take me for a ride in your car car

There's a few kilometres between our place and 'town'. It's mostly dual carriageway but there are a couple of stretches of single lane road. I was on the road today and, coming up to the end of dual carriageway before the longest piece of single lanery, I came up behind a car obviously travelling slower than me and, it seemed, well below the 100 km/hr speed limit. I went to sneak past, they immediately sped up and also moved into the right hand lane early, to keep me out.

And then proceeded to drive at between 85 and 90 for the whole stretch of single carriageway, at the end of which there was a procession of a dozen cars waiting to get past.

Some people should have their licences taken from them if they can't handle the posted limits. Then be shot, and then eaten. And not get their licences back.

Jeremy Clarkson is someone who appreciates the meaning of a posted limit in terms of smooth flow of traffic, but look what happens when he drives a car that can't make the grade. I loved his suggestion that they should have called it the "Imodium."

Mr Clarkson is also a vehement opponent of the nanny-state and I have to say I'm with him in most cases. The arrival of technology that simplifies remote monitoring of both public and private behaviour, combined with the incursion of the State into more of our lives, is far from a benevolent development.

It's trite and a truism that technology has outstripped governments' ability to respond. You'd think that this would be a sufficient reason to look at government processes with a view to ensuring that governments can respond in a more timely fashion.

This is where our adversarial model of government is unhelpful. If a government and opposition could agree on what were the big long and short term challenges, they'd be better placed to respond.

Instead, we get this kind of puerile schoolyard spat.

Inconsequential linguistic annoyance of the day: the use of "name-check" for "reference."