Sometimes, people don’t do themselves any favours. I just saw this in the news feeds, and I had to check the date to make sure it wasn’t April 1st.
For those who don’t know, there has been a big kerfuffle in Saudi Arabia over a ban on women driving. Unfortunately – for SA, anyway – the women over there have not taken to this edict very well and there are all kinds of protests and deliberate flauntings of the ban taking place. So, in a desperate attempt to try and “win” the argument that would make any 5-year old involved in a schoolyard argument proud, Sheikh Salah al-Luhaydan has come out with the following:
…[driving] could have a reverse physiological impact. Physiological science and functional medicine studied this side [and found] that it automatically affects ovaries and rolls up the pelvis. This is why we find for women who continuously drive cars their children are born with clinical disorders of varying degrees…
What a plonker! And he is allegedly “a psychologist”, which says a hell of a lot about that branch of study if he can come out with nonsense like this. It’s straight out of the Middle Ages.
Why do religious groups do this to themselves? They must really believe what they write – in spite of the whole weight of science and factual information which proves them wrong – otherwise they wouldn’t do it. It’s frightening, and no wonder some of the things happening in the world these days do happen.
I had a pupil on test this morning, and as I was travelling to pick her up I hit traffic. At 9.30am, it was far heavier than usual, and I quickly realised something other than the idiot tram works were involved. And so it was.
Severn Trent were in their absolute element. Big hole in the road, barriers, temporary traffic lights, and people standing around apparently doing sod all.
There had been what appears to have been a major leak on one of the only roads into Nottingham still unaffected by tram works, ring road improvements, gas main replacement, or the building of “quality developments of affordable 2- and 3-bedroomed housing” on green belt land. The temporary lights were still up this afternoon around 3pm, so try to avoid that end for a day or two (and especially during evening rush hour, which is bad enough down that road anyway). I can’t see Severn Trent finishing this off any quicker than usual. (Edit: the lights were finally removed late – very late – on Sunday)
It would be unfair to blame Severn Trent completely. After all, they’re just doing what they usually do, as well as they usually do it! The real culprits are those in the Council who have restricted so many roads because of the tram, or who have rushed into “improvements” within five minutes of the grant cheque being cleared without waiting for the tram works to finish.
And don’t forget it is the bloody Marathon on Sunday. That already involves closing off even more roads (and I bet the ring road at Aspley Lane is down to one lane at the same time – the berks won’t pass up a chance to rub salt into the motorists’ wounds like that). (Edit: They actually went one better. The only road through Clifton – the roundabout at Farnborough Road/Green Lane – has now got 4-way (count ’em: FOUR way) traffic lights on it. They appear to have sanctioned tram works there before any of the other routes have re-opened).
This story somehow managed to spam the newsfeeds, coming in numerous times. The title of the piece laughingly trumpets that the source is an “expert instructor”.
To start with, there is no such thing as an “expert instructor”, and those claiming to be such are guaranteed to be much further away from the imagined finishing line than they believe they are. In this case, our erstwhile “expert” is merely the chairman of the local chapter of the Driving Instructors’ Association (DIA). But let’s take a look at what the story says – it’s from those irritating This Is… local news websites who throw stories together using a food blender.
The crux of the story is that this “expert” reckons “newly qualified drivers must be kept from fast roads until they get enough experience under their belts.”
Let’s just clarify again for our “expert” the true statistics. The vast majority of accidents involving “new” drivers tick the following boxes:
driver aged 24 or under
car full of mates
at night
on rural roads
on a bend
no other car involved
Reading between the lines, you have lack of experience sitting on one side of the scales, and the belief that they know it all on the other – and the scales are heavily tipped to the latter position. Reading further into it, you also have the deplorable underlying attitude of many typical sub-24-year olds.
Our “expert” appears to be campaigning for learners to be allowed on motorways. I agree with that, but for totally different reasons. How does he think this is going to be applied to all learners? A huge number live nowhere near a motorway and couldn’t possibly do lessons on one (at best, they might get on one once for a few miles). But he is quoted:
It’s not necessarily that young people are speeding, it’s that they may be going too fast for the road circumstances.
Quite. And they do that on rural or town roads – not on motorways, where bends are gentle and general visibility of the road ahead is usually good. That’s why those statistics about accidents I gave above are so significant. What’s more, the article is in This Is Gloucestershire – a county known for the number of rural roads within in – and is part of a campaign being run by that news source commemorating the number of young drivers killed on Gloucestershire’s roads.
So the unworkable solution being suggested would have to involve keeping all new drivers off all except non-NSL (National Speed Limit) A roads.
On the other hand, of course, Gloucestershire’s appalling young driver accident record could just have something more to do with the number of rural roads it has, and the attitudes of many of its drivers. And not the fact that they haven’t been taken on motorways when they’re taking driving lessons.
It is difficult to separate these companies. They all use similar names, though some display their exceedingly poor command of English in the names they choose. But having noted that, it appears that the second company involved in the stories above is at it again – and once more the ASA has found them in breach of just about every rule going.
Waqar Ashraf has already been identified as a liar and thief in the earlier article, where the small print for his “pass protection guarantee” revealed that it only applied if you failed the theory test by one mark. Fail by two and you were screwed. It would be like your car insurance putting in the small print that you were only covered in the event of an accident if you were wearing turquoise socks!
Bearing in mind that the scumbag didn’t even reply to the ASA when it sought his defence arguments, this time he has been pulled up for lying about providing instant booking confirmations, pretending to be an official DSA site, and lying about the cost.
Due to his lack of response, the affair has been referred to the CAP Compliance Team. Hopefully, they can work with the authorities to put this parasite away for good. He is just lying and stealing and laughing as he does.
Thanks to a reader who gave me the heads up on this story. Details are sketchy at the moment, but it seems that an 84-year old woman managed to get on the wrong carriageway of the A1 up in Northumberland, and this led to several collisions, one of which resulted in serious injuries to two of the occupants. The elderly woman herself was killed.
If you search for “elderly drivers” on this site, you’ll find numerous stories regarding accidents they have caused (and related topics). As far as my interest goes, it all began with the tragic case of Cassie McCord, who was killed in 2011 by an elderly maniac who shouldn’t have been on the road in the first place, but who was allowed to be so (the Law had no power to stop him back then).
If you didn’t already realise it, I have a very low opinion of people who continue to drive even after age has caught up with them – even lower than my opinion of people who continue to drive after evolution has indicated they shouldn’t.
EDIT:More details in this local article. The incident happened near to Morpeth at around 3.50pm on Saturday. One of those injured is in a serious condition, and another is also serious – but not with life-threatening injuries. The story is also covered by the Express. Details remain sketchy as police continue their enquiries, and are appealing for witnesses.
Last year I wrote about Alcopal – an internet snake oil medicine that claimed to be able to make people pass the breathalyser test even if they’d drunk around five pints of beer. The posts relating to it are listed below:
The articles remain popular – with an inordinate number of people finding it on search terms indicating that they are looking to use Alcopal rather than read about it, and many of those originating from Poland (make of that what you will).
Another blogger, JosephineJones, has picked up on it. As a result of that I discovered a news story I hadn’t seen before. It dates from January this year, and is mainly concerned with an alleged gun incident involving Arthur Kibble – the “entrepreneur” with the dubious distinction of being the man who introduced Alcopal to the UK. However, a few more titbits can be gleaned from the story.
I didn’t realise that Kibble was an ex-policeman. But even more entertaining are his latest comments.
He now states that Alcopal…
…stops alcohol entering the blood stream, re-directing it to the kidneys.
This is bollocks. To get to the kidneys it would HAVE to get into the blood stream. And if neat alcohol got anywhere near your kidneys, it would destroy them! He goes on…
I am not advocating that motorists get blind drunk and then try to drive…
So why are you bloody selling it? And he continues…
And I must stress that these tablets do nothing to improve the performance of a driver who has been drinking…
So the only thing they do is MASK alcohol, otherwise they WOULD lead to an improvement in performance.
But the best part is that Kibble was selling these things at £35 for 5 tablets. The actual cost price for that number of tablets, containing “herbal” ingredients and carbon, would be infinitesimally small. Even Viagra only costs about £1-£2 per tablet from dodgy online retailers – the cost price to pharmacies is much less. Kibble somehow rated Alcopal at £7 a pop!
But better still is the fact that for Alcopal to “work”, you need to take three tablets before you drink, and two after. So it will cost you £35 on top of the £10 you spent on booze.
It would be far simpler either to not drink – or not drive. A taxi or the bus would be a lot cheaper.
There is a word that rhymes with “banker”. It describes completely those people who allegedly “work” for the County Council and Rushcliffe Borough Council.
Tonight I was wending my way along a route designed to take me as far away from Wilford Lane (and the tram closure there) as possible in order to go home. I’d successfully gone from Woodborough to Edwalton, heading towards Keyworth, when guess what? The berks had cut the A606 near to the Wheatcroft Garden Centre down to a single lane. It looks for all the world that they’re farting about putting a new pedestrian dropped kerb!
I’ve said it before, but it is a deliberate policy to cause as much disruption to motorists as possible. It can’t possibly be anything else. It’s just one major blockage after another, and Nottingham is becoming an absolute pit to live and work in.
I also noticed today that they (City Council, I think) are replacing the street lighting along Swansdowne Drive in Clifton – the only route remaining between the Varney Road shops and the Ruddington side. There are yellow barriers around every street light, and there’s no way traffic is going to be able to get by while they’re pulling out lamp posts and putting new ones in.
I have edited this article significantly to make it clearer. The first card reader I purchased was an iZettle, and I was happy with it for a while. I had looked at the PayPal option when it first launched and PayPal’s support staff gave me conflicting information about money be tied up ‘in reserve’, which was totally unacceptable and I went with iZettle. iZettle performed flawlessly right up until the time they botched an app update and blamed it on my HTC phone suddenly being ‘unsupported’, and basically just told me ‘tough’. They almost killed my business overnight, so when they came back and apologised after acknowledging the fact that they had screwed up, it was too late. I had opted for the PayPal system after discovering that what they had told me over a year earlier was incorrect. I now use the PayPal system and it is perfect.
Something I’ve always wanted to be able to do is take credit and debit card payments for lessons in-car. However, the traditional way of doing this has been to open a merchant account and then purchase (or rent) a suitable credit card terminal, which is costly – particularly if your turnover is small. The terminal rental alone would have cost upwards of £10 a month (they’re about £200 to buy), and then there would be transaction fees on top of that, plus any set up fees for the merchant account itself. Plus, they were about the size of a toaster.
Yes, I could have done it. But driving instructors do not operate with high margins, and the cost would have been unacceptably high to me as a sole trader.
But all that is changing. There are a number of new solutions which combine a simple card reader with a smartphone. I’ve looked at several and have finally plumped for PayPal Here’s system.
A definite contender was iZettle’s option. The attraction here was the fact that their transaction fees operate on a sliding scale. However, what tipped the balance against this for me was the fact that payments only appear in your bank account 3-4 working days later, and I was also a little unclear on what would happen if someone’s card effectively “bounced”, since iZettle’s website at the time said that clearance didn’t happen immediately. (NOTE: THERE IS A DELAY WITH ALL SYSTEMS – NO METHOD PAYS MONEY INTO YOUR ACCOUNT IMMEDIATELY – actually, this is not true: PayPal’s system pays you pretty much straight away.).
As an example, the Friday before Late Summer Bank Holiday I received a cheque in the post. I paid it into my bank account the next day (Saturday) using the automatic paying-in machine at my branch. It didn’t actually clear until very late the following Friday – shortly before midnight, as far as I could tell. I had phoned my bank that Friday to find out what was happening, and the story was that the cheque wouldn’t have been processed until Tuesday, thereafter it would clear 3-4 working days later. I definitely do not want any credit or debit card payments taking that long to be cleared – I’d be getting paid up to a week later!
PayPal’s system clears payment immediately and pays it straight into your PayPal account.
Since it was announced in the spring, I’ve been canvassing my pupils on the subject – and all except for two have said that being able to pay by card in the car would be a huge advantage to them (i.e. it would mean not having to go to the cash point the night before). It would also be a huge advantage to me, since:
I wouldn’t have to go to the bank to put money (or cheques) in
I wouldn’t have to pay parking fees while visiting the bank
I wouldn’t have the hassle of driving pupils to cash machines if they forgot
The one minor drawback is the transaction fee – 2.75% per transaction – but this is offset by not having to deal with those problems listed above. However, 2.75% appears to be the standard fee – iZettle’s sliding charge down from 2.75% only kicks in if you take more than £2,000 per month, and it only hits 2.00% if you take around £4,500. Although on paper I would easily hit that, I haven’t started taking card payments and cannot be sure how many pupils will use it after all. So once more it comes down to payments being cleared and going into my account immediately.
The PayPal terminal costs £99 outright. You order it by downloading the PayPal Here App on your smartphone, then requesting the reader via your PayPal account within the app. With the app, you can either take straight payments of any amount, or set up a stock list of products (i.e. lesson durations) with fixed prices. The terminal connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, so there are no wires or connectors to mess with.
Mine’s on order, so I’ll see how it goes. (NOTE: PAYPAL TURNED OUT TO BE INCOMPETENT IN THE EXTREME AT ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT THEIR DEVICE. THEY VARIED BETWEEN BEING CONTRADICTORY AND BEING TOTALY INCORRECT. THEIR DEVICE APPEARED USELESS FOR THE JOB I DO. EVEN NOW, EVEN WITH HINDSIGHT AND A THAWING IN THE STUPIDITY OF PAYPAL REPRESENTATIVES, IZETTLE WAS THE BEST CHOICE TO MAKE, AND THE ONE I SHOULD HAVE MADE.
Update 6/9/2013: Hold the press on this! DO NOT GET THE PAYPAL CARD READER UNTIL I GET A REPLY FROM PAYPAL OVER THE FOLLOWING ISSUE.
The website clearly stated that money is paid into your account immediately. That was why I signed up. However, there is now the confusing matter of “reserves”. It seems that if you take more than £200 in any seven day period, every penny of the additional money goes into “reserve” which you cannot touch for 30 days, after which it is released to you.
This is ridiculous. If it is true, then the card reader will be going back without me even opening it, and I will opt for iZettle instead. There is no way I am going to wait 30 days for what could amount to anything up to £800. I have business running costs which are payable daily.
This was NOT made clear on the website before I signed up, and only now is the information showing in my PayPal account information pages. It is such a hugely significant detail that it should have been mentioned right at the top of the bloody page!
PayPal Here would be totally useless for driving instructors if I am reading things right. The service would be pointless for anyone taking less than £200 a week, and yet only those taking thousands would be able to withstand having their money held in reserve for a whole month.
Update 7/9/2013: Panic over! The reserve only applies to payments taken over the phone – where details are keyed in – and is a security feature that type of transaction requires. I am assured that chip & pin payments in the car have absolutely no reserve.
The guy I spoke with in Support said that he had had 20 others call before me with the exact same concerns. I pointed out that the online documentation is appallingly bad and needs to be made clearer. Even my online ticket attracted this response:
Thank you for contacting PayPal regarding reserves when using PayPal Here.
I have reviewed your account and it shows we will hold 100% of payments processed using PayPal here for 30days. This means that on the 31st day your payments will be released from the initial day of using PayPal Here. This is a rolling reserve so once the initial 30days have passed money will be released to you daily from your reserves.
You have 200GBP per week that will not be held in reserve anything over 200GBP taken in a week using the PayPal card reader will be held for 30days. So if you took 700GBP in a week you would have immediate access to 200GBP then 30days later the other 500GBP would be released to you.
The reserves only apply to payments taken using the PayPal Here device.
This is exactly the opposite of what the guy on the phone told me. The last sentence in particular is highly misleading.
Update 7/9/2013: Hold the press again! DO NOT GET ONE OF THESE CARDREADERS UNTIL I HAVE CLEARED THINGS UP WITH PAYPAL… AGAIN!
The online support is adamant that all monies above £200 are on a rolling reserve for 30 days. They have asked me to call them.
Update 8/9/2013: Everything is OK again. In spite of the totally incorrect information provided by PayPal’s email support – twice – telephone support has confirmed again that chip & pin card payments are not subject to the rolling reserve. Only payments where the card number is keyed in fall into that category, and in theory 100% of cards in the UK are chip & pin. So it shouldn’t be an issue at all.
Update 8/9/2013: Hold it again! DO NOT GET A PAYPAL READER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
I wrote to PayPal asking for confirmation of what phone support had said in writing, and they have again said that every penny taken above £200 will be held in reserve, no matter how it is taken.
At this moment in time I have demanded return and refund.
Update 8/9/2013: Final confirmation – DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SIGN UP TO PAYPAL HERE UNLESS YOU ARE HAPPY FOR YOUR MONEY TO BE HELD “IN RESERVE” FOR 30 DAYS BEFORE YOU CAN ACCESS IT.
I have arranged to send my card reader back before it’s even arrived.
In spite of the absolutely appalling confusion and lack of consistent explanations by PayPal, it is now clear that every penny taken by card payment – from whatever source – is subject to this idiotic policy.
Take my own situation. Let’s imagine that I do a 40 hour week, and let’s imagine that everyone pays by debit card. My turnover will be £920, but I will only be able to access £200 of that – the rest will be held by PayPal for 30 days until it is released to me (and released “daily”, whatever that means). My business expenses for that week could easily exceed £200, so I will be in big trouble.
But if I do a similar busy week the next week, the same thing happens. And the week after that. And the week after that. And most of the week after that. So I could do 5 weeks of 40 hour weeks, with all that that entails as far as expenses go, yet only have access to £1,000 out of a total turnover of £5,000.
The PayPal Here service is not fit for purpose. I cannot imagine what sort of lunatic would be happy with such a system controlling their business. And who, I wonder, gets the interest on all the money held in reserve?
I have now ordered my iZettle reader. A 3-4 day clearance time is peanuts by comparison – and the need for me to take card payments is too great.
PayPal has shot itself in the foot big time on this one.
Update 9/9/2013: And one final word. PayPal has written to me twice more – once to contradict itself, and again to apologise for MY misunderstanding. In doing so, I think it is worth comparing the second to last email I received.
Regarding your queries, I can assure you that the majority of payments you take through PayPal Here, will be available immediately for yourself. The only payments that will be held are payments where you manually enter your buyers card details.
With the one before that:
I have reviewed your account and it shows we will hold 100% of payments processed using PayPal here for 30days. This means that on the 31st day your payments will be released from the initial day of using PayPal Here. This is a rolling reserve so once the initial 30days have passed money will be released to you daily from your reserves.
You have 200GBP per week that will not be held in reserve anything over 200GBP taken in a week using the PayPal card reader will be held for 30days. So if you tool 700GBP in a week you would have immediate access to 200GBP then 30days later the other 500GBP would be released to you.
I apologise if you were given incorrect information previously as we have only just had this confirmed by the PayPal Here development team.
And then the last one:
These reserves were in place dependant on the characteristics of your Business account. Reserves are common industry practice used to help ensure that you are able to meet the liabilities you may incur from a chargeback, claim or bank reversal, when no other funds are available.
Ordinarily, if you have a reserve on your account and receive a chargeback or dispute, we will deduct that amount from your available balance and not from your reserve balance. However, if a seller goes out of business or stops processing payments through PayPal, we will deduct any payment reversals that subsequently come in from the reserve.
I appreciate your understanding in regards to this, and I am glad that we have had this opportunity to assist you further.
I wrote back explaining it wasn’t the bloody reserve per se – but the fact that almost every penny I was likely to earn was going to go in it according to half of PayPal’s staff. However, according to the other half chip & pin was exempt. I returned the device on the strength of the final phone conversation last night which confirmed every penny went into reserve – no matter how it was taken. That was absolutely what I was told, and I even tried to argue the point.
And then I got that email above (the first quote) this morning! Well, it’s too bloody late, now. They clearly don’t know what they’re doing.
SEE THIS ARTICLE ON THE IZETTLE READER. I USE THIS DEVICE AND IT IS PERFECT FOR WHAT I DO. IT WAS PERFECT FROM THE FIRST TIME I USED IT – UNLIKE THE PAYPAL SYSTEM, WHICH NO ONE AT PAYPAL UNDERSTOOD.
Well, there was yet more chaos on the roads today. I also saw a story on the local news tonight which tells how a concrete girder for a bridge has snapped as they attempted to span the Fairham Brook. With the Brook being all of 15 feet across – and with it being something that, as kids, we used to cross using planks – it doesn’t fill you with much confidence.
Furthermore, out on a lesson tonight I noticed that they were just setting up “4-way control” temporary lights at the 5-ways junction on Coventry Lane at Balloon Wood. Unless that was just overnight – and it looked like serious business with the number of people there – it looks like the chaos is going to be backed up to that side of the City.
Oh, yes. And this morning as I travelled towards the City from Wilford Hill along the A60 I was relieved to see that the temporary lights at Boundary Road had gone. My joy was short-lived, though. Because they’ve just moved about 200 metres along the road to the fire station. It would appear that Rushcliffe Borough Council is waging all-out war in its quest for the perfect junction for pedestrians. It’s hard to believe that so many motorists can be inconvenienced for such long periods merely to put down fresh tactile paving and dropped kerbs.
What makes it even funnier is that the latest location involves the most underused road imaginable. I think it is even a cul-de-sac. (Edit: They have installed a pedestrian crossing outside the fire station).
This snippet from the Southend Standard is interesting. It says that in an “unprecedented” move, police arrested 80 boy racers for illegal street racing in Thurrock. They are due to appear in court later this month.
It is such a large operation that Basildon Magistrates’ court has been set aside to just deal with this one issue for an entire day!
Although it’s unlikely, one would hope that every one of them is banned from driving, ordered to take an extended retest, and to have their cars crushed. Because let’s face it: this will be a badge of honour for most of them, and as soon as Friday night comes around again they’ll be back out there doing whatever it is they do, for whatever reasons they do it.
I’ve seen them in Nottingham at the Victoria Retail Park. Even late in the evening, when the roads down there are fairly quiet, they would much rather park right on a roundabout and then stand there trying to look cool than go and park somewhere sensible. It’s just so they can be seen (and possibly for some shady sexual reason best known to themselves).
instructor”.
Council.
about £200 to buy), and then there would be transaction fees on top of that, plus any set up fees for the merchant account itself. Plus, they were about the size of a toaster.
as they attempted to span the Fairham Brook. With the Brook being all of 15 feet across – and with it being something that, as kids, we used to cross using planks – it doesn’t fill you with much confidence.