Nottingham. City. Council. Are. Idiots.

21/09/2016
DOAADI
Cyclists, News, Roadworks

Four years ago, spurred on by the London Olympics, a lot of people with no brains took up cycling, and so joined a lot of other people with no brains who already cycled.

I think I should explain, for about the six hundredth time, that I ride a bike sometimes. But – being in possession of a brain – I tend to do the following:

  • keep away from traffic whenever possible
  • use cycle paths wherever possible
  • follow the rules in the Highway Code

As we all know, though, the vast majority of cyclists do none of these things. They deliberately ride in traffic, deliberately get in the way of traffic, deliberately refuse to use cycle paths and cycle lanes, and do not abide by a single rule in the Highway Code. And they’re just the good ones. The long and the short of it is that the number of brain dead cyclists on the roads has increased dramatically since London, and the Rio Olympics appear to have given the problem another kick start. As a result, the number of actually dead cyclists continues to rise.

Here in Nottingham, the City Council has decided that we should be like Amsterdam as far as bikes are concerned (it also decided we should be like Munich, Hanover, Vienna, Zagreb, and lots of other places it was nice to visit on expensive “fact finding” trips about tram systems, but that’s another story). Consequently, it has continued to plan and introduce more and more dedicated cycle routes – bravely ignoring all opposition – as it steamrollers its Cycle City Ambition Programme through every inch of road.

Probably the worst example at the moment is along Castle Boulevard and the surrounding area. This what the road used to look like:

Castle Boulevard – before the cycle superhighway

Notice how the lanes were wide and there was already a cycle lane marked out.

But this is what it is like now, after the installation of Nottingham City Council’s Glorious Cycle Superhighway:

Castle Boulevard – after the damage

You can see how the kerbed area on the left has taken a significant amount of road away from motor vehicles. If you go back towards the city centre you will also notice that all the residential parking along the side where the cycle route is has been lost.

Further away from the city, at the junction with Abbey Bridge, the roundabout which used to be two lanes wide is now only a single lane (as are all the feed roads). This older shot is from the Lenton side before Google has had a chance to update its imagery:

Two lanes on approach – now it’s just one

As a result – and bearing in mind that this is a main route into the city centre and the Castle Marina Retail Park – traffic is frequently queueing on to the roundabout, even outside rush hour. Nottingham City Council has, in its quest to make sweet love to all cyclists while systematically screwing all motorists, created serious congestion.

But I haven’t got to my point yet, I’m just about to show you proof that Nottingham City Council is staffed by complete and utter f–kwits.

Let’s turn left from Castle Boulevard and on to Abbey Bridge. Here’s what the road looked earlier this year (again, Google imagery hasn’t been updated yet):

Abbey Bridge before the Superhighway

Nice wide road with a cycle lane either side. Enough room for cars and lorries to keep well away from cyclists.

Here’s what it looks like now, with the Superhighway installed:

Abbey Bridg now they screwed it up

You can’t quite see how narrow the lanes are now that more than a quarter of the road’s width has been given over to the new kerbed cycle route. Back down by the roundabout they’re narrower still, AND they have put in a pedestrian crossing more or less ON the roundabout itself.

As an aside, you will notice the complete lack of cyclists in any of these pictures.

Just consider this a moment. The area is more than 90% student accommodation, and is a ten minute walk from the University main campus. Anyone who has ever had to drive during rush hour where there are students and pedestrian crossings will know how much of a delay that can create as the crossing spends more time on red than it does on green. And you purposely put such a crossing right on a roundabout which – as we’ve already seen – is on a road which was busy to begin with, and which has been made more so by the halving of its capacity. And the problems already being encountered have occurred during summer before the students come back…? But I still haven’t come to my point yet – and you’re going to love it!

As you travel over Abbey Bridge and down the other side, you approach the junction with Lenton Lane on the left and Gregory Street on the right. This is what it looks like right now:

A nice safe area for cyclists at the end of the Superhighway

As the cycle superhighway ends, the road opens up into two lanes at the lights. The lanes are clearly marked as you approach, thus:

Yep, the left lane is for straight ahead…

One detail you might not notice is that, having spent millions on building a dedicated and segregated cycle route, the Council f—kwits have not seen fit to provide any cycle lane between the end of the superhighway and the cycle forward area at the lights. You will understand that in normal operation, hundreds of cars will be trying to move into that left hand lane while – theoretically, at least – hundreds of Bradley Wigginses will be trying to move into it from the superhighway. And it’s not marked up in any way!

But I’m still not there yet. And here it comes.

This is what the road looked like until two days ago. At the weekend they had the road markers out, and this is what they did at this junction. It is exactly the same as in the photo above on the approach, but this is what you have when you get there:

Oh, wait! Let’s knock some cyclists over

Precisely what that left turn arrow is doing there is anyone’s guess. But the placement of a marked cycle lane right in the path of traffic has to be the most stupid and dangerous thing I have ever seen carried out by people in positions of ill-deserved power.

It’s so dangerous it’s criminal. Literally.

I should point out that the last three images were taken from the same video clip I recorded when I drove through the junction today. I didn’t have a picture of the junction prior to the weekend so I simply erased the new cycle lane in the 2nd image to show what it looked like last week.

They simply cannot leave it like this [edit: they didn’t. The assholes changed it sometime later], as it is an accident waiting to happen. The big question, though, is what will they do? The road is too busy – a lot of people turn right – to restrict traffic to just the right-hand lane. It isn’t wide enough to accommodate the superhighway and two lanes either at or beyond this junction (I guess that’s why it ends 50m short). There are definitely two lanes on the other side. And the road has been two lanes for so long – decades – changing it now would be dangerous. In any case, the road leads to the ring road, and is a major route to Long Eaton, Beeston, Chilwell, and Derby.

Lenton students are idiots

Someone found the blog on that search term. ALL students are idiots. The problem with Lenton is that 99.9% of the population is student, so the problem is amplified.

The Trend Continues

20/09/2016
DOAADI
Music, News, Weather

The Met Office has revealed the names it will be assigning to storms during 2017/18. Here they are:Storm Names 2017/18 - Met Office

You could just leave it at that. If you’re like me, though, you might see something a little more sinister.

Once upon a time, hurricanes were always given female names. In our modern PC world, though, this is totally unacceptable, and nowadays they use a mixture of male and female names. I believe that they alternate – so one hurricane will be female, the next male, the next female, and so on.

The Met Office – which started naming “storms” in the UK last year – has been giving them both male and female names from the start. As you know, all science in the UK simply has to involve children (and people with the kinds of children), which explains why you get names like Oisin and Wilbert.

I mean, there have been about six people named Wilbert in the last 100 years. Most of them are dead (a bit like the name, really), and those who aren’t nearly are. And although Oisin is apparently a top choice for Irish language boys’ names in Ireland, I can honestly say that the only time I’ve ever come across it is in ancient Irish literature (Oisin was the son of Fionn MacCool) through one of my favourite bands, Horslips.

The sinister part to my mind is that there are 11 male names and only 10 female ones. Can you imagine the uproar and demands for resignations that would follow if it was the other way around? And I reckon it’s only a matter of time before they start naming them retrospectively – or renaming them after the event – so that damaging ones don’t go down in history as having female names.

I’d bet money that someone somewhere has already raised that one in a meeting.

To the Unknown Pupil

18/09/2016
DOAADI
ADI, Training

Someone sent this to me recently, and I thought I’d tidy it up, add a few bits, and reproduce it here. It’s in the form of an open letter to a problem pupil. To be honest, I think it’s a composite of various pupils, but I think most of us can relate to at least part of it (note: I believe that the original came from somewhere around London and the Home Counties).

Dear xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You recently accused me of shouting at you on a lesson when your test was only ONE WEEK away. I listened to you, and decided that the written word might convey my sentiments more diplomatically than what I really wanted to say to your face at the time.

You came to me barely EIGHT WEEKS ago. You told me on the telephone that you could already drive, and had been doing so on a full licence in your home country in Africa – and more recently in Europe – for “many years”. Your plan was to “learn the test routes” and the British roads.

On our first lesson you could barely move the car without either stalling it, or lurching off with a wheel spin. Each time you stopped, the contents of the rear seat transferred themselves to the front. Indeed, stopping didn’t initially appear to be a problem for you, as you did it every time you saw another car moving even vaguely towards us, in the middle of junctions and roundabouts where we had clear right of way, and in sundry other situations. However, once we moved to busier roads it was apparent that your stopping skills were less reliable around pedestrian crossings and red lights. At least once on each of the FIVE LESSONS you have had during our time together I have had to stop the car for you either to  prevent us hitting a pedestrian or in order to comply with UK Law regarding red lights. Your clutch control has improved, but even on our most recent lesson you once again found moving away from your house problematic. The ache in my arm by the end reminded me that I had spent more time controlling the steering from my side than you had from yours. If I suggest that you use the handbrake when we are stopped, you invariably forget about it and try to move off with it engaged. Conversely, if I let you do it your way, we invariably roll back – and then either stall or generate a wheel spin as you react to the roll. For all practical purposes, you are a beginner in all aspects of driving in the UK.

Your speed control is such that I often have to remind you of the speed limit. You frequently do not see road signs at all (you don’t know what many of them mean), and your ability to follow and/or interpret direction signs is non-existent based on the few times I have asked you to follow the signs to somewhere.

You were – and remain – unable to complete any of the standard manoeuvres to anywhere near an acceptable standard. The time available to practice these has been reduced by your issues with basic car control, roundabouts, and road junctions, and the need to address these. On our most recent lesson, and having only done it once before with me, I asked you if you remembered how to reverse around a corner. You furnished me with the answer which is common among your countrymen, who would apparently prefer to demonstrate that they can’t do something instead of just admitting to it up front, and gave me an emphatic “yes”. I expressed surprise, but you were adamant. You then proceeded to do exactly what you did on the first lesson before I had shown you how to do it properly, and moved off without even a glimmer of a safety check. By the time I stopped you we were about to mount the kerb on the opposite side of the road, although you were gazing fixedly at something in the nearside mirror (it certainly wasn’t our nearside kerb).

You are unable to adhere to any sort of lane discipline, and you frequently drive as though there are no road markings at all. Your solution to not knowing where to position the car is to put it “somewhere in the middle”. Having said that, we have had to spend a significant amount of time recently going over two particular roundabouts repeatedly, because no matter how many times you negotiate them, and no matter how many times I get you to tell me you’re going “straight ahead” and you need to be in the lane with the “straight arrow”, as soon as we get there you jiggle the steering and go into the lane with the “left turn” arrow and we end up going left. All this happens when you panic (and especially when the word “roundabout” is mentioned), but you refused to acknowledge that you are in any way “nervous” or “panicked” until the most recent lesson when you let it slip out.

Your uncertainty over your road position in these situations means that even if you appear to be handling a particular junction or roundabout correctly, there is a high probability that as we approach it more closely you will suddenly attempt to fling the car into another lane with no prior mirror checks or signals. Indeed, this has even happened on straight roads, and without warning, when new lanes have appeared in front of us. I am constantly saying “watch the kerb” or grabbing the steering wheel to prevent us mounting the pavement or veering into another road user (which is why my arm aches by the end of our lessons).

Unfortunately, and in spite of what I have mentioned above, from the first moment you got in my car on that initial lesson all you have wanted to do was book your test. You had made it clear you were poorly paid and couldn’t afford many lessons. I explained that being test-ready was about being able to drive, not about taking the smallest number of lessons possible, but my experience in these matters told me you were not listening and just wanted to take a test as soon as you could get one (you would happily have done one that afternoon if you’d have had the chance). I warned you that tests were booking 18 weeks out, but you said that that was too far away. I explained that if you were test-ready we could look for cancellations and 18 weeks would be fine for now.

On our second lesson, you still had not booked a test. Then you told me that one of your friends had informed you that test centre “X” was “easier” than all the others in the county (this was based on the sole criterion that your friend had passed there). I explained that this was factually incorrect. I also pointed out that I didn’t normally cover that test centre as it was further away, and that I wasn’t completely familiar with the roads around it. I advised you to ignore your friend and to book your test at one of the several centres I DID cover (I even explained that one of them had the ACTUAL highest pass rate in the county) . These were closer and we had already driven around some of the typical roads.

You ignored me and booked your test at test centre “X” – because you had come across a cancellation test date that was less than SIX WEEKS away. You then cancelled a lesson and I didn’t see you for more than two weeks. This explains why, having been with me for EIGHT WEEKS, and with only ONE WEEK to go to your test, you have only taken FIVE lessons.

During our lessons your mobile phone chirps merrily away in your pocket. On the most recent one I made you silence it, because it was just too distracting. However, in spite of apparently being at the hub of the technological universe, you steadfastly refuse to answer any of MY texts – and I’m thinking especially of the ones where I was trying to clarify the actual date and time of your test for my diary. I only obtained this information from you on the THIRD lesson, and even then you had to look it up from the DVSA email on your phone. This suggests that you don’t give a damn about MY business and are only interested in what YOU want.

On that third lesson I took you out to the areas covered by test centre “X”, which is very busy. Even though you refused to admit it, you were terrified of every roundabout and every junction. You later claimed that it was because you were on “unfamiliar roads” – I refrained from pointing out that it was YOUR choice to book your test over there, though to be fair to you ALL roads are “unfamiliar” as far as the problems we are encountering go.

Fixing your driving would have been fairly straightforward over 18 weeks. Fixing it over 6 weeks, then losing 2 weeks when you stopped lessons, and concurrent with all this realising the depth of your problems, made it pretty much impossible. On our most recent lesson, I believe that it was my repeated intervention for the reasons mentioned above (most notably, where you AGAIN turned left at one of the roundabouts after telling me clearly what you had seen, what lane you needed, and which exit you should take), combined with your own dawning realisation that there just might be a problem, which led to your accusation that I was “shouting” at you. You also accused me of “not teaching” you. You actually said – with only ONE WEEK to go before your test – that “you should be telling me what to do so I can learn”.

Just for once, and before my blood boils off completely, you will consider MY concerns and do as you are told.

You ARE NOT taking your test next week. You WILL cancel it and move it back. A LONG WAY back. If you don’t like it, you can find another instructor.

I have been “telling you what to do” since the first lesson – and that is part of the problem. I should not be having to “tell you” anything this close to your test, particularly as you keep claiming to “be able to drive”. I have tried to let you drive independently and you can’t. Even a simple left turn can blow up into the most convoluted disaster imaginable if I don’t tell you exactly what to do, and you have learned almost nothing from these instances. You are not as good a driver as you seem to believe, and you are not a particularly fast learner. As I say, I can fix you in 18 weeks, but definitely not within the time frame you have in mind.

When the examiner gets in the car with you, you are ON YOUR OWN. If he has to tell you what to do, grab the wheel, use the brakes, etc. then you WILL fail.

My livelihood depends on retaining my licence to teach. People like you who only want to use my car for a driving test, could easily interfere with that. I have tried to get you ready for your test and – as a result of your complete and utter selfishness in booking a cancellation slot – have failed. Therefore you ARE NOT using my car next week.

Personally, I’ve lost count of the number of poorly-paid overseas pupils I’ve had who reckon they can drive and only want to go to test. Ones who do it in their own cars are the bane of DVSA examiners, as they take test after test with no proper lessons in between. Many are just dangerous, and the frightening thing is that if the examiner doesn’t see anything that the system says he should award a serious fault for, he has to pass that candidate.

I believe that the proposed changes to the driving test – while welcomed by certain inexperienced and naïve instructors – will just make the situation worse. We need a test which can weed out as many bad drivers as possible – not one which helps them pass, which is precisely what the proposed new test will do.

Sorry for the Down Time

15/09/2016
DOAADI
Admin, Computers & Tech

Apologies for being offline for a while this evening. I had been trying to convert the site to HTTPS and lost access to the control panel.Futurama's Broken Robots

I make regular backups, and had a bit of a scare when the latest one wouldn’t restore (more specifically, I couldn’t import the old MySQL database into the new one). Anyway, after a bit of fiddling I finally managed it.

Sorry about that.

Planet of Women

13/09/2016
DOAADI
Movies & TV, News

A week or two ago I was force-fed the news that Alex Jones (a BBC TV presenter) was pregnant at the age of 39. My thoughts at the time were a very vague and nondescript mixture of “so what”, “39 isn’t old”, and “good luck to her”. Stuff like that.Alex Jones

Given the choice, I probably wouldn’t have thought about it again. Mind you, I wouldn’t have thought about it the first time if I’d been given the choice there, either. But then I was force-fed with some more “news” about her today. It seems that the BBC with its master plan to outlaw the condition of being male, has already given her a new show about fertility.

Ms Jones has been pregnant all of five minutes, and she is already an absolute and complete expert on the subject, telling us not to judge older women as selfish career hunters when they wait to have kids.

It’s funny. Two weeks ago, the possibility that Alex Jones was a “selfish career woman” hadn’t entered my head. But now, I can’t get it out of my head that Alex Jones IS a selfish career woman as she harangues us about age and fertility for her new show.

There is Hope for the World

13/09/2016
DOAADI
News

I saw this story on the BBC website. It’s one of those that brings a tear to the eye.Fidencio Sanchez

Fidencio Sanchez is 89 years old. He had only been retired for a few weeks from his ice-cream selling business when his only daughter died and he became guardian to her two children. His wife, who also sold ice-cream, was forced to retire due to ill health. Consequently, he came out of retirement and began selling ice cream again. He works from “early” until 8pm. He’s 89, for God’s sake. The same age as my dad – and he shouldn’t have to be doing this.

Joel Cervantes Macias was passing by and saw him. He took this picture, which then appeared online, and then went viral. A friend (Joe Loera) suggested an online fundraiser – which had a target of $3,000.

They exceeded that within an hour. It currently stands at more than $200,000. And Joel and Joe prove that there is hope while the world still has people like them.

You can make a donation directly from the fundraiser page here.

It’s Official! They’re Liars

11/09/2016
DOAADI
Brexit, News

The Brexit campaign has officially dumped its pre-referendum claim that leaving the EU would immediately free up £350,000,000 for the NHS. Irrespective of retrospective semantics, that’s what they were telling the monkey-with-the-vote on the run up.

Ironically – or perhaps not – this comes on the same day the NHS announced that it is at “tipping point” as far as funding goes.

Meanwhile, the GBP remains 10% down on its pre-referendum level (notwithstanding a handful of biased news reports announcing its “recovery” every time it goes up by a few tenths of a US cent, even though those are invariably followed by a similar fall).

You will recall (unless you were one of the prats taken in by it) that this £350m which was used to pay for our EU membership would immediately be freed up and channelled into the NHS instead if you voted Brexit. This, along with the implied promise of ritual bonfires containing millions of immigrants, was enough to secure your vote.

How cheaply that was bought in the end, eh? Both claims were totally wrong, and you fell for it.

Older Drivers are “Not Dangerous”

11/09/2016
DOAADI
News

I saw an amazing piece of nonsensical gobbledegook in this BBC science story, which is in turn based on the amazingly biased writings of a “professor” of extremely soft subjects at a university which has incredibly low entry standards, and which comes 45th in the current University League Table. Apparently, “new research” – that’s layman’s science-speak for “we put some easily obtainable data into a spreadsheet and pressed a button” – shows that drivers aged 70+ are involved in 3-4 times fewer accidents than 17-21 year olds.

The fun part is that the “research” was done by a “professor of gerontology” at Swansea University’s “Centre for Innovative Ageing”, and was presented at the “British Science Festival” (with a very poor website), which is being held in… yes, you guessed it. Swansea. Oh, and “gerontology” means:Definition - gerontology

So there’s no bias, then. Reading between the lines, it would appear that the “conclusions” were made by a guy who specialises in philanthropic studies relating to old people in order to prove that said old people were not a risk on the road. Somehow, the following disconnected conclusions were drawn, but portrayed as being inherently related to each other:

  • older people are not dangerous drivers
  • drivers aged 70+ have fewer accidents than 17-21 year old men (see what they did there?)
  • older drivers make most mistakes when turning right and overtaking
  • young men drive too fast and lose control whereas older drivers drive more slowly (see, what they did again?)
  • dangerous driving “is not generally an issue for older people”
  • older drivers are more likely to be involved in accidents than the safest 40-50 year olds
  • older drivers are “less likely than very young drivers to be involved in accidents”
  • older drivers make mistakes when they felt under pressure from other road users
  • 17-21 year old men are the most accident prone
  • 17-21 year old men are 3-4 times more likely to have an accident than 70 year olds
  • those over 75 show an increase in accident involvement due to failing faculties
  • older and younger drivers are involved in different types of accidents
  • young men are most likely to be involved in single vehicle accidents (i.e. lose control, hit a tree)
  • older drivers have smaller impact collisions (i.e. fence, wall, kerb, other peoples’ cars)
  • older women are more likely to have “small accidents” when doing tight manoeuvres (so, just like younger women, then)
  • older people are most likely to be involved in accidents involving other older drivers
  • older drivers compensate for declining skills by driving slower, leaving bigger gaps, and only going out when it is quieter (i.e. weekends)

Unbelievably, this muddled up tosh was presented at a so-called science festival. I suspect delegates then split into groups, and went away to make models out of papier mâché, dried macaroni, and glitter sprinkles to represent what they had learnt.Child playing with paint

We already know – and have known for many years – that the 17-24 year old male group has more accidents. It’s why their insurance is so high. We also already know that this is down to lack of experience and lack of various biologically-controlled emotional restraints which only become fully matured in the mid-20s. We know that this male age group generally likes to drive fast and show off, and that they are therefore more likely to lose control. We could get colloquial and add that it is because they are generally arseholes. And we might also add that – in spite of not mentioning it one way or the other in the “research” – plenty of young females are at least as bad. And this has absolutely zero bearing on whether or not older drivers are “safe” drivers. The two issues are not connected in any way whatsoever. Both details might be true, but they are completely independent of each other. No one has ever… EVER… claimed that older people purposely drive like maniacs, whereas that’s the precise accusation levelled at younger drivers.

The “research” is therefore absolutely right that older drivers don’t drive like younger ones. It might also have told us that fire is hot, and water is wet. However, it seems to deliberately avoid the far more serious issue of older drivers tending to drive badly because they can’t do it any other way.

Something that is apparent is that there isn’t much breathing space between supposedly “safe” 70 year olds and 75 year olds, who the research admits do have more accidents simply due to their age. It naively ventures into very dangerous non-PC territory by identifying older female drivers as being poor at manoeuvres (you’re only supposed to say good things about women by default, then recommend that they be given executive jobs in large corporations or in government).

The article then brings out the usual emotional claptrap about independence, freedom, and mobility – and the obvious inference that risking other people’s lives means less than risking the loss of an old person’s ability to drive. The comedian – sorry, the “professor” – who has come up with all this suggests that in order to deal with older drivers’ inability to turn right properly (i.e. their poor judgement skills), there should be dedicated filter lanes or wider roads to help them! Or, in other words, he wants to fix a problem he has just done “research” on and concluded doesn’t exist.

British science is dead.

The same “science festival” has also included feedback on a “study” on the effects of weather on chronic pain. It seems that “researchers” have been using a smartphone app to collect “data” about how people experience pain under different weather conditions.

Just imagine this, for a moment – and try to think about it objectively. You give a phone app to a group of people who suffer pain as a result of some ailment so they can provide feedback about how they feel at any given moment. Talking about their aches and pains is quite probably their favourite (and only) discussion subject. Many of them will be the type where if you say to them “I’ve got a cold, and feel terrible” will immediately inform you that they feel worse. Or, if you foolishly ask them how they feel, will tell you about things they wouldn’t have otherwise deemed worth mentioning because they’re incapable of setting a personal baseline.

Give these people a brightly-coloured app – I saw it on the news, and it is brightly-coloured and simplistic – and ask them to tell you how they feel after the slightest twinge, and you have created the most biased and subjective bank of data imaginable.

RIP, British science.

The iPhone 7 and Misunderstanding Over the Meaning of “Courage”

10/09/2016
DOAADI
Computers & Tech, News

You’ve got to love Apple sometimes (and I mean that in a jocular sense). They’ve just released the iPhone 7, which has had the fortunate (for Samsung) effect of shifting attention away from the saga of the exploding Galaxy Note 7s. However, keen to innovate everything to death as always, they have caused a bit of a stir by removing the headphone jack.Apple AirPods

To be fair to Apple, the problems being suggested aren’t as bad as they’re being made out to be in the media. The iPhone 7 is supplied with a set of wired earphones (or “EarPods”) which connect to the Lightning port, a Lightning to USB cable, and a Lightning to 3.5mm stereo jack adapter (so you can use your existing earphones). The Lightning socket is an Apple invention dating back to 2012. All the media stories I’ve read have missed these details, and have suggested Apple is forcing people to buy its premium AirPod earphones.

Apple’s head of marketing, Phil Schiller, has come out with probably the most arrogant and typically Apple statement imaginable, and described the decision to lose the 3.5mm jack as “courageous”. The tech world seems to be split on this – well, when I say “split”, it’s more like a small piece torn off the corner – with the vast majority seeing it as a cynical attempt to make money and a doomed venture based on poor logic.

From the money perspective, people don’t have to buy AirPods and, as I’ve already said (but no one else seems to be), the iPhone 7 can still output to 3.5mm jack earphones and headphones using the supplied adapter. Apple’s gear has always been overpriced, and at £159 AirPods are no exception. But even if the whole Apple fanboi user base bought them, I couldn’t see it making much difference to Apple’s bottom line – not when you consider that a new iPhone 7 is going to set you back £600 or £700 depending on the model. So yes, it is somewhat cynical, but nowhere near as much as it would have been if users had had no choice but to buy AirPods. The real problem is all to do with Apple’s logic on this matter.Star Trek's Lt Uhura

You see, not that long ago, if a pair of headphones slipped off your head there was a good chance they’d shatter a coffee table or injure the Labrador. This would have been true whether they were wired or wireless, because they were bloody big things with proper speaker coils inside them. They may also have contained a couple of Duracells, and wired types would have sported a cable strong enough to hold down an elephant. More recently, though, technology has improved significantly and headphones – especially earphones – have become so small that the cotton-thin wires used to connect them to equipment provides additional functionality as a location device and a tether to stop them from falling into toilets or down drains. If an earbud were to fall out – which they frequently do – it would simply dangle around your neck until you shoved it back in your ear, and if you dropped the whole shebang as you ran across a field, the bright red or white cable would be visible from 100m or more. Take the wire away, though, and you’ve got two small things each the size of a broad bean which you’ll probably never see again. This is essentially what Apple has created with AirPods.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the physically small size means a similarly physically small power source. Weighing in against that, AirPods contain what Apple refers to as a microprocessor, and this is needed to collect data from built-in optical sensors, accelerometers, and microphones, and to provide the functionality above and beyond just playing music. In fact, AirPods come across as being the aural equivalent of Google Glass. Without the dangle-round-your-neck safety feature, these delicate electronic units are likely to find themselves coming into contact with hard floors from heights of up to 2 metres if they slip out – possibly with a little extra momentum (not to mention dirt and water) thrown in if the wearer is a jogger. Apple claims a 5-hour talk time, which in real world English probably equates to 3-4 hours – and this is with factory-fresh batteries. After a few dozen charge/discharge cycles this will likely deteriorate to 1.5-2.5 hours. Knowing how the typical iPhone user uses earphones (i.e. 18 hours a day, 365 days a year), most will start to experience a substantial reduction in talk time within a few months. Naturally, in something so small, there isn’t a slide compartment where you can replace batteries, so when the battery dies so does the AirPod. And they cost £159, remember.

Quite simply, wired earphones are about as perfect as you can get as far as the basic design goes. The wire is important, and getting rid of it is therefore a major change which requires a major shift in battery technology to work out properly. And let’s not forget that AirPods are typically Apple – designed to be seen. They are released in October, and I predict AirPod related muggings will start around the same time.

I stress once more that iPhone 7 buyers will still have the (for Apple) rather inelegant as standard option of plugging in normal earphones or headphones via an adapter cable. AirPods, though, have all the hallmarks of being too far ahead of their time – just like how the first mobile phones had to be connected to batteries the size of briefcases, or how current electric cars have extremely limited mileage range per charge. Until they can go a full day on a single charge – and until someone finds a way of making them stay put – users are likely to become disillusioned very quickly.

Just watch how many people lose them.