Damon Hill - true gent

Instead of employing an expensive lawyer to try and wriggle out on a technicality, he actually did the adult detention speed awareness course (it would appear more than once).

From The Daily Mail:

When asked what he was convicted for he told the hosts: "You can’t ask people what they were in for.. It was a camera. I was slowing down going into a village, but I was just going a bit too fast. There was another one that I got at about 3am in the middle of nowhere, which I felt was a little bit hard cheese, but you know you are supposed to stick to the rules."

Bonus points for "hard cheese", I haven't heard that in years.

On a separate occasion in 1994, Hill, 60, was fined £30 and banned from the roads for seven days after being caught doing 102 mph on the M40 in Oxfordshire in a Renault Safrane.

He used up his luck on that one. £30 for 102 mph? Those were the days.

Fun Online Polls: Speed traps & EU citizens in the UK

The results to last fortnight's Fun Online Poll were as follows:\

Sent a fixed penalty notice for 61 mph in a poorly signalled 50 mph stretch on the M62 at 10.22 pm. What's my best course of action?

Do the Speed Awareness Course - 68%
Take the 3 points on my licence - 15%
Go to court and appeal - 13%
Other, please specify - 4%

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.

(I still haven't made up my mind, the stubborn part of me does't want to meekly cough up £100 and do the SAC even though AFAIAC it was so poorly signalled that I ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. AFAIAC the speed limit on motorways is 70 mph unless there is good reason to assume otherwise. There was no such reason, everybody else was accelerating back up to 70 mph, end of discussion.)
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This week's Fun Online Poll - what approach would you like the UK government to take regarding citizens from other EU Member States currently living in the UK?

Vote HERE or use the widget in the sidebar.

UPDATE: Having now thought about this for a couple of hours, if I were the UK government, I would by-pass the EU entirely and just go to each individual Member State and thrash out individual, bilateral, mutual deals i.e. your passport holders can stay in the UK and our passport holders can stay in your country on the following terms and conditions to apply in both directions...

Quite what those T&Cs are doesn't really matter, hopefully it will level out at something sensible either way (so we might agree that Poles in the UK do not need work permits and neither do Brits in Poland. Or perhaps Poles in the UK need work permits and so do Brits in Poland, whatever). But that was a bit long to squidge into the possible answers section on the Poll.

The rules might have changed since I did a couple of units of EU law seventeen years ago, but at the time, EU Member States were bound by EU rules as regards citizens from other MSs, but each MS can make up its own rules vis a vis citizens from non-EU countries or enter into treaties with non-EU countries regarding immigration, extradition and so on.

Classic British Understatement

From the BBC:

A man caught speeding at 154mph (247km/h) has been banned from driving for 56 days....

He was driving a [ghastly little hatch back] when he was stopped by police. Officers said they believed it to be the highest recorded speed on a Suffolk road.

Appearing at Bury St Edmunds Magistrates' Court, Howlett was also ordered to pay £365.

Suffolk police said the sentence was "disappointing". Inspector David Giles, from the roads policing unit, said: "I don't think it is enough at all. I'm really disappointed frankly. It's not a real incentive to stick within the speed limit, in my opinion."

IMHO he should have been banned for life and been forced to watch as they crush his car. The police have my full sympathy on this one.

The Pryce Is Right

FakeCharity of the day

Having spent the morning on a family surfing lesson (as in 'the waves' rather than 'the internet') and the afternoon at the Blue Reef Acquarium (which is really good but either a tad expensive or a tad small, depending on your point of view), I haven't had time to trawl the usual sources today, so am indebted, again, to AC1 who asked, completely o/t, "Is Brake a fake?"

From the BBC:

Swindon has become the first English authority to scrap the use of its fixed speed cameras.

The Conservative-run borough council said it was reinvesting the £320,000 a year maintenance costs for the five cameras in road safety measures. The move does not mean the town will be left without any speed cameras as Wiltshire Police will continue to operate mobile units. The decision has been called "reckless" by the road safety charity, Brake...

Leaving aside the question of what "road safety measures' might entail - the article suggests it'll be "vehicle activated signs", i.e. another complete waste of money, let's have a quick look at Brake.

Their website screams fakecharity - it uses the same template as all the others, with sub-pages for 'Home', 'About us', 'Contact us', 'Our supporters' (as a variant on 'Support us' or 'Donate'), 'Jobs' and 'Links'.

The income in their 2007 accounts (see page 8)was as follows:

Corporate partnership £285,718
Donations £333,057
Road Safety Education £296,984
BrakeCare £75,979
Fleet Safety Forum £66,535
Research £3,360
Investment income £15,759

Their list of corporate partners seems innocuous enough. Donations include "Community Fundraising £236,319" (which might or might not be suspect). Note 3 to the accounts discloses income of about £70,000 from the Department for Transport, the Youth Justice Board, the Office for Criminal Justice Reform and the Scottish Executive. Those government departments are all duly listed on their site, along with Children in Need, which you might argue is not a fakecharity.

So far, so not so bad, really. Where it starts to stink a bit is on their list of Organisations working with Brake, which includes, along with some genuinely interested private groups, the following:

British Transport Advisory Committee
Chief Fire Officer Association
Child Accident Prevention Trust
Community Transport Association
Disaster Aftercare Services
European Secure Vehicle Alliance
GMB
The Intensive Care Society
Learn + Live
Motabillity
Pre-Hospital Care
Never Away
Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety
Prospect
Public & Commercial Services Union
Road Operators’ Safety Council
Road Safety Markings Association
The Slower Speeds Initiative
Transport & General Workers Union
Transport Management Association of the NHS
University of Huddersfield

All of which appear to be quangos, fakecharities, public sector pressure groups and/or wholly or party funded or arganised by the government (there may be exceptions and I am happy to edit that list down a bit).

So, to cut a long story short, Brake appears to be, to a large extent, a fake.

NOW That's What I Call Negative Equity!

Liabilities $1.9 million; assets $6,500.