People will have picked up from some of my articles that I am a cat person. This brilliant story came through on the newsfeeds about a cat which saved a boy from a dog attack in California, USA. (Edit: the original video has been removed from YouTube. This one is from the newspapers).
From what I can gather, the dog has been is to be put down (and so it should have been). But kudos to the cat, who clearly seems to be defending the child and not just its territory. Cats might square up to dogs if they’re threatened themselves, but they don’t usually get physical. For one to go in with such ferocity is very unusual, particularly since the threat was not directed towards the cat itself. The dog, which had clearly been after blood, was certainly fazed by the attack.
This has been all over the news today. The BBC has an interview with the family here, and the hero cat – who is called Tara – is a dead ringer for one we used to have. Apparently, she was a rescue cat or stray the family adopted.
Watching the video of the attack again, you can clearly see the cat slam into the dog, look round at the boy, then chase the dog further away.
I’ve tagged this as “funny”, but that’s only in the sense that the dog got the tables turned on it. It’s a great story, though.
This keeps getting better. It would appear that Tara has been invited to pitch the first ball at the next home game of Bakersfield Blaze minor league baseball team.
Actually, having seen the video of the event, it wasn’t as funny as it could have been. Still a nice story overall, though.
I saw this in the newsfeeds. It concerns advice from a RED driving instructor about how to prepare for the driving test.
There’s nothing wrong with any of the advice, though I’m not sure I agree that “interactive online learning tools” will keep people sharp between lessons. It was the first three sections that caught my eye, though. You see, lately I seem to have been slightly swamped by pupils who can barely (or don’t want to) afford lessons, and yet are desperate to pass their tests.
I mentioned a couple of months ago how one pupil’s father was desperate for him to “have a try” at the test, with no allowance whatsoever that the boy had some sort of learning issue and was a dangerous driver on the road. On his last lesson with me (less than two weeks away from the test they had re-booked against my advice) he emergency stopped in the middle of a busy junction because he suddenly realised he didn’t know where “straight ahead” was, and he would reliably steer the exact opposite way to what he should have when reversing. Indeed, I had identified with him – in these precise words – that he believed that when something was coming closer in the mirror, it was therefore moving further away from the car.
Then there was the one who had apparently taken a lot of lessons previously, and who didn’t want to take any more because he couldn’t afford it. His solution was to keep taking tests, but only doing a single hour lesson a day or two before each one. By my reckoning, he had spent something like £250-£300 on lessons with me, and a further £320 on tests. And yet I could not get him to understand that if he’d have spent even half of the amount gone on tests taking additional lessons he may well have passed by now. His otherworldly argument was that he might not have, so it would have been a waste of money. I also couldn’t get him to understand that just because he’d failed for “something different” each time that didn’t mean that he just didn’t have to do that one thing wrong again to be sure of having eliminated it. It was his underlying driving that led to these errors.
In fact, when he was in the car he was one of those people I have come to regard as “taut”. I’m sure you have seen them yourselves – the slightest external stimulus can prompt a disproportionate action by either feet or hands, and they’ll reach for the handbrake instead of the gear lever, the wipers instead of the indicator stalk, or do the “bungee leg” thing when moving off at lights. I have two female pupils at the moment who are like that, and both of them have been given beta-blockers by their respective GPs. These have had a dramatic effect in both of them, but one in particular (whose GP has also referred her to a hypnotherapist) worries me because she’s by far the most taut driver I’ve ever seen. Beta-blockers seem to be almost a miracle cure for debilitating test nerves in some learners – but people can’t keep taking them forever.
Then there’s another current pupil whose mother is in charge. His test is coming up and she’s suddenly decided that it would be best for him to have two 1 hour lessons a week instead of the single 1½ hour lesson he’s been having up until now. She’s totally wrong, because we can do more on a 1½ hour lesson than we can on two one hour ones due to travel times to and from suitable locations, and being able to cover bigger areas. Sure, it’s more money for me, but that’s not the only reason I do this job and it makes me mad that these people can’t see it. Even if he manages to persuade her to change her mind, we’ll have wasted part of a week already. To make matters worse, he was a calm and progressive driver until a few weeks ago, whereas I’m now seeing signs of tautness in him, too.
I’m not at all happy with my pass rate this year, as it’s still only 50%, and the serial failers (of which most have been taut drivers) have taken so many tests that I’ll need a spectacular run of passes to get it up to where it was last year. Part of me is thinking that these pupils are just a blip in the big scheme, but the other part is wondering if it is a sign of a more dramatic change. A small part even wonders if it’s something I’m doing wrong – I know it isn’t, but you can’t help wonder. However, it does seem to show that there’s more to passing your test than just following some rigid guidelines. Everyone is different, and they seem to be getting more different by the generation.
As regular readers will know, I have little time for people who drive badly (especially on purpose) in spite of what some looney mystery cyclists may believe. So this story in The Telegraph gave me a good chuckle.
It seems that some half-witted 17-year old up in Scotland was following the standard script to the letter when he crashed his Honda pratmobile a week after passing his test. Make no bones about it, it WAS a pratmobile – as the picture before the accident shows. And Honda Civics are at the top of the must-have pratmobile list for most boy racers. His father, Steven Clark, was not impressed.
Due to Son thinking he’s Colin McRae I now have a 2000 Honda Civic 1.4 breaking for spares…
It Seems a 1.4 was to much for him to handle
He talked the talk, but certainly didn’t walk the walk (he will be walking now, for a long time)
If only all roads were straight, we as parents wouldn’t have to worry about our over enthusiastic Son’s
It seems his ambition outweighed his talent on this occasion
I can’t think why! he’s been driving for over a week now……………………………..
Included in anything you may buy!
One FOC 17yr old Boy, complete with black eye? not from accident, administered by myself!
None of the press coverage I have seen has included that last part. Let’s hope the dad doesn’t get into any trouble over it if it’s true, because it’s certainly deserved.
Nathaniel Clark wasn’t hurt in the accident. He lost it on a bend (big surprise) because the difference between his own opinion of his driving skills and the reality was huge, but reckons he was driving slowly. It also turns out he rides a dirt bike, so it doesn’t take much effort to assess his attitude from afar.
Apparently, he apologised to his mother, but not his dad – to whom his plaintive cry is:
Dad, why are you doing this to me?
Clearly, he’s not very bright, either, if he can’t work that one out.
On a slightly different note, the car cost £1,700 and a further £1,600 to insure. The parents paid for it all. And this is where it makes me wonder what parents are thinking when they buy pratmobiles for their kids in the first place.
This story came through on the newsfeeds. It’s totally mislabelled as it does not – in any way, shape, or form – show “Britain’s Worst Drivers”. That label is merely a demonstration of the crass ignorance of the Yahoo! hacks who wrote it.
It concerns a video montage created by an anonymous cyclist with a helmet camera, titled “York Drivers”. The cyclist in question seems to be one of those people for whom a little knowledge is clearly a dangerous thing, because in his attempts to discredit drivers he has inadvertently shown quite clearly how recklessly cyclists – including himself – behave on the roads.
I’ve linked to the video below – click the image and YouTube will open in a new window – and it will be interesting to see if it remains on view when he realises how vividly it highlights his own shortcomings.
[EDIT: The video is no longer available – there’s a surprise. However, the comedian who took it hasn’t managed to get it wiped from the news story in the link above.]
Let’s be clear about this – many of the drivers in the video could hardly be regarded as particularly adept behind the wheel. Even so, very few of them could be said to be demonstrating anything other than normal behaviour. The problem is that all of the cyclists involved are behaving exactly the same, if not worse!
The very first example in the montage shows a cyclist attempting to undertake a car at a left-turn junction. The car doesn’t indicate – but anyone, be they cyclist or motorist – should know that you do not overtake near a junction, and that undertaking is especially dangerous.
The second clip shows an oncoming van turning right – and he’s signalling. The dipstick with the headcam hasn’t considered the fact that he was riding at speed whilst hidden from the oncoming driver’s sight behind another van. The van driver couldn’t possibly have seen him, and he – the cyclist – should have been much more careful.
Numerous other clips are focused on cars parked on double yellow lines, but none of this slows down our cameraman very much, and he does not stop for a second. He’d much rather squeeze through tiny gaps when the safest thing to do would be not to. Bearing in mind he has a camera on his head, there doesn’t appear to be much (i.e., any) shoulder-checking before passing any of these obstacles. He also sounds like one of those riders who has a little too much testosterone in his veins, and you can hear him muttering and grunting at everything.
In another clip, he rides on to a roundabout without any consideration for his own safety, and then grunts again when a car turns in front of him without signalling. Perhaps he hasn’t heard of the Highway Code (what am I saying, he’s a cyclist – the Highway Code doesn’t apply to him), and the part where it says you should never rely on people’s signals (and, by implication, lack thereof).
Just after that, he appears to ride off a cycle path and on to a pedestrian-only pavement and has an issue with a car that has U-turned back into a road, preventing him from shooting straight across the junction (and over double yellow lines, because there is no cycle junction there).
Later in the video, he homes in on people using mobile phones behind the wheel. In doing this, his camera shows other cyclists riding at speed in heavy traffic out of the designated cycle lane. In one example, a female is riding much faster than the traffic, which is virtually at a standstill in a queue. This is suicidal if a car tries to cut across and doesn’t see you – which is more likely if the cyclist is flying up on the inside, hidden behind other cars. It’s even more questionable when you’ve got a camera on your head, are craning your neck specifically to get footage of the drivers breaking the Law as you whizz by and have already identified that said drivers might not be paying attention because they’re farting about with their phones.
Near the end, the cameraman is screaming at drivers who are actually nowhere near as close to him as he seems to think they are. One clip suggests that there is a cycle path off the road, which he isn’t using, and he wonders why he is almost flattened by a lorry. He even appears to have moved over into the mouth of the junction to give a lorry space before it goes past.
As I said, the standard of driving depicted in the video is no worse than you’d find anywhere in the country. That doesn’t mean that it is particularly good or right, but it is part of the norm – and anyone on a bike who had any sense would try to avoid it rather than go pelting in as if they had special privileges, and then wondering why they almost got killed. In many of the clips, the anonymous cyclist in question is at least as much in the wrong as the drivers he has filmed. In most of the others he (or other cyclists) can certainly be seen to be less than lily white.
Maybe I should put up my own video of the routine behaviour I experience with cyclists. If I wanted to put them in a poor light, I wouldn’t have to edit much out.
I originally embedded the video in this article using YouTube’s embed code. The anonymous cyclist has been in contact with me threatening litigation, even though I pointed out that embedding the video was within YouTube’s terms of service. Said anonymous cyclist has also been demanding my name so he can “report me to ORDIT” because of my “dangerous attitude”.
I had to draw his attention to the use of various words and phrases in the above text which clearly identify that the motorists in many of the clips were in the wrong (at least in part). However, he seems to take exception to the fact that I also pointed out that virtually all the cyclists were also at fault, and that such behaviour – from both cyclists AND motorists – is relatively normal and is something that has to be dealt with when it happens. After all, martyrs cannot pursue matters using more sensible means.
I have spoken to my legal advisers, and it has been pointed out that although the article as it stood was not in breach of any copyright, if the owner of the YouTube page removed the embed code feature without warning, then it might become so. I reasoned that in order for someone to try and save face over this article they might resort to such actions in order to create an issue where there was none before. The anonymous cyclist has been openly sharing his video with anyone who holds the same views as him, but he appears to be prepared to adopt different methods for those who hold a different opinion. For that reason, I have now provided a direct link to the YouTube page where the video resides. If you click the image, above, it will take you there – or click this link to get the same page[EDIT: The video is no longer available – there’s a surprise. However, the comedian who took it hasn’t managed to get it wiped from the news story in the link at the start of this article]. Alternatively, go to YouTube and search for “York Drivers”. This is DEFINITELY not litigatious in any way – either now, or in future.
It’s funny that the Vigilante Cyclist has removed the video from YouTube. I bet he wishes he’d kept his mouth shut before submitting it to the media, because he can’t get it wiped from their archives quite so easily.
This story has appeared on several newsfeeds over the last couple of days, and it deals with the frightening number of troglodytes out there who don’t understand what road signs mean. An example:
James Barter, from Southampton, Hants, admits struggling to identify some of the road signs – despite passing his test ten years ago.
The 28-year-old said: ‘I passed my driving test when I was 18 and I still struggle to tell what certain signs mean.
‘There are so many and some of the signs are not very clear or obvious.’
A higher primate would find out what a sign means if they saw one they didn’t understand. Clearly, this guy is different, and represents just about everything that is wrong with society today. How the hell can he go on driving unsupervised if he doesn’t understand basic road signs? What else about driving doesn’t he understand? Why couldn’t (and didn’t) he look up those he didn’t understand? That way – and it is a simple 5-minute task reading the Highway Code to find out – he wouldn’t have had to reveal in a national newspaper that he was such a bad driver.
The large-scale confusion over road signs comes weeks after Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin called for hundreds of thousands of ‘pointless’ signs to be torn down.
Some signs may be pointless – but that doesn’t make them meaningless (as an aside, McLoughlin should be ordering that they be torn down instead of just prattling on about them). The problem with superfluous road signs is down to incompetent local councils (of which Nottingham possesses a prime example). The typical forest of signs that can cause confusion is usually associated with cycle or pedestrian areas, and is the direct result of immature and unintelligent people in local government anxious to make some sort of mark as they pursue their incoherent and politically correct agenda.
Some of my pupils worry me from time to time, though. I remember several years ago a girl who had passed her theory test and who had her practical coming up. I often had to remind her of the speed limit on one particular stretch where the limit changed from 50mph to the national speed limit (NSL). On one lesson after many weeks of lessons I remember her asking on that same stretch: “what does that sign mean?”. It was the NSL sign. And I lose count of the times on lessons where I ask pupils who have either passed their theory or who have it coming up what a particular sign means and they simply don’t know.
It also reminds me of a Chinese pupil I once had who, for all practical purposes, couldn’t speak English (what a nightmare those lessons were). She passed her Theory Test – in English – the first time, which is a feat beyond quite a few of my English-speaking pupils. On one occasion, where after prompting from me she failed to spot a huge, illuminated 30mph sign, I managed to ascertain that when she “panicked” she “saw things in Chinese”. It was areal eye-opener, and I use it as an example to all my learners that road signs MUST speak to them loudly and clearly in words, without any lengthy translation being required.
Spooky. I’m getting a flood of hits yet again in 2023 on a ten year old story.
Candidate for the 2014 Darwin Awards, Aaron Wintin, 18, was showing off to his friends. Wintin was one of that breed of person too stupid to be able to pass a driving test, so just drove without a licence as he saw fit. When police saw him driving and tried to pull him over, he reversed at them, attempted to hide in a barn, and then drove through villages at speeds of up to 120mph.
Police caught him with a stinger device, and he continued to drive at 70mph until his tyres shredded.
Laughably, his four young passengers were said to be “shaken”. Of course they were, the little darlings – though I bet they wouldn’t have been making such a pathetic claim if they hadn’t all been caught. After all, they could easily have got out of the car while Wintin was hiding in the barn for 30 minutes. This all happened at 3am when these little dears should have been at home in bed.
Wintin’s character is easily ascertained when you consider that he was already on a conditional discharge for criminal damage. Yet another pathetic mitigating plea was heard:
Jonathan Straw, defending, said Wintin, who is due to become a father in July, lost his job as a chicken catcher after his employer learned of his court appearance.
He urged the court to impose a suspended sentence, adding: “He is just 18 with no real experience of the criminal courts and no experience of custody. The overall effect on his future life will be grave.”
The court wasn’t taken in by this crap. Wintin was sentenced to six months at a young offenders’ institution and banned for four years. It’s just a shame his passengers – who were clearly from the same low strata in society – weren’t given similar sentences.
Incidentally, I am getting a surge of hits on this story as of December 2014. Six months after I wrote the piece, and multiple hits daily. I wonder why?
Another chiller tells how John Jones, 29, led police on an 80mph chase along Blackpool’s Golden Mile in the early hours at a time when there were still a lot of people around. The court was told that he was “away with the fairies” on drink. He had no driving licence or insurance.
Yet another pathetic mitigating plea was lodged:
Preston Crown Court heard the defendant could not recall much of what happened and was someone who had suffered agoraphobia, anxiety, depression and panic attacks. He was also said to have lost friends through drink driving incidents.
All the more reason to lock him up and throw away the key. Instead, he was given a paltry 12-month suspended sentence, banned for three years, community service, and a three-month curfew.
This is a chilling story. Peter Conroy, 73, knocked down two pedestrians, one of whom died six weeks later. He claimed he was wearing the wrong glasses, but police found his eyesight made him unfit to drive whether he was wearing the correct ones or not, and that he had lied to the DVLA in order to keep his licence.
Conroy said in court that the women “ran across the crossing”, but CCTV footage revealed he was lying about that, too. Audrey Noden, the woman who died, was 93. John Siddle from Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership said:
Ninety-three-year-old women don’t run anywhere.
In spite of the CCTV evidence, Conroy still denied he was at fault. He eventually admitted to causing death by dangerous driving. The court heard that Conroy had glaucoma, was blind in one eye, and short-sighted in the other. Yet he told the DVLA he was fit to drive when he had to renew his licence at 70.
Conroy was jailed for 2 years and banned from driving for 10 years. I can’t work out why he was banned for a finite period – it should have been permanent.
Part of me almost feels sorry for him. But most of me doesn’t. Lying to the DVLA is a common practice among elderly drivers.
I’ve mentioned several times about how the vegetables who “run” Nottingham City (and County) Council are determined to destroy this city. Aside from the appalling eyesore that is the skyline in Nottingham (get a different architect to design every new building, make it completely different to the one next to it, and be creative with turrets, spikes, and cheap materials that will discolour in the sun and rain within 12 months), there is also the waste of money known as “The Tram”.
I’ve also mentioned the latest drive towards 20mph speed limits on as many urban roads as possible (and reduced limits everywhere else). It’s worth pointing out here that the Council has given up asking the public for its opinion, and is simply changing 30mph zones to 20mph without any sort of warning whatsoever now – and even if it IS telling people, it isn’t telling the ones who drive those roads but don’t live there. After all, 20mph is about screwing the motorist and catering for all the Earth Mothers who live in the God-forsaken estates where these 20mph limits are being placed, so no point telling those who actually use the damned roads, eh?
But I digress a little. Nottingham Council’s pathetic argument in favour of 20mph zones is that other cities have done it. Oh yes, and some out-of-context RoSPA advice which evidently says that all Council employees will suffer a curse for a thousand years if they don’t impose 20mph limits on at least 60% of all roads by the end of the decade.
Well, it seems that Brighton has a similar problem with vegetables running local government, and it has prompted the formation of a group called Unchain The Brighton Motorist (UBM). The group consists of – according to the super sleuths at The Argus – a number of local business leaders, including taxi firm, cafe, restaurant, and hotel owners, along with solicitors and accountants.
The group… describes a blanket extension of 20mph speed limits across the city as a “declaration of war” on motorists.
They’re right, of course. But they are missing something far more insidious, which is really what’s at the root of the problem. You see, UBM is also backed by The Tourism Alliance – which includes The Sea Life Centre, the Hilton Brighton Metropole, and the Palace Pier – which means that virtually anyone who has a business interest in Brighton is against council policy. It also means that the only people who are actually pushing 20mph limits are the clowns who work for Brighton and Hove City Council, and perhaps a few members of the public who normally busy themselves by being members of the Neighbourhood Watch but who are looking to make their lives just a little less boring than usual (i.e. by being members of silly activist groups). All the people that matter are against 20mph limits in Brighton.
I first heard of UBM when I saw an ASA ruling involving them back in February. The insidious nature of the council’s policies becomes apparent when you note that…
Fifteen complainants, including Brighton and Hove City Council and members of 20’s Plenty for Us, Brighton and Hove Friends of the Earth and B[ic]ycles, challenged whether the following claims were misleading and could be substantiated…
So you have an elected council – a political body – which is using the ASA to push its own private political agenda and stifling anyone who opposes it. That cycling groups or the mummies who comprise the “Twenty’s Plenty” groups should also be crawling to the ASA doesn’t come as much of a surprise. But the council?
The council and the evolutionary throwbacks from those other groups must have been wetting themselves when the ASA upheld all the complaints on this first round. But it didn’t stop there, because in April there was another ASA ruling involving UBM and two complainants…
One complainant, a member of Brighton & Hove Friends of the Earth… Both complainants, including Brighton and Hove City Council…
Brighton City Council again clearly sought to stifle those who oppose it by twisting the ASA around its little finger. The ASA, however, appears to be wising up and this time it only upheld three out of the six issues raised. That was round two.
Round three came with this week’s ASA rulings. Who complained? You guessed it…
Brighton & Hove City Council challenged whether the claims…
This time the ASA has clearly become fully wised up and rejected ALL the complaints.
Kudos must go to UBM for bringing this issue out into the open. Something like it is needed in all cities where politically correct fools who have no other skills or qualifications manage to squirm their way into local government and interfere with the livelihoods and lifestyles of the majority of the population.
Apparently, East Midlands airport has been closed today because a cargo plane suffered a “landing gear failure”. The picture below shows the nature of the “failure”.
It’s a bit like that episode of The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob’s brother has rigged a dam with dynamite, and – with Bob hanging on to one of the charges – says, as he prepares to push the plunger:
You might hear a slight ringing in your ears – fortunately, you’ll be nowhere near them.
Apparently, she was a rescue cat or stray the family adopted.
