My Motley Meanderings

Labour: Not Flash, just Gordon.
Lib Dem: Not Merciless, just Ming.

The government has responded to the petition I wrote about earlier this year, which asked for the age of exemption for road tax on classic cars to be brought forward by a few years (there was another petition asking for the rolling exemption to be reinstated but I haven't seen a response to that one yet). There were 14,251 signatures in total with very little publicity (unlike the vehicle tracking one which was reported all over the place). Predictably, the response was another brush-off, but I hope it has at least brought to certain ministers' attention how many voters are interested in both classic cars and politics.

The part of the response I found most interesting is the statistic that there are 307,407 cars currently taxed in the historic vehicle class. The car has to have been built before 1973 to qualify for this (as well as having valid MOT and insurance etc.). That's roughly one per 200 UK residents. I wonder how much that would have increased by if they had decided to reset the age limit to 25 years before 2007 (1982), as it was when they fixed it to 1973 in 1998.

Poll #977860 2007 Elections
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Have you voted?

The results of this election are

The campaigning has been

Miscellaneous

I must be slacking, I was only the second voter to arrive at my polling station this year. They've implemented new high-tech unbreakable security measures to prevent ballot stuffing, which involve you showing the bar code printed on the back of the voting slip to the attendant, who goes, "oh yes, that looks like a bar code to me."

It took 15 minutes of searching last night just to find out who my candidates were. They don't appear to be listed anywhere on my council's web site - I eventually found them in a story on a local newspaper's site. There are two candidates in my ward: Lib-dem and Labour. I managed to find out their names, parties, and the fact that the labour candidate is the local constituency secretary and has previously run in other areas of the town. Nothing else. I already knew a bit about the Lib-dem candidate because she's our next door neighbour and we got a leaflet from her. Very poor show if you ask me.

For some reason I got confused about the dates and thought today was Star Wars Day, so I was hoping to see a late entry from our local Sith Party representative (those guys really know how to run a galaxy). Sadly they hadn't made it onto the ballot, so I voted Lib-dem again on the principle that even if I don't agree with all of Maureen's policies, I can at least go next door and talk to her about them.

The last Tory government introduced free road tax for classic cars, which they defined to mean cars that were at least 25 years old. I think it's fair to say that many more classics would have gone to the great scrapheap in the sky by now without this incentive. One of the first things Labour did when they came into power was to change the definition to cars that were manufactured before 1973, which means a car that is currently 34 years old is not tax exempt and never will be without a change to the law. Many rare 1970s cars are being left to rot, scrapped, or broken up for parts because their owners can't afford to keep them on the road. While it's true that road tax isn't the only cost involved in running a classic car, it certainly makes a difference particularly for those who look after a large collection.

There is a petition over on the government's "Petition the PM" website where you can sign to request the cutoff date to be changed. Personally I'd prefer a rolling 25 or 30 years, but moving the cutoff date forward to the early 1980s would be better than nothing. Go to http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/historiccartax/ if you wish to sign it.

The Open Rights Group, which I wrote about a while back has broken its target of 1000 people pledging to donate £5 a month to fund it. Apparently they're going to have an inaugural meeting/launch party in London tonight.

In other news, I accidentally volunteered to be the secretary for Orbital 2008, which is a bid to run Eastercon in 2008. I'm not on the committee, but I'll be the guy who keeps track of all the deadlines and nags the committee members when they lag behind, as well as taking minutes at meetings, recording information, etc.

Danny O'Brien, Cory Doctorow, and several of the other Usual Suspects in the world of electronic rights have announced that they plan to create the Open Rights Group, which will be a UK-specific non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting the raft of stupid laws currently being proposed to restrict our digital freedoms. That means things like mandatory ID cards, enhanced wire-tapping abilities (eg. mandatory back doors in the encryption used for VOIP), mandatory vehicle-tracking systems (ostensibly so they can charge us more road tax, but who knows what else they will use the data for), and the EUCD (the European equivalent of the DMCA). It will primarily be focussed on educating people (especially politicians and journalists) about the realities of the complex technological issues involved. All too often, the only people who manage to effectively put their viewpoint across are the big corporations who stand to gain from the implementation of the stupid laws. That's because they can afford to hire expensive marketing consultants and PR firms to convince the public that we weren't really using our freedoms so we won't miss them when they're gone, we don't need privacy if we have nothing to hide, and the latest massive white elephant is guaranteed to stop the terrorists. The ORG hopes to tip the balance in favour of the people by employing a couple of full time technology experts to make our opinions heard ("our" meaning tech-savvy UK citizens). Probably the most important thing they will do is to provide an intelligent, respectable, coherent, single point of contact for the press. For example, if a reporter was doing a piece on ID cards, they could contact the ORG to hear our version of the technical issues involved, and be provided with a list of specialists who can back up our arguments with hard evidence. Or if a radio talk show was doing a debate about wire-tapping, the show's researchers would be able to contact the ORG and ask to be put in touch with somebody who is willing to take part and argue our corner. Other things I believe they plan to do include actively issuing press releases, helping to organise public campaigns, and helping other civil rights organisations with technical issues. In other words, it's going to do for the UK a lot of the things that the EFF does for the US.

The ORG needs your fivers! At the time of writing, 821 people (myself included) have pledged to donate £5 per month to the cause. They need another 179 before they can start the organisation. Personally I'm too busy/lazy (take your pick) to get involved in actively campaigning, so I look at this as a cheap way to make sure that somebody is working on my behalf to protect my rights and freedoms (because my MP - whom I didn't vote for - certainly isn't).