.. well there’s a shock!
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Nottingham City Council’s tax on workers..
Nottingham City Council?
Nottingham City Council get on my nerves. After a petition lodged with the Prime Minister’s website, they released a patronising and ridiculous statement attempting to justify their punitive revenue generating scheme levelled at the honest workers of Nottingham. I sent them a long and ranty email about it, for all the good it will do… you should do the same. wpl@nottinghamcity.gov.uk
The quoted bits are extracts from the statement issued by the robbing so and so’s Nottingham City Council puppet spokesperson…
Dear Sir/Madam,
It is with no small degree of dismay that I read the recent response to the petition submitted to the Prime Minister’s website from a representative of Nottingham City Council in relation to the Working Place Parking Levy proposal; which despite sensible objections appears to be pressing ahead to impose a new taxation on a subset of Nottingham and it’s surrounding area’s population.
I have copied sections of the reponse below, and annotated where I have queries relating to the various points discussed; I would appreciate if these concerns could be considered in the ongoing progression of the scheme, because to state that I am dissatisfied with the explanation provided by Jon Collins would be an extreme understatement.
“But we’ve got to keep the city moving. Forecasts tell us that car use is set to increase, congestion levels will get much worse and, ultimately, over the next 20 years oil production is going to peak. Any city that does not plan to meet these challenges is not planning ahead for sustainable growth.
People all over the UK are beginning to wake up to the fact that we’ve got to reduce our reliance on the car. Congestion already costs our local economy £160m every year. The traffic jams are literally putting the brakes on our competitiveness and, if left unchecked, our city could grind to halt in a fume filled traffic jam – not good for businesses, not good for residents, not good for anybody, even those driving the cars.”
If the WPL is designed to address congestion, how do you propose to raise revenue to pay for transport improvements, given that presumably you are hoping to encourage fewer people who happen to be unfortunate enough to work within the Nottingham City boundary to take their car to work. What percentage of the traffic active on the roads of Nottingham ends up parking within Nottingham City Boundaries?
How does this short-sighted and reactionary initiative address traffic flowing into and out of the City Boundary? How does it address the increasing amount of parents taking their children to school? It doesn’t – I don’t believe that this scheme is effectively targetting a suitable percentage of the traffic flowing through our city to be in a position to make a robust claim to be a measure to address congestion.
“Businesses tell us they want a public transport system fit for the 21st century. With the Workplace Parking Levy that’s exactly what they’ll get; the Levy is designed to pay for:
· A tram system that spans the entire city
· A modern railway station
· More and better Link buses serving employment sites
· Help and assistance for businesses to implement the LevyThe Levy is a small stick with some really big juicy carrots. It will provide real public transport alternatives, making it easier for people to choose to hop on a bus or tram and leave their cars at home. Importantly, with more people using public transport, those who continue to drive will enjoy less congested roads.”
So those road users who don’t get several hundred pounds written from their salary will benefit; that is beyond doubt. Those people fortunate enough to live within the influence of the proposed public transport links will benefit. Those of us who live outside of these areas and are not served by sufficient public transport will simply be expected to lose a portion of their salary. That doesn’t feel like a carrot to me, and given that a sizeable proportion of the traffic on the roads that will not be punished by this not-so-stealth tax, I’m dubious about how much improvement in congestion there will be.
“The Levy isn’t an additional tax or convenient revenue-generator; it’s a demand management tool which is directly linked to real and tangible benefits, and part of a coherent set of measures that give genuine alternatives to those traveling.”
It is a tax. It is a convenient revenue generator. If you were serious about addressing congestion you would introduce a congestion charge; this would raise revenue from all road users, not a subset. It would also involve investment in infrastructure to implement it (cameras, processing etc) which is why I presume the Council has elected to ‘pass the buck’ to the employers of Nottingham, who they expect to adminster the cashflow of the initiative on their behalf. It is frankly insulting to suggest it is anything other than this.
“Alternative funding sources could, and may, contribute towards public transport in Nottingham. However these sources don’t offer a viable alternative to the Levy as they require further legislation, or are limited in the level of funding they generate.”
It is a funding source, which sounds remarkably like revenue generator, which was denied in only the previous paragraph!
“Ultimately the vast majority of congestion in Nottingham is caused by commuters driving to a free parking space at one of the 500 large employers of the public and private sectors. I believe it’s only fair that these larger employers stop being part of today’s problem and start being part of tomorrow’s solution.”
Or alternatively these larger employers could decide that they would prefer to relocate their business at the first opportunity, leaving a lack of jobs in the region and a disaffected local population.
“And let’s be clear, the Levy is a charge on the employer not the staff; it’s up to the employers to decide whether to pass the charge on. The Levy also won’t apply to businesses with ten or fewer parking spaces because they are more likely to be younger or smaller businesses which we need to encourage and support.”
So we can feel safe and secure in the knowledge that the council washes its hands of whether a business chooses to absorb an exorbitant bill for something they wouldn’t have to pay in a more forward-thinking city; or we can feel alientated and embittered that our employer has passed the cost on to their employees.
“Last year 68% of Nottingham City residents who took part in the consultation supported the Levy and the transport benefits it will bring. Of course there are those who objected, there always will be, but here in Nottingham we’re prepared to take tough decisions for the long-term benefit of the city, and that’s exactly what the Levy does.”
How were people recruited into the consultation process? How widely was it advertised? Research methodologies such as these are not representative; and since – as described above – the levy targets a minority of Nottingham’s road users, it isn’t remotely surprising that the figures were able to be presented in a manner which appears to be a majority. If you don’t work within the Nottingham City boundaries, or don’t drive, then why would you not agree with a mass investment in public transport funded by a minority of road users?
I still fail to see the tangible benefits; aside from an improvement in public transport for a subset of the population lucky enough to be served by the proposed extensions, and perhaps a minor decrease in congestion, I am at a loss to understand how this will actually improve the metrics which the scheme is proposed to – ie, congestion, because such a proportion of road users will remain unaffected and content to use their cars and vans just as they had been doing before.
It is clear from the rhetoric and transparent attempts to reinforce the false aims of this levy that regardless of common-sense objections, they will be ignored and a repetition of the same ill-conceived justifications will be repeated ad infinitum, and the levy will be put into place, and the hundreds of employees of Nottinghams companies will bear the brunt of the cost.
I can’t express clearly enough how disaffected I am with the way my home City is being managed; I am very proud of where I come from, of our heritage and of our City in its current incarnation. It’s genuinely upsetting to read false media portrayals of Nottingham as some kind of drug-addled gun-crazy crime zone. I had always envisioned that I would be happy to remain living and working in the City for my lifetime – but increasingly I cast envious glances at other cities, whose councils don’t choose to disadvantage its’ hard working population, who don’t alienate large employers from wishing to base themselves with them, who offer genuine initiatives to make the environment a better place rather than cynically seek to extort money from people already under pressure from raising prices of fuel, amenities and groceries.
It is genuinely heartbreaking to consider my home in this way; but policies such as these leave little room for misinterpretation, whatever propaganda or spin is applied in a slapdash and inconsistent fashion in press releases or responses to petitions.
I hope somewhat vainly that some common sense in this issue will prevail; because I really genuinely fear for the future prosperity of Nottingham should initiatives like this be allowed to proceed.
Sometimes it’s good to let it all out! It’s ironic that the council desperately clings on to the imagery of Robin Hood, I wonder what he would have made of such corruption?
Since sending the email, it’s clear that the “68% of people agreed” with statistic is based on people who live in Nottingham City boundaries – ie. those probably, in greater Nottingham, less likely to depend on cars, and more likely to depend on public transport. The beneficiaries of the scheme, not those being punished. Also, conveniently, the electorate for the City Council of course. As a friend and colleague pointed out, Nottingham City Council witters about the full population of Nottingham to be considered for misleading crime statistics – then uses the said same methods to try to justify their robbery of non-City-bound motorists trying to earn a living.
Bastards.
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I saw a sparrow hawk today!
Today I awoke to a strange noise; concerned that we were being burgled I stagged upright from my slumbers, and looked out the spare bedroom window – which was kind of wear the noise was coming from – only to find what I believe to be a female Sparrow Hawk looking up at me from the flat roof outside the window, having just felled what looked like a Dove from the feathers scattered around.
Something like the scene I encountered this morning, but our bird had lost its' kill!
She was looking at me, the yellow eyes enabling me to identify the type of bird more easily. Just as I was reaching for my phone to try to get a picture, she was startled and flew off. It was this point that I noticed I couldn’t actually see the body of the kill, so whether it was actually a smaller bird the hawk could take away with her, or whether the unlucky Dove had managed to escape, I can’t be sure. Even if so, I can’t imagine the poor Dove lasted much longer given the number of feathers that had been scattered.
It’s quite exciting to have a bit of real life wildlife shenanigans going on on our very doorstep! Even if I was too slow with my phone to get a proper picture of it!
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Is this the most sinister advert ever?
Now, I ain’t no prude… quite the opposite in general – but this advert popped on to telly the other night and flummoxed me completely. It’s disturbing. Disturbing and wrong. Isn’t it? This is actually the French version, but the one I saw was pretty much the same.
In other news I spent around 20 hours frantically turning the house upside down because I thought I’d lost Rich‘s season ticket, which I’ve taken charge of whilst he’s busy in between Russia and Mongolia (with no car now!)… it transpires that it had somehow fallen from the chest of drawers upon which it was residing, and ended up lodged between two of the drawers. The only way I discovered this was a last ditch desperate measure of taking the back off the chest of drawers.
Forest, being the customer-centric robbing bastards that they are, would have made me (or Rich, but obviously I would have paid him!) pay for the full cost of the season ticket (less one game, as I wouldn’t have told them ’til after tomorrow) had it been lost. Most other clubs just charge a nominal administrative fee, which is fair enough. Robbing bastards.
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How to freak people out thanks to Facebook!
You can have quite a bit of fun with the ubiquitous nature of Facebook. For example, if you are reading this on a computer where you have logged into the social networking site, you should be seeing your profile picture to the left over there. Freaky, huh?
I had some fun on my Forest forum earlier, indeed, it is ongoing. I changed by ‘avatar’ (the picture that appears next to messages you post) to be the Facebook photo of whoever is viewing the post in question. Cue a flurry of private messages demanding to know why I have a picture of them in my avatar.
Quite amusing really, since all I can see on the forum is my own inane face grinning from a collapsable camping chair which makes up my own Facebook profile picture.
So, how do you do it? Well, the URL I used in this post to insert the image including a status message was:
For most Internet forums, to create an avatar you would be better off using something more like this:
http://www.facebook.com/badge.php?&items%5B%5D=badge_profile_pic&format=png
Although be prepared for the questions to ensue, particularly if – like me – you put some text under saying “a picture of my latest stalking victim”, only to be greeted with private messages of concern saying things like “Why do you have a picture of my 2 year old daughter as your avatar?”. Well, actually, I don’t!
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The customer’s always right…?
‘Customer service’ is a difficult thing to achieve. It’s a bit of a buzzword for corporatedom… but does anybody really think what it is? Well, really, it’s about giving people what they want, for a price they think is fair (or better still, a bargain!), and the icing on the cake is to throw in something unexpected to delight them. All done with friendly politeness, but not descending into uncomfortable obsequiousness (I will never take pleasure in a person older than me calling me Sir!).
That’s my take on it anyway, as a customer, that’s generally what floats my boat. I suspect many people’s ideas of what constitutes good service might vary slightly – but I think the core of addressing your needs, for a price you’re prepared to pay and polite/friendly are pretty core to all but perhaps a sado-masochist or similar. That might not be good service at the ‘Be a Gimp for the day’ emporium, for example, but that’s another train of thought entirely…
So anyway, over the last couple of weeks I have encountered what I believe to be the very Apex of my experience of such things.
It all started when the dreaded note popped up on my car’s display – “Service C due in x miles”.. naturally the number of miles was sufficient to procrastinate away for a while; but after a while I started to think about actually planning getting the work done. I checked the prices at the Mercedes dealership, was revived from the floor, and then decided to opt for something else. You see, having had work done there before, they’re very good – and they’re polite (teetering on the brink of fawning, though), but so fecking expensive it’s untrue.
Which is why I was chuffed as hell to discover MB Nottingham. If you have a Mercedes in Nottingham, or indeed if you are unfortunate enough to live in Derby or Leicester, then it’s worth keep these guys details. I dropped them an email from work, they got back to me pretty quickly quoting a price much much much lower than the main dealership – still using Mercedes trained mechanics, and still using Mercedes approved parts. That was me sold, so I duly booked in.
They had offered to collect and return my car, but I opted instead to drop my car in on a saturday morning – upon doing so, was offered a lift to and from the City Centre rather than hanging around or making my own way somewhere else – how cool! So I mooched around Nottingham for an hour and a half or so before getting a call from the garage, a few filters and things not included in the service were worn out, did I want to replace them too? Also the brake pads were 95% worn and the front tyres were heading to be borderline legal soon…
… “Argh!” thinks cynical I, “This is where they make the cash!”… not so, having asked for a breakdown of prices, the service, filter replacements and the brake pads would come to a smidgen over the Mercedes service alone. I had asked them to hang fire on the tyres so I could shop around a bit. So, another call when it was ready, and a car waiting to pick me up where we’d arranged – rock and roll! They hadn’t got the brake pads they needed, so had ordered them – so I booked the car in for the following weekend, and asked for a price on the tyres too – which were, as it happens, very competitive too, so I asked them to do that too.
Fast forward to this saturday, I again took the car to them, confirmed everything and handed over the keys – and as an afterthought asked them to check the wheel alignment for me, as I’d noticed it pulling slightly to the side. This was all agreed, and this time I opted to wander from the garage down by the canal to get a coffee and some breakfast whilst the work was going on.
The bottom line is I got what I needed – my car being serviced, as well as some needed maintainance both pointed out to me and remedied once I’d given it the go ahead, I wouldn’t say I was happy to hand over the amount of money it cost, but I know had I taken it to the Mercedes garage it would’ve cost a great deal more – so I do believe I paid a fair price. The team I dealt with were all polite and friendly without being obsequious, and – to top it all off – a follow-up letter arrived in the post in between appointments with a card entitling me to free breakdown cover from them for a year.
They come highly recommended from me.
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Useful!
I’ve got a couple of hours to kill, having dropped of my car at the garage; hmm, I think to myself, I don’t know Lenton very well, where’s the nearest greasy spoon to get me some breakfast?
iPhone to the rescue! Making use of the Vicinity application, I asked for a café near me, and it duly obliged an easily walkable example complete with integration into Google Maps, providing my start point, my destination and current location en route!
So now I’m arsing around posting this whilst supping a nice cup of tea!
Categories: Blog, iPhone / iPad / Mac
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A new record!
I wrote before about using the live mpg measure in my car as a bit of boredom relief when commuting; well today I’m proud to say I’ve smashed all previous records! Normally I’m ecstatic (well, okay, quietly smug) if I exceed 50mpg on my cross-city commute!
Given the ongoing concerns over ridiculous fuel prices, it’s a good thing to make it last a bit longer! Of course, it’s absolutely no coincidence at all that the school summer holidays started this week, now is it? 🙂
So I can feel a little better about my carbon emissions for today at least! With reports of fuel prices coming down tomorrow, fingers crossed I can save even more on ever seemingly-spiralling fuel costs!!
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Blogging on the go..
Thanks to a nifty iPhone plugin, I can now update my infrequently updated blog whereever I may be!
Utterly pointless, in my case, but still cool!!
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When I were a lad…
This isn’t a ‘things ain’t want they used to be’ kind of ponder.
Far from it.
Anyone who knows me even reasonably well will know that I’m a big fan of technology and gadgets; and it was upon sorting out my portable music into a state of anally-retentive organisedness that I started thinking about all things technological. It’s pretty amazing how things have changed in my relatively short time on the planet on the consumer technology front.
The first computer we had was a Spectrum 48k when I would’ve been about 9 or 10; something like that. It wasn’t an integral part of life, more an interesting diversion. I can remember when I first encountered a video tape, thinking it was most peculiar. Indeed, when my Granny first got a Microwave which we had assumed was a television in the kitchen – how decadent that seemed!
And so, as I was arranging my music into portability, I noted a few stats down – 2171 songs, lasting 5.7 days currently sit on my iPhone. They’re all labelled up properly with id3 tags and album artwork, and I was thinking that if you rolled back 20 years or so, how much effort you’d need to go to without the Internet, a device like an iPhone and a laptop with iTunes to compile a reasonably-sized music collection for portability.
Well, you could’ve just about had a cassette-based walkman I suppose. Now assuming you had 12″ vinyl or tapes of the music you wanted, or – and I remember doing this – perhaps you tape the songs you like from the radio – you could’ve made a stack of tapes to carry with you to accompany a walkman. Let’s be generous and assume you are using C90 tapes that lasted an hour and a half – to have 5.7 days of music you’d need not only your bulky Walkman, but you’d need an amazing 91 tapes. It’s hardly portable is it.
Also Lord help you if you wanted to find a specific song; you would have had to meticulously written the track listings on the tape inlays and memorised some kind of order; and then undergone a series of rewinding and fastforwarding to find the song in question. And shuffling is pretty much out of the question. So how amazing is it the leaps and bounds we’ve come on in just those two short decades? It is bloody phenominal when you think about it like that, and that’s not even starting to scratch the surface of the ability to stream media over the airwaves etc.
I can’t wait to see what insanely advanced gadgets we have in the next 20 years!
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Goddammit 
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