Bloody Minded Wankers 1 Series

Yes, the BMW. Once driven by morons, now made by morons.

On my recent anger management break to Mallorca, my pals rented a 1 series BMW. Nice enough wee car, manual, four wheels, air con... and some sort of bloody green hippy engine cut out to save the planet when you're waiting at lights.

Auto Start-Stop they call it.

"When you next come across a stop sign or red light, or join the end of a traffic queue, it won't bust be your car that comes to a rest. Auto Start-Stop automaticall switches off your engine whenever you're stationary and in neutral, saving fuel and cutting CO2 emissions. Simply depress the clutch and the engine restarts automatically."

Lovely sentiment, but it can get to fuck.

Sat on a hill, about to turn onto a roundabout, handbrake on, clutch depressed, in to neutral, engine turns off, just as it's being put into gear... FUCK! Now you automatically try to restart the car, but pressing the ignition button of course turns the fucking car off. So you now have to start the car again, wait for another gap in the traffic, just for this fantastic thing to cut the engine again. Bastardos!

Yes, there is a wee button that switches this "feature" off, but since the hire company thoughtfully blagged the manual for the car, we had no way to figure out how to permanently switch this feature off...

I'd be surprised if this sort of eco-ass-hattery hasn't caused a few crashes.

And in other news, despite this, it was a lovely holiday. I ate a little octopus. Tapas there is so much better. Almost as if they invented it or something.

Freezing Fog

When you are driving a fog and road spray coloured car, perhaps you would like to put your dipped headlights on, you fucking cretin. Then we might actually be able to see you.

Also, when the fog isn't there any more, and visibility is up to several hundred yards, turn your fucking fog lights off, the conditions even when at their foggiest weren't really bad enough to merit fog lights anyway.

This has been a public service announcement.

Never seen snow before

Here in Scotland we have just uncovered a new concept in rain. It's like rain, but colder. It's not quite as cold as hail. It's a bastard halfway house called snow.

Clearly, we've never seen it before, since when it fell from the sky, the entire city stopped.

Today, I arranged to go for lunch at the society. I walked to the west end to meet my pal, and then find a chariot to take us there... Half way along George Street, I finally found one. In the hackney conveyance all was not rosy, as we braked suddenly on the slippery roads, going down Leith Walk, due to some fucking idiot walking out in front of the cab. Somehow, we didn't slide - I don't really understand why, given the typical grit coverage from the City of Edinburgh Cuntcil.

People seem to lose all sense of physics when snow happens.

One morning last year while I was walking to the station to go to work, I get to the Tollcross junction just as the lights were changing - the driver coming down Lauriston Place was driving as if conditions were perfect. I hated to break it to her, but they were not. I saw that the vehicle was traveling quite fast, and thought to myself - fuck me, I'm going to get killed if I walk across the road in front of that - and so I stood where I was. The driver duly braked when they would have braked when conditions were normal, then she fishtailed all the way down to the lights. The expression on her face was hilarious. "How can the laws of physics let me down in this way" her face said. Bless.

Actually, it was more of a "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU........slide sideways.......UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" Which would have concerned me, had I not been stood behind a robust traffic light pole.

Unite says the strike would have been suspended if perks were restored

Oh really?

Oh really?

The perk mentioned by Auntie Beeb is that staff pay 10% of the normal fare. That's 10% of, not 10% off, just to be clear.

Get back to work you shower of workshy gits.

Unite will soon reap what it has sown when BA gets humped by the strikes, the economy and the ash, and sacks the lot of the workshy staff.

Scotrail ticket machines are Scheidt

Do you see what I did there?

I was in Stirling the other week, and on Monday was trying to leave.

At the station, they had two folk on the ticket desks, both occupied, and a queue of 3 people. War and Peace was being dictated at the right hand desk, and since I thought that given I had the exact change, I would rattle some money through the Scheidt & Bachmann ticket machine that was also in the ticket office...

I managed to get it to accept four out of the six pounds (and ninety pence) required.

After a few futile attempts at getting the heap of Scheidt, heh, to accept my money - all the usual tricks were tried - topspin, backspin, coins in fast, coins in slow... No joy. I had to rejoin the queue, and purchase a ticket at the desk.

What's the point of these machines if you can't get your ticket on time to get your train? surely being at the station nearly ten minutes before the departure, and not at peak time either.

Also, the user interface of the machine leaves a lot to be desired... I don't want a few default offerings (usually returns, or tickets to useful places, I want to tell the machine where I am going, and it offer me some fares. Just like you do when you speak to a conductor. A single from Stirling to Haymarket please. Simple. Gaaaaaah!

Dumfries shenanigans

So, I was in a car with some chaps, and we were driving to Cardoness Castle at the weekend. We were involved in a road rage incident. I wasn't driving either, which makes it all the more amusing.

So, we pull out to overtake some slow moving person, and all of a sudden there's a guy right up our arse. As it were. He was driving a white VW Golf... I suppose it was a combination of our car not accelerating like normal due to there being 4 of us in it, that and the Golf driver having a heavy foot and being a twat.

So, he's behind us flashing his lights, and gesticulating wildly. We complete our overtaking manoeuvre, pull in, and he drives past (I do believe our driver and the chap in the golf exchanged some looks, words, and some hand signals) then pulls in in front of us, and starts pointing at the left hand side of the road. This goes on for a few hundred yards.

So, me, being in the passenger seat, made the well known sign of the wanker (clearly visible, obviously) and asked the chaps in the back if this guy was in his right mind.

So the chap slows down, and is indicating left, inviting us to stop and have a discussion with him.

We then speed up, and pull out to pass him as he is starting to enter a deceleration lane... At which point he sped up, pulled back on to the road, and gesticulated some more, waved at the left hand side of the road some more, then evidently got bored and drove on. (Driving like a cock as he went).

Should we have stopped and had a frank discussion with the man? I can't help but think that would have been an interesting moment when the 4 of us got out of the car...

Don't mess with Texas

I went on holiday to Texas to see friends, eat BBQ and steak, and shoot guns.

Austin was warm and sunny, as usual - 80F (ish), and rained only the once. My timing was near perfect - warm enough to be pleasant to be out - evenings cool down fairly quickly though. Certainly not as hot as it gets in the summer 100F for weeks on end.

Amusingly enough, I hired a car (well, more like a tank) for the duration - a Chevy Blazer. I don't drive in Edinburgh, but obviously it's hard to get around a city like Austin without your own transport - and one can't impose upon friends for transportation all the time, particularly since they're at work, or up to whatever they get up to. The last time I was behind the wheel was the last time I was in Austin, which was about 3 years ago. They've sprouted some new freeways - toll roads, which make going places a lot quicker than the parking lot otherwise known as I35. And I only nearly crashed once.

Here are some pictures of my remarkably anger and stress free vacation...

Austin:


I worked in Austin, almost 10 years ago, during the .com craziness. It was all very stressful, I didn't make my millions there, but did make a lot of friends.

BBQ:



The evil people at The Salt Lick have opened up a new pit BBQ and restaurant up by Round Rock. I have made the pilgrimage to Driftwood a number of times for the fab BBQ, and now excellent MEAT can be enjoyed after a much shorter drive to Round Rock. They were doing a $3 off the family style (all you can eat) which is pictured above. Plates like that keep coming to the table until you stop them. Family style is best enjoyed in large groups and (obviously) when hungry.

Guns:



I'll not post pics of my targets here - they're online elsewhere. My shooting was fairly crap, but then again, I haven't shot anything in 3 years. For the record, everything hit the target card. Most hit close to the centre, but I have done better in the past. I was rather rushed though, Red's Range was closing early for maintenance so a blitzkrieg session was had. 50 rounds through a HK USP 40 S&W pistol, and 50 rounds through the (pictured) .223 Colt AR-15.

The 2 weeks I spent there were ab-fab, with many thanks to my hosts. I definitely could have done with staying for another week or so - particularly since there were a few people I didn't manage to see. That and I returned to find work in the middle of another cluster-fuck.

Gas guzzlers face £320 parking bill

Number three in a series of Metro letters...

Is this the same story as last year, or are they actually going to do it this time? Correct me if I am wrong, but do cars pollute when parked? Do CEC expect long suffering motorists to sell up and buy new cars (ignoring the financial cost - just think about the waste of a perfectly good old car)...

This is nothing more than Edinburgh's car hating policy making once again - they are still spanking us for saying no to the full tram monty. When I am taking the train to work all week (assuming it's running) having a nice car to play with at the weekend is a great thing - this is nothing more than luddism. That and their failing, underfunded trams project needs funded somehow. They see me rollin' - They hatin'

--

We need to set fire to council offices and start hanging cuntcillors with piano wire from the lampposts. It is clearly the only way to stop this sort of shite spewing forth from the City of Edinburgh Cuntcil offices.

The 392

Via a colleague of mine, The Hootsman reports that there are 392 sets of roadworks in Edinburgh at the moment...

"The level of disruption was today described as unprecedented"

Oh really?

It gets better... Apparently we have a "cone tsar":

"A spokesman for Mr Gooday said he was taking a "strategic view" of roadworks and continuing to work alongside local authorities as part of the Roads Authorities and Utilities Committee Scotland"

Well, if he's taking a strategic view, then everything is OK then, isn't it?

I suppose we should just hang the "cone tsar" from a lamppost with some piano wire. (What the fuck is a cone tsar anyway?) Why are we paying for cunts like this to fuck our lives up?

Spanking Edinburgh's Motorists. Again.

The Hootsman tells us that the cuntcil are running a consultation on the proposed increase in parking charges for higher polluting vehicles.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but a vehicle that is parked is not polluting. It's when it is running that it is... So perhaps encouraging people to leave their vehicles parked would be the way forward. The vitriol between the luddites, and sane people in the comments is quite entertaining, if it weren't so tragic. 4x4s are baaaaad, they bleat. Forgetting that so many estate cars and large saloons favoured by those with families are just as big and just as polluting.

What this looks like is a simple case of the council trying to screw motorists in the city, and using supposed green arguments as an excuse. Mostly because the cuntcillors will be taking taxis everywhere, paid for by us, so what do they care? Bastards.

One commenter links to The Glasgow Herald. (They call it The Herald now, but some of us are old enough to remember when they weren't ashamed to have a west coast bias). Apparently Glasgow council had the sense to listen to their residents... Makes a change. Last time Edinburgh asked us what we thought, and we said no, the cuntcil spanked us by inflicting a tram line on us.

Why don't you take this opporchancity to tell the bastards what you think of their plans?

Holibags

Well, even large angry people get to take holidays. I returned, yesterday, from Durham. It's a small city with a fucking ridiculous number of hills over a short horizontal distance. It's a rather picturesque place, although it seems to be plagued by joggers.



I spent time with friends in the pub - now, I do this in Edinburgh too, but it is a group of friends I don't see often enough, and obviously it was a different pub. A change of scenery, and all that.

One morning I pottered around in the Botanic Gardens, which had a nice soothing effect on me. I came across a giant water lily. Next to which, they had a picture of a small child sitting on a giant lily...

Something like this:



(I gleefully plundered that image from the interwebs). Conveniently, there was a mother with small child sat at the entrance to the hot house where the lilies were, so obviously I asked her if I could borrow her small child to sit on a lily...

Needless to say, this did not go down too well, so this is the best I could do:



Anyway, whilst in that neck of the woods, my friends and I went to Diggerland! (Watch out, there's annoying muzak on that site. Bastards.) I was driving a JCB, which was brilliant.



Well worth a visit - for kids of all ages. One of the gang was doing so well at digging holes, the chap told him to fill it back in... I was amazed at some really small kids being allowed to drive some fairly large plant around the site... Don't tell the Health & Safety fascists.

So, with all this done, I headed back to Embra yesterday morning on the National Express East Coast service, first class, natch. I had to evict someone from my seat, which was a pain, but then, I had gone to the trouble of reserving the seat, and he was clearly a chancer. There's always one. That and there wasn't nearly enough coffee served on the train back home.

Normal angry ranting will resume shortly.

Air show? No show!

I was at Leuchars on Saturday there to see XH558 fly. That's a Vulcan bomber, for the people who don't follow this sort of thing... Possibly the last chance to see her.



Sadly, the weather was shite. As a result, the Vulcan did not fly due to not enough V for VFR. Just as well there wasn't a war on or anything. Bastards. How did this country ever manage to be great?

I did see the Red Arrows though. Again.



And whiles the Red Arrows are great, it's not as if we haven't seen them before - they do get around you know?

I was bitterly disappointed, nay, raging fucking mad, that the Vulcan wasn't allowed to fly. pesky weather and civil rules. Damned uncivil if you ask me. They did at least allow her to taxi up to rotation speed, which was nice, since the noise that the Rolls Royce Olympus engines make would make you think that God was angry.

I was last at Leuchars when I was a wee boy, so this was still a fantastic day out, even with the gash weather, and I'll certainly try to get along again next year.

Haymarket doom

The BBC reports that traffic chaos is about to hit Haymarket - as if the current closure of Shandwick Place wasn't enough already.

Cllr Phil Wheeler, transport convener at the City of Edinburgh Council, said: "Edinburgh remains very much open for business while work goes on and every effort is being taken to ensure that access to businesses for customers, services and deliveries is retained".

Aye, apart from businesses being fucked by this... Like the Caley being demolished.

You can be damn sure if anyone else wanted to demolish a grand old building like the Caley, they'd be told to fuck right off, but since it's for the trams, oh that's ok then. Bastards.

Interestingly enough the links at the side of the article show...

How green are the trams?
Trams 'will help airport grow'
'A place where firms want to be'
'Unique benefits' of trams
A better experience for visitors
'They will aid passengers'

Nothing mentions the fact that the people of Edinburgh didn't have an option to say "shove your trams up your arse" or "spend our money on something we actually want". For the money, we could have a huge reduction in bus fares. We could have the roads fixed so buses and bikes and cars can get about the city without falling into massive holes where repairs have been botched. We could send all the cuntcillors off on a holiday so they'll not be here to bother us with their pish.

Rail users get ‘simpler fares’

c/o the Metro

Simpler. Because the public are evidently simpletons.

Notice, we're not getting cheaper fares. We're not getting better service. We're not getting newer rolling stock. That really would be news-worthy.

Of course, the problem has a lot to do with the different companies who run services in our wonderful privatised railways system. The "fares jungle" is only one of the problems, but I think that they have their priorities wrong. Get people to use the trains by making them more reliable, and cheaper. Not by hiking the prices year in, year out!

A bridge too far

Well, a tollbooth too far anyway.

The booths on the approach to the Forth Road Bridge are being demolished, at the estimated cost of £2,000,000. Sorry? What? Are these the same booths that were only constructed in 2006, at the cost of £4,000,000.

Who are these utter bastards who are pissing £6,000,000 up the wall like this?

Even with the removal of the toll charges, there is no need to physically remove the booths. Indeed, they could be useful - when it comes to shutting the bridge in high winds or if there's an accident (like that HGV the other week...) or for simply controlling traffic flow as the 4 or 5 lanes of traffic are merged in to the 2 that cross the bridge.

Who has taken the decision to remove the booths.
Who is paying for this?
Why are these fuckers doing this work in peak times (people at my work are constantly whining about the crap traffic now!)

Surely I am not the only person who thinks leaving the booths there would be a great idea, and save £2,000,000! The folk who are pissing this money up the wall would do well to remember "tollbooth" is an auld Scots word for the jail!

More tram nonsense

Apparently the west end of Princes St to Shandwick Place and the east end at St Andrew Square are to be closed for 16 weeks while workers move pipes and cables in preparation for the trams...

Hang on, so you mean we've got to go through more roadworks on the same stretch of road in the future? Oh yes, when they start laying the tracks, sometime in the future... In the meantime, they're just going to fuck about a bit, and piss off all the folk who are trying to commute in Edinburgh - Shandwick Place is a bottleneck for bus services at the best of times...

Some guy from Tie was quoted by the BBC as saying:

"The work will be completed before August so as not to impact on the Edinburgh Festival."

Of course what he really meant to say was:

"The festival is the be all and end all of life in Edinburgh, and we wouldn't want to give the tourists a bad impression, so in the meantime, we're going to fuck up the roads because we think Edinburgh's residents are cunts and don't care how this unwanted trams project effects the city. "

Edinburgh Trams are crap...

...a 111 year old clock agrees, and has taken a stand.

The Edinburgh Evening Hootsman reports that the old clock at the top of Leith Walk has called time on this tram nonsense which is fouling up our fair city.

Sadly, the resistance mounted by the grand old clock is likely to be overcome next month as measures have been taken to avoid damaging the cast iron column that is causing the bother.

Tell me again why we allow Edinburgh Cuntcil to vandalise the city in this way?

It's not just the airports...

The Hootsman reports that Scottish airport security is terrible... Well damn me, common sense told me that years ago.

Current hysteria about terrrirrrr is actually making things worse for travellers through our airports... Not only can you not take sensible quantities of liquid onto an aircraft, but you are made to queue up in stupid places where any self respecting terrrrrrist will be able to wander past and explode in the vicinity, whilst taking some air...

I know, I know, I am stating the blindingly obvious...

Trouble is, this sort of nonsense is spreading from airports, where you expect to be inconvenienced, and felt up by security apes, to the railways, where one was once accustomed to jumping on to a train seconds before it departed (don't be silly, it was never on time) and sped you merrily on your way to your destination...

However, these days, you can get your arse felt by the Peelers at the local train station... Two or three of my friends have been inconvenienced in this manner...

"Do you have a moment to be searched?" They ask...

"Well, my train leaves in 1 minute" My friend replies...

"We were not really asking" says the Peeler...

Several minutes of pointless inconveniencing and rummaging goes by, in the meantime the train (for once on time, the bastards) comes and goes.

Perhaps they should fuck right off and let us get about our business without hindrance.

Does any of this actually make us more secure? Does it fuck.

I expect they asked the same people who think ID cards are a great idea, and will sort all of this out whether they would mind having their mornings ruined by the plods at the train station... "Oh no, anything for security" they answer...

Fuck off.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

On yer bike

I have recently acquired a new flat for myself. Thanks very much, it's lovely, I know. (Pictures are online, those who know me, know where they are).

A month or two after I got the keys, I started collecting bicycles outside the flat (it's a maindoor flat, so has a garden, and a fence around the aforementioned garden).

Student fuckers have been affixing their bicycles to my fence, two in front of my living room window, two in front of my study window, and one adjacent to the door to the common stair.

I, thinking I might be a tad unreasonable, becoming angry about such things, sought advice from my ground floor neighbour about this. My neighbours, who have lived there for a good while (decades) told me that I was being quite reasonable...

I then applied a notice to the board in the stair, asking for the removal of bicycles from my fence, and then a couple of days afterwards, applied noted to the few remaining bicycles... After only a couple of days, all bicycles had been removed.

Tonight, I returned home from a night of fine booze at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, and I found a bicycle chained to my fence.

I have utilised a chain of my own, to ensure that the bicycle is secure. I fully expect someone to knock on my door at an inconvenient time of the night, however, my bedroom is at the rear of the property, and as such, I am unlikely to hear a knock on the door.

Oh well...

-- Update on Sunday afternoon --

Very sneakily, in between having my lunch and watching the telly, the owner of the bicycle has removed the bike, and my padlock and chain in the process. How they managed it without me (or my friend who is round for coffee) hearing, I am not too sure. However, next time, I'll invest in a D lock of my own to properly inconvenience the bastards.

First Scotrail crap, film at eleven.

Well, it was season ticket renewal day today...

A mere £649.80, up on last year by £26.60. (This includes the 5% crapness discount on both).

To add insult to injury, the train was 15 minutes late getting me in to Waverley tonight.

So, prices increase, by more than inflation, and service remains crap - as defined by First Scotrail themselves...

I have emailed them, as usual, and expect the same old shit from them... No doubt I can expect an improvement in the future, and blah blah blah.