Miss Transit
Posted: Sat 19 April, 2014 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Public Transport, Travel Leave a comment »Back in September, I wrote a small bit of cynicism about Luton’s Guided Busway, and why I was rather unconvinced about the reasoning behind the current glut of Busways, Tramways.
This week the first operating quarter’s passenger figures were released – and they’re only 41% of what they were projected to be.
Luton Borough Council revealed there were 346,854 passenger journeys between October and December 2013.
The 2008 busway business case projected usage of 9,000 daily trips, indicating 828,000 journeys for its first quarter.
But of course there’s someone else to blame – and it’s not the council, nor is it the bus companies involved in the project.
“If you want to blame anybody, blame the bankers,” [Colin Chick, the director of regeneration] said.
“When the country starts to recover and sites are developed and we create new jobs in that area and the airport expansion goes through, within a few months those figures will go back to what was anticipated.”
I remain unconvinced – but apparently the figures for the second quarter will be published soon, so it should be fun to see what they reveal…
Skewing Perceptions
Posted: Tue 15 April, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, News 1 Comment »This story from Business Insider contains one of the worst (or cleverest, depending on your perspective) graphs in history.
The story is about gun deaths in Florida, and contains the graph below, created by Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement.
Looks like deaths went down after the “Stand Your Ground” law came in, doesn’t it?
But no, look at that Y axis on the chart (or the bold ‘totals’). The scale is upside down – so gun deaths actually increased after that law came in.
I can hear Blue Witch gnashing her teeth about that graph already…
Breaking Things
Posted: Sun 13 April, 2014 Filed under: Creativity, Cynicism, Geeky, News, Security, Stupidity, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »Last Friday there was a big(ish) story in the BBC and Media about the convicted paedophile who is requesting his laptop – complete with ‘non-obscene’ images of one of his victims. Dorset Police were quoted in the story as saying it would be ‘unlawful’ to delete/remove those images from the laptop, because they’re not technically obscene or showing nudity.
Now, aside from the fact that there’s something so blatantly wrong with this entire process (and why wasn’t the laptop just removed/destroyed as part of the evidence and ‘proceeds of crime’ bollocks?) then surely this is a perfect opportunity for a tragic IT-related ‘accident’?
Make sure it’s believable, could happen, and is feasible, and it’d be the devil’s own job to prove anything.
For example, a liquid spillage. Or leaving the machine next to – I don’t know – some kind of large magnet. Maybe the metal scanner in a doorway. Or just mis-filed in such a way that a) it can’t be found or b) it got destroyed. Lost property, IT security, avoidance of possibility for divulging person information.
There are many, many ways in which this could’ve never been an issue. The mis-filing and “sorry, can’t find it” would be easiest (and probably hardest to be disproved) but any of them would work nicely. It’s more of a problem now, because they’ve admitted that a) it exists and b) it’s currently in an OK state. Ooops.
People Carriers
Posted: Fri 4 April, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, BMW Drivers, Charm School, Commuting, Cynicism, Driving, Travel 1 Comment »As has been noted before on here, I do a fair amount of driving on any given week, mainly for commuting. It’s about 400-500 miles per week at the moment – although I’ve had greater mileages, and lesser ones.
One of the things I notice during those drives is how drivers do seem to group up, and that certain groups are infinitely worse than others. There’s always the usual culprits – BMWs, Audis, and White Vans, but there’s another one I notice more over time. MPVs, or people carriers.
I don’t know if it’s because BMW et al don’t actually do people carrier vehicles, but it does seem that MPV drivers are on a par with BMW drivers. In particular it seems that Citroen Xsara Picasso (now renamed the C4 Picasso, I think) are a breed of shit drivers. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen these vacuous bell-ends approach roundabouts in the wrong lanes, cut across lines of traffic, cruise across busy roundabouts, stick their cars into the flow of traffic, weave across multiple carriageways, and generally act like cunts.
So yes, welcome to the ‘shit drivers’ group.
- BMWs and Audis
- White Van drivers
- MPVs – and Picasso drivers in particular.