An important appeal court judgment on bus wheelchair spaces.

The court of appeal has issued an important and interesting judgement about the extent to which bus companies have to enforce their policies about the wheelchair space. The introduction sets out the scope of the issue:

1. This appeal has attracted some public interest, so it is important to be clear about the issue. It is not about whether non-wheelchair users should move out of the wheelchair space on a bus in order to accommodate a passenger in a wheelchair. Of course they should if that is possible. Nor is it about whether mothers standing in the wheelchair space with a child in a folding buggy should fold their buggies in order to make way for a wheelchair user. Of course they should if that is possible. Non-wheelchair users, unlike wheelchair users, will normally have a choice about which part of the bus to sit or stand in. Common decency and respect for wheelchair users should mean that other passengers make way for them. What is at issue is whether the bus company must have a policy to compel all other passengers to vacate the wheelchair space irrespective of the reason why they are in it, on pain of being made to leave the bus if they do not, leaving no discretion to the driver.
2. For the reasons that follow I have concluded that that is a step too far.

The original judge had said "alteration to the conditions of carriage which would require a non-disabled passenger occupying a wheelchair space to move from it if a wheelchair user needed it; coupled with an enforcement policy that would require non-disabled passengers to leave the bus if they failed to comply with that requirement." but First had decided to appeal based on a case in Middlesborough having an opposite outcome and have won.

While this is a failure for the absolute right for a wheelchair user to claim the space what makes the judgement interesting is the reasoning of each of the judges involved. As per usual there appear to be gaps in the legal frameworks as passed down by parliament. There is also the consideration about how far a bus driver can reasonably go in enforcing the company's policy. There is also a lot of associated discourse, for while they all allowed the appeal, each judge wanted to have a say on steps that the bus company could take without a change in the law. Mainly trying to reduce the probability of disadvantage to any wheelchair users and to prevent the policy being perceived as “first come first served” by other users of the space.

So the bus company must take all reasonable steps short of compelling passengers to move from the wheelchair space. We have not had argument on this but provisionally I consider that the bus company must provide training for bus drivers and devise strategies that bus drivers can lawfully adopt to persuade people to clear the wheelchair space when needed by a wheelchair user. Bus drivers have to use their powers of persuasion with passengers who can move voluntarily. The driver may even decline for a short while to drive on until someone moves out of the wheelchair space. There is no risk of liability to such passengers in requesting them (firmly) to move, if they can, because if they cannot safely do so, they will not do so. The bus company should also have an awareness campaign and put up notices designed to make other passengers more aware of the needs of wheelchair users. It might also have to conduct surveys to find out when people are likely to travel and what their needs are so that it can do what it can to provide an appropriate number of buses for everyone.

I am not, at the time of writing, a wheelchair user. I do follow equality issues especially to do with public transport as I often need to take use of priority seats. This sort of judgment could lead to clearer equality law, but as traditional, I’ll not be holding my breath. It is of course a great shame that we can't just rely on "common decency and respect" so people have to fight these sorts of cases.

I recommend reading the full judgement.

The death of my online presence #DEBill #GE2010

It is likely my days are numbered, I will not be with you for much longer, my only hope is you will miss me when I am gone.
My online self is about to die, cut off from the data supply which is as vital to it existing as oxygen is to my real world self.
Firstly all the pubs, cafes and other places I like to frequent will have to stop providing usable WiFi as it will be too much of a business risk.
Then my home connection will be turned off, time will see exploits against even the highest grades of wireless encryption currently in use; so it won't be long before people can download files willy nilly using it and have me cut off when I am accused of "illegal file sharing". This may even become a method of attack against people to deny them service. Even if I then switch to a wired internal network it will be too late.
Finally as far as personal access go I have my dongle. Since sim card cloning has been around for years and over the air attacks on mobile data traffic have been shown in the theoretical space that won't be safe from "technical measures" for long.
To begin with while all this is going on I will have my work internet connection, but how much longer for? Given that the Digital Economy Bill is going to kill off the digital economy in a fruitless attempt to shore up the bad business models of BPI members etc, the company I work for could fail and die and I doubt that I'll have much time on the internet when I try and make a go of being a cook.

Illegal to say illegal

I really wish it was illegal to say something was illegal when it wasn't. Some pubs do it when they don't want to serve certain drinks that look wrong to the untutored eye like a Black and Tan or snakebite. Instead of being honest with the customer and saying "the landlord won't let us" or "it is against the pub company policy" they lie about the law thinking people are less likely to argue.
It happened to a woman in front of me in the supermarket the other day, I don't know if it was bad staff training that meant the checkout staff didn't realise the difference between the law on the sale of Paracetamol and painkillers in general, or perhaps he just thought ibuprofen contained paracetamol, or it is a badly implemented a company policy but still.
I suppose it would just be another law that people objected to you pointing out to them (oh the irony) given they generally go into utterly nasty defensive mode when you call them on their mistake/lie and given how shitty people are when you point out they are breaking the rules themselves; this mostly happens with traffic regulations and the smoking ban, not had to say "excuse me, do you know holding up a building society with a shotgun is against the law" in a while.