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.
Apparently, the Reservoir Road Test Centre in Hull has been closed on Health & Safety grounds after a neighbouring factory apparently experienced “a series of explosions” and “smoke from a shredding machine” caused an examiner to experience an asthma attack.
The article is in one of those “This is…” local publications and the emotive headline and reference to “explosions” is pretty vague. Even when they quote the owner of the factory where these explosions are taking place you’re still not much wiser. However, the owner explains that explosions occur inside a machine used for crushing cars a couple of times a week and are no hazard to anyone – which is at odds with the story’s initial reference to “shock waves” shaking the test centre and setting vertical blinds swinging.
Anyway, let’s leave the issue of alleged nuclear explosions in a breaker’s yard next door to the Hull test centre and look at the various responses to the temporary closure.
The story is dated today – the 11th – and yet tests appear to be going ahead until 23rd (so the whole issue can’t be that serious), after which time they will be run out of Beverley and Bridlington. Beverley is a 24 minute drive away from Hull, whilst Bridlington is 50 minutes away. Even Scunthorpe is only a 40 minute drive.
I ought to point out that I often take pupils who live in Long Eaton, for example, to tests in Colwick – a 25 minute drive at best, and often 40 minutes or more depending on the route I take. I carry out manoeuvres at various locations along whatever route we’re using, and that pushes the total travel time to anything up to 90 minutes – the warm-up time I include prior to test for all pupils..
One instructor reckons that pupils will now need two hour lessons because they will need experience of the roads they’ll be taking their tests on. He asks if they will be able to afford that. Well, the simple answer is yes, because all you do is let them miss a week and then do a two hour lesson the following week. I do that all the time with those who are strapped for cash. And he refers to a “huge fireball” erupting from the machine in the breaker’s yard – the BBC version of the story is somewhat less dramatic.
A DSA spokeswoman says:
…there is more to a test than learning test routes and it is expected that any candidate who considers themselves to be ready for test should be able to drive in any area.
That was exactly what I was thinking. Fair enough, there are certain features that it is useful to cover on lessons around any test centre, but you don’t spend all lesson, every lesson just covering test routes, test roads, test corners, and so on. Unfortunately, some ADIs do just that.
Another instructor thinks that Beverley will be “swamped by learners” and she adds:
They already have to put up with the Leconfield lorries going through their town.
The point she’s trying to make here escapes me. I’m not sure what lorries have to do with it, but I would very much doubt that even if every Hull examiner moved to Beverley and conducted all the planned Hull tests that there would be a significant increase in traffic. It would amount to a few dozen extra cars spread out over a whole day.
I wish people wouldn’t try to dramatise things so much.
Edit 10/10/2013: The latest news is that a temporary centre could open shortly – less than a month after the original office was shut.
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 came across this on the BBC website. It tells how a university graduate, Alan Bacon, applied for a job with Currys. Instead of being able to demonstrate why he’d be good in the photographic department in the interview, he was made to dance to a pop song.
Currys has apologised, and claims that it was not part of its official interview procedure.
Of course it wasn’t. But as the article points out – and many readers will probably have seen it anyway – this kind of idiotic “interviewing” was used in the recent fly-on-the-wall documentary series, The Call Centre.
Something frighteningly similar even happened to me once. It was part of the big Teamworking rollout in the early 90s, and the managers and team leaders were on a compulsory week-long residential course at a hotel in Sherwood Forest. The course facilitators were the usual bunch of extrovert prats, and one day we were told that there was “a forfeit” for something we were supposed to be doing that day – which was to put on a play for the hotel staff. It was no surprise to discover that we subsequently had to pay the forfeit.
I remember saying calmly: “Let me explain something. I have a phobia of acting, so I’m telling you now I’m not doing it. I’ll do stuff backstage, I’ll help to organise it, but I am NOT going to perform in front of people. And that’s final.”
This opened the flood gates. One of my team leaders was nearly in tears over the possibility of having to do it – and was ready to punch one of the facilitators (I had to restrain him). None of the others were keen, either. Only my opposite number on the other shift was almost wetting himself over the prospect, but he was a recent graduate, and dressing up (ideally in drag) was something he missed desperately. The play never went ahead.
Even as long ago as the mid-80s the typical management course would involve “ice-breaking exercises”. Indeed, the very first graduate course I went on involved such an exercise, where we had to lie on the floor and others drew around our heads to get a profile. These were then hung on the wall (using Blu-tac, of course) for the duration. But there were dozens of others over the years. Even my time in technical support for another division of the same group Currys is part of – while I was training as an ADI – required throwing sponge balls around. And First Aid training also involved similar stunts.
In the case of Alan Bacon, Currys offered him another interview with the apology. He wisely turned them down – but I think he still might have a few unpleasant surprises coming his way as he embarks upon his working life.
Currys reckons it is dealing with the idiot staff responsible. I’ll bet they still have jobs at the end of it.
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).
You really would think that those morons in charge of road works would start to get the message, wouldn’t you? So much so that – as I’ve said before – the total chaos on Nottingham’s roads can only be deliberate.
Today, there was almost gridlock on the south side (all along the ring road, all through West Bridgford, and all around Wilford and Ruddington) as people tried in vain to avoid the Wilford Lane road closure. But the best part was that on the A60 in Bradmore, and just to add insult to injury, some other morons identified as Severn Trent Water had got temporary lights up. These were there all day.
But the real problem is that they didn’t need to be there. The hole they’d dug was on the grass border next to someone’s house, and did not even extend as far as the path, let alone into the road. But of course, Health & Safety bullshit means that plastic barriers have to be put up to move the pedestrian walkway a certain number of metres away from any earthworks, and it then demands that if the walkway then comes within so many millimetres of the road then the road must be restricted and traffic lights put up. And this is what happened.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the idle, lazy contractors were anywhere to be seen – but whatever time of day it was that they dug the hole, there was absolutely no one there to do even the smallest amount of labour any time from 12pm onwards. I noticed that around 6pm the lights had been pushed out of the way – and I doubt that it was Severn Trent who had done it.
I also encountered another Severn Trent road block this afternoon (and I’ve forgotten where it was). Again, temporary lights were up.
Going back to the Wilford Lane fiasco, is it only me who cannot figure out why the whole road needs to be closed for 4 months when the road is only about 8 metres wide at that point? I mean, what they’re doing is closing it and not doing anything to it for 90% of that period. It’s just “in the plan”. Obviously, these fools (who comprise Nottingham’s roads department and NET) are incapable of only closing such a vital artery for the shortest time possible, and can only respond to whatever came up on their flipcharts at the undoubtedly copious meetings they held to plan it in the first place.
As I say, it is deliberate, anti-motorist incompetence.
Wilford Lane has now closed for 4 months while work on that waste of money called “The Tram” continues.
Ruddington Lane is only partially open. It closed last September “for approximately three months”, and opened – partially, as I say – nearly a full year later.
On top of this, there are temporary lights on Woodborough Road (again). The A60 towards Mansfield still has temporary lights during the day – and I noticed last week that all they’re doing is re-pointing that bloody wall. The Ring Road has long-term road works (currently at Aspley Lane, but if you read the Council’s propaganda they’re going to be moving as far north as the A60 roundabout at Arnold over an unspecified period of time). There are numerous other closures and restrictions.
This afternoon – well before 5pm – there were huge tailbacks all around Wilford Hill, with people finding alternative routes now that Wilford Lane is closed.
Nottingham has become the absolute pits. As a city – in the geographic sense – it is fine. But politically – in terms of the morons who allegedly run the Council – it is the worst place in the country to live. Wherever you work, your employment is going to be put at risk as a result of the limited mental capacities of the people at both County and City Halls.
I know this is terribly politically incorrect of me, but I just saw this story on the newsfeeds, and the one question that keeps dancing in front of me is: WHY?
A special off-road driving day was set up to allow “young drivers with sight problems” to have a go at driving a car. The story makes it clear that those involved are unable to apply for licences – or have had licences revoked when they started to experience issues with their sight. One driver is quoted:
I am on cloud nine.
It is now my dream to be a driver one day.
How? It can’t possibly ever be possible in a manually operated vehicle (and by “manual” I mean one that is actually controlled by the driver). If you can’t see, then there’s no way to circumvent that problem in any vehicle which depends on the driver being able to observe what is around them. Fair enough, if you put on your H G Wells hat and start imagining what might be possible then there is some hope. But realistically the best that can be expected is that self-driving cars become common – but that would be no different to riding in a taxi or bus, and would not constitute real “driving”.
There’s nothing wrong with running these sessions, of course. But someone somewhere needs to be a little more honest and realistic about the expectations they are creating in the minds of young people with eyesight problems. Being young and visually-impaired doesn’t mean you are any less susceptible to the issues that afflict other young people. In that case, let’s hope that these falsely-inspired youngsters don’t get it into their heads that they can joyride like some of their peers are wont to do.
series of explosions” and “smoke from a shredding machine” caused an examiner to experience an asthma attack.
Council.
why he’d be good in the photographic department in the interview, he was made to dance to a pop song.
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.
Today, there was almost gridlock on the south side (all along the ring road, all through West Bridgford, and all around Wilford and Ruddington) as people tried in vain to avoid the Wilford Lane road closure. But the best part was that on the A60 in Bradmore, and just to add insult to injury, some other morons identified as Severn Trent Water had got temporary lights up. These were there all day.
Wilford Lane has now closed for 4 months while work on that waste of money called “The Tram” continues.