They’re worth a look for the average driver, especially the first one – most drivers don’t do any maintenance at all. However, they are not reference documents, so be careful about using the information other than for general guidance (e.g. the document says that you “have a legal obligation to ensure that your tyre tread does not fall below the minimum limit of 1.6mm.” In fact, the legal minimum is 1.6mm all the way around the central ¾ of the tyre, which could catch you out if you played your cards (or tyres) down to the last).
But as I say, useful information for the average motorist.
If you use the Contact Form to send a message to me, please make sure you fill in a valid email address if you want a reply!
Someone asked me for a few photos for his young son, who went to the Rush gig at Sheffield as a birthday gift, but the return email address is not working, and is returning an error.
I’d love to help, but obviously can’t.
Remember: make sure the email you provide is correct before you click “submit”.
I wish I could catch the twats responsible for this. It happened in my neck of the woods, near Gotham in Nottinghamshire.
A three week old lamb has had its ears cut of with what appeared to be either a knife or scissors. It was subsequently rejected by its mother and is having to be hand-reared.
There’s almost no chance of the perpetrators being caught – though my suggestion would be that if the police stopped every Corsa driver under 25 in the area who was behaving like a prat they’d probably have them. I’m sure that will upset a lot of people, but that’s tough. It’s half joking, half serious.
It’s all down to attitude and morals – which seem to be running down the plug hole by the day in this country. Therefore, by pulling over anyone with an attitude problem in one area you’re likely to snag offenders from other areas – including pond scum like those guilty of this affair.
This is an old post. I ought to point out that I tried to use SLRHut again one time, and was far from impressed. They don’t actually do pure online ordering – your order gets held until you phone them, and their phone line is poorly manned. The only reason they want to talk to you is to hard sell a whole pile of extra crap.
As I mentioned in that recent Rush article, I have bought a new camera. I’d done my research and I knew exactly which one I wanted – the Panasonic Lumix FZ200. But it wasn’t cheap. Even now, Amazon sells it for £400, but when I first started looking it was anywhere between £400-£500 (indeed, currently John Lewis sells it for £440, Panasonic for £445, and Jessops for £410).
To cut a long story short, I nearly didn’t buy from them. When I looked them up, they appeared across various photography forums as being “dodgy” and “a scam”. One Wise One – it looks like photographers are worse than driving instructors when it comes to believing their own fabricated hype – said “if it looks too good to be true, it probably is”. However, between the lines it was clear that this was just opinion based on that deluded self-belief, and had nothing at all to do with concrete facts.
So, I ordered from SLRHut late Tuesday (their lines are open until 11pm). The product was shipped within 24 hours from the USA. It arrived with DHL in the UK in the early hours of Saturday morning. There was then a frustrating wait for nearly three days over the weekend (and Bank Holiday Monday) while it sat with DHL, who don’t deliver weekends or holidays. It arrived Tuesday morning, less than a week after I’d ordered it. It would probably have arrived a few days sooner if I’d have ordered on a Thursday or Friday, with no Bank Holiday.
SLRHut has a UK office, but it does not supply products from there, and the UK people are apparently only involved with returns and warranties. It ships from the US, and all import duties are included in the price. Products are not “grey” imports and have a full worldwide warranty. They are supplied with UK plugs on the power adapters. Ordering is quick and easy.
Basically, ignore any crap you read elsewhere. Although I’m sure that SLRHut has exactly the same problems any other retailer does – and I mean the occasional order going pear-shaped for some reason – you have absolutely no worries outside of that. They’re definitely kosher.
Update: SLRHut now takes payments via PayPal. Anyone who does that is hardly likely to be trying to scam you – Paypal would cut them up and hang them out to dry if they did! As I said above, SLRHut is definitely kosher, so don’t be worried about using them. And ignore any crap you read on photography forums denigrating them – such comments are usually made by people whose opinion of themselves is far greater than the reality.
Are SLRHut products “grey” imports?
No! My FZ-200 is a proper UK product with UK plugs and a UK warranty.
Do SLRHut products come with a UK plug fitted?
Yes. They are not grey imports.
Is SLRHut a UK company?
No. But it has UK offices.
Is SLRHut reputable?
Take a look at TrustPilot. They get a rating of 9.3/10 (as of December 2014). Ignore the jackass from Buxton who appears to be unable even to spell his own name properly – the fact they are not a UK company is totally irrelevant. And God only knows why someone would post this:
Very Good. I must be honest in saying that when I discovered all the orders will fulfilled from the USA I was very sceptical. However everything came and the service was surprisingly good.
And then only award 4 stars. What was he expecting?
Amazon only scores 6.1 on TrustPilot, Currys gets 1.0, and Argos gets 2.0. Yet SLRHut gets almost a perfect 10! You probably wouldn’t think twice about placing an online order with Currys if their price was right, would you?
adiNEWS needs your help, and in return we are offering you the opportunity to WIN a brand new iPad with 3G! – compliments of the lovely people over at Hitachi Capital Driving Instructor Centre.
The current series of feature articles in adiNEWS magazine focus on using the latest tablet and smartphone technology to help run a driving instructor business, from lesson plans and training aids, to admin and book keeping… but we think they can offer even more, and that’s where you come in…
Information Is Power!
We want to know ‘apps’ YOU use to make this possible. Whilst there are still only a few apps dedicated to driving instructors in particular, there are many others that can be used throughout your working day. So we want to know how many of you are harnessing the power of apps through your tablets and smartphones, whether you are operating your business using the latest technology and, if not, whether you are interested in doing so?
In return, we are very excited to announce that we shall be giving away this fantastic prize of a brand new iPad with 3G to one lucky entrant, no strings attached. All you have to be is an ADI or PDI and spend a minute of your time answering a few simple questions. We just want the facts and figures to understand where the industry is, where it wants to go in the digital revolution, and use the information to help everyone get more by unlocking this massive potential for their business.
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Go to: http://www.delivr.com/22qsf, answer a few questions, and you are automatically entered into the prize draw to win a brand new iPad with 3G. That’s it!
You don’t have to be a subscriber, so tell all your ADI and PDI colleagues to log on too!
Whether it’s a new iPad, better information or better technology deals – you win!
T&C’s Apply, see www.adinews.co.uk/competitions for details. Entries close on the 23rd June. Winner to be announced with the survey results in the August edition of adiNEWS.
adiNEWS and Hitachi Capital Driving Instructor Centre
I love this ad at the moment. I didn’t realise it was Eva Longoria until I looked it up. It’s for Sheba cat food.
[YouTube link now dead]
Mind you, I cringe a bit near the end when she’s dancing around the cat with her feet. It takes me back to a cat we used to have – if you’d have done that with her you’d have ended up in A&E.
For years now my inbox has been filled to overflowing with spam emails from “experts” trying to sell me CPD courses. Over time they’ve developed from basic “CPD” sessions to the “ultimate coaching” courses. Some of these emails were sent very frequently – perhaps as often as… tri-daily, if you get my drift! I was reliably informed – perhaps not quite as directly as that, but the implication was clear – that unless I did their coaching course I would be a poor instructor who would fail my next check test. The only way was The Coaching Way.
But then the DSA recently turned around and said it wasn’t going to make CPD compulsory. Even before that, as the DSA’s Learning To Drive trials concluded and the initial Client-centred Learning (CCL) training was given to participants (of which I was one), it was made clear that CCL was merely another tool that instructors could use along with their other techniques. CCL would simply be a part of the training for all new PDIs/ADIs going forward, but existing ADIs weren’t going to be thrown in jail if they didn’t use it.
I predicted that the spammers would change tactics. And they have. I’m now receiving emails telling me that I need to do their CCL course, which is funny when you consider that I already did CCL training with the DSA! But there is a little bit of a difference. As I mentioned above, the DSA made it absolutely clear that future check tests would not penalise ADIs whether or not they used CCL – there was to be no sea change from one system to the other as far as existing ADIs were concerned.
Personally, I was a little disappointed over this. When the Learning To Drive trial started the implication was that this was to be a complete overhaul of the current system. But three years down the line they backed off from anything compulsory and stated clearly that CCL was absolutely and definitely only an additional tool in the toolbox of the existing ADI. But I digress. I was saying that CCL was not mandatory, and not using it was not to be career limiting as far as the check test was concerned.
Well, according to the latest spam email:
Client-Centred Learning (CCL) is about to enter the arena under the guise of the new ADI Standards Check and for some instructors this will be an entirely different ball game from the one they’ve been used to. Others will see the change as a breath of fresh air, which will reinforce much of what they have been doing for years. Whatever your starting point, the need for development is probably greater now than ever before to secure your place in a successful future.
All this in order to sell their BTEC course in “CCL & coaching” – now with an “easy payment option”.
Soon after I posted this, a reader drew my attention to an example of a post on the Facebook page of the people I am referring to above. I’d like to quote it here:
Hi all. I would like your advice please. I took out a new female pupil for her 1st driving lesson which she said she thoroughly enjoyed and learnt a lot. I used scaling and goal setting. She wants to work on her reversing on her next lesson and is going to decide what else she wants to do on that lesson. Now here is my question. My pupil closed the car door rather hard almost a slam of the door and has not booked another lesson but will as has paid for them. How would you read the situation. Do you think my pupil closed the car door too hard because she wanted to make sure it was closed properly, she closed it hard because she was glad the lesson was over or a combination of both.
Ignoring the possibility that the post is just someone on a wind-up, doesn’t it remind you of something from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers?
I have to be honest about something here. I am very sensitive to body language and all the stuff that goes with it. Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not likely to set up some sort of wussy, new-age coaching school involving it, but I can just read the signs very well, and I use that as necessary. And the bottom line is that if a pupil is upset over something – even if they deny it – I can usually tell.
Having said that, if someone came to me wanting lessons, only to discover that they were paying me to make them teach themselves and make up their own lesson content, I wouldn’t be too surprised if they didn’t book another lesson and slammed the car door as they got out.
I’ve written before that getting DAB radio in my car was one of the best things I have done. At the time, that little Pure Highway served its purpose well. But like most new technology it was consigned to the gadget drawer when I decided to get the DAB radio option in my Ford Focus.
Well, an email has just come from Sandicliffe Ford advising Ford owners who don’t have DAB that they can have it retro fitted for just £199.99 ahead of the planned switch-off of AM/FM stations in the UK. Obviously, this is for people around the East Midlands, though I would imagine dealers in other parts of the country will be offering similar deals.
DAB is a must in a car if you drive more than a handful of miles a week.
On the subject of pathetic drivers, I was on a lesson last night and we were driving through the city centre. We’d got to the end of Huntingdon Street when all of a sudden the traffic was at a standstill in the left lane.
It was because some imbecile (Black Ford Focus, reg. no. Y734 VGE) had stopped to turn left into Nile Street – which is clearly marked with No Entry signs because it is a one way road. To make matters worse, someone was coming out of Nile Street and couldn’t emerge because of the traffic overtaking the queue we were in caused by the idiot who’d started it all. So it was a gridlock situation in the left lane.
There’s more than one problem with the people who do these kinds of things. To start with, some of them know what they’re doing is wrong – they’re just arrogant tossers who don’t give a damn. Others are so appallingly bad at driving that they genuinely don’t see road signs, and if they do there’s no guarantee they understand them. And even after all that – in a situation like this one, where it is obvious you can’t go that way when there’s someone blocking the mouth of the road – they’re just too stupid to work it out.
Still, as we finally managed to get past, I pointed out to my pupil the No Entry sign. So at least it provided a further valuable learning topic for the lesson.
One of my pet hates is when I am at traffic lights waiting to turn left or go straight ahead, and the twat on the opposite side turning right decides that he somehow has the right of way. It happened today with a Vauxhall Cavalier (I think), reg. no. FG56 YPA.
What annoys me most, I guess, is how they put their heads down and refuse to make eye contact afterwards (assuming they use their mirrors when driving in the first place, of course). They know they’ve made a bad decision, but are too stupid to learn from it.
On the roads these days there’s a lot of monkey-see-monkey-do behaviour. I get it with some of my pupils, when they start following cars in front (or signal when they do), and I have to point out how dangerous it is, especially when they go out on their own. A good example is the speed bumps along Shelton Street in St. Anns in Nottingham. I can remember when one or two people started driving in the middle of the road to try and avoid them – and within a few months you had every idiot driver doing it, even when traffic was coming the other way.
It’s the same with this traffic light problem. It’s far worse in certain areas – the rough places, where everyone has six kids and owns a Staffie. It used to be only the boy racers or young pillocks who did it (like the one I mentioned above), but it’s got to the stage where even the more “normal” – but horrendously even-less-gifted drivers – do it. Their judgement is appalling.
I wish I could catch 
Lumix FZ200. But it wasn’t cheap. Even now, Amazon sells it for £400, but when I first started looking it was anywhere between £400-£500 (indeed, currently John Lewis sells it for £440, Panasonic for £445, and Jessops for £410).
nothing at all to do with concrete facts.
I’ve written before that getting 
when all of a sudden the traffic was at a standstill in the left lane.
coming out of Nile Street and couldn’t emerge because of the traffic overtaking the queue we were in caused by the idiot who’d started it all. So it was a gridlock situation in the left lane.
somehow has the right of way. It happened today with a Vauxhall Cavalier (I think), reg. no. FG56 YPA.