Seen in the News

[Stanley]

And about time too Kev. Grant Shapps as Minister of Transport seemed oblivious to the obvious problems. (But of course, that is his special skill. Look back at his history. Remember the bullying of interns?)
Later. News from Minneapolis that the ex police officer Chauvin has been convicted of the murder of George Floyd.
Also in later news. The twelve clubs super league has crumbled. See THIS BBC report that all six English clubs have withdrawn. Now the owners have to apologise for even considering this grubby scheme.

[Tizer]

Smart motorways, super club league - like many of these `bright ideas', those who try to foist them on us don't seem to be in touch with reality.
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Spot the common factor...
`TikTok sued for billions over use of children's data' LINK
`...TikTok said the case was without merit and it would fight it..'.
`Daily Mail owner sues Google over search results' LINK
`Google called the claims "meritless".'

[PanBiker]

No more new smart motorways until technology is in place to make them safe
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56815522

They said all that before they opened any of them. The only one with auto technology is a short section of the M25. All the rest rely on human operatives to spot breakdowns on giant walls of traffic management monitors. The average time to shut down a lane is 17 minutes! Not very good odds if you are the poor bugger who breaks down in a live lane!

[plaques]

The braking distance at 60 mph is 180 ft. That's just a few seconds. Do drivers ever take any notice of what's going on ahead of them, I begin to wonder. Yesterday I left the M65 onto Vivary Way,. Immediately on entering there was a notice 'Left hand lane closed 300 Metres' Some move to the right hand lane. Another notice Left hand lane closed 200 Metres. Cars / vans still whistling up the left hand lane. Yet another notice 'Left hand lane closed 100 Metres. Made no difference to traffic flow. Finally lane closed. All those who had ignored the warning thought it was their god given right to push into the right hand lane. Total Chaos. and a lot of aggravated drivers including myself.

[PanBiker]

On Vivary it's normally the other way round with drivers bombing up the right hand lane then pushing in to the left just before the lights.

Not been any distance for quite a while now but I will not use any of the motorways that don't have a refuge lane. The smart motorway designed refuges can be 2.5km apart. Whoever made the decision to spend all that brass on creating a continuous ribbon death trap should be held to account and should be behind bars at the very least. I think it was 27 people who died last year simply because of mechanical failure.

[Stanley]

See THIS shameful admission by the War Graves Commission. It also cited racist comments such as the governor of a British colony saying in 1923 that: "The average native... would not understand or appreciate a headstone".
I suspect that most of us knew that this was the case but never pressed the matter. I remember my brother telling me that during WW1 the Pavilion at Brighton was used as a convalescent home for Indian troops "as they would feel at home there". Just in case the locals were worried about miscegenation an armed guard kept the clients inside the premises. This demonstrates the climate of thought at the time.

[Tizer]

I've heard that about the Brighton Pavilion too. But it was a hundred years ago and what we now define as racism was normal behaviour for most of the population in those days. We can show recognition but we can't apologise for what people did 100 years ago. You can only apologise for what you've done or caused yourself.

[Marilyn]

Many of us with Indigenous Populations continue to apologise every day, in every way.

[Tizer]

Should we really trust the man responsible for these cars to build thousands of satellites and send people up in rockets?
`Tesla's Autopilot 'tricked' to operate without driver' LINK

[Tizer]

I've posted this not so much for the explosion story in the link below but for the fact the BBC is falling into the trendy fashion for using the word `gender' when they really mean sex. Have they become like the Americans, scared of using the correct word? They put gender in the headline but state in the article `An expectant couple had gone to a quarry to let off an explosion to reveal the sex of their unborn child.' They don't seem to understand that sex and gender are not the same thing. It makes me wonder if this swing away from gender to sex has arisen because the younger generations have been so brainwashed that sex only means copulation, porn etc that they avoid the word even when talking about biological sex.

`Explosive gender reveal party shakes houses miles away' LINK

[Stanley]

"It makes me wonder if this swing away from gender to sex has arisen because the younger generations have been so brainwashed that sex only means copulation, porn etc that they avoid the word even when talking about biological sex."
I think you might be right Peter. For some reason, and I don't understand why, Americans are very coy in some ways. Grease nipples are zerks, breast meat from a bird is 'white' and I well remember my friend Ethel from New York commenting on 'Chimney Breast'. I sometimes wonder if it is just a difference in culture, I have seen it in other areas. I remember being in the company of a group of people in LA, most of them were connected with psychiatry, and I used a slice of bread to mop up the gravy from the excellent steak I had just had. I realised that all conversation had stopped and they were all watching me. It turned out that cleaning my plate like that meant that I was either orally obsessed or anal retentive, I think those were the categories. It's at times like that you realise there is a gulf between the cultures.

[Tizer]

When I was editing science articles from around the world I noticed the different use of the written word `backside'. For us it's what we sit on. For Americans and some other nationalities it's used as we use `rear' or `back': they would write `Do not write on the backside of your answer book' which looks amusing to us.

[Stanley]

Another quirk is the use of 'fanny' for arse. Different here of course·
The linguists tell us it's largely because they took 17th Century English with them and many of the constructions and usages have survived. A similar thing can be seen in Quebecois French and the same mechanism is quoted.

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report on a leaked memorandum.
"The leaked memo - prepared for FCDO minister Wendy Morton ahead of a meeting with MPs - predicted there would be concerns about proposed aid cuts for water supply, sanitation and hygiene - known as "Wash".
It said some MPs "will be worried about the reduction in the UK's spend on Wash at a time when [global] Covid-19 cases are increasing" and as the UK prepares to host the COP26 climate change conference in November in Glasgow.
The memo added: "We expect criticism on the reduction in spend, particularly as the UK public views Wash as a priority area for UK aid, because hand hygiene is widely recognised as a critical intervention to counter the spread of Covid-19, and because the cuts are being announced in the year that the UK is hosting COP26." In a section titled "handling advice", it said the funding reductions for Wash "add to a pattern of declining UK support to the sector that started in 2019"."
It is exactly the wrong time to be cutting vital aid like this and compared to domestic spending it is tiny.

[Tizer]

`Self-driving cars to be allowed on UK roads this year' LINK
`Self-driving vehicles could be allowed on UK roads by the end of this year, the government has said. The Department for Transport said automated lane-keeping systems (ALKS) would be the first type of hands-free driving legalised. The technology controls the position and speed of a car in a single lane but only up to speeds of 37mph (60km/h). But insurers have warned the government's definition of ALKS as 'self-driving' is misleading..'.

Our Honda Jazz has ALKS but isn't self-driving. The ALKS is intended to help the driver stay in lane by monitoring lane markings, road edges, obstacles etc and warning the driver by audible beeps, a warning symbol in the dash display and gentle pulls on the steering wheel. It might be useful on a motorway but all our driving at present is on urban and countryside roads. Under these conditions the ALKS often gives what in covid terms we would call a false positive - we even get it pulling the wheel to the right, towards oncoming traffic, because it thinks we are too close to the nearside road edge. (Think of a narrow street or lane where you close up to the nearside when a car comes the other way.) It's only a slight nudge but it's unnerving. We now switch it off but - guess what - when you switch off the engine it reverts to the default setting of ON so you have to remember to switch it off every time you start the engine. Also, when you start the engine it can't be switched off immediately. So you have to drive away with it on until you've gone a few hundred metres then you can switch it off - which means reaching under the steering wheel to feel around for the switch (while driving in busy traffic), pressing it to bring up the icon on the display, then pressing a button on the wheel to change the icon to OFF then pressing again to confirm. It must have designed by a monkey on an off day!

[Tripps]

Good phone in on LBC this mprning on this topic. My conclusion - it will never (in any meaningful way) happen. File away with Nuclear fission, and colonising the Moon and Mars.

Examples - a bit random -

The software does not read the red cross 'lane closed' motorway signs.

Chap says he has emergency stopped from 70 mph three times with no obvious cause. Car is now in garage awaiting manufacturer's solution. I think that was a VW. Who would ever trust them again?

Man says his car emergency stops in towns, due to presence of nearby pedestrians on the pavement.

Man says he has had three rear end shunts due to unexpected emergency stops. Says no effect on his insurance as the fault is always with the other vehicle. (!)

Strong suspicion that some of the calls were planted? An orchestral conductor said his car cost £120,000.

No answer to the question - are the insurance companies comfortable with it?

Grant Shapps was trying to sell the idea. As always he sounded like a super glib second hand car salesman. (Don't they all?) Can't help remembering that he was once a fireplace salesman, and tried a 'get rich quick scheme posing' as Mr Michael Green. Mr Shapps / Green

[Stanley]

Hee hee! I'd forgotten that part of Mr Shapps' career David, thanks for reminding me.
Reading Peter's description of what living with ALKS is like fills me with horror particularly the one where you are on a narrow road driving close to the verge and the car is trying to steer you into the oncoming traffic.
I heard Shapps saying that in the gap between the incident and the driver taking control which could be 'up to ten seconds' there was no problem because the car would be taking 'appropriate' action. Really?
I'm glad I don't drive any more so include me out!

[PanBiker]

I reckon along with "smart motorways" it's a cunning plan to thin the population down.

[Stanley]

There is some really serious opinion out there on the fringes that that is what the pandemic is. Funnily enough it is the theme of the book I am reading at the moment for 'entertainment'.

[PanBiker]

Trouble is the self steering car and the smart motorways are definitely both man made. As is the Covid virus to an extent, however there could be some of the Gaia principle at work. One thing is certain, the planet won't bother if all human life is wiped out it would be a lot better off.

[Stanley]

Have a look at THIS Ian. here's the relevant quotation:-
At 3 kilowatts per person, a 6-terawatt world implies 2 billion people, about the number alive in 1930. That was a sufficient number of people to allow for "many great cities, giant industries, and thriving arts and letters. A great diversity of cultures existed, and members of many of them were not in contact with industrialized cultures. Large tracts of wilderness remained in many parts of the world. A world with 1.5 billion people using 4.5 terawatts of energy seems equally plausible and would carry a larger margin of safety. This is about the same number of people as existed at the turn of the century."
This is why some think we need an even bigger pandemic but of course this cannot be official government policy.

[plaques]

The article was written in 1994, that's 25 years ago. The trouble is that we have continued with an expanding population but still using old technology. We live in a throw away age driven by fashion and a 'must have' culture. Packing people into smaller housing space may look energy efficient but drives up energy usage in other directions. There's still a lot of savings to be made as long as those elite at the top will let go of their monopoly interests.

[Stanley]

Yes I knew it was an early article but it demonstrates the problem. I have seen more recent estimates that suggest 4 Billion as the viable figure.

[Tripps]

Imaginative response to the Covid situation.

Cannabis Coffee shop in Barlick

I wonder what the 'accessories' are that are mentioned on the board.

PS Comes from Holland and is £25 for a small jar. I wonder what grades other than 'ceremonial' they have? Hatcha Powder

[Cathy]

This caught my eye in the Craven Herald.

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