I came across this the other day – it’s the Driving Examiners’ Branch of the Public Services Union (PCS).
As you meander your way through life, some things pass you by. Other things attract your attention. And a few things grab you by the throat and shake you. This website falls easily into that latter class as far as my own wander through life is concerned.
The first thing anyone clicking on the link will be struck by is the viciousness of the main story towards the employer of the members of this group. As I write this, the front page story is proclaiming that it is ‘the voice of reason in the double standards agency’ (for anyone not in the know, ‘double standards agency’ is the name people of restricted intelligence give to the DSA (Driving Standards Agency) – but it stopped being clever or funny shortly after the first time it was used many, many years ago. Actually, around the second or third time – but that’s not important).
But back to the main topic. If you click on ‘ Advice to Test Candidates ‘ on the site you get a very superior lecture on what to do when you go for your test:
You!
Make sure you read your appointment letter fully, there is valuable information in it.
Make sure you are well prepared and ready for the test, your Examiner will know very soon if you are not, and may terminate the test.
Remember to read and know the Highway Code and follow its advice, it is not just to get you through the Theory Test.When you attend for your test, you should be :-
- in possession of all the correct documentation
- courteous
When you attend for your test, you should not be :-verbally or physically abusive to your examiner
- obviously ill
- suffering form an infectious disease
- verbally or physically abusive to your examiner
Gosh! No need for us instructors with people like this guy around, is there? You get the distinct impression of a uniformed, jack-booted neanderthal delivering this advice – and it’s not the kind of approach that is customer-focused or sympathetic to the candidate, is it?
Click on ‘ Dumbing Down The Driving Test ‘ and you get an inkling of the minds involved in this site and their motives (articles are written by more than one person, you would imagine):
I have been saying in my office for a long time, the problem is outside with the instructors,[FULL STOP, CAPITAL ‘W’] we are checked a minimum of 6 times a year, [BUT] some instructors are going 3 or 4 YEARS with out a check and even then, when found to be sub standard, the agency get in a higher manager who can see no reason why not to allow them to continue,[FULL STOP, CAPITAL H] how many instructors have been taken off the register in the past year?
I can make a good guess that any errant spelling has been corrected, but I have taken the liberty and corrected errant grammar (green additions in brackets) so that the paragraph makes sense. If certain examiners feel like this about instructors then we’re always going to have a problem, aren’t we?
But this is the best bit – after more superior advice to candidates it offers a list of example infectious diseases which you should not turn up for your test with:
- Acute Encephalitis
- Acute Poliomyelitis
- Anthrax
- Chicken-Pox (Varicella)
- Cholera
- Diphtheria
- Dysentery (amoebic or bacillary)
- Food Poisoning
- Glandular Fever (Infective mononucleosis)
- Infective Jaundice
- Influenza
- Lassa Fever
- Legionnaires’ Disease
- Leprosy
- Leptospirosis
- Malaria
- Marburg Disease
- Measles
- Meningitis
- Meningococcal Septicaemia (without meningitis)
- Mumps
- Ophthalmia Neonatorum
- Paratyphoid Fever
- Plague
- Rabies
- Relapsing Fever
- Rubella
- Scarlet Fever
- Shingles (Herpes Zoster)
- Smallpox
- Syphilis
- Tetanus
- Tonsillitis
- Tuberculosis
- Typhus
- Viral Haemorrhagic Fever
- Whooping Cough
- Yellow Fever
All of the above are highly contagious;
Those highlighted in red are the ones we have been told about at centres this year!!!!
Plague? I guess there must be a lot of that, so well worth the warning. And Rabies? Well, you can’t be too careful. Leprosy? (Driving Examiner: “Excuse me, but is this your finger I just found on the floor?”) Marburg Disease and Lassa Fever are both exceedingly rare. There have only been 12 cases of Lassa in the UK since 1970, and none of Marburg. So whoever published the information on this website is obviously right to be worried! And Anthrax? Stupid! I never thought of that. I mean, it’s everywhere, isn’t it?
To be fair, they do say the red ones are those reported this year, but it obviously reads like the author is afraid of candidates who might be carrying the other ones. And I’d love to know how they accurately diagnosed some of those – maybe they have a lab, now? (Pupil who simply doesn’t feel well: “I’ve got food poisoning/flu/tonsillitis”).
In actual fact, I think whoever wrote this – or should I say, Googled it and then copied and pasted it – didn’t know the difference in meaning between the words ‘infectious’ and ‘contagious’. What business is it of the examiner if someone has Malaria? You can’t catch it off people (and that’s the only thing they’re worried about on this site – not the test candidate). And there are a few others on there which aren’t actually contagious – even Leprosy is less contagious than, say, HIV, and I’d love to see them publicly discriminate against people who are HIV-positive.
Yes, a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing when in the wrong hands.
I must point out that all the examiners I know from my available test centres are courteous and polite to both candidates and instructors (something which can’t be said of all instructors). I also know that these examiners appear to work through any of the frequent industrial action (i.e. pay disputes), so it’s safe to guess they didn’t write any of this rubbish.