Swindon Borough Council are considering getting rid of their speed cameras. Roderick Bluh, the Council Leader, offered a truly awful argument for doing so on today’s BBC lunchtime news:

When you fine a motorist for speeding, he’s already been speeding. Would it not be best to invest and make sure that speeding is prevented in the first place?

There’s nothing wrong with the idea that it’s better to prevent a crime than to punish one. If we can implement measures (e.g. advertising, improved signage, etc.) to encourage drivers to slow down, then that’s great. However, whatever measures we take to reduce speeding are only going to be partially successful; there will still be some people out there who break the speed limit. So what should we do about them?

There’s no reason why, having done all we can to prevent people from breaking the law, we can’t also try to catch and punish people who break the law. The first problem with Bluh’s argument is therefore that it restricts the options, trying to force us to choose between prevention and punishment when we can in fact have both.

The second problem is that it ignores the fact that speed cameras act as a deterrant. If you know that if you speed you’ll get caught and fined, then there’s a good chance that you’ll slow down. Bluh’s argument thus generalises from the fact that speed cameras don’t stop some crimes (those that they detect) to the idea that they don’t stop any crimes. Speed cameras may not stop people who are fined from speeding, but they do stop plenty of people who aren’t fined from speeding.

Even without those problems, however, there would still have been reason to worry about Bluh’s argument. If its logic worked, and we should get rid of speed cameras because by the time we catch and fine someone for speeding it’s too late to prevent them from speeding, then we should get rid of more than speed cameras. When the police catch and imprison a murderer, his victim is already dead; should we therefore forget about trying to catch and imprison murderers? Bluh’s argument isn’t just an attack on speed cameras, it’s an attack on crime detection and punishment in general, so goes far too far to be plausible.

Whatever decision the Council reaches, hopefully they won’t get rid of the cameras on the basis of the argument above.

In 2003, sprinter Dwain Chambers was caught taking the banned steroid THG. He served a two-year ban, and has now turned informer to the anti-doping authorities and returned to the track. Earlier this week he ran the fastest 100m by a British athlete this year, and he intends to win a place on the British Olympic team at the trials just over a week from now. He looks to have a great chance.

The problem is that the British Olympic Association (BOA) has a policy of not selecting athletes that have failed drug tests, whether they’ve served their bans or not. No matter how well Chambers does in the trials, the BOA won’t pick him unless they’re forced to.

Chambers will challenge the legality of this policy in court, arguing that it constitutes an illegal restraint of trade. He hopes to get a ruling from the court saying that the BOA have to pick him if he does well enough at the trials.

In response to Chambers’ challenge, the British Athletes’ Commission (BAC) has taken up a petition calling for the selection policy to stay in place. Over a hundred athletes have signed, including big names such as Steve Redgrave and Kelly Holmes. The BAC’s Peter Gardner explained, “The petition carries weight because it has support from many athletes.”

He’s wrong. The petition doesn’t carry much weight at all.

The question here concerns a point of law: Does the BOA’s policy of not selecting athletes that have failed drug tests constitute an illegal restraint of trade? The petition only tells us that certain people approve of the BOA policy; it doesn’t tell us anything about whether it is legal or not. The policy may be popular, perhaps even have near unanimous support among athletes, but still break the law. This appeal to popularity shouldn’t persuade the court.

The presence of big names on the list doesn’t change this. Holmes and Redgrave have plenty of Olympic gold medals between them, but being a faster runner or rower than anyone else doesn’t give you much insight into employment law. To suggest that Chambers’ ban should be upheld because some great British Olympians say so would be an inappropriate appeal to authority.

I sympathise with the athletes that have signed the petition: I hope that the selection policy is legal and can be maintained. But the petition itself isn’t evidence that should sway the court.

Tonight it’s the final of The Apprentice, the ‘job interview from hell’. After weeks of bitching, back-stabbing, and making (usually very small amounts of) money doing things they’ve never done before, one of the candidates will finally hear the words “You’re hired”. They’ll then get a hefty salary and a chance to learn how to manage a business at the feet of Sir Alan Sugar.

Clearly the programme is more about entertainment than recruitment, but let’s take it at face value for a moment. The interview process is supposed to be Sir Alan’s way of finding the best of Britain’s emerging entrepreneurs. But is success on the tasks likely to indicate that a candidate has the skills needed for success in business?

The tasks certainly test some relevant skills. If you’re a good salesperson, then you’re likely to do better on many of the tasks than if you’re a bad one. If you present well, then that will help on some tasks too. And if you have some basic business acumen then you’re less likely to end up trying to flog a Ferrari to people shopping for cheap groceries and cut-price clothing than if you don’t.

However, there are a number of reasons for thinking that the process is less than ideal.

For a start, the tasks are too hands-on. In the real world, you won’t find many managers identifying fish or staying up all night pressing hotel laundry, but being unable (or unwilling) to do these kinds of things is exactly what gets some candidates fired. Watching the candidates outsource work to people who can do it better and more efficiently than they can wouldn’t make for great television, but it would give us more insight into their business skills.

Then there’s the problem that the process tests for the wrong kind of people skills. Most businesses have a clear management structure, and everyone knows their place in it. If you’re in charge, then everyone knows you’re in charge, and attempts to usurp your authority will be relatively rare. As a Project Manager in The Apprentice, your team members will all think of themselves as Managers temporarily ‘acting down’; it’s understood that there’s no particular reason why you’re the boss this time, and that you won’t be the boss for long, and your team will consequently be more difficult to manage and more liable to revolt. As Helene, who has plenty of real-world management experience put it, “I’m not used to having to work with fifteen gob-shites”.

Even more worrying is the fact that the tasks actively encourage unsustainable business practices. In most businesses, it pays to build a good relationship with a customer; selling to an existing customer tends to be much cheaper and easier than finding a new one. In The Apprentice, however, long-term business relationships are worthless. The tasks are never about which team comes back with the most credibility and contacts, and always about who comes back with the biggest pile of cash. Candidates who rip off their customers will do much better in the tasks than those who provide the kind of value that will make customers want to come back for more.

All of this shows that the candidate that’s most successful in the tasks isn’t necessarily the candidate that’s demonstrated the best business skills.