When I'm Prime Minister

Fat fighters

2006-11-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

The concept of exercise is so important that I will most certainly launch a new campaign to make people gleefully aware of the benefits of going that extra step towards keeping themselves healthy. Don't just walk to school: go the wrong way and force yourself to walk further! Cycle in a gear too high for the speed so that you have to put in extra effort!

The name of this campaign? Extracise!

Naturally.

Holiday for two

2006-11-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

When I'm Prime Minister I will pass a rule whereby any "competition" that involves the player phoning a number and supplying a code - or similar such games; you know the ones: you scratch off things and get a code or three of the same picture and you win every time and you phone the number and you win a pack of cards - is required to offer for each prize a cash alternative that can never be less than the amount of money spent on the actual phone call. Alternatively, the competition co-ordinators will be required to prove that the chances of winning when you scratch off the panel is equal to the statistical chances of that combination appearing given the nature of the game. Thus any card where you have to find three of the same symbols would have to prove that the chances of finding three of the same symbol in the cards is equal to the chances the statistics, calculated on the number of different symbols and the number of symbols on the card, say they should be.

That should put a stop to it.

SI go hang

2006-11-14T01:16:00.000-08:00

When I'm Prime Minister, the official kilobyte will be 1024 bytes; the official megabyte will be 1024 kilobytes; the official gigabyte will be 1024 megabytes: and so on, until we run out of Greek-etymological prefixes. It will then be illegal to report media storage sizes in any other manner, such as this bizarre practice of having 1000 units per larger unit for marketing purposes, which would then be classed as false advertising.

Weeding out the unsavoury

2006-10-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister this whole cannabis taboo will be ejected. I've had enough. We have people addicted to nicotine and alcohol and yet our one drug that actually makes people peace out is illegal? What other peace-promoting things are illegal? Well we lost the right to protest without a licence recently, that's for sure, even though under European law we all get the right to protest without fear of recrimination. It's a basic human right.

Anyway; cannabis is the least dangerous of our drugs and yet it remains illegal. Why? Well the original reason recalls the slave trade. The slaves would smoke cannabis and so work less; thus it became illegal: since no citizen of England or the US would be caught partaking of a slave habit, it affected none of them.

So I hear.

Regardless: it's a useless restriction. Begone with it.

The C Word

2006-10-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister I will make it illegal to advertise Christmas before November: in fact I will make it illegal to start stocking Christmas stock and making Christmas gestures before November. Also it will be illegal to sing Christmas songs and ask for Christmas presents before November. Anyone caught doing so will be nailed to an evergreen.

Nuisance Lawyers

2006-10-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister it will be punishable to file a nuisance lawsuit. If a lawsuit were to be dismissed on grounds of stupidity or some similar reason, the defending party will be given the opportunity to shoot at close range the prosecutors and the entire legal team on that side.

This brings up the idea of corporal punishment. Perhaps it's a good idea. I'm all for bringing back the stocks. Guards would of course be necessary, but the public humiliation of petty criminals is going to be much more effective than locking them away or telling them off. In fact, punishment of all undesirable habits should be encouraged, because telling people off and locking them away just doesn't get the message across any more.

Equalitarianism

2006-10-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister I will combat discrimination by not recognising any differences and treating all people identicaly. Thus it will be illegal to request any information about anyone that does not pertain to the reason for collecting. Thus, no job application sheet may even request the person's gender, let alone their race or religion. By not recognising that there are different races, so racism is solved: by not recognising that there are two genders (except, of course, where relevant!), so sexism is solved.

A Roundabout Way Of Doing Things

2006-10-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister the vast majority of traffic lights in this country will be replaced by roundabouts.

There is a huge congestion problem in this country because there are more cars than there is road. It does not take a genius to see that if you're stopping half of the cars half of the time then half of the cars are going to be stopped half of the time. Of course, in many situations, this is desirable: but not at rush hour.

It is further demonstrated that removing traffic lights alleviates the problem by the intermittent failure during rush hour of certain sets of signals. When a set fails and the traffic flows more smoothly, the set is, in fact, counterproductive. Conversely, if it fails and traffic is at more of a standstill than it usually is, the set is controlling traffic.

The most efficient conjunction of two like roads is with a roundabout. This basically merges both roads into one, round road, off of which you can come at any time onto any of the roads. Better still, it is extensible to multiple roads: five roads can all meet at one point and nothing changes.

What really makes it grind is when it's not quite a roundabout. There's a basic rotund conglomeration of soil, trees and signposts in the middle, around which cars orbit like moths around a light, and then there are strange parasitic constructions like lanes that never quite reach the roundabout and instead take you off to the left, or lanes which purport to be the correct lane for going straight ahead until you cross into the roundabout, whereupon the lane becomes a turning left lane. And, the lowest of the low, the one for which all traffic management officers are going to hell, is the unforgivable traffic lights on roundabouts.

Picture, if you will, a circle. This will serve as our roundabout, viewed from above. From it radiate a number of roads. Be aware this is the UK, where we drive on the left and roundabouts are followed clockwise from above.

A car arrives at the roundabout; it slows lest traffic be coming from its right (as one must give way to the right on roundabouts) and then moves off. It goes as far as it needs, and leaves the roundabout. For argument's sake, each road has but one lane in each direction; the roundabout has one lane.

Another car on another road must judge whether this car is going to pass in front of it; if so, the other car must wait until it has passed. Since people drive slowly on roundabouts due to their roundness, there is often time to move out before the first car arrives. Then it continues as the first car did. This pattern may be repeated for any number of cars in any number of roads, but it does require that the roundabout gain more lanes as the volume of traffic increases.

And lo we find that even the most major of roads must at some point give way to someone. Anyone coming in from the right has priority over the major road, and the users of that road must stop. This means that the major road can continue to filter traffic into the roundabout until such time as someone arrives on the minor road; there is a pause for the little guy, and everything goes off again. And even the most chock-a-block road will eventually ease off and filter out, meaning that no one should wait a long time at a roundabout.

Now divide this roundabout into sections. Each section comprises an incoming road and the section of circle clockwise of this road up to where it meets the next road. Dividing each of these sections is a set of traffic lights. There is also a set of traffic lights at each incoming road, where the road meets the roundabout. Now set up the timing of the lights so that full roundabout functionality is retained.

No, you can't. The lights on the roundabout itself create little sections of road which, every time the light goes red, fills up with cars. The cars will come either from the section previous to it, or will come in from the joining road associated with it. A filled up section of road is useless, because when lights change, there's nowhere for the cars to go. When one set of lights goes green, the people move a few inches and catch up with the back of the queue at the next set. Maybe a car will turn off, but what you end up with is a snake biting its own tail, and the roundabout is at a standstill.

In the eighties there was technology that could determine whether or not a car was waiting at lights. It is no longer in use today, since this technology is much inferior to the new technology of having a set light cycle for all times of the day. Knowing when a car is waiting at a minor road and changing the lights only at that time is far inferior to stopping the entire major road at set intervals in order that no cars can go.

This is because it's impossible to turn right at traffic lights; you have to cross oncoming traffic. It is required to stop the entire road periodically just to allow the people who want to turn right to do so. What a lot of people do not know is that the rules of the road say that if you have crossed the white line while the lights are on green you must complete your manoeuvre, even if the lights turn red. Of course, with so many people having passed their driving test before they learned to drive, what you get is people sitting in the middle of junctions, feeling a bit silly because they're poking out, and completely blocking traffic on the other road when the lights change. With a roundabout, there is no opportunity to stop like this, unless some idiot goes and puts traffic lights on it.

In fact, the only thing you can get from traffic lights is a pedestrian crossing. Quite frankly I'm prepared to replace all of those with zebra crossings and make anyone who does not stop for someone waiting at (not already on: waiting at) a zebra crossing liable for a lot of fines. There is no reason to be wasting this much precious energy on these useless automatic traffic controlling units that do not actually in any way help with controlling traffic.

Customer Disservice

2006-09-28T04:39:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister it will be illegal to charge any phone service that involves or may involve the customer requesting help for a faulty product at a rate above the national local rate of 1p per minute.

Sawdust McNuggets

2006-09-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister it will be a legal requirement for all sources of food to put on ingredients lists and nutrition information, not just those you buy in plastic wrappers off a shelf.

Freedom of Information

2006-09-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister I will organise an isolated library network. It will have a huge repository of all books, newspapers, pamphlets, songs, audio clips, interviews, films, TV episodes: Everything! It would be like those microfilm archives of newspapers but it would hold everything, and there would be no opting out of it because it would be the library network, and every book ever can be found in libraries somewhere.

It would only be accessible from libraries but you could print stuff out for a fee or burn them to perishable media so that you could "borrow" films from the library without actually keeping them, thereby extending the idea of borrowing books to all media in a digital age.

I would call it L-Space, and Terry Pratchett would not mind because Terry Pratchett appreciates the need for some friendliness in the world these days of bureaucracy and kneejerk reactions.

Healthy and Fun

2006-09-22T06:47:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister I will introduce the word "Nutrilicious" and make it a legal requirement to display the Nutrilicious logo on anything that's both nice and good for you.

Copyright Schmopyright

2006-09-22T04:26:00.000-07:00

When I'm Prime Minister I will stand up in front of peers and say:

"There are two types of people in this world: people who will pay to see a film, and people who will not. Making it illegal to watch films without paying for them will not make them pay for them; rather, it will alienate some and criminalise the rest. All you end up with is three types of people: those who will pay to see a film, those who will not pay to see the film, and those who will not see the film.

"No one makes any more or less money. In fact, you will be criminalising people who pay for certain films but are not willing to spend the money before they know it's worth it. I do it myself. I did not pay for many films, and it turned out that they were rubbish. However, there are several films I willingly paid for, because they were good.

"Which is the problem, of course. You big Hollywood buffs are so adamant that people who don't pay legally to watch your films be locked up or otherwise penalised but it is you who should be penalised! The sooner you stop pouring out plastic die-cast tripe out of your fantasy land, the sooner people might be willing to actually divulge some of their hard-earned to see it.

"The problem is not a criminal element of society. The problem is that the films these days are crap. And people are not prepared to pay money any more because nine times out of ten the film they are paying to see is rubbish. So it is you, Hollywood, who have alienated a whole generation of cinemagoers; not I. I gladly paid to see Batman Begins in the IMAX and for me, at the time, it was a lot of money, but it was good, and I feel my money was well spent. On the other hand, I got a free advance showing of Along Came Polly and it was dire, despite the fact it was free. Absolute tosh. So, should I spend money to find that films are poor? No - I would rather download them from the Internet, find out they're good and go out and buy them if they are.

"The same applies to everything. You're not going to make people buy things they don't like by making it illegal to find out if they like them or not before they buy them. That is controlling and unsporting.

"And to be quite honest, I have a feeling that if MGM make a hundred films that no one likes and no one pays for, they're not going to find they can't afford a nice semi in suburbia with wholesome, organic food and enough left over to put the kids through university. Copyright infringement is not an issue, you are not losing money, and you are not going to influence my laws with your money. Get out."

Yes I am willing to say crap in a public speech. The world needs to be more laid back.