Stupidity

Speeding

| Richard

On the same subject, I was pondering about speeding today: a lovely day, a wide dual-carriageway that had opened up to three lanes, the fairly light traffic moving well, etc.

The traffic was flowing well at speeds of between 50 and 100mph, I’d guess, with no bunching, lots of space being left, etc. Nice and safe.

And then we came across a rare sight on our roads these days: a marked Volvo estate doing slightly under 70mph. All the alert drivers slowed down to 70mph and for the few miles until the police car turned off, it was horrible. The previously free-flowing road was now snarled up with everyone keeping to the limit and thus taking much longer to overake the slower moving commercial vehicles which in turn was causing longer queues of traffic and further bunching. It was clearly a far more dangerous place to be with so many other vehicles in a smaller area than they otherwise would be taking up.

But of course, that wasn’t the point, was it? Forget good driving: everyone was having to simply obey an arbitrary limit set in 1965 when the average family car was hard pressed to hit 70mph and even more hard pressed to slow down from that speed. Ridiculous!

The Trouble with Speed Cameras…

| Richard

So after people decided that the “scameras” were being located for maximum revenue potential rather than to actually save lives – pouring scorn on the pathetic “safety camera” doublespeak that our illustrious leaders and the NGOs indulge in to restrict us - regulations were introduced to require speed cameras to be brightly painted, be visible from 60m (200ft), and be sited only where there was a history of road accidents. Of course the scamera vans flouted these guidelines no doubt to be seen to be doing something about this scourge (sarcasm intended).

It was only by chance that I happened upon an article in the Motoring section of today’s Daily Telegraph which reveals an about turn by the Department for Transport and that those regulations are now merely guidelines. So we can now expect these little Hitlers to be concealing scameras all over the place to provide as much justification as possible for these useless wankers to keep their overpaid and unnecessary jobs.

Their true intentions are revealed by this telling quote from Lee Murphy, speed camera manager for Cheshire:

“If the rules weren’t compulsory, we could use cameras to tackle emerging trends rather than waiting for the minimum number of collisions.”

In other words, “forget the justification for speed cameras being that they are positioned to assist road safety, it’s all about the money!”

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

| Richard

…or “who will guard the guardians?”

So it appears that the head of the National Audit Office – which is there to “[scrutinise] public spending on behalf of Parliament” – is able to authorise his own expenses. In carrying out his role (apparently), Sir John Bourn has over the past six months spent £16,998 of taxpayers’ money on mainly first class travel for himself and his wife. And she does what, precisely?

Sir John and Lady Bourn took first class foreign trips to San Francisco, Venice, Lisbon, Brazil, South Africa, the Bahamas and Budapest. One trip to Brazil cost £15,997. So why – exactly – is the watchdog for public spending in the UK travelling first class to these destinations and more to the point why is his wife accompanying him?

Still the Public Accounts Commission investigated and cleared him of any wrongdoing. Well they would, wouldn’t they, given that our MPs claimed £87.6M in expenses themselves last year…

Mercedes C-Class: Pretentious? Moi?

| Richard

There’s an advert presently running on the TV in the UK for the latest version of Mercedes’ C-Class. It’s cringeworthy in the extreme. Why? Well how about this exchange between a couple of voices from the ad.:

“I’ll see your design and raise it!”

“That’s how real design works.”

Does it, bollocks!

I had no idea that “real design” involved a couple of wannabe yuppies exchanging pretentious and indeed meaningless phrases. The things we learn from TV … like not to buy Mercedes in case we get tarred with the same brush as those commissioning such utter shite or the ‘lifestyle’ it tries to convey.

Stupid Domain Names

| Richard

I’m sorry but I could never do business with a company based upon a stupid domain name. Online insurance brokers like elephant.co.uk or confused.com. I mean to say, what have those domains got to do with insurance?

Or moonpig.com which – obviously! – is a site for personalised cards. What else would it be?

Might as well call these sites fecktard.com or something like that.

More e-mail Entertainment

| Richard

Or “Dear Lazyweb…” 

Someone from a large firm of property professionals visited one of my web sites today and filled in the feedback form under our contact details:

“I am working on behalf of … at … in Aberdeen. I was wondering if you could send confirmation of your contact details, such as your e-mail address. Thank you.”

“Hmm,” I wondered, “what can this be about?”

So I asked:

“Can we ask for what purpose?”

Now you’ll have already spotted the slight flaw in my plan, given I e-mailed them back (and included telephone details in the signature).

Nevertheless, a reply came my way:

“Hi Richard,

… was attempting to contact Nikki through this e-mail address
Nikki.{Lastname}@{afirmofarchitects}.co.uk but the e-mail bounced back. I am not sure what it was regarding but I can find out for you tomorrow as I believe he has been in meetings all day.

Thanks for your help…”

Who?

Anyway, I had a spare five minutes:

“Hi Emma,

Well I suppose contacting people at random from the Internet is one way of trying to get someone’s contact details.

I have no idea who Nikki might be but amazingly enough through skilful use of Google and the search string “Nikki {Lastname}” (cunningly gleaned from the bouncing e-mail address you had, and coupled with the possibility that she might be an architect from that address, I was able to find http://www.{adifferentarchitects}.co.uk/ and the e-mail address nikki.{lastname}@{adifferentarchitects}.co.uk

Stand in awe of my mastery of the Internet!

All the best,

Richard”

The Last Laugh

| Richard

Toy Yoda

My inital reaction was to laugh out loud at this woman who should have listened more carefully to what was on offer in what was apparently an April Fool’s Day prank.

But this is from America where they have loads of ambulance-chasing lawyers and where the Courts are open to the most bizarre and spurious claims (which only tends to reinforce the ‘only in America’ stereotype). So of course the company has settled out of Court with her…