Longrider

Pimme’s recent blog entry about learning to drive triggered a few memories for me. I used to be a driving instructor before joining the UK Rail industry in 1992. I taught both cars and motorcycles and, like Pimme, I have a few tales to tell.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating things for the professional driving instructor is that everyone is a self elected expert in driving. Ever come across someone who admitted to being an awful driver? A rare breed indeed. So who are all these folk who have all these accidents? Rhetorical question and straying from the point.

Many of my clients were women in their thirties and forties who decided to take up driving. Their husbands were either hostile to the whole idea and constantly put them down, or supportive, but misguided, giving them advice that would inevitably lead to a test failure. Parents who paid for junior’s driving lessons when they turned seventeen were also a nightmare - they assumed that a block of five or ten lessons would do the trick and assumed too, that I was trying to string things out to make more money when I insisted that junior was not yet ready.

“Ah,” they would say, “Let him/her take the test and they just might pass.”

“The examiner isn’t stupid.”

“But they might get lucky.”

“They won’t, they are not ready.”

“We’ll go to another instructor.”

“Good luck.”

You see, I used to get phone calls (as did my colleagues) from such disgruntled parents asking for a lesson and test booking. To which the answer was always a firm negative. Driving instructors talk to each other and we knew full well that a last minute booking of this nature was from someone who was not yet ready for their test and had decided to take their custom elsewhere. What these folk forgot - or did not consider - was that driving instructors have a reputation to maintain and examiners expect them to present candidates who are properly prepared for their test. They might still fail, but they were at least ready. Woe betide the instructor who gets a reputation for presenting candidates who are not ready.

Bikes were another matter. At that time, instructors were not regulated in the way they are today and were mostly enthusiastic amateurs. I recall watching my sister struggling with a figure of eight manoeuvre in preparation for her off-road test. She couldn’t understand why she constantly hit the cones marking the outside of the exercise area.

“Try looking where you are going,” I said. Funny, a simple solution to a simple problem, but no one had picked it up at her training school.

Then there was the old gent (I’ll call him Bert) who decided to return to riding after a prolonged period of illness had caused him to lose his license. He was on a borrowed Yamaha and was unfamiliar with it. So I briefed him on the controls before explaining to him and the other client I had for the day where we were to go.

“I want you to follow Andy (not his real name) out of the training centre, where we will turn right onto the dual carriageway. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay”

So we set out, Andy turned right onto the dual carriageway and Bert turned left, while signalling right. I decided that Andy would realise what had happened and wait for us to catch up while I followed Bert. A couple of miles later I pulled him into a safe place and asked him why he had turned left instead of right. Apparently, he was confused by modern bikes with indicators “on my old Francis Barnett, we used hand signals.” I could think of a hand signal or two I could use, but kept my trap shut.

We rejoined Andy and set off through an old village. The road was narrow and rose up a steep hill. As we progressed, Bert’s progress became progressively less the further we climbed the hill. Eventually the Yamaha stalled and Bert toppled into the grass verge. I stopped and lifted the bike off him.

“Why didn’t you select a lower gear?” I asked.

“Never needed to on my old Francis Barnett. That’s the trouble with these newfangled modern bikes - no power.”

I could go on, but you get the drift

Happy New Year to you all.

While I was away, the ID Cards Bill received its second reading the house. No real surprises, although Trevor Mendham comments over at the UK ID Cards Blog about the MPs who rebelled. Even that, though contains no real surprise as battle lines were drawn up some time ago. The disappointment is that Michael Howard has lined himself up behind the government thereby displaying a complete lack of backbone. Fortunately, some of his MPs have more metal about them.

Once again we were treated to a Home Secretary lecturing us like naughty children repeating the same tired clichés. Mr Clarke attacked those of us who oppose the bill accusing us of:

"woolly liberal thinking".

Stating that ID cards won’t infringe civil liberties. This is the classic "Big Lie" technique. If you keep repeating the same untruth with sufficient conviction, people will find themselves starting to believe it. The traditional attack on anyone who purports to defend civil liberties is to accuse them of woolly liberal thinking - so, zero out of ten for originality, Mr Clarke. I am not a "woolly liberal", and I am perfectly capable of seeing through the lies and misinformation put about by the Home Office and I am sufficiently concerned about the very real threat to civil liberties this authoritarian regime poses to actively resist. A point here; not once has the Home Office answered any of the civil liberties concerns raised by opponents - just the same stuck recording stating that there are no civil liberties issues. More big lies come in the form of this little gem:

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".

Jesus H Christ! Are these people for real? How many times do we have to spell it out - every single one of us has something to hide - and we all have plenty to fear from a government that has proved itself so consistently inept at managing computer databases. The Passport fiasco, anyone? And when it comes to managing information effectively, does anyone recall a little incident recently regarding a 45 minute capability? This was government information and it was all true, wasn’t it? Do you really trust these incompetents with your personal information? Answers on a postage stamp, please…

Clarke goes on to tell us that this will help combat terrorism, and benefit fraud. Again LIES, LIES and more LIES. Terrorists have nothing to fear from ID cards - they will carry on as normal. Identity is not the issue with terrorism, nor is it with organised crime - detection and evidence is. Also, until such evidence is available, intent is not solved with ID cards - unless there is an entry on the database that says "suspected terrorist". Benefit cheats do not hide their identity, merely their circumstances. Clarke also raises that populist spectre; immigration. Britain is a nation of immigrants - we’ve been doing it since, well, since the Romans invaded in the first century. We have nothing to fear from immigration and much to gain. It does need to be properly managed and ID cards won’t stop illegal immigration. What they will do is provide an opportunity for a black market in forged ID cards that will be sold to illegal immigrants so that they can slip into the country and disperse even more easily than they do currently.

Back on point for a moment, and I’ll let my blood pressure come down a little…

19 Labour MPs voted against. Hopefully more will follow suit when they realise that this could become an election issue. We just need to make more people aware of what they are likely to lose by it. Given that the Tories also either abstained or rebelled in significant numbers, this is likely to get a rough ride through the commons. Then there’s the Lords. Finally, if it gets all the way through to implementation, around 3% of the population (according to the UGOV poll) are prepared to actively resist. I just hope it doesn’t come to that.
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As trips go, this one was mixed. The drive through France was fraught with appalling weather. Continuous rain meant visibility was reduced by spray. This wasn’t helped by a tendency for the car to aquaplane on stretches of waterlogged road (of which, more later). So the trip across the Millau bridge was a murky affair and we saw nothing beyond the lights of the preceding car. It was at this point that my wife mentioned the noisy car next to us at the péage. Except, it wasn’t the car next to us. It was us. My conclusion that the exhaust had blown proved to be correct.

These things have a way of playing out that is both frustrating and predictable. I just knew it was going to take all day and possibly more. Experience of similar mishaps in foreign countries with the bikes had always played out this way - so why should this be any different? The Roman philosopher, Seneca, said that if we expect the worst and the worst happens, well, we won’t be disappointed. It think what he actually said was along the lines of we tend to expect too much and are consequently disappointed. With that in mind, we set out early the following morning and made getting the car fixed our main priority.

The garage in Lodève couldn’t help as they were all booked up and didn’t have the parts in stock, so we would have to go to Clermont L’Herault some 18Km away. Not a huge problem, but we were conscious of the appalling racket coming from the car. Still, the Renault garage had it up on the ramp to take a look. More bad news. One of the tyres had been badly gashed on the inside. It must have happened sometime on the trip down. The way the tread had been ripped along the wall of the tyre explained the tendency to aquaplane as it must have been filling with water causing the tread to float away from the tyre body. The other front tyre, while still legal, was getting low, so we agreed to replace that, too.

Neither tyres nor exhaust were in stock, so we would have to wait until Wednesday. Today was Monday. Okay, so that’s why we have recovery insurance. They would sort out a hire car. Which, with a little phoning around, they did. It would however mean a taxi trip to Beziers, over 40Km away.

By the time we picked up the hire car and got back to the house, it was gone 6pm. The experience was repeated on Wednesday - ‘cos nothing happens quickly and everything stops for the 2 hour lunch break. If you’re mentally prepared, well, it’s just the way things go - and it could have been a lot worse. That rip in the tyre makes my blood run cold just thinking about it.

On the plus side, we completed the work we set out to do with time to spare - so we had some time to just relax and enjoy the ambience of the French countryside in mid winter.

The drive back was plagued with falling snow - so I still can’t say what the experience of the Millau bridge is like…

This article in the Telegraph triggered all sorts of memories. Classic bikes have always had an appeal for me - I grew up when the old British “thumper” was still a regular sight on our roads. My father had a series of single-cylinder British bikes during the years that I was a child - the earliest that I recall was the Norton 600, followed by the P&M Panther. Prior to that, there was a 350 Royal Enfield and a BSA C12.

When I wanted a bike in the summer of 1975, the year I turned 17, Dad decided that an old British bike rather than one of the modern Japanese imports would be more suitable. Simpler in design, it would give me an education on how it worked so that I could learn to repair it when things went wrong. There was a logic in his approach and my first bike was a BSA C15 SS. It was, unfortunately, a wreck, so those things that went wrong were inevitable. Worn out main bearings when I bought it were the least of my problems. The big end bearing failed dramatically in a plume of smoke and an ominous grinding noise taking with it the piston and cylinder requiring a resleeve. The electrics were dire, failing completely on one occasion causing me to crawl home in virtual darkness. Things shook off it regularly. Passing my test meant that I could get something bigger (and better). I bought an Ariel NH 350 Red Hunter. One of the last of its kind, it was typical of the old pre-unit British motorcycles built to the old quality before the rush to beat the Japanese at their own game brought about the decline in quality that the BSA suffered. The Ariel was dependable and robust. Over a period of about a year, I spent time and money restoring it to its former glory. A state I enjoyed for a couple of weeks before some thieving scumbag stole it.

A brief encounter with an Ariel Arrow in similar condition to that of my erstwhile BSA while I awaited the insurance payout convinced me that a new bike was a better proposition. I bought a Laverda and haven’t looked back.

I still enjoy the sights and sounds of those old classic bikes, but these days I’m happy to ride my modern BMW.

This piece of "news" comes as no surprise to me. After all when Michael Howard was Home Secretary, he proposed a similar scheme. The only thing I suspect that is sticking in his throat is that it is a Labour government that is showing signs of succeeding where he failed.

He said that the police had said ID cards could:

"help them foil a terror bomb plot in which people could lose their lives. When the police say that you have to take them seriously".

How many times will this tired and discredited argument be trotted out by buffoons who believe their own rhetoric?

ID cards do not prevent terrorism. Identity of the perpetrators is not the issue - intent is. ID cards are a solution looking for a problem. Mr Howard has just confirmed his utter unsuitablity for high office - well, from his last performance, we knew that already….

This story is also covered over at the UK ID Card Blog

I’ll be less prolific during the next couple of weeks - ‘cos I’ll be Here:

Mostly, I will be painting and decorating.

According to a UGOV poll, younger people are ignorant of the basics of Christianity. Well, I won’t claim any surprise - standards of education in the UK have been declining for a couple of decades. Yes, despite government claims to the contrary, obtaining basic educational qualifications today is easier than when I did mine. At least my generation learned the basics of grammar - English and foreign languages. Conversational French is all very well, but a true understanding of a language is underpinned by an understanding of its grammar and it is a good idea to start with one’s own.

I digress - this was about Christianity. What amuses me is the Church leaders’ disappointment at an increasingly secular society in the UK. Don’t they realise that this is a good thing? Obviously not. True religious tolerance is built upon an acceptance of each individual’s right to practice whatever belief system they choose. This will only happen in a truly secular system. There is no place for a theocracy (and the Christian church has demonstrated what it can do when that happens - the inquisitions anybody?) in a modern liberal democracy. No, true tolerance means that everybody has the right to express their religious views free from oppression or sanction by the “state” religion - and that includes the right of non-believers to criticise, satirise and ridicule if they see fit.

So while Church leaders are concerned that Britain can no longer be described as a Christian country, I am content.

David Blunkett finally succumbed to the inevitable this evening and resigned. So departs one of the worst Home Secretaries in living memory. For those of us determined to fight his nasty authoritarian regime, it is merely a brief respite. After all, we know not who will replace him. The government has set out its stall and doubtless will still try to deliver. There is always the hope that Blunkett’s replacement will not have the stomach for some of the more extreme measures and will prioritise them so that they slip quietly off the parliamentary timetable - we can but hope.

On a personal level, I am not a vindictive person and feel just a little sorry for David Blunkett, the man. I am inclined to believe his protestations of innocence. His biggest mistake was to forget who his friends were.