There’s a superb article in the Telegraph this week about Speed Cameras, the ideas behind their implementation and some of the truth behind the arguments and statistics. If you’re anything like me you’ll long for the days when the Police had the authority and capability to allow some lassitude to drivers, giving many of them the benefit of the doubt.

As a young guy with a penchant for speed I was stopped quite a few times by various Police officers and at no time did I ever take offence. Often a patient ‘ticking off’ for some boy-racer behaviour meant that I did actually think more carefully about my driving standards and in the late ‘80s even paid to take a safety course provided by enthusiastic local Traffic Police, something that improved my driving beyond recognition. Just a couple of years ago I did the same after passing my motorcycle test with the Warwickshire Bikesafe scheme.

Unfortunately our Government appears to use the following procedure for creating ‘safe’ roads:

        (1) Set a speed limit
        (2) Put up many, many signs to distract attention while driving
        (3) Erect a speed camera
        (4) Collect the resulting revenue

The article in the Telegraph is fairly lengthy but well worth reading. One notable quote is this:

“The efficiency of the UK’s traffic police, respected as an elite, had won international recognition. Regular patrols enabled them not just to pick up drivers breaking the speed limit, but those whose driving or vehicles might need to be checked for other reasons. Not least of these was a severe clampdown on driving under the influence of alcohol.”

Those days are long gone, and getting back to that level of service would take considerable time.

It’s incredible to think that otherwise intelligent people can postulate that erecting speed cameras across the country, often on perfectly safe multi-lane roads, will stop accidents.

What about drunk drivers, drivers under the influence of drugs, drivers paying little attention to the road, people driving within the posted speed limit but too fast for the conditions, inexperienced drivers in tricky situations, cars that have safety issues, and people driving quite safely in the dead of night on empty roads?

The UK appears to be a country where intelligence, common sense and personal responsibility count for nothing. And the amazing thing is that none of the current political parties seem to think that crediting their electorate with the named qualities would be a vote-winner…

Read the original article here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt692UuRMyg&rel=1&border=0]

Watch this and tell me that men don’t thrive on adrenaline!

…are a wonderful thing, especially when they’re from people who are not particularly connected with the thing they’re recommending.

“I like the Salvation Army because it is a “doing” organisation. “Heart to God and Hand to Man” is their motto. Philosophically, I do have problems with some of their ideas but that’s to be expected because I have identical issues with every other group which believes it has the complete answer to everything. What I do admire is the SA’s action. Army members don’t sit around talking about helping people – they get up and do it.”

This is from Frank Melling over at The Telegraph newspaper in his Friday blog which you can find here.

If TIM was back on the road (and I wasn’t already booked up this weekend at MPH) I’d love to take part in this run. If you live somewhere near Manchester please consider taking part, or send your donations as requested in Frank’s story.

TIM (left)

I thought The Secret Millionaire was one of the most edifying TV shows I’ve watched in the last year.

It’s back on tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm. Watch it and see if you agree.

No, I haven’t just spelt my name wrongly or indeed changed it to suit my preference for ibooks/ipods etc. The Robi is a new product from Roberts, radio manufacturers by appointment to HM The Queen.

It plugs into your ipod and gives the facility to listen to DAB or FM radio via your normal iPod headphones. It’s compatible with iPod and Nano, so presumably uses the dock connector, and is powered by the iPod itself.

Can’t find any stockists yet although Amazon have a listing page in place. RRP is £49.99 which is about the same price as a decent small portable DAB radio.

Christmas present for someone you love?

In these days of really, REALLY crap customer service (as recently suffered by me via Comet, Specsavers and Hawkshead), it came as welcome relief to deal with the customer service team at Coventry Toys ‘R’ Us.As you’ll know if you read this blog, Mrs G-T recently purchased a Nintendo Wii for my birthday from www.toysrus.co.uk.Last evening I went round my brother-in-law’s house to play with it. Four of our friends joined us for the anticipated evening of fun. You can imagine our distress when the aforementioned Wii turned out to be faulty! It wouldn’t accept discs, which is a bit of a problem when all the games are on discs.So, without much hope I went to the local Toys R Us store and spoke to the customer service team.They were fantastic! Tested the Wii, confirmed that it didn’t work and replaced it with a brand new one. No problems, no lengthy forms, no issue about buying it via the web but taking it to a store.And the best bit was that they had had a delivery of Wii consoles that morning and had kept one back just in case of any faults. Given how hard it is to find a Wii console at the moment it’s a refreshingly customer-oriented decision to NOT sell every single one they get in.Great service. I’ll definitely shop there again! Well done guys.