How voting works from the other side of the table

On the day of the European Union Referendum (23rd of July 2016) I found myself discussing how the voting system worked from the other side of the table.

What are those Poll Clerks doing? What do all the numbers mean? What happens to them? Why do you not have pens (#PenIsBest and #UsePen being popular on the day)?

A good starting place for anyone looking into this side of things is the Handbook for polling station staff (pdf) from the Electoral Commission. This is given (as far as I know) to every member of polling station staff. It covers everything from roles and responsibilities  of polling staff to how to set up a polling station right the way through to how to transport things back to the count at the end of the day.

The main question I was asked about was what does the number on my poll card mean? Can it be used to track my vote?

The answer to this is a little complex, but simply put: Yes, it could technically be used to track your vote. In reality, it would be a huge amount of work to do so.

Most of us are used to what a poll card looks like. Below is a nicely annotated example one from Horsham Council:

The number that we're interested in in the Voter Registration number. It's made up of two parts. 

The first is a text code. This identifies which polling station you vote at. This will normally be a two or three letter code. 

The second half is normally numerical. This is the number that the poll clerks are looking for on the list that they have. This list is the Register of Electors. It holds the names of everyone eligible to vote at that polling station, and their elector number. 

Elector numbers are quite interesting. They are (as far as I know) issued once per year. If you were on the register at the start of the year, you will have a number like 1363. If you have been added during the year, you have a number like 1243/1. At the start of every new year, electors who have left the area are removed, and every elector is given a new number.

The Register of Electors also has a number of codes against the names on it. These help polling staff tell who is eligible to vote at any given election. The most common code is an 'A', for Absent Voter. These are all of the voters who have chosen to vote by post., and are therefore not eligible to be given a ballot paper in the polling station.

Once you have been found on the Register of Electors, and it's been confirmed that you are eligible to vote, your number will be read out by the poll clerk, and the second poll clerk will write it down on the Corresponding Number List.

The Corresponding Number List is preprinted with the number that is on the back of every ballot paper. This number is unique to each paper. Your voter registration number is then written against the unique number that corresponds to the number that is on the back of your ballot paper. You are then handed the ballot paper, which you go off and fill in in one of the booths, and then put into the ballot box.

So, in this way, your voter registration number is tied to your ballot paper which you have marked with your vote. Therefore, theoretically, your vote could be tied back to you, and someone could find out how you voted.

This is why what happens to the Corresponding Number List is so important. When the polling station closes, this list is sealed into an envelope, This envelope is taken back to the count, but is secured well away from the ballot papers. My understanding is that assuming that there is no challenge to the election, both ballot papers and the corresponding number list are destroyed after 21 days have followed the election. The corresponding number list envelopes should only ever be opened as part of a court challenge to an election, and only then if the court orders them opened.

To track your vote, someone would need not just the coresponding number list, but also the correct Register of Electors, and every ballot from the ballot box. Given that a low turnout might see 3/400 ballot papers in a box, it gets difficult to trace them. Even more so once counting the votes has taken place, and all of the ballot papers have ended up mixed together

The numbers on the back of the ballot papers also provide a check that the ballot box hasn't been stuffed. The ballot paper numbers issued to each polling station are known, and the first and last paper issued each hour is recorded. This allows an hourly count of ballots cast (which may be asked for by polling agents) and for the number of ballots in the box to be checked at the start of the count process.

The marked Register of Electors, which shows who has voted, is sold by councils to a limited number of people proscribed by law.

Why do we not have pens in the polling booths? Well, pencils are easy to use, don't stop working, and don't smudge. If you want to bring a pen along and use it, great. For all the conspiracy theories around poll boxes being opened, I'm really not sure at what point they think that anyone has time to  get a box out of the back of their cars,open even one of the boxes, rub out a load of votes and enter a new vote, then reseal the box and bring it back to the count without it being noticed.

This has all ended up being written a little late at night, so if there's anything else you'd like to know, please do ask in the comments below, and I'll do my best to answer.

Email from re: West Yorkshire Police Log 721 of 09/06/15

Hello MrDrem

I am just letting you know as discussed earlier, in respect of the youtube footage you reported to us.

I have spoken to the company and they have viewed the footage, stating that on the footage the driver of the lorry cannot be overtaking any cyclist on Canal Road during the journey he took, he states that the cyclist was seen to come into view on the nearside bottom of the camera and then can be seen cycling away into traffic and onwards on Canal Road. He then said that the cyclist rang the company to tell them about the incident and apologises stating the incident was his fault.

They have spoken to the driver of the lorry and I have submitted an intelligence report about the incident and the footage. This is the action we have decided to take as we cannot prove that the lorry driver was at fault at this stage. However, this has all been recorded on the report I have submitted and the company are aware of this action. If the footage needs to be viewed further the roads policing unit will follow this up.  If we do manage to trace the cyclist we will speak to him and if any other issues are highlighted we will follow this up.

If you need anything at all please do not hesitate to ring 101 quoting the log number.

Thankyou for your time.

Emily Ogden

PC 3800 

Mapping Rediscover Mitcham 2

Mitcham Town Center is about to undergo a huge redevelopment, which has been rather controversial.

Given that the second survey had been open to anyone from anywhere, I wondered where the responses had come from.  I was also aware of a number of issues with streets not getting the second consultation delivered within the timescales that where promised, and wondered if the response data would show up any other areas where a lack of responses might show that there where issues with deliveries.

I therefore put in a Freedom of Information request via What Do They Know, which can be found here.  I've taken the postcodes, and converted them to latitudes and longitudes using this website.

I then input the data into Google's Spreadsheet mapper, fiddled with it a little, and created this map showing where responses came from. I'm not sure it answers my original question, but it's still quite an interesting exercise, all using free tools that are floating around the web.

Dunwich Dynamo 2013

This was my second DD, this time with my father-in-law and brother-in-law.

Not a bad ride all in all, we left about 8:30, and got to the beach at about 8:30.

I had a nice chat to a couple of people in the queue to pick up coach tickets.  Doctor Cake modelling the rather swish LFGSS ladies jersey (which looks stunning).

Chatted to a few people on the road, had a nice chat with Chung, said hi to JAH Tim. Plenty of LFGSS sharkpits and caps on the road, and got DaS'd a couple of times, to which I think I gave an appropriate response.

Crashed at one point, when someone overtook me, and cut back in (I'm 99% certain they left me loads of room) and I, being a bit dozy, flicked myself left into a gutter created by the road camber and curb, filled with dust, cut speed, sensed that it was going to end badly, unclipped, and tried to go up a dropped curb, and flicked myself over the bars.  Reportedly I did a fantastic tumble, ending up sitting up, with grazes on my left elbow, and both knees, a hole in my new shorts and my lights in bits.  Found all of the rear one, which went back together fine, but the front had to be sticky plastered back together.

Following that it all turned into a bit of a haze.  I recall the food stop well enough, no issues finding it this year, but we got there after most of the snacky bits had gone, so grabbed a coffee, ate some sausage rolls, filled water (Said hi to Skydancer) and headed back out.  Most of the ride was me getting ahead of the other two, waiting for them, then disappearing off again.

I paused at the bottom of the big hill, waiting to gather people so that I could shoot down to the bike shop to get new bar ends (since mine had come out in the crash) and missed my father-in-law, but found my brother-in-law, who thought his dad was behind him.  He waited whilst I shot off and got the bike fixed up, When I got back to him, he'd discovered that we were about 10 miles behind.  A lovely bit of faster paced riding got us caught up at the first of the breakfast tents that where popping up, but we pushed through past the sausage stop to the Yurt with the bacon and drinks.  We grabbed a sandwich, peered at the Yurt, decided not to risk going into it (we weren't sure we'd be able to carry on if we did), filled our water bottles and headed out again.

The last few miles felt like they went on forever. The distances seemed much greater than I recalled from last year, but the final descent was lovely, helped I suspect by the fact that we managed to get ahead of a coach that was busy getting stuck trying to get past cars that where leaving, meaning that there wasn't much in the way of moving things other than bikes and people.

We locked the bikes up on the beach (near to tricitybendix and companion in their sleeping bags) before trundling back to the Cafe, where we managed to get an inside seat, and devour breakfast, before getting slightly changed, and joining the coach queue.  Our bikes went on the 11:00 lorry, but we managed to get onto the 10:30 coach, deciding that sitting in London in the sun was preferable to sitting on the beach in the wet.

Riding home along CS7 on a Sunday was by far the worst bit of the ride.  Most of it becomes a car park out of peak hours, so was only any use to us for directions. I'm glad that we chose to get get the train across London on the way out, and sad that it was suspended on our way back.

Despite swearing off of doing it for the first couple of days afterwards, I've already decided that I'll be back again next year.  I might try and persuade the family to camp somewhere near the end of the ride, so that we can just tootle along after we've had out beach breakfasts and crash, rather than getting the coach back. 

Product Reviews

I'm currently waiting for the new SimCity game to be released in the UK, whilst I do so, I've been reading a number of forums for the game, and watching the first reviews rolling in from the States and other places that the game has launched.

As with many other games that have have gone down the have-to-be-online-to-play route (mostly MMOs, but notably Diablo 3 too) there have been issues with the servers at launch. Despite Maxis and EA running beta tests to try and ensure that there were no problems, inevitably there were.

This has lead to, in the age of instant feedback, to an interesting effect. The reviews for these games have hugely suffered.

Taking Diablo 3, it has an Amazon.co.uk rating of 2.7 stars from 476 reviews (100 @ 5*, 75 @ 4*, 55 @ 3*, 64 @ 2* and 164 @ 1*). Looking at the numbers here, the number of 1* reviews seems hugely out of proportion to the others. Its Metacritic scores are also interesting. Pro critics scored the game at 88/100, but the public scores only give it 3.8/10 (from 7943 ratings).

Looking at SimCity, which has only been out for 3 days, the reviews are strikingly similar. Amazon.com currently has an average rating of 1.4 stars from 278 reviews (9 @ 5*, 10 @ 4*, 7 @ 3*, 18 @ 2* and 234 @ 1*). Once again the number of 1* reviews seems well out of proportion. Its Metacritic scores are similar to those from Diablo 3 - pro critics giving the game 90/100, but the public score being 2.6/10 (from 850 ratings).

Why is this happening? I'm fairly sure that in both of these cases, the reviewers are punishing the company involved for taking a game that could previously be played without an internet connection, and forcing online play on people.  In addition to this, both games have had initial problems with server load that have prevented first day players from playing the game, adding to the discontent of the previous fans of the series, who have been used to being able to play offline. Another factor in the discontent may be that both games are continuations or reboots of an old series that's not been touched for some time (11 years for Diablo II, and 9.5 years for SimCity).

Whilst this skewing of review scores isn't great for the games production company, its also not helpful for Amazon, and to a lesser extent Metacritic. They want reviews that reflect the gameplay experience overall, not just the first week or so where the servers where under heavy load, and the game wasn't as it should be.

So, what's the answer to this issue? From Amazon's point of view, the labeling of users that they know have bought the game from them is helpful, but at the moment, you can't get a rating made up of just confirmed purchasers. This also can't be a solution for Metacritic, who don't have the sales details that Amazon do. The only solution that I can come up with for both sires is not to take reviews for a game for the first week or two. Those who are cross about the games forced online play and/or other issues, then have a chance to calm down about any issues that might have spoilt the launch, and thus will give a better set of reviews. Maybe Amazon could have an option so that you can restrict the reviews to only those who have bought the game via Amazon.

Any thoughts?

Keeping your bike safe at night.

This morning I spotted this Twitter post from The Met Police in Merton:

Last night we mentioned bikes stolen from sheds. Have a look at the security that was protecting them ! #getabetterlock http://t.co/QwSfisKy

(https://twitter.com/MPSMerton/status/276261924973449216)

I've had my bike shed broken into twice, with them going in two different ways.  I've toughened up my security each time, and thought that it might be useful if I shared my experiences.

When I first got the shed, I was concious that as it would have my bikes in it, it would be a target.  I looked at the parts that came with it, and realised that the hinges were a huge weak point.  They looked like they would fall apart with one tap.  I therefore invested in in a pair of new hinges from Screwfix. 

These ones:

Recognising that normal screws would be far too easy to undo, I also bought some 'security' screws, these ones:

I also made sure that I had a good padlock on it, one like this:

The thieves that took my bike didn't even look at either of these things.  They identified that the weak point on my shed was the hasp.  The shed had come with an even flimsier version of one of these:

The thieves cut through the hoop that the padlock goes through, allowing them to remove the padlock (which they took) and open the shed with ease.  Bang, one bike gone.

I then decided that I should replace the hasp with something tougher.  Looking through the screwfix catalogue, one of these seemed best:

I also bought a new padlock the same as the last one.

When the thieves came back, the new hasp did it's job.  The thieves didn't even look at it.  What they did look at where the screws that held the hinges in.  Those came out in a scond.  Security through obscurity (i.e. relying on odd shaped screwheads) isn't a challange for any thief.  The tools to take the screws out are really cheap to buy from the very place that I got them from, Screwfix. 

Bang. Second bike gone.

So, I looked into what could be done to prevent this method of entry.  I discovered clutch screws.  These can be done up, but not undone.  so I got some of these:

I've not gone through all the security now on my bike shed for obvious reasons, but take a look at yours, and see which of my pitfalls you've followed, and can take care of to make your shed safer.

Quick links to those products:

Hinges - http://www.screwfix.com/p/heavy-duty-scotch-tee-hinge-406mm-pack-of-2/76908

Screws - http://www.screwfix.com/p/clutch-head-security-screw-10-x-1-pack-of-25/14977

Hasp - http://www.screwfix.com/p/sterling-188mm-hasp-staple-for-shackle-less-padlock/23300

Padlock - http://www.screwfix.com/p/master-lock-excell-disc-padlock-80mm/84205

Sharing videos with Roadsafe

On the 14/07/2011, I posted a video on youtube of the driver of a black BMW, registration number YE54 0KV (YE540KV) overtaking me, at a point that was far too close to a central road island, and being forced to go the wrong side of it.  At the same time, I reported him via the Met's roadsafe website.

The video is available here:

You'll note that in my intro to the video, I labelled the driver a Numpty.  This is because I think it's quite clear that he is one.  The officer at the met who reviewed my video got back to me to let me know that they were unable to take any action against the driver as "Unfortunately, due to the mildly insulting comments you have added to the title and content of the video, I am unable to take any further action with regards to this matter. The Metropolitan Police cannot be seen to be endorsing such comments in any way.".  They also warned me that I "leave yourself open to being sued by the driver through the civil courts for slander / defamation by posting such comments about him in the public domain."

I've looked up the definition of "numpty" in the OED, it gives us two possibilities:

• Noun - A stupid or foolish person; an idiot.
• Adjective - Esp. of a person: stupid, foolish, idiotic.

I think that the driving in the video is all three, stupid, foolish and idiotic, and stand by my use of the word as such, but I'll let you decide if I'm right or not.

I did however, want to ensure that any further footage I sent to them would be usable, so I asked for some guidance I could share.  I've held onto this myself for far too long, so here it is:

"Thanks for your interest, I have compiled a short list of points that would help both the RoadSafe unit and yourselves :-

 

First of all, don't engage with the driver / rider who's caused you the problem. It's far better just to record the video and post it. There is always the chance of a violent reaction and we would rather you avoided this where possible. If you should get into an argument with someone, remember that everything you say is being recorded by your camera. We have had cyclists submit videos where their language is unacceptable and they themselves have received a warning from us. 

 

Try to say the registration number for the camera audio to record. This helps you where the camera hasn't recorded a good enough image to read the plate later.

 

If you submit a video to us, it would be helpful if you could hold on to the original footage until you hear from us. If you get our standard reply, then you can delete the footage (or whatever you want to do with it). However, it may be that we decide to prosecute the driver and will require the original, unedited footage. You will be asked if you are willing to attend court before we proceed.

 

When posting the video to YouTube, Vimeo etc. Please don't post insulting comments about the driver. Try to keep it neutral, e.g." This driver overtook me on a blind bend, leaving two inches of space and scared the life out of me," not "this ***** idiot, ****ing nearly killed me, the ****" (I'll leave you to guess the blanks). Keeping it neutral presents you in a better light, gives nothing for a possible defence solicitor to work on and lastly, doesn't leave you open to a libel suit.

 

Please tag the video with the registration number, without spaces, e.g. AB12CDE. We can't click the links you provide as we have to move to a standalone computer - but please add the full link in case the registration is wrong.

 

If you post the video publicly, we will add the link to any letter we send out to the drivers. Therefore, you may wish to post the video in such a way that it isn't available to anyone and everyone. YouTube allows this and Vimeo can password protect a video. Or you could use your own web space if you have it. If you do this, please mention this on the RoadSafe submission and we won't include the link.

 

You will see lots of drivers committing lots of offences every day. We would really like to concentrate on the worst - those that draw your attention or cause you a problem and you really feel need some advice re their driving. The video you submitted is a superb example of this.

 

I hope this all helps,

 

PC Stuart Carey"

 

I'd like to thank PC Carey for this advice, and am just sorry I too so long to share it with people.  I hope you too find it useful!

A reply to Giles Corran

I'm posting this here as I don't want to lose it.  It's a response by me to a blog by Giles Corran on Skyfall (here - http://reciperifle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bond-villain.html).  I agree with a lot of the post, but had a couple of issues with it.  I don't know if this will get through moderation there, but I hope that it does, if not, its here for everyone to enjoy.

I like this article, and enjoyed the questions that it brings to me regarding the film.  I don't have answers to all of your points, but I do have points regarding two of them.  This means my reply contains slightly more spoilers than your article, so some people may not want to read it.  Just a (I hope) helpful warning to those that haven't yet seen it.

"1) Judi Dench’s ‘M’ dies, and is replaced by a man;"

'M' dying is interesting, as part of the film, I don't think that this is a problem.  I really liked Judi Dench as 'M', and am sad that she has left.  However nor do I have a huge problem with the new 'M' being male.  What sort of a mess would we be in if we could couldn't change the sex of someone in a job?  It might have been more interesting to see more candidates for the role, but I'm not sure that this is realistic in terms of the amount that the film can show.  

As such I'm not certain that a charge of sexism can be leveled here, but I do appreciate having to consider it, which I wouldn't have done so much otherwise.

"3) The pretty girl who manages to remain chaste despite Bond’s ‘charms’ is rewarded at the end with a job as his secretary."

I also have to take this one up.  Sadly Giles, you've made a fundamental factual error.  Moneypenny is not Bond's secretary.  This is an important point.  She never has been in any of the films.  She is the private personal secretary to the head of MI6, which is hardly a lowly post.  

Sadly secretaries are now often underrated. Proper secretarial trained people are extremely highly skilled and trained, and the post of personal private secretary of MI6 is not just going to be given to just anyone.  

Moneypenny is shown throughout the film as being highly capable, Bond's attitude to her might not be great (the constant ribbing starts to grate a little after a while) but that's Bond, and doesn't make the whole film sexist.  I'd also like to point out that I don't feel that the job was given as a 'reward' for her actions during the film.  In fact, it's explicitly stated that she's been seconded to cover the transition period between the service heads changing, during her suspension from field service having shot Bond (a shot that she was unhappy about taking and was pushed into by 'M').  This implies to me that she has a wide ranging knowledge of the organisation as a whole, a skill that would by highly valued be someone such as the new 'M' who has just started with the service.

Once again, I'm not sure that the (factually incorrect) point you've made is so much a sexist point, as a failing to appreciate the skills of properly trained secretarial staff.

I'm not going to disagree that the film is in some ways sexist. To an extent I expect it in a Bond film, and would be far more surprised if it wasn't.  I was however fairly pleasantly surprised by how little there was.  I find it interesting that other far more mainstream writers have agreed with me (see http://goo.gl/zZp3C for one).

Over the last few weeks, I've been watching the stories coming out of the Everyday Sexism project (see http://www.everydaysexism.com/ for more details on that).  Many of these fill me with horror, some of them make me question things that I see day to day, and some of them make me question where boundaries are and where they should be.  I'm flagging it here as I hope that both of you find it as interesting and challenging as I have.

Thank you for putting this article into the public domain, and allowing us to comment on it, and thank you to Esther, for letting Giles post this here.  I would like to say once again how much I enjoyed it (and the comments after it too).

Petronella Wyatt's mother

I have to say, that if the Daily Mail articles are correct, I feel really sorry for Petronella Wyatt's mother.

If we compare http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200280/Cyclists-How-thuggish-minority-Lycra-louts-terrorising-roads.html with http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1250746/Beware-rogue-bicycles--Petronella-Wyatt-attacks-cult-cycling-frail-mother-knocked-down.html we discover that Petronella Wyatt's poor mother has in fact been knocked down 3 times in two and a half years...

Once within 2 months of the 19th of Febuary 2010, by a cyclist "who did not have his lights on."  This caused her mother to fall on her back and hit her head, causing bleeding. When the cyclist didn't bother to stop, a kind passer-by took my mother to hospital, where was told she was lucky to have escaped concussion or a broken back, but had broken her arm.  Sadly, we're not told where or exactly what date this collision occoured, or which A&E she went to, so that one can't be verified.  (taken from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1250746/Beware-rogue-bicycles--Petronella-Wyatt-attacks-cult-cycling-frail-mother-knocked-down.html - incidently note that the only comment that is left is the one about how she's wrong on what strict liability would mean).

The second pair of accidents are a bit more verifiable, and I'm tempted to pop a freedom of info request in to see what it blows up.  The first of the second incidents took place on the 16th of August, as her mother was crossing the road whilst shopping in London's Regent Street, presumbely at a pedestrian crossing, when a youth on a bicycle shot a red light, knocked her to the ground and left her with a broken arm. Now, we're told that kindly passers-by dragged her seemingly inert body on to the pavement and called an ambulance.  This should be traceable, be asking hospitals that she may have been taken to how many callouts to Regent Street they had on the 16th of August, and asking for a breakdown of the reasons for the callouts, and the times of them.  I'd suspect that even a busy street like Regent Street doesn't have that many ambulance callouts a day.

We're then told that 3 days earlier than the date of the article (8 September 2012) her mother was once again knocked down by a cyclist, this time on a North London street.  This would put the collision as occouring on the 5th of September.  She states that her mother nearly lost the sight in her left eye, and that her broken arm sustained such serious damage that she may have to undergo a lengthy operation on it.  I have to assume that this again means that she would have had to go to hospital, so there should be some record of this admission, although as in the first incident, I don't think that there is enough data to pick it up in the stats.

She also goes on to claim in both articles that "If my mother had been hit twice by a car in a similar space of time, the general reaction would have been one of horror and outrage".  Sadly I think that she's wrong.  The Killed and Seriously Injured stats for those hit by cars are horrific, and still they are reported as actions taken by cars, rather than drivers, and are punished in a very light way.  Currently you are more likely to be sent to prison for damaging a car (a charge of criminal damge, which carries a potential jail term of 6 months if the damage is under £5000 in value, or up to 10 years is the damage is over £5000), compared to the charges for killing or injuring a cyclist or pedestrian in your car (a likely charge of causing death by either careless [a punishment of Up to 5 years in prison, and disqualified for a minimum of one year] or dangerous driving [a punishment of 1 to 14 years in prison, and disqualified for a minimum of two years]).  As far as I know, conviction rates on criminal damage charges are much higher than those for causing death by careless or dangerous driving.

I might just throw in those FoI requests, and see what comes back...

More on Vehicle Excise Duty

Sometimes I hate twitter.  It makes me do stupid things.  Like get out of bed to write a blog post on Vehicle Excise Duty at 1:30am

I've been having a discussion on Twitter with Lee Massey (@threeamp1) over VED, and how it could be made fairer.

We both seem to agree on the idea that charging for the amount of wear that your choice of transport does to the road is the best way forward.  Where we disagree is on how to measure that damage.

He suggests that the only two things that are important are the mass of the vehicle, and the distance that it travels. He also suggests that it needs to be based on the actual wear that has taken place.

I would suggest that a better proxy for the wear on the roads is the force that could be exerted on them by the vehicle, combined with the distance traveled.

All taxation schemes have to have a simplification in them somewhere, mine in this would be to use maximum potential wear, rather than absolute wear.  The use of absolute wear would require constant tracking of every one of us, for every minute that we were travelling.  This not only has huge technology cost implications, but also massive privacy ones too.

Physics tells us that force is equal to mass times acceleration.

Car manufacturers are really good at telling us a number of things about their cars.  Their weight, and their 0 to 60 mph time.

Whilst Mass is not Weight, since everything that we are measuring is under the Earth's gravity, we can just use the posted weight as a mass.

I've thrown together a quick table of transport modes, and what their VED ratios per 10,000 miles would be under my proposed system.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AncwBxyMWI06dFNyamltRzN6eE5wNVl1d1BybE0xVUE

I've only thrown a few cars into there, and I'm quite liking the results.  There is no method of taking into account how good or bad a vehicle is in terms of fuel usage, but on the basis that a less polluting car will use less fuel, I'm inclined to suggest that taxing fuel is a better choice for this.

Part of the point of this exercise was to try and find a relative amount of VED for a bike.  I'm going to dig into this a bit more, but since most cyclists don't ever reach 62mph (100kph), it's going to be tricky.  I'll look into it more later on today, but on the basis that a bike ways 8kg, and a cyclist could get to 62mph in a minute, a cyclist does over 600 times less damage to the road than the best car that I've stuck in so far.

I'll update this post later, and increase the table with other vehicles as they are suggested to me.

Why I'd love to pay Vehicle Excise Duty

I shall start this blog with a statement that may seem rather odd to many people out there.

"As a cyclist, I would love to be able to pay Vehicle Excise Duty for my bicycle."

I can hear the outcry from cyclists now, and the cheers from many drivers.  If either of these is your reaction, I'm sorry, but you've got it the wrong way round.  Cyclists should be begging the government to let us 'pay road tax'(1), and car drivers should be pleading for cyclists current exemption to stay.

Why should cyclists be begging for a tax disc? Simple, once we have one, the argument of 'but I pay road tax' is gone.  Having a tax disc would cost cyclists nothing.  The VED on a vehicle that emits up to 100 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre is £0 per year(2).  Since this is based on the vehicles emissions, and not those of any drivers or passengers, all bicycles would be in this group.  Since all modern bikes already effectively have a registration number in their unique frame number(3) this could be used on the disc instead of a number plate.  The tax disc could even help to serve as a theft deterrent, I would suggest that they should be in the form of a tough to remove sticker with an identifying code that is easily scanned by the police to check that it is in date, and that the rider is either the owner of the bicycle, or has permission from the owner.

Maybe the state should even hold a list of frame numbers, which are held against a registered owners name, much like the V5 for a car.  The fact that this list is held by the state for cars is part of the reason that relatively few cars are stolen.  It is easy for the police to check if a car is stolen, using it's registration number or its chassis number, this can't happen with bikes, as there are about 6 different places that a police officer would have to check to find out if a bike is stolen.

So far I think that I've built a fairly basic case for having a state controlled database of all cycles, based on the frame number, and for why cyclists would want to pay Vehicle Excise Duty.

I can see all the car drivers nodding along, this is what they've been telling us all along, cyclists need registration plates, and to pay our road tax, and to have insurance...

Sadly, they are fighting the wrong battle, they've just not been told yet.

Why are they fighting the wrong battle? It's because they haven't thought it through fully yet.  Let's run some numbers about shall we?

In 2010 (the year I can find best figures for at the moment) 3.5 million bikes were sold(4).  That's 3,500,000 bikes, or around 9600 bikes sold per day, every day of the year.  The cost to issue a tax disc in 2012 is £1.65 per disc(5).  Therefore just for the 3.5 million bikes that were sold in 2012, their first tax disc would cost the tax paying public £5.7 million.

That's before we've added them to the big database of bikes frame numbers that would need to be created and maintained, and the large number of bikes that would need a renewal disc.  In 2009 3.4 million bikes were sold in the UK(6).  Reissuing those bikes with a tax disk in 2010 would add an extra £5.6 million to the cost of issuing tax discs.  Assuming that the growth in cycle sales stayed steady into 2011, we would expect that 3.6 million bikes would have been sold in the UK in 2011, and a further 3.7 million will be sold in 2012.  If all of these remained taxable (and let us not forget, that bikes are far less likely to go wrong mechanically than cars are), that would give a cost of £23.4 million just to produce tax discs for every bike sold in the last 4 years.

Given that the current cost of issuing tax discs just to cars is estimated at £90.7 million per year(5), it is hard to see the justification of adding an increase of over 25% to the cost of this, for no gain in revenue coming in to the government.

Where would the cost of that increase in the cost of issuing tax discs go?  Either it would have to be paid through general taxation, and so everyone would pay for a scheme that if implemented correctly, would be of benefit to very few people, OR it could be paid for by increasing the cost of Vehicle Excise Duty to take into account the extra overheads.  This would mean an increase of over 25% for most drivers, just so that the demands of a few who think that 'road tax' still exits can be met.

Drivers therefore should be demanding that the status quo of cyclists not paying Vehicle Excise Duty is not changed, as it it likely that they will end up paying for my tax disc

1. Yes, I am fully aware that road tax no longer exists (see http://ipayroadtax.com/)
2. http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/OwningAVehicle/HowToTaxYourVehicle/DG_10012524
3. http://www.goinggoingbike.com/blog/the-importance-of-bike-frame-numbers/
4. http://corporate.sky.com/documents/pdf/press_releases/2011/the_british_cycling_economy
5. http://www.bvrla.co.uk/Document/Default.aspx?DocumentUid=696F68B6-2FEA-4E3F-805B-81CD55BA7B7F
6. http://www.goinggoingbike.com/blog/uk-second-only-to-germany-in-terms-of-bikes-sold/

Armchair Auditing - Slight Disappointment

So, today was the first day that I could expect any information back from any of the Councils that I've contacted so far.  I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting anything back yet at all.

I've had a number of acknowledgement letters, and one refusal.  It's the refusal that disappoints me.  Any Housing Benefits system is going to be based on a database.  That database, if its up tot he job, should be searchable.  Ashford Council have told me that their system cannot provide the information that I have requested.  The have said that this is because a "new program" would need to be written to get the information, and the cost of this would exceed the £450 limit.  I very much doubt that this is the case.  It should be a fairly simple database query, See http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_regarding_housing_be_10/new for my request, and their response.  Before I request an internal review of this decision, I've asked them who their Benefits assessment software is provided by.  There are only a handful of firms that provide this software, and I know of most of them.  I would be hugely surprised if any of them can't provide this data.

I shall be watching this request quite closely.

Armchair Auditing - 1st letters sent, and I hit a snag...

So, today I sent out the first requests for data.  I decided that using WhatDoTheyKnow would give me the best method of tracking the requests.  I started going through the big list of councils that administer Housing Benefits (taken from a DWP document giving their average times to deal with claims).

Pretty soon I hit a minor snag.  WhatDoTheyKnow only lets you send 10 Freedom of Information Requests per day.  You can ask them to increase this number if you feel that you have a good case to do so, and I'm considering doing this.  I don't feel that my requests are vexatious, and as far as I know, this information isn't gathered centrally.  Even if it is, I may well get data that goes further back by requesting it from the council directly.  I think that I'll hold off asking them until I've got the information back from the first responses, to see if anything in my letter needs tweaking.  I don't think that it does, but then again, I would think that, wouldn't I!

I've created a google docs spreadsheet to keep track of the requests that I make, and when I get responses to them.  I'll keep updating this as I go along.  I'm still pondering how to deal with the data that I get back.

Armchair Auditing

Having been getting more and more fed up with the Government lines that the Private Sector is far more efficient than the Public sector, and that Benefit Claimants (and in particular Housing Benefit Claimants) are the reason that the government is in the mess that it is in, I started to wonder how much the State is subsidizing big business.  Well, in fact, business of any kind really.

The main method in which business is subsidised by us, the tax payers, it by topping up workers wages to a fair amount.  What's that I hear you cry, that can't be true! It is. Housing Benefit is paid to employed people too, as is Council Tax benefit.  Why do those people need to claim Housing and Council Tax benefit? Because those uber-efficient businesses have twigged that if they can pay below the amount that people need to live on (as determined, let us not forget, buy the government) their profits will be higher.  Since they have a legal obligation to maximise shareholder value, businesses have little interest in actually paying their staff enough to live on, especially when the State will cover it for them, and its not them that get condemned for it, its their greedy scrounging benefit claiming staff!

How can the Government claim that business is more efficient than the state, if the state is paying half of the costs of employing people?

I decided to do a bit of digging around the Housing Benefit Stats.  I wanted to find out to what extent is the state supporting business by paying for the housing costs of their staff.  Fortunately for me, previous governments have seen fit to let me get at some of the data that I need to get at least an outline picture of how big the issue might be. I'm sending the letter below to each of the local authorities that assess Housing Benefit.

To: $Council
Subject: Freedom of Information request - Information regarding Housing Benefit claim numbers and amounts

Dear $Council,

I would like to recieve the following information:

1. Number of active Housing Benefit Claims on the first Monday of
April each year for as far back as your records allow.
2. Number of active Housing Benefit Claims on the first Monday of
April each year where either (or both of) the Claimant or their
Partner is recorded as having had "Earned Income" on that date, for
as far back as your records allow.
3. The Total amount of Housing Benefit paid for the week starting
on the first Monday of April each year for as far back as your
records allow.
4. The Total amount of Housing Benefit paid for the week starting
on the first Monday of April each year where either (or both of)
the Claimant or their Partner is recorded as having had "Earned
Income" on the first Monday of April, for as far back as your
records allow.

I would like to make it clear that I would consider income from
Self Employment to be "Earned Income"

For your convenience, the dates of the first Monday of April for
the last 15 years are below:
04/04/2011
05/04/2010
06/04/2009
07/04/2008
02/04/2007
03/04/2006
04/04/2005
05/04/2004
07/04/2003
01/04/2002
02/04/2001
03/04/2000
05/04/1999
06/04/1998
07/04/1997

Many thanks for your help.

Yours faithfully,
Mr J Chandler

Now, one of the problems with this approach is that I cannot tell how many hours the people that are Earned Income Claimants (or partners) that I get told about are working.  This means that I catch all part time people who are also entitled to claim Benefits.  I have no problem with that at all, but I doubt that any Local Authority keeps that data, and in fact I would be more worried if they did.


I'll try to keep updating this as I get along, I'm hoping to get all of the letters sent out tomorrow. 

Thoughts on the first Fortnum and Mason protesters trial

This is a subject that I've been thinking about for a while.  Whether UKUncut are correct about their reasoning for occupying Fortnum and Mason, today's sentencing of the protesters for doing little more than standing about in a shop seems wrong to me.


One of the things that interested me in the reporting was that in an article from the Morning Star, the Metropolitan Police Chief Inspector in charge of the operation confirmed that the only people he had not arrested "were women and children carrying shopping bags."  


This raised two questions for me:

1. Where any men carrying shopping bags amongst those arrested?
2. What would have happened if the protesters had all bought something?

To be fair, I'm not that interested in pursuing the first line of enquiry, although it might be something that the next group of people arrested might like to ask Chief Inspector Graham Dean when/if they have him in the stand.


The second question is the one that I'm far more interested in.  


It sounds like a silly idea, you're in a shop, which you believe has failed to pay the appropriate level of tax, why on earth would you want to buy something, and thus support the very shop that you're protesting against?


I have a hunch that it may be possible that small value transactions may actually cost a shop money.  My quick workings are set out below.  Please feel free to have a look and try to pick holes in my reasoning, and let me know where I've gone wrong!


So, let us imagine that you've picked a small piece of fruit or veg from the lower ground floor of Fortnum and Masons.  It's cost per weight is likely to be high, compared to a normal supermarket, but remember, that bit of fruit ins't like any other supermarket piece of fruit, its got to be better than one from M&S at that price right?  So, we'll assume you've picked a banana, I can't find a price for M&S banana's, but a Sainsbury's Fairtrade Organic Banana will set you back £1.50 for 5, that's 30p per banana.  I'll assume for the purposes of this calculation that Fortnum and Masons bananas are twice as expensive as Sainsbury's ones, which would make them £0.60 per banana.


Fortnum's will have to pay to buy in the banana's, and get them to the stores, and to put them on the shelves. Given that they are unlikely to pay more than Sainsbury's per banana (they're the same product remember, just more expensive in F&M due to their name), from a bit of digging about on the web, it seems that Organic Fair Trade bananas cost about £0.37 per kilo when bought from the farmer, there will be some shipping charges, and other fees in there too, so if we round that up to a price of £0.50 per kilo to F&M, we might not be that far off.  If each banana weighs in at around 125g, that's 8 bananas per kilo, so each banana costs them a bit more than £0.06 each.  Their profit margin having just paid for the banana to be at their store is now only £0.54.


They then have to pay a member of staff to put those bananas out onto the shelves, lets assume that they are quick at this, and it only takes them 30 minutes to unbox all of the bananas, say 600 bananas.  If that staff member is on minimum wage, the cost to employ them is £6.86 per hour.  So, each banana put on the shelf takes off about a penny of the stores profit, leaving them with £0.53 per banana.


Now comes the fun bit, if each protester can tie up a member of staff for a minute or two, with a serious question or two, e.g. where is this banana from, what percentage of the price goes back to the grower, do you only sell fairtrade/organic fruit? etc. that has a cost for the store.  Per minute you spend with an employee, you cost the store £0.11.  Lets assume you only manage to tie them up for a minute, that's the stores profit down to £0.42, and that's before you've even got to the till to pay.


Once you get to the till, be polite, make small talk, ask the cashier how their day's been, etc.  Talking to people slows their reactions, makes the transaction take longer, and that's what we're interested in.  Make sure that you're not ready to pay.  Your wallet's at the bottom of your rucksack, and you've got to dig it out? Oh dear, that takes time, time is money.  How much money? The same £0.11 per minute we established earlier.  It shouldn't be too hard to drag the time that you spend paying for your banana out to a couple of minutes, that costs £0.22 for 2 minutes of staff time remember?  Now they're down to £0.20 profit on that banana.


Now we need to pay for the banana.  We're not looking to make things easy for the shop here, but we do want to give ourselves options.  


For highest cost impact, pay on a card.  Card transaction fees are apparently the second highest cost a business has, after staff costs.  The most expensive way for you to pay is to use the magnetic swipe part of your card, it takes longest, and costs them most, chip and pin is the next most expensive, with cash the cheapest.  Typical costs are about 2% for credit cards and a set fee debit cards.  For small transactions pay on debit cards, that fee can be as high as £0.20 per transaction.  If we assume that its half of that cost, that makes the profit on the banana £0.10.


If you'd rather not be tracked, you can pay with cash.  For this, you want to pay the wrong amount in the oddest set of coins you can, pull out a handful of change, root through it, hand over shrapnel in batches so the cashier has to count to check your maths are right.  Pay slightly too much, so that they have to work out the change, and you should be able to waste a bit more time.


Now, remember what our friend Chief Inspector Graham Dean said?  He released people with Fortnum and Mason bags.  Don't forget to ask for yours!  Yes you have a rucksack, but you want a souvenir of your time there don't you? That bag also costs Fortnum and Mason money to give to you, they're pretty shiny bags, and whilst Fortnum and Mason can buy them in bulk, they are unlikely to get the cost down below about £0.05 per bag I suspect.  If we go down our card route, we are now left with only giving the shop £0.05 for your transaction.


In return for this, you've got a banana, a nice paper bag, caused the police problems with wanting to charge you, as are you a protester or a shopper, or both?  you;ve also blocked the till for a genuine customer who was going to spend far more than you were, all in all, not too bad for £0.05.


If you can now have a chat with another staff member, maybe ask a question about the building, or enquire about the cost of the teas in the restaurant, or how far in advance you need to book... That took you another minute? Now you've stolen that last £0.05 back from them, costing them money, just by being there.


Now I know that a lot of this is factored into the prices, but it's worth a thought for future demonstrations.  Can you be a customer and cost a shop money to serve you? Of course you can, if you think about it.  Shops like Fortnum and Mason rely on customers having a high value per transaction.  If the opposite is true, they start to feel the pain quite fast.


Would UKUncut have been better off doing things this way?  I think that they might have been, it would certainly have made the court case more interesting.  Aggravated Trespass charges against customers? What shop is going to want that?  And how would the police deal with it?

Does TFL really have it in for cyclists?

This is written as a response to a fantastic post at the Over the Hills and Far Away blog.  "Cycle Superdeathway" is her term, but I like it so much, I'm going to use it here.

TFL's cycle route planner likes to push people to the Cycle Superdeathway route where ever it can.  The route that it suggests from my house to Clapham gives a great example of this

Prior to CS7 being put in, TFL would suggest that from my home, I cycled to Tooting Broadway, and then along what is now the "Cycle Superdeathway".  This is part of the route that I normally use to get to work, so I know it quite well.

This route is great, on the way to Tooting Broadway, most of it has a bus lane that, although time limited, cars are wary of going into as they can never manage to read the tiny signs that tell them when they can go in it, so I get a full bus lane to myself nearly all the way to Tooting Broadway.

TFL's Cycle Planner never even thinks of this as a route.

Instead it sends  me via Colliers Wood, to the start of the Cycle Superdeathway 7 for both the easy and fast routes, but on some wierd twisty offroad route for the mid option.  The mid option has changed since I looked last, and not for the better.

The easy/fast routes that they use are the same, except that the easy route adds two very dangerous right turns, that are there to avoid a single light controled right turn with an ASL on it.  I know which I think is easier!  Compared to the route I use (linked above), this route adds about an extra quarter of a mile along a narrow fast road that is used by rat running motorists, and has to have flashing signs that warn them to slow down as they are over the limit, before dropping you onto the end of the Cycle Superdeathway, which, to be fair, is better than the nothing that was there before.  This route however leaves a lot to be desired, either as a fast or an easy route. It's certainly not one that I'd want either an 8 or an 80 year old cycling to get the the Superhighway.

The mid route is so obsure that I think that I'd get lost on it, winding as it does round back streets, through a housing estate, crossing a main road, and then across Tooting Common, across another main road, over the railway on a footbridge...  Like I said, obscure.

I think that given the increased focus on TFL's approach to cycling in London, this is an issue that need to be raised with a higher priority.  Good cycling routing can be done.  Google have it for some places that they have the data for (sadly not yet in London), CycleStreets have generally done a fantastic job with theirs although for this journey they sadly fail too.

Whats the answer?  As so often is the case, better data.  Route planning is important but, as ever, very tricky, even with good data.  Without it, its impossiable.  Can cylists like myself help TFL collect this sort of data?  Would TFL accept it?  This is one more area in which the crowd can help, but can't do it all.  I'd love to hear how we can get this sort of data out of peoples heads, and into a central location that other people can benefit from it.  Thats something that the internet should be good at, but how do we do it?

Is it better for TFL to offer a poor service than none at all? I think so.

Is it better for them to offer a service that actively puts cyclist who follow their advice at risk? I'd argue not.

Drivers with more than 12 points on their licence

I know that this has been a contentious issue that has been floating around some of the cycling blogs for a while, but I found 2 sets of numbers that were just over a week apart that quite interested me today.  I did a tiny bit of analysis on them, and then sent a FOI request to the DVLA.  The analysis that I did on the initial data from other people is below.

Points	16/05/2011	24/05/2011	Diffrence
12	7014	6983	-31
13	804	809	+5
14	881	870	-11
15	1093	1075	-18
16	296	297	+1
17	147	144	-3
18	245	233	-12
19	38	37	-1
20	49	46	-3
21	38	39	+1
22	13	10	-3
23	16	15	-1
24	24	24	0
25	3	3	0
26	0	0	0
27	3	3	0
28	1	1	0
29	0	0	0
30	4	4	0
31	0	0	0
32	0	0	0
33	1	1	0
34	0	0	0
35	0	0	0
36	1	2	+1
Total:	10671	10596	-75

Is that one extra driver with 36 points the one that has gone from the 23 point place? or is it someone new, or have more than one person jumped about or what. I find this puzzling, but suspect that the simplest answer is the best; that it is simply a mistake on the part of the DVLA.

I would like to thank both Freewheeler (his blog post with the data from 16/05/2011 is here) and Amoeba (his comments on this blog post have the data from 24/05/2011) for asking this question ahead of me.

I'll post more on this once I've had a response from the DVLA.

That promised post on Local Housing Allowance, from November 2008, with additional comments to bring it up to date.

The post below was written shortly after LHA had been rolled out nationally:
Taken from posts on the HBInfo forums, an amalgamation of points from two posts, to give some context to my reply...

So, six months into LHA and what do we find:-
-LHA rates at a level that even those with above average salaries would struggle to afford.
-Landlords looking up the lha/direct website and pushing rents for even sub-standard property up to the median.
-Landlords beginning to report increased incidences of rent arrears and apparently bumping up the level of deposits to try and cover losses (and all this before the Christmas and winter fuel bills start to compete with payment of rent for LHA recipients)
-BRMAs that have been set too broadly causing people to be priced out of their own communities.
-Localities and LRRs only introduced in the past year or so likely to be reviewed as a result of the post-Hefferenan guidance from the Rent Service, creating a fresh round of winners and losers (guidance which is readily available to all on the Rent Service website).
-Apparently national LHA expenditure levels in the first six months so high that Treasury is beginning to lean on DWP for an explanation and probably demanding that they be reined in, and quickly.
The main point is though that LHA appears to be causing a surge in expenditure well beyond DWP projections and will continue to increase as landlords bump rents up to and beyond the LHA level.  The DWP consistently said this would not happen and that it did not feature as a problem in their evaluation of the pathfinders.

---------------------------------
My reply.

I would suggest that this would be because it didn't happen in the Pathfinders...

Remember, the biggest change between the pathfinder scheme and the final scheme was that the excess that was paid to the claimant was capped at £15. This removed the incentive for claimants to find a property that was more than £15 below the LHA cap. This in turn removes the incentive for landlords to charge less than £15 below the cap per week to encourage tenants to move into their property, rather than the property next door.

So, the two situations outlined above would theoretically work like this:

Pathfinder scheme:

LHA set at £120 pw

Property A, rent £100 pw, V. nice condition
Property B, rent £90 pw, V. good condition
Property C, rent £80 pw, OK condition

Claimant takes property C, other landlords find their property is harder to rent, drop prices slightly, rents drop, LHA figures drop, cost of HB goes down, everyone is happy, (except the landlords).

Final Scheme:

LHA set at £120 pw

Property A, rent £100 pw, V. nice condition
Property B, rent £90 pw, V. good condition
Property C, rent £80 pw, OK condition

Claimant will now take property A in preference, other landlords find that low cost of property is not an incentive to rent their property, increase prices, LHA figures rise, cost of HB goes up, only landlords are happy.

Of course this is all very simplified, but I believe is a reasonable estimation of what is/was happening on the ground.

---------------------------------
My Solution to the Problem

The largest problem with the Pathfinder scheme was that it could be seen to encourage deliberate overcrowding of smaller properties so that the amount of excess that the claimant received was disproportionately high, thus stopping them from looking for larger properties that were a more suitable size.

If the government had really wanted to produce a properly functioning Housing Benefit scheme that had the desired effect of allowing claimants the security of knowing how much Housing Benefit they would receive, whilst encouraging Landlords to keep rents low, the following approach would have got results much closer to those desired than either of the two schemes tried thus far.

The amount of benefit to be paid would be the lower of either the rate for the number of bedrooms needed for the family size or the number of bedrooms in the property and also remove the cap on the LHA excess. 

This would solve a number of problems with one stroke, by help to lower the Housing Benefit bill, provide claimants with the stability of a known maximum amount of benefit and a genuine choice of properties, provide Landlords with a known rent level, and keep the scheme easy to administer.

---------------------------------
An update on the situation at LHA is now (May 2011)

Relatively recently, the Government decided that the Housing Benefit bill was still far to high, and that Housing Benefit could be used as a tool to haelp lower rental prices.

This lead to two main changes from April this year.  The first was to remove the remaining £15 excess.  This will have saved an awful lot of money.  If a council had 5000 LHA claims, all paying out the maximum excess, this measure alone will have saved £7500 instantly.  I still feel that the points above stand, and that leaving the uncapped LHA excess would help to drive down rental prices.  This will still not have had as fast an effect as the second measure implemented by the government.

The second measure implemented was the change from using the median rent level as the figure for LHA, to using the third quartile figure.  This measure in itself more than wiped out most excess payments, and so the cost of rewarding claiminants for finding cheaper property would be reduced anway.