ultranomics

In this Ultraletter…… A Hollywood theme to tk’s contemplations, while jq is on Speed…………..


Reaching for the stars

23rd November 2008, TK

With America in the throes of its worst slump since the 1930s and the rest of the world not far behind, Americans have been keen to latch on to any glimmer of hope they can find – Barack Obama’s recent election being a case in point. Hopes and expectations are riding high on the new president elect and a wave of optimism could be felt washing over the country during the recent elections. The public turned out in record numbers to vote, in fact it was the highest turnout since 1960, when JFK beat Richard Nixon to take over from the outgoing Dwight Eisenhower. JFK promised “to get America moving again” after claims that the Republicans had allowed America to fall behind the Soviet Union in the Cold War, militarily and economically. He managed to win the election, albeit closely, despite widespread prejudice against his Roman Catholic faith, with people fearing he would be taking orders from the Pope. A case of hope and optimism winning over prejudice and fear? We’d like to think so. In any case, some interesting parallels with Obama. No doubt in both cases, the film star personas also helped to win over the celebrity-loving US denizens.

“During the Depression, when the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.”
-President Franklin Roosevelt

Hope and optimism also manifest in films directly during times of economic strife. The era of musicals in the 1930s, during the last Great Depression, gave rise to hits such as Gold Diggers of 1933, 42nd Street, and Footlight Parade, which all portrayed the possibility of ‘making it through’ with hard work and perseverence. The Wizard of Oz provided escapism and fascinated audiences in 1939, following Dorothy as she was whisked away from black and white Kansas to the far off and beautiful, ‘Technicolor’, Oz, yet asked that in the end the audience believe that “there’s no place like home”.

Coming up to date then, what of the next couple of years? Perhaps we should be looking forward to some spirit-lifting Hollywood movies for some years to come? The wane of the Horror slashers and Vampire Slayers then?……Perhaps.

In fact only yesterday I was watching a trailer for the new Star Trek movie, due out in May 09. As an aside, it seems there is a current fashion with film franchises of “returning to the beginning” or doing prequels, with recent examples such as the Bond and the Batman films (both superbly done in our humble opinion). And so it is with Star Trek – J.J. Abrams, the creator of LOST, is going back to the beginning and giving a new edge to Kirk and Spock (I wonder if he considered renaming it ‘Lost in Space’??) At first look it appears to be one movie worth waiting for. But I would say that, having been a bit of a Trekky in my time.

Star Trek is known for its utopian view of the future. A future where all of humanity has reconciled its differences and the entire planet is at peace. There is no hunger and no poverty. Maybe because in the Star Trek 23rd century, neither is there any longer such a thing as money! Everyone has whatever they could need, and instead we pursue higher goals such as self advancement and exploring space. So, perfect escapism from the current world, the new Great Depression of the 21st century, and the rampant warring across the globe.

A world where those pesky somali pirates are still holding on to their loot over in the Gulf of Aden, the Saudi ‘Sirius Star’ with its 25 crew and 2 million barrels of oil. They don’t want much in ransom either, only $25mill in return for the $100mill cargo. What an insane world, where pirates are still able to do roaring business. This year alone they’ve managed to attack 95 ships, hijack 39 of them and collect $50mill in ransom. Not bad work for those with serious disabilities such as one eye or a missing leg. Abu Hamza could get on to a nice earner if he got bored of the preaching.

What with the ever present Israel-Palestine issue, no end in sight in Iraq or Afghanistan and now bombings all over Pakistan, the world is about as dangerous a place as I can remember. Not that I want to do the work of the NeoCons for them, but that’s just the way it will always be while people quibble over finite commodities, whether it be land, oil, water or food.

Perhaps one day the Americans will finally colonise the moon and mars, begin asteroid mining, and manage to harness direct solar energy and beam it all around the world for free. And maybe one day the guys at CERN in Geneva will manage to capture enough antimatter and in partnership with the Russians build a stable containment system for it. And perhaps, just perhaps, some brilliant Pakistani and Indian mathematicians will do some out of the box thinking and instead of VAT fraud, they will engineer the world’s first prototype Warp Engine. Then maybe the Chinese and Japanese will do a joint venture (for a fraction of the cost and twice as fast as the Americans) to build the first Galaxy Class Space Ship, with the whole venture under the watchful eye of Richard Branson no doubt.

Will we ever really make it to that utopian 23rd Star Trek century we wonder? Well as pakistanis, indians, chinese etc. we had better be trying extra hard. As nations of the Asian subcontinent if only we could realise the futility and wastefulness of our quarrels and wars, maybe our efforts could be directed to peaceful coexistence, partnership and mutual advancement. After all, Star Trek must be proved incorrect in one way, and that is that there will indeed be a pakistani on board the Enterprise one day. You bet!

more ultranomics below as jq takes the baton….

as jq ponders on his next car……


Speed Cameras – Big Brother’s Ever Grazing Cash Cows

23rd November 2008, JQ (co-editor)

Ever had a feeling of being watched? Well I did today as Specs3 stood still watching with his peering eyes waiting for one wrong move, my hands were stiff, my knuckles went white due to my tight steering grip, my eyes were aching due to the constant monitoring of speedometer and traffic, my right foot was trembling for fear of pushing too hard on the accelerator and getting caught by the dreaded average speed camera and I had only done about 500 meters out of a 5 mile stretch at 40mph limit! I would be over the edge any second now.

Can anyone hear the climatic horror movie music when the dude is about to get it? Ching ching ching AAAAH. Well ching ching ching was the cash clocking music to the ears of the British Government and guess who gets stabbed countless times everyday? The poor British motorist that’s who!

The Association of British Drivers, which campaigns against speed cameras also made an interesting point about the Specs3 as they would make, “People put the car in cruise control and the mind in neutral. It’s so boring driving through these sections at a constant slow speed that people are going to drop off.”

Maybe I’m missing something here, but why does the UK government allow cars to be sold that are capable of achieving almost twice the 70mph speed limit which was set back in 1977 when the Ford Anglia had a stopping distance of 2 miles or so. If according to their laws no cars should ever go over 70mph why don’t they simply force the car manufacturers to install speed limiters in every new model and fit one in every existing car during the yearly MOT? The simple answer is that they don’t want to because the UK government would make less cash from the car industry & less cash from the speed fines.

Every UK driver has to go through the stringent British road test which tests the drivers to their limit. Oppressive tactics by the police like constant detection and dictation are an insult to their intelligence and road manners. The new average speed cameras known as Specs3 will appear in clusters of 50 working in a network and will monitor “every” driver’s average speed as they travel. Not only that but an ‘eye in the sky’ helicopter targeting speeding motorists in Essex at a cost of £1,000 an hour is adding misery to the once enjoyable driving.

This recent Canadian report (Review and Analysis of Posted Speed Limits and Speed Limit Setting Practices in British Columbia) has a clear view of the role of speed limits and speed enforcement.

It includes such straightforward common sense items as:
• The majority of motorists drive at a speed they consider reasonable, and safe for road, traffic, and environmental conditions. Posted limits which are set higher or lower than dictated by roadway and traffic conditions are ignored by the majority of motorists.
• The normally careful and competent actions of a reasonable person should be considered legal.
• A speed limit should be set so that the majority of motorists observe it voluntarily and enforcement can be directed to the minority of offenders.

Ready for another eye opener, this time from the Australian police! Apparently a recent survey by the Herald Sun has found that more than 70 per cent of Victorian police believe speed and red light cameras are more about revenue-raising than preserving road safety. A point every motorist [or majority of] has tried so very hard to get across.

The politicians will keep on preaching that speed cameras are there to promote safety and the high fines associated with them are just to slow people down, well this is a baseless argument because the truth about this hypocrisy is coming out. The UK Department for Transport first funded and then suppressed a study that shows a 55 percent increase in injury accidents when speed cameras are used on highway work zones and a 31 percent increase when used on freeways [or non freeways as I would like to think] without construction projects. According to the Transport Research Laboratory, the “non-works [personal injury accident] rate is significantly higher for the sites with speed cameras than the rate for sites without.” You can see the full report here.

I thought of Pakistan to be the speed camera safe haven until my recent trip and found multiple speed cameras at Islamabad’s newly built seventh avenue and Pakistan Motorway Police equipped with the dreaded handheld device at every 5 miles!! This is pants [I could not describe this tragedy in any other word]. First the tobacco industry moved, after the European watershed ban, to Pakistan, India Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries to mint money and pass cancer to the poorer third world countries and now speed cameras which are as painful as any cancer could get are making their way to a local road near every Pakistani town.

So what should the regular Joe think about BBC Topgear now when he sees the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May blast their gravity busting 500bhp+ monster machines? Is this entertainment or fact based “drama”? Where are those roads where they drive at a million miles an hour without the fear of any Specs3, gatso or speed camera ever passing them by? Why is it that the average Joe is now under the £1000 an hour surveillance eye in the sky?

With modern technology there are better ways of keeping drivers to the speed limit. Unfortunately none puts money in the government’s, council’s or police authorities’ pockets. It would be perfectly possible to install a GPS based device, not dissimilar to a SatNav, in every car, telling the driver what the speed limit is for that stretch of road. The signal would automatically change when the car entered the next speed zone. Should the car be speeding (easily assessed from either a gps signal or directly from the speedometer) an alarm in the vehicle would sound, alerting the driver to the fact he is going too fast similar to the ones installed in BMW cars. The only way of silencing the alarm being to get the speed back under the speed limit. This ensures the driver’s attention is fixed on the road and it’s hazards, not constantly watching the speedometer. Attention to the actual driving is increased and therefore the roads made safer. No need for [you should have gone to] Specsavers Speksy3 and other gizmos – but I don’t see that happening because how then would the UK government milk its cash cows?

But there is still hope for the joy of driving as long as good Samaritans like Swindon councillor Peter Greenhalgh are taking the common sense approach. It is after he objected to the central Government receiving all the cash from fines while Swindon council paid £320,000 a year for the cameras’ upkeep that the Swindon Borough Council became the first to ditch the yellow boxes. Now towns all over the country are joining the rush to get rid of fixed speed cameras. Portsmouth, Walsall and Birmingham may copy Swindon in ripping out the hated cameras, and others are expected to follow suit.

jq@ultranomics.com

…..continues below……

lastly, some more down-to-earth economic dishes, served cold by tk…….

Here in the UK on Friday, the Council of Mortgage Lenders revealed that the number of properties repossessed rose by 12% to 11,300 in the third quarter of 2008. The number of borrowers in arrears went up by 8% compared with the previous quarter, to 168,000. Watch out readers, those of you with cash in your pockets and iron-clad hearts will have ever increasing casualties of the crunch to pick over in the coming months. We expect a yet larger wave of repos in the next few months, as the earliest defaulters (those who went backrupt a year ago) come to the end of their 12 month grace period which they were given if they had a wife or kids (or both). A Charles Dickens christmas is forecast across much of the country.

In the US on Thursday, Detroit car makers went up Capitol Hill to fetch a pail of money. Unfortunately they came tumbling down without a crown! Boo hoo. The silly sods went with begging cap in hand, yet when asked by congressional leaders how much they wanted and what for, they sat there scratching their heads like Stan Laurel (you remember Laurel & Hardy don’t you??). The Californian Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, who is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, said that the 3 Amigos, the bosses of General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler LLC have 12 days in which to come back with a viable plan of what they need and how they’re gonna spend it. Can you imagine going to see your bank manager and asking for a loan, then telling him he can give you as much as possible although you’re not sure what you want to spend it on yet. What a hoot!

As well as record levels of idiocy and farce, it seems the US is setting records daily across the board. The share price of General Motors hit $1.27, the lowest since 1938 ( a year before The Wizard of Oz). The US unemployment claims have hit 4 million – the highest since 1982 and factory output is now the lowest since 1990. Oil closed at $49.62 (the first time its been below $50 since 2003). Furthermore it seems that the cost of living in the US is falling at its fastest rate since records began in 1947. That might be much worse than it sounds. The same thing happened in Japan in the 1990s where the domino effect of dropping prices meant consumers wouldn’t buy large items since they’d be able to get them cheaper if they waited, leading to catastrophic demand slump and hence further price falls. Already in the US, retailers have begun to go out of business literally overnight. The double-edged sword of deflation might appear great for the consumer, but is in fact a guillotine to the neck of the economy. More detailed commentary on the deflation issue is promised for a future Ultraletter…..

Have a great week readers and we promise to catch up with you again soon.

tk@ultranomics.com