Fit To Drive?

This eight-year-old boy is a little hero.

His name is Ben Hedger .

 

His mother had a seizure while travelling at 60mph.  She blacked out.

 

When he realised that something was amiss, he put on the hazard lights and steered the car to the hard-shoulder where it stalled.

 

"He said he just did what he had to do otherwise we would have died."

 

He's probably right - he probably had no choice.

 

But he did do it and that makes him a hero.

 

The car was a Ford Ka, it will have been damaged bouncing along the central reservation but she won't be behind the wheel for a good while now - if ever.  But she is alive. And so is Ben.  And so is everyone else who was on the A120 near Colchester at the time.

 

So a good news story on the run-up to Christmas while The World is being crap.

Bye Bye Bernie, Bernie Bye Bye

Well,

It's finally happened!

Good riddance to the horrible little man.

 

I bet they thought he would be there forever.  He's 86 and still going strong.

But not as chief executive officer running Formula 1 any more.

I can see what he was trying to do - make Formula 1 (and himself) richer and richer by various means including expanding it out to larger markets.  But to do that, he was alienating the existing markets.

Like the UK.

Obviously I've made no secret of my dislike of him - or his deal to take F1 off free-to-air - which brought in more Sky money but lost F1 many UK viewers.  Similar things have happened abroad.  I've pointed out his lack of morals.  I've also reported on his bribery charge.

But the five foot two-and-a-half inches tall dictator seems to be able to get away with stuff.

Unlike this six foot seven inch prat from Newcastle:

 

The story is here.

"I'm an excellent driver but I was advised to plead guilty to get it over with."

Yeah, right!

The court heard Elliott had 12 previous convictions for driving while disqualified.

Ka-Tastrophe!

OK - I take it back! What I said last week about how Ford should be leading the way in new designs.According to Auto Express today, this is Ford's new City Car, or "Ka" as they like to brand it here, or "Kak"* as I like to call it. My first thoughts are - it looks quite a bit like a StreetKa...
A StreetKa named "Desire?" I think not - I could never desire one of those - there is no way one of those could ever look good.
OK, I'll take that back too. However, that doesn't detract from my initial problem. My second thoughts on seeing the car, probably unfairly, were that it reminded me of an old Isetta Bubble-car:

It's not clear from the article or the photo if the new Ka (assuming it will be called a Ka) is a two or four-seater - I'm guessing a four-seater but you'd have to all be very good friends in there.

The current Ka hasn't really hit the public's imagination - possibly because it was a joint venture with Fiat and their 500 which seems to do a much better overall job of being a good small car. So this time, they've gone back to new radical design. Will it be case of "The Emperor's New Clothes" like "Roger and Val Have Just Got In" and like I felt the original Ka was?

When that was launched, I remember thinking how ugly that was too - I particularly disliked the grey plastic bumpers which invaded the whole front and back of the car. All the motoring journalists raved about it though. The general view of the general public was women loved it and men hated it - the women must have won out though because it ran from 1996 to 2008.




*Scouse (and maybe from other bits of Britain too) word meaning "excrement"