Archive for the 'police' Category

Car Wars: Greater Manchester Police Trash a VW Golf R

Published on 27 January 2012 in News, police, Stupidity, Syndicated and Vehicles. Closed

I was interested by the evolving story of how a policeman from Greater Manchester Police managed to spectacularly wreck a new VW Golf R in the wee small hours of the morning recently.

It started with a report on the BBC News website that told us that:

“The Greater Manchester Police officer crashed the £33,000 VW Golf R on Wharfside Way, Old Trafford, at about 01:50 GMT on 15 December.

The driver was taken to hospital and treated for a back injury.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesman refused to reveal details of how the crash happened.

He said that “as a result of the incident, GMP is reviewing its policy on officers test driving cars”.

The officer, who has recovered from his injuries, is currently suspended from driving duties while an internal investigation takes place.”

The photo of the car shows just how much damage was done: not just a little bit of superficial damage as you might expect from a shunt on an urban road.

It'll polish out with a bit of T-Cut

Now Section 19 of the Road Safety Act 2006 amends Section 87 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 which grants police an exemption from speed limits when a vehicle is being used for police purposes. “Police purposes” is a pretty wide-ranging description but you do have to wonder what on earth this officer was doing at that time of the morning at the sort of speeds he must have been doing to cause that sort of damage whilst, apparently, testing the car for possible police use.

But the story gets better: apparently the driver was PC Paul Fletcher who was regularly seen on the TV programme “Car Wars” doing high speed chases.

PC Paul Fletcher on "Car Wars"

And GMP stated that no other vehicle was involved, despite emerging reports that in fact the whole thing was caught on camera by another high performance car out at the same time on the same piece of road when PC Fletcher – a trained driver, remember - lost control on a roundabout. Hmm. Racing each other, perhaps? That’s surely what the police would say if you or I were doing the same thing?

Greater Manchester Police are, supposedly, reviewing their policies in this regard but surely testing a vehicle would be better done on, say, the MIRA test facilities which are purpose-built for such testing?

Maybe next time I get a pull for speeding – at a significantly lower speed than that which would have led to a car being written off so badly as the Golf – I could just say I was testing its suitability? Ah wait: I don’t have the exemption they’ll be hiding behind whilst driving as dangerously as they do…

Lost and Found

Published on 27 March 2010 in Insurance, police, recovered, Syndicated and thieving cunts. Closed

Well, well, well.

This morning I received a phone call from the Met. Wilf has been found somewhere in Lincolnshire!

No news on its condition or anything and of course it now belongs to the insurance company but if it’s not been totalled, I may well see if I can buy it from them. It should be worth less as a stolen recovered vehicle anyway and of course it’s almost a year older, but it’s worth asking.

In the meantime, I’ve got an appointment for early next week to give a statement to the police to say that it certainly wasn’t being used or stored with my permission so they can (hopefully) prosecute the scrote that had it.

N-N-N-N-Nineteenth

Published on 11 March 2010 in Insurance, MID, police, ST200 and Syndicated. Closed

I had the delivery date confirmed to me today: the car is available for collection on Wednesday, 17th March but because that would mean me driving up to Grimsby and back the same midweek day to collect it, I’ve postponed collection until the 19th. D-8 days and counting!

In the meantime, however, I’d better get used to being pulled by the police with threats to impound the ST200 as for some reason it isn’t showing up in the MID as being insured even though it’s currently on the dealer’s insurance policy.

Humberside Police – Speed Enforcement Breaching Guidelines?

Published on 22 September 2009 in police and speed. 0 Comments Tags: police, scamera.

Last night I was travelling through Waltham when I drove past one of Blunderside’s finest trying to catch speeding motorists.

It was dark, around 9.00pm, and in contravention of ACPO guidelines, the officer was not wearing his high visibility jacket and his marked car was concealed from the main road.

Looks like he was down on his quota…

I probably wasn’t speeding and in any event there was another, similar-sized vehicle I was following (see those guidelines again), so I’ll be very surprised if a ticket comes my way.

If You’ve Done Nothing Wrong…

Published on 11 August 2009 in police, Roads, speed and Travel. 0 Comments

One of the most trite sayings that sheeple come out with from time to time when human rights issues come up is “if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you’ve nothing to fear”.

I always counter that with “define ‘wrong’ now and in the future”. What may be acceptable now might not be acceptable in the future.

Taking speeding and speed limits. Now I regularly speed but I believe I am a safer driver when ‘pressing on’ given that my attention is fully on the road ahead, traffic, etc. The other trite line trotted out by the Government is that “speed kills”. If that truly was the case, there would be no Traffic Division police officers alive, would there? It’s the inappropriate use of speed that’s the issue, but that’s more difficult to police without human intervention.

The Nanny State has announced that it intends to reduce speed limits where there is a higher risk of accidents but that’s bollocks as usual: speed limits will simply be reduced for no good reason as a revenue generator.

A case in point: the section of road between Wymondham and Thickthorn Services on the old A11 in Norfolk (now the B1172) used to have a 40mph limit in Wymondham, then a national limit, then a 50mph limit through Hethersett before becoming a national limit again.

Over time, the 50mph limit has been extended towards Wymondham despite there being no additional housing or changes in use, etc.

I noticed recently that the limits have now been changed to a 40mph limit in Wymondham, then a 50mph limit then a 40mph limit through Hethersett. Why’s this?

Similarly other rural roads in Norfolk have had 50mph limits imposed despite no changes of use or apparent increases in crashes.

Ridiculous!

Norfolk Traffic Police

Published on 12 June 2009 in AA, police, Syndicated, traffic and Travel. Closed

Thank you very much indeed, Norfolk Constabulary. Thank you for costing my company a day’s lost fees. Thank you for wasting £60 of my money for the hotel room I’m in now. Thank you for doing absolutely sod-all to help the hundreds of motorists your incompetence incovenienced.

What am I talking about?

Today I had a dental appointment in Wymondham at 11.15am, so I left London in plenty of time. By 10.50am, I was 20 minutes away (maximum) on the dual carriageway section of the A11 Thetford By-Pass between the Brandon and Watton interchanges when I had to come to a halt. Why? Some dickhead driving a tractor and towing a trailer of vegetables had managed to turn the whole thing over and blocked the southbound carriageway. Remember, I was heading northbound.

Like a well-oiled team of professionals, the police’s traffic division and the Transport Agency’s Incident Support Unit had mobilised to get things sorted out.

Between then and 11.45am, I sat in stationary traffic and watched as most of the police vehicles drove off having done … er … nothing at all. One police motorcycle went down the southbound carriageway, around the roundabout and then back up the southbound carriageway the wrong way for no good reason at all. Maybe he was getting a bit warm in the summer sun and just fancied going for a spin to cool himself down. Bless!

Traffic announcements confirmed that the southbound carriageway was blocked and that there were long southbound queues. Apparently the traffic going north was slow as people were slowing down to take a look, according to the AA team.

Obviously that was as far removed from reality as the Labour Party are from unity. As I discovered when I did eventually get past the next roundabout, the southbound lane was actually flowing pretty well. And no-one was rubbernecking in my lane – we simply couldn’t get past the roundabout because of the southbound traffic effectively turning it into a lane of southbound traffic.

In the olden days, a policeman or policemen would stand there directing traffic like human traffic lights to ensure that traffic flowed as freely as possible every way, but instead this bunch of lazy idiots just wanted to sit around with their thumbs up their arses doing absolutely sod-all.

And as a result, all the northbound traffic had been at a standstill for almost an hour.

So I missed my appointment thanks to their complete lack of any positive action. Well done you! It’s really no surprise I have absolutely zero respect for them. They always set low standards and consistently fail to achieve them in my mind.

I won’t even start to go on about how South Blunderside Humberside Police have failed to take any real action against a harassing, violent and abusive drunkard (with overtones of child abuse)…

And thanks to the AA’s radio traffic reporters for rubbing it in by reporting absolute crap and insulting those of us who were stuck in the jams the police had caused.

Met. Police and the Tamil Protests

Published on 1 June 2009 in government, lies damn lies and statistics, police, Public and Syndicated. Closed

According to the BBC News website, the Metropolitan Police says it has spent almost £8M monitoring the Tamil protest at Parliament Square – this was up to 19 May 2009. According to the TV news tonight, the cost is now £9M and this is being used as the basis for reviewing allowing peaceful protests.

ORLY?

So it cost £8M for 43 days. Or £186,000 a day. For what?

Looking more closely at the report, they claim that:

“About half of the total spent policing the demonstration – £3.72 million – was from additional policing costs, including overtime, the Met said.”

So that’s £86,500 a day on overtime. Nice litttle earner, eh? I mean, how many policemen are on duty there every day? 100? 200? That’s a lot of overtime or a disproportionate number of policemen.

And that leaves a balance of £100,000 a day for … er … um … doughnuts? Bacon rolls? Who knows? The policemen are already employed, the vans are already bought and will just be parked up there most of the day. So what – precisely – is this claimed additional expenditure on? Mind you, when they closed off Weston Street after a stabbing for a day or two, one of the few police vehicles on the scene was a Met. Police burger van. I kid you not!

Sounds like bollocks to me…