When I think of the Apple versus the FBI fiasco, I sometimes wonder what the world is coming to.
In December 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, carried out a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. They shot and killed 14 people, and seriously wounded 22 more. Three bombs they also planted failed to go off, but if they had then there could have been many more fatalities and injuries. Farook and Malik were killed in a shootout with police. Apparently, Malik had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on social media on the day of the attack.
In February 2016, the FBI asked Apple to help unlock an iPhone owned by Farook. The FBI had realised that if they failed to enter the correct password after several attempts then they would lose any information held on the phone. The FBI wanted a modified version of iOS that would bypass this security feature.
Now when you consider what happened at Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, then in Paris in November 2015, and then (albeit more recently than the FBI’s request to Apple) in Brussels in March 2016, any normal person would have expected Apple to comply immediately. But Apple isn’t a normal company, and it refused. Worse, we discover that there a lot of other people out there who aren’t normal, and who supported Apple’s stance.
Irrespective of whether or not Farook’s phone contains anything relevant to the FBI’s investigations into the San Bernardino murders, it was vital that they at least had the opportunity to examine it to make that call.
Apple managed to stall for almost two months – through the Brussels bombings – and there was every likelihood they would have continued to do so as the matter moved sloth-like from one US court to another. However, in late March 2016, it became known that an Israeli company was working with the FBI to unlock the phone without Apple’s assistance. Today, it was announced that they have succeeded.
Apple said it did not know how to gain access, and said it hoped that the government would share with them any vulnerabilities of the iPhone that might come to light.
Let’s just get this straight. Apple refused to help crack the phone (and it could have), but it wants the government to tell them how it did it.
I wonder if government officials are allowed to give one-fingered salutes to Apple?
This is an old post. Chetwynd is still operating, at least partially, since it still has armed guards at the gate as of mid-2022.
It appears that numerous MoD sites around the country are being sold off to raise money. They will apparently be used to build houses, and one of the sites due to be closed is Chetwynd Barracks in Chilwell. At the moment, it looks like this (those green things are called “trees”).
This is what it will look like once they manage to cram in 800 of those hideous shoebox abodes they favour these days. Those shown here are just up the road from the barracks. Note that there isn’t a colour fault with the photo – there’s just no greenery in it.
The report says that Chetwynd won’t close before 2020 [update: they have confirmed it will close in 2021] [Another update: It’s still at least partially operating in mid-2022]. I’d just point out that 2020 is less than four years away – roughly the same amount of time it took them to build Phase 2 of the tram system.
Chetwynd Barracks was built shortly after World War I, and before that there was a shell-filling factory on the site. It was known as the Chilwell Depot until 1995, the new name “Chetwynd” coming from the name of the director of the original shell-filling factory.
It would appear that Broxtowe Borough Council has had its beady eyes on the site for at least the last 6 years judging from this document (which they appear to have removed) [there is an updated document here which is somewhat different to that original one]. The site is almost 80 hectares, and they reckoned on building up to more than 1,500 houses when they wrote this (that’s probably over 2,000 in today’s money [the updated document has it revised down to 800 houses because they’re going to screw it up with more industrial areas]). It’s worth noting that as far back as 2011 they were planning to build up to 2,700 houses on the site! They couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
How do I get to Chetwynd Barracks?
Nothing to do with this post, but just me trying to be helpful as I’ve had a few hits on this search term.
Leave the M1 at Junction 25. There are two options after that.
Firstly, you could take exit on the roundabout signed for Long Eaton, turn right at the smaller roundabout at the end of that road, then travel for about a mile to the next roundabout and turn left into Long Eaton. Keep going until you reach Chilwell Retail Park and turn left at the traffic lights. That’s Swiney Way, and Chetwynd is about half way down on the right (though you probably wouldn’t miss it).
Alternatively, at M1 Junction 25 exit, follow the A52 towards Nottingham. At the Bardill’s Roundabout turn right on to B6003 Toton Lane and go for about a mile until you reach the traffic lights. Turn left and you’re on Swiney Way from the other side.
Note that this is quite an old post, and the figures given are not correct in 2023).
I saw a comment recently on one of the forums where a newly-qualified ADI was asking if anyone had “considered” working after 4pm and weekends, since these apparently counted as “unsociable hours” and so a premium price could therefore be charged.
I immediately thought of the way Scott Adams depicted the “new guy” in a Dilbert strip some years ago. All arms akimbo and gushing with enthusiasm.
I mentioned in my recent update about becoming an ADI that to succeed in this business you have to start out with a wide open diary and a flexible approach. If you started as an independent right away, you’ll find it hard enough to charge even normal hourly rates, so the last thing you need to be doing is deterring people with “premium prices” before you’ve even got enough income to cover your bills. Working evenings and weekends – at least until you are established, which can take years – is pretty much mandatory if you expect to stay in business very long.
Once you’re established, of course, you can do whatever you bloody well want. If you want to put people off booking certain times, then by all means up your prices for those times – but just remember that anyone landing on your website home page who is confronted with an intimidating price structure that looks like it could be part of a Mensa test probably isn’t going to stick around long (nor are they likely to be impressed if they get their calculators out and realise what you’re doing). If you’re a newbie who sees it as a good way of making extra money to offset having too little work – no one else will have thought of it before you, naturally – just switch off your moral compass and go right ahead.
People who do it to deter pupils from booking certain times really need to think before they begin telling newbies, who are looking to earn extra pennies, that it’s all right to do it. The two reasons are poles apart. A newly qualified ADI is more likely to end up having to cut his prices than he is to be charging premium rates. You need to be a premium-performing ADI with a premium reputation before you can even entertain charging premium prices. Most pupils know if they’re getting a good service or not, and newbies need to accept that they will not be performing like someone with many years’ experience.
Charging more for lessons at times you don’t want to do is fine (I suppose, and as long as you’re still prepared to do them if someone falls for it). But charging more for weekends and evenings just to try and make money is – in my opinion – stupid. There’s no law against it, of course. It’s just… well, stupid. You’ll never be able to quantify it, but one thing you can be sure of is that charging premium prices for what you imagine are “premium times” is never going to get you any extra work. You simply have to face the fact that no one shopping around for lessons is dumb enough to be positively attracted to an instructor with a complicated price structure who charges them more for evening or weekend lessons. On the other hand, simple logic dictates that many pupils will be repelled by high or confusing prices so it’s almost certainly going to lose you work though – as I say – you won’t be able to quantify it and will probably go around promoting the idea instead.
Incidentally, I asked one of my pupils – making clear it was hypothetical, and explaining to her what I’d read – if she would be prepared to pay £5 extra for her occasional evening or weekend sessions. She initially surprised me by saying it wouldn’t really matter to her, but after a pause she added that she would have to think about it if her friends were paying less. There’s the rub: do you really want to introduce that sort of uncertainty to what is already an uncertain business to be in?
Evenings and weekends are the most popular lesson times on average. The last thing I’d be wanting to do is piss off potential customers of those slots.
In the past, I’ve worked as late as 11pm and 12am – both times for the purposes of completing night driving modules on Pass Plus courses taken in summer. I often take on pupils who can only do 8-10pm due to work, and when my diary is full many of the others are happy to do late evening lessons too. I prefer to start at 10am, but again when my diary is full many will happily book 8-9am lessons. I do explain at some stage that I am not naturally a morning person and that I hate getting up early, but I also make it clear that I am prepared to do it if that’s best for them, so I make no serious effort to prevent pupils booking these lessons or, indeed, 8.10am tests (which means picking them up at 6.30am). I tell them that they’re paying me for a service, and it’s what they want (within reason) that matters – not what I want. I’m smart enough to make sure that 9.30-10pm finishes dovetail with later starts the following day. Most days, I start at 10am and finish at 7-8pm. I charge the same prices… and I have a full diary.
I’m well established, but even so I cannot just hike the price for my existing pupils whenever I feel like it. I make it a point never to increase how much a pupil pays during the time they’re with me (it’s one of my selling points). My price has increased in stages by about £3 an hour since I became an ADI (2023 update: my prices are now about £10 higher than when I started out), but I am also acutely aware of the dividing line beyond which the price is too high for my area, and which would – logically – impact my work load. I have definitely lost enquiries as a result of the price I charge over the years and putting them up further has to be managed very carefully or just shelved.
Why do some instructors tell me to charge a premium price for evening lessons?
It’s quite possible that this job isn’t their main source of income, and losing work through being unavailable doesn’t matter to them as long as they have work when they want it. You, on the other hand, are probably quite new, desperate to get work, and are looking for ways of maximising your income. Putting your prices up – for any reason – in your situation is a very risky strategy, and the people advising you ought to understand this, though many don’t.
There’s also the fairly remote possibility that someone is telling you to do it because they know it will perhaps harm your career. It’s a horrible thought, but there really are people out there who are like that.
Is it wrong to charge more for evenings and weekends?
It’s not illegal. The morality of it is debatable and my personal view is that weekend and evening lessons are no different to weekday ones. The only time I would ever charge premium prices for any lesson – and I’ve been asked about it a few times – is if someone wanted to book me on the days I take off over Christmas. I’ve made it clear that it would be triple-time, which has successfully prevented anyone from taking up the offer, but which would also make it worth my while if they ever did (we all have our price).
Won’t I make more money if I charge more for weekends and evenings?
If people were prepared to pay, yes. However, most of them will not.
Look, there is no way that I am ever going to persuade you using mere words that people won’t pay, and that it would almost certainly end up being detrimental to your business, so why don’t you just go ahead and try it and see what happens. When someone skims through your website and is immediately put off by what they see, at least the rest of us will benefit even if you don’t!
Just remember that putting your prices up for any reason is almost certainly not going to bring in extra work. At best – and if you’re very, very lucky – you simply won’t lose any.
What if I just want to put people off booking evenings and weekends?
I can think of far more effective ways of not working evenings and weekends. Just saying “I don’t do evening or weekend lessons” is one that springs instantly to mind. Other than that, it’s not quite as morally questionable as just trying to make money.
I was driving over Lady Bay bridge today with a pupil, and the car in front of me – a grey Mini Cooper Countryman, reg. no. FD14 TYC – suddenly swerved sharply to avoid a head on collision with another car.
For a split second I wondered what she was doing, but then I saw the tell-tale flicking of her eyes from lap to road in her rear view mirror, and it became rather obvious.
Texting while driving is on the increase again. Meanwhile, all the police seem to do is spend the better part of every day parked in their camera van just beyond recently-changed speed limits signs.
The police don’t seem to bother with pulling over crap drivers these days. If they did, they’d certainly want to have a word with the driver of a black Ford Focus, X803 JBE, which was driving at speeds close to 100mph on the ring road in a 50mph zone, and weaving in and out of traffic during the late rush hour.
I saw him coming and slowed down, otherwise he could easily have lost control and hit someone.
I’m not exaggerating any of this, either. It was one of those situations that happen once in a blue moon. The police really ought to be stopping this guy every time they see his car, because he’s probably got quite a few other things to hide. People like this always do.
It seems that the accident was the fault of the Google car – the bus didn’t do what the Google-bot’s program said it should – and that’s what caused the collision. Mind you, I’m sure that Google’s scientists see that as a fault of the bus driver, and not of their car. Perhaps the solution is to make autonomous vehicles more visible for we inferior humans so that we automatically sense danger when one is near?
Maybe they could stick a lot of Audi badges on them.
One of the more promising additional features in Windows 10 was the apparent ease with which you can display your computer display on to your TV set using the “cast to…” feature. If only it were as easy as that.
The web is full of half-assed articles thrown up by Google whenever you search for how to cast your Windows 10 display to a TV. None of them actually tell you how to do it on a PC – it’s inevitably some American tablet or a smartphone they’re talking about, running Android – not Windows.
Even Microsoft online support doesn’t know exactly what it is talking about. I spent some time with them over the issue and they wanted to selectively begin to disable every installed service to “check for conflicts”. I told them that it wasn’t that, because I can’t cast from my Surface Pro 2, either.
In the course of my investigations, I discovered that the casting technology in question – Miracast – needs to be supported by your graphics card (I’ve since discovered that your WiFi card needs to support it, too). When I contacted NVIDIA to see if my GeForce GTX 660 had such compatibility, I was informed that NONE of their current graphics cards does.
Then I found this link on Intel’s website. It is a small tool which checks to see if you can run WiDi (as it is called) on your system. Here’s what it told me:
If nothing else, I can now stop worrying about why I can’t get it to work. On my desktop, at least.
Because my Surface Pro 2 reports that it CAN support WiDi. Now I need to try and figure out why it won’t bloody work when I try to cast to my Amazon FireStick – with Amazon’s online support being pretty useless in not saying if Windows can cast to it or not.
In a nutshell, if you are having problems using the supposedly simple “cast to…” feature of Windows 10, unless your PC is brand new, top of the range, and doesn’t have an NVIDIA card, you are probably not going to be able to do it.
Note the age of this article. Prices were correct at the time (5Day are still going, but as of 2022 the fees are almost double what they were in 2016).
I saw someone refer to this on a forum and looked the company up. I must stress that the following comments are my own opinion.
What 5Day is offering is an intensive driving course which lasts for – no surprise – 5 days. The words that will leap out and burn themselves into the brains of the people likely to apply are:
…cost effective theory and practical tuition that will allow an individual to learn to drive within 5 days… If you don’t manage to pass your theory or practical tests you will receive free, unlimited retraining to help you improve.
I’m sure that 5Day are aware of this, and that the various conditions they apply will be overlooked by many applicants.
First of all, there is the cost of the course – £964 (they use the adverb “only”) . The theory and practical tests – just one attempt at each – are included in that, which means that the training itself is valued at £879. The training is done between 9am and 5pm, and this includes theory test training. It is necessary to make a few assumptions here, but if there is one hour of theory training and one hour for lunch, and if the rest of the time is in-car (which is perhaps a little generous), that means the pupil will be doing 5 hours of training each day – a total of 20 hours.
If we also assume that theory test tuition is valued at the same rate as driving tuition (also generous), and lunch hours have no monetary value, driving lessons are being charged at a rate of over £35 per hour! I doubt that the pupil will actually be driving for 5 hours in a stretch – there will have to be breaks – so the actual lesson rate is probably even more than that.
Then we come to the conditions and small print. First of all, 5Day says that theory tests are pre-arranged to take place during the course. I guess they can risk that claim, because booking a theory test only has a short waiting time (though if someone booked a short-notice course, I wonder how they’d handle that). They then go on to say:
…once [the theory test is] passed, 5DAY™ will assist you in applying for your priority practical driving test. 5DAY™ guarantee to secure the test 75% sooner than the DVSA waiting list.
Now, in many places in the country the waiting time for tests is very long, and the subject of much controversy. DVSA is trying to address the problem. Here in Nottingham, for example, anyone booking a test today (29 February) will get a date in early June at Beeston, and mid-June at Colwick. That’s more than 14 weeks away. As I look at all test centres in my area – that’s Beeston, Colwick, Clifton, and Watnall – there is one cancellation/available slot for Watnall this Saturday and nothing else for any of the others until June. I’ve been actively looking for cancellations for pupils for the last few months and they simply don’t come up very often. Even so, the “75% sooner” claimed by 5Day would make the typical wait for a test approximately four weeks, and with no guarantees of even that.
That’s hardly the “Learn to drive in just 5DAYs” they claim on their website home page. It’s more like “complete the course in 5 days, then take the test in anywhere between a couple of days later if you’re lucky and can attend it at such short notice, and 14 weeks if you’re not”. People who sign up for this will be drawn in by the “5 days” hook and end up disappointed – it’s how bad reputations start.
If you book a course which is more than four weeks in the future then there is a non-refundable £200 deposit required – though the balance is required no less than four weeks before the course commences. You’d need to be a bit careful there, since if you booked today for a session starting on 4 April you’d have to pay £200 immediately – and another £764 before next Monday! If you didn’t, you’d lose £200 and not get on the course (that’s what their conditions are saying).
5Day has centres in Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Peterborough, Bristol, Norwich, and three around London. Many people will need to pay for at least four – probably five – nights of accommodation. You can slap another £150-£250 on the price for that.
If you fail either of the tests, you will have to pay for further tests. The additional “unlimited” training is free but since it is outside of the “5 day” window you’ll have to consider how you would complete such training. You may need further hotel stays, or possibly travel costs, if the re-training isn’t residential. They don’t say what form this re-training takes, and I doubt that it is “intensive”. And you will have to pay for the “hire” of a car for the test – they don’t mention anywhere how much that would be, but assume at least £50, which would mean each re-test day would cost you at least £112.
The detailed conditions state that you might not go to test in the car you were training in.
Now we come to the all-important disclaimer:
The 5DAY course is designed to give an average pupil an overall grounding on all the topics of the DSA learning to drive syllabus and to help a pupil achieve if possible DSA test standard by the end of the 5 Days. There is no guarantee implied written or otherwise that a pupil will get to the required standard to be able to pass a driving test as achieving this standard is entirely down to the pupils ability.
This seems to go completely against the gist of their homepage, where it says:
Learn to drive in just 5DAYs… With our 5DAY intensive driving course… There really is no quicker, easier or safer way to get your full driving licence.
Let’s digress to discuss the implications of this.
Even an above-average pupil would find it difficult to concentrate for more than 2 hours of driving at a time. Even with an hour break, a further 2 hours of driving would be less productive than the first two. Doing this for five days on the trot would be less productive still. I will admit that there is a very small number of people at any one time who might be able to handle it, but the vast majority couldn’t. It is a simple fact.
Going further, the official average number of hours taken to learn to drive by someone who hasn’t driven before is around 40-50 hours with an instructor, plus 20 hours or more of private practice. The quickest I’ve ever had anyone go from zero to test pass is 14½ hours (1st time pass). I’ve had another do it in 17½ hours (1st time pass), several in under 25 hours (1st time passes, some with no private practice), the majority in 25-40 hours (one to several attempts), and a fair number in 40-60 hours (ditto). The most hours any of my pupils has taken is 160 (3rd time pass). And one did over 100 hours with me (no test taken) until I finally persuaded her to switch to automatic, whereupon she did around another 100 hours (7th time pass – and has since given up driving because she had too many accidents). Obviously, I have had many who could already drive and just needed a bit of a wash and brush up – sometimes only having a single lesson – but I haven’t included these.
In other words, only two have done it in under 20 hours. I reckon that’s considerably less than 5% of those I’ve taught from scratch.
What about intensive courses? Well, I don’t offer them anymore, and here’s why. A long time ago someone contacted me for an intensive course – 20 hours over four days, with his test the next day. He’d never driven before, and after the first session it was apparent he was not a quick learner. We’d arranged the lessons so that he did 2 hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and two more in the evening, with a 2 hour break between each session. Each day went from the good (in the morning), through the bad, and finished with the ugly (in the evening)! Each of the three lesson days also followed a similar pattern. And he failed his test. A couple of months later he contacted me again, and we did the same – 20 hours over four days. It all followed the same pattern, and he again failed his test. I felt terrible, he felt terrible – and that was the end of intensives for me. They simply cannot be relied on to work.
When I think back to him I can’t help but think of the very real dangers of putting such people on the roads if they should manage to get lucky and scrape a pass. It’s hardly “safe driving for life”, is it? I also wonder about the moral implications – over the last few years I’ve had several people pass, some of them first time, who I worry about as a result of what they were capable of on lessons. You get to know them and you know that a test pass doesn’t always tell the full story (one dyspraxic pupil was capable of the strangest actions).
Going back to what 5Day is offering, only a small percentage of the learner population stands a decent chance of passing in 20 hours – and it would still cost them considerably more £1,000 overall to do it. The same pupils could take normal lessons and pass by spending considerably less than half that amount, and when you consider that 5Day cannot guarantee a quicker pass due to test waiting times you have to wonder what the pupil is actually paying for. For the more average pupil, they might end up taking any number of tests at £62 a pop, with vehicle hire of at least £50 per test. They could end up spending closer to £1,500 – around double what it would cost them to do it normally. For below average pupils… well, how long is a piece of string? 5Day’s offer isn’t quite the “exceptional quality, cost effective theory and practical tuition” it first appears to be, is it?
I emphasise again that these are my opinions and my own experiences. Comments about 5Day’s course are based on their own freely available information and conditions, and I only comment on the nature of intensive courses based on their relation to normal training.
It starts off with the title. This is the kind of classy headline you’d get in The Sun, not the BBC: Rat in Trowbridge pub ‘ran up man’s leg and stole chip’. Of course, just in case this doesn’t paint the picture clearly enough, the Beeb has provided a helpful picture, depicting:
a pub
a rat
some chips
Reece Coombs, the hapless victim in all this, claims the rat was “sewer sized” – so large, in fact, that when it made the alleged contact, poor Mr Coombs reckoned it felt like he’d been “kicked”. He doesn’t mention anything about being left unconscious or requiring emergency surgery or anything, so we must assume that the rat confined itself just to delivering a good kicking.
Wetherspoon, the pub’s operators, evacuated the place immediately and called in pest control. They refunded Mr Coombs (and all the other guests, I would imagine). Naturally, they apologised explaining that fly-tipping in an alley next to the pub may have been responsible. Certainly, I do not live under the impression that Wetherpoon either encourages or subsequently ignores rats on its premises. But this isn’t enough for Reece Coombs. Oh dear me no. He hasn’t had his full 15 minutes of fame yet (evidenced by the standard selfie-style photo of him in the article), and is apparently “still not happy”. He plans to take the matter further.
I wonder where else there is to go with it. The European Court of Human Rights? Amnesty International? Rentokil?
If it was me, it would be over and done with by now. I wouldn’t be craving attention over it, and I probably just wouldn’t go back to the pub involved for a while. I mean, there are other pubs.
It’s been in the media the last week or so that the power cords supplied with Surface Pro 2 and some Pro 3 machines before July 2015 have been identified as having a fault which can lead to overheating or even fires. Microsoft is replacing the cords free of charge.
Note that the issue is with the power cord only – that’s the bit that goes into the wall socket. There are no issues with the power supply “brick” the cord connects to.
