Bikes, bumps, and a burn-up...

Another pedicab (a.k.a. another traffic hazard) caught my eye last night. Note the lack of lighting (hours of darkness, around 2am in Central London off a busy Oxford Street on Saturday Night). It's also parked up illegally on not one but two crossing points, this being the corner of a traffic lit junction. If a car parked there, it'd be lifted rather rapidly by Westminster... yet this gormless candidate from the Darwin School of Parking seems to have got away with it.

I'll say it until I'm blue on the face, most likely, but the riders of these things are dangerous. They do NOT obey the rules of the road, and they appear to have no regard for others on either the road or the pavement. Their machines do not meet even the bare minimum of regulations for road-going conveyances - hells bells, they don't even have red reflectors, let alone lights, and they weave in and out of traffic with wild abandon, whether they have paying passengers or not. When the hell will someone actually DO something about these morons?

Next up... bump!

The owner of the somewhat wrecked vehicle behind the Police car obviously watched too much Dukes of Hazard as a kid... he tried to impact weld the post he hit to his engines' piston block! Messy!

I was a bit luckier than my colleagues following me a few minutes later, mind... shortly after I passed the scene, a broadcast over my two-way radio informed me that the road had closed "for a short hold" to allow for recovery of the wreck. "Short hold" in this case meant, I was later told, forty-five minutes of waiting for a recovery truck driver to meander all over the place trying to get a good angle from which to lower his stingray lift flat bed recovery truck, attach a cable, and drag the thing onto the back of his flat bed - oops!

And lastly this time around... a burn-up :)

I've been trying to get a decent photo of this guy for ages :) Finally got a half decent shot this time :) he's shown great initiate in setting up his BBQ set opposite a night club in south London, but unluckily for this lad, it was not only cold, but a tad damp last night, which reduced, rather dramatically, the amount of potential customers he could serve!

He did, however, have a full rack of (presumably) chicken on the go when I passed him at five a.m. this morning morning, though - being a little blocked of nose, I couldn't smell it - which may or may not have been a good thing ;-)

Leaving Orange... part three...

I've had a LOT of problems with Orange in the past while I was in contract, and I've been looking to leave them (at least, their mobile service, anyhow). The complication has always been the provision of their home broadband service as part of the last contract... so... having seen the blurb for the TG01, and thinking "ok, so I'm with Orange, so it might count for something, even if I'm out of contract now, so let's see what Orange can do"...

Note that I'm well out of contract lock from their Canary 30 calling package (with no data plan). This was the plan I signed up to when I got their broadband service a couple of years back; I also pay a notional fiver a month for their "unlimited" home broadband service. On the phone to their helpful young lady at orange Broadband, it turns out that if I leave orange Mobile, the fiver will rise to a score (twenty quid) a month.

That's an extra £15 a month for what I'm using!

OUCH Part one

I was then on the phone for something like 20 minutes to a fairly helpful (for a change I got an intelligent human there as well - I must've been on a roll!) bloke at Orange Mobile Retentions, to see what kind of deal they could do me on the latest gadget to hit the shelves, the Toshiba TG01, one heck of a powerful Windows Mobile PDA/Phone (details over on GSMArena)

However, despite looking at every dodge, from reduced calling plans, increased calling plans, length of contracts, and so on, the best they could offer was two years (24 months) at 50 quid a month including 1 gig of data allocation (that's a tenner a month) and a one-off charge of 100 quid for the Toshiba TG01 handset itself.

With the insurance, the Canary 30's costing me roughly £35 a month. They'd be asking an extra £15 to twenty (if you add in the Orange Car Insurance) a month.

OUCH part two

I think it's time to (1) revert to my original idea of a lesser phone (HTC Touch Pro 2 or Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 come immediately to mind) and (2) look at another service provider (T-Mobile comes to mind on data/phones alone) ...

Although getting all the figures to balance out on what the yanks call a "revenue neutral" model is gonna be... challenging...

Silent Callers (Part Deux)

I am now really really really ****** off with these morons. You would think that someone would pay attention to the Telephone preference Service.

I've been using "Who Called Me" to find out the details of these idiots who call when either I'm trying to sleep, or when I'm out, and who don't leave a message or hang up on answering their damned calls. It's an excellent resource, and I commend it to you. Here're the logs from others who are getting the same as I am from this one damned number... "Who called me" website details.

It appears that BT think that they're immune from the silent calls regulations. While I investigate how to disabuse them of this notion, I've now also registered with "SilentCall-Gard". Let's hope this works where TPS have failed.

I really am getting rather bloody tired of this.

Round and round the merry-go-round ;)

*sigh*

It was one of those shifts again, last night!

First off, Parliament Square. They're resurfacing and adding what appears to be Shell SureGrip to the road surface as well. As a result, they'd closed off lanes in all directions, on all approaches.

The traffic was, as you'd expect, even in very late evening, a bloody nightmare.

It took fifteen minutes to crawl round Parliament Square northbound, to find that the Whitehall exit was closed off.

Joy.

Instead, we had to go along Bridge Street, turn onto Embankment, and then up Horseguards Avenue and onto Whitehall instead. Anyone who's driven that rout in heavy traffic will tell you: It adds another ten to twenty minutes onto your journey. Include the 15 minutes around the merry-go-round that was parliament Square, and you'll get the correct impression that I was well late.

So, it was into the stand in central London, spin the blinds, scribble madly onto the log card, check the bus for sleepers (more later), and off we go again.

South bound was a tad better - the traffic was moving more quickly, and the delays were manageable, meaning I only had to toe it for half the trip, not the remainder of the trip. Still, it kept the punters happy, as I wasn't having to "drag the road" and crawl along at 20-25mph for a change :)

Mid-duty, and getting to the southern end of the route for my meal (supposedly lunch, this at four in the morning!) break, the heavens decided to open up. Writ large.

One solid ten minute deluge of stair rods, cats, dogs, and any other notional live creatures dropped from altitude (yeuch, what a messy thought!) later, the road was as slick as, well, you supply the simile ;)

Just as well it was a Thursday night in the outer suburbs - the roads were extremely empty, helped me to keep to time at the reduced speed due to the slightly slippery road surface :)

Then, later, we got the last trip down south... and a sleeper, who really needed to be charged room and maybe even half board...? You decide if he needed to pay £48 for the bed *evil grin* - the photo was taken off the CCTV monitor - I've sanitised it to cover his face and preserve his anonymity (ain't I nice, lol), but damn, I was chuckling at the cheeky wotsit.

Then I realised that I'd probably have to wake to poor sod up at the other end, and my grin faded. Nothing worse that being the last bus south, and a punter waking up to find that he'd have to catch three more buses to get home after falling asleep. They tend to vary in reaction on that news, some good, some bad, most grumbling like you just ate their last Rolo or something.

Not this one, though :)

He actually woke up for his stop, and got off all on his own!

Nice one, guv! Hope the crick in the neck wears off!

Um... stating the bleeding obvious?

This had me guffawing loudly. Probably made the passengers wonder if I'd completely lost the plot, but what the hell :)

If you're the driver of it, yep, I was the guy with the flashing camera at the lights, in the bus ;) Thanks for giving me a much needed belly-laugh :)

PS - it's me birthday today :) Happy Birthday to me :) I'm on (for the first time in what, six years on the buses, is it?) two days off over my Birthday, so whoopee :) No work tonight!! OK, so I had to work last night, into my Birthday, so there's one of the reasons for the much-needed belly laugh above :)

PPS - this is an anniversary posting in more ways than one - I just noticed that this is the Hundredth Blant on here :)

Megablant: Pink, Pedicabs, and Parking....

First off, one for my better half :) Who, oddly enough, has an apparent fixation for the colour Hot Pink ;)

This one's for you :)

Enjoy :)

Next up... pedicabs... one of the current plagues on Central Londons' Streets...

These are pedicabs. Note there are no licence plates, registration numbers, or even mirrors. They're also blocking the road.

This is typical behaviour for these immigrant machines from the Orient, and frankly such behaviour is a right pain. Additionally, the Riders apparently have no need of any for of drivers' licence, and from what I've heard, do not even have to undergo a Criminal Record Background (CRB) check.

For those of us who (1) have worked hard to earn their Driving Licences, (2) are REQUIRED to follow the rules of the road, (3) have to undergo CRB checks to get our licences, and (4) get prosecuted if we park like those pedicabs, it's a complete and total insult.

Hells bells, estimates by Westminster Council even put the numbers of these things that have been illegally modified (illegally modified meaning that a battery-powered motor is installed to add speed, making it a POWERED road-going machine, or electo-car, in other words) at close to 80 percent of the total number on the streets. Add to this that the multi-seat bikes they use have no requirement for any form of regular MoT inspection in order to remain on the road, or even to show fitness for purpose, and you begin to see the scale of the problem. Something MUST be done to keep the public safe from these maniacs, who weave in and out of traffic - regularly - WITH passengers on board, with no form of protection for their paying customers - not even cycle helmets.

And TfL are apparently doing NOTHING?! Yes, there was a consultation exercise on this - in 2006 - THREE YEARS AGO.

There are regular rumours of these maniacs being eventually licenced, but after well over three years of these potential death traps being on Central London's roads, there's no concrete sign that the Authorities are actually doing something about it, and that's a bloody disgrace.

There's more on this that I could add, but I'm gonna keep this Blant printable.

Next up... Parking. Specifically, illegal parking.

This is Haymarket, in Central London, looking south. Forget that it's a bus lane, for a moment. Look as the road markings, and the TRAFFIC LIGHTS.

The Mincabs are always parking here, and it's bloody dangerous, to say the very least, as they force us to move into the right hand lanes smack dab after a blind right-angle corner from Piccadilly.

It is illegal to park on top of traffic light junctions, and the Highway Code makes this abundantly clear - Rule 250 applies...

250

Cars, goods vehicles not exceeding 1525 kg unladen weight, invalid carriages, motorcycles and pedal cycles may be parked without lights on a road (or lay-by) with a speed limit of 30 mph (48 km/h) or less if they are

* at least 10 metres (32 feet) away from any junction, close to the kerb and facing in the direction of the traffic flow
* in a recognised parking place or lay-by

Other vehicles and trailers, and all vehicles with projecting loads, MUST NOT be left on a road at night without lights.

[Laws RVLR reg 24 & CUR reg 82(7)]

The operative note here is TEN METRES. That's roughly thirty (30) or so feet. Look at that photo and tell me truthfully - does that look EVEN CLOSE to thirty feet?

Of course not.

Westminster and the Police have the right to uplift and impound offending vehicles, after all, and it's a nifty source of revenue for them. So, with all the above in mind, is it not about time that this was enforced?

Final note (In Pink, for my better half ;)). All photos were taken while halted in stationary traffic, with the Service Brake ("handbrake") applied.

Probably the best one yet...?

Seen outside a Baptist (I think) church on one of our night bus routes last night. Apologies for lopping off the bottom of the poster, the bush (not a burning one, lol) got in the way!)

It says, in full:
"There is probably no bus....
So why not come in and enjoy God?"

Nice comeback on the original the Atheist version, I think - ten out of ten to them for the riposte ;-)