The moaning old git thread

[Brockett]

So there I am on a 60 mph road approaching some nice bendy bits and whooooaaa there's a bloody car crawling along at 42mph. It happens every time I do this journey. ( uncle George and auntie Mable) Hello ho they must be being careful.
Insufficient sighting to overtake and so we all dawdle along for four miles into the next village where 'stone me'  uncle George continues through the the 30 limit at 42. Careful !! CAREFUL!!! not he is not being careful, he just happens to drive at 42 everywhere.
They really do P me off.

[snowy]

Hi there

Yes these people who drive everywhere at the same speed also annoy me greatly
They are up your a@hole going through a village, you loose them in the next national speed limit section of road, then f me they catch you in the next 30mph section.

[LaKraven]

My next mod is dual machine gun and rocket launcher combi turrets mounted to the crash bars.
I've got my eye on a couple of rocket pods from the AH64 attack helicopter, complete with complement of 47mm rockets!

What for? See the two posts above about blue-haired morons who shouldn't be on the road because they lack the co-ordination and awareness to drive safely!

[Oldie]

Can I just remind you idle whipper snappers that this is a thread about us moaning old gits - not other old gits.

It's bad enough being a moaning old git without having to explain it.

Flippin' heck, a moaning old git is someone like me coming on here complaining about, well, stuff like this.

See?  

[LaKraven]

"idle whipper snapper"? Me?

I'm the most miserable bastard alive, I'll have you know, and the only time I'm happy is when I'm moaning about something.

Lately it seems to be mostly moaning about how the government privatises national services (electric, water, gas, bus, rail etc) while I'm paying enough tax to fund a socialist Eutopia!

[Oldie]

"idle whipper snapper"? Me?

I'm the most miserable bastard alive, I'll have you know, and the only time I'm happy is when I'm moaning about something.

Lately it seems to be mostly moaning about how the government privatizes national services (electric, water, gas, bus, rail etc) while I'm paying enough tax to fund a socialist Eutopia!

Good, back on topic  

[Jacko]

The 42mph everywhere brigade are universally hated I think, of the folk I talk to about road traffic it is the most talked about subject.. I suspect that's what the camera vans in 30 limits are all about, can you imagine that old fella getting his ticket in the post, protesting to his long suffering wife about having been driving for five hundred years and never having been done for speeding before..?

Is it just me who feels like stopping them and telling them that what they're doing is not only selfish and inconsiderate, but also illegal? I suspect they're the type of person that'd not listen to anybody regarding anything, they know best, that's why they still do it..

[LaKraven]

I'm unfamiliar with the 42mph-everywhere brigade! Around here it's the "20mph in national zones, 45mph in 30 zones" brigade. Okay, so that's way more wordy, but that's what they do!
I swear half the time they do it just to piss normal people off, and the other half do it because they're morons who not only cannot drive safely and cope with the traffic around them, but worse-yet know that they cannot drive safely and cope with the traffic around them!

I had two great laughs last year because of these idiots!
First was in the nearby village of Orford where an elderly lady pulled up at the petrol station in her brand new automatic. Some overpriced piece of shit car, cannot remember what it was... probably a Honda or some other blue-hair-mobile! Anyway, she had just fueled up, then as she pulled out of the petrol station and approached the junction with the road, floored it directly into the wall of a house on the other side of the road. Yup... she was so braindead she not only hammered the accelerator instead of the brake, but travelled over 100 yards before her last remaining brain cell could process that she'd done it, by which time she'd already written the car off before her 0.000000000001mph nerve conduction velocity allowed the instruction to press the brake to reach her foot!

The second good laugh I had was travelling between the nearby village of Snape and the main road leading to Aldeburgh. I was stuck behind the aforementioned "20mph in a national zone, 45mph in a 30" blue-haired woman in a silver Yaris... and she was driving directly over the centre line. I could see clearly what was about go happen, minutes before it did.
Anyway, it was completely obvious she was about to crash, so I backed off and watched everything unfold.
Wouldn't you know it, as we approach the left-hand bend, an oncoming car approaches: also with an old woman driving directly over the centre line!.
There was at least 3 seconds for the two of them to see each other and stop, but the blind biddies clearly lacked the mental capacity to realise they were operating a vehicle, so they smashed directly into each other at 45mph.
Here's where it gets even funnier!
The two ladies step out of their wrecks and begin shouting at each other for causing the crash... and then another car comes crawling round the bend (oncoming from my perspective) and proceeds to crash directly into the back of the first oncoming wreck! You guessed it: another blue-haired old woman driving!

Two cars written off, three angry old ladies blaming each other for the crash while I spent about a minute at the side of the road laughing my arse off before riding away.

I wish I'd had the cameras mounted to the bike back then... that video would have hundreds of millions of hits by now!

[LaKraven]

Oh and here's another thing that pisses me off:

Watching the police breaking road laws in their cars!

I have hours of footage I've captured with my bike cameras of police breaking the law on the road... so much so I'm actually compiling a montage video including the full registrations of the vehicles, the GPS co-ordinates of each event, and the date and time of each event.

Time these bastards realised that if they're going to penalize us for our minor infractions, we're going to publicly humiliate them for theirs!

[hookie]

There are statistics released about the number of police vehicles involved in crashes and they are horrendous and how often to you hear of a police driver being prosecuted (or even reprimanded?). I was out walking with my three kids a few years back and were nearly run down by a police car driving on the wrong side of the road, well over the speed limit on a foggy evening in the town centre. We, along with several other  pedestrians were using a pelican crossing at the time. I 'phoned the local police station to make a complaint. I was told:- 1. The driver was on an emergency,  2. As a trained driver it was safe for him to drive this way and 3. He had faster reaction times as he was a police driver. I politely said he was talking bollocks and could I speak to the station commander as I wanted to make an official complaint and was then hung up on. At the time I was working with the wife of a local detective and she strongly advised me not to pursue the incident as I would get harassed, pulled over in the car and nicked for invented faults, speeding, etc. etc. Very reassuring. I've never had much time for them and this just reinforced my views.

[Fatbelly]

I went to court once as a witness against a police driver. There were almost 30 police officers waiting in the witness room when I arrived! There were only two there when the accident happened.

However, when two other independent witnesses arrived there was some scurrying around, the cop changed his plea to guilty and they all went home. They knew that 2 of us gave statements about how the police measured the position of the vehicles AFTER they had moved the police car.

The victim, whose car had been hit by the police car, gave me a lift home and told me that after the accident they had towed his car to the police station and inspected it for two days - eventually prosecuting him for a faulty handbrake because the lever had too much play!

That was some time ago and I'd like to say things have changed. Unfortunately my experience suggests that they have not.

[LaKraven]

So is it any wonder that few of us would urinate on a police officer to extinguish a blaze?

It's not even as though this completely illegal behaviour from them allows them to do their jobs better, because crime increases by the day, convictions for serious crimes are declining (while convictions for stupid things and "non-crimes" are on the up).

The police don't exist to serve and protect us (the people), they exist to serve and protect the Politicians who fear uprising![b/] As an institution in practise, they are every bit as distasteful as Hitler's SS, serving politicians whose unpublished illegal activities make Hitler look like a godamn saint.

Hell, our current government wasn't even on the ballot... what further proof do you need that we're living in a fascist dictatorship?

Don't you find it funny that, just as the press hones in on Cameron's involvement in the "phone hacking scandal", a very convienient series of events occurs: the London Riots?
All it takes to initiate that is for Cameron to place a call to his buddy, the head of the London police, and have him (and a few trusted underlings) take aside some known criminals (gang members) and tell them "from such a time to such a time, in these locatioins, there will be no police officers around. You've got a free pass to loot and pillage all you like, you won't be punished for your actions"
Before you know it, the press isn't digging its heels into David Cameron anymore, and he gets three convienient days to cover up his involvement.

I genuinely hope these bastards burn in hell!

[Andy M]

..... I 'phoned the local police station to make a complaint. I was told:- 1. The driver was on an emergency,  2. As a trained driver it was safe for him to drive this way and 3. He had faster reaction times as he was a police driver. .....

It's the pointed hats. They convey some sort of super powers directly into the users brain.

In a previous life I was a test engineer. I used to drive army trucks, fire engines, ambulances, prison trucks, all sorts really at insane speeds on a track or frozen lake or Alpine passes in order to do the type approvals. We used to put thousands of road miles in and never had a crash despite the prototype nature of the vehicles and how hard we could be pushing. I've been on track driving courses with racing drivers and rally drivers and road ones with police instructors. I've passed Fire brigade and police driving tests. We did a lot of risk assesment work and didn't think very much about how to start fights outside pubs.

As I do not own a pointy hat however, I'm expected to obey the traffic laws just like everyone else. Maybe I should practice the funny handshake, or just stick to 42 mph.

Andy

[LaKraven]

...or just stick to 42 mph.

[Fatbelly]

42mph - the speed of life, the Universe and everything.

[hookie]

The "funny handshake" is a very useful asset and can get you into very well paid jobs and out of situations that could get "normal folks" in serious shite. Can't think why I was never asked to join the club. Never wanted to wear a pointy hat either...

[Fatbelly]

I can't go along with the conspiracy theories, and I believe crime figures have actually fallen even though the population has risen. I don't believe most police officers are rotters, but a few of them definitely are and that undermines the whole of our society.

Nobody should hate bad cops more than good cops, but folks keep their heads down and look after number one in all walks of life. Lots of people on this site say stuff that I hate - but thank goodness they have the balls to say it anyway.

[LaKraven]

I can't go along with the conspiracy theories

Fair enough

and I believe crime figures have actually fallen even though the population has risen.

Yes, and statistics can be used to prove and disprove everything equally. What governments do to demonstrate an improvement in a statisized subject is change the criteria on which those statistics are generated. To show less homeless people (and suggest the government is doing a good job at housing the homeless), they change the way those figures are calculated to exclude the largest numbers (such as age-restricting, or not including those who haven't registered for government assistance)
To show less crime, they change it from counting the number of actual crimes to counting the number of convictions, or they twist - for the sake of statistics - the definition of what constitutes a "crime" to exclude the most prolific numbers.
They've done it for generations, they'll do it long after we're dead. It's no great secret, and certainly not a "conspiracy theory"

I don't believe most police officers are rotters, but a few of them definitely are and that undermines the whole of our society.

I agree, but would like to add that most officers I've had to deal with are "rotters" (as you so eloquently put it)

Nobody should hate bad cops more than good cops, but folks keep their heads down and look after number one in all walks of life. Lots of people on this site say stuff that I hate - but thank goodness they have the balls to say it anyway.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

[hookie]

Governments of all complexions and other state bodies are notorious for using statistics (lies and damned lies) to prove they are doing a wonderful job and then justify spending cuts or to create yet more tiers of bureaucracy and red tape at the public expense. Not all coppers are bad. I've met some that are excellent and some that belong in some South American tin pot dictatorship. The crime rate might well be falling or it might be that people aren't bothering to report it because nothing gets done and whether statistics can distinguish between the two is very debatable. I just take the whole thing with increasingly large pinches of salt.

[LaKraven]

I just take the whole thing with increasingly large pinches of salt.

Where I believe it best to scrap the entire system and start over. It won't be perfect (there's no pleasing everybody) but it wouldn't be difficult to do a better job than the status quo!