It seems as though the roads are littered with young drivers that are quite literally causing havoc. Like many youngsters today, they care little about other people around them and behave terribly when driving their cars.
Before I get loads of complaints, I know that not all young people are like this. In fact it is probably the minority letting down the majority however it does seem that there is an increasing number of youths of the roads in modified cars out to cause trouble.
It is probably mainly 17 -19 year old drivers. They acquire a car (god knows how as they probably haven’t a GCSE to scrape together to get a to get the money) which, for some unknown reason, has to be a Vauxhall. 10 years ago it would have been a Nova, but now it must be a Corsa – usually around 7 – 8 years old. They then spend what must be thousands (again were the money comes from I don’t know) modifying various parts and adding as many chav car features as possible. These often include enhancements to the engine which make the car go way too fast. They then proceed to drive round like lunatics at tremendous speeds causing hassle and often fright to other road users.
Now don’t get me wrong I have speeded once or twice in the past but there is a difference between the everyday ‘slightly over the speed limit’ to what these youngsters are doing. There are seriously in danger of hurting others around them. I heard on the news this morning that the government are worried that they are going to hurt themselves. Well I say that isn’t the issue, if they are flying along urban roads at 80mph then they deserve to get hurt. My concern is that they are going to end up hurting or even killing someone quite innocent. What’s worse is that the attitude of some of the young people is that they seem not to care.
Some MPs this week have called for the driving age to be increased from 17 to 18. Sounds sensible. Older people are more mature and this thing wouldn’t happen, but this is punishing the respectable, law abiding 17 year old who has waited and waited in order to be able to drive, perhaps so that he/she can go to college etc.
Why not introduce the following in order to make youngsters drive safer on the road.
All cars should have speed limiters on them – lets face it, legally the fastest you can go on any public road is 70mph on the motorway, so why make cars that go faster?
People under the age of 21 should only be allowed to purchase and drive cars with a maximum engine size of 1400cc. This would reduce the performance of their cars, be cheaper for them to run and help the environment a little
People under the age of 21 should not be allowed to modify their cars in any way in terms of performance enhancing features e.g. spoilers, and engine tweaking
I just feel that it is people like this that are ruining things for others and it really frustrates me about living in this country at the moment. You go abroad and this just doesn’t happen.
Today was the annual sponsored walk with work. The walk is 10 miles and I was walking this year and not on a check point. It was very muddy.
The walk itself is a lovely walk along to banks of the River Ribble, in the Ribble Valley. It is not too hilly as it is along the river and it is usually a very enjoyable experience. Also we usually get back before the end of the day and therefore get to leave early.
However this year the walk was a little different due to all the rain that we have had pretty much across the UK over the last month or so. There were parts of the walk that were tremendously muddy and I was hanging on to trees in order to prevent myself from slipping.
Anyway we managed to (almost!) complete the walk in the slutch and now sat here typing I can feel my legs aching. I will sleep tonight!
It is 0536 in the morning and I can’t sleep, so like any true computer geek I decided to get up and do some research on my latest project. Podcasting.
It has been around for a while now and I have used podcasts to listen to on my iPod such as Jamie Oliver’s video podcasts and also the BBC Sport ones such as football focus but I have yet to try and create my own. You may well think “what on earth would the average Joe Blogs podcast?”. Nothing really but being a teacher the possibilities are endless.
First of all you need to understand what a podcast is. Many people will tell you that it is just any audio or video file however it is more than that. What makes a podcasts different is your ability to subscribe to that podcast so that you automatically receive the latest edition. This is done through RSS or Really Simple Syndication (which proved a little less simple than I had first thought!).
The first step is to record your podcast. This is the easy part as I have been recording audio (and video for that matter) for a while now. There are lots of free pieces of software out there, perhaps the best and most popular being Audacity. However I like to use Quicktime Pro, but I have just discovered (well I say discovered but I always knew it was there) Garage Band on my iMac. So you create and upload your MP3 file ready for your podcast feed.
The feed is the file that people subscribe to and contains information about your podcast and also the link to the podcast (MP3 file) itself. The standard very basic format for the feed needs to be like this (from about.com):
You replace the bits inside the tags (e.g. title, description and enclosure url) with what is relevant to your podcast. Then you just save this file with a name and the file ending .rss (e.g. feed.rss) Upload to your webserver and then visit the URL. In FireFox you are asked what you want to do with the feed.
You can even subscribe to your podcast in iTunes. Go to the ‘Advanced’ menu at the top and click ‘Open Stream’. Then just type in the URL of the .rss file you have created and the podcast will appear in your podcasts library from the left hand panel.
This is fighting but not as you know it. This week it is the annual bull fighting in the Spanish City of Pamplona. Fighting that I believe is cruel and wrong.
Bull fighting has gone on for centuries and is tradition in many parts of Portugal and Spain. The idea behind bull fighting is that the matador will perform a number of manoeuvres with the bull trying to look as in control as possible, and then this ends in the killing of the bull with a precisely placed sword. The bull is clearly angry at the treatment that it receives and therefore is trying to hurt the matador.
This week in Pamplona this ‘sport’ takes on a different form. Bulls are let free around the streets of the town with men being chased by them. The bulls are let free around a course that is created and usually lined with wooden panels to prevent the bulls going off course. These wooden panels have gaps in them in order to let people through to escape the bulls but not allow the bulls through. Anyone can take part in this and injures are often.
Why people find it exiting(?) being chased by a bull and then killing it I cannot understand. To me the injuries that they receive they deserve. Maybe if the hospitals refuse to treat those injured because of the ‘Running of the Bulls’, then the competitors would understand what they are doing to these animals that have done nothing wrong.
I am appalled at this activity. They call is a sport but surely it has to be classed as a blood sport. It is basically a form of severe animal cruelty. How can people do this to bulls or any animals? It makes me very upset to see this happening. I wanted to put some images on this page to show you what exactly happens, however when I did a Google search the images were really not very pleasant at all. After this I didn’t really want to search YouTube for fear of what I might see.
This is another of those activities that many humans take part in and that should be stopped. I am not a vegetarian and except that animals will need to die in order to feed the global population. However engaging in activities such as this where the animal is humiliated and then in-humanely killed is not right, and makes me extremely angry and upset.
The Lake District is a lovely place even in winter and so today with the weather finely OK, I was in Bowness for the day. Even though it was with work I had a little more relaxing time.
The journey was trouble free and we arrived at about 10:30 in the morning. After wandering around for about 30 minutes it was time for coffee (or in my case hot chocolate) and cakes. I choose a rather nice scone with some Jam and cream. Very nice.
After that we wandered the shops for a while, when the pupils that we took were completing some questionnaires. Bowness has lots of little shops here and there and it has a good mix of tourist and local facilities. I always enjoy a nosy around the outdoor shops to see how expensive a Bergaus jacket is and to remind myself that I cannot afford one!
It was then time to read the paper. I bought a Express and my colleague purchased the Mail. We found a suitable bench down by the lakeside and then read for around half an hour which was very relaxing.
Lunch was a pub lunch today. I choose Jacket Potato with coleslaw which I struggled to finish actually while others has BLTs and jacket potatoes. The weather was still fair and after lunch there was time for a quick stroll along the lakeside before setting off at 13:30.
The journey home was good even though it was tiring. I don’t know why it was tiring, but I was almost falling asleep all the way home. A read of the other paper managed to keep me awake. A good relaxing day out and a destination recommended to you all.
Watching the breakfast news as I do every morning, usually half a sleep, a story this morning caught my attention. The story was about schools now having the power to give teenage girls the morning after pill should they need it. It got me and others thinking about this issue.
Is this right I found myself asking? The government and other agencies have defennded the decision as they claim that it will cut the rate of teenage pregencies in the country. The idea being that the morning after pill could be used ‘just in case’. Should we be encouraging our youngsters to experiment at an early age with sex knowing that there is a ‘get out clause’ that I believe should only be available for true emergencies, not for people who couldn’t be bothered to think about contraception at the time. Also is this encouraging unprotected sex? The pill may remove the risk of pregnancy but not STIs.
Some have said “yes [to is this right?], but these youngsters are very immature and too young to take this responsibility”. To that I would agree [that they are immature], but also add that therefore surely they should not be having sex if they are too immature to take it seriously. The reason why they do this must come down to the parents, as they are responsible for their children.
When I was younger this just never happened. The issue of unwanted teenage pregnacies was too great a risk in order to risk getting involved with sex without contraception and when I was at school I can’t remember anyone being pregnant. This has certainly changed today.
Not being a parent it is perhaps niave of me to comment here, but surely if you have brought your child up well to respect morals and what is right and wrong then there would never be an instance of the need for the morning after pill. It is this that the government need to change and not providing emergency contraception or education. Lets face it, all pupils are taught contraception at school and there is nothing wrong with sex education. All pupils are also taught the dangers of smoking, which they already know about, yet a proportion of them still choose to smoke. Therefore education and emergency treatments are not treating the cause they are treating the symptoms, which is surely the wrong was to go about this.
As for the question of the morning after pill being available in schools without parents having to find out about it, I need to say just one thing. Currently in schools teachers and any other adults are not allowed to give a paracetamol to children without having to ring home and get the parents permission. However the government are now saying that teachers in schools can give a pupil a drug that will effectively terminate a life, and there is no need to involve parents? This must be the wrong way to go about it. Parental consent is needed to get rid of pain, whereas it is not needed to potentially end a life?
We all know that up and down the country we have had tremendous amounts of rain. Well today around Preston it was our turn for the unpredictable rainy weather.
I was sat watching the TV when all of a sudden the heavens opened. This was rain like I had never seen in a long time. From sunny blue skies, the sky suddenly turned black and hail getting on for the size of marbles was falling.
I went into the conservatory and the noise was deafening. It was also bad in the house. The budgies were not impressed with the noise and George and Jeremy looked very scared when I went into the garage after the rain had finally stopped.
We never used to get rain like this when I was young (not that I am old now of course!). I don’t think that the total amount of rain we are getting is much different it is just the pattern of rain. We now get rain in short sharp bursts were it rains a lot, whereas a decade ago we got steady rain for longer period.
This change in our weather patterns, which could be causing the increased amount of flooding all over the country, is surely yet another warning to the government, and everyone else for that matter that we need to act now in order to prevent major global climate change.
Today was the annual sponsored walk with work. The walk is 10 miles and I was walking this year and not on a check point. It was very muddy.
you just save this file with a name and the file ending .rss (e.g. feed.rss) Upload to your webserver and then visit the URL. In FireFox you are asked what you want to do with the feed.
This is fighting but not as you know it. This week it is the annual bull fighting in the Spanish City of Pamplona. Fighting that I believe is cruel and wrong.
Watching the breakfast news as I do every morning, usually half a sleep, a story this morning caught my attention. The story was about schools now having the power to give teenage girls the morning after pill should they need it. It got me and others thinking about this issue.