Author: Richard

Total Loss

| Richard

Two items of news concerning Wilf:

  1. The insurance company has declared it a total loss which means they’ve decided to pay up. The argument now will be over a valuation, but I can back up the value of the bike by a PDF print of the MCN used bikes of that model for sale earlier this week that were all well over 4,000. We shall see.
  2. Talking of total losses, the Metropolitan Police have written to me to say that due to the lack of evidence they’ve dropped the investigation. Hmm. I wonder if the lack of evidence is as a result of the lack of any investigation? They decided not to send SOCOs to fingerprint anything and they didn’t send any officers to talk to the neighbours. Too much like hard work, I suppose…

If You’ve Done Nothing Wrong…

| Richard

One of the most trite sayings that sheeple come out with from time to time when human rights issues come up is “if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you’ve nothing to fear”.

I always counter that with “define ‘wrong’ now and in the future”. What may be acceptable now might not be acceptable in the future.

Taking speeding and speed limits. Now I regularly speed but I believe I am a safer driver when ‘pressing on’ given that my attention is fully on the road ahead, traffic, etc. The other trite line trotted out by the Government is that “speed kills”. If that truly was the case, there would be no Traffic Division police officers alive, would there? It’s the inappropriate use of speed that’s the issue, but that’s more difficult to police without human intervention.

The Nanny State has announced that it intends to reduce speed limits where there is a higher risk of accidents but that’s bollocks as usual: speed limits will simply be reduced for no good reason as a revenue generator.

A case in point: the section of road between Wymondham and Thickthorn Services on the old A11 in Norfolk (now the B1172) used to have a 40mph limit in Wymondham, then a national limit, then a 50mph limit through Hethersett before becoming a national limit again.

Over time, the 50mph limit has been extended towards Wymondham despite there being no additional housing or changes in use, etc.

I noticed recently that the limits have now been changed to a 40mph limit in Wymondham, then a 50mph limit then a 40mph limit through Hethersett. Why’s this?

Similarly other rural roads in Norfolk have had 50mph limits imposed despite no changes of use or apparent increases in crashes.

Ridiculous!

Stolen

| Richard

I’ve just got in after almost a fortnight away and decided to check the garage before heading off to bed.

The Gixxer has gone: stolen. The remnants of the padlock which had been bolt-cropped are still there but the thieving bastards even took the Abus chain with them. The Met. Police have been telephoned and should be in touch within the 24-48 hours to process it. I mentioned the lock and that they might be able to do something with the bits but the operator was non-committal… I doubt they’ll even bother interviewing the neighbours, even though one is almost always there. It has been alpha-dotted and marked with SmartWater, so who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky and get it back.

So if you’re offered a low-mileage, immaculate 2004 Suzuki GSX-R750K4 engine number R741-100646 VIN/frame number JS1B3111200100375 it’s mine!

Video Camera Mount

| Richard

I’ve successfully used a Sportbikecam camera mount for my Kawasaki ZRX1200R for some years now, using a large Sony DV camcorder. I’d recently bought a much smaller Sony DCRSR57E Handycam Camcorder With Built-in 80GB Hard Disc Drive (61hrs) – Silver from Amazon – it was far cheaper from there than from anywhere else, online or on the high street.

So with another trackday looming at Rockingham next month, through the Motorcycle Folly as usual, and a three day special at Jerez in September with Tracksense (not sure whether to use Wilf or the ZRX for this one), I thought I’d better get myself sorted with another mount.

I’ve therefore ordered an SBC24 through Camera-Mount.com who are the UK distributors. I’ll post how it goes in terms of fitting, etc. when it arrives.

CrapBerry

| Richard

{sigh}

Another attempt at adding a number to the contacts list on my BlackBerry Curve 8900 ends in an uncaught exception, a useless phone and a reboot that takes longer even than a PC!

This is despite my having gone through the troubleshooting of deleting the contacts database and recreating it from scratch – itself requiring me to install the BlackBerry Desktop Software that I don’t want or need and which itself failed to install properly on my laptop.

BlackBerry = FAIL

Oh and a tip: rather than having to remove the battery to get it to reboot after an uncaught exception, use alt-rightshift-del to do the ctrl-alt-del PC equivalent.

Le Sigh

| Richard

Not a good day today.

Started off OK with the second flight out to Dublin from London City Airport. As I was about to board the plane, I received an e-mail from the Client asking to postpone our meetng by half an hour until 3,00pm. Not too worrying as I wouldn’t hace to leave site until 4.30pm anyway.

By the time I’d landed, they’d e-mailed to cancel the meeting but my big boss had said I’d go along anyway as I was on a plane!

As it turned out the meeting – further dwlayed by another half hour – went OK and I headed back to Dublin airport, grabbing an expensive sandwich and Guinness when I got there.

Boarded my Air France flight back to London City Airport and off we went: flight due in at around 8.10pm.

As we began to descend into London, the Captain told us it was stormy over London and lo and behold the flight was a bit rock and roll but we gained height again and were told we were stacking due to standing water on the runway.

After a while, we were then told that due to our low fuel and the fact that City was still closed, we’d now be diverting to London Stansted. Ah…

Finally on the ground, we then waited in the Arrivals Terminal for news and were told we would be getting a coach back down to London.

And so it was that at around 10.00pm we boarded the coach. It’s going to be a long night…

Norfolk Traffic Police

| Richard

Thank you very much indeed, Norfolk Constabulary. Thank you for costing my company a day’s lost fees. Thank you for wasting £60 of my money for the hotel room I’m in now. Thank you for doing absolutely sod-all to help the hundreds of motorists your incompetence incovenienced.

What am I talking about?

Today I had a dental appointment in Wymondham at 11.15am, so I left London in plenty of time. By 10.50am, I was 20 minutes away (maximum) on the dual carriageway section of the A11 Thetford By-Pass between the Brandon and Watton interchanges when I had to come to a halt. Why? Some dickhead driving a tractor and towing a trailer of vegetables had managed to turn the whole thing over and blocked the southbound carriageway. Remember, I was heading northbound.

Like a well-oiled team of professionals, the police’s traffic division and the Transport Agency’s Incident Support Unit had mobilised to get things sorted out.

Between then and 11.45am, I sat in stationary traffic and watched as most of the police vehicles drove off having done … er … nothing at all. One police motorcycle went down the southbound carriageway, around the roundabout and then back up the southbound carriageway the wrong way for no good reason at all. Maybe he was getting a bit warm in the summer sun and just fancied going for a spin to cool himself down. Bless!

Traffic announcements confirmed that the southbound carriageway was blocked and that there were long southbound queues. Apparently the traffic going north was slow as people were slowing down to take a look, according to the AA team.

Obviously that was as far removed from reality as the Labour Party are from unity. As I discovered when I did eventually get past the next roundabout, the southbound lane was actually flowing pretty well. And no-one was rubbernecking in my lane – we simply couldn’t get past the roundabout because of the southbound traffic effectively turning it into a lane of southbound traffic.

In the olden days, a policeman or policemen would stand there directing traffic like human traffic lights to ensure that traffic flowed as freely as possible every way, but instead this bunch of lazy idiots just wanted to sit around with their thumbs up their arses doing absolutely sod-all.

And as a result, all the northbound traffic had been at a standstill for almost an hour.

So I missed my appointment thanks to their complete lack of any positive action. Well done you! It’s really no surprise I have absolutely zero respect for them. They always set low standards and consistently fail to achieve them in my mind.

I won’t even start to go on about how South Blunderside Humberside Police have failed to take any real action against a harassing, violent and abusive drunkard (with overtones of child abuse)…

And thanks to the AA’s radio traffic reporters for rubbing it in by reporting absolute crap and insulting those of us who were stuck in the jams the police had caused.

The Apprentice and BBC News Coverage

| Richard

Dear BBC News,

Is there any particular reason why you have seen fit to inflict so much coverage of your reality TV show “The Apprentice” on your BBC News viewers?

I am not sure that anything that a bunch of wannabe yuppies do whilst fawning over some businessman in a glorified job interview is that newsworthy. Or is the BBC planning to devote similar hours of news coverage to other executive recruitment from here on in? Or maybe BBC Breakfast News will begin covering Channel 4’s “Big Brother” and interview evicted housemates the following day as well, in the name of balance.

No, I don’t think so either…

Yours sincerely,

A Pissed-Off Viewer

Football Supporters

| Richard

I wonder if there is any particular reason why the manufacturers of football and rugby replica kits decided not to make them from cotton or a similar absorbent material?

Maybe they just want their customers to stink of BO after a wee while…