Category - ADI

Portable GPS/GPRS Tracker

26/06/2015

I’ve stopped using this device and switched to one from Tracker Shop. Specifically, the Pro Pod 4.

The reason for this is that Rewire Security changed the lifetime subscription agreement terms and then ignored my email when I sought clarification. Bad service equals bad product in my view.

Added bonus I found was that the Pro Pod doesn’t go drawing straight lines across lakes and rivers if it loses sight of the satellites.

In the past, I’ve played around with various GPS logger apps on my phone. One of the drawbacks to these is that if you want to track something when you’re not present, you have to leave your phone with (or in) whatever you want to track. Of course, you also have to wait until you can get your phone back, download the log file to computer, then fiddle with Google Earth to display the route. There are other apps which allow remote monitoring, but you still have to be separated from your phone and can’t therefore monitor properly. I thought about buying another phone, but that was going to cost surprisingly more than I expected, and carried its own drawbacks and limitatons. So I started looking at various devices on Amazon.

Before I continue, a word of advice: NEVER trust Amazon customer reviews. The people who fill out most product reviews (on Amazon or anywhere else)are idiots – that’s the subject of another article – and what they write is frequently a product of their own inability to operate whatever it is that they bought. Unfortunately, if some twat can’t figure out how to turn something on, then posts a review along the lines of the following:

Started to set this up and got a few texts on activating but can’t go past this. It won’t let me. Got a star because it turned up!!!?

Im still trying to figure out the set up.

Absolute rubbish.

Does not work, instructions extremely poor.

And so it goes on… well, you can’t help wonder if you should buy the product or not when you read this kind of thing. I turned to Ebay instead, and it was here that I came across the Rewire Security TK 102-Nano tracker. I was initially suspicious, because it looked like some of those I’d seen on Amazon, but the description made it clear that it had UK firmware and was an official Rewire Security product (a British company). The Ebay trader selling it was called “ematrading”, and the surprising thing was that although Rewire Security sells the unit for £54.99, ematrading (an official Rewire reseller) was shifting it for only £31.99. So I sent for one.

It arrived next working day in a sturdy box with various accessories. As you can see in the photo, the main unit is tiny. Accessories included in the box were:

charging cradle
mains USB charger
USB charging cable
plain battery cover
magnetic battery cover
waterproof pouch
manual and quick start guide
CD with software

The package also includes a pre-activated pay-as-you-go SIM card from Lycamobile. You have to remember that the device is essentially a customised mobile phone, and it has to be able to “phone home” on a regular basis. It has to use a 2G card, and this detail seemed to be something which was catching some Amazon reviewers out.

The Lycamobile SIM card comes with a telephone number – this becomes your logger’s identity. Set up was simple after that using the quick start guide. The first thing you have to do is charge the batteries for 8-12 hours (though they charge normally in much less time). While this is happening, you have to top up your SIM card (I put £20 on mine and got £5 extra free). The card then fits into the logger, and the battery goes on top of it.

The logger then takes a few minutes to identify all the satellites available to it (constant green LED while it is searching, blinking LED when it is ready). At this stage it is ready to use in SMS Tracking mode. All you have to do is call the logger’s number from your smartphone and it replies with an SMS containing its current coordinates and a Google Maps link. Clicking the link opens Google Maps with a pin marking the logger’s exact position to within 5 metres.

However, Internet Tracking mode is the really impressive feature. To configure it you need to download the Rewire GPS app to your smartphone. You add your logger as a named device using its phone number, and your smartphone number as the authorised user ID. You can now go into the Live Tracking Setup screen and send various messages to your logger to set it up how you want it – most importantly, you can choose a logging interval of one point every 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, or one point every 10 seconds. Obviously, if you choose a long interval then you will not see all the twists and turns of the journey.

Setting up Internet Tracking mode on your computer is also very simple. You need to set up an account at GPSLive (it only takes a few minutes to do this). You have 7 days after that to email GPSLive with your IMEI number to activate a lifetime subscription. All of this is free. All you then have to do is log into GPSLive and you can see what your logger has been doing.

The image above shows my activity over several lessons (the “P” pins indicate where I was stopped either on lessons or in traffic). The image below shows just one time slot, where a pupil was picked up at home but dropped off in the City Centre. I managed almost a whole day on a single battery charge, so that gives an idea of how it performs.

Note that the logger only sends data when it is moving, and it drops into standby when it is stationary (bear this in mind when you are setting it up).

GPSLive holds your data for 90 days, and you can download it as GSR, KML, or GPX files (these are standard GPS logger formats). You can load these into Google Earth if you want to and view your logged routes there.

The big question has to be: how much does it cost to run the logger?

Well, each text message costs £0.19 and it would be relatively expensive to attempt to monitor your logger continuously using that mode. Internet tracking, however, is much cheaper – a whole day, half of it monitored at one point every minute, and half at once every 10 seconds, ran out at about £0.002.

Your best bet is to use SMS only for set up commands – or tracking/locating where you only need a single point.

Note that all of this was achieved without having to install anything on my computer, and the only download involved the free app on my phone. That was when I got to wondering about the CD which comes with the unit. I could be wrong here, but It appears that “TK 102” refers to the chipset used by the logger, and you can buy devices which contain it from many different sources – most of them Chinese. To that end, the CD contains the software and documentation which runs this unit in what you could call the “Chinese mode” – at the very least, this means bad translations and software which appears quite crude. Perhaps this is why some of those reviewers had bad experiences? I don’t know.

What I do know is that you can have this thing up and running using proper English instructions written by an English company, and who are helpful over the phone (I called Rewire Security to register my device on GPSLive). Admittedly, some people might still have problems if they don’t understand some of the key concepts, but you certainly do not need to install anything from the CD. The app and GPSLive are polished products, and both appear to work faultlessly from what I’ve seen so far.

Battery life is poor on my unit

It can run for about 4 hours with a decent, fully charged battery. However, remember that a “decent” battery gets old and starts to run down quicker. You can buy replacements, so if you’re having problems just buy one.

Know Your Road Signs (Motorcyclists Only)

25/06/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Bad Drivers, Funny

When leaving a village or entering a village how do i know what speed to go on a motorbike?

Someone came to the blog via that exact search term! Is it any wonder the country is in such a mess as far as driver attitudes go?

Diary of an ADI doesn’t even appear in the first 20 pages on Google for that term (that was where I gave up), so you have to admire the tenacity of whoever it was in their quest to find the answer.

In the UK, we have this little booklet, which is known as “The Highway Code”. Somewhere at the back are some pictures of things called “road signs”, and it is the usual custom to affix them to lampposts or other upright structures in order to inform road users of trivial details like imminent hazards and speed limits.

The little booklet is aimed at all road users.

To be honest, I was rather surprised that a motorcyclist should ask this, since most of them treat speed limits as advisory guidance, i.e. the speed to go at if there is a speed camera present.

So, to answer the question: as you enter the village there is most likely a round sign like the one shown above with “30” written on it. The “30” translates to the number “thirty”, and it refers to the number of miles per hour you are not allowed to exceed. If you look at those dials on your handlebars you might notice that one of them also has a “30” on it (it’s right near the bottom, so you may not have noticed it before), and this is your “miles per hour” dial. The little pointy thing that moves when you accelerate or decelerate should be on or below that as you enter the village, and it should not go above at any point.

When you leave the village, the chances are that you will see another sign. This one is harder to understand because it doesn’t have anything written on it, but instead consists of a white circle with a black diagonal stripe. It means that the national speed limit (NSL) applies, and this is “60” (or sixty) miles per hour on single carriageway roads, and “70” (or seventy) miles per hour on dual carriageways. A “dual carriageway” is a big road with a solid barrier between your side and the side where traffic is going the opposite way. Look closely and you will notice the dial on your motorcycle also has a “70” on it. It’s a bit higher than the “30”, but still far enough down from the biggest number that you might have previously overlooked it.

If at any point you don’t know what the speed limit is – after all, it is difficult to spot these things when you are trying not to fall off on a corner – then you should assume it is “30” until you do.

Note also that some signs have “20” (twenty), “40” (forty), or “50” (fifty) on them. These numbers also appear on your motorcycle’s dial somewhere. The speed limit in a village isn’t automatically “30” every time (it could be higher or lower), nor does it necessarily go up to NSL (it could be lower) as you leave the village. This is why those little signs are so useful.

Driving Tests and Common Sense

15/06/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Driving Tests

This old post is attracting a lot of hits, lately. It contains a valid point that is valid all the time – not just in the case I described – so I’ve polished it a little.

I had a pupil fail her test on the parallel park (back in 2011). She only got five faults in total.

Now, I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: I have never had a pupil fail the test for a reason that I didn’t agree with, or which wasn’t valid. This particular situation is no different – not technically, anyway. My pupil didn’t complete the parallel park properly and finished partly on the pavement, and the examiner is not at fault for failing her.

However… the examiner had chosen a location where the driveways didn’t have a raised kerb (it was one of those you can drive a car over). At the time they were doing it, the heavens opened and there was a torrential downpour. I can vouch for it, because in the waiting room back at Chalfont Drive (this was 2011, remember) I was watching it out of the window, thinking “wow!” after it went dark like someone had just turned out the lights.

My pupil was quite upset at failing, as they usually are. In this case, though, I had a lot of sympathy, because she said that she couldn’t see the kerb and had finished perfectly straight otherwise. Apparently, she asked if they could go somewhere else, but the examiner had asked her to continue.

The pavement is the pavement, and you can’t drive or stop on it, and especially not in reverse and on your test. But it does make you wonder why some common sense couldn’t have been exercised by the examiner, and the manoeuvre repeated or resumed after the rain had stopped – perhaps in a new location with a clearly defined kerb. Other examiners sometimes allow ordinarily serious faults to pass because the drive was otherwise excellent (I have no argument against that), so when you hear of things like this you .

No matter how long you’ve been driving, in order to parallel park properly you have to be able to see the kerb! If you can’t see it, you can only guess where you are, which is dangerous. Furthermore, if you can’t “feel” the kerb (i.e. detect if the wheels nudge it) you can’t react to it and correct it. My pupil had no chance – there was rain on the windows, rain on the mirror, rain on the road, no visible kerb line, and no physical kerb to feel with the wheels.

Expecting a learner to do a parallel park as if they were wearing a blindfold in such poor conditions – conditions that 99% of all other candidates don’t experience – is wholly unreasonable. It’s no wonder stories about “quotas” start circulating when an examiner basically forces someone into a fail like this.

I repeat, this article refers to a test in 2011. I can’t even remember who the examiner was, or if he (it was a “he”) is still working.

How To Find Test Cancellations

07/06/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Driving Tests, DSA

Originally written in 2010, but updated due to the number of hits it is receiving.

I get a lot of hits from people using the search term “how to find driving test cancellation slots”. The test wait has been as low as a couple of weeks up this way. At the moment it is at least 10 weeks, and from what I can gather it is almost double that in some places around the country.

I’m not sure exactly how DVSA allocates its available slots, but it seems that they have standard ones which are always available until someone books them. However, they also release additional blocks of test slots periodically, and these suddenly appear in the timeline even when all the original ones at the same times have been taken. It is possible that these are initially reserved for some reason, but then get released when it is clear they aren’t needed (it might also have something to do with manipulating the official waiting times – you can’t say the waiting time is 10 weeks if they always release extra blocks which are only 5 weeks away).

Test slots which require examiner overtime also appear in the timeline at short notice, and I assume that this happens because they don’t know too far in advance who is available to work overtime. Having worked in the rat race and experienced this sort of thing, it is also very likely that they have to get permission for overtime, and this is only granted on a short term basis.

And then there are other people like you. They’ve booked a test, but then find that they can’t make it for some reason, or perhaps they aren’t ready. So they cancel it, and straight away it appears in the timeline for someone else to book.

In summary, tests slots come and go for all sorts of reasons. But the closer they are, the quicker they get taken – and that’s the thing you need to understand if you’re going to find a cancellation (though by “cancellation” I mean any slot which becomes available some time after the initial ones have all been taken).

You simply have to be in the right place at the right time!

The “right place” is logged into the DVSA’s booking system. The “right time” is more difficult to pin down, so you need to log in and check regularly. The oftener the better.

Should I use a test cancellation booking service?

Short answer: no. They can’t do anything more than you could do for yourself – but they charge you extra for it without making that as clear as they should. But let’s be honest: most of them are trying as hard as they possibly can to hide that fact from you without actually breaking any specific Law. They’re as close to being scammers as you can get.

This Is An Absolute First!

29/05/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Driving Tests, DVSA

I picked one of my pupils up for his lesson last week, and he informed me he had failed his theory test. When I questioned him, it became clear he’d failed on the hazard perception part. He’d scored 0 for it – no points whatsoever for any of the 14 clips.

I know he’d been practising, because getting his licence is important to him. So what happened for him to get no points at all?

He fell asleep!

Yup. As the HPT began, he just sat there and fell asleep. I could scarcely believe it

What caused it was a combination of things. To begin with, he is a carer, and that means he works stupid hours for little more than the minimum wage. Secondly, he has a baby daughter, and he has to look after her when his wife’s at work and he’s not. I figure that some nights he must not get any sleep at all.

But as if those two things on their own were not enough, I have discovered that he now has a second job in a hospital. It hasn’t started yet, but it is the one he’s been looking for as it carries higher pay and greater security. When I asked him why he hasn’t dumped the first job yet, his answer was that he is currently caring for someone and he wants to finish that before he hands in his notice. What a great guy.

He nearly didn’t go to the interview, either. When they called him he realised he had no one to look after the baby and said he wouldn’t be able to make it – to which they replied “bring the baby along”. So he did.

In the latter years of my time in the rat race, I was literally praying nightly for something to happen which meant I didn’t have to put up with unnecessary crap any more (my prayers were answered, of course, and I became a driving instructor). If I’d have had to put up with any more nonsense from those prats I worked for I think it would have killed me. But this pupil has it even worse.

Malware And WordPress Exploits

12/05/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Computers & Tech, DVSA

WordPress is a powerful blogging platform used by about 75 million people around the world. At least half of those host their own sites rather than use the free WordPress.com platform. That’s because you can install various plugins and themes that the free option doesn’t allow.

Of course, freedom is always quickly followed by the scammers, spammers, and general scumbags, and a recent scare reveals that some smaller sites – probably run by people who don’t update very often – are being targeted.

As you are aware, I don’t allow comments on this site. Any form of live comments system (and that includes most forums) just attracts arseholes who think they can get away with saying things to others that they would get a punch in the mouth for if they tried it face to face. But probably the most common use of any system is to post URLs linking to (often illegal) pornographic material or, increasingly, terrorism-related sites. I don’t want any of that, so I’ve disabled commenting completely.

Unfortunately, though, this is still not enough. Those scumbags I mentioned are like dog-shit – once you get some on you, you can’t easily get it off again.

I installed some new security software recently and made an odd discovery. Although my site is secure, one infected link was discovered. It seems that an article I wrote about an examiners strike contained a link to the PCS Union website, and this was possibly infected with malware (well, the destination was, according to Google). It’s gone, now.

I’m not quite sure what to make of that. My anti-union stance is well known, as is my derision of any strike by PCS staff – intended, as these are, to cause the maximum amount of inconvenience and suffering to as many innocent people as possible. But the link was definitely clean when I first posted it.

Very interesting, to say the least.

20mph Signs Erected by Halfwits

01/05/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Transport

I recently mentioned the idiotic 20mph speed limits which Nottingham City Council – and championed by Jane Urquhart – has erected within the City boundaries. I pointed out specifically that the signage is now extremely confusing – and in many cases, totally wrong and probably illegal. Well, take a look at these two examples.

This first one is on Hungerhill Road, at the junction with Abbotsford Drive. Note how there is a 20mph repeater sign, a 30mph main sign, then another 20mph repeater further down the road. The 30mph sign is the original signage and the 20mph zone has been extended farther down the road. It’s also worth pointing out that at the end of Abbotsford Drive (where the parked car is), there is another 30mph sign – and yet there are 20mph repeaters both left and right as you emerge.

The second one is on Beacon Hill Rise in St Anns. You can see how the previous 20mph zone ended just here – and yet there is another 20mph repeater just after the mini-roundabout (again, they have extended the 20mph zone).

These are just two out of many I have seen. At best, speed limit signs are now frequently the wrong size – you’re supposed to have a large one at the start (or end) of a zone, and the small repeaters in between. However, now the large ones exist within 20mph zones, and that makes them confusing.

At worst, the halfwits at the council have simply left all the old signs up, even when they have contradictory speed limits marked on them.

None of this is legal, and enforcing it if anyone is caught speeding is going to be a huge waste of money because they’ll more than likely be able to wriggle out of it in court.

These signs have been like this for at least two months, now. It proves beyond doubt that the council wouldn’t understand road safety if it bit them on the ass. However, I’m sure that quite a few people who work there will have received glowing annual appraisals just based on the number of times they said “road safety” in their team meetings. It simply goes to show what happens when you promote mediocre people to positions of responsibility.

I’ve always been a Labour voter (I wouldn’t vote for anyone else). But I’m seriously thinking about not voting at all this time around. That’s because a vote for Labour is effectively a vote for Jane Urquhart, and she is simply not up to the job.

Do Nottingham police enforce 20mph limits?

It is my understanding that they don’t – not yet, at any rate. I’m sure I read some time last year that they had refused to do so because they didn’t have the manpower.

However, you must remember that if you break the 20mph speed limit then you ARE committing an offence and if they did decide to enforce these limits at any point in time you wouldn’t have any defence (as long as the signage was legal, of course).

They could start enforcing these limits at any time – for all we know they could have started now.

Is the 20mph signage legal?

The short answer is that in many areas it is absolutely NOT legal. As I outlined above, many areas still have 30mph signs plonked right in the middle of 20mph zones. In other areas the signs are the wrong size, and this gives the clear impression that you are moving from a higher speed limit zone to a 20mph one, when in fact the idiots have dropped the limit in the former zone already – quite possibly using further illegal or misleading signage.

Would I have an avenue of appeal if I were ticketed?

I would say that you would – certainly if the signage was incorrect in the ways I have already outlined. Furthermore, the constant changing from 20mph to 30, then back again is confusing enough (even with correct signage) to form the basis of some sort of appeal, though how successful you would be with that is anyone’s guess.

Remember that I am not a lawyer and I am not offering legal advice. I am simply stating the obvious based on Nottingham City Council’s total incompetence over this matter.

20mph is too slow on 90% of the roads where it has been introduced.

Rehydration Drink Recipe

17/04/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Food

Sitting in the car all day can be bad for your health. Apart from the more obvious risks like lack of exercise, the matter of dehydration is easily overlooked.

Although I never had anything like it as a child, these days I get early season hay fever symptoms (it’s the tree blossom). Nothing too serious, but itchy eyes and a tickly throat – the latter of which always seems to be worse when the air is dry, and which I can also trigger if I have the aircon on for too long. To try and do something about it I recently started drinking water during the day. Now anyone who does a job like this will know that you normally try to avoid drinking too much of anything so that you don’t end up having to take a leak every five minutes, and that was me to a “T”. I would often start work at 10am and finish at 8pm, sneaking in a couple of McDonalds’ white coffees along the way, and apart from the inevitable need to offload these at some point, I’d wait until I got home before drinking a load of tea.

It seems fairly obvious looking back, but when you’re only drinking things that make you wee even more, and especially in the warmer weather, dehydration is likely to be an issue. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to hear that my tickly throat cleared up completely almost immediately I began drinking water. It should come as even less of a surprise to hear me point out that after the first half litre water is boring.

A quick Google revealed myriad rehydration drinks. What I was after was a make-your-own flavouring I could buy in bulk, and since I was expelling minerals as well as fluids every time I took a whiz, replacing them using isotonic drinks made sense. What didn’t make sense were the prices – the typical cost of 500g of isotonic powder (ten servings) is around £10 – and although I found one particular brand at about a quarter of the price (and with 20% extra for free), it turned out this was a special offer. With every Spandex Boy in the country on to the case, they’d sold out when I tried to get some more.

So, long story short, I decided to make my own. After some research (and trial and error), here’s a recipe for an isotonic rehydration drink (it makes 400g, one 40g serving is dissolved in 500mls of water):

Maltodextrin	80g
Glucose	199g
Fructose	100g
Citric Acid	5g
Malic Acid	1.5g
Sodium Citrate	2g
Sodium Chloride	5.36g
Potassium Chloride	1.15g
Flavouring	6g

Making it is simple: just put all the ingredients in a food processor and make sure it is fully mixed. Then store it in an airtight jar and use as required. I also add a pinch of food colouring powder during mixing, but the amount used is too small to quantify.

Based on the prices I paid for all the ingredients, this mixture costs £4 per kg (25 servings). Compare that to at least £15 per kg (unless you can get it on short-lived special offer) for commercial mixes.

I bought the sugars from Bulk Powders (you need to buy the 5kg pack to get the lowest price).

I obtained Citric Acid, Malic Acid, Sodium Citrate, and Potassium Chloride from various sellers on eBay and Amazon (make sure you get food grade material). I’ve got tons of fine sea salt (sodium chloride) at home, but you can get that from just about anywhere. And the concentrated flavourings (by far the most expensive ingredient in terms of contribution to overall cost) can also be had from various online sellers. Remember that the larger pack size you choose, the lower the cost.

Ordinary kitchen scales (measuring to 1g) are fine for weighing out the sugars, but you may want to get a more accurate balance for the other ingredients. You can get small scales which weigh up to 500g with 0.1g resolution on eBay for about £15 (they look like CD jewel cases), and they’re accurate enough. Don’t even think about the tiny ones which supposedly weigh to 0.01g and cost a few pounds, because they are crap.

I buy 12 x 500ml packs of spring water from Asda for about £2.00 and add my powder to those. At 17p a bottle, each finished drink works out at around 33p. It’s worth noting that if you didn’t flavour the blend, it would only cost about £2.80 per kg, and each completed drink would cost about 28p (this is the base price). With commercial powders, each drink comes in at around £1.20!

You can adjust the recipe if you want longer term energy supply by cutting down the glucose and fructose (keep the ratio at 2:1), and increasing the maltodextrin. It’ll be less sweet, since maltodextrin isn’t sweet, but your body has to break this down into glucose by itself. You could also replace it with sucrose (cane sugar), which is sweet. And you may want to increase or decrease the amount of flavour slightly depending on what strength you buy. Just make sure everything adds up to 400g. Each 40g serving delivers 258mg of sodium and 60mg of Potassium.

It tastes rather good. I had a few fun issues to start with. First of all, it tastes very bland without any acidification, and – as I discovered – the level of Citric Acid doesn’t need to be as high as it is in the fresh fruit (my first try had eight times more acid and it gave me wicked indigestion). The acid has to be buffered using Citrate. And Malic Acid rounds off the flavour dramatically. Once I researched the formulation of soft drinks and built in the ingredients listed on several commercial packs, everything came together perfectly.

On a final note, the acids and the citrate have E numbers associated with them. You will find lots of nonsense on the internet about how that is bad. It isn’t. Citric Acid is made from natural ingredients, and sodium citrate is made from it. Malic Acid occurs naturally, although the manufacture of it commercially is via a synthetic process.

Gedling Country Park

07/04/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Roadworks, Transport

One of the routes I often take my pupils on is along Spring Lane (from Mapperley) down to Lowdham, then back through Burton Joyce or off to the A46 (or the opposite way, depending on where they live). It passes the site of the old Gedling Colliery, which closed in 1991, and which has been used for some time as a dogs’ toilet by local people.

The route is important, since it is one of the few remaining roads where the idiot council hasn’t cut the national speed limit to 20mph, although it has reduced part of the road from NSL to 40mph. It enables learners to be taught how to handle the type of road where statistics tell us they are likely to have most of their accidents without having to travel 20 miles out of the council’s jurisdiction. But I am worried that might soon change.

Council stupidity goes far beyond introducing 20mph speed limits on roads which should be 30mph or more. In this example, it concerns their conversion of the old colliery site into a “country park”.

I don’t know about you, but to me a country walk means dirt tracks, old trees, brambles, and mud if it’s raining. And it means not many other people around. To the council, it means digging all that up and installing Tarmac (or some other artificial surface) footpaths and a nice big car park for people to drop litter in. It also means extra lighting and footpaths outside for “accessibility”. And this is exactly what they have been up to for the last six months, with all the associated road closures and restrictions.

When I was young, people could lay several miles of new paved footpath in a week. As I say, it has taken them close to six months to lay 25 metres of Tarmac along part of Spring Lane, and temporary lights have been up all that time. Of course, this was carried out slap in in the middle of the tram works (which have overrun by about a year so far), the Ring Road improvements (which have created more traffic jams), and the grossly overrunning “Creative Quarter” road works on Manvers Street (where two lanes of city centre traffic now – and forever – will have to make do with just one, and where pedestrian crossings have been placed on blind bends for use by the kind of people for whom it is borderline that they should be allowed out unsupervised in the first place).

The “country park” also has a 34-acre expanse of solar panels at its heart (this was opposed by virtually everyone, but approved by Gedling Borough Council anyway – and it was built quicker than you could say “no, hold on a minute…”). The park narrowly escaped having a waste recycling plant built on it.

I won’t go on about the detrimental effect all this is likely to have on the diversity of species on the park, because for reasons best known to him, Terry Lock (the chairman of some group known as “Friends of Gedling Country Park”) who once saw a badger reckons it will increase diversity. So who am I to argue over such absolute scientific fact?

No. My point is that when I went past the place with a pupil last week, we rounded a corner to be met by rows of cars parked on either side of the road for about a quarter of a mile, creating a corridor that wasn’t wide enough for two vehicles to pass at the same time. I assumed it was some sort of opening ceremony, but given that Spring Lane is a narrow country lane (as this old Google Earth image shows) I thought how irresponsible it was of Gedling Borough Council to have allowed such dangerous parking.

However, when I went past on another lesson over the weekend we encountered the same thing, but with the additional problem of people blocking the road trying to get into the car park which was obviously full, otherwise those hundreds of other cars wouldn’t have been lined up outside. I noticed dozens of people out on an Easter “country walk” with their prams and designer wellies, wandering along the artificial paths that had been installed. The indiscriminate parking creates a long and continuous corridor with several bends, so you cannot see if anyone is coming the other way. It also means people are parking on grass verges outside residents’ homes and screwing up the grass borders.

So well done Gedling Borough Council for creating an absolute disaster-in-waiting. Someone will get killed and it’s all thanks you your bloody stupid ideas of what constitutes a “country park”, and your desire to attract the kind of morons who don’t give a f*** where they park as long as they get what they want.