Do Motorists Pay For The Roads?

 General, Politics  1 Response »
Feb 092023
 

No.

There is something that certain entitled motorists keep banging on about – “road tax”. There hasn’t been a road tax since 1937; it’s currently called vehicle excise duty and the income (£8 billion) goes into the general taxation fund. It sounds like a lot, but is just a drop in the overall public spending budget. And it isn’t reserved for spending on roads.

And local roads are mostly paid for out of council tax – in other words the roads that cyclists and pedestrians actually use are paid for out of local taxes.

Which has an interesting side effect – a motorist on a local road is likely to be a local road user, but a significant proportion will be visitors. Meaning that they haven’t paid for the road. Whereas a cyclist or a pedestrian is more likely to be a local.

Meaning that on any road that isn’t a motorway, the cyclists and pedestrians pay more for that road than the motorist.

Posts leading out to the sea.
Into The Water; Stillness and Motion

Why Do Computers Suck At Maths?

 Computing, General  No Responses »
Feb 092023
 

Sometimes, computers seem to suck at maths :-

>>> 1.2 - 1.0
0.19999999999999996

To be fair, that’s a raw Python interface; an application intended for use as a calculator works a bit better :-

» qalc 
> 1.2 - 1.0

  1.2 − 1 = 0.2

The problem is related to low-level numeric types. Computers store numbers in a variety of different formats (called types by developers). Whole numbers (integers) are easy – just allocate a certain number of 8-bit bytes (more means you can store bigger numbers; but it takes more memory for each number) and you would have something that would store whole numbers with perfect accuracy.

Floating point (i.e. numbers with a ‘decimal’ point) on the other hand are much more a compromise between size and accuracy. Floating point in effect uses scientific notation for numbers – 1.23E23. So a number is split into two – the mantissa (effectively the bit before the “E”) and the exponent. Storing two numbers in 32-bits (single precision) limits the precision in which numbers are stored but is usually sufficient and allows a far larger range of numbers :-

>>> print("{:10.4f}".format(1.2 - 1.0)) 
    0.2000

In other words if you are using a low-level interface as a calculator, you can produce sensible output merely by writing your code properly. Or use a proper calculator program like qalc(ulator).

This is of course an over simplification and the Wikipedia article on single precision floating point goes into far more detail than I want to understand. Amongst other things I’ve glossed over is the problem of performing calculations in base 2 (binary) rather than base 10 (decimal).

Plus there are a whole bunch of other numeric types such as larger floating point types, decimal floating point, bignums (which use whatever memory is necessary to store a number), fixed point, etc.

Computers aren’t bad at maths; it is just you can trick them into making themselves look bad.

Untitled Seascape

Heatwave Scare-Mongering

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jul 232022
 

A certain bunch of … let’s call them idiots to be relatively polite … have been spewing forth idiocy in the online comments of various places labelling the heatwave warnings as “scare-mongering”. Mentioning the summer of 1976 and saying we all coped.

The heatwave of 1976 although it went on for longer, didn’t get as hot (36C was nearly reached). That’s 4C below this year’s heatwave peak. And people died during that heatwave too – there was a 20% increase in “excess deaths”.

So no we didn’t cope in the 1976 heatwave; at least not those of us who died.

A lot of criticism was aimed at the Met Office for the heat warnings, and mainstream media channels for repeating the warnings so endlessly. “Oh! We see such temperatures every year on holiday” the numb-brained drawl. No, you don’t; at least not often.

And when you do, it’s when you’re sleeping in air-conditioned hotel rooms beside a pool, with plenty of shade around. You aren’t stuck in offices with no air-conditioning, even hotter work-places (such as kitchens), or outside in the sun (nailing tiles to a roof). You’re not sleeping in a bedroom with the choice of leaving the windows shut (and building up heat), or opening them to let hot air (and noise) in.

When experts issue warnings, it is wise to pay attention to them. Whilst I understand an instinctive distrust of authority (I share it), subject specialists should be trusted – not blindly but (for example) when the Met Office issues heat warnings, it isn’t just one expert thinking it. If you want to question an expert, get as much education as they’ve had.

In short :-

  1. That heatwave was dangerously high and justified the number of warnings issued.
  2. It isn’t natural and was made more severe by climate change.
  3. Being that guy who claims that we’re all snowflakes for being concerned about it just shows that you’re an idiot.
Two Posts in the Sea

Highway Code Changes: Throwing Some Rocks Back

 General  No Responses »
Feb 092022
 

The Highway Code changes that went into effect on the 29th January seems to have caused a bit of a palava amongst drivers. Except this is probably a noisy minority as most are either :-

The majority are either completely oblivious to the changes or assume that nothing significant is changing (and they’re not entirely wrong).

And the majority of the remainder are probably accepting of the changes.

When you come down to the changes, they’re mostly fairly minor. The biggest change is making explicit a hierarchy of priorities based on the vulnerability of road users – pedestrians are the most vulnerable so have the highest priority, etc. Funnily enough very little protest against that has been heard, although some of the other objections do indicate an unconscious bias in favour of driver priority; perhaps assisted by the widespread myth that motorists pay for roads. Interestingly whilst there a number of changes for cyclists, these have attracted very little attention – it seems that Highway Code changes are only controversial when they might inconvenience car drivers.

The most noise has been about the change requiring motorists to allow pedestrians to proceed when waiting to cross at a junction – for example when turning from a major road into a minor road, the motorist should wait to allow the pedestrian crossing that minor road. This is not as big a change as it seems as motorists were already required to wait when pedestrians were already crossing. What happens when a pedestrian doesn’t choose to cross? Presumably because they were wool-gathering, or their assistance dog is trained to wait until the road is clear. Will this result in permanently stuck motorists causing city-wide traffic chaos? Well, “giving priority” doesn’t mean “wait forever” – you would stop, wait for 10s or so, and then proceed slowly.

Those protesting make a big fuss about how stopping before turning may result in them being rear-ended by other motorists who aren’t expecting traffic to stop. There’s two problems with this – motorists already stop at turnings to allow pedestrians to cross, and motorists should already be prepared for vehicles in front of them to stop unexpectedly. Fact is, in every accident where a car is rear-ended, the motorist behind is the one at fault.

Lastly there is the new rules regarding cyclists – specifically the rule allowing cyclists to ride in the centre of the lane. Funnily enough this isn’t really new although it wasn’t explicitly stated before – there was never a rule that cyclists had to segregate themselves into the gutter risking life and limb risking the gutter pot-holes. But you would imagine from the reaction of some drivers that this new rule was allowing cyclists to use shotguns against car drivers they’ve been so up in arms about it. It is not as if they are supposed to do it all the time – just on slower roads and to increase safety.

But no, these drivers imagine roads are there for car drivers exclusively and anything that inconveniences them must be prohibited. There are special roads like that – motoreways.

It’s Round

English Bank Holidays and Common Law Holidays

 General  No Responses »
Dec 272021
 

In honour of the traditional family argument about whether Christmas Day is a bank holiday or not, I shall be wittering on about it for a while. The UK government web site on Bank Holidays, lists it as a bank holiday. Incorrectly, although it’s understandable why it does.

The Act of Parliament currently in force establishing “bank holidays” is the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, which lists the following as bank holidays :-

The following are to be bank holidays in England and Wales :-

Easter Monday

The last Monday in May.

The last Monday in August.

26th December, if it not be a Sunday.

27th December in a year in which 25th or 26th December is a Sunday.

Note how the 25th doesn’t appear! Within the text of the Act, it also states :-

No person shall be compellable to make any payment or to do any act on a bank holiday under this Act which he would not be compellable to make or do on Christmas Day or Good Friday

There are of course other missing bank holidays which are proclaimed on a yearly basis by the queen, but Christmas Day and Good Friday are special – they’re Common Law holidays that have been taken as public holidays since time immemorial (6 July 1189) as traditional customary holidays.

Those two days appear many times in legislation dealing with restrictions on what can be carried out on those days, but nowhere is it declared that they are public holidays – it is just assumed.

There used to be a good deal more customary holidays – in 1833 the Bank of England shut for 33 days a year but in 1834 shut for just 4. When bank holidays were first established in 1871, they were intended as public holidays but were expressed in financial terms – specifically so banks couldn’t be declared bankrupt for not being able to process a promissory note or a bill of exchange.

Which is why we call them “Bank” holidays. And why they aren’t strictly speaking “holidays” for workers – they are really just holidays for banks as there is no guarantee that you can take a bank holiday off work.

The Bare Family

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