The War on Cars (and Drivers)

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 072026
 

Every single measure taken to improve air quality on roads, add facilities for cyclists, restrict parking, restrict entry to overcrowded cities invokes a cry from the loony right of “Not more war on car drivers”. As if there really were a war on car drivers!

To those who read this and say “There is”, just imagine if there really were such a war – we could legalise shooting cars with shot-guns, setting up traps that’ll dump cars in the sea, etc.

Well perhaps not. But if you look at the harm cars cause, you do have to wonder if there shouldn’t be a war on cars – cars kill roughly 2,000 people a year (or just under) :-

And that ignores the thousands of “live-changing injuries” (that means important bits came off) that occurred over the same time period. If you compare with the number of deaths that occur through shooting in the UK, and the response to that cause of death, you see if anything we underreact to the deaths caused by cars.

And deaths are not the only aggravation caused by cars: noise, localised pollution, space on our streets, excessive priority, and probably a whole lot more.

Boat Skeleton

So the answer to “Why the War on Cars?” is “Well it’s about time.”

Upgrading Ubuntu 24.10 to 25.04 with ZFS

 Computing, Linux, Working Notes  No Responses »
Dec 282025
 

If you happen to have tried upgrading Ubuntu 24.10 (probably – I didn’t check before getting this done) to Ubuntu 25.04 with ZFS, you will realise that the upgrade is blocked because of known issues. Specifically (without having seen the issue personally), the upgrade blocks at a certain point where the userland ZFS tools have been upgraded and the old kernel is still running.

Fair enough, but why hasn’t it been fixed? Or even a suggested work-around?

One suggestion I came across was to remove the ZFS storage pool(s), upgrade, and add them back in. For those not familiar with ZFS, this is done by simply importing the previously exported (or not) pool without loss of data.

Although backups are as always a good idea!

But there’s more to the suggestion than that, so here are my working notes … the ones written down long-hand with a pen on paper (something I rarely do these days) :-

  1. Shut down the virtual machines.
  2. Shut down the gooey – as in shut down the applications, and return to the login screen.
  3. Switch to a text console (most of the work is done here).
  4. Shut down the containers.
  5. Unmoun the ZFS filesystems
    • zfs unmount -a
    • Which failed, so killed off various running processes with pkill -u ${USER}
    • A second zfs unmount -a also failed and had to kill off various other processes until it worked.
  6. Export the pool which failed – including a second attempt when forced.
  7. Removed the ZFS packages :-
    • dpkg –remove zfs-zed zfs-utils-linux zfs-dkms
  8. Rebooted as Linux still thinks ZFS is enabled.
  9. Upgrade started in text mode.
    • Skips past the ZFS block and completes normally.
  10. Added the ZFS pages back (zfs-zed zfs-utils-linux zfs-dkms) and imported the pool. This did issue a dire warning about potential data loss with ZFS and this version of the Linux kernel. With any luck this is an outdated warning and perhaps more to do with ZFS root.

But that dire warning is probably worth avoiding the upgrade.

Model lighthouse in a lake.
The Lighthouse

Is The UK a Christian Country?

 General, Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Dec 042025
 

No.

No country believes in this religion or that religion; it is an individual choice of the members of that country as to what religion they should believe in (or not).

The lunatic fringe of the far right want to push the notion that the UK (and the USA) is a christian country because they want to use that as an excuse to punish anyone who isn’t. Oh, it’ll start with Muslims and Hindus and end with anyone who doesn’t follow their brand of Christianity.

As of 2021, the UK was 46.5% Christian; that’s the single largest religious group. But it isn’t the majority; there’s plenty of other religious groups and the non-religious. Of course the christofascists will point out that in the past, the UK was nearly 100% Christian, glossing over the fact that this was forced on us – either explicitly or more subtly.

The past is the past – whilst we may have a christian tradition we also have a pre-christian tradition (or a pagan tradition). Christianity is a foreign religion – it’s an immigrant from the middle-east.

War Memorial Church

Secrets of Southsea Images

 Photography  No Responses »
Dec 042025
 

Well that “secrets” is a little bit of an exaggeration; it’s possibly more “paths less trodden”. Bits of Southsea you are less likely to see even as a resident.

The Alley

For example, the alley between the Chinese takeaway and Sam’s Place on Grove Road South. Not exactly a public thoroughfare, but not entirely trespassing either.

The Courtyard

And at the end of the alleyway, is the courtyard and the front doors of a few places of residence.

Off Wilton Place

And around the corner, there’s an alley off Wilton Place … itself off Marmion Road.

Towards Wilton Place

And looking back towards Wilton Place.

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