Speed Cameras In Focus
Urban myths are proliferating around speed cameras. One of the commonest is that they are a backhanded way for local authorities to take pressure off increases in council tax. In fact, the total raised by all cameras last year was just ?73m. The surplus after costs was just ?6m - and that went to the treasury. Even if councils had got their hands on it, it would have amounted to less than 0.3 per cent of receipts from council tax.
A more relevant calculation is that every week 70 people are killed on the roads, at a cost of ?1.4m each. A further 800 are seriously injured, each with an actuarial cost of around ?0.7m. A reduction of one death and eight major injuries a week therefore repays the costs of cameras in ten weeks.
Not all cameras are well sited but there is no reason why positions should not be regularly reviewed. Opponents say that the death rate on the roads has not fallen in the past five years. They ignore an increase over that period of about 15 per cent in traffic levels - equating to a considerable fall in fatalities related to total travel. They also overlook the increasing role of cameras in detecting other crime.
MD proliferation
Fancy becoming a managing director? Your best chance seems to be to go into banking. So far this year three investment banks have created between them over 550 new MDs - UBS leading the field, with 220 from Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. They are all rather coy about how many they have in total, but say that this year's number is around average. If you assume a modest 12 years in post, this suggests that they have nearly 7,000 managing directors. That seems an awful lot of chiefs for around 75,000 Indians.
