Olympic traffic hell

OK, it’s not that bad yet. And I mostly commute by bike from Marylebone Station to the City, so I’m not trying to drive around London.

But two issues really concern me:

More danger

First, the only dedicated bike route from the West End to get to Marylebone Station has been closed – just to save a few seconds at the lights on Marylebone Road. Now, in order to legally cycle to Marylebone Station I have to turn right onto Gloucester Place – the main northbound route in that part of London – and do battle with dozens of buses, lorries and motorists – and the bus lane has been painted out so no protection there. At least I can cross Marylebone Road easily because left turns have been banned, and then I have to turn left into Dorset Square.

It’s possible, but it’s MUCH more dangerous than the normal route along Paddington St, Upper Montague Street, York Street and Enford Street. Not only is Enford Street blocked, but the lights have been changed so there’s no phase to go north – a phase which usually lasts only five or six seconds in about a 3-minute total sequence.

Madness.

Inconsiderate road works

I understood that all roadworks had been suspended in London during the Olympics, but Islington doesn’t appear to know that. There are road works on both east and west sides of Finsbury Square, in particular the eastern end of Chiswell Street is completely closed to all traffic. I couldn’t find anything about this closure in the consents on Islington’s website, so I emailed and asked how long these works would be continuing. The reply was, “the road closure is on a rolling programme of works that are due to finish on 12th September 2012” so we’ll have road works in Islington right through the Olympics and Paralympics then.

Really helpful.

I’m sure I don’t have as severe disruption as others, but what I do encounter seems to indicate a lack of thought for the consequences, particularly for cyclists.

Sort out passports, UKBA, for the country’s sake

The news today is full of reports of 2-hour queues at Heathrow to get passports inspected.

I remember the halcyon days of international travel, back in the 1990s, when getting back into the UK after a trip abroad was a breeze. You stood in line for a few moments with a queue of maybe 10 or 12 people ahead of you. The passport official (now the UK Border Agency of course) took a cursory glance at your passport and you were in.

Back in the halcyon days of travel only getting into the United States was tricky and time consuming. Today getting back into the UK,

It’s hard being young

It was George Bernard Shaw, that most quotable of authors and playwrights, who said, “Youth is wasted on the young”. He had a point, but the young don’t have it easy, and while I wouldn’t mind having youth, I wouldn’t want to be young again today.

Getting an apprenticeship isn’t easy

My nephew has not had the easiest start in life. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he grew up as part of a loving family, has a doting mother and four gorgeous siblings, and a fantastic auntie and uncle who took him on all sorts of adventures (guess who that might be). But he suffered with “glue ear” when he was young, ended up having to have grommets and now has mild hearing loss; he also has mild dyslexia. So his education wasn’t the easiest. He dropped out of sixth-form college after having been badly hurt in a car accident – as an innocent pedestrian I should add.

Since when he’s had a series of jobs, none of which really offered him the career potential that he is capable of. Earlier this year, inspired by a friend of his, he decided he’d like to qualify as an electrician, and started looking for an apprenticeship.

Well, you would think, with all the politician’s talk about creating new apprenticeships, that wouldn’t be too hard. What they don’t tell us is that in order to qualify for an apprenticeship, and register at a suitable educational establishment, you have to have a job first! Yes, you have to persuade an employer to take you on, pay you a sum of money (the amount seems to vary between different colleges, but it doesn’t have to even be as much as the minimum wage in some instances) and then agree to release you one day a week for three years to enable you to get your qualification.

How does having to find a job before you can become an apprentice help create jobs?

Anyway, Mrs Meadowend emailed just about everyone we know over the summer; some of our friends responded very helpfully (you know who you are – and thank you) and my nephew secured a couple of interviews. We were all delighted when he was offered a job, as an apprentice trainee, at an electrical engineers and contractors near where we live in Buckinghamshire. The company has been very generous; they are paying him a bit more than the minimum wage and also for the day he spends at college – neither of which they are obliged to do. So he registered at our local college for his apprenticeship training just in time at the start of term in September.

Now, find somewhere to live

OK, that’s one hurdle over. Now he, his partner and adorable four-month old daughter (I know, I am her great uncle, so I would say that, but she is adorable) need to find somewhere to live nearby – they had been staying with Mrs M’s sister – nearly an hour’s drive away when the roads are clear – not really conducive to getting to work by 7:30am.

And here we encounter another problem. There’s no chance round here of them finding social housing, so they have to find somewhere to rent in the private sector. Because he’s on such a low wage, and his partner is on maternity leave, their total income entitles them to receive housing benefit.  ”That’s handy.” you might think.

However recieving housing benefit automatically disqualifies you from renting from most private landlords! You see, if you’re a private landlord there’s a good chance your insurance won’t cover you if you rent to someone with income from a “third party”. This is because councils, which are responsible for paying housing benefit, often change their mind and reduce their estimate of the rentable value of a property, and therefore reduce the benefit. So as a landlord you may have accepted a tenant in good faith, believed their income plus their housing benefit would enable them to afford your rent only to find that your tenant, through no fault of their own, suddenly becomes unable to pay the rent you’ve agreed with them. And you may have difficulty terminating their tenancy agreement. Because this has happened a lot many insurance policies now implicitly exclude those receiving housing benefit.

I guess insurance companies gratefully accept premiums and then do their utmost to avoid paying out if they can possibly find a hole through which to wriggle.

So my nephew, partner, and adorable daughter are staying with us. And may be staying with us for a while yet.

It’s no surprise that young people won’t leave home these days. Many of them can’t if they wanted to. All this while they’re still idealists, consider themselves to be immortal, and believe the world is a wonderful place if only us old people would stop screwing it up for them.

It’s hard being young – I wouldn’t want to do it again.

Is F1 really a sport?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching motor racing, and I particularly enjoy Formula 1 when the outcome of a race is being seriously contested. But this season the introduction of DRS (drag reduction system) following on from KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) in 2009 makes we wonder what’s going on, and whether F1 really is a sport.

While all sports can suffer rule changes during the off season – rugby has particularly suffered from this, and football (soccer) notably had the controversial offside rule changed a couple of years ago – changing the rules and introducing technology that gives the slower driver an advantage over the chap infront doesn’t seem like cricket to me.

IMHO winning in Formula 1 is now primarily about the cars. A good driver in a great car (Jenson Button in the Brawn car in the 2009 season for example) can dominate much of the season, but actually in the second half of that season, when the rest of the teams managed to replicate the Brawn’s diffuser, the difference evaporated and Jenson managed to win the title only because he’d established such a commanding lead in the first half of the season.

Conversely a great driver in a mediocre car just gets left behind – Rubens Barrichello proved just how good a driver he is when he was Michael Schumacher’s team-mate at Ferrari, coming runner-up twice. But in an underperforming Williams, he’s just not in contention.

Adam Parr, chairman of Williams said:

“For us to design and build the two cars that we will have on the grid on Sunday here, without putting an engine in them, without putting a driver in them, without accounting for the 70 staff that we bring to each race – without all of that those cars cost £2m.”

And as I just pointed out, Williams aren’t really in contention at the moment. How much more do Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull spend?

So really, how much of this is about sporting prowess, skill and ability, and how much is about the money, the designer and the engineering?

I’m not saying I could drive one of those cars as well as any of them out there – I know I couldn’t – but surely if they all got identical cars, whether they were designed by Adrian Newey or not, we’d all believe the results would reflect their sheer driving ability rather than the amount of money their teams can burn through.

For me, F1 at the moment is primarily about making money for Bernie Ecclestone, who hardly needs more than he’s currently got. So when it goes to Sky Sports next season, I for one won’t be watching it. I’m not putting any of my money into either Ecclestone’s or Murdoch’s pocket.

George Washington’s PC?

In early 2007 I decided my Windows XP Home PC had to go. But I hated Vista. I managed to buy one of the very last Acer Aspire desktop PCs running Windows XP Media Edition. I used it until two weeks ago. I always felt it was a good purchase and a good, reliable and decently performing computer.

But it started blue-screening sporadically, complaining about disk and memory errors.

What recession?

In the last recession I worked out three measures to determine the state of the country’s economy, and how I could tell things were picking up.

The first was the number of people on public transport during the rush hour. My logic is that no-one in their right mind would travel into London during the rush hour unless they had to. And the primary reason they have to is because they have a job. The number of empty seats, or conversely the number of people standing, on the train in the morning is a good proxy for the number of people employed and therefore the state of the economy.

Does it have to be like this?

A tweet from the inestimable Bill Thompson (@BillT) this morning about being over 50 and throwing yoghurt on his trousers prompted me to contemplate the pros and cons (mainly cons, I admit) of being in my 50s. It has to be said that it’s a bit depressing…

What was I saying? Yes, that’s the worst. I haven’t got to the point of forgetting what I’m saying mid sentence yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. I sure as hell forget what I climbed the stairs for, only to remember just as I reach the bottom step. I guess the exercise is good for me.

I am the invisible man. I work in the City of London, most of the time