A year of Broken Promises Part One: The Great Repeal Bill.

As the coalition government have been in power for a year now, I thought it would be useful to have a series of posts outlining why they haven't captured the public imagination and support.

So, lets focus on the great repeal bill that was being mooted during the pre-election campaign.

Last May, David Cameron mooted a great repeal Bill "in the very first days" of a Conservative government. The idea is something Nick Clegg had proposed as early as 2006.

Has it happened? No. Is it being planned to happen? Has either of the parties in power done anything at all to repeal bad law instigated by Labour? Not as far as I can see.

In fact all we've had is a series of new Labour-like laws put forward and introduced. For instance continuous insurance for motorists and roadside fines for minor infractions for.... oh yes, the motorist again.

Nothing at all has been done about the 13 years of spurious and malicious Labour law-making burden that has dragged this country down. The faces in the government have changed, but the legislation and the policies haven't. Its like theres someone else running the country; despite who you vote for and get elected things just roll on as before.

Of course the real reason for the lack of a repeal is the fact that if you strip away the thin veneer of facecious lawmaking that has gone on over the past decade and a bit, you get to see the real legislative process and I mean the real meaty stuff are the hundreds of laws introduced as a result of E.U. directives.

The huge number of petty laws is just a smokescreen to distract us from the truth. Our supposedly great government is reduced to the role of town council, creating newer and wider ranging byelaws, moving into legislative territory it hasn't previously had an interest in as a result of attempting to be seen to be part of the process, of which they are shut out.

One thing Nick Clegg could do to help recover his reputation is start to form a true coalition with the Conservatives that support the reduction of petty legislation and the restoration of freedom and start to work on making the big repeal bill a reality.

The Earthquake Prophet.

I'm ill in bed at the moment so can't validate the facts around the prediction, but what was a humorous story this morning has suddenly got more interesting.

Over the past few days, there have been reports about the residents of Rome wanting to leave the city over rumours of an earthquake in the city predicted by a scientist who died 30 years ago. Haha, you'd think, paranoid Italians running scared of a prediction by a scientist of something that even modern science can't predict.

But here's the interesting thing: Today, Spain suffered an magnitude 5.3 earthquake. Okay, its not Rome, but given the length of time between the prediction and the actual event, the margin of error is amazingly small. To predict an earthquake would happen on a particular day is a feat in itself. To get the position to within a few hundred miles is also outstanding. To predict it decades ago is amazing.

So was Raffaele Bendandi, the scientist in question onto something? Was he able to predict something decades ago that scientists maintain isn't predictable today?

Who knows. But his methodology, which involves planetary alignments as influences certainly needs further investigation.

This case also has echoes in the current weather forecasting farrago. We have established science using computer models issuing forecasts with no real accuracy and we have independent scientists providing regularly accurate forecasts using methods that established science refuses to recognise. Yet the independent scientists are marginalised and labelled as crackpots.

Label me a crackpot, because I'm believing in established science less and less. A closed mind is a good thing to lose says the old proverb. Something scientists would do well to remember.

While you ponder all of this, I'll go back to sleeping this bug off.

More Milking of the Motorist Cash-Cow

It appears our lovely government are planning on-the-spot fines for motorists doing things such as undertaking, tail-gating and cutting people up, thereby removing the ability of having your day in court and explaining any extenuating circumstances.

The charge of driving without due care is subjective and not black and white. There is a huge grey area here that no doubt will be exploited by revenue collecting Police officers, in the hope that people will not know their rights or the legal context of any alleged infraction.

Yet again the motorist is deemed a cash-cow for exploitation.