Reorte

32 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

Here we go again - I thought that we'd both agreed to leave this alone!

 

...

 

Nothing to be frightened of!

In which case all I'll point out is that I'm not frightened of it, I simply loathe it.

20 hours ago, adb968008 said:

 

so is this about shutting wcrc down, or making them cdl compliant ?

 

certainly the posts here read as many would like or are trying to shut them down, and as an outsider it certainly feels to me like theres plenty of vendettas and ill will.

But if thats the case, surely cdl isnt the right vehicle to do it, as if they become compliant…then that avenue is closed.

or is it a case of keep fighting until you get the killer blow ?

 

I’m not in this industry so I only know so much, but what I read here is fascinating, ive got to be honest ive not been on a wcrc tour in years either. I’d no idea it was that bad.

If it feels like some want to shut WCRC down it's only because  WC keep treading on toes and dragging their heels and generally giving the impression of not being a responsible operator. I said it earlier it's the job of an operator to follow the rules (they can argue against them, just as long as they follow them), and WCRC don't appear to be all that keen to do so. And whilst I'd more than happily travel on a train without locked doors (indeed, I'd prefer to) I'd have serious doubts about travelling on one belonging to a company that seems unwilling to meet the requirements - if they can't be bothered on one I'm not concerned about what are the chances that they're not bothering on one that I very much would be?

So it's no wonder some people appear to have it in for them.

If you've got nothing to hide - then it's absolutely no-one else's business to know about it. Nothing to hide, nothing to prove.

3 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

My objection to ID cards is not to the principle of the things, but how they tend to be sold. 

 

I have an ID card, it is very convenient for many things, and can make life easier. Actually,  Singapore has moved past ID cards and it is now a digital ID based on the Singpass app.

Does that mean you're not allowed to not have a mobile there?

1 hour ago, Sidecar Racer said:

 

 

 This is going to be hard to explain away .  

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-norfolk-68598455

The jogger in the background must be really jaded. The thing nearly hits him yet he just carries on as if nothing's happened.

36 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

...and cables. Although the depth on Admiralty charts has been in metres since c.1967. What your depth sounder measures in may be set to read in metres, feet, or maybe even fathoms.

But the nautical mile is still a thing, based on 1/60th of one degree of latitude at the equator, and the knot (defined as one nautical mile per hour) is still used for speed on water.  Ten cables in one nautical mile.

Nautical miles and knots are a logical unit for navigation purposes, your definitions show why (1/60th degree being one minute of latitude). You could argue that it doesn't matter when a computer's doing it all anyway, although navigators are still expected to be able to manage without them if they need to, but the same computer argument renders the convenience argument about any unit set moot.

If you want an abomination of a measurement, the Navy uses kiloyards...

To be honest whilst I can see why people say metric and decimal is simpler in principle (although arguably base 12 is a better choice than 10, although imperial units are in a variety of bases) in practice most people seem to find whatever they grew up with sufficiently usable, so the reality is that there's no particularly good reason to favour one or the other for that reason. Familiarity is a much more important factor, even if that leads to a mixture - I'm much prefer weight in stones, height in feet and inches, but have no feel whatsoever for temperatures in Farenheit.

I do find it telling that the people who push base 10-based units never seem to do so for time, and carry on quite happily with 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week... (stuck with 365 and a bit days in a year as hard astronomical fact though).

34 minutes ago, MJI said:

Do you mean that weird stuff they abandoned when i was at primary school?

Worked perfectly well for hundreds of years. Changed before I was born but always felt like change for the sake of change to me. Personally I like it when different parts of the world have their own idiosyncrasies, including our own. Only need just enough utilitarianism to make things practical, more than that and it gets lifeless.

Quote

I use kg now as it is easier to read on my scales.

I need to have that converted to stone to get any feel. I wouldn't buy a set of scales that only had kilograms on them.

5 minutes ago, Nick C said:

I understand your distaste, but I think you're directing it at the wrong thing.

 

The need to prove who you are is already totally ingrained into our society, with many things you cannot do unless you have an appropriate way of demonstrating that you're entitled to them (e.g. driving, travelling to other countries, accessing the money in your bank account, gaining entry into certain places, and so on). We have passports, driving licences, "proof of age" cards, credit cards, company IDs, and so on and so forth. Whether for better or for worse, modern western society simply wouldn't work without people being able to prove who they are - we simply have too many people.

 

The presence or absence of ID cards doesn't change that, they are simply a way of proving who you are, not the reason for it.

You think I like any of that lot either? I very much don't, and thus I'm not at all keen on moves that shift even further in that direction, rather than trying to wind them back as much as possible. I know the reasons for them, why we've shifted like that, and it often feels like another example of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

I also find the dislike of the potential hassle we've got currently, which doesn't involve anything you're compelled to have, less than my dislike of the concept of ID cards.

11 minutes ago, Nick C said:

I don't get that - if you're not worried about misuse, what possible objection can you have to having a consistent, secure means of proving who you are?

You don't get that someone could simply find the whole concept fundamentally disagreeable?

I see this quite often, people often not understanding any dislike (or like) that they don't actually share, and insist on an argument that would turn them around to agreeing in order to understand. Is empathy really that difficult? Note empathy and sympathy are very different things.

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

Seeing as I carry round a photo ID driving licence in my wallet all the time  (and no I’m not going to the bother of putting it in there every time I am going to drive a motor vehicle - nor waste my time presenting it at a police station because I got stopped driving while not having it with me) then, yes I am ‘OK’ with that possibility as you put it.

I've had to present my driving licence to the police zero times in the thirty years I've been driving. Whilst I can't rule out the possibility of it happening the frequency that it does is low enough that any hassle involved even without having it on me is too negligible in the grand scheme of things to care about.

29 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

If they pick up innocent suspects they later eliminate from enquiries , clearly either they are indeed making mistakes or they're simply going on fishing expeditions.

Although I agree with the general thrust of your post on this, sometimes they will indeed pick up innocent suspects. That's an inevitable part of policing - if they didn't it would mean that they're always correctly arresting the guilty party first time, which although ideal clearly isn't possible. They're doing their job if the grounds of suspicion are sufficient enough that the risk of arrest for an innocent is sufficiently low. It's like the searching you mentioned - sometimes an innocent's house will be searched, even when everything has been done properly. If that wasn't the case, if they could always be certain about searching the right house, it would mean that they already had enough evidence to go to trial and wouldn't need the search anyway.

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I regularly use cash for purchasing things like lunch, but my supermarket purchases usually run between $100 and $200 - not where I would choose cash transactions.  I did stop writing paper cheques at the supermarket many years ago - that transaction takes longer than anyone in the queue behind you wants to wait for.

Same here, cheques aside (since I've not used those regularly for a long time indeed).

Talking of cheques I'm tempted to find the cheque book and keep hold of it for some place that says "no cash."

25 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

At the end of the day, most of the world seems to manage perfectly well with identity cards - as did the UK during and after WW2.

How about we just agree to disagree and move on?

1 minute ago, Tim Dubya said:

 

Proving who you are rules you out as a criminal, unless of course one is a criminal in the first place.  It'll also save you a trip to the nick for finger printing etc to prove you're not wanted for a crime, should one be under suspicion of such.

Sounds a bit "prove your innocence." If you're not a criminal you should be able to go about your life without ever having to speak to the police (unless you're a victim). Whilst life isn't and never can be perfect the odds of a bit of extra hassle should be low enough that it doesn't make any sense to mitigate against them; if they're not then the police aren't doing their job properly.

Anyway how often do the police pick up the wrong person? They pick up suspects who they later eliminate from enquiries often enough, but that's different from just making a mistake.

You're wording it as essentially a protection against the authorities. Needing that doesn't sound healthy.

1 hour ago, Tim Dubya said:

I have no problem whatsoever with I.D. cards, I carry my driving licence with me at all times anyway.  I also wear my two I.D.'s at work, one of which has my DBS number on it, so 'they' already know everything about me.  

 

I just don't understand the paranoia around national identity cards and find it baffling, unless of course 'we' are a nation of criminals.

 

It's precisely because I'm not a criminal I don't like being treated as a criminal, or potential criminal.

It's nothing to do with paranoia. I don't fear misuse of them, but ID cards are a seriously, seriously messed-up concept.

30 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

All of which casts no light whatsoever upon the reasons for your abhorence.

 

You are perfectly entitled to your viewpoint, of course - but your reasons are incomprehensible to me; (which is as you would wish, no doubt)!

Who you are, what you are doing is absolutely no-one else's business whatsoever as long as you're not negatively affecting anyone else. What's so hard to see about ID cards being a fundamental contradiction to that? I'm not saying you have to agree (you can understand someone else's point of view without agreeing with it), but I don't see what's confusing about it.

Why would you say "which is as you would wish"?

5 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

As a newborn in 1949, I was required to have an identity card - which I still have! I cannot conceive of a reason why I would have objected to the requirement having continued until the present day.

 

Why would I not wish the 'Old Bill' to know to know where I am? Being able to prove who I am could, in the event of my being mistakenly suspected of some misdemeanor, avoid being detained whilst my identity was established.

 

If one does not transgress the law, one has nothing to fear from compulsory identity cards.

The concept of ID cards is one I find utterly repulsive. Not because I fear misuse, but because I find the whole idea utterly at odds with a basic respect for people and privacy. You have no right whatsoever to know or do or compel anything about any other person unless they are harming you in some way. The same's true of the law (ultimately the authorities are just other people). ID cards are just being tagged and branded in another form.

18 hours ago, Classsix T said:

I empathise Michael, but let's not run away with ourselves here. Owning a trackable mobile is a consumer choice, we're hardly in the territory of mandatory bodily chip insertion or "papers please".

It is, however, very disturbing just how many people are quite happy with that. If you'd raised it as a concern twenty or thirty years ago you'd have been told to stop being so absurd with your exaggeration dystopian views of the future, people would never go along with that.

A big thanks for stepping up to fill a gap, here's hoping it's a success for many years to come.

7 minutes ago, admiles said:

 The problem is (certainly with my doctors surgery) that there are so many people trying to phone up and talk to someone it gridlocks the system and most people can simply never get through or speak to anyone. 

 

Now that my surgery has taken the booking of appointments online you do stand a fighting change of actually getting one. Those that can't use the online service can still phone and because the vast majority of people are booking online, actually speak to someone where that wasn't possible (most of the time) before.  It's split the "traffic"! 

That's part of why I said I don't have a problem with such things as additions, it's when it becomes the only option that I start taking an incredibly dim view of the modern world (not that that takes me much effort!)

22 hours ago, BachelorBoy said:

Grotty bits are usuall the most interesting bits to model :-)

Personally I find it depends on the grot (well, to look at, not really tried to model much). Dirty stone, mills, soot, yes, concrete, litter, graffiti, no.

Spent a year living in Hunsonby. Well, on and off since I was at university at the time so I was just back there for the holidays. I took the train from Langwathby several times to get back.

Always liked Hunsonby, felt it belonged to a different century what with the goat grazing on the green. Not far from Long Meg, for a bit more rail interest, not that there was much left to see of it by the time I was living there.

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