Wrong way round

November 28th, 2008 catnip

I have noticed a disturbing driving trend recently - people driving the wrong way around roundabouts!

I’m sure it started off by people taking a lazy shortcut when turning right at mini roundabouts when there’s no-one else about.

But I’ve seen people do this when there are other people waiting to enter the roundabout and also not just on the very small ‘mini’ roundabouts in residential areas.

I recently saw someone turn right from Wake Green Road (a B-road) into Hayfield Road in Moseley while I was waiting on College Road:

I regularly see people turning right at the roundabout where Spring Road meets Cateswell Road and Tynedale Road in Acock’s Green. I pass this roundabout on my way to and from work and I see this happen so regularly that I’m tempted to go and stand there with a video camera or ask the police to set up camp there!

A van nearly hit me recently at this roundabout. I was on Cateswell Road going straight across and he was coming down Tynedale Road indicating right. It was my right of way so I carried on going, but he decided to turn right without bothering to go round the roundabout and nearly hit me and had to break suddenly. Apart from the obvious problems of driving the wrong way round a roundabout, it mucks up the right of way. If he’d have gone right round the roundabout as he was supposed to, we both could have gone at the same time.

Bad driving habits are quickly formed, so my advice is don’t even take shortcuts on mini roundabouts when there’s no-one about, because you’ll end up doing it without thinking on a bigger, busy roundabout!

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Boycott Armani for supporting bullfighting

August 4th, 2008 catnip

Not that I can afford to buy armani anyway, but if I could I wouldn’t!

From Catwalk Queen:

Giorgio Armani’s decision to dress Spanish matador, Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, for the historic Goyesca de Ronda bullfight, has attracted protests from animal activists.

Do NOT get me started on bullfighting. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

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Noisy neighbour

July 17th, 2008 catnip

I have a problem with my next-door-neighbour playing music extremely loudly. I feel powerless to do anything.

Last night (Weds) she played really loud music until 3am. I have been struggling to stay awake at work today. It’s not the time of day/week that’s the problem, it’s the volume. I don’t want to hear someone else’s music at that volume at any time of day.

The problem has been going on intermittantly since we moved into our house about 2 years ago. I phoned the police last night and was told that they don’t deal with noisy neighbour, which I’d kind of already guessed might be the case. I don’t really understand why they don’t deal with noise. After all loud music has been used as a torture weapon by some. My neighbour plays music so loud that the bass sounds like someone is hammering on the wall. I had about 7 hours of that yesterday when I was trying to sleep.

Anyway, the official route is to contact Environmental Health. We did contact them last September and their procedure is to send a letter out to the perpetrator and then get you to fill in a diary for the following two weeks. Presumably they know that after they have received the letter they might shut up for a couple of weeks. The problem did seem to get a little better for a little while, but then she was back at full volume. We didn’t do anything as the problem is quite intermittant.

It seems to have come to a head again this week, so I rang the council to see if I could use the diary forms that they sent me last time, but of course I can’t. They had closed the case. How convenient. Now they have to send another letter out and we have to keep the diary in the following two weeks, which will presumably be the quietest two of the year, following receipt of a warning letter.

I’m guessing the fact that they’ve sent out a letter before will hold no weight at all for my case. We’ll see what happens…

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