Five tips for shitty drivers

I know a lot of you out there are really terrible drivers, who ought never to have been allowed behind the wheel of anything faster-moving, heavier or more expensive than a Cozy Coupe.

So, I have put together these top tips to help you – if not to actually become a better driver – then at least to minimise the threat your fundamental incompetence poses to other road users.

No biscuit for going slow

If you are driving past a speed camera in – say – a 30mph zone, there is really no point in slowing down to 20mph while you pass it. It’s not going to “accidentally” go off if you’re doing 25mph.

Yes, it’s true that bad things happen when you go past one too fast.

That doesn’t mean that good things happen when you go past too slow.

The cameras do not photograph you going past below the speed limit in order to send you a present for being a good boy.

Don’t force people to be polite

OK, sometimes it can be difficult to right pull out of a junction into a busy road. Here is a tip though: don’t pull out halfway and block the traffic coming from the left while you sit and wait for someone to let you in on the right.

If this was the sort of blog where you get other people’s jokes recycled, I’d say something about tiny women in massive 4x4s at this point. Or BMWs.

But this is Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind. and everything here is fresh. Or if it isn’t, I can assure you, I came to the same conclusions independently.

Know your limits

When I am dictator, one of the first things I will do is make lorries straying out of the left-hand lane on the motorway a capital offence.

If your vehicle is restricted to, say, 55mph and the speed limit is, say, 70mph, YOU HAVE GOT NO BUSINESS OVERTAKING ANYTHING! Stay in the slow lane and do not block the whole frigging carriageway up until you have dragged your sorry arse round.

If you have a caravan, just stay off the motorway altogether. In fact, just stay at home. And don’t ever leave it.

Make other drivers aware of your idiocy

The best way to signal your lack of any kind of redeeming sense to other motorists is to buy a Porsche Cayenne or Range Rover Sport.

If you cannot afford one of these gold-plated wanker beacons (or if, despite being a congenital imbecile, you nevertheless have a vestigial degree of taste), your options are as follows:

1. Take a normal car (preferably an affordable Japanese model for authenticity) and put stickers in the front and back windscreens saying “Minicab”. On seeing this tell-tale sign, other drivers will not be surprised when you make a U-turn in front of them, mount the pavement to hit a cat or do something similarly deranged.
2. If you would rather be thought of as an arsehole than a maniac, buy a van.

And finally...

If you see a large man in black on a small, battered white Honda scooter, let him do what he wants. Get out of his way, cheerfully wave him past and try not to run him over. 

I Stamp on Your Duty

Of all the parasites that clamp their jaws onto the body of a home buyer, surely the worst is Stamp Duty.

The five figure sum I am going to have to hand over to the government when I buy my new house dwarfs every other vig I have to pay up put together, coming as it will at 3% of what I’m paying.

And for what?

A stamp. Possibly not even that.

Without wishing to arouse the teabag crowd, resistance to the Stamp Act 1765 on the grounds of “no taxation without representation” was one of the major catalysts of the American War of Independence.

Well, I can’t complain about not being represented in juridical terms – I have a vote and I usually use it, for what that is worth – but for its naked rapacity in expropriating people of money in return for absolutely nothing whatsoever, I don’t think Stamp Duty has changed much in 250 years, even if we do call it Stamp Duty Land Tax now.

I am going to have to give all of the House of Sicily’s savings – built up over the years, with all due tax paid before I got it and then again on anything the savings earned – to the government.

For nothing.

For them to simply say that what I am doing is not against the law.

OK, it's not the highest percentage tax take imaginable. Sure, VAT gives the government a 20% cut of everything you buy. On road fuel that’s around 65%, because not only have you got fuel duty, but you’ve ALSO got VAT! Don’t believe ministers when they blame oil prices.

But when it comes to reminding you that there’s rarely much difference between taxation and racketeering – when you have to wipe yourself out ALL OVER AGAIN after buying a house – it’s hard to beat Stamp Duty.

Did I mention that we’re moving house? Please expect more on what a horrendous process this is over the coming weeks and months. 

Where did all the jackdaws come from?

I used to sponsor a jackdaw.

Back in the early 1980s, my family and I were regular visitors to Norton Bird Gardens in Suffolk – a place which, I discover to my dismay, no longer exists.

Norton Bird Gardens, that is. I am reliably assured that Suffolk still exists. It has a website at any rate. 

Anyway, much as at today’s zoos you can pay hundreds of pounds to sponsor a lion or a dugong or something – for which you can expect one signed photo a year – so then for an undisclosed sum I got my name on a sign outside an enclosure housing one common British bird.

My brother, if I remember rightly (Mum? Dad? Corrections below please), sponsored a magpie.

Two other things stick in my memory about Norton Bird Gardens.

1. Trees laden with more crab apples than I have ever seen during the summer. I’m not sure if they came from here, but the memory of those trees is tied up inextricably with a memory of making what seemed to be a never-ending supply of crab apple jelly.
2. An upright complete circle of bricks. To me as an under-10, that was an architectural marvel far surpassing the pyramids, the Taj Mahal or anything else wrought by the hand of man. 

So, the jackdaw was called Jackie and the magpie was called Michael, and we preferred to look at them – and try to run around the brick circle – than all the exotic birds that made up the rest of the collection.

My parents must have felt then much like I did the other week when we took the kids to Blackpool Zoo (approx £50 plus travel) and all they wanted to do was go on a poxy climbing frame and chase geese.

And so it is that I feel in some way responsible – culpable even – for the astonishing proliferation of these two species of crow in this country over the last 30 years.

Magpies, it need hardly be said, are now everywhere. Back when I was a kid, the best chance you had of seeing a magpie was to look for a dead one hanging off a farmer’s gate.

Clearly the joy imparted by the sight of two of them was a function of their relative scarcity. Nowadays, it’s wishes, kisses and secrets never to be told all over the bloody place.

But until very recently, it was pretty unusual to see a jackdaw. You generally had to go to “proper countryside” away from the presence of human beings – at which point you got out of crow territory and into either rook or jackdaw land.

Woodlands? They belong to jays.  

Towns? Pigeons.

Motorway service station car parks? Pied wagtails. They should just change their name to “car park bird” and have done.

Is it just me or are jackdaws encroaching on human habitats? I’ve seen them near my house. I’ve seen them in Boston (which is borderline human habitat, I know).

What does it mean? Surely, this is YET ANOTHER sign of the impending end of the world. Only 252 days to go now. Make sure you befriend a jackdaw before then – you might need him. 

Troll Bait

Here, for your amusement, is a book Roger Jr selected from the library this week – “The Swirling Hijaab”.  

After seeing the Samantha Brick effect at work this week, I have figured out that publishing stuff which is going to wind people up into a frenzy of impotent rage is the way to the internet big time.

Because look – not only is this book about an Islamic thing, it also has a POLISH TRANSLATION! And it’s in a PUBLIC LIBRARY! For CHILDREN! In BRADFORD!

Start frothing, Mail readers!

Now, Roger Jr is in many ways representative of the bulk of the British public. That is to say, he can’t read and if he doesn’t get his own way immediately, he will throw a massive tantrum.

But you know what – when I read this to him last night, cultural difference wasn’t something he even noticed. It was just a nice story. Maybe there’s hope for the next generation after all, eh?

Bradford: Symbol vs Reality

Here in Yorkshire, there are two Bradfords. There are two places co-terminous in space but miles apart in other respects (or Respects, if you prefer) going by that name.

The first, which has been flung back into the public imagination in recent weeks, is “Bradford the Symbol” – Bradford, the illustration of whatever lesson the (inevitably London-based voice) you are listening to wishes to preach.

As long as that lesson revolves around (i) decline and stagnation or (ii) ethnic segregation, I should add.

So, we have the Bradford that proves David Cameron is out of touch – not something that requires a great deal of proving. We have the Bradford that proves Labour is finished in the north of England. And of course now we have Bradford the symbol of George Galloway’s spectacular victory/opportunism/ego (delete as your prejudices dictate).

We have the Bradford that proves that white working class people are awful. The Bradford that proves that poor people are all racists, and the Bradford that proves that they aren’t as well. British Bradford and not-British Bradford – take your pick, but just don’t come so close that you get your hands dirty with context!

I have particularly enjoyed the colourful depictions of “Bradree” or clan politics as if Bradford were in another world entirely.

I must confess to never having come across this myself, but hey I live in Bradford East not Bradford West and we have a nice, cost Lib Dem for an MP where we are. I’ve even heard we’re going to be made part of Leeds in the Boundary Review, so how’s about that for moving up in the world? Bradford won’t be my problem soon...

In contrast to symbolic Bradford, we have Bradford the reality. The reality of the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people, persistently made out to be victims or manipulated pawns with their individuality subsumed into their “group”.

It's supposed to look like this. 

Of course, Bradford has its problems and the pictures recently painted of symbolic Bradford are not false as such.

But they all just use Bradford to make another point, because nobody really wants to think about Bradford the reality for too long.  

Bradford may have the national attention for the moment, but if all we can’t rise above being just a sad example of what went wrong with (i) the cotton industry, (ii) Thatcherism, (iii) immigration, (iv) local politics or (v) methods of rhubarb cultivation, then it will be long forgotten before the public has finished picking the remnants of that pasty out of its teeth.

Westfield is not the only gaping hole in the centre of Bradford. The city can’t sit around waiting for London to rescue it. It’s not going to happen, with Galloway or without. While Bradford is a symbol of victimhood and a byword for awfulness it’s going to remain the way it is. 

Only if some dynamic local energy and motive force comes from within this city – or any city that isn’t London – can we hope to stop the relentless decline.

And that’s why, if you live in Bradford, you should REGISTER TO VOTE and then VOTE FOR an elected mayor on May 3^rd! Stop waiting for handouts and let’s start solving the problems ourselves!