This email alert from the DVSA states that tests will cease to be conducted out of Clarendon Street as of 29 August 2014. However, Watnall will now re-commence conducting car tests as of 15 September 2014. The email says that tests will be available every day.
I didn’t do any tests out of Clarendon Street, but my understanding was that they only did them two days each week. I could be wrong, but that was certainly the original plan when the scheme was first trialled.
I think I’ll open betting on how long it takes for the Watnall residents to start complaining about all the learners who will undoubtedly be flocking back there! I’m sure there will be notices on the wall for ADIs to ignore asking them to avoid certain locations within a fortnight. Mind you, the only bad thing about Watnall for me is that there’s nowhere to get a decent coffee or something to eat. Oh, two things. The waiting room is uncomfortable, too!
I’ve noticed a few sources in the last few days rattling on about how the maximum speed limit for HGVs is to be increased. Sources (some of which are forums) seem to have some of the details wrapped around their necks.
A previous consultation has recommended that the speed for HGVs on single-carriageways be increased from 40mph to 50mph. This will go before Parliament during the summer, as it will require changes to the Law. Personally, I am not convinced it is a good idea, and the best argument Baroness Kramer seems to be able to come up with is:
The current speed limit just does not work – it is broken by about three quarters of HGV drivers at any particular time when they are not constrained by other traffic or the road layout. It is implausible that it could readily be made to work without a disproportionate effort.
I wonder if she thinks they’ll stick to 50mph any better than they do 40mph? And I wonder if she has seriously considered – or is capable of understanding – the additional risks associated with drivers attempting to control a vehicle weighing up to nearly 40 tonnes on narrow, twisting roads, or the effects of an accident involving one which is therefore moving 25% or more faster than it would have been legally (or illegally) moving previously? I hardly think that criminal behaviour should be decriminalised just because it means you don’t have to police it.
I mean, the council round my way is cutting limits to 20mph all over the place. But hardly anyone does 20mph (I do – I have to), so shouldn’t these limits be increased, too?
Anyway, if all that wasn’t bad enough, they’re now consulting on whether to increase the HGV speed limit on dual-carriageways from 50mph to 60mph. I’m counting the minutes before some prat argues that its a good idea because “dual-carriageways are the same as motorways”. No, they’re not. Dual-carriageways have lots of stopping points – traffic lights, roundabouts, and so on – and motorways don’t.
I guess the outcome is foregone conclusion – these “consultations” are just a small hoop that has to be jumped through before this crap government does whatever the hell it wants and then tells us it’s best for us.
Increasing speed limits for HGVs won’t get them from A to B any quicker than before. What it will do is get them from one set of lights, one roundabout, or one queue of traffic to another faster, on the assumption that they’ll be able to stop when they get there. And as we all know, HGVs don’t like slowing down unless they have to (they rarely let people merge if it means easing off the gas).
I’ve got an idea for a new videogame nasty, where cyclists with attitude take on HGV drivers with extra momentum.
Well done to Peter, who passed today with just four driver faults. A well-deserved result to a fellow Arsenal fan.
I usually marked his driver record using the “Spurs Index” – a number between 0 and 10 depending on what he did wrong, just to wind him up. The Index maxed out a few days ago when we were doing a bay park and he kept going too far and finishing just past straight. When I analysed it with him, he said “well, there is a reason but I didn’t really want to tell you because I know you’ll laugh”. I said: “Come on. You’re going to tell me now”.
It turned out he was trying to be better than perfect, which somehow meant going beyond straight to him. And he was right: I did laugh. But it meant that we got it sorted, even if it did gain a perfect “10” on the Spurs Index.
I’ve used Mazuma Mobile several times now. They never fail to impress – and this time is no exception.
I have upgraded my HTC One to the latest HTC One M8 model, and once I was running on the new phone I hopped on over to Mazuma and ordered a return pack last Wednesday night. It arrived Friday morning, and I packed up the phone and sent it by Special Delivery on Saturday morning.
Today (Monday), I got an email from Mazuma timed at 08.30 telling me they’d received it and it was going to be checked and processed. Another email timed at 17.40 told me the phone had been accepted and payment would be made shortly. A third email at 18.20 told me payment had been made and that it would appear in my account before midnight. It was actually in there as soon as I read the email (at about 21.30 when I got in)!
If you have a phone to sell, you’d be mad not to use Mazuma. They pay the full price every time (in my experience – and the HTC One is quite high-value), unlike some other companies who’ve come in for some stick over that, with their reneging on original offers over minor (and debatable) cosmetic issues. Mazuma doesn’t do that.
No one can have failed to have seen the news concerning Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was apparently shot down over Ukraine last week.
Without jumping to any conclusions over if – or by whom – it was shot down, let’s just assume that it was for a moment. The first question I would ask is this: who could be so stupid as to do it in the first place, and then be so chicken shit scared to admit it after they’d done it? The second question is: why?
There are obviously a lot of complete pricks in this world, and at the moment they all seem to be congregating in Ukraine.
On top of that, if Vladimir Putin is in any way involved (as many are claiming), then the man needs some serious head surgery very soon to sort out his obvious problems with megalomania. Why – in the 21st Century – would anyone in the civilised world want to behave the way Putin is on the world stage? Such behaviour might be second nature to the troglodytes who are pushing radical and militant branches of Islam in their sorry little corners of the world, but Russia managed to dig itself out of that kind of cesspit once. Putin is just shoving it back down the hole again.
If he’s not careful, he might end up going the same way as Saddam, Gaddafi, and all the other retards that the world got tired of having mess up peoples lives for entire generations at a time.
Well done to Rod, who passed on Tuesday with just 3 driver faults. Current plans are for both him and his brother to do Pass Plus when he gets back from his summer holiday – I’ll believe it when it happens, as everyone plans to do Pass Plus, but they seldom follow it through!
As I explained to him (in front of his dad) last week, he couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. Rearranging lessons he hadn’t got booked, giving me the wrong time of his test (fortunately, too early instead of too late), and picking up habits off his mum (who appears to be related to Lewis Hamilton as far as advice on speed is concerned) in ten seconds flat whilst ignoring what I am teaching him for weeks at a time. All light-hearted, of course, as he has been a good pupil and we’ve successfully overcome his dyslexia.
The DVSA has reported its findings and conclusions following the consultation earlier this year into modernising driver training. The details of the outcome are as follows:
The government introduced a simpler grading structure for approved driving instructors (ADIs) on 7 April 2014.
The government has also decided to:
take steps to help ADIs publish and publicise their grade
look at the options for replacing the ADI part 3 test with one that uses the same criteria and marking system as the ADI standards check
continue to look at the possibilities of introducing a vocational qualification, while making sure that concerns raised can be addressed
talk to the driver training industry about how we can best reform the trainee instructor licence
start work on an online booking service for ADI standards checks
consult separately about changing the ADI fee structure
change the law so an ADI can ask for their name to be removed from the ADI register
provide the option for an ADI to take an ADI standards check to renew a lapsed registration, after talking about the practical implications of this with the ADI national associations
not pursue the introduction of fines (called ‘civil sanctions’) that the ADI Registrar could issue to ADIs for the time being
The grading structure is obviously already implemented – apart from the information in the embedded link in the quoted text above, I wrote about it back in March.
Of those yet to be implemented, the wording of the first one is interesting. It’s being interpreted ambiguously by many of the radical rabble-rousers out there. If you look at it objectively, what the DVSA is saying is that they will “help” ADIs publish and publicise their grade. They don’t actually say that they ARE going to publish them whether ADIs like it or not, yet it is that threat – which first surfaced several years ago – and I think it is that earlier proposition which prevents many of the radicals seeing this current statement for what it is.
The second one is also interesting. Recently, some crackpot had concluded on a forum that I had declared somewhere that they had replaced the PST marking sheets. Actually, I had said nothing of the kind – what I had said was that in view of the changes to the Check Test, with it becoming the Standards Check and all, with the integration of CCL topics within that I couldn’t imagine that the Part 3 test would remain as it was. I simply pointed out that if the PST sheets changed, I would obtain copies and provide them for download. So I think this particular outcome vindicated my comments completely, though anyone with an ounce of common sense would have realised the Part 3 was going to have to change. Whether it does or not even after this is another matter – there’s a General Election next year, and all of this may end up swept into the gutter.
There’s further talk of reforming the trainee (pink) licence. Previously, the talk was of getting rid of it completely, though this has been scaled back to merely “changing” it. It’s still as far away from actually changing as it was three years ago. And as I say, there’s an election next year.
All the other stuff is fairly niche, and doesn’t really affect most instructors (well, not unless they’re fully paid-up unionistas, in which case every syllable and letter has to be nit-picked to death).
On a different note, it’s worth looking at some of the responses which are quoted verbatim in a separate document accessible from the findings link. Apart from the appalling typing, grammar, and spelling, I couldn’t believe one response to the issue of vocational qualifications. The respondent has written just short of 6,000 words in his reply! Others have used the opportunity to have a go at the DSA/DVSA. I love this one:
The current system is useless
Bless. I bet it took him all night to write that, and no doubt he had help! But it illustrates why the DVSA is sometimes reluctant to listen to “the industry” or “the associations” if this is the kind of input they’re going to get. The current system isn’t useless. It could be better, but no one knows how at the moment – after all, Mr “the current system is useless” is typical of those who propose alternatives simply by virtue of opposing the current state of affairs.
The show is available on catch-up on ITV Player until around 16 August 2014.
An ITV press release a couple of weeks ago alerted me to this programme, and I commented on that release at the time. Since I wrote the piece – and before the show was aired – both of the people appearing on it have contacted me. Neither was happy with my opinion about these sorts of shows and the type of people who appear in them. It’s also generated a disproportionate (and suspicious) amount of traffic to the blog.
This genre of TV show has become very popular with the media in the last few years. Without exception, those appearing on past programmes have clearly been involved for reasons of self-interest – and I’m talking about the kind where appearing on TV is the objective, not the kind where they actually learn something and change their ways. You see, when someone is eating behind the wheel on the motorway, driving with no hands, texting, speeding, etc., you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realise that this is both dangerous and wrong. However, these previous shows have glamourized the whole sordid business of driving badly by following the contestants – there is no other word to describe them – into bars and other places where they can show everyone how cool they think they are.
My initial assessment of the forthcoming programme – which I stress that I hadn’t seen at that time – was based on all of this. All I had was the press release for yet another hour of bad drivers who the TV company thought made for good TV.
In fact, I was wrong to suggest (or expect) that bad driving would be glamourized here, too. The show did not – in any way, shape, or form – suggest that the normal behaviour on the road of the two featured drivers was anything other than of an appallingly low standard. One of them – the one who wrote to me and stated that he was now a better driver than me – was an accident waiting to happen. He was speeding, shooting red lights 6 seconds after they went red (and claiming they were on amber), and so on.
A simulated (but realistic) collision with someone driving like he did under normal circumstances scared the shit out of him. The programme suggested that this had changed him, and one can only hope that it did. But I have to say that anyone who was driving as badly as this guy was prior to that experience is likely to need a little more than a scare to put things right. As I have said, it isn’t rocket science knowing the difference between right and wrong, and when someone actually denies or defends it then you have to wonder why they are even on the road to start with. And as for driving better than me… well, let’s just say that I’ve never had to make such a huge leap from such a low starting point, so I don’t think so. Let’s just hope he drives a little better than he did before.
The other driver got less screen time, but she was actually more dangerous in her original state. She was eating, texting (almost continuously if the edit is in any way representative), playing with her dog (and letting it “drive”), applying make-up, doing her hair… all the stereotypical things you constantly read about in the press when there’s nothing more important to cover. Although she might resent this comment, she had the attention span of a goldfish, and that’s where the problem was. She, too, was subjected to a simulated incident, and got a serious wake-up call as a result.
Whether the experience changes the behaviour of these two people in the long term remains to be seen. The programme didn’t attempt to suggest that this had happened, and nor could it have. I still maintain that most of what has apparently been “learnt” from the experience by the two drivers would have been available to all but the dullest examples of homo sapiens if they’d have applied some common sense in the first place, or unless they had other underlying issues – like poor attention spans. Unfortunately life doesn’t seem to work this way, and even if they do learn from it, how on earth would you roll it out to the general public?
Each crash involved the writing-off of at least one, and up to several vehicles. These crashes required vehicles kitted out with advanced remote control systems to be totalled. If you did this for the general driving public it would cost maybe £10,000-£20,000 per experiment, and with around a million test passes each year (or approaching that figure), that would add up to between £1 billion and £2 billion! It isn’t likely to be rolled out anytime soon.
The programme was actually well made and somewhat different to its predecessors. But I was right when I said that the characters involved would feature hooks and deviate somewhat from what would be classed as “normal” (in the most general sense). When these shows start featuring boring, ugly people with no trips to clubs or coverage of expensive hobbies and pastimes included, they will begin to chip away at the problem. Until then, they remain unrealistic.
As an aside to all this, the female participant in the show has been plaguing me with emails. She doesn’t come over as very bright, in my opinion, although with hindsight that might also have been apparent in the programme. After all, she did allow her dog to “drive”, amongst other things, and you don’t need to be too smart to realise how dumb that is.
Suspiciously, I received another message on the same subject and using the same pathetic tone from an IP address only 5km away from Miss Britain’s Worst Driver within the time bracket of her first two. She denied this was from anyone she knew, then admitted in passing a few days later that it was one of her friends. Basically, it was exactly as I’d suggested to start with as a result of the suspicious IP addresses – but which she had denied.
I tried to explain to her that her IP address had been routed through Hounslow, and the other one from Staines – about 5km away. I seem to have spent the last two days trying to explain to her that no one has actually said she LIVES in Hounslow, just that the email was routed through there. She cannot get her head around the fact that her email DID go through Hounslow. And the other one through Staines, which made me suspicious. I mean, to get two messages on the same subject, within minutes of each other, with the same snivelling tone, and only 5km apart as far as the logged IP address goes… you’ve got to wonder, haven’t you? She even claimed she had talked to her ISP and they’d told her “only one digit [of the IP address logged] was correct”, which is utter bollocks, since it was a BT address and that means at least three characters would have matched even if it was otherwise wrong.
You know, of all the hundreds, even thousands, of people I have taught, I have never come across anyone like this. Is it any wonder she ended up being picked as one of Britain’s Worst Drivers?
I could have killed one of my pupils yesterday. He booked a last minute lesson in the only space available in my diary – at 9pm on Sunday evening. I could have said no, but he has his test coming up. But I did lay it on thick about how I was missing the World Cup final because of him.
I got home in time for extra time, and saw Mario Götze’s brilliant goal for Germany. I’m glad Germany won – they were the best team in the tournament, and any other result would have just been unfair. But something about the BBC’s coverage rankles me.
Götze’s name is spelt with an ‘o’ with an umlaut (or diaeresis in linguistic jargon). Thomas Müller’s name also has an umlaut, as does Mesut Özil’s, André Schürrle’s, Benedikt Höwedes’s, and manager Jogi Löws’s. The, for good measure, you have Kevin Großkreutz. And yet the BBC incorrectly reports these names as Gotze, Muller, Ozil, Schurrle, Howedes, and Lows (and misses out other diacritics). The German newspaper, Die Welt, obviously uses the proper spellings.
I’ve always been better at speaking German than any other language – I can’t actually speak fluently, but I can get by whenever I go to a German-speaking country (you know, order food and beer, get a taxi to take me where they serve food and beer. That sort of thing). But it was bad enough that they tried to replace umlauts with letters at one time. I used to do business with a company called Bausch and Ströbel, and in the English-speaking world they printed their name a “Stroebel”, because in the English-speaking world people are either too stupid or too arrogant to understand the umlaut.
In a similar vein, I’ve seen Löws written as Loews, and Götze written as Goetze. And it’s bloody wrong.
I find that the same thing happens with pupils who have non-British origins. Chinese pupils especially seem to often adopt English names instead of their Chinese ones to make it easier for the Brits. I’ve got a clutch of learners at the moment from India, Latvia, Lithuania, Senegal, and so on, and I make a point of learning their names and finding out how to pronounce and spell them correctly. I will go so far as to find out if they have a shorter nickname that they use themselves sometimes, but I insist on using their correct names if they are happy with that.
So I’d expect the BBC to at least spell the names of German footballers correctly instead of just missing out critical symbols which govern the pronunciation.
I love the way that they can confidently deduce the entire colour scheme on the right from the fossil on the left. And I’m also amazed that anyone could make a living out of mocking up these creatures (if you look closely in the link, the feathered one on the right is a collection of bits of modern birds glued on to a model).
This time, we get an artist’s impression rather than an actual model – look closely at the beak region and marvel at what appears to be an Albatross with teeth added.
The third story – and this link is not on the BBC, though that’s where I first saw it – provides a video showing how a 440 million year old spider would have walked.
The amusing thing about this is that the video gives the impression of a creature the size of a small dog, when in actual fact the spider in question was only a few millimetres long. I can’t imagine an arachnid that small moving in a similar manner to an elephant!
Anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that the steps involved in creating a mock-up of anything that’s extinct are as follows:
select a modern animal to compare against
change the environmental context as necessary
pick the most bizarre colour palette you can find in Photoshop
add some teeth
You will note how I have demonstrated this using a cuddly Toucan. In its normal setting, it looks just like a Toucan should.
However, by applying the above steps, you can see how a prehistoric version – toucanosaurus – would have looked if it had walked into New York (it couldn’t have flown, as it would obviously have been flightless back then). This is a definite likeness of such a prehistoric Toucan if one ever existed, by the way.
Well done to Peter, who passed today with just four driver faults. A well-deserved result to a fellow Arsenal fan.
Well done to Rod, who passed on Tuesday with just 3 driver faults. Current plans are for both him and his brother to do Pass Plus when he gets back from his summer holiday – I’ll believe it when it happens, as everyone plans to do Pass Plus, but they seldom follow it through!
