Wales has always been home to me. I was not born there but spent many years living and working there. Never have I felt so relaxed as when staying in Wales. In fact the only reasons I do not live there now are around being here for others.
Today though I am saddened at the realisation that Cymru has been took over by people with such little sense. It seems the Welsh Government has decided all roads that were 30mph should and will now be 20mph. At least according to a article I have read today in the MSM.
Now do not get me wrong, I get the need for the safety for l pedestrians, especially children and those with mobility and health issues that may effect their awareness. I fully support 20mph speed limits when schools are coming out, kids are not armoured and 20mph can and often does mean more pedestrian victims of road traffic accidents will sustain less injury and are more likely to survive the impact. I cannot and will not argue that point.
What I will say though is that I have been a driver for 38yrs. I spent over 10yrs of that driving double decker buses and another year driving delivery vans all over the UK.
My other jobs meant driving all over the country in so many different environments to Courts, hospitals, schools and peoples homes.
My only real hobby makes full use of all roads.
The one lesson i learned throughout that time has been additional rules and restrictions upon a road never increases safety.
That’s a contentious statement I know, and yes there truly is evidence to back it up. If in doubt search out Hans Monderman, he was a Dutch road traffic engineer. He undertook experiments in regard to sinage and restrictions, to the point of removing all pavements, road markings and signs in a community. Guess what, it proved to be safer with a massive reduction in accidents.
When people are placed under pressure to watch a speedo on their car, on their motorbike or in their truck, when they are looking for cameras and signs they are not watching out for other hazards.
Now I have a bee in my bonnet about roads, as many of you know. I hold no faith in the records taken by the police in regard to causes of accidents, why? Well because all the recordings have a major flaw, they never give the investigator the option of recording the accident as being due to the condition and surface of the road.
This is even more of a flaw now that it has ever been given our roads are now akin to a WW2 runway after it was bombed by the luftwaffe!
We have potholes a plenty, failing surfaces and faux repairs undertaken by placing either a blob of inferior tarmac substitute to fill a hole or once outlawed surface dressing to hide all the malrepaired holes.
If you want to improve safety you firstly need to know why accidents happen, and recording all as errors of people whether the driver, the victim or other folk does not provide us with that. Yes, when we take control of any vehicle from push bike to juggernaut we take upon the responsibility for our actions in regard to the control of that machine, but we are not the only factor in an accident.
So reducing the speed limit to 20 from 30 is not a true safety measure, it likely in my unqualified but very experienced opinion is like putting a sticking plaster on a huge shark bite whilst still underwater.
If you hold up people by reducing speed, you end up with some people trying to go faster where they can, so if there is a camera they slow down for that, but then speed up. A 15 minute journey will still take 15 minutes whatever speed you place upon the road.
Now, we get the muppets going on about camera vans…..”if they speed they deserve the fine” brigade….but, people get to know where speed cameras, even mobile ones are, and often the speed trap may entrap odd people taking the mickey and driving like the brainless twonks they are, but mostly it will be folks doing a couple of miles above the limit. Yes they “broke the law” but that does not in my (some will argue feeble) mind make them the ones to blame for the accidents. The camera vans in my extensive experience are often placed in dangerous positions causing higher risk due to their presence, even parking upon the pavements causing disruption and danger to the people they are supposed to be ensuring the safety of. Here in Derbyshire one was photographed this week in someone’s drive, hidden, and that is entrapment, never prevention!
So how should we make roads safer?
Well if you have gone away and read up on Monderman, you may already have some ideas, if not then firstly lower reliance on instruction and demand, by truly giving the driver the responsibility, allow them to decide where speed is safe and where caution is needed. When people drive in a dangerous manner and cause accidents prosecute with true sentencing, not just minimal fines, not just a year for killing folk.
But also investigate the accidents properly, hold councils to account and identify the true cause of the accident, even if the cause was not involved by direct contact or impact.
We need traffic vehicles and police officers (and no, I still ain’t a fan of the police in any way) rather than the pathetic and in my mind dangerous cash cow camera vans.
We need to educate those driving and those others using the roads, but not with the current wishy washy speed prevention course, run by some arrogant pseudo entrepreneur who has decided to make easy money preaching crap to a trapped audience.
We need roads to be wider, especially near schools, and a good infrastructure with safe communities, so folk do not feel the need to drive the 400yrds to drop off or pick up. Sadly many of you won’t remember true communities that Mrs Thatcher destroyed.
We do not need more of the same, speed humps damaging vehicles and making them unsafe, damaged roads, invasive road works due to over use of weakened infrastructure caused by over development of areas, so fat cats can profiteer.
Yes keep lower speed limits where people are vulnerable, such as outside schools, but enforce the removal of obstruction, such as dangerous and rude parking, delivery vehicles at school coming out times, and……well, you by now either get my point or not, I guess.
Thanks for reading.
Month: Mar 2023
Government Warning
People are obviously scared about the new government warning app that will take over mobile phones.
Well we should be, but not for the reasons we are being directed to believe.
The app is not about nuclear war. In that event what would be the point in “warning” us? We would be either dead or not, your kitchen table will not help.
It may be to a degree be relevant to fires, floods, and severe dangerous weather warnings, but we kinda have survived without that for eons, so not really the greatest need for it there. Despite the government insisting that’s why they are bringing it in.
Most of us have seen Independence Day and other entertaining films, and yes folk are going on about UFO’s and Alien contact, but to be honest it’s not in my humble opinion big fleets of Borg, not some intergalactic Empire or even some huge flaming asteroid we need to be worried about.
The reason this app or whatever it is, to me is so scary is that it’s totally about control.
This program can and will be used to not only “warn” (if you want to use that blatant misdirection) the nation but will be able to be used locally, possibly down to a few streets or even a section of an estate or area.
The app/program/system will be able to take over your phone, not only emitting an audible siren (possibly with higher or lower frequencies also broadcasting, which is a whole other concern), but stops people being able to use their phones, by locking them out, until they respond, (or until they are unlocked by the government or their agencies).
This means that the government, the organisations they comply or collude with, can in effect black out all communication at once anywhere and whenever they want.
Now I am sure they will put all the appropriate “safeguards” in place, just as we would expect from any trustworthy- erm- government would, but those safeguards are only there until they are not.
We live in darkening times, a period of history that is unlike any other in so many ways.
The human race can easily destroy this planet we call home, ten times over, but there is no profit in that.
We have, or rather most of us, have a reasonable standard of living (everyone easily could and should and would but for those making that deliberately impossible). I would say no one starves or lives on the streets, but we know despite there being no need for such poverty globally, never mind in the 5th richest country on this planet, that is a lie.
So why a need to warn or isolate us, using our own technology?
Well the motivating factor of today’s society is greed. We all know that, whether we choose to see or admit it. Greed is not just the motivation for next door to have a better car or lawn mower than you, it’s is for the very few richest most powerful people to hold absolute power over everyone and everything they see.
There was a line from a Meatloaf song that states “money is power and power is fame” and that sadly is the overriding principle of today’s society.
When you have a world run on such values you always will have poverty, and worse people living a life that holds no value to others.
In the past things were changed by civil disobedience, by marching, angry mobs, unions, strikes, yes, even riots and revolution. They are the tools used throughout history by the people to attempt to make a fairer society, they were the tools used to get us rights (rights are never granted, by those in power, they are demanded by those who have none).
Sooner or later today’s society may awaken from social media, from video games, from the celebrity gods we promote and follow. When we do the current world differs hugely from the past.
We no longer have industrial areas, where all the community works, sleeps and lives.
Now we likely don’t know the person living next to, above or below us. Now our community is often almost exclusively on line.
If we are isolated from the online world, from social media, from text and from calls we kinda become powerless.
We cannot form into the angry mob, because a mob is more than one. A march becomes a solitary walk, a riot becomes criminal damage. Revolution becomes a section under the mental health act or a prison cell.
This is why having a tool to isolate us from others is so essential for a government and establishment, especially ones as cruel and corrupt as those we currently have to live with.
Jonesy.
Unseen illness & people’s recognition.
I truly have just realised its not about how visible a pain is, my epiphany today is that folk only understand the pain that they themselves have been through.
This is absolutely why invisible illnesses such as Fibromyalgia or Chronic Pain Syndrome are not accepted, even it seems by some ill trained professionals.
We are asked to describe our pain, but for me that’s like being asked to describe the shapes I see in smoke.
If I said a “velociraptor” but you had never seen one it would be meaningless.
I currently have just had the wrong tooth removed by my dentist and developed a rather painful abscess under the tooth he should have removed. Now on antibiotics for the pain.
The people who I have told about it are all genuinely sympathetic to my pain, but for most I believe it’s because they recognise the severity of tooth ache through personal experience or the experience of close friends and family. Its lovely to feel the support from these folk, truly, and most of these fabulous people I see as my family anyway, however, when I describe a fibro flare up, or the after effects of a hypo, or the embarrassing situation crohns can leave me in, or worse in some ways the destructive effects of anxiety, ptsd and depression have left upon my life, the loss not only for my brother, for my still born children, for my….er, self by losing career, identity and most of all my still living family, because its not something that they or many of you have experienced there is no point of reference for them. This not their fault, no competition, and sadly some of my issues they will have had to live through and vice versa. I am not saying my situation is any worse than theirs!
Maybe when we use a phrase to identify an illness not seen nor understood we should call it a “not yet experienced by you illness”. (I am sure there will be better suggestions).
These illnesses are not always (but all too often can be) fatal, and when they are the cause of death will likely be “misadventuture”, not “the only end to the suffering” or “an end to pain” or “a scream for help”. Maybe if they were seen as potentially fatal then its possible we would all offer support rather than seeing those fighting these illnesses as weak, it is possible we would recognise them as as strong, as the warriors they are, not as feeble (a phrase been bandied to me).
Does it really matter? Well yes it does. With so called “invisible illness” there is not just the illness itself to contend with. It maybe that you have to take stupid amounts of meds including pain killers, opiates just so people do not see you as “putting it on”. For me personally I constantly wear a pain patch, I take codeine, morphine, and paracetamol almost every day, I also have to take other poisons including very strong immune suppressants just to stop me soiling myself. My lack of concentration whether through illness, pain or medication inhibits me every single day, it’s akin to having dementia, as I forget things whether the cooker, a task or even what I am saying during a conversation.
I strive every single day to hide the pain, to ensure people do not see me as weak, or useless. I get angry, more at myself than others but that anger is destructive, because it feeds my interaction with people including those i love.
Not being able to get up some days nevermind leave the house, not just due to pain but anguish, fear, lack of motivation, and…..so many other reasons that cannot be voiced with mere words.
How do you explain this to folk that haven’t experienced it? Well you can’t.
If but it were a tooth ache, a head ache a broken bone people would get it, but non experienced illness whether with a physical or mental causation is not understood by so many.
I am sorry to babble on, but I do hope some who haven’t and I pray will never experience chronic invisible illness will read this and just think about those folk they know, those who have to live like this.
Jonesy.
Jonesy, simply a human 