..in my benighted adopted home country, in which I have just had a dreadful week for a variety of reasons.
Where I live you renew your annual registration based on the last figure in your plate number, e.g. 7 for July. The Land Transportation Office send round a crew to your local area on the first Saturday of each month to save you the hassle of going downtown and sitting in a shed with the hoi-polloi in the baking heat or teeming rain (delete as req'd).
So you rock up to the local clubhouse in a convivial atmosphere while a very polite chap with a pickup truck does your emission test (no one ever fails), stencils your VIN on the application form, ticks all the boxes to confirm your vehicle passes all the requirements to be driven on the highway (no bothersome MOT's here) and an extremely pleasant lady sells you your third party insurance, and another lady with her infant on her knee types out your policy in between texting her paramour and you go back in 3 days and collect your stickers for your licence plates. During this particular episode (took about 90 mins) I met a chap with an immaculate 1955 BMW bike, a journalist (Brit) with fascinating tales to tell of our recent (rigged) elections and a delectable movie starlet with a Land Cruiser and substantial appurtenances who wouldn't give me her cellphone number. The whole thing was worth every cent (penny) of the £10.90 to reg and insure my bike for another year. Plus small tips of course to these obliging staff. Oh, and the cost of the Diet Coke for said starlet wannabe.
All this under the trees with a cool breeze blowing and a chap pedalling by on a trike selling hot coffee, cold beer and hot dogs.
When this place drives me nuts (which it does regularly) little cameos like this make me think again. The bureaucracy is normally horrendous (hence the corruption) but what a rare streak of brilliance to send the reg people round once a month to a street near you.
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Meanwhile in a wet Northern Ireland G., MOT is in such a disarray that they have had to pass Legislation to allow use without out until they can get back to working beyond rule and clear the back log. Elsewhere, in a similarly wet Wales, stocked with soggy sheep, the mad mullah of ACPO recommended yesterday to HMG that there should be more and more and more and more speed cameras. At the same time Weblanket Home Sec removed, through Court action (no doubt under the old boys network) a Chief Constable that was elected by local consent and supported to stay so in under some difficulties with Home Office.
.... and at times you imply your neck of the woods is weird?
Mind you some relief, read my paper for past three days without one single reference to Skeletol and Derek (The Beckhams).
DVD
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Why dont they just send the old Chief Constable to The Home Secretary and introduce him as the new one? Hes not going to spot the difference is he?
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Why dont they just send the old Chief Constable to The Home Secretary and introduce him as the new one? Hes not going to spot the difference is he?
LOL!
Cringeworthy, isn't it. We frequently knock the Police here in the Backroom, expressing our concerns that they are out of touch. So when you get a Chief Constable with popular support what does old Labrador Boy do? Sacks him.
He's a twisted and angry little man, but then most of that bunch are.
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>>>>>Mind you some relief, read my paper for past three days without one single reference to Skeletol and Derek (The Beckhams).
These wretched people continue to fascinate my partner through the wonders of satellite TV, alas. Beckham, Dallaglio, Henman, I've taken to adopting an Aussie accent out of shame and wearing my bush hat in bars.
But we must stay motoring or else we shall be snipped. Looking at my emission test results (no connection between being snipped and emissions, that's something else LOL) I see the following:
CO % vol: 0.01
HC ppm vol: 05
CO2 % vol: 0.1
02 % vol 25.11
Lambda NO ppm vol: 00
Oil deg C ------
RPM 4: 00
Perhaps an alchemist will shortly be along to tell me what all this means.
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