Tuesday, 23 March 2010
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This blog has moved
This blog is now located at http://theworldaccordingtowesley.blogspot.com/.
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Friday, 5 February 2010
Pointless Poor Parking
Hello [Bedfordshire Ambulance Service],
I routinely see ambulances in Bedford turn up to an event with no care for their parking whatsoever. Last Saturday an ambulance parked diagonally across Bedford High Street, massively disrupting traffic for a long time. There was NO REASON WHATSOEVER for such sloppy parking. Perhaps the driver gets a kick out of being above the law and screwing up so many people - because he can.
Disruption to traffic and the increased danger that causes is the result. I have sat in my car behind an ambulance before now that completely blocked Lansdowne road in Bedford, because the driver couldn't be arsed to park it nearer the curb. There was no emergency. But hey - "I'm an ambulance driver - her her her".
Today, I got such an incident on camera. Between at least 4pm and 4:15pm today, and perhaps long before - an ambulance was parked almost in the middle of Mill Street in Bedford, causing widespread disruption. Notice that the gap left between the ambulance and the curb is not wide enough to accommodate a car, so we can safely assume that when the ambulance arrived, there was no reason not to park normally.Three ambulance crew were in the ambulance, and the incident was a non-emergency. The patient, an elderly gent, eventually walked away. For about 5 minutes the near-side rear door of the ambulance was left completely opened flat against the rear of the ambulance - protruding even further into the the road. If a car had clipped it, especially when the old fellow was leaving the ambulance - it would almost certainly have been fatal.
Clearly, in an emergency, traffic disruption is a price well worth paying, but in this case it was not. At times there were very long queues in both directions, and traffic was backing up on Bedford High Street. It served no useful purpose whilst inconveniencing and endangering the public.
Sheer idiocy, surely? Obvious questions which sprint to mind:
1. Why not park near the curb in the first place - regardless of the emergency? It takes no longer.
2. Why not have one of the three staff move the ambulance to a more sensible spot when the urgency of the case is determined?
This is not a one-off - it's a trend, and I think you stamp it out it urgently.
I look forward to your comments, but I have to say - I'm virtually certain they will not only be useless, they'll be closed-minded, defensive and hugely annoying.
So - over to you.
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Dishonest Advetising
There is a lot of material about misleading advertising on the Let's Fix Britain website. (By the way, to sign my petition at number 10, please go here). Currently, I'm trying to make very important changes to normality in this area, because I'm bringing a test case with the authorities.
It concerns the TalklTalk ads which boast a phone and broadband service for £6.49 (now £6.99) per month. That's what the narrator says, and that's what the big bright moving graphics say, but - as is so often the case, the small print contradicts these high profile claims. That is counter to the guidelines, which say that no low-visibility textual screen addition can contradict the more dominant claims made elsewhere in the ad. I took this to OFCOM, who ducked the issue, so I took it to my MP - Patrick Hall. He wrote to the head of OFCOM as well as the head of TalkTalk. No progress - I've sent two reminders to Patrick Hall and it's been more than six weeks since nothing was done about it. Patrick's secretary says he needs time to think about it. SIX WEEKS?
More likely, it seems to me, Patrick is delaying until the advert disappears from TV of its own accord, then nothing risky or - well - useful - will have been done. Well, we can't tamper with the good ole British Status Stinking Quo, can we?
If you'd like to support cleaning up UK TYV advertising just a little bit, then please at least vote on the petition, and perhaps make a small donation to LFB.
It concerns the TalklTalk ads which boast a phone and broadband service for £6.49 (now £6.99) per month. That's what the narrator says, and that's what the big bright moving graphics say, but - as is so often the case, the small print contradicts these high profile claims. That is counter to the guidelines, which say that no low-visibility textual screen addition can contradict the more dominant claims made elsewhere in the ad. I took this to OFCOM, who ducked the issue, so I took it to my MP - Patrick Hall. He wrote to the head of OFCOM as well as the head of TalkTalk. No progress - I've sent two reminders to Patrick Hall and it's been more than six weeks since nothing was done about it. Patrick's secretary says he needs time to think about it. SIX WEEKS?
More likely, it seems to me, Patrick is delaying until the advert disappears from TV of its own accord, then nothing risky or - well - useful - will have been done. Well, we can't tamper with the good ole British Status Stinking Quo, can we?
If you'd like to support cleaning up UK TYV advertising just a little bit, then please at least vote on the petition, and perhaps make a small donation to LFB.
Sunday, 11 November 2007
When is a Mistake not a Mistake?
This week sees two more examples of a worrying recent phenomenon.
I first noticed this when Mandelson was caught having failed to declare a huge loan.
He called it "a mistake" - and hey - everyone makes them, right?
This technique conceals or at least de-emphasises, conscious self-interested wrong-doing.
What exactly WAS Mandleson's mistake? As far as I can see - his mistake was to get caught, and that's a different kind of mistake.
Did Mandleson - oops - take out the loan by accident? No.
Did he - oops - simply forget to declare it? No.
Did he - oops - simply forget to declare it? No.
Of course not. He got caught at trying to circumvent the system and deceive us all - for his personal benefit.
More recently Sir Ian Blaire was found trying to obstruct an enquiry into the Jimenez's shooting.
But yesterday on Radio 4 David Blunkett told us that it was all just A MISTAKE of the kind we all make, and that we should leave him in post to learn from his mistakes and be a better police chief for it. Blunkett alluded to his own "mistake" - presumably meaning his adulterous affair. Did he "oops" his way into that one?
These mistakes were not an accidental events. They knowingly did wrong with self-interest in mind.
Blaire wanted to look better than his conduct would allow so he tried to bury the facts of his conduct by obstructing the enquiry.
He didn't make a mistake from which he can learn and grow - he was exposed in dishonest actions which suggest he does not have the kind of personal make-up we need in our high office holders. He should go.
This morning, I heard that Aitken has been appointed as an advisor to the Conservative party, despite his past.
His response? Well - it was a mistake and he's learned from it.
What exactly did he learn from it? That perjury is wrong? How enlightening! I guess he just hadn't grasped the concept before then, huh?
And now he has - and he's fixed! Comforting.
I think there IS scope for character growth and personal moral reform.
People DO change for the better.
They do bad things in early years, they grow, they develop higher personal standards, and they become better people.
And it may be that such people are well-suite for high office.
But let's not use the mistake label when someone is caught with his pants down, and let him pull them, "draw a line" under the unpleasantness and get on with the highly-paid job. Let's not have a police commissioner in post who was caught obstructing a legitimate enquiry in order to conceal his own actions. That's evidence of deceit and we don't want that kind of person in charge of our large police forces.
Illegal Persistent Parking
Here's one of those little niggles which annoy me daily.I respect the police. I value their service to us and I admire the folks who willingly do that difficult work for us in the face of drunken abuse and personal danger.
But when they park illegally on non-emergency calls - as they so often do in Bedford, then I think it sends the wrong message entirely.
If our parking laws make sense (and I do wonder sometimes) then we should all stick to them. The police should not (and in law do not) have special immunity from the law to enhance their own personal convenience. Yet in Bedford, police cars routinely park here - it's outside Bedford's magistrates' courts. They'll be giving evidence. That's OK, but this location is five minutes walk from Bedford police station. They also routinely park illegally on the road just outside that policestation (which is very near to a roundabout - and is double-yellowed with those NO LOADING lines too). It says to me that our police hold themselves above the law, albeit in a fairly trivial way. It tells me that they don't think the parking laws are more important than saving a few minutes or walking a short way. Wrong answer.
I asked a traffic warden if they have any instructions regarding illegal police parking. He was vey cagey, but admitted that he has never - and would never - issue a ticket for a police vegicle.
Addressing the predictable objections to this post:-
1. Get a life. Yeah I'm working on it. Thanks for your contribution.
2. Police may be on an emergency - would you want to wait for them to save you while they find a place to park? No more than I'd like to rely on your reading skills. As it says, I'm addressing NON-EMERGENCIES here.
3. There's nothing dangerous about parking there. I might agree. So why itsn't it a legal parking space? Let's make sensible laws, and then follow them sensibly - all of us - the time.
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