peripatetic
says
We should all go on 'Frivolous Stop Strike'
We riders are all tired of getting stopped for trivial, hair-splitting, academic speed increments; typically on straight roads with no turnoffs (but of course generous car parking corrals for the rozzers to park and milk the sheep) and having our bleeding
helmet stickers and mudguards and exhaust stickers inspected, and generally being stood over by the constabulary for the spineless, defenceless, divided fools we are. When pulled over for a horseshit 'offence', at the very least speak your mind and tell the wooden-tops what a waste of human life their robotic actions are. A pissant is a pissant is a pissant. And tell the pissant enough times and soon enough the pissant will start to question his actions. Shame and censure and constant berating ... grind the fools down.
And lads, why aren't we all running flip-up number-plates? Countermeasures.
The typical behaviour of today's traffic cops is draconian, pitiless, inflexible, quota-filling - and it amounts to a Nazi-like presence on the public highways.
On 'Self-protection and the individual':
Motorcyclists are typically a danger only to themselves and not to others, yet police are still evidently hell-bent on trying to protect riders from themselves. This flies in the face of the need to have a balance between the right of the state to impose legal sanctions and the rights of the individual, including self-protection. J.S. Mill defined the balance in 1858 as follows:
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. ... Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
Mill went on to describe a proper office of public authority to guard against accidents:
"When there is not a certainty, but only a danger of mischief, no one but the person himself can judge of the sufficiency of the motive which may prompt him to incur the risk: in this case, therefore he ought to be only warned of the danger; not forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it."
Alright mind, I admit 50mph is a fair bit more than 30mph - but was there a clear and present danger? I see more dangers caused by ill-positioned speed or licence check roadblocks over here in OZ - and black lines on the road mark these revenue farms for what they are - head-in-sand and fingers-in-ears political expedience gone mad.
Never stop for the pigs. Not until they start making sense and doing a genuine service to the community.
31 March 2008 15:28
