Apparently a recent study of this in NZ claims that since compulsory helmets were introduced cycling use has halved and cycling accidents increased by 20%.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/6395656/Helmet-law-halves-cyclist-numbers

I think money is a red herring in all this. Anecdotes and surveys have shown that what people want is convenience and they are prepared to pay a fair and reasonable sum to get it. Forget the 1% that will drive round town looking for an unsecured wifi and concentrate on the 99% that will happily pay an ISP a fair sum for the convenience they offer. The best model for content distribution can be seen every time you call up Google and are given instantly at no cost anything you search for. Like the better mousetrap argument, if the entertainment industry did the same - enter name of movie, song, TV show and click PLAY - the world would flock to its door. But what do we get from them? I posted this in The Register describing a Media Biz competitor to Google, which I think sums up their half-witted handling of internet distribution:

Welcome to RACQUETS, the great new alternative to Google. We promise to bat your searches back and forth until you have no money left. Enter your search term and have your credit card ready!

- You have entered 9 words. The cost of your query will be $99.99. Read these conditions then call a premium number on your cellphone at peak time and wait a while if you do not want to continue; otherwise your credit card will be automatically charged shortly after you have finished reading:

1 - Your search term, the displayed results, all your family photos and any rectangles with rounded corners will become the Intellectual Property of Bagman Extortion Racquets inc. If you look at them we will sue you.

2 - Your eyes will be tracked as you read the results. If you want to read them again you will be charged again, and again for successive views of all or any part of the results. If you remember results we will sue you.

3 - You are not permitted to read results aloud where others might overhear, or leave them on the screen facing a window. If you do we will sue you.

4 - You are not permitted to copy results to your hard drive or a usb stick or the cloud or your brain without paying Bagman Extortion Racquets an extra fee. If you don't cough up we will sue you.

5 - Failure to comply with any of the above will result in immediate disembowelment without anaesthetic, together with a fine of $666 for each of the bits and bytes involved. We will not tolerate online piracy. Piracy is theft. Piracy is evil. If we run short of caviar in our penthouse garrets we will sue you. Stop Online Pirac ...

8 - You have now exceeded the time limit for this search. Your credit card will be charged again. Our legal advisors (Fuckyou Fuckwit & Payme) have noted where your children go to school. This is to ensure that our service is not abused by pirates. If your children sing Happy Birthday we will sue you.

9 - You have failed to cancel the search so your credit card will be charged again. To stop further automatic payments every 13 seconds go to a library computer in a nearby town, load this page and press CANCEL (Windows Vista only, 0200-0215 local time). If you succeed we will sue you.

-------- Be a HIT MAN with RACQUETS! --- --- HIT the online PIRATES!! --------

RACQUETS had three searches on its very first day, two from bored cats and one from a very fat Bluebottle. Analysts warn Google to beware of this ground-breaking, polished commercial challenge to its airy-fairy hippy business model. The Media Industry warns that if the human race continues to communicate amongst itself without paying the MAFIAA extortion money it will do its damnedest to prove the Mayans right. And finally a Mayan pops up and says that a more accurate analysis shows that only the Media Industry will end in 2012.

So, yay to Y Combinator. Anything, but anything has to be better than the current system, which frankly is little more than a gangster protection racket.

Yes. As someone noted earlier Ireland is no longer an independent nation; it is a vassal state of the European Union, and must implement without question the laws ordered by that body's unelected, unaccountable leaders. This is no different from sueing your local village's Parish Council for failing to implement the law of the land. If the democratically elected Irish Government fails to obey its Master's laws it will be turfed out and replaced with appointed Euro-bagmen, like the Greek and Italian ones have been.

When will people wake up to what is happening in Europe? This is no cosy cooperative of friendly nations working together for the good of mankind, as EU propaganda would have us believe; it is a fully-fledged authoritarian state run by a self-anointed European political elite to whom 'the people' are just cannon-fodder for its own global power ambitions. The EU constantly rabbits on about the 'rights' it gives its citizens (such as the right to sue their own government), while quietly removing the only one that really matters - the right to elect their own government.

The EU's modus operandi is exactly that of a street corner drug pusher - hand out free money until the countries cannot manage without it, then tell them what the price will be from now on. Ask the Greeks. Or the Italians. Or any of the others who have been trapped in the eurozone by the EU's cynical machinations. The EU is even less a friend of the people than the MAFIAA is.

The overall destructive negativity of all these 'anti-piracy' vendettas was put into perspective for me when I read a short post on The Register saying that anyone who can invent a means of duplicating vast numbers of something at negligible cost should be awarded a Nobel Prize. The sooner all these stupid media mogul thugs can be removed from the equation the sooner such an observation can be put to good use for the benefit of everyone, particularly those who create things.

Call me stupid, but how can the EU, or even Max Schrems, know that those 1200 odd PDFs contain all the data collected on the man by Facebook? Not that I imagine the EU gives a toss about it, any more than it does about Max Schrems; like the schoolyard bully, all it wants to do is throw its weight about and receive an apparently cringeing response. Perhaps Facebook is just taking the piss and having a laugh at the stupid pomposity and arrogance of the EU. Max Schrems should, in truth, worry a lot more about the information that increasingly undemocratic power bloc holds on him. And most certainly will not divulge on his request.

The Hindus apparently believe that everything you do is indelibly printed on the fabric of the Universe forever, and there seems little reason to realistically claim that the same should not happen with the internet. If you don't want the Universe to know about something, don't tell it.

Coincidentally I have just this morning decided not to waste any more of my time trying to join in Slashdot discussions, precisely because of the moderation system. I have offered up a few comments over the months that I have been reading it and all have been modded +1, which basically means that virtually no-one will ever see them. However, I have soldiered on, taking an interest and making the odd comment, in the hopes of one day rising above the dross.

The other day I read about the EU doing some wondrous thing that appeared to be highly beneficial to the ordinary people - http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/11/28/1824256/eu-targets-facebooks-ad-system . In the face of the praise the EU received for such beneficence I felt that someone should point out some of the things the EU does which are of very doubtful benefit to the ordinary people - such as turfing out their democratically elected governments and appointing EU stooges to replace them. I was pleased that it produced +2 points and prompted some thoughtful responses, but when I came to reply to one of the responses I was told in a most patronising manner that due to my poor karma I was not allowed to post again for 24 hours. I then discovered that presumably because I had criticised the EU, quite rationally with no swearing, ranting or crazed personal attacks on anyone, I had been downgraded to -2 (troll and flamebait) and my karma was 'Terrible', and I should run along and calm down, and no-one would now read anything else I ever said! Well, what was I supposed to deduce from all that?

Frankly, I could not avoid deducing that the moderation system is so open to abuse as to make Slashdot almost useless as a forum, and that there seems little point in trying to post again. Even reading Slashdot must be of dubious value when such arbitrary 'de facto' censoring can take place. I would accept a Moderator refusing my post for a specific reason, but this? It seems more like some crazy TV Quiz Show than a serious forum. Or is that the whole idea and I don't get it?

Anyway, whatever it is, I'm off. I really have better things to do than get caught up in silly games like that.

"Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible" - Wikipedia. Sounds a pretty good description of the EU to me, even though it has managed to keep those totalitarian ambitions carefully obscured with an avalanche of handouts and cheap loans that initially made its subject nations happy but has now, predictably, brought them to their knees. At the eleventh hour, the EU will step in and save them by taking full control of all their affairs and finances, and all their people. And that will be the end of them as independent, democratic nations.

This is happening as we speak. And, as you note in your home of Portugal, these self-appointed overlords are getting away with autocratic behaviour that should be causng riots in the streets - at the very moment that such riots are taking place all over the Middle East in order to gain precisely what the EU is removing by stealth - the people's right to elect their government. I think the folk living in the EU, particularly those trapped in the eurozone, should be quite seriously worried by the rapidity with which the EU is now abandoning any pretence of democracy. It is a measure of the power it now has over the nations that it no longer feels any need to disguise its true intentions. If an elected Government does not obey EU orders instantly and without question the EU will simply turf it out and hand the country over to an appointed Commissar, who will. As we have seen.

PS Slashdot blacklisted me as my criticism of the EU was rated 'Flamebait' and 'troll'. Perhaps the EU is now handing out grants for blocking criticism of it, not just for praising it to the Heavens and plastering its political logo over everything.

I have been in NZ for five years now, having removed my family from the EU when I finally saw the iron hand that is truly behind all the pompous hyperbole and handouts (I think the final straw was their Supreme Court's pronouncement that criticism of the EU or its bosses was on a par with blasphemy!), and we have not regretted a minute. I have just enjoyed the pleasure of being able to vote for who governs me, which is more than anyone in the EU can do in reality, for all the fluff and bullshit about European (toothless) Parliaments and so on. Not only can the people not vote for those who makes their laws, they don't even know who they are!

There is no shortage of low wages, alcoholism and child poverty in the EU, however much its bosses may prattle to the Press about their 'Brave New World'; and it harbours a great many social evils far worse than them. And there is better weather and more room here. And I am not battered by Third World dictator brainwashing logos plastered all over everything from unneeded bridges and motorways that go nowhere to my children's school milk (yes, my children's school milk came loudly and ostentatiously courtesy of the wondrous EU!). I began to think I was living in North Korea.

So, for me anyway, NZ beats the EU by 12,000 miles, which is a nice distance to be from Brussels. I can even tolerate the Metric System knowing that the people voted for it rather than having it foist upon them by an overbearing overlord. And I don't imagine I will be hauled before the courts for a wicked Crime against the State if I sell someone a pound of apples in the market.

I may have missed some wondrous benefit of the glorious EU that makes it a better place to live than New Zealand, but I don't think so. Not for me, anyway. And I'm with Winston Churchill on the democracy issue - "Worst form of government, apart from all the others". And the EU is certainly one of the others.

See my earlier post about one way flights to New Zealand. That explains how the EU works and why it will not collapse soon. And if you doubt me, then ask yourself how all the massed ranks of expert economists in the EU apparently failed to foresee a crisis so obvious in the making that Monty Python's dead parrot could have seen it coming. Then ask yourself who benefits from those eurozone nations having to go on their knees begging for financial help at any cost, after being encouraged by the EU for years to live beyond their means. And ask yourself who signs the cheques. Then ask what he who pays the piper calls.

If Heisenberg was right when he said the Universe is "not only stranger than we think but stranger than we can think" then perhaps all these religious 'whack-nut-jobs' are simply looking at something they have no way of understanding. That their interpretation makes no sense does not mean that what they are looking at makes no sense; nor that it doesn't exist. We shouldn't mock a tadpole for not being able to explain how the sun works, even though it can presumably see it.

If you study carefully what is really happening in the EU you will realise that their economic crisis is an essential and cleverly engineered part of a much bigger, and more worrying plan. And the reason the British object so vociferously to the EU can be clearly seen in the current disgraceful goings-on in Greece and Italy. If the British Prime Minister were turfed out of office by the unelected Commissars of the EU and replaced by one of their card-carrying stooges I suspect there would be blood in the streets. And rightly so.

The EU is not a kindly old uncle looking after the people, it is a totalitarian state, increasingly controlled by Germany, that subjugates the masses with bureaucracy and bullshit rather than bombs and bullets. It has never been given a mandate by the people to govern, yet it does so with an autocratic arrogance that is quite breathtaking to those who have lived in it. It is controlled by a self-anointed European political elite who have never been elected by the people, who are in no way, shape or form accountable to the people, and who are building a rigidly centralised, dictatorial superstate for the sole purpose of boosting their own importance and power in the world; and they are using the people as economic cannon-fodder. The only good thing to come out of the EU is a one-way flight to New Zealand.

Your formal analysis shows the major difficulty anyone has in figuring out exactly who has the real power in the EU. All its legal literature is written in such a verbose, convoluted, impenetrable and obfuscated manner that it is quite impossible for a normal human to understand, yet at the same time very easy for the EU itself to interpret any way it likes, particularly as it has a Supreme Court specifically charged by treaty with 'returning verdicts that further European integration'. There can be little doubt that the intention of the EU is to become a centrally governed federation or unitary state, and the current economic crisis (caused by itself) is giving it all the excuse it needs to abandon any pretence otherwise. And who will run this? Well, in Scotland they say that "He who pays the piper calls the tune" and the fact that the Irish government seems obliged to present its budget proposals to German authorities before showing them to its own elected Parliament should contain a clue as to who really pulls the strings in the EU.

And what can one say about the unceremonious removal of two elected Prime Ministers and their replacement with appointed card-carrying EU lackeys. Who exactly ordered this? Were they elected by the people? I do not think any rational person could place 'democratic' and 'EU' in the same sentence. Even EU sycophants admit to what they euphemistically call a 'democratic deficit'. Everything I have discovered points to the European Parliament having no real power at all, as none of its decisions seem to be binding on the Commission, which concocts all the laws of the EU in secret, then orders the national governments to implement them. This 'parliament' is a cynical, tax-money-slurping front for what is a 'de facto' dictatorship; it has the legitimacy of a Mafia boss's cafe and the power of its waitresses.

I think we can safely say, without having to read any of the gazillions of pages of Euro-bullshit, that whoever really controls the EU it is not the European Parliament. There is absolutely no direct connection whatsoever between the people who live in the EU and those who make their laws, and manipulate their 'governments'. It is a totalitarian state, that subjugates the people with bureaucracy and bullshit instead of bombs and bullets.

When this economic crisis reaches such a point that millions are crying out for the EU to save them at any price (very soon now), I think you will realise that things have worked out very nicely for the unelected European Commission, thank you very much. They are already using the crisis as an excuse to begin replacing democratically elected Prime Ministers with their own appointed stooges, and hinting that the only solution to this desperate problem is firm, centralised control of all the nations' affairs by their unaccountable selves.

However, while certainly unaccountable to the people, they are perhaps not so to others; ask yourself who is paying the piper. Ask yourself whether you believe that the economic experts of the EU, particularly in the German financial powerhouse, did not know full well that this would be the result of uniting hugely disparate national economies that the EU then encouraged to be profligate with endless handouts and cheap, easy loans. And they let it reach crisis point? Ask yourself who is now, as a direct result of the crisis, being permitted to govern Greece and Italy with no mandate from the people; and doubtless other countries will follow.

At the very moment that huge numbers of people in the Middle East are spilling blood in pursuit of the right to elect their leaders, the EU is cynically and systematically removing that right from the 500 million who live in Europe - without having to fire a shot. It is a serious mistake to think that 21st Century dictatorships need bombs and bullets to subdue the people: bureaucracy and bullshit are far more efficient, and they do not damage the infrastructure.

However, if those people in Europe ever wake up to what the self-anointed political elite running the EU has done to them they just could get as pissed off as the Arabs. And then there might be some damage.

The best teacher I ever had refused to allow the taking of any notes during a lesson in any shape or form. "I want you to concentrate totally on listening to me and thinking about what I am saying," was his reasoning. "I want you to understand this subject, then you will not have to waste energy trying to remember it." Any notes that he considered we should keep for reference he handed us on a sheet of paper at the end of the lesson. Which was physics, should you wonder.

Water does not come out of the faucet for free - everyone with a faucet pays something for it one way or another, somewhere along the line. If they want better quality they pay more again for bottled water. Could there be a clue here for the cretins that run the media industry?