Psychology, Society, Transport

The Road to Hell…

Road

Image by Jim Semonik from Pixabay

…is paved with good intentions – as we all know.

The recent changes to this country’s Highway Code were intended to improve road safety for the most vulnerable road users but it seems that they will only cause confusion at best, resentment in between and accidents at worst.

As a driver I disagree with the new requirement to give way to pedestrians crossing a junction you’re turning into. In principle the car driver should be slowing for the junction anyway so stopping shouldn’t be an issue, the problem is that there will be, at some point, a car following where the driver will either not want to stop, is following too closely, or not paying attention and will, not expecting a car to stop on the main road, run into the back of the stopped car. If this rule applies to roundabouts as well where people often don’t actually stop before joining then I can see many t-boned vehicles blocking roundabout entrances before long.

I’ve said before that I am both a cyclist and car driver and I admit that not all cyclists follow the highway code. I get just as annoyed as anyone else at cyclists riding on the road in the dark, in dark clothing without lights and expecting drivers to see them, I get annoyed with cyclists who don’t indicate, who just dart across the road etc – mainly because they are the ones held up as an excuse for car drivers to act aggressively towards all cyclists, not give us room, sound their horns at us etc. As it is the new rules will make no difference, those who break them will always have the attitude of “I’ll do what I want, nobody’s telling me what to do or how fast I can go…”

Since the new rules have come in I’ve had a white Fiat 500 sat behind me at a junction revving and edging forward to get me to pull out in front of moving traffic then another, or the same, Fiat pull out of a junction in front of me, causing me to brake sharply and two vans passing within inches of me, the last one almost pushing me onto the pavement – all the drivers no doubt thought it was funny and in most cases pedestrians nearby looked at me like it was my fault, that I shouldn’t have been there, which typifies the attitude these days.

As has been said recently the newspapers haven’t helped much by implying that drivers will be fined for opening their door with the wrong hand – it’s a recommendation in the highway code to use the hand furthest from the door, so you look in the wing mirror – and screaming and crying that cyclists will all be riding down the middle of the road and stopping everyone getting to work.  Sensationalist headlines sell papers and get websites ad revenue don’t they, even if they stir up aggravation.

Demands for licence plates, insurance, road tax etc, on the grounds of road damage, accidents etc is just sour grapes. The true source of the resentment that some drivers hold towards cyclists is, I believe, that firstly they are being delayed by the slower bike, their journey taking all of a few seconds longer; secondly their egos can’t stand not being in control – they want to drive at the speed they want to and they’re being prevented from doing so – when a car slows them down they can’t say “F***in’ car drivers, should be banned from the roads, oh, wait, er…” Thirdly there is a simmering jealousy that they don’t look so good in lycra, no sorry, I mean they can’t get round, and in-between, stationary traffic. Finally is an arrogant sense of entitlement, that it’s their road, that roads were invented for motor cars, to the degree that many drivers feel that roads shouldn’t be used by cyclists or pedestrians at all – well as for the ownership I think some Romans laid claim to that with their carts and chariots a long while since.

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environment, Nature, Society

Throwaway Comments

Reused Lightbulb

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I watch TV shows like the BBC’s “Money for Nothing” with despair sometimes. Who am I kidding, every time. The reason is waste. When I see people throwing away perfectly usable objects just because they don’t want them, from kids bikes to three-piece suites, it makes me cringe. Why? Well, because of all the people who could make use of them. People will religiously wash out their yoghurt pots and put them in the recycling bin, “doing their bit for the planet”, but then take still usable items to the tip – It’s as if they’ve never heard of charity shops, who would happily take many of the items that go in the big bins, either that or they can’t lower themselves to give their stuff to a charity. Often items just need cleaning or a basic repair – I once saw a perfectly good, solid, bench vice being thrown away which could have been cleaned, painted and oiled and be back being used on a workbench but it was going to be skipped and was then “rescued” and turned into a wall lamp, which is another subject altogether.

Of course there are other outlets for unwanted items – Ebay, Gumtree, Facebook, friends or family – but maybe it’s all too much effort, far easier to take them to the tip. Besides selling items yourself or via charity shops, old tools like the vice above could be donated to local projects, there is one near here that does free bike repairs while teaching youths useful skills in the process. Old furniture can be provided at low cost to those in need by organisations like The Furniture Project whom I have donated many pieces, including two good sofas (the second of which wouldn’t fit into my current house, I wish I’d kept the first, smaller, one now though – I might have got it up the stairs.) Organisations like these will collect the items free of charge, at a time that suits you and you get to know that someone will be helped, that someone will appreciate what you no longer want or need.

It’s currently fashionable to “upcycle” things into some trendy “authentic” or “quirky” lamp or piece of “shabby-chic” furniture, usually to sell for a stupid price, but how about we think about the “reuse” option a bit more, which is a bit “greener” too, isn’t it.

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Business, Society

Movable Feasts & Extended Events

Xmas

Image by Couleur from Pixabay

When I was young Halloween was 31st October, regardless of the day it fell on, even if it was a school night, the same with November 5th. I was never bothered about Halloween, in fact I think I’m allergic to fancy dress of any kind, being averse to any kind of school play too – I couldn’t even be persuaded to play the dead Mr Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” and instead taking part in the choir, I much preferred singing – still do – I do wish there was a good local Karaoke.

Anyway, when I originally wrote this I couldn’t see the keyboard quite so well as I was almost in the dark to avoid the inevitable “Trick or Treaters.” My last home’s front door was up two floors and hidden in such a way as I’d often had to go downstairs to meet delivery drivers bringing parcels and take-aways. My new house’s front door is again hidden under a dark archway and it looks like my home is part of the neighbour’s house but I wasn’t taking any chances. The thing is it was a Saturday night, the 28th of October, three days before All Hallows Eve. Today is the third of November and my writing and the Jazz on the radio is being disturbed by fireworks. The same being increasingly true of other such days; in the UK we have what used to be called Guy Fawkes Night, remembering the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament which is now more usually called Fireworks Night, or more accurately Fireworks Week now as again it can cover two weekends, particularly if the 5th of November happens to fall mid-week. This year it’s on a Friday yet it’s started tonight.

Valentine’s Day used to be just that – a day. A day when people would send a card, anonymously once upon a time, but now it’s part of the selling season and regardless of what day of the week the 14th of February falls on the nearest weekend has become “Valentine’s Weekend” when people are encouraged to buy expensive gifts and go out for an expensive meal or have an M&S meal for two at home, it has even extended to encompass cars – a dealership’s radio advert suggesting that “this Valentine’s weekend” you might want to take your loved one to look at a new car.

Easter seems to vary in length as well as its religiously defined date and the eggs go on sale sometime in January while Christmas is similarly a week now and begins sometime in August and parents are encouraged by some companies to buy their kids Christmas Eve presents. Stag and Hen nights became weekends or even weeks depending on how far from home the event is, having moved from a few drinks in the local pubs, humiliating outfits and “bride to be” sashes, being tied to a lamppost and onto trips to Ibiza etc – mostly due to the inevitable modern phenomena of showing off on social media – having the most extravagant, expensive, event.

New Year’s Eve seems to have escaped extension, so far, if only because it’s so close to Christmas that many wouldn’t have recovered from the latter in time for the former.

Even Black Friday which spread to Britain a few years back has become Black Friday Week. I think the greatest example of Mission Creep I’ve seen so far was Wren Kitchens’ Black November sale…

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Psychology, Tech

Hey, What’s Your Name?

Google Home Mini

Image by antonbe from Pixabay

Our current group (party, gaggle, company) of smart-speaker voice assistants have real names, Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google.  Eh.  Why didn’t Google give their assistant a name, a proper name.  She clearly has a personality of sorts, even if it is pre-programmed, and apparently now has feelings to hurt if you swear at her or speak impolitely.  If she was a real person she would, I’m sure, be embarrassed by her name and people would say “did her parents have a bad sense of humour?”

It’s not just me being flippant, for me it just doesn’t feel natural saying “OK Google” or “Hey Google”.  I’m sure they think it sounds cool but imagine if everyone who meets you and asks you a question had to prefix it with “Hey Joe” or “Hey Sue” or worse still “Hey Human” it would get boring very quickly, for both parties.  As for “OK Joe” – that just sounds unnecessarily aggressive.  I think it’s the “OK” or “Hey” prefix that niggles, just asking “Google?” would be a little better, to be fair.

If we are to, in the future, have a natural verbal interaction with technology it has to be exactly that – natural – not an excuse to crowbar the name of the service provider into the conversation.  At the end of the day you’re likely to know you’re using a Google device.  Their approach seems to hark back too much to the original Star Trek’s “Computer…”

Hey Google, please grace your AI with a real name, those of us who feel daft saying “Hey Google” might use it more.  Personally, having lived in Newark, and more specifically worked with a certain Mr Johnson for twenty years, a natural way to summon her would be to say “Now then Mush, what’s the weather like today?”

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Society, Transport

It Didn’t Register

Licence Plate

Image by Peter H from Pixabay

Personalised registration plates are an anomalous thing, expensive (in this country at least) and often pointless.  There are those which are spaced as to indicate that they’re trying to spell something but I cannot for the life of me figure out what – the secret belongs to the owner and perhaps, for them, that may be the point.  I’m not against them in principle, I have seen some genuinely funny ones (which I can’t unfortunately recall) and personally toyed with the idea of replacing my old car’s full-length registration with “P6 ETC” but decided it wasn’t a pun worth £250.

The second group are those who spell out their name – and as Phil Jupitus once pointed out if you call out their name from the plate, Jim for example, “they don’t like it.”  So don’t get it then.  Maybe it’s just so they can remember which is their car, or their own name.  Last summer I regularly saw a car that had a registration that, I presume, was meant to spell – combining letters and numbers with a little squinting and imagination – “Jodie’s” but actually spelt “Jobies” which, if you’re familiar with the Scottish dialect, is something less pleasant – I thought the car looked ok.  I once saw a car with the owners initials following “XO07” once, it was an old Ford Mondeo, but then the secret service has, no doubt, had budget cuts.

Next are the truly pointless ones – the brand names, plates ending in BMW, for example and often beginning with the model number, or as near as.  Hundreds of Honda S2000s have plates beginning S200, while there will be limits on how many “O”s to follow it are available so many drivers appear to have S200s instead.  I once saw a Skoda whose numberplate tried very hard but was missing its terminal “A” being a “Skod”.  Ah.  The biggest issue with these plates is they fact that they tend to be stuck to the car roughly six inches from the front or rear manufacturer’s badges and model numbers.  The oddest thing I’ve seen was a plate that had clearly once been attached to a BMW X5 – it started with the model number then presumably the owner’s initials followed – but was at that point attached to a Skoda Octavia.  Downsized?

There are numerous miscellaneous messages and such like – I regularly saw a car with plates apparently saying “No Sweat” but due to the limitations of the letter combinations available actually said “Noo Suet”.  Either they were not aware of the stodgy cooking ingredient or they don’t like meat puddings or Jam Roly Poly.  Similarly I was passed by a fast Merc which had an apparently inspirational numberplate exclaiming “GOO BRUV”.  Goo?  The mind boggles. I have seen many with “Boss”, “SXY” and even one which was split in order that the centre four digits spelled “Asbo” (an acronym for Antisocial Behaviour Order in the UK).

Lastly, just a few weeks ago, I encountered the most existential registration I’d seen, ending in the letters “YRU” – well, I think we’ve all wondered that, at some point.

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Productivity, Tech, Work

No More Lines

This isn’t a campaign against schools’ repetitive handwriting-based punishments, nor against linear markings of any kind as such – they have their uses, keeping traffic apart on roads, for example.  No the lines I’m referring to are on paper.

When learning to write we had lined paper of course to keep us on the straight and narrow, to keep our exercise books tidy and stop the words flowing across the page like the Yorkshire Dales, but they naturally limit how much can fit on a page and how you can organise blocks of text.

I prefer to use plain paper notebooks now for writing notes.

At work I have an A5 plain-paper notebook and on each page I write things to do, notes when someone rings about something I need to find out for them etc and I have found that I can fit far more on each page this way, even appending information into a blank space to the right, or draw a fenced-off area in a blank space and write a small reminder or some other such snippet or list in it and not lose it. When a page is full any outstanding items are copied to the top of the next blank page and the process repeats. The bonus is that the information is retained in the book, unlike using post-it notes or scrap paper which gets lost or thrown away ten minutes before somebody asks if you’ve still got the information and you need to start sorting through a thousand paper balls and used tea bags.

For this blog I use a similar system but instead of a notebook I use a grey and green suede A5 six-ring binder that’s a nice addition to the desk and loose leaf paper that is removed and binned as soon as the notes are transferred to Evernote. I found I needed to do it this way as I usually think of things to write about when the computers aren’t on and I can’t risk that by the time I’ve started either of them up and then Evernote that I’ll have forgotten what I was going to… erm.. oh yes, say.

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Business, Gadgets, Language, Tech, Work

There’s No Answer to That

Telephone
Image by Here and now, unfortunately, ends my journey on Pixabay from Pixabay

The answerphone has been around for a while but I’m not sure that giving some people the ability to record their own answer message was a wise idea.

There are the ones who think it’s cute and sweet to get their kids to record the message – a real example, they sang “mummy and daddy are not at home, leave a message after the tone” really, slowly.  The rhyming is just about acceptable, the high pitched whine, not so.  Its OK if it’s nanna ringing but when you’re having to ring them three, four or eight times a day to try to arrange an installation or to try to get payment from mummy and daddy the little darlings’ singing gets irritating real quick. 

Though not as irritating as the man who was trying to sound like some kind of nineties “dude” –  please brace yourself – “Yo! Yo!  You’re through to Karl. If you wanna leave a message then you can, it you don’t then…” suddenly sounding like an eighties local radio DJ “…juuust hang up!”  I stifled my laughter, left a message and hung up.

The “insert name here” automated message can be interesting.  “Welcome to the telco messaging service…” the softly spoken woman intones, “DAVE” a gruff male voice barks, then the woman’s back”…cannot take your call, please leave a message after the beep”  One user completely missed the point and it went like this: “Welcome to the Sky messaging service, hi, I’m not available to take your call, leave a message after the beep, is not available to take your call, please leave a message after the beep.”  Hmm.

The telcos are not always so much better – one which shall remain nameless tries to be a bit ladish and overly informal by saying “…when yer done, just hang up”.  Picky, I know, but such things grate with me sometimes.  The other network issue is the overly lengthy message, “…please leave your message after the beep.  When you’ve finished recording please hang up (no shit, I was going to wait) or to change your message press hash” by now the person I was leaving the message for is trying to call me back and I haven’t even got as far as leaving a message.

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Music, Psychology

Whoopin’ an’ a Hollarin’ Live From Madison Square Gardens

I don’t like live albums generally, mainly because most of the ones I’ve heard have been by American artists in front of American audiences and what normally happens is the singer will start singing and then half the audience recognise what they’re singing and start whistling, cheering and shouting “yeah” at a volume that drowns out the music altogether.  This wouldn’t be so bad but they do it throughout the song.

Showing that you appreciate that they’re playing a song you like is fine but what’s the point when you can’t hear the song for all the hollarin’ goin’ on.  You might as well sit at home and listen to the album.  It seems, like so much such behaviour, to be about self again – a kind of exclamation of how much more you appreciate it than everyone else, a kind of competitive congratulating, as though the artist will notice you specifically.

I don’t mind the audience singing along however, I myself remember singing loudly, along with everyone else in the crowd, to “Vienna” when Midge Ure played a free live concert here in Newark many, (oh heck, many) years ago.  That felt like a magical experience, a shared experience, being part of the song as we were all in harmony with the singer on stage, but whistling and shouting “yeah” isn’t being part of it. 

I recently heard an artist interviewed in the sixties mention that audiences in the UK were different, more attentive – that’ll mean less hollarin’, I’d assume.

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Society, Work

Retail Impatience

I was in a short, socially distanced, queue in a major supermarket, at twenty past six in the evening, after work, a month or so ago.  The complete queue ahead of me consisted of a younger couple – the lad in baseball cap was clearly a gobby type, and between them and I was an unattended trolley, which it soon became clear belonged to a man who was breaking all distancing rules by leaning over the screen at a checkout, being too close to both the cashier and the customer being served at the time.  When he returned to the queue he was loudly making it clear to everyone including the couple in front that he’d been complaining that they weren’t getting served quickly enough.  Baseball-cap man then loudly pointed out that the male cashier was “…going even slower now ‘cos yoov said somefink to ‘im (s.i.c.).”   The wanderer then started exclaiming to baseball-cap man that he’d said to the cashier that “I won’t need to defrost anyfin’ when I get ‘ome, ‘cos it’ll be done before I leave ‘ere (s.i.c. too)“, or words to that effect, laughing loudly because he thought he was so amusing.

All of us who work in retail will have had to put up with loud-mouthed clever-dicks like him at some point.  Emphasis on “dick”.  I wasn’t amused even though he looked round at me for affirmation in an “am I right?” kind of way, I expected him to start high-fiving everyone.  But no, I thought, you’re not getting any group approval from me, no matter how much you want to look like a supermarket hero, the shoppers’ champion.   Another man joined the queue behind me and was similarly agitated, probably in a display of group conformity – everyone else is complaining – “there’s not normally this many customers at this time of night” I wearily muttered to him.  In the end we all got through in a reasonable time, my BBQ chicken bake was still frozen when I got home. 

I felt like saying to all three of these individuals “have you worked in retail?…  no?… you should try it.”

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