Posts by Chris 15 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Oct 2007
Er, no - a UK passport says "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Great Britain = England Wales and Scotland
United Kingdom = England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
British Isles = England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland
It's amazing how many British people don't know the distinctions. I blame the education system, when I were a lad etc etc.
"Conditions change with time as well as place. *That*'s what you and the strident nannies are ignoring.
Not all road speed limit decisions are taken in a rational, evidence-based environment. I can see why daytime speed limits like the A38 through Birmingham have dropped a bit over the years as traffic volume has increased, but when the road is empty (at 3 am), well-lit and wide, and a comfy speed in 5th is 40, why can the speed limit not increase? And be 50 on the expressway section?"
Oh, I agree that the speed limits can stand to be changed upwards in certain areas (motorways could definitely be a bit higher, for instance, as per certain more enlightened continental countries), and that a road can be safe to do 40 in at one time of day and only safe to do 25 at another, but I'd still much prefer that decision to be taken by the government or local authority than by the individual driver. How many people *under*estimate how good a driver they are? The person setting the speed limit also knows better than someone just passing through the area that although the first section of that 30 stretch looks like it's all country lane and safe to do 50, just around the corner is a zebra crossing in front of a school which at 50 you'd be unable to stop for.
I'd not trust 95% of drivers to make a decision on what speed they should be doing in a "rational, evidence-based environment", or even a fully informed one. There are precious few drivers who are as careful and unlikely to cause an accident as you say you are.
And in any event, from a legal point of view how on earth would you enforce a speed limit which is determined by the skill of the driver? How would you even determine it in the first place? "Dangerous driving" is a subjective enough offence as it is, without making one's speed entirely policed by that offence.
Far simpler, and easier to enforce, is to have set speed limits for set stretches of road. We all know what they are, and if you're in such a hurry that you'd need to consider speeding, then you should just have left a little earlier.
So - yes, we should increase one or two speed limits around the place, but anything more than just increasing certain set speed limits is going to be ridiculously impossible to police, and *will* lead to more accidents.
Good grief. Of *course* road conditions change - that's why speed limits are different on different stretches of road. And one of the reasons they're different is because in the areas of lower speed limits there is a higher likelihood of an accident (e.g. due to passing through a hamlet on the A46, for instance, or going through a built up area) - and any accident is made worse, and is more likely to be fatal, the higher the speed(s) of those involved (which is not something that a sane person could dispute). And I'd rather take the local authority civil engineers' views on when it's safe to do 60 than rely on the common sense of some twat in a chavved up Nova, ta (sure, some people know when and how to drive safely, but 95% don't).
And that's the government's point - if it's a 30 limit, and you do 50, you're much more likely to kill someone than someone obeying the speed limit doing 30. This is *still* very simple. Your very inability to appreciate this and your insistance on over-complicating the issue makes one wonder about how safely you drive, and how much you over estimate your abilities.
I commute about 60 miles a day by car, btw, and see an awful lot of shitty drivers acting exceedingly recklessly, and regularly get delayed by accidents - probably at least once or twice a week. And I'm not a 60 year old pottering along complaining about all those youngsters in their silly fast cars, either - I'm 28 and drive a BMW 3 series.
Can we drop the tedious, facetious "speed doesn't kill, sudden acceleration/sudden deceleration/excessive speed/inappropriate speed/transfer of momentum kills" nonsense please? You all know full well what's meant - being hit at 60mph is massively more lilkely to kill you than being hit at 30mph, whether you're being hit as a ped or as a fellow driver. It's quite simple.
Good idea, there. There's the potential for some interesting storylines in the history of the Republic, which is something that hasn't been explored either in the films or in any of the 69 billion SW novels.
What we'll *get*, of course, will be a live action version of Droids, with a Droid version of Jar Jar Binks in it.
"its been a while since I readup on the typhoons but if I do remember correctly they would fly like bricks if it wasn't for the fly-by-wire computer technology keeping them stable...."
Just like pretty much *all* modern fighters, then. They're made unstable and run on a FBW system to improve manoeuvrability.
"Would it *REALLY* surprise you if they actually did ban the red arrows considering they've already outlawed centuries old nursery rhymes?"
See, here you're just proving that people really do believe made up stories in the tabloids. That story about "baa baa black sheep" was a myth, for godness' sake. One that's maintained legs, sadly, but a myth nontheless.
"It gets my goat when people use unreliable means of communication for critical information. Email is not a reliable medium. SMS is not a reliable medium. Voicemail is not a reliable medium. Telephoning someone and talking to them is (you know whether the message has been delivered)."
But what if the information has to go to several hundred people? You would call them all?
And we know how reliable snail mail is at the moment...
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