The Cadbury's Spira

It can be found in one newsagent in Didcot. Oh joy, oh rapture...!

My Roots Are Showing

After Sam dyed my hair on holiday (basically sun bleached and nothing else), it went a nicer lighter brown/blonde. Unfortunately further dyeing caused it to go a distressing ginger at the ends. Must defintely be the Celtic past catching up with me!

A few weeks later, and there is a ring of far darker hair round the roots. Looks like I need to hit the bottle...

Days out from work

When I was a senior scientist in the labs, I managed to get two trips out to Indianapolis to meet clients. Now that I've moved into Health and Safety (a more senior position, possibly?), I have managed:

• some really rough bit of north Birmingham to audit a hideous waste transfer station;
• an audit of a solvent distillation site in a very rough bit of the Liverpool coast;
• a cement fuel plant emptying into the dregs of Morecambe Bay.
  

Admittedly, I've done a few courses in slightly nicer places (Stratford, Solihull, Cork, Manchester) but its all relative.

I'm off to Atherstone tomorrow to walk round a landfill. I think.

Cupholders

What is the priority for carmakers in designing the interior of cars. Is it ergonomic design of the cockpit? Is it fuel efficiency? Is it a decent sound system? No, it appears to be the number of cubby holes and cupholders that can be placed around the place. I have just bought a new (well, new to me) Ford Mondeo. In place of the nicely designed ashtray which I used for storing change for parking meters in my old Mondeo, they now have a cup holder that springs out from the dashboard. Very nicely designed with an exceptinal mechanism, but uttely useless for me. Do car designers assume that everyone drives along with a scalding cup of coffee that they don't want to go into their laps? Do they not realise it is possible to drive without drinking.

Mind you, if I need a drink in the car, I use the best cupholder ever invented - my wife.

I suspect I'm going to be in trouble for that comment.

Typos

Why can I not type any verb in the continuous present tense correctly. I always manage to type "-ign" instead of "-ing". Very f**kign annoying.

EU Directives

EU Directives are not binding on the member states. They do, however, have to be enacted by each national legislation within a certain time frame (normally 2 years), at which stage the national legislation does become binding. The UK has enacted more Directives within the proper time frames than any other country in the EU, apart from Portugal.

We get fined by the EU if we either fail to enact the Directive into UK law, or if we fail to enact properly (including not enforcing the reaultant law). Explain these two facts then:

Italy were fined as they were a long way behind with their enacting of Directives. Their response was to pass a single law which stated at one fell swoop that a whole raft of Directives were passed into Italian law. No communication to the Italians, no communication to the enforcing agencies and police. No-one knows about the new laws, no-one is following them and no-one is enforcing them.... Howeeevr, they are no longer in breach as at least they are on Italy's statute books?

Wearing helmets on motorbikes is an absolute requirement under one Directive. This is rigorously enforced in the UK, but if you go to Spain, Greece, Italy or Portugal, the only people wearing helmets are the British tourists, despite the fact that it has to be in national law.

Jeremy Clarkson

I'm reading the excellent "The World according to Clarkson". As a Health and Safety professional I really shouldn't like Clarkson, as he has been turned into the anti-hero by the Safety press. IOSH even challenged him to a live slanging match (sorry, debate). They don't seem to realise that he speaks an awful lot of sense. Whether it is about the concept of risk and how removing all risk from people's lives is not necessarily sensible, or how an awful lot of safety rules and professionals lack common sense or reason. We try and control far too many items of people's lives from a fear of being sued.

Despite everything that is read in the press, and the vast number of ambulance chasers advertising on TV, we are not a litigious society. It is actually still difficult to bring actions to court over accidents as long as people have been reasonable.

Speed is not dangerous on a motorway with a modern car and decent road surface. Speed cameras are not the answer to road deaths - these have increased since cameras came in. The problem is poor driving ability, poor road conditions and poor enforcement of current laws. There would have been no need for a new offence of driving while using a mobile phone if the police had properly enforced the rule on driving without due care and attention!

Back to Jeremy - It is a superb book and I find myself agreeing with most of it. Slightly worrying - I'm definitely not turning into a wooly liberal!

Pets' Names

To carry on from a post made by Anna.

Sam had a friend that called her cat "Pete". A friend at school's grandmother had a cat called "Muff". Cue any number of comments about her standing in the back garden shouting "has anyone seen my Muff".

Our cat is called PJ, and came from a rescue place. We suspect that there is also a "Duncan" somewhere.

Our hamsters have been called:
Spike and Drusilla;
Anya, Cordelia, Willow and Tara;
Faith, Glory, Harmony and Fred.

Our greyhound's name is Buddy, although his racing name was "Dynamo Freshness". His kennel mates were Dynamo Belowski (the pup) and Dynamo Phatness (Shane).

The A34

Welcome to the worst maintained road in Britain. The A34 running between Winchester and Bicester must be one of the busiest and most important non-motorways in the country (with the exception of the A1). It carries all the freight traffic to and from the south coast ports to the Midlands and North, via the M40 through Birmingham, or via Northampton to the M1. It is the one of the most rutted, uncomfortable and crowded roads in the country. There are a series of tramlines between Didcot and Oxford where lorries have worn holes in the road surface. There are vast numbers of patches on the road between Hinksey Hill and Botley, and the road north of Pear Tree sounds like several aircraft taking off.

The latter of these is being sorted - the road is being closed for about a year while they resurface. This will just add to the woes of drivers attempting to get into or round Oxford. Abingdon Road, the main route into Oxford centre from the south, is almost permanently dug up for roadworks. It has been dug up for 9 months this time, just a year after it was resurfaced (which took about a year). At least the juction with the M4 has been sorted - this now works quite well. Just another 40 miles to go.

Botley itself is quite ridiculous. The speed limit reduces to 50 mph due to the narrowness and the weakness of the road/bridge, but the traffic levels continue to increase. A blockage on that part of the road (and they are extremely frequent), causes untold losses in people's time, and unmeasurable hold ups.

Once you have successfully negotiated the Oxford ring road, the next obstacle is the several mile queue for the lights at the end of the road, the junction to the M40. While the M40 is generally the fastest road in the country (driving at 85 mph in the inside lane, there is a vast line of cars passing you at speed in both outside lanes), the delay in getting on to it reduces the average speed considerably. The solution is simple - make this junction into a motorway style intersection, exactly the same as the A34/M4 one.

And finally - the Newbury by-pass part of the A34 has the shortest slipways in existence to get onto and off the main carriageway. I often wonder why there are not more serious accidents.

That's enough about a road.

Vauxhall Zafira adverts

It is neither clever nor cute to advertise cars with children pretending to be adults. These adverts are surely the most annoying ones ever and are part of the reason I did not buy a Vauxhall recently. Mind you, the main reason was that I couldn't get the dog in the back...

Jonathan Hall

There are 192 people named "Jonathan Hall" on friendsreunited. And I thought I was special.