Fun Online Polls: In-car entertainment & Responding to a speeding ticket

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

What do you usually listen to when you're driving your car? (You can choose more than one if appropriate)

* Music (excl. radio) - 58 votes
Nothing, just the engine noise - 47 votes
Radio (spoken word) - 43 votes
Radio (music) - 42 votes
** Other, please specify - 9 votes

* "Music" consists of the following sub-categories:

iPod or Bluetooth etc - 19 votes
CDs (shop bought) - 18 votes
USB data sticks with MP3s - 17 votes
CDs with MP3s - 4 votes
Eight-track - 0 votes
Cassettes - 0 votes

** "Others" were mainly audio books or podcasts, with one vote for MiniDisk.

122 voters in total. Thanks to everybody who took part.

I'm surprised how many listen to nothing. I go for USB sticks with MP3s myself, being the maximum amount of music in the least space, you can leave the stick permanently plugged in so you don't need to remember to take your iPod with you, plug it in, take it with you when you park the car etc. One of the greatest inventions of the 21st century IMHO.
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Turning to more unpleasant topics, we drove to Liverpool in Mrs W's car last weekend and it was my turn to do the last bit on the M62. There was a long 50 mph section because of roadworks/narrow lanes, fair enough, stick the speed limiter on. Getting nearer town, the roadworks ended and the lanes were normal width again.

Conditions dry, good visibility, normal amount of traffic. All the other cars shot off like bats out of hell, so I took off the speed limiter and started speeding up a bit so that nobody would rear-end us. "Oo-er," said Mrs W, "I think we just got flashed."

Sure enough, a fixed penalty notice turned up a couple of days later, 61 mph in what is allegedly a 50 mph stretch at 10.22 in the evening.

My options appear to be:

1. Go to court and try and talk my way out of it, I suppose the only thing I can argue is that the speed limit was not clearly signalled. That's at least half a day wasted and might backfire on me.

2. Take three points on the chin and pay £100.

3. Go to grown ups detention a Speed Awareness Course which also costs £100.

I think we can consider the £100 a sunk cost.

In my position, what is the best course of action?

That's this week's Fun Online Poll.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Speeding fines & picking winners

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

In the last ten years, have you ever had a speeding ticket for exceeding the speed limit by… Choose the lowest which applies.

Up to 10 mph - 19%
10 to 20 mph - 7%
20 to 30 mph - 7%
I haven't had a speeding ticket for ten years - 67%

Hmm. Where I live (south east England) everybody seems to merrily exceed the speed limit by up to 10 mph as a matter of course. It strikes me that - ignoring legal speed limits on any particular stretch of road - the most sensible speed is "roughly the same speed as everybody else" so I have grown accustomed to it - unless it is a clearly marked residential area with a 20 mph limit, where you aren't just risking a ding or a scratch, you might actually injure a pedestrian or generally wind up people in their homes, so I stick to that religiously. I didn't realise that this many people got speeding tickets for doing a few miles over. Bugger.
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And lo, our PM has spoken!

From gov.uk:

The new Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, overseen by UK Research and Innovation, will back projects covering a number of priority technologies and help Britain build on existing strengths in research and development. Despite its strengths in science, Britain has until now been relatively weak on commercialisation, meaning that all too often ideas developed in this country end up being commercialised elsewhere.

Government will consult on how the fund can best support emerging fields such as robotics and artificial intelligence, industrial biotechnology and medical technology, satellites, advanced materials manufacturing and other areas where the UK has a proven scientific strength and there is a significant economic opportunity for commercialisation.

So a nice list of buzzwords plucked out of the air then?

That's this week's Fun Online Poll, which of these do you think are worthy of subsidies?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Brexit next steps & speeding tickets

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

That Article 50 decision. What do you think will happen next? No wishful thinking and multiple choices allowed.

The government will just trigger Article 50 anyway - 17 votes
The government will appeal the decision and win - 21 votes
The government will appeal the decision and lose - 36 votes
The government will call another general election - 12 votes
MPs will vote to trigger Article 50 - 42 votes
MPs will vote not to trigger Article 50 - 22 votes
Other, please specify - 4 votes

111 voters

On that basis, the most expected (or least unexpected) outcome appears to be that the government will appeal the decision, lose and MPs will vote to trigger Article 50 (even if only by a slim majority). Which happens to be what I think is least unlikely as well.

But we'll see…
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Next, a more general question, you read in the papers about people getting done for exceeding the speed limit by 30, 40, 50 mph, but what is the lower bound?

Has anybody had, in the last ten years say, a speeding ticket/fine/penalty for exceeding the speed limit by 1 mph, or 2 mph? I doubt it.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

Share your experience here or use the widget in the sidebar.

I am getting fed up with this...

Some months ago I was done for speeding by a mobile camera van.

Fair enough I was over the 'speed limit' (which in my sad old Kim's Game way I try very hard to stick to). Did the speed awareness course and suffered some hours of sophistry and learned a couple of useful things and went on my way. Thing is, I know for a fact that the piece of road I was done on has actually got safer over the years.

I know this because I surveyed it for safety and alignment, 'traffic management', traffic flows, turning movements (the van was near a left/right staggered junction on a rural dual carriageway) and all the rest of it in the mid eighties when the road was the main A12 into Ipswich and parts North. At that time it was OK-ish at 70. Now it's 50. I was caught at 57. And because it has been bypassed, all the hazards - especially the turning movements and traffic volumes - are a fraction of what they were. So it's bollocks that the speed camera was for 'safety measures. (It was hidden as well of course).

Since then I have intensified my Kim's Game. Why not? It relieves the boredom.

Today I was dodging gently along back to the office travelling from Darsham via Yoxford and Sibton back to my office in Ipswich via the pretty way.  I was trundling through one of the villages at about 30 and the character of the road changed to more rural and I was just thinking to myself  'hang on what's the bloody speed limit here?' (having not been recently aware of any repeater signs) when there, hidden in the verge in an obscure way was another camera van. I have no idea if I was over the limit or not, I think my speedo was about 35, but we shall see.

The point is though that I am pretty sure that the 30 mph repeater signs were all obscured by foliage.  OK.  So I can go back and spend another day surveying and photographing it all, but what's the bloody point?  I certainly cannot afford that time and if I do and prove the case I still won't get my costs and then I will be well out of pocket.

I have a view that they 'authorities' do the things that they can do most easily.  It's easy nowadays to process speeding tickets.  It's easy to process parking tickets.  The authorities can then say 'we've caught X tens of thousands of speeding people' as if that proves anything.

Meanwhile, in Rotherham...

Fun Online Polls: Irish universities; motorway lanes

Thanks for your input here, I emailed my son the link and that is the end of that.
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This week, yet more bansturbation: persecuting people who stay in the middle lane on the motorway.

The full article is at the BBC, which is surprisingly even-handed, e.g. "Motorways are currently the safest roads in the UK..."

Newsthump took it to one extreme and reported that there were calls for middle-lane hoggers to face the death penalty while The Daily Mash took the other tack and reported that the middle lane was voted the "best lane".

I know that there is a lot of fancy maths involved with variable speed limits and so on - it is better to drive at an average speed of 60 mph all the way than to be alternate between 40 mph and 70 mph or more - but AFAICS, if the national speed limit is 70 mph and you are doing 70 mph (or the same speed as the cars ahead of you if slower), then it can't possibly matter which lane you are in.

[For sure, I can see good reasons for lifting the national speed limit to 80 mph or even abolishing a formal upper limit and having a variable speed limit decided from minute to minute by the clever mathematicians and motorway engineers, but let's stick with 70 mph to illustrate the point.]

Seeing as I have every intention of bowling along at 70 mph or thereabouts, to save me the faff of arriving behind a lorry or a pensioner, or somebody approaching pension age in a Mazda MX5, waiting for a safe gap, indicating, overtaking, waiting until I'm a safe distance ahead of the lorry, dropping back into the slow lane and then repeating the whole f-ing exercise half a minute later, I'd rather stay in the middle lane, thank you very much.

But what does everybody else think?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Xmas decorations & Philip Hammond

OK, I shall close the fill-in FOP on Xmas decorations. By now, half of us have seen some and half of us haven't (or have managed to ignore them to the point of not even noticing them) and return to more interesting matters.
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Defence Secretary is normally seen as a very senior job, certainly more senior than Transport Secretary, so on the face of it, Philip Hammond was promoted once the totally not-corrupt-at-all Liam Fox resigned in such an honourable and dignified fashion last week. Interestingly, the defence lobbyists seem to have got their knives out for Hammond already, but hey.

Now, as it happens, Philip Hammond was originally pencilled in by the Tories as Treasury Secretary (or 'Chief Secretary to the Treasury' or whatever the exact fancy title is) but was shuffled sideways because they had to give the job to a Lib Dem as part of the Coalition negotiations. The first incumbent David Laws was booted out because of some expense-claim shenanigans and was replaced by another Lib Dem, Danny Alexander.

Despite all this, and having been made Transport Secretary at short notice, Philip Hammond seemed to a) know what he was talking about and b) be enjoying the job. I just can't help liking him and his ve-e-ery dry sense of humour (despite him being an über-Home-Owner-Ist and all, at least he was prepared to go into battle over the HS2 route).

But is it really a promotion? Who really wants the job as Defence Secretary?

I'd far rather be Transport Secretary and really achieve something - raise the speed limit on motorways, turn off the traffic lights, build a few new railway lines, allow a new runway to be built at Gatwick or Luton, cut bus fares, whatever - than be blundering around in the MoD morass, there is no concept of 'value for money' in that department, it's all about massive vanity projects and nothing to do with what really benefits the UK. As Transport Secretary, you can quietly plan out the next few years and work towards a target; as Defence Secretary you are pushed and pulled every which way, and by and large, you usually end up resigning and being hated by all and sundry.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Which job would you prefer... Minister for Defence or Minister for Transport?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Philip Hammond On Top Form

If he goes on like this (his slot starts 2 min 50 seconds into the clip), he'll end up turning off the traffic lights or something:

I'm starting to like Philip Hammond.

Two stories from The Daily Mail:

Exhibit One: Motorway speed limits could rise to 80 mph to shorten journey times and boost the economy under a radical review of road safety, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond signalled today.

He is concerned that anti-car campaigners have for too long used 'road safety' as a convenient excuse to both stymie raising speed the limit on motorways from the current 70mph, and to push for more 20mph zones* in urban areas - even when they are inappropriate.

Exhibit Two: Residents’ groups, some councils and several Tory MPs are firmly against the [high speed London-Birmingham rail link] and there are concerns that the planned 2015 start date for the scheme will be hard to meet. The 140-mile first phase could cost £17 billion and plans for extensions to northern England and Scotland will take until the 2030s.

Mr Hammond said: "Until now, the people who are opposed to it because it is in their back yard have made all the running. Now that we are getting to the real crunchy bit, the people who are going to benefit from it – which is everyone in the UK except those who have got it in their own back yard – are beginning to mobilise and articulate the significant benefits that will be delivered."

* I'd say that this is up to the people living on each individual street to decide.

Scared To Death

Today I have been mainly lazing around and reading Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth.

It is a most awesome book, incredibly well researched etc. Warmly recommended.

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.

Coalition of the willing (2)

UPDATE 24/05/08 - the online poll over here is currently standing at 24 'ayes' and 23 'noes', most heartening indeed! Why not drop in and have your say?

Coalition of the willing

Let's look at a list* of some of the main things have been made illegal (or might be made illegal) for no good reason (whether such a ban is actually enforced or not in practice is by-the-by) and the two most stupid traffic regulations:

Smoking in pubs and clubs
Drinking alcohol on public transport
Smoking cannabis
Fox-hunting
Patio heaters
Plastic carrier bags
Taking ecstasy tablets
Brothels
Traffic lights
National speed limit on the motorways and major roads
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Update:
Allow handguns for sporting purposes
Scrap ID card scheme, national ID database and interviews for passports
Allow local councils to subsidise post offices via a precept on Council Tax, subject to local referenda
Allow trading and collecting ceremonial swords
Allow shops to use pounds and ounces
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The reason why 'they' get away with it is because the majority of people don't smoke (either tobacco or cannabis); the majority of people don't work in or admit to visiting brothels; didn't used to go fox hunting and so on. But surely, a majority of people would like to at least some of these bans lifted (those particular bans that affect them personally) or to see more humane traffic regulations? OK, there may well be a minority who don't do any of these things, who don't mind being stuck at traffic lights and who are basically total kill-joys, but let's ignore them for now.

To sum up, would there not be any mileage in a political party saying that they'd lift all these stupid bans and regulations, in one fell swoop - lock, stock and barrel?

For sure, there may be hippy dope smokers who support the fox-hunting ban; there may be women who hate traffic lights and quite like plastic carrier bags but have a moralistic aversion to brothels; there may be those who used to enjoy lighting up in the pub who believe (erroneously) that ecstasy is a dangerous drug - but have we not reached the tipping point where all these narrow groups could declare an armistice and all do their own thing and let others get on with doing their own thing?

* Please leave a comment if I've missed anything important off the list!

UPDATE 24/05/08 - the online poll over here is currently standing at 24 'ayes' and 23 'noes', most heartening indeed! Why not drop in and have your say?