Category Archives: Civil Liberties

How to bring back smoking in pubs?

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An article in the register the other day has given me an idea as to how one might bring back smoking in pubs without any need for a change in the law. The article reports that an American bar has gone self service by use of RFID cards (contactless payment cards) and flow control pumps. So tap the pump with your card and it will let you dispense so much beer. Now sadly this won’t work for real ale but what I can’t help but wondering is this. If no one is in the pub working because it’s entirely self … Continue reading →

Danegeld and riots for all reasons

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So almost a week since the looting and huge swathes of forest has been sacrificed to discuss the cause of the unrest and more importantly who was to blame. I am of course going to add to the sound and fury being generated, mainly because some of the commentary has rather tickled my sense of the absurd. One of the early “causes” of the looting proffered by the punditry, was that youth centres had been shut down and more people had said if the youth centres shut down they’d be trouble/riots/the end of civilisation as we know it. Now to … Continue reading →

A flight of fancy

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Having had occasion recently to journey to the fair city of York I picked up a copy of New Scientist to read on the train back home, and came across a few articles that were rather interesting, so in the order in which I encountered them. The first concerned the ethical problems for anti-addiction drugs – now obviously helping people beat an addiction is a good thing. The drugs described though are vaccines that prevent you getting a high from the drugs, and as the article observes there is the risk that this will just cause addicts to take much … Continue reading →