Classic FM
February 25th, 2008 at 19:07

My car’s cassette tape adapter finally broke the other day, meaning that I can no longer rock out listening to my iPod whilst driving along. This means that rather than listen to Reel Big Fish, or, er, The Economist Podcast, I’ve instead had to endure the radio.

As a young, cool trendsetter, I first decided to turn to Radio 1. I tried listening to this on a couple of journeys, but it made me feel old and depressed. The DJs spoke about the most asinine garbage: on Saturday afternoon - I’m not making this up - there was a phone-in discussion about what biscuits the listeners were eating at that point in time. The DJ read out texts from people who were (thrillingly) eating digestives, rich teas, custard cremes and so on, and then upped the ante by inviting a caller to speak live on air about the biscuits she was eating. Spoiler: it was a chocolate digestive.

The music was strange too. I didn’t realise I was so hopelessly out of touch - listening to the last part of the Top 40 yesterday was a bewildering experience, as I didn’t know any of the songs, or even recognise the names of any of the artists. Why had I never heard of the number one artist (”Duffy”) before yesterday? Surely if someone is famous enough to be number one they’d at least be a part of the public conciousness?

So for the past couple of days I’ve been trying a different tactic: I’ve been listening to Classic FM instead. Its significantly better because Chris Moyles isn’t anywhere near it. It clearly takes a populist stance, as despite knowing nothing about classical music, I’ve so far recognised about half the tracks I’ve listened to on there. Driving along to the James Bond theme tune is quite exciting, even if subconsciously it is urging you to drive fast and womanise.

The funniest thing though was listening to the Classic FM Chart Show on Saturday night. It was just like Radio 1 - there was a presenter playing the top selling singles, they even had jingles to introduce each track with the number of its chart position. The crucial difference with radio one though, was that whereas Radio 1’s jingles are something like “Number One… one… one…”, with lots of echo, over production and laid on top of a several sound effects, like most radio jingles are, to sound exciting, Classic FM’s jingle was just a man’s voice saying in the Queen’s English “Number One”. Classy.

Recommend me a radio station, people!

Comments(6)

Parking enforcement in “lucrative business” shocker
September 26th, 2007 at 14:44

A few weeks ago I was most annoyed to discover that I had a parking ticket. So annoyed in fact, that I sent in a freedom of information request to try and get some dirt on parking enforcement - I was hoping that it’d turn out that employing traffic wardens makes a massive loss, and so I’d be able to smugly wave my finger at them disapprovingly for wasting money.

Unfortunately, it turns out that employing traffic Nazis makes you loads of money.

If you like wildly extrapolated data based on unverifiable assumptions, you’ll love this.

On January 2nd this year, the council took control of parking enforcement (instead of the police) - they’ve sub-contracted this to a third party company who employ 33 parking attendants. (Autistic level of detail: They want it to rise to 37 pending approval by the council). From the year to date (September? Early September?), how much have the council made from parking enforcement? £1,251,000.

If we assume that to be until the start of September, call it nine months, that means that on average, each attendant has bought in £37,909 in that time- and this is presumably (key word there) after the expense of actually running the thing, as that’ll be handled by the third party company. This is a lot of money.

Lets look at it another way - the standard fine if you pay within 14 days is £30. If we assume that most people paid that, then approximately 41,700 parking fines were issued to make the one and a quarter million pound profit for the council. In the 242 days between the council taking control of parking and September, That works out at just over 172 parking violations a day. Which, er, is probably about reasonable for a big city.

So what’s the lesson in all this? Remember to check if you need to pay and display before leaving your car? You can’t be like Mark Thomas exposing governmental lies and hypocrisy if they’re actually running a reasonable operation? No, of course not. The lesson here is that if you want to make money, start your own council and start fining people for parking.

Comments(1)

Big Brother is watching you
September 10th, 2007 at 12:03

This is slightly creepy. After logging on to the council website to pay my parking fine, I put the details on the ticket in, and I was given the option to “view evidence”. It turns out that the traffic warden has been taking photos of my car. I didn’t realise they could do that. Whilst this is arguably a massive invasion of privacy and yet another sign that a surveillance culture is turning modern society into an Orwellian nightmare, it also has an upside: I get to post action photos of the actual thrilling event.

The amazing thing, I think, is that the photographer was the bastard traffic warden himself. With photography skills like these, I wonder if he’s got a Flickr account and is one of the many semi-pro photographers on there who post endless artsy black and white pictures of their pets?

I think the lesson here is to pay and display when you park, kids.

Comments(4)

Parking isn’t fine
September 10th, 2007 at 00:56

On Friday night, for some inexplicable reason I ended up going to Mosh, again. As I don’t drink and I’m the only one qualified to operate a B-class motor vehicle, I was driving.

When you’re sober in a dank nightclub, you really begin to appreciate why people at these places drink to get drunk. I don’t drink because I reckon I don’t need artificial stimulants to appreciate the world. Basically I’m trying to take a pseudo-scientific high-ground by referencing the majesty of nature. Trouble is, there isn’t a lot of that nature to appreciate inside Mosh because there aren’t any windows, and I’ve seen spooky tunnels that are better lit. So I guess the patrons have to liven it up somehow.

But anyway, the next day, rather than waking up with a hangover, I woke up with something worse: a parking fine.

I opened the plastic bag stuck to the windscreen, that I’d failed to spot the night before, to see a demand for £60… or £30 if I pay in the next two weeks.

It turns out that the Nazis who run the car parks insist on charging people around the clock - I’d previously assumed that it would become free at some point during the early evening like nearly every other parking space on earth.

This raises two annoying questions in my mind: what sort of parking attendant works at 11:40pm on a Friday night?! What sort of car park demands money at that time of night?

I guess the new guy must have started - I’ve parked in the same place without a problem before… but maybe I was just lucky? The new guy must be so enthusiastic he’s donning his traffic wardens jacket and can’t wait for 8am. Presumably he justifies this moral travesty by framing himself as a sort of Batman vigilante figure, fighting the bastards who didn’t realise that it was 24 hour Pay & Display.

I’m not happy about this, as you might imagine, as I’m a poor student. I’ve already wrote to Bono to ask him to release a charity single to try and raise the £30 I need.

(Oh yeah, the Freedom of Information request is also in the post)

Comments(1)

Trains are great!
August 30th, 2007 at 14:26

Apparently a single report has “proved” that cars are more environmentally friendly than trains. As you might spot on the link, the issue has been needlessly politicised by a bunch of anti-environmentalist cretins who have their heads in the sand, who seem to have no problem with ignoring an almost unanimous consensus that climate change is occurring.

I’m going to be generous and take the bullet pointed headlines of this at face value, and “accept” that cars have been proven to be more environmentally friendly than trains - even though the report only takes into account one hyperthetical journey, and seems to make assumptions about the occupancy of all of the vehicles involved, and the fuel consumptions of thousands of different types of cars.

Despite all of this, I would still argue that if we are serious about tackling global warming, then the last thing we should do is shut down the railways and give everyone cars. Why? Because its easier to make a couple of thousand trains more energy efficient than it is force everyone to buy a hybrid car.

Sure, using fossil fuels to power trains probably isn’t a good idea, but trains can be (more) easily upgraded to run off of electricity… electricity that can be generated entirely cleanly. A lot of railways are electrified - the London Underground, Eurostar (thus presumably the rest of the South East), and so on. Sure, this isn’t going to help if the source of the electricity is burning oil in a power station somewhere, but equally it could be generated by some wind turbines if they’d build some.

Car usage, being a “capitalist” mode of transport, as it is hilariously called on Guido’s blog, suffers from the so-called tragedy of the commons. In other words, why should I cut down on the amount of energy I consume?

Trains don’t have this problem, as its not possible to pick and choose your train. There’s no sports-utility-trains that go to the same places, that consume more fuel and make you feel important.

So I reckon it would be easier to upgrade the train network to more environmentally friendly trains, assuming such things exist or can be invented, than convince the general public to give a damn about the environment.

(Hypocrisy alert! I also drive a band C car… I’ll get a Prius whenever I finally start earning a lot of money. But I still like trains.)

Comments(8)

Parisian Motorists
August 5th, 2007 at 23:10

We were sitting in a bar in Paris one evening last week, watching the world go by, when we saw the most incredible thing.

Oh, alright, that’s overselling it a little bit, but its something you don’t see in rural Britain, so that makes it notable enough to write about.

There were some on-street parking spaces outside the bar and a big black Mercedes pulled up, trying to park. The driver parallel parked in only to discover that there wasn’t enough space for his gigantic car to fit. So he did the most logical thing possible: he shunted the silver car next to it backwards in order to fit in the space. This took a few extra goes too, and wasn’t just one smooth motion. With each shunt, the silver car was pushed further and further back, perilously close to a Smart-car, that became boxed into its space.

After this, the driver and his girlfriend/wife/mistress/whatever got out of the Mercedes, he slung his jacket over his shoulder and swaggered off like an officially-certified wanker.

We stuck around for quite a while waiting for the Smart car driver to return, but there was no sign of him, unfortunately. I had the camera poised to capture the despair on his face.

I don’t know why this was such a surprising sight though, given the state of the rest of Paris’s roads. Surrounding every Place de la Wherever, like the Bastille or the square where they cut off the King’s head during the Revolution is a gigantic roundabout. They all seem to have about eight lanes - only unlike good old British roundabouts, which tend to feature things like lane markings and arrows showing you where to go, Parisian roundabouts are basically a free-for-all.

The only lines painted on them tend to be give way lines before another entrance/exit, which despite the line’s noble intentions, tend to act more like a starting line in a formula one race - they may as well go the whole hog and paint on a box for the car in “pole-position”.

Cars tend to meander about wherever they like and think nothing of cutting people up on their left and right. We actually sat and watched the Bastille roundabout for about fifteen minutes with our jaws on the floor at just how insanely dangerous it was. Someone even had the spectacular idea of putting a taxi-rank on the roundabout itself.

I think the only way they could have made it more dangerous is by designing the roundabout like the big charity money boxes where you slot a coin in at the side and watch it slide around the edge before falling through the centre. Cars would have to keep going faster and faster or risk falling into the Earth’s mantle.

Comments(0)

Pulled Over
June 21st, 2007 at 14:15

Last night I was driving home from seeing Oceans 13 (Review pending), and as I approached some traffic lights, they turned amber. As I was going 40mph, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to slow down in time, so I decided to retain my speed.

Unfortunately, as I sailed through the traffic lights they turned red.

Unfortunately, there was a police car in another lane at the traffic lights.

So as I continued along, I saw the blue lights kick into action. As I pulled up at the next set of traffic lights, the police car stopped beside me and mimicked to wind my window down. On doing so, the police officer told me to pull up on the kerb a bit further along. Shit.

I can safely say I’ve never been so scared in my life. Well, maybe. It was at least equally as scary as the time I was nearly mugged. I had to go and sit in the back of the police car.

They asked me my name, address and date of birth, and radioed in to check me out. Needless to say, I was apologising profusely and managed to adopt my “telephone voice” to try and reinforce my image of totally not being a boy racer. Which I’m not, and the two police officers knew because when asked if it was my car, I explained that it was my mum’s.

Apparently because it was a traffic offence, I’d get three points on my license - which is critical when you’re in your first two years of driving like I am, because if you get six points, you lose your license, as well as the respect of your peers. And there’s a sixty quid fine.

Thankfully, they were very nice police officers. They took the tone of being firm but fair in speaking to me, which is fair enough. They decided to let me off, which was nice of them. And they also gave me some advice about approaching traffic lights.

The whole encounter lasted maybe ten minutes, but it was the scariest thing ever. Let this be a lesson to you, kids, don’t take risks when driving. Especially when there’s police cars around, as it’s bloody terrifying.

I apologise for this being badly written - I’m not particularly enjoying recalling the event in my head in order to write about it. But at least now it has been transcribed to the internet.

Comments(2)

Nutter of the week
May 31st, 2007 at 00:08

Driving home from work today, I stopped at some traffic lights and waited for an old man to cross. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.

Actually, that’s a slight exaggeration, as I’ve seen the internet.

He was your typical old unhinged type - slouch, stick, lack of teeth, looks like he’d murder you if absolutely necessary.

He ambled across the crossing, but as he did so, stopped every few seconds and turned to the three waiting lanes of traffic, and waved, looking at the drivers. He then, bizarrely, waggled his finger at the drivers, as if he was telling us off. Before walking a few more steps.

As he was passing in front of me, with the lights already on green, he looked straight at me with a face that said “Haha, I am slightly delaying your progress”.

I just wanted to write about this so I know that it definitely happened, and I wasn’t just station at a green traffic light, as has happened many times in the past.

Comments(1)

Driving me mad.
April 19th, 2007 at 02:24

I recently reached an unimportant milestone - I’ve now been driving under my own steam for just over a year, by which I mean, I’m euphemistically describing having held a valid driving license for a year, not that it was only a year ago that I thought about installing a combustion engine into this metal frame with wheels that I used to push around.

I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with driving really- by which I mean, I love driving, but driving seems to hate me. I started learning to drive in the week following my 17th birthday in June 2004. I wasn’t very good at it, but I kept trying.

My progress was stalled slightly when as a Christmas present the same year, my parents added me as a named driver to my mum’s car insurance. So I took the car out on to the deserted Christmas day roads, and somehow, within two hours of being behind the wheel, managed to end up smashing up the front of the Nissan Micra by hitting a bollard when swerving to avoid a wobbly drunken cyclist. On Christmas Day.

Unfortunately, this is absolutely true. The car was sent to the Body Shop for them to have a look at, but it unfortunately turned out that some aromatherapy oils or whatever it is the Body Shop sell were no use - it was written off and it sort of spoiled Christmas a little bit. On the plus side, the bollard was fine though - it was hollow and it popped back up again and was fine.

So I continued having lessons for over a year - passing on my second attempt at the driving test in March 2005, after once again being insured on my mum’s insurance on her new car. It’s a dark-green Ford KA, which I’ve been driving to this day, and a car which I still believe is the manliest car on the road, regardless of whatever its effeminate shape or popular opinion might say.

I’m actually thinking of trying to “pimp” the car, as seems to be the fashion amongst young people today - I might put some white lights on the front, red ones on the back, with some intermittent orange ones on the side to give it some extra class.

I am concerned though that being a motorist has changed me. I still love the environment and hate pollution right? And the oil companies are still evil? But then… why should I take the bus when a car takes me to directly where I need to be? What difference does one extra car make anyway?

I’m even becoming irate at things that traditionally irritate motorists: I get impatient when stuck behind caravans and other slow vehicles, for instance. Old people too… at what age do old people think “right, I’m old now, so despite the speed limit being 70 miles per hour, I’m going to drive at 40 and infuriate everyone in the cars behind me”?

Comments(0)

Frank Turner
January 29th, 2007 at 02:28

This evening I went to see Frank Turner, formerly of Million Dead, playing at The Social in Nottingham. He’s a bit different to the stuff I usually listen to - he’s all acoustic and moderately gentle… the sort of thing JD likes. I basically decided to go on the premise that I’ve seen a couple of videos of him on Youtube covering punk songs by bands like Propagandhi and NOFX. And I like ‘Thatcher Fucked the Kids’, which Frank wrote himself.

You’d think that getting to a major music venue is easy. We even had the SatNav to help us out. I put in the postcode and away we went, and it was working fine until we got to central Nottingham, when we might actually need it. It was giving us some strange instructions, trying to get us to disobey the laws of the road. At one point when it was egging me on to drive the wrong way up a one way street (which I, er, did), I’m sure it said “go on, dare you”.

It was weird- whatever we did, we just couldn’t get to the venue. We kept circling around with about 0.3 miles to go, unable to get any further. In the end, we hit a dead end and it dawned on us: they’d pedestrianised the road.

“FFS!”, I cried as I took the rite of passage and became a proper motorist. It turns out that I’m strongly opposed to the pedestrianisation of city centres. I think this is the culmination of my slow transformation into the sort of person who joins the Association of British Drivers and pops up on the news complaining every time some sort of sensible environmental measure is proposed, and who will never be happy until every inch of countryside is tarmacked over and given an unlimited speed limit.

Thankfully, we eventually got parked- that’s probably a good thing, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to hear my expert opinions on the musicians that I saw:

Beans on Toast was, despite the numerically questionable name, wasn’t bad. He was just one bloke with a guitar who sang vaguely comedic songs. He stood on a stool for the entire performance. At one point he asked the audience if any of them had done Cocaine today. Two of them had.

Dive Dive were… hard to define. I can’t figure out what genre they were, but that’s because I’m terrible. They were quite good though. They also doubled as Frank’s backing band.

Frank Turner himself was good. I’m a bit disappointed that he didn’t play any covers- not even any old Million Dead songs. It would have been excellent to see him play Propagandhi’s State Lottery in a gentle way. He did play Thatcher Fucked the Kids though, which went down well. I’m not too familiar with the rest of his material but it was all enjoyable.

It was good, really. In summary: music!

Comments(0)