A long time ago — perhaps a year ago — my Freeview box flashed up a little notice that appears from time to time. It notifies me that new software is available to download, and it assures me that this will definitely result in an improvement in the service. Or words to that effect.

Normally, that is more or less true. But this one time the software was downloaded, and my Freeview box has not quite been the same since.

The software was for the Teletext Extra service. In essence, Teletext Extra is just a really elaborate, annoying EPG. Quite why this was required when I already had a perfectly functioning 7 day EPG is unclear.

What is clear is that I have been unable to use my Freeview box in the same way since that day. Every time the box is switched on it defaults to Teletext Extra. You then have to wrestle with the remote control just to switch this blasted EPG off. It’s as though they thought I would want to switch me television on to do something other than watch television.

Mercifully, the old default EPG is still available, so you can choose never to see the Teletext Extra service. Don’t think this gets rid of all the bloat bullshit though.

If, for instance, I dare to switch it off at the mains, the next time I want to watch television I am harassed by a new message telling me that I might as well have thrown my television off a cliff. It then switches into some kind of spooky mode in between standby and full power which makes the red light flash.

It remains in this mode for several minutes, sometimes around half an hour by my estimation, downloading crap for this rubbish EPG. The EPG that I don’t use, and have actively switched off.

In these energy-conscious times, it seems like an anachronism to actually be forced to leave my Freeview box on standby permanently. And just why does it take half an hour to download this programme information when the old default EPG managed it with no bother, with no time-consuming downloads?

Even worse, should I be committing the heinous crime of watching television at either 3am or 5am, the Freeview box displays yet another message warning me that I have 30 seconds to press the ‘quit’ button on my remote control or else it will go into the aforementioned spooky mode. Worst of all, sometimes for whatever reason it ignores my button presses, and I have mashed the quit button so much in my attempts to avoid spooky mode that it is now partially broken.

I mean, is this not just immensely stupid? Is there not a way for the box to say to itself, “Oh, it looks like my owner is watching television. I guess I had better not bombard him with messages obscuring the programme, and I had definitely better not switch myself off automatically.” Seemingly not!

The worst bit comes, though, when you want to watch television when it has already entered spooky mode. You can press the power button all you want, but there is only a small chance that it will ever bring itself out of spooky mode to allow you to watch television. You know watching television. It’s that thing that I bought the blasted box for in the first place! Even if you manage to get it to stop its spooky behaviour, chances are you will be greeted by a blank screen, so you will have to try again.

Now this is becoming big news. It seems as though I am not the only person to have experienced trouble with this Teletext Extra service. In fact, several people have reported a variety of different complaints ever since Teletext Extra began to pollute the DTT service.

Given the immensely important role DTT and Freeview has to play in the impending analogue switch off, the fact that Teletext have rolled out a service that has crippled so many boxes is rather concerning. Particularly given that I never use the Teletext Extra service, nor do I ever intend to use it in the future as I already have a completely fine EPG on my Freeview box, I do regret letting the download happen.

Having said that, I can’t even remember if I had the opportunity to refuse it. I certainly was not made aware of the nature of the download — what it was for, and the implications it would have on the functionality of my Freeview box. No doubt if I did refuse the download, I would still to this day be getting the notifications every time I switched on my Freeview box.

You know, I really don’t mind the SNP all that much. I mean, in the sense that they are better than Labour then I am pleased they won the election. And I think that, on the whole, they have done a very competent job in charge.

But what have they done since gaining power? ASwaS notes:

The first Act of the SNP Government was to abolish tolls in and out of Fife. The second Act has been to remove university fees. As a St Andrews graduate I feel like I am in a privileged subset of the population.

So there have been two acts, both of which I oppose. This is a bit paradoxical because I am a student living in Fife. Received wisdom has it that I’m supposed to be in favour of these policies. But only the myopic think this. People see the headlines — “free this” and “free that” — without thinking about the full consequences. The policies are unashamedly populist, but unsustainable. This makes the SNP demagogues in my book.

Both of these policies are completely counter productive to a Fife-based student. I have already covered free university education before, so I won’t bore you again. But I have been meaning to write about road tolls for a long while now. So here is why road tolls should not be scrapped.

Roads are a scarce resource. There are only so many roads that can be built with the resources we have (not least space). And it is well known that no matter how many roads you build, drivers will literally be queuing up to use them.

Roads are a particularly scarce resource if you are trying to leave Fife (and who would blame you?). Geographically isolated, Fife is a peninsula. The River Tay lies to the north, the North Sea to the east, and the Firth of Forth is on the south. On the west, the Ochil Hills act as fourth barrier to entering Fife. It is almost as though the Flying Spaghetti Monster was trying to tell us something about Fife.

Anyway, the point is that if you want to travel to Edinburgh from Fife by road you don’t have many options. Basically you can cross the ageing Forth Road Bridge and deal with some horrendous traffic jams. Or you can spend even more time (and use up more petrol) going via Kincardine.

So roads out of Fife are a very scarce resource. When a resource is scarce it has to be rationed somehow. Clearly, no everyone who would like to use the Forth Road Bridge, or indeed any road, would be able to use it because there simply isn’t enough of it to go around. There needs to be some way of finding out who needs to use the road the most.

There are two ways to do it. One way is to make people spend time. This is the way most roads work, and of course the Forth Road Bridge has recently become one of those roads. The other way is to make people spend money. Evil, evil money. Yes? No.

Evan Davis has explained why queuing does a really bad job at rationing a scarce resource. When you make people queue, you are making everyone spend a lot of time. Time is the scarcest resource of them all. You can’t bring back the past, and you can’t transfer your spare time to someone else who doesn’t have enough time. Once time is spent, it’s gone forever.

If, on the other hand, you use money, it might still be costly to you as a person. But at least the money doesn’t just disappear. It has simply changed hands. The money can be re-spent again. Now, society is better off than it would have been had everyone been made to queue.

So to use the Forth Road Bridge as an example, the government could choose to whack up the price of crossing. This money could then be used to build more hospitals, or even — shock horror — a second Forth road bridge or tunnel. Or they could use it to reduce taxes.

Instead, the SNP have chosen to make not only drivers crossing the bridge, but also society as a whole, pay through the nose just so that they can say that they have removed road tolls. It’s a pretty pyrrhic victory if you ask me.

A couple of months back Calum Cashley was sceptical that the removal of the tolls would lead to greater congestion. His argument was that as the charge was only £1, removing it would not make crossing the bridge much cheaper in the eyes of many. But if anything, this is an argument that the charge was not high enough in the first place!

Instead, the SNP have taken it in the opposite direction. Common sense dictates that it would increase congestion. And evidence suggests that it has — by half an hour every morning. The rush hour is now a rush hour and a half.

The situation starts to look even worse when you consider the environmental impact of this situation. If road tolls were in use then think of the carbon emissions that would be cut. Instead, the SNP have removed the one toll road left, meaning that even more drivers are just standing still on the road with their engines running and emitting carbon dioxide. And the SNP are supposed to be a green party!

So road tolls make sense from an economic and environmental point of view. Does that mean we should dive head first into a full-on road charging scheme? Possibly not.

I seem to remember that when Evan Davis wrote that post, it was on the back of a debate about the possibility of people being charged to use roads by the mile (or something similar). This involves having a little box in your car that enables you to be tracked wherever you go. It might be economically efficient, but there is a serious problem with civil liberties there.

Also, it is perhaps worth pointing out that queuing is probably not always the worse option. Even though people grumble about NHS waiting lists, it seems preferable to a charge-based system where doctors could make up your illnesses in order to extract more money from you.

Nevertheless, the principle of road charging (if not the method as it currently stands) is perfectly sound. The tollbooth system on the Forth Road Bridge did not suffer from this civil liberties issue, so there was no good reason to abolish them. It was all the more farcical when the Scottish Government decided to pull them down at a cost of £2m, when they had only just been erected at a cost of £4m!

Since I wrote about the overblown approach some environmentalists have been taking, I may as well post about it again because two stories have caught my eye today.

Firstly the nuclear thing. Today’s announcement from the government is probably the best news for the environment for years.

Nuclear power is, after all, carbon-free (well, carbon-low anyway, as Tim Worstall points out). Increased nuclear power will reduce the high carbon emissions that arise as a result of coal and gas. Meanwhile, the technology needed to make renewable energy cost-effective is not there yet.

As such, for the medium term at least, nuclear power is the only viable, vaguely environmentally-friendly solution to the current energy conundrum. Greens ought to be cock-a-hoop. Of course, environmentalists are never happy, and they are complaining about the government’s announcement.

I’m with Niall at Mushkush here:

I am nominally a Green voter (I think my membership may even still be valid) but I’m also pro nuclear. Not necessarily because it’s a cure all - it’s not - but because it’s a necessary evil… Simply put it’s not possible to do what appears to be necessary without some nuclear in the interim.

The only reason environmentalists could be opposed to nuclear power as a medium-term solution is if they actually wanted there to be either:

1. More carbon emissions
2. No electricity

Sometimes I think some environmentalists really would prefer it if people had a standard of living that was more akin to that of the middle ages. Which brings me on to the other story that caught my eye.

Tata Motors have unveiled the world’s cheapest car, on sale for 100,000 rupees — £1,277 to you and me. It’s a breakthrough that is sure to transform the lives of people in developing countries for the better. But environmentalists are calling it a disaster.

It is not an environmental disaster. The Tata Nano must be one of the most efficient, resource-saving methods of travelling that has ever been accessible to people in a developing country like India (it wouldn’t be so cheap if it wasn’t). It will surely have a part to play in improving the standards of living of many Indians.

So what is the message environmentalists are trying to tell people in developing countries? “Sorry, but only we westerners are allowed to have cars”?

If environmentalists are really concerned about the earth’s resources, they ought to be applauding Tata’s breakthroughs in the realm of resource-efficiency.

This isn’t to say that compromises have to be made in order to tackle climate change. The solution to the problem of carbon emissions is simple and well-known: a Pigovian tax. Simply make people pay for emitting carbon.

That way there is no need for outbreaks of bansturbation or inefficient regulation (which only results in people meeting their quotas, not actively aiming to reduce emissions). A simple tax would incentivise people to reduce emissions themselves with the minimum of fuss.

Update: This post has been published over at Liberal Conspiracy here. To keep the discussion in one place, I will close the comments on this post. If you have any comments please post them here.

What do you think the word ‘liberal’ means?

Perhaps if you are American, you are thinking of what Europeans call social democrats. Maybe some Europeans think of it as some kind of wishy-washy centrism that can’t decide between left and right. In certain countries it may have something to do with a pro-business approach. If you’re Australian it probably means the same as conservative.

A pre condition of liberalism might be the existence of free markets. Or maybe liberalism is to do with equality of some kind or another. Animal rights? Environmentalism? [insert trendy cause here]? Smith, Mill or Kant? Etc, etc. It seems to me that the word ‘liberal’ is about as useful as words like ‘that’ and ‘thingy’.

As such, it wasn’t really a surprise that the name of Sunny Hundal’s new ’superblog’, Liberal Conspiracy, provoked some debate about the nature of liberalism when it was launched a month or so back. “My liberalism is more liberal than yours” and that type of thing.

I would agree that, looking at the list of contributors, ‘Socialist Conspiracy’ might have been a more apt title. For instance, Jonathan Calder noted the lack of Liberal Democrats involved.

It looks like a conspiracy against Liberals.

In fairness, apart from the title (which I actually find quite amusing — it makes a good point), the site is describing itself as liberal-left rather than just liberal. Fair enough I guess, although I always thought that people describing themselves as ‘liberal-left’ were really just socialists trying to duck jibes about the Judean People’s Front.

Even the design of the website looks rather more socialist than liberal. The dark maroon colour scheme, Impact font and spatter marks make it look like some kind of SWP-affiliated website.

Anyway, liberalism. The thing that vexes me about this is the fact that — you guessed it — I describe myself as a liberal. This is mostly because I don’t know of a better term. (If you don’t know about my political views, take a look at my position on the political compass.)

When I describe myself as a liberal that means I am talking about limited government. It can’t be no government. Liberalism can’t be the same as anarchism. The question becomes “how big can a government acceptably be?” And even the most hardcore libertarians (as in the free market kind, lest there be any confusion) see the need for a government in order to protect property rights and prevent force and fraud.

A liberal (excuse the pun) interpretation of that could still leave quite a wide scope for government intervention. It might not be too controversial, for instance, for a government to step in when an activity causes a clear and unambiguous negative externality.

The classic example of a negative externality is pollution. A factory may dump pollution into a river that runs into land owned by another person. The government is duty bound to protect this property, so it would have to step in. Incidentally, I don’t think this approach is too far removed from Mill’s “harm principle”.

Liberalism “doctorvee style” goes a bit further than this. This is why you would tend not to find me using the word ‘libertarian’ to describe my political views. In my view, the government should also step in to prevent certain kinds of market failure. For instance, public goods will be under-supplied by the market.

I find it difficult to imagine how, for instance, street lights would be paid for in a strictly free market system. I can be a (critical) supporter of the BBC and still describe myself as a liberal without flinching because the BBC is a non-rival, non-excludable public good.

But for me, the bottom line is to be suspicious of any extension of government power, and to resist it unless there is overwhelming evidence of the need for it. If you take civil liberties and economic efficiency seriously, there can be no other way. History tells us to treat governments with contempt. When did you ever hear of a riot happening because the government was too small?

Given that most left-wing solutions to any problem usually involve a liberal (sorry) dose of extra government intervention, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Liberal Conspiracy found itself at the receiving end of some jibes about the term ‘liberal-left’ being an oxymoron. I think this is a tad unfair. It is possible to be left-wing / collectivist and anti-government at the same time (all I can say is, good luck solving the free rider problem).

However, it is not difficult to find instances of the Liberal Conspiracy being distinctly illiberal. One of the first posts on the blog was defending the government’s idea of forcibly keeping children in education until the age of 18. Not only that, but the writer, Mike Ion, said:

I struggle to understand why anyone on the Left of British politics could oppose Gordon Brown’s moves

It’s quite funny how I decided that my version of liberalism should keep the ‘liberal’ name. Has anybody got any better ideas?

For what it’s worth, I think the ‘liberal-left’ should just drop the pretence and call themselves socialists.

As for the (free market) libertarians? David Farrer grappled with this a few weeks back, and lamented the fact that both the ‘liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ tags have been stolen by leftists. I like his suggestion of using the unstealable “Real Fascist Bastard” tag.

But perhaps they could take inspiration from one of Hayek’s favoured terms. How about calling themselves catallactists? It would be a bit difficult for a socialist to use that one with a straight face!

This is the third of my posts looking at different aspects of the 2007 Formula 1 season. I have discussed the drivers here and here.

This post is the first of two in which I will assess the constructors. Or is that teams? Toro Rosso and Super Aguri barely deserve to be called constructors. Nevertheless, this post will rank the teams on all aspects of their performance — on the track, in the pitlane and beyond. So don’t expect this list to mirror the Constructors’ Championship!

11 — Spyker–Ferrari

This is becoming a familiar story. Once again Spyker struggled all season to lift itself from the back of the grid. And once again it changed owners. Spyker Cars ran into major financial difficulties this year meaning that it been sold yet again. The team that was once called Midland and was once called Jordan is now called Team Force India. This makes it four name changes in as many years.

They seem to be in competition with Super Aguri to see who can have the most ridiculous sounding name. Super Augri and Team Force India both sound like bad super hero characters from a Japanese comic.

Anyway, back to this year’s performance. There is not much you can say really. They came up with an under-performing car, and hired largely under-performing drivers. Some people rate Adrian Sutil, but Christijan Albers, Sakon Yamamoto and Markus Winkelhock were never going to set the world alight.

The team worked hard to bring out a new chassis for mid-season. Embarrassingly, however, it failed its crash test so had to be delayed still further. Even so, when the car was eventually brought to the race track, it wasn’t much more competitive.

There were a few flashes of promise for the car. A particular stand-out was the Belgian Grand Prix, where Adrian Sutil spent a considerable amount of time in 12^th position before eventually finishing 14^th. However, even here the only other cars running behind Sutil at the end of the race were Super Aguris, and Sakon Yamamoto still managed to finish last of the classified runners.

At least at the following race, the rain-soaked Japanese Grand Prix, Adrian Sutil managed to score a point. Even this was a bit of a fluke though, as it was awarded in the stewards room after it was judged that Vitantonio Liuzzi passed him under yellow flags. In the following two races, Spyker were back to their usual positions on the back row.

Still, a point is a point and this was enough to save Spyker’s blushes. They didn’t finish at the bottom of the table. Even this is a pyrrhic victory though. The only team that finished behind them was McLaren, who built arguably the best car this year and had their points taken away by an over-zealous FIA.

They have taken Minardi’s place as Formula 1’s perennial under-achievers. But thanks to their status as a temporary home for naive businessmen, they completely lack the romance that made Minardi a fans’ favourite.

10 — Honda

Oh dear. What an embarrassingly bad season Honda have had. Even Nick Fry sounded pretty pessimistic at times. I thought I’d sooner see the apocalypse.

It started off with a cheesy PR stunt to paint the Earth on the car in a supposed bid to highlight environmental concerns. While this is a laudable enough idea, it came off badly. Those in the know observed that Honda probably only did this because they couldn’t find any sponsors. Meanwhile, the reaction from non-F1 fans that I saw invariably pointed out the hypocrisy of a energy-greedy F1 team trying to boast about its environmental credentials.

Then there was the car itself, which was about as disastrous as it could get. Early in the season the drivers reported that the car had a tendency to behave unpredictably under breaking, which is hardly going to give the driver the confidence to push to the limit.

While this problem was seemingly ironed out, the car had a more fundamental issue: a lack of speed caused by fundamentally flawed aerodynamics. Undoubtedly part of the reason for this must be the inexperience of the car’s designer, Shuhei Nakamoto. Nakamoto’s experience is in motorcycles, and apparently he had never designed a car in his life. It also seems that there is a serious flaw with Honda’s wind tunnel.

The result was an embarrassingly awful car. Good reliability, but precious little speed. Honda’s RA107 chassis was regularly outpaced by the Super Aguri SA07, which was essentially last year’s Honda car. It really is something to think that Honda would have been better off with last year’s car. Every time the drivers were interviewed they sounded utterly demoralised. And who could blame them?

Thanks to some heroic performances from Jenson Button, Honda managed to score 6 points, and it could have been more at Japan. Given how bad it all looked at the start of the season, that is pretty good going. But it is a far cry from the 86 points scored in 2006 or the 119 points they scored when they finished second in the Constructors’ Championship just three years ago.

At least Honda are now doing the right thing to rectify the problem. Hiring Ross Brawn — one of Formula 1’s greatest talents — was a master-stroke. Results might not come as early as next year, but undoubtedly Honda will be on their way up again (not that they could possibly go much further down).

9 — Scuderia Toro Rosso–Ferrari

If you are a naive businessman looking to buy Team Force India in around ten months’ time, look at Toro Rosso for an example of how not to run your team.

The first thing to point out is probably the disgraceful treatment of the drivers. They refused to confirm Scott Speed as one of their drivers until about 5 minutes before the flight for Melbourne was about to leave. This is hardly the way to get your drivers in the right frame of mind.

Things went from bad to worse as it became clear that team bosses Franz Tost and Gerhard Berger were none too pleased with their drivers. Barbed comments were constantly being made about driver performances through the press and even in the team’s own press releases.

Things came to a head at the European Grand Prix where it was rumoured that Franz Tost had physically attacked Scott Speed during an altercation. Tost had blamed Speed for spinning in the rain, even though several other drivers — including the much-lauded Lewis Hamilton — had done exactly the same thing. The row was the end of Scott Speed’s relationship with Toro Rosso, and Formula 1.

It seemed as though Vitantonio Liuzzi was not in favour with his bosses either. It was obvious by mid-season that they didn’t want him there. How Berger and Tost expected Liuzzi to get better under these circumstances is still unknown.

On the track, Toro Rosso’s performance leaves a lot to be desired as well. With this year’s Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull chassis and this year’s Ferrari engine, you would expect them to be running a lot higher than they were.

Despite those woes, the team showed considerable improvement towards the end of the season. The Toro Rosso car seemed particularly strong in the wet, and Sebastian Vettel in particular put in some great performances towards the end of the season. They came close to scoring in Japan, and scored a massive 8 points in China.

8 — Toyota

Ugh, who cares any more? Really. It is the same old story. Gigantic budget, precious little to show for it. The team is run by committee. The management has its head in the sand. We all know the story. It shows no sign of changing.

How long will it take before the Toyota big wigs start properly taking notice? My hunch is that they would sooner pull out of the sport altogether rather than make any real changes.

For once, Ralf Schumacher is right. The fact that Toyota refused to speak to Ross Brawn says it all.

7 — Super Aguri–Honda

They might sound like the title of a discount NES game, but Super Aguri are in fact a wonder of Formula 1. They might have their chassis made by Honda. But let’s not forget that it’s last year’s Honda. And beyond that they seem to get very little help from Honda at all.

The odds are against them, yet they still manage to put in highly respectable performances. Regularly outpacing the Honda ‘A’ team, Super Aguri have been hard done by in the Constructors’ Championship. In the end they only scored 4 points to Honda’s 6. But the reality was so different.

The highlight of the season came in Canada where Takuma Sato pulled off a brilliant pass on Fernando Alonso to net Super Aguri 3 points. Delightful.

Apart from the odd sponsorship difficulty, they are fairly anonymous off the track. Especially given the events of this year, that is how it should be. In this era of big budget manufacturers and drinks companies crushing the privateers, Super Aguri have become the small team that everybody loves.

I just hope they don’t have to put up with that dire Honda car next year.

6 — Renault

I don’t like to see Renault doing badly, but 2007 was a bit of a stinker for them. The team has looked exceptionally strong since 2004, and it has taken two Drivers’ and two Constructors’ Championships in the process. But this year’s car was obviously not up to those standards. Pat Symonds said that in Australia the car was almost as bad as the Honda.

I don’t things were quite that bad. But for a Championship-winning team, it is shocking that they were never in a position to win a race all season (except, arguably, in Japan). They were comprehensively outpaced by BMW all season long.

The departure of Fernando Alonso clearly hit them hard. Indecision left them lumbered with the increasingly sluggish Giancarlo Fisichella and the wet-behind-the-ears Heikki Kovalainen. Kovalainen had a disappointing start to the season and later on in the year Fisichella was becoming badly covered in cobwebs.

Now Renault once again can’t seem to make their mind up about drivers. Despite impressing, Heikki Kovalainen seems to be left without a drive as the team seems set on promoting Nelsinho Piquet and wooing back Fernando Alonso.

Worst of all, events since the end of the season have been highly damaging. With McLaren having been put through the wringer for so-called “spying” allegations, Renault now face allegations which are every bit as serious as (if not more so than) what McLaren faced. Moreover, Renault have already confessed that more engineers knew about the drawings than McLaren.

It’s difficult to see how it could be worse for Renault. They won’t succeed in wooing Alonso under these circumstances, especially since Alonso has just escaped a similar mess at McLaren. And if the FIA is consistent (I know, but bear with me), Renault are headed for a huge penalty. And if that happens, chances are that Carlos Ghosn will pull the plug.

Those are my thoughts on the not-so-good six constructors. Check back next Sunday to see my top five ranking.