World In Motion

 There is so much wrong with this photo.

And I say that as someone who was born just after ENGLAND - not GB, won the World Cup.  I was born about 20 days before Tony Adams (MBE apparently) and he was the first England player to be born after ENGLAND - not GB, won the World Cup.

Next issue - I am 57 years old so whoever has chosen that plate is living somewhat in the past.

Next up (and this isn't an issue if they are stuck in a traffic jam) is how close whoever has taken that photo is to the car in front.  While on the plus side, it looks to have been taken from the passenger seat so at least the driver isn't messing about with a mobile phone.

Now wouldn't you have thought that a proud British patriot would have bought a British car? Not a 2018 Subaru Forester XT SYMM with CVT.  If you are impressed that I can tell the transmission from the back of the car, you don't know about mycarcheck.

But, apart from all that, nice photo.

George Michael Impersonator

Two different BBC car stories caught my eye today.

Ford have launched a car that can be driven hands-free on British motorways.

WHY!?

OK, so I suppose you  have to start somewhere - but not with this.

Apparently, you have to keep your eyes on the road ahead and "the driver is not permitted to use their mobile, fall asleep or conduct any activity that takes attention away from the road."

So what is the point?

Plus, this is a Ford Mustang Mach e that has a maximum speed of 80mph.

DON'T CALL SOMETHING THAT CAN ONLY DO 80MPH A MUSTANG!

I hate the way Ford are reusing classic car names on horrible SUVs - I'm looking at you, Ford Puma.

I don't normally like the comments under BBC stories - the ones I usually read tend to be full of angry Gammons still trying to defend Brexit.  But this one is lots of angry Gammons and angry non-gammons coming up with more and more reasons why this won't work in Britain.  Smart Motorways being a good one - this car is supposed to safely grind to a halt if the driver loses interest in the road ahead - you will have cars stopping all over the place on warm, Summer afternoons.

And will Police have to check whether or not it is the right age of Mustang when they see a driver doing jazz-hands while travelling at 70mph down the M6? And that his hands-free subscription is up to date?

Yes, you need to subscribe to this hands-free driving lark as well!

So why have I called this post, "George Michael Impersonator?"

Ah, well that's because of my second BBC story which combines my love of cars with my love of Swansea City Football Club.  Danny Graham made 54 appearances for us. This includes when we were in the Premier League, so I don't know why we are only a sub-note in the story of him crashing an expensive Jaguar-Land-Rover vehicle into a Co-op in County Durham:

Whilst over the limit.

I wonder if his hands were on the wheel at the time?

A Question of Sport

I don't watch A Question of Sport.  It's awful since they parachuted in Paddy McGuinness.

I did however watch a sportsman on Question Time.

I refer to Sebastian Vettel.

I haven't watched Question Time in ages - I tended not to like it because of the Gammons in the audience.  I wasn't going to watch this one despite Seb being on it but then I spotted that comedian Geoff Norcott was also on it so I gave it a go.  Geoff Norcott's hand was the last one I shook before Covid meant that we couldn't do that any more.

It has improved.  There was only one right-wing pillock in the audience and he suitably demonstrated his pillockness.

Seb didn't actually say too much apart from pointing out that Brexit is a mess and admitting to being a bit of a hypocrite about thinking green while travelling the World racing cars.  But he did give a very good account of himself in a debating programme using a second language and he really impressed Planet f1's Finley Crebolder.  I suspect Lewis Hamilton wouldn't have been as eloquent.

Today's sport on TV is the Women's FA Cup Final - I'm not watching it.  I suspect a lot of people aren't watching it which might be why ITV Sport have decided to showcase the middle BTCC Race today on ITV1 (also known as "ITV") rather than the usual ITV4.  This features Lewis Hamilton's brother and Rick Parfitt's son but they are always at the back of the field so don't tend to get much of a mention.

I found it a bit irritating because the presenters and commentators were trying to explain everything to the new viewers but they did get a very interesting race with plenty of action.

ITV4 meanwhile showed Twins.

So the question of sport for ITV is: How many people will watch the third race today?

It's Going Home

Well, it's not actually - not if it's stuck in a mega-traffic jam on the M4.

In sweltering heat.

So what do you do?

You get a football out and have a kickabout.

OK, so it could potentially distract emergency vehicles sweeping down that carriageway en route to the lorry fire that caused the tailback and probably added a couple of degrees to the heat.  But emergency vehicles tend to be very noisy things that you can see from a distance giving you time to pick up the ball and clear off to the side of the road like we had to when we were children and a car came along.

I don't see the problem myself.  The BBC reports Inspector Mark Freeman of Wiltshire Police not being very happy though.

The only thing missing from this for me, is more drivers and passengers from other vehicles joining him for a proper match.  Like Christmas in the Trenches in World War One.  Paul McCartney could have written a song about it.

Talladega Racist Way

Speaking as a fairly ignorant white bloke, I still understand what "Black lives Matter" means.

It doesn't mean that all lives don't matter and it doesn't mean that white lives don't matter.

It means that there are still a significant number of white, lowlife scum who think that black lives don't matter.  You may have detected from my tone that I have no time for such people.  I also get irritated by people who don't understand #BLM putting up messages stating that "All Lives Matter" on their Facebook accounts not because they are particularly racist but because they don't get what #BLM is about.

I was impressed by NASCAR the other week, banning the Confederate flag from the race meetings stating it was “contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry.”

Remember that NASCAR was born out of the Southern States and Moonshine and the attitudes that prevailed down there.  A lot of the fans were not happy - as reported in this NY Times article.  And one toerag got a plane in the air with a large flag flying behind it and the caption "Defund NASCAR"

There was a similar event here last night as the footballers of Burnley FC and Manchester City took the knee to show respect and solidarity with the #BLM Movement, a small plane was heard flying overhead - it was towing a banner declaring that "White Lives Matter".  The company that owns the plane and made the banner have been identified and suspended from working at the airport they flew from and, as far as I'm concerned, can go bust but, apparently they haven't broken the law.  I suppose that saying that "White lives matter" isn't illegal - I happen to think that white lives matter too - but white lives are not under threat every day in the same way that black ones are.

They must have known, however, that they were inciting racial hatred?

Anyway, back to the States and NASCAR - the whole story took another sinister turn on Sunday, when a noose was found in the pit garage of the only African-American participant, Bubba Wallace:

The follow-up, as reported by Car+Driver is that all of NASCAR is backing him.  Good.  Although, given who had access, the guilty party could well be a member of staff at the raceway or of one of the teams.  The FBI are on the case.

Anyway, I'm with NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt, Jr. who simply said,

"Hope Bubba wins it tomorrow."

Goal? No - Gaol!

As a Welsh football supporter and proud Swansea boy, I was disappointed to read this story this week.

Fellow Swansea boy Dean Saunders has been sentenced to prison for refusing to give a breath test when caught in an apparently very drunk state at the wheel of his Audi in Chester.

Actually I'm quite annoyed.  He is described as "The former Derby County, Oxford United and Aston Villa forward" - no mention whatsoever of Swansea City.  Disgraceful bias against the team currently riding high in The Championship.

 

District Judge Nicholas Sanders banned him from driving for 30 months and ordered him to pay court costs of £620.  Which is less than his car-parking fine when he left his car in a short-stay car park while Wales excelled at the 2016 European Championships.

 

And the first 10 weeks of the driving ban will be irrelevant anyway due to him being banged up.

 

As he was jailing him, Sanders told Saunders, "Throughout these proceedings you have shown yourself to be arrogant, thinking you are someone whose previous and current role in the public eye entitles you to be above the law."

 

Quite right, nobody should be above the law.

 

They've let him out after a day.

Supremely White

I used to regard myself as part of a group known as The Superwhite Army.

I don't associate with them any more.

But this isn't a Liam Neeson moment.

I mention it because of this BBC story about an American University professor who is annoyed that the California DMV won't let him have "COYW" on his license plate.

 

COYW stands for "Come on You Whites".

 

They say it is racist.

 

These are the "whites" in question:

The more observant of you will have noticed that quite of few of them are black.  Fulham Football Club play in white so are regularly referred to as "The Whites."  The prof, Jonathan Kotler, is an avid supporter and thought it entirely reasonable to have a plate with COYW on it.

 

I tend to agree with him.

 

I like his argument statement, "I pointed out that many clubs in Britain are known by their colour - the blues, the clarets. Nobody thought the Liverpool reds were communists."

 

Incidentally, I fell out of love with The Superwhite Army (aka Tranmere Rovers FC fans) when the team got relegated from the old League 1 at the turn of the Century.

 

Fulham are also doomed to relegation this season.

 

Meanwhile, here is a story about a white California Police Officer chasing a black girl down a street: 

Stock Response

My most recent two posts have been about football and about a small hatchback with bits missing.

This one combines the two.

It comes from this BBC story.

 

Some football pitches have running tracks around them.

 

Ballymena United's has a racetrack running around it.

 

And we aren't talking Formula One.

 

Inevitably in Stock car Racing and Banger Racing, cars may just, ever so slightly, COLLIDE!

 

So the odd one is getting shunted on to the pitch - and churning it up.  This isn't damage that can be easily remedied by a bloke wandering on to the pitch with a hoe at half-time.

 

Maybe they should change their name to Ballymena ROVERS.

Not Coming Home

It's been about two weeks since my last post.

Partly because there hasn't been much car news.

And partly because I've been engrossed in the Football.

I have dual-nationality - I'm mostly Welsh but when there is a major football tournament going on I tend to be English.

And this major tournament has been better than most from an English perspective.

We did play in Samara last week so it is an excuse to mention the Lada Samara:

But today The BBC gave us a story combining traffic AND The World Cup.

Apparently, according to The RAC, traffic was going to peak between 4pm and 6pm this afternoon/evening due to us England fans commuting home in time for our semi-final against Croatia.

I was one of those commuters and didn't notice any extra traffic on the bit of motorway I was using.

I did notice us lose to Croatia though - this makes me mostly Welsh again.

The English boys have done their country proud though - they are only young and they got a lot further than most would have thought possible which bodes well for future competitions.

Meanwhile, Croatia is the home of Rimac - manufacturer of electric supercars like the Concept One:

Which looks a lot better before an Englishman crashes it: 

Balls to Bad Road Signs

This sign infuriated me recently.

Or did it?

 

No, I don't suppose it did really.   But the road layout it "helps" you with did.  It's like a big square roundabout on the edge of Swansea near the waterfront development.

 

If you don't go there often and you don't have a sat-nav it is a bugger to negotiate it.

 

But it would have infuriated this man for a different reason:

His name is Matt Parker and he dislikes the representation of a football so much that he started a petition (signed by 20000 people) to get it changed. The BBC have the story here. He is a maths geek and knows that a football made up of all hexagons, like the one on the sign, could not exist.  You need some pentagons.

 

Now I am a football fan and a maths geek. I could argue that this representation is OK because the roadsign is flat but that would be missing the point.

 

The Department of Transport say:

 

"The purpose of a traffic sign is not to raise public appreciation and awareness of geometry which is better dealt with in other ways.

If the signs were corrected, it would only be visible close up and not from the distance at which drivers will see the sign.

The higher level of attention needed to understand the geometry could distract a driver's view away from the road for longer than necessary which could therefore increase the risk of an incident."

But what about the distraction for drivers trying to mentally recreate a sphere from hexagons and realising that there is a fundamental error on the sign?

Meanwhile, for any Americans reading this - I would like to point out that the item in the picture that you think is a football is actually a rugby ball.  The football is the round item.

Here is a rugby picture for no other reason than I think it looks nice:

Another 3 Points for Jose Mourinho

It's June and I miss the football season already.

So here's a Mirror story about Jose Mourinho amassing 12 Points and a driving ban for speeding.

Love the bit in the story that says "Mourinho did not wish to declare his income, however, the court said it would take his significant income into account.  He was ordered to pay a £750 fine as well as a £75 surcharge and £85 court costs."


While we're discussing football, here's a picture of an Oldsmobile 4-4-2: