Road Maintenance and Sarcasm
Posted: Mon 16 August, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Norfolk, People, Stupidity, Travel Leave a comment »Over the weekend, one of the significant crossroads near us was completely closed for re-surfacing. The problem was that at least one route to get to that crossroads didn’t have any mention of said road closure.
Which means I get to send sarcastic emails to Norfolk County Council. (Again)
To whom it may concern,
I’d just like to congratulate the person(s) involved in sorting out signage for the road closure in Hingham this weekend.
If (as many people did) you took the road from Little Ellingham towards Hingham using Hingham Road->Little Ellingham Road -> Attleborough Road to the crossroads in Hingham, there was not *ONE* sign saying that the road ahead was closed. The signage was in fact before this junction (at roughly the spot of the red circle in this map)
This meant that anyone coming through on the route from Little Ellingham came round the corner to find the entire road closed off, and then had to turn round and go back. This also had the effect of stuffing a significant amount of the newly resurfaced road before the junction.
Of course, the road from Little Ellingham isn’t that heavily used. Except when Little Ellingham has its Vintage Working Weekend event- yes, the weekend just passed.
I look forward to any response Norfolk Council deigns to give in explanation of why there was no thought given to this route, or signage on it.
Sincerely
Lyle
I know it’ll do bugger-all good, but I felt better having written it. And that’s what matters.
Repeatedly Released
Posted: Fri 30 July, 2010 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »Sometimes you look at a story and think “Oh, there’s got to be a lot more than that behind it”.
In this case, the story was about Arran Coghlan, the Cheshire ‘businessman’ who’s now been cleared of murder on three separate occasions. That’s going some. But really, the guy’s either incredibly unlucky to be caught up in these types of situations, or he’s involved in some way or another.
The three cases were :
- Cleared in 1996 of shooting Chris Little dead at the wheel of his Mercedes in Marple, Stockport.
- Stood trial for the murder of drug dealer David Barnshaw, who was kidnapped and forced to drink petrol before being burned alive in the back of a car in Stockport in 2001
- (The most recent) accused of shooting dead Stephen Akinyemi in a fight at his £2m home in Alderley Edge in February
Additionally, on New Year’s Day 2008, Coghlan was stabbed in the head, face and back in a frenzied attack in Cobdens Bar in Stockport.
There’s also the ‘small’ matter of an assault charge in an unrelated matter, for which he will be back at Liverpool Crown Court for a mention hearing in September.
You look at that story and you just have to assume that his businesses can’t be completely legitimate. That’s a lot of trouble for one businessman to be in, isn’t it?
Speed Cameras
Posted: Wed 28 July, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Driving, People, Politics, Thoughts 2 Comments »It’s currently looking like one of the victims of this new political Age of Austerity (AKA The”Can we cut it? Yes, we can!” years) will be the funding for speed-cameras. Sorry, ‘safety cameras’.
So far Oxfordshire is one of the first to say they’ll be turning the fixed cameras off, which will save them some £600,000 a year.
I have to say that I really don’t have an issue with this – I think that getting rid of the cameras will (in most cases) actually make the roads a bit safer. Yes, there are rat-runs where people are stupid and drive too fast – but in my experience, speed cameras cause far more dangerous driving than they prevent.
One prime example of this is the A11/A14 around Cambridge (and I think I’ve written about this before) – the intersection where they join has a speed camera just after it. I’ve seen far too many near-accidents at that point, where people have been feeding in just fine from the A11 at 70mph(ish) and then have to slap the brakes on because the people in front of them have dropped from 70mph to 50mph to get past the camera. Yes, it’s down to human stupidity to drop to 50mph – 70mph is fine for going past that particular camera – but it’s still a much more dangerous junction because of the speed camera.
You see the same thing all over the place – people suddenly slowing from an already-legal speed, just to “make sure” they don’t get done by the camera.
So yeah, I think that getting rid of the cameras might just be an improvement to road safety in general, rather than a detriment to it.
Ferrari and F1
Posted: Mon 26 July, 2010 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the weekend at the German Grand Prix Ferrari were deeply unsubtle about their team orders, and forced one driver to give way to the other, allowing Fernando Alonso to win the grand prix. For this, they’ve been fined $100,000 (approx £65,000) but haven’t lost points or anything.
The fine is pretty much insignificant to Ferrari, and this just sends out the message that it’s OK to run to team orders, you’ll just fork out a bit of cash. (In Formula 1 terms, £65,000 is probably a new engine or something)
If the race stewards had really wanted to send a message that running to team orders (and making it public knowledge) then they would have docked Ferrari all the points they gained from both Alonso and Massa, as well as all the manufacturer’s championship points from the race. That would’ve been a significant loss.
Personally I don’t have that great an issue with team orders. Sometimes they make sense – for example, if there were a standing order that if your team-mate is coming through, you’re not quite so aggressive at trying to block them, so you don’t wipe out both cars and stuff the team’s race completely. But the clear-cut engineering of who they want to win, that is (to me) not on. If you know there will be team orders like that, it puts F1 at the same level of competitiveness as professional wrestling.