Rants
| Eureka is in some sort of stasis. It seems very much the same now as when it opened. It seems as if they got a bunch of thinking people in to set it up - and then they left without checking whether their undoubtedly good ideas functioned or not. Sadly, many do not. Every time we visit there are exhibits that have stopped working. Others don't work because of the noise and sheer pressure created by the number of visitors. Some of these stands offer real concepts which need a bit of time to assimilate. Someone needs to stand and watch and see what is going on and hopefully come up with some ways of controlling the flow so that these time moments can be created. There are also some very important safety aspects that need to be sorted out. |
It is a complete nonsense that the income from these cameras goes to the government when it is the individual police forces that have to finance their installation. If the money went straight to the police force, there would be a proliferation of these devices - and everyone would be obliged to drive at safer speeds . . .
Why aren't there barcodes on car tax discs? Then a traffic warden would just have to swipe the disc for his GPS enabled PDA to tell him if the car had been in that spot for too long and also what its number plate should be and if it had valid MOT and insurance - assuming of course that Swansea gets its IT act in gear and records these rather useful bits of data.
WAKEFIELD TRAFFIC SOLUTIONS
| Wakefield have come up with a novel (but surely flawed) solution to the question of how you discourage people from using cars in cities. They have made it impossible to drive through without stopping . . . lots of times. All of the traffic lights (and surely no-one has more) are set out of synch so when you move off from one set, you see the next set turn red. They are presumably not worried about the levels of pollution and stress that this policy is producing. It is ironic that you can almost always drive into Leeds without stopping at all. |
| Can anyone explain why money being taken OUT of my account always moves in one or two days but money going IN to my account always takes at least five days? |
| I used to have a BX which was solid and fairly reliable. It also used to stop very quickly - but never needed any new brakes! We moved 'up' to a ZX estate which was very comfortable and roomy and incredibly good at going around corners. (I suspect it might be too good since I would think that if you did manage to find its limit, everything would go at once) but it had rubbish brakes and no amount of discussion would convince the dealers - until the warranty ran out when they immediately said that not only the pads but the discs too needed replacing. In spite of this we stuck with the breed and bought a Saxo - and the same thing happened! |
Quite apart from the obscene sums of money generated by the Utility Companies (after being privatised as subsidised gifts to friends of the Government) I think it is ridiculous that they are so slow in fixing leaks - and it has taken them so long to set up an 0800 number for reporting them! (It is 0800 573553 or contact household@yorkshirewater.com!)