought that finding graduates with the requisite moustache wouldn’t be difficult, but it turns out that foreigners studying chemistry and middle-eastern politics doesn’t seem to sit well with the security services’ recruitment department.

So they turn to the likes of me. Now, I (used to) love my country dearly. As readers of this blog will know, I’ve contributed to parliamentary enquires, supported open government, and been a great campaigner for the use of technology to promote open government. And oddly enough, I seem to fit the advertised profile perfectly.

I have to admit, it would be nice to actually spy on someone else, rather than be spied on by your own country. In the early and mid-1990s, I worked on a number of defence projects that were marked UK/US Eyes, and yet over 10 years later, I’m under more surveillance by my own government than I ever was from the Russians.

Even given the above, it’s an alluring prospect; flash a “James Bond” ID card at the police, vodka martinis on expenses, and the chance of sleeping with Yiavonna Succabich…

Sadly, I’m actually a professional engineer, and so don’t qualify for entry into the rarefied strata of the security services. Professional engineers understand good security practices, and so I’ll present some questions that better reflect the current “State Of The Art” within the service…

 

Have YOU:

• Left any TOP SECRET papers on a train recently?
• Flogged a digital camera on eBay (complete with classified images)?

 

Can YOU:

• Leak like a sieve?

 

If so, MI6 could be just the place for you!!

 

I admit I’ve been very scathing of the UK security services in this post, so as a way of making amends and doing my bit for the defence of my nation, I’d like to offer some free words of advice to the security services (as this post goes through GCHQ); next time you let your operatives out of the office with a CD-ROM to leave somewhere in public, make sure it’s an ADA compiler. Hopefully someone from a hostile power will pick it up; It’ll set ‘em back at least 30 years…

Speeding through the common-sense barrier…

Both regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve recently received a letter informing me that attempt to break the world landspeed record on the A322 was kindly noted by the authorities, and I ought to be prepared to be financially spanked for my misdemenours.

Well, I coughed to it. As described in my previous post, I thought they were missing a trick by fining people instead of putting in proper speed-corrective measures. After all, it doesn’t matter if there’s a speed camera in place when I run over a child because I’m doing 95mpg in a 30mph zone. All it ensures is that I’ll incur a fine. Putting in some chicanes and speed bumps will slow EVERYONE down – but would of course mean that that revenue stream would dry up.

And I thought that my comments would be enough to get it off my chest. But for a moment I forgot about the current government…

Having admitted to my offence, I thought I was resigned to taking the 3 points, paying the £60 fine, saying I’m sorry and promising to vote Labour at the next election.

But soft. What letter through yonder letterbox falls? It is a secretary for the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police. (A person who clearly feels unable to put their own name on a letter…)

And what good tidings, pray, does this communication hold? That I shall be spared from the tower?

Well no, actually.

I’d always had a suspicion that the whole speeding-fine thing was nothing more than an attempt to screw more money from motorists. The positioning of the speed camera that caught me reinforced this belief, but now I have some evidence to support this.

You see, the letter I received contains these lines:

“Normally for this offence you would receive a letter offering you the chance to pay a fixed penalty. This gives you the opportunity to accept a £60 fixed penalty and 3 penalty points on your driving licence, provided you do not have more than 8 penalty points.

However, Thames Valley Police seeks to educate and not prosecute and irrespective of the number of penalty points you may currently have, I am of the opinion that your attendance at a Speed Awareness Scheme Workshop would be beneficial and am prepared to offer this as an alternative to the fixed penalty on the occasion. On satisfactory completion of the Speed Workshop, the Notice of Intended Prosecution will be withdrawn.”

Yikes! I’ve dodged a bullet! They realise that my transgression was a momentary lapse of concentration, and a simple course will remind me of the dangers of exceeding arbitrary speed limits. Phew! I’m glad we have such a benevolent government.

Oh – hang on, wait a minute – what’s this? Ah, yes, the “Bend over and here’s the red-hot poker clause..”

“The workshop must be completed within four and a half months of the date of the offence, will cost £79.50 and your license will NOT be endorsed.”

Ah, and eventually we cut to the chase; namely that you can buy your way out of an offence. I can either pay £60 and take the 3 points, or I can pay an extra 33%, suffer 4 hours bleating from a consultant telling me how dangerous speed is, and then see some photos of weeping mothers shrouded behind Kleenex, whose kids were killed on council estate roads – probably by the drivers of stolen cars, being persued by the police.

And this will somehow make our streets safer. I’m not totally convinced by this argument. So who is my extra £20 going to?

I’ve blogged before that a friend of mine can’t attend a course he wants to, student debt is at a record high, and physics funding is being cut at every avenue.

And yet the course I’ve been offered, is run by an independent third-party. So, you fine people in work, you charge students,  and yet somehow you expect the very same people in the private sector to continue to support you when you use their work against them…

The UK Government pumped billions of pounds into CERN in the 1980s, and got the World Wide Web from Sir Berners-Lee as a result. And they now use it as a global surveillance mechanism.

So I can’t wait to see what they think they’ll produce by fining us road users…

 

Maybe I’m finally going to get my bloody flying-car…