I didn’t used to like Rio Ferdinand purely based on the fact that I’m an Arsenal fan and he played for Manchester Utd. After he retired, I never really thought much more about him. Then I saw this story in the media today.
It seems that he’s donated £500,000 of toys to a charity to make sure that underprivileged kids don’t go without presents on Christmas Day. On top of that, he’s also donated 11,500 sleeping bags to help homeless people in Manchester.
What a great guy.
I should be numb to it by now, but I never cease to be amazed by some of the things ADIs come out with. This time it’s to do with lessons and lesson payments.
The first comment I saw was to do with lesson payments. Speaking personally, in all the years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve never had much of a problem getting paid. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of pupils who have truly been a problem, and since I had decided right from the start that it would make more economic sense to get rid of troublemakers, they didn’t stay with me long. I still get the occasional learner who struggles to pay for lessons, but as long as they are honest about it and don’t mess me around too much I am prepared to be quite flexible.
I used to get paid by mostly by cheque. I never had a problem with them bouncing, but they were always a glorious pain in the ass – the trouble with cheques is that they only have monetary value if you physically pay them into your account. If I was busy, I would sometimes end up with close to £1,000-worth of them in my wallet before finding the time to make the exodus to the bank. You have a bit of a moral duty to get cheques cleared quickly – I know I used to hate it when one of mine wasn’t cashed until a month or more later – so these trips were a frequent necessity. While we’re on the subject, cash is almost as problematic if it needs to be in your account rather than under the floorboards in the attic!
Trips to the bank were the major issue. Branches are closing all over the place, and the ones that remain are located conveniently distant from suitable parking spaces. Even when you go into a branch, everything takes place in slow motion – the act of paying £1 into a current account which is in credit takes 10 minutes even if no one else is in there. Unfortunately, bank branches are second only to doctors’ waiting rooms as meeting places for old people, every single one of which is incapable of paying their pension in without other issues arising, in spite of having done exactly the same thing every week for the past 10 years (it’s even worse when you consider they could have their pensions paid in directly, without having to go to the bank – or Post Office – at all). If you were in a hurry, going into a branch was a major gamble and frequently a big mistake. From my perspective, it meant parking charges, parking fines (if Rushcliffe Borough Council decided my ticket wasn’t displayed prominently enough, which has happened twice), lost lesson time, and a lot of swearing. More than once I turned up in West Bridgford, only to discover the branch shut ‘for staff training’, which I would have only known about if I went there every day and carefully scrutinised the crudely typed note sellotaped to the window.
Since 2013 I have not accepted a single cheque after switching to taking card payments. I also take much less cash than I used to, so I very rarely have to go to the bank, and I spend a lot less (cash is a temptation). I would also imagine that I would be better off if I was mugged – financially, at least, and when compared directly with being mugged whilst in possession of large amounts of cash. Almost everyone has a chip & PIN card, and they can easily pay me using that instead of in cash. It’s much better for them, in fact, and most find it remarkable to the extent that I’m certain it helps generate referrals.
The issue that always crops up when the ignorant technophobes get involved is transaction fees. I pay 2.75% per card transaction with PayPal Here, so if my lessons are £25 per hour, my annual turnover if doing 35-hour weeks would theoretically be £43,750. If every lesson was paid by card, my net annual turnover would be £42.547 (a difference of £1,203). I estimate that, on average, I made 1.2 visits to the bank each week when I took cheques and lots of cash and, being very generous about it, each visit cost me one lost hour of lesson time. That works out to about £1,500 each year. In short, when I think about all the other costs associated with having to go to the bank, 2.75% leaves me somewhat better off than taking cash and cheques did.
As if this wasn’t enough, many of those who refuse to accept card payments – preferring instead to force their pupil to withdraw cash from an ATM either in lesson time, or before they come out for the lesson – will take PayPal payments through their websites. Ironically, PayPal – as distinct from PayPal Here – charges 3.4% + 20p per transaction. On £25, that’s 4.2%. On £50, it’s 3.8%
A second comment I saw had to do with the physical area covered by an ADI.
When I first qualified, I had recognised right from the outset that I needed to cast a wide net in order to stand a good chance of filling my diary – at least in the short- to medium-term. Initially, I covered virtually every Nottingham postcode and the east side of Derby. However, the Derby lessons became problematic when they started work on what is the current incarnation of Bardill’s Roundabout. Since most work was in Nottingham anyway, and it was building up by the day, I cut out Derby altogether, and then whittled my postcode coverage down further. Presently, I cover all of Nottingham south of the city, as far north as Hucknall, as far east as Bingham and the surrounding villages, and as far west as Long Eaton. I do tests at any of the Nottingham test centres, and when I get an enquiry I decide there and then whether I want to take it or not based on where the pupil is located. In actual fact, I rarely turn anyone down who is within my area.
If I could fill my diary with pupils who all lived within a five minute drive of my house, I don’t think I would want that. It would surely save me a bit of money in fuel costs compared to what I spend now, but it would be as boring as hell. I mean, cripplingly boring. And that would inevitably affect the quality of my lessons in all sorts of ways, not to mention my own long-term wellbeing. I suspect this is one reason why not many ADIs stick in this job for the long haul.
The other problem is best illustrated by the old saying about putting all your eggs into a single basket. While work from your local area is plentiful you might well get a lot of new pupils. But when those are all gone – and not many areas have such a high turnover of residents that there is a never-ending supply of 17-year olds to teach – so is your full diary. And then there is the national economic climate, which goes in cycles. A downturn – and we’re due one, even before Brexit is taken into account – means less work per se. A wider net ensures a better catch.
I next saw a comment about road works and being stuck in traffic jams, making travel of more than a few miles impossible. That’s nonsense. Yes, traffic can be a problem – but not if you know all the rat runs, and understand the hold ups in question, and can bypass the blackspots. Only last night I set off for a local lesson in Wollaton, only to be met by a wall of stationary traffic on the ring road back to Clifton Bridge. I quickly detoured along Queens Drive, up Maid Marian Way, along Derby Road, and came to the QMC roundabout from the east instead of the south, missing the queues entirely (and this was at 6pm). On the other hand, I keep an eye on what’s happening at the Nottingham Arena or if Forest are playing (Notts County doesn’t matter as the traffic doesn’t increase when they’re at home), and avoid those areas as necessary. Unless there has been an accident – which can make even a 2-mile journey last 40 minutes or more – I find a way through, and I am rarely more than a few minutes late.
As the title says, this job is as easy and enjoyable as you make it. Conversely, it can be as hard and unpleasant as you let it be.
I noticed that the subject of Box Junctions was being over-complicated and obfuscated on a web forum recently.
Rule 174 of the Highway Code says:
Box junctions. These have criss-cross yellow lines painted on the road (see ‘Road markings’). You MUST NOT enter the box until your exit road or lane is clear. However, you may enter the box and wait when you want to turn right, and are only stopped from doing so by oncoming traffic, or by other vehicles waiting to turn right.
It seems odd to me that there should suddenly be a problem with this, given that it has been worded pretty much the same way for the last 30 years or more (box junctions have been around since the late 60s).
The bottom line is that – and it has always been clearly understood that this is what it meant – if you are travelling straight on, you will be committing an offence if you (or any part of your vehicle) stop inside the area marked with the yellow lines. If you are moving slowly in traffic, it is up to you to decide if you should enter the boxed area and run the risk of having to stop in it if the traffic comes to a standstill, hence the Highway Code wording about your exit road or lane being clear. If you keep moving and manage to clear it then you have not committed any offence – though you might have taken a bit of a gamble. Technically, your exit road or lane IS clear if you get it right, whether by good judgement or good luck. It doesn’t matter how slowly you are travelling – if you clear the boxed area you have not done anything wrong.
The Highway Code DOES NOT say it is an offence to enter the box junction if someone else is already passing through it. If that was how you had to use them, there’d be gridlock for 12 hours every day as a result of reduced traffic flow, not to mention lots of bumps as people tried to work out the different permutations!
You can stop in a box junction if you are turning right, and the only thing preventing you from completing the manoeuvre is traffic coming towards you or also queuing to turn right. If my memory serves me correctly, I think that once upon a time you weren’t allowed to wait behind another vehicle waiting to turn (i.e. only one car at a time was allowed in). I might be wrong about that, but it is a moot point anyway, since it is what the Highway Code says now that matters. However, this may explain why people think it is wrong to follow other traffic through a junction when going ahead, even though it only applied to turning right.
Box junctions are intended to prevent traffic being gridlocked. They used to work very well, though they are less effective these days as driver arrogance and ignorance has increased. Lorries and buses think nothing of blocking box junctions during rush hour, and it is only in London (where cameras are used to enforce the rules, and where there is a flourishing business in legal firms trying to get people off when they’re caught) where they are taken seriously – though perhaps not for the reasons originally intended.
I’m getting a lot of hits on this subject, probably due to the Watchdog programme which aired this week.
The situation is a little confused at the moment. A recall is already in effect for certain Corsa models made between 2006-2014, and this was the subject of a Watchdog report a couple of months ago. The latest report suggests all Corsa D and E models are implicated. This latter problem is not yet official (to my knowledge) and no recall is in effect.
The original problem affected a few thousand cars, whereas this new problem – if it is verified – implicates virtually all Corsas made since 2006. The problem is a similar one to that which caused Zafiras to be recalled.
DVSA is currently investigating based on the reports, and has advised Vauxhall to ensure customer safety in the meantime. Quite how Vauxhall will do that is not yet known, although if this FAQ is anything to go by, probably not a lot.
Corsas are used by a lot of ADIs – particularly those at BSM.
An update from Charles Goerens, following the previous communication on this:
Dear Madam or Sir,
Yesterday I decided together with Guy Verhofstadt to withdraw my amendment on Associate EU Citizenship. We realised that this has become a very important issue that cannot await treaty change – as was my intention when I first tabled my amendment – since this might take years.
Yesterday evening, the House of Commons decided by a majority of almost 400 to support Theresa May’s plan to trigger article 50 by the end of March 2017. Hence the prospect that Article 50 will be invoked has become very real indeed.
The European Parliament will define its position on the Brexit agreement through a resolution during spring 2017. This seems to be the best opportunity to give Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt the possibility to enforce the Associate EU Citizenship.
I recognise this might come as a surprise to many of you, but please understand that the abovementioned procedure makes it much more likely for the Associate EU Citizenship to succeed than through an amendment.
Yours sincerely,
Charles Goerens
This article was published in 2015, but I’ve started getting hits this year, and DVSA has sent out the first 2016 reminder, so it’s worth an update.
DVSA has posted a new blog entry [original article from 2015] concerning bad weather and driving tests. As we know, apart from being rocket scientists, doctors, psychiatrists, life coaches, political raconteurs, with most having been refused entry into Mensa for being too intelligent, the average driving instructor is also a highly skilled meteorologist.
As DVSA says, they have a duty of care. However, what they don’t say is that tests are pretty much only ever cancelled when it is icy or particularly foggy. I don’t blame them one bit, since the majority of test candidates will not have driven in fog or snow/ice before (many will have cancelled lessons for just that reason in the past, or their instructor will have) and doing it for the first time on their tests is a pretty risky operation for anyone within a 2 mile radius of them.
I can’t understand why instructors get so worked up about bad weather cancellations. Fair enough, it’s lost income (well, for most it is – some still charge their pupils), but it isn’t as if the well-run driving school is going to have a turnover based totally on income from driving tests. It’s more like a maximum of two or three a week.
My own advice is:
You can whinge and whine as much as you want if tests get cancelled, but you won’t change the test centre manager’s mind. Life is much more relaxing if you just accept that it happens and learn to deal with it. That way, you can minimise – or even eliminate – any final loss incurred, and help to prevent childish and inaccurate advice being passed on to future generations of learners.
How does that saying go? If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
The comments began almost immediately back in 2015. One ADI questioned DVSA’s criterion for cancelling due to fog, citing “bad mist/moderate fog” as an example of a poor reason for tests being postponed. As I said, many ADIs believe that they are skilled meteorologists.
Many test candidates will never have driven in foggy conditions before. Furthermore, fog can be patchy and unpredictable – I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been driving on the motorway during the winter and early-evening or early-morning fog banks start appearing, and you can be driving in totally clear conditions one moment, only to be unable to see more than a few car lengths ahead a second or two later. There is no way I would expect DVSA to risk either their examiners or the candidates’ wellbeing if such a risk exists, and I trust them to make the decision. I also don’t go around looking for evidence to contradict them.
Another ADI referred to a situation where it was obvious that a test was going to be cancelled, and yet he was forced to pick a pupil up in dangerous conditions since DVSA would not confirm that the test was off until 20 minutes before it was due to go out. If what he has said is correct, then he definitely has a point. His test centre should have been rather more sensible. We’re a bit more fortunate up this way – before now I’ve spoken with the test centre manager or an examiner and they’ve actually asked me if I’d like them to make an immediate decision rather than delay that decision (when conditions were very bad about three years ago). Based on my limited meteorological knowledge (yes, I admit it!), they tend to cancel whole mornings if things are bad, or up until a certain time if they think things might improve, and that really helps me when it comes to picking up pupils. Maybe a word with the test centre in question would be a more fruitful area to investigate for that commenter instead of just bad-mouthing them.
Will my test be cancelled due to bad weather?
I’ve answered this just about every year since I started the blog. YES. YOUR TEST CAN GET CANCELLED IF THE WEATHER IS BAD. If it IS cancelled, you will get another one free of charge.
Typical examples of ‘bad weather’ include:
In theory, ANY type of ‘bad weather’ could cause a cancellation, but they usually don’t. I’ve never had one cancelled due to wind or flooding, but I have the others.
This nanny state gets ever worse. You can’t buy anything these days that tastes any good because they’ve removed the bloody salt and sugar from it. I had a couple of hash browns from McDonalds this morning and they were devoid of flavour (they only have any if they’re crispy, and mine were bordering on soggy).
When I came home I saw this article aggregated by MSN from the Huffington Post. Neither of them are to blame for anything – the real pain in the arse is a British food nanny TV show called ‘Tricks of the Restaurant Trade’. They’ve apparently made the ‘shocking’ discovery that when you add dressing to salad, the calories go up, and that hot tomato soup contains added salt and sugar.
They cited Greggs, whose Cream of Tomato Soup claims to contain 5.7g of sugar per 300g portion – but which, when measured, was found to contain over 25g. My guess here is that Greggs calculated how much sugar they had added to their recipe, and omitted the sugar already there from the tomatoes. Take 300g of canned tomatoes and you’d find over 13g of sugar naturally present, so add another 6g and you’re not far off what Greggs claimed (the TV crew also had a larger sample than 300g and declared the total sugars, and were too stupid to adjust the figures pro rata – probably to make Greggs look bad on purpose).
Greggs has said it will reformulate if necessary – but they should leave it alone. If they take out the added sugar it’ll just be like eating tomatoes, and you don’t need much help if you just want to do that.
Then there was the startling case of the Big Mack Salad. This is a Mackerel salad, which was found to contain about 760 calories – and which sent everyone apoplectic. What they didn’t point out (and probably didn’t know because they hadn’t bothered to look it up) is that a typical single serving of Mackerel on its own – raw – would contain about 430 calories. Add a mere 30mls of Olive Oil and you’re up to 700 calories right away. Add a bit of sugar and you have your explanation without any need for a stupid Channel 4 shit stirring show. In light of this, comparing the salad’s calorie content to ‘an average fried breakfast’ as though the Big Mack is something heinous is so misleading it is plain wrong.
Unfortunately, this is what happens when you involve someone like Amanda Ursell – a ‘nutritionist’. You see, anyone can become a nutritionist – the name is not registered, nor is the ‘profession’ regulated – so the title is pretty much meaningless. However, it does attract a certain demographic, and if you’re lucky enough to be blonde, female, photogenic, and emanate from the Home Counties, then you’ll have a career in television ready to fall into your lap with very little effort on your part.
People like Ursell love to compare various foods with ‘spoons of sugar’ or ‘grams of salt’ as if there is some sort of problem, and yet the only ‘problem’ is their own vague understanding of the issue and their inability to understand science properly. They can’t get it into their thick skulls that food contains calories, and these calories often come from fats and sugars.
They even had a go at Wasabi’s Sushi boxes for having too many carbs, and likened it to ‘seven slices of bread’. More simple maths: a slice of bread has 80 calories, so seven slices is 560 calories. Cooked sushi rice is about 140 calories per 100g, so four sushi rolls would have a similar overall calorific value from carbs. It’s like, wow, rice has carbohydrates in it. In fact, it is what it is, and nothing more.
I originally wrote this article as the result of the most ridiculous editorial written by a female journalist in one of the usual newspapers which prints crap like that. She was trying to justify why she couldn’t drive. She was only 30, for God’s sake!
The news story was badly written and full of inaccuracies and untruths. In fact, it was typical “femail” fodder, if you get my drift. It didn’t stay available for more than a month or so, and the exact things it said are long since gone. I’ve summarised the important details of my response to that article in the bullet points below:
Can I learn to drive when I’m 50?
Someone found the blog on that term. Yes, you can! Two of my best-ever pupils were 50+. However, not everyone is the same. I can get one 17-year old who picks up everything first time, and another who should (in my opinion) give up the idea of driving for the sake of humanity and get a bus pass instead! And it’s exactly the same for older learners. Age isn’t an automatic barrier. But it can be a bigger barrier if you let it become one by thinking old in the first place.
People can pass at any age. The real question is “should they?”. You can only find out by trying.
Is learning to drive difficult for a 60-year old?
Another search term used to find the blog. It depends on what kind of 60-year old you are. If you’re 60 but think like you’re still 20 (or 30, or 40) then you can probably learn as easily as you would have done if you were still that age. But if you think like you’re 60, going on 70, it might well be a challenge for you. Then again, it might not.
You won’t know unless you try. Don’t use your age as either a weapon or an excuse.
Can you be too old?
My personal opinion on this is yes, you can. But it’s not as simple as just your age, it’s also down to how you, your mind, and your body have handled it. I had one lady some years ago who was “around” 70 – she wouldn’t admit how old, but she’d hinted that it was 70+. She was disabled through arthritis and her lessons were being paid for through Motability. She was absolutely lovely – she was learning guitar, wrote poetry, and liked music (especially rock). She’d decided to learn to drive because her husband had died and she wanted to get around.
I don’t know how long it would have taken her, but the signs from the lessons she did were not good. I had to buy extra mirrors because her arthritis prevented her turning her head, and every lesson was like a beginner’s session – she forgot everything we’d covered before. Her Motability funding ran out until she’d passed her theory. She did phone me to say she’d be back once she’d passed, but I never heard from her again.
Some older people have serious age-related coordination and cognitive issues, and these are bound to affect how easily they can learn to drive. Other older people have very “young” minds and have fewer – if any – issues in this area.
I once knew someone who was mentally in his 50s or 60s by the time he reached 25. All he wanted was a wife and kids, and a pipe and slippers by the fire. Someone with that sort of outlook is likely to have serious issues learning something new by the time they really do get older (and believe me, he did).
Eventually, virtually everyone is “too old” to drive. For some, it might be in their 40s or 50s, while others may still have what it takes in their 80s. As an aside, I recently did an assessment on a near-90-year old woman who’d had an accident and had lost her confidence. She wanted an honest opinion to help her decide whether to hang up her keys or not. She was a good driver – very alert – so I told her she was fine, but to have an assessment with someone regularly or if she felt her reactions had changed in any way.
But anyway, it is logical that there may be a point at which some people shouldn’t waste time and money trying to learn. It’s just different for everyone.
You won’t know if any of this applies to you unless you try it.
I haven’t written much about Brexit recently – if I did, I’d be at my keyboard permanently. However, one particular story today has prompted me to start writing about it again.
The story concerns an aged halfwit called Derek Norman. This unholy specimen is 82 years old, and he is apparently a “staunch Brexiteer”. It seems that he is guilty of extensive acts of criminal damage around the country, since it is his self-appointed vocation in life to go around removing any road signs which have metric values on them. He proudly boasts to have removed 2,000 signs – that’s 2,000 examples of absolute, outright criminal behaviour.
Most people his age would content themselves with hiding behind the curtains ready to run out and claim ownership of a particular corner if a learner showed up there. But this man is special.
I wrote a while back – shortly after the Referendum – that it wouldn’t be long before some prat started trying to bring back Imperial measurements. I was proved right when Warwick Cairns formed some jackass movement for precisely that purpose. Senior Citizen Norman has taken things a step further by committing acts of vandalism to effect the changes himself. It is also worth pointing out that he’s a UKIP activist, which means that his thinking is far from normal. As a small digression, it speaks volumes about his likely opinion and attitude regarding other Brexit propaganda, such as towards people whose lineage isn’t confined to this sceptr’d isle. You don’t join UKIP with the Party line anymore than someone in the American Deep South joins the Ku Klux Clan in order to promote racial tolerance.
Norman said: “We have what we call spotters all over the country who tell us about the signs.
Accurately translated, what he means is there are plenty of like-minded twats all over the place who look up to him and egg him on to commit further criminal acts.
He should be locked up until such time as he can be handed over to the British Natural History Museum and stored in a back room with all the other fossils.
I get email alerts from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), and over the years I’ve seen some funny rulings.
Until recently, ASA was a battlefield for BT, Virgin, and all the other broadband companies to keep trying to discredit each other over claims made in adverts. Every week without fail, BT would have a complaint about Virgin, then Virgin would have a complaint about Talk Talk, then BT would complain about Virgin again, who would then complain about BT. However, this has pretty much stopped now, and although no one ever admitted to it, I’d lay odds that it was a conscious decision on someone’s part to stop the practice once and for all.
ASA frequently reverses some of its previous decisions based on appeals from those it has ruled against (or those who won’t let go, if the decision was not to uphold a complaint). ASA is not government funded, is non-statutory, and it is self-regulating.
Every ruling against someone concludes with the phrase: “The advertisement must not appear again in its current form. We told [company] not to [make whatever claims it has been accused of]”.
Some of its rulings are extremely petty. Most complaints seem to be equally as petty, and it is obvious that they are raised by professional complainers in the majority of cases. What irks me is that some of the companies ruled against may well have spent a lot of money on the ad campaigns in question, and all that money is effectively wasted thanks to an organisation whose CEO, Guy Parker, is on a salary of £120,000 a year.
A ruling in this week’s bulletin against Heinz is a prime example. Heinz has a series of adverts centred around tapping on empty baked beans cans. Now, if ASA had banned it on the strength of how annoying it is, I’d have had some sympathy (anyone remember the Heinz Tomato Soup ads?) But their decision to ban this one is on health & safety grounds!
Heinz is a multinational company with annual revenue of more than $10 billion, and over 30,000 employees worldwide. Any advertising campaign it launches is likely to cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Heinz Baked Beans are a staple food, and Heinz sells more than 1.5 million cans per day in the UK alone. Nearly one billion people eat Heinz Baked Beans at least once per year. Two million people eat them each day (not necessarily the same people).
The ASA’s ruling came about as a result of just nine complaints.
That’s right. Nine arseholes whose brains have turned to jelly as result of whatever happens when you have children complained that the ad promotes dangerous practices which might cause little darlings to cut themselves. Where have these idiots been living?
I was brought up on cans which looked like this when you opened them. They were sharper than razor blades, especially if you used one of those lever-type openers which had a longish blade and effectively sawed through the metal. And we used to play games like Tin Lurkey with these things – but I’m still around.
In fact, I’m not aware of anyone having had their lives changed or snuffed out as a result of the most horrendously sharp edges on the cans I used to know, so I find it even less likely now that most cans are ring-pull types with no sharp edges of note.