Driving CAN be fun!

Fresh from my bollocking for using the DVLA logo, here's another of my sporadic posts, only this time, it's not through laziness or having nothing remotely decent to write about.

In fact, I haven't been able to get rid of this massive grin on my face for more than a week now.

You see, driving is not fun any more. Rather than the freedom of the open road and spectacular scenery, driving in the UK is, quite plainly, crap.

Congestion, speed cameras, sleeping policemen, bleeping arcade machines at motorway services, road works, traffic wardens, environmentalists, BMW 3-series drivers, traffic lights, highways officers, pointless lane closures, stupid one-way systems, toll roads, government "think-tanks" and a plethora of quangos all conspire to make travelling from A-B as difficult and as hellish as possible.

But there are a few places where you can actually enjoy driving in the UK, and I happened to find one such place last week.

As a belated birthday present, I took to the track at Silverstone for one of those "driving experiences" that you often see advertised in the Boots Christmas catalogue, only they're usually at some decommissioned airfield, not the home of the British Grand Prix.

I quite fancied taking my own motor around there but unfortunately, my insurance company wouldn't let me unless I gave them a big bag of money, so I had to make do with what those chaps at Silverstone offered me:

That happens to be a Lotus Exige S - the S stands for supercharged which evidently turns a very fast car into a very, very fast car.

Still after I'd done with that, they decided to let me lose in one of these:

That is a Ferrari 360 Modena and is, quite simply, outstanding. If you're the sort of bloke that watches Top Gear, you might think that much of the speed is exaggerated by the cameras / editors but it certainly doesn't feel like it when you're behind the wheel of one of these 'supercars'.

Surprisingly, they were both very easy to drive. The difficulty comes in driving them quickly, which seems a silly thing to say but bear with me.

For most of us, the only time we've sat behind the wheel of a car is on a public road. Your head tells you that if you don't slow down for the upcoming corner then you'll end up in the ditch opposite or that if you vear to the opposite side of the road, you'll be taken out by a articulated truck heading in the opposite direction.

It's that mindset and the theory of racing lines anddriving quickly that's the difficult part and there's a hell of a lot more to it than what your Max Power Saxo-driving boy racers certainly think. It was easy reaching 132mph on the Hangar Straight, it wasn't so easy going around the tight right-hand corner at the end of it at 50mph+.

I must give massive credit to the guys at Silverstone who were fantastic and for anyone even considering something like this, then I would fully recommend it. I'm seriously looking at my next free weekend to sign onto the rally driving course and even that may not be my last one!

Dealing with Idiots

Bloomin' heck! It's been a while hasn't it? I'm obviously getting lazy at this blogging lark.

Well actually, that's not quite true. I've been too busy dealing with complete muppets, most of whom tend to be working in some sort of "public service" capacity.

The most recent of which are the DVLA.

Given that I haven't been on here for a while, I best explain that my dealings with the DVLA are bourne from the purchase of a new vehicle. Despite the doom and gloom predictions of the "credit crunch", I was still easily able to find a well-known bank stupid enough to lend me a big bag of money in order to purchase said "wheels", a 1.6t Astra Sport Hatch SRI - and very nice it is too:


Now as anyone familiar with the car buying process will be aware, the dealers are more than happy for you to drive around whilst the DVLA, the body responsible for registering ever car and driver in the UK, are completely oblivious to the fact. Instead, they eventually get round to posting the logbook to some industrial park in Swansea where it spends the next three months in somebody's "pending" tray.

Apparently, some disgruntled motorist tried sending a letter bomb to the DVLA although quite how they found out I've no idea. By the time any envelope managed to work its way through their "high speed processing system", any traces of dynamite, TNT or anthrax would have long-since died off. They probably even set the same envelope back to the bomber, given that he probably used the wrong colour pen or something.

Eventually, you get a copy of the logbook, indicating that the DVLA recognise you as the new owner and that any speeding / parking tickets will have your name on them, even, as in my case, your name is misspelled.

OK, so the misspelling may have been the dealers fault and to be quite honest, they are currently on my feckwit list given that they lost the spare key, but that's not the point.

Having sent the logbook back to be corrected, it arrived this morning - again misspelled - with the same misspelling.

Quite why the processing minion at the DVLA thought that sent the document back in the first place I've no idea, they didn't explain but that's probably because they are completely useless.

I thought I escaped all of this shit when I packed in customer service.....

I'm already bored of 2008

We're now just 17 days into 2008 and I'm already bored of the following phrases:

• Carbon footprint
• CO2 emissions
• Flood warning
• Energy prices
• Facebook
• Data Protection
• Credit crunch

I'm sure I'll think of more later.

No so bright now eh?

The smoking ban has been in for a while now and what a fantastic piece of legislation it has proved to be.











Pubs are smoke free, the air is healthier, my clothes don't stink and drinking establishments are, generally, much more pleasant places to spend time. It also seems that, contrary to what the pro-smoking alliance kept telling us, the pub industry isn't dying - apart from those that were probably on the Grim Reaper's list long before July 1st 2007.

But the smokers still aren't happy. After all, why shouldn't they be allowed to expel hazardous fumes upon people who would rather not breathe them in? Why should they have to go outside in the open air in order to take their pathetic dose of precious, precious nicotine?

Well one Yorkshire publican seemed to disagree with the latest legislation, openly allowing his clientèle to smoke within the four walls of his premises, a fact he admitted live on the BBC Yorkshire regional news.

His argument is that people have a human right to smoke inside a public house.

If said landlord genuinely believes that the "right" to smoke is included in human rights legislation, perhaps he should consider actually reading up on the contents of the European Constitution on Human Rights. Whilst he's at it, he can download a map to the nearest Magistrates.

On Strike

Today I became yet another victim of French engineering and the tendency for all things from the across the channel, be they internal combustion engines or air traffic controllers, to go on strike without warning.


The gearbox on my faithful Citroen Saxo seems to feel under-valued and unloved and is refusing to work until I throw a considerable amount of money at it and even then, it may not return to action.

Which is bad news on several counts.

It means that my "new car fund" won't be seeing any growth this month and it means that my already-poorly Mastercard isn't going to get much rest either.

But it gets worse than that. It also means (and I can barely bring myself to contemplate it), I'll be having to use public transport for a few days at least!

I know these problems can happen with any vehicle, but I'm annoyed and nobody is going to stop me angrily waving my fist in the direction of the English channel.

Right on Time

There was something of an inevitability about it, but in true railway fashion, the timing of extended rail disruption to the West Coast mainline could not have been worse.


Essential maintenance to a footbridge which crosses the primary line connecting London with Birmingham and Manchester over-ran, meaning that rail passengers were met with chaotic scenes at stations across the London and the South East with cancelled services and lengthy delays - and the same is on the menu for tomorrow.

And the news couldn't have come at a worse time for our alleged "eco-conscious" leaders, as rail operators announced fare rises of up to 11% on certain routes on the day that Britain 'went back to work' after the festive holidays.

The rises, which will understandably grate with commuters, environmentalists and anyone looking to jump on the Labour-bashing bandwagon - one that is already as overcrowded as a Northern Rail commuter train.

However the Rail operators, who experienced a 15% increase on complaints this year according to one passenger watchdog, claim that the rises are "essential" as they are needed for "essential" investment that will provide "essential" service improvements on "essential" services. If you learn anything as a rail operators spokesperson, it's that using the word "essential" enough times will make your price rises seem OK. What you also learn is that it is perfectly fine to re-issue the same press release that you released 12 months ago.

One of the biggest culprits happens to be First Great Western, despite having the dubious honour of being the worst train operator in the UK according to official statistics. With an appalling record for customer service, including threatening to sue a passenger watchdog for complaints made about it's services and being subject to a 'fare strike' by passengers (with another one threatened), their bosses tried to justify their average 6.1% rise on unregulated fares.

First Transpennine Express, who run the main route between Leeds and Manchester, is even worse with a 6.4% hike and the main operator in and out of Leeds, Northern, has upped their fares by an average 5.7%. Despite this "essential" rise to facilitate "essential" service and capacity improvements, the capacity on the Manchester-Bradford-Leeds route was halved again this morning and afternoon.

The rises don't exactly 'fit' with the government's constant insistence that we need to start leaving our cars at home, start using the railways and save the environment because in truth, the environment is just an easy excuse to mask additional forms of taxation.

Today we have a government that is happy for rail operators to increase fares and is preparing to bulldoze an entire village to facilitate an expansion of Heathrow yet come budget day, Alistair Darling will stand at the podium and attempt justify a further rise in fuel duty by trotting out tired lines about "CO2 targets" and "environmental concerns" amongst the other garbage that spews from his mouth.

Happy New Year everybody!