Reorte

Google tends to roll out changes, so they're not inflicted on everyone at once, so you may get lucky with avoiding them for a while. If you block cookies it can be a bit random wether or not they're forced on you each time you look.

I bought some screws from a shop about fifteen minutes' walk away. The address on the box was about thirty minutes' walk away. Couldn't help wondering just what the route they were transported from the latter to the former was...

Well, that's completely spoiled The Wrong Trousers for me, now I know it wasn't an original idea!

I'm guessing that the bypass wasn't built for horses and carts!

There should be small NSL repeaters every now and then if it's streetlit but 70 (or anything other than 30 for that matter), e.g. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.7004713,-2.3325213,3a,42.2y,147.59h,83.64t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_4jDKWAxCpBi-FRzIH4ppQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?ucbcb=1&entry=ttu

I'm pretty sure that that's not the case - if it's a dual carriageway then it's 70 mph unless signed otherwise (30 if it's streetlit, although that's very rare which is why 70 mph lit dual carriageways carry NSL repeaters). Dual carraigeway isn't defined by the presence or not or a barrier. There can't be all that many around nowadays without a barrier, although that picture demonstrates that there are still some. There's no mention of barriers here: https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits

Exactly. So hopefully the instincts to avoid that have already been developed to a reasonable extent by then. At 17 we won't necessarily be able to tell just how far we can push when driving, but the idea of messing it up, the fear of the idea of ending up wrapped around a tree should still be there. What were you like on your first driving lessons? I was slow and nervous. I'd be worried about anyone who wasn't.

I'm never happy with approaches that take the "treat everyone like a potential criminal" direction. It's sometimes unavoidable in order to get anything done in practice, but I don't think it makes for a healthy society.

Surely the point is clear, that self-preservation instincts need to be developed by experience, and it should be obvious that that's a general point - they don't only apply in exactly the same situations as ones you've had negative experiences of. There's no need to be facetious. We get it from our parents and so on but I think we get the most instinctive behaviours from learned experience of what happens when we don't pay attention - the grazed knee encouraging us to learn to stay on our feet, and it doesn't rely on any backlash against being told what to do (it's at a more basic, animal level than that). Teenagers do indeed have a not unfounded reputation of risky behaviour anyway, so reasonably well-developed instincts before people get to that age are pretty important to help get through that period of our lives. Childhood is a constant battle of pushing boundaries to see what we can get away with. It's how the brain finds out where the boundaries lie, often at a subconscious level.

The best way to develop instincts about dangerous behaviour is to have a few minor mishaps when young (younger than driving age). Trip up and fall when you're small and it hurts but is unlikely to do any damage, but it still hurts, so you start to develop the instincts to avoid tripping up, and a general sense of self-preservation. I have very vague memories of being at a preserved railway when I was quite small and I found the locos quite intimidating in one place (publically-accessable shed IIRC), seeing them looming above me from ground level instead of the platform, especially walking in front or behind them. If it had totally put me off trains I wouldn't be here, but I do think it created a bit of healthy nervousness about the idea of being in the wrong place relative to them, and since that happened when I was small and the brain very much developing it's stuck.

It's quite far north in Scotland, no point in going there if you're not prepared to be cold! Surely a nip of whisky to keep the cold out is what's appropriate!

Just going with the numbers I've seen. Scroll down on this one: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/63304224 - a big increase between 2000 and 2010, and a fall from there, although not to anywhere near pre-2000 levels. I think it's reasonable to ask what's going on there.

I agree that it's simply impractical considering how things are set up at present, but from various chats and observation there are quite a lot of drivers who aren't maniacs but do simply seem to have fallen in to some bad habits. It's very much a "would be nice in theory" idea. That said I do wonder how many serious accidents are caused by those people, and how many are caused by the type of lunatic who shouldn't be behind the wheel in the first place (far fewer of the latter but they're a much bigger risk, so where it shakes out I don't know). If it's the latter any change of rules isn't going to make a great deal of difference - people who knowingly break existing rules aren't going to start paying attention to new ones.

Something I find very depressing, and a big part of that is because there's no hope whatsoever of that changing (in the direction I want it to). I'd much, much rather live with the (not massively higher in the grand scheme of things) risks, and that's not because I want to drive like a maniac but fear getting caught either.

Ideally you try to deal with as many as possible before the test (preferably by stopping them from starting to form in the first place), but without checks most people will drift over time. Equipment needs calibration from time to time, and it's not a bad analogy for people.

It doesn't sound like a bad idea, and I think a retest maybe once every ten years wouldn't be either. There may well be practical problems - we keep hearing stories (although admittedly not as many as a year or two ago) of test centres struggling to handle the demand for tests under the current rules.

1600 sounds a bit on the low side these days, a quick Google suggests that the heaviest version of the Ford Focus for example is only just under that, so it would go over with a couple of people in it (or one if they're my size). I don't have a problem with changing what categories you get with a standard licence (in principle, there'll always be devil in the detail of course), but as you point out it can raise the type of odd situation you mention. But I suppose that's the lesser evil than suddenly removing entitlements from people, e.g. it wouldn't have made much sense to expect everyone already with a licence to take a re-test when the written part was introduced (if nothing else it wouldn't have been practical).

It's not so simple though in reality (putting aside the legal aspect), since it shouldn't ever be a case of keep taking from one to avoid taking anything from another. Roads are absolutely necessary for society to function, just as much as anything else, it's just that leaving them to fall apart doesn't have as many immediate problems. Children still need to get to school, ambulances need to be able to get people to hospital (preferably without jolting them over potholes). But kicking the can down the road means a bigger headache later on (no different from the railways there and the appalling state of many structures, with forests growing out of them), so in the long run you'll spend less if you don't cut now. So taking some money away from those other things can be the lesser evil. You also need to look at what money is being spent on elsewhere. A while back I looked at school spending - the amount spent per pupil is much higher, even after adjusting for inflation, than it was when I was at school. Is that money well spent?

True enough, but when the damage is largely caused by much heavier vehicles the difference between ICE and electric is a drop in the ocean.

Conversion to oil of something that was once oil-fired in service doesn't really bother me - that's part of it's in-service history after all, so doesn't represent a fundamental change from what it was.

Depends really. If you've been travelling the same route for years and it was once reasonably quiet it's not you that's changed anything that's made it bad. I don't like being stuck in traffic any more than the next person but I usually find the "solutions" (i.e. building more roads) even more unpleasant.

The road surfaces feel like another case of dropping proper routine maintenance, something that's plagued all areas of the UK in recent years. I'd argue that that aside the road network isn't unfit for purpose, it's the amount of traffic that's unfit for anything. No point in increasing road capacity unless there's also some plan (and not of the control freak variety) that results in a stop of the growth of traffic, otherwise you're just caught in an endless vicious circle that leads to an ever worse country to live in, with ever more and larger *?@£ being built over it in an endless game of catch-up.

Well yes, I suppose the bandwidth from communicating with smoke signals is low.

Still a few examples of wooden rails, sometimes with a strip of iron on the top, hidden away - I've seen one or two in long-disused mines.

Nothing's a waste of time if you don't mind doing it. Some people will enjoy stringing the scammers along. Personally I just hang up, but I can see the amusement in keeping them going. Personally I think we all need to worry less about saving and wasting time, but that's a separate discussion.