Permit

Without a doubt in modern life we have far too many rules and regulations, one is constantly having to either give ones permission or seek the permission of others to do virtually everything and I suspect most people are so used to this that they don’t even notice.

When parking one’s car virtually anywhere nowadays you need a permit, granted by displaying the ticket you have purchased from the handy machine, assuming you have the right change or a phone and a credit card about your person. I’m sure when I was a boy and I’ll admit that was some considerable time ago, but there used to be car parking with no permit, i.e. no ticket and no charge. Tell that to the plethora of NHS managers running our hospital car parks and they would laugh in your face.

I recently purchased car insurance and during the telephone conversation I was asked to listen to a long list of terms and conditions before they would permit me to complete the transaction. Like me I think most people pay scant regard to the list of conditions and may well have agreed to sacrifice their first born child rather than make a claim.

One of the permits that I’m not at all keen on is the permit required to drive into the London Congestion Zone, now I realise the powers that be think it justified to charge us for the pollution in London but if they removed the bus lanes, cycle lanes, slow traffic lights and all the other obstructions stopping us proceeding at a decent speed, there would be no pollution, ergo, no charge.

Even something as simple as making a phone call requires permission by having to enter one’s security number before proceeding, there should be a way of setting up your phone which takes into account the fact that my phone rarely leaves my pocket and is never used where it may be stolen. I am willing to take a chance on the odds of it getting stolen, which if it were to happen, any thief worth their salt would have it re-chipped in no time at all, negating the need for my access code anyway.

When you start to think about it, you realise just how many things require you to give permission before being able to continue, it wasn’t that many years ago when using a credit card, the permit required was your signature on the paper slip. Gradually more and more information was requested, I seem to remember the first security numbers were just three numbers, then four and finally, (at the moment) four and the addition of the three on the back.

Almost everything you use on the internet requires a password, once again it started all lower case, then required an upper case letter too, then the addition of a number, and finally the addition of a symbol, which is all well and good when your computer is set to remember for you and fills it in automatically. However if someone were to gain access to your computer is considerably less secure than inputting a shorter pass code, not remembered by the computer but one you can remember in your head.

It’s quite amazing how many things require pass codes etc before allowing access in this modern day and age, I could continue moaning about them for ages but time does not permit.