I keep posting stuff to BBC comments pages but it never seems to see the light of day.

 

Wonder if this will:

 

Well, the tram supporters say that we ought to copy some place they insist on calling "Köln".

And the trendy-lefty woolly-liberals would love to see Nottingham more like Moscow.

So what we need to do is build something between a motorway standard ring road linking ten motorways as in "Köln", and what they have in Moscow.

"What do they have in Moscow?" I hear you ask.

Well they're just finishing their third ring road and starting their fourth.

And they've got twenty radial highways.

Oh, and they count their roads as part of their Social Services!

And what has the forward looking but leftward leaning Nottingham council done?

Just finished closing off the roads that got Nottingham voted 10th out of the 12 major cities outside the capital for transport provision (despite having the highest per capita transport spend) a year or two ago!

So I suppose my wish will have to remain just that.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2005/02/18/features_miscellaneous_2005_02_wish_list_for_nottingham_feature.shtml

 

I can understand that, post Hutton, the BBC has to toe the Tony Blair line.

But surely PM is getting carried away when it refers to a former Conservative Prime Minister who ruled (sic) the country from 1970 to 1974?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/pm/contribute.shtml

 

Had to post this:

 

I came here to comment on the death of Edward Heath and was absolutely gobsmacked not only to see the totally biased selection of letters on Speed Cameras (reflecting the balance of opinion of 20 million drivers perhaps?), but the total lack of even the most basic understanding of the facts about roadsafety!

If I might be allowed to put the record straight (fat chance on the anti-car Beeb!): who are the "association of bad drivers"? Those that strangle the arteries of the nation, preventing the life-blood of the economy from flowing, by creeping along 60mph roads at a steady 40 with a "Speed Kills" sticker in the window? And carry on doing 40 through village and town, and past school and playground!

Drivers have no reason to object to speed cameras?

Apart from the ones "accidentally" left set to roadworks limits, or on roadworks where someone "forgot" to put up the lowered limit signs, or where they "signified" a new 30 by taking the old signs off the lamp posts, or even the ones which have "caught" people driving at under 30, 20, 10, even under 5mph in a couple of cases that I'm aware of!

But the worst thing is that it's speed CAMERAS that kill, not speed.

Even the government, if you read carefully, have backtracked from two thirds of accidents AREN'T caused by speed and will have to eventually admit that only around 3% are.

Real traffic engineers have always known that the safest speed to set the limit at is the one most drivers will drive just below through choice, but if you force them to drive slower you actually INCREASE accidents!

And published, though, strangely, unpublicised, government research has recently found that drivers don't drive to numerical speeds, but to relative ones. If the road gets safer they automatically speed up.

That means that if, amazingly, the speed limit was appropriate for once, they will AUTOMATICALLY break it as the road gets safer.

UNLESS THEY CONTINUALLY KEEP CHECKING THEIR SPEEDO!

So it's hardly surprising that the formerly falling fatality trend had stopped falling with the introduction of speed cameras, flatlined with their spread, and finally appeared to be starting to rise with their proliferation. Or that, almost incrediby, the divergence from the former trend line almost exactly (something like 97%) correlates to the increase in speeding fines!

Ah, but what about last years drop to a record low, the Beeb "journalists" will say.

Well, on pre camera trends that record should have been broken at the end of the Nineties, and we should now have around a thousand deaths a year fewer than we do.

Oh, and it would appear that there were effectively NO extra speed cameras set up last year. Which would explain the return to pre camera trend!

But, of course, this will neither reflect the balance of opinion, nor be short enough to publish.

Or, if it is, it will be "edited" down to:

"Drivers have no reason to object to speed cameras."

Don't dare deny it:

That's what you did when I last had a comment "published" !

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/pm/contribute.shtml

 

He's finally flipped!

To be honest Bogush, I'd be a great deal more interested to hear whatever it is you have to say about the passing of Ted.

Poor old bugger never managed to outlive the mad cow. I'm told that was what he was holding out for.

Pity, really.

I think he was a good sailor.

Or was it conductor?

One of the three, anyway.

 

Regardless of whether or not he was ultimately planning to submerge the UK in a European superstate:

Why did he have to sever links, ties and allegiances with the Commonwealth as well?